I want to talk to you tonight about death, particularly, about The Death of The Righteous. Balaam cried, "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!" (Num. 23:10).
Proposition: Forever blessed are those men and women who live and die in righteousness!
Read the first two verses of Isaiah 57 with me. Now just hold your place there for a few minutes, while I talk plainly to you about death. Then we will look at the message contained in these two verses.
1. You and I are dying! We are all eternity bound sinners with immortal souls' and we are dying. "Dying thou shalt die!" "The wages of sin is death."
2. For you who are without Christ, death is the beginning of infinite, indescribable, eternal woe!
B. But for the believer things are different – For the believer death is not something to be dreaded with fear, but anticipated with hope.
For the believer death might be compared to a friendly visit from the Lord. As a man walks in his garden and plucks a beautiful flower in full bloom to stick it in his lapel, so the Lord God comes into his garden, gathers his lilies with delightful smile and carries them in his bosom up to glory. The Believer Lives In: FAITH – HOPE – RIGHTEOUSNESS – PEACE
"O what a burst of joy, what a scene of glory opens to the ravished view, and beams on the triumphant soul of a saint in the moment of departure! The deathbed of a Christian is the anti-chamber of heaven, and the very suburbs of the New Jerusalem." – Toplady
Pause for a moment and try to imagine what it will be like to enter heaven1 (I Cor. 2:9).
Divisions: Now, let's look at Isaiah 57:1-2. I want to show you four things in these two verses.
I. The Character of God's Saints – "Righteous" and "Merciful" are the words that are used here to describe believers.
A. Believers are people who have been made righteous by God's grace.II. The Providence of God in The Death of His Saints – "The righteousness perisheth."
Not eternally! He may, by reason of temptation and sin, fear that he shall perish. He may sometimes say, "My strength and my hope have perished before the Lord." And his peace and comfort may perish for a time. But the righteous cannot perish everlastingly! All who believe on Christ, being washed in his blood, robed in his righteousness, and sealed by his Spirit, have everlasting life and shall never perish!
Isaiah is here talking only about the death of the body. This body of flesh must perish. But the righteous can never perish. And this perishing of the righteous is an act of God's wise and good providence (Eccles. 7:15). "The merciful man is taken away" – gathered to heaven by the hand of God.
A. God has ordained the time of my death.And it really is of no concern to me when, where, or how I die. That is entirely up to my Master. Righteousness delivers us from the sting of death, but not from the stroke of death.
NOTE: In his providence, God often removes the righteous and leaves the wicked. Fruitful trees are cut down in death, but barren trees are left to cumber the ground. Merciful men are often taken away by the hand of malicious men, who are left to work havoc in the earth. (Illus: God took Abel by Cain's hands and left Cain to live a cursed life!)
Very few value the lives of God's saints. When they are taken, few look upon it as a public loss, fewer still take notice of it as a public warning.
A. Wise men look upon the death of another as a reminder of the certainty of his own death.
B. But when God's saints are taken out of this world, we are especially wise to lay that to heart.
NOTE: When the flood was coming. God put his elect into the ark. When he rained fire on Sodom, he snatched Lot out of the city!
When those who stand in the gap to hold back the flood of God's wrath are taken away, the flood will soon come. "It is a sign that God intends war when he calls home his ambassadors." (M. Henry).
B. "He shall enter into peace!"We walk in peace now (Rom. 5:1; Phil. 21:12). And when we leave this world, we shall enter into a world of peace.
1. Heaven is a world of peaceful associates.4. As soon as we step out of this world of strife we will enter into Christ's world of peace!
When our souls have entered into heaven's world of peace, these bodies of flesh shall rest in hope of the resurrection in the bed of the earth, in the grave.
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