DISTRESS IN PROSPECT OF DEATH
Isaiah 38:2-3. Then Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall, &c.
The causes of Hezekiah’s reluctance to die may be gathered from his circumstances. [See Outline: Hezekiah’s Prayer, p. 426.] That ungodly men should be terrified at death is what might be expected (P. D. 684); but reluctance to die is not confined to them (H. E. I. 1570).
I. The Christian has naturally a feeling of repugnance at the very thought of the disruption of the union between soul and body. What precedes death, the stroke itself, and its consequences, all excite feelings of dread (P. D. 741, 761).
II. True believers may feel reluctant to die because of the doubts which they entertain with respect to their eternal state. After death is the judgment. Their fears may proceed from various causes. From constitutional temperament, increased by a relaxed state of the nervous system; from the prevalence of unbelief, the imperfection of knowledge and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; from the powerful agency of the god of this world in producing them. A last desperate effort is made to overthrow faith. While these prevail, recovery from bodily distress is felt to be a mercy of no ordinary kind (H. E. I. 323).
III. Religion may be in a declining state in them, and a consciousness of this may render the prospect of death distressing to them. The progress of the Christian is not uniform. If, while in a backward state, he is called to die, conscience is awakened, and he is thrown into alarm (Matthew 25:1-13).
IV. The prospect of death may be distressing, because the believer will then be deprived of all opportunity of honouring God in this world. This was one reason for Hezekiah’s unwillingness to die. He was in the prime of life. Believers, at a like time, may pray to live in order to be useful in the Church and world. The prayer proceeds from a right principle—a desire to honour God. It seems hard for the minister of Christ, after a long course of laborious preparation, to be smitten down to die before he has well begun the great work of preaching. The philanthropist, like Howard, feels a bitterness in the stroke. The Christian parent also. In these and like circumstances a rare strength of faith is called for.
V. God may see good to withhold from true believers the comforts of religion under bodily distress and in their dying moments. To what is the difference in the measure of comfort enjoyed on a deathbed to be ascribed? The sovereignty of God must here be admitted. Objection against it here applies equally in other circumstances. The Divine reasons may be inscrutable to man, although assuredly dictated by infinite wisdom. The newly converted may die joyfully; the veteran Christian may have much less comfort. But generally the faithful life will end, at least, in a peaceful death (H. E. I. 1264).
Would you meet death without terror?
1. Improve by faith that righteousness which Christ wrought out in our nature.
2. See to it that your hearts are changed by the Spirit of God.
3. Devote yourselves unreservedly and unweariedly to the cultivation of holiness in heart and life. The longer we are here, we are the more prone to set our hearts upon the world as if it were our rest. It is from this tendency that the aged Christian sometimes feels as great a reluctance to depart as the Christian in the morning of life (Colossians 3:2).—James Anderson: Scottish Christian Herald, iii. 569.