CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Revelation 14:13. Blessed are the dead.—This relieves anxiety concerning all who are taken out of the warfare before the victory is fully won. They will share all the rewards, and their life-witness and service will be in no wise forgotten. Recall the fear with which St. Paul deals in the epistle to the Thessalonians, that those who died before Christ came would be placed under some special disadvantages.
Revelation 14:14. Son of man.—So figured as presiding over the final judgment of humanity. The visions of a harvest and a vintage (Revelation 14:15-20), typify the time, now nigh at hand, in which God will gather in His own, and will trample His enemies in the winepress of His wrath.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Revelation 14:13-16
Revelation 14:13. The Harvest of the Earth for Keeping.—This is the link between the earlier and later visions of this chapter. Many of the Lord’s redeemed ones had already been gathered in, out of their earth-persecutions. Many were still left under the fiery trial. But they were keeping steadfast and faithful, while the gospel was being proclaimed unto “every nation and tribe and tongue and people.” They are to be cheered and encouraged by the vision of the hour when the angel may declare that the earth-story is complete, and the judgment of God has come. In that day evil, however mighty it may seem to have grown, will fall, suddenly, irretrievably, even as Babylon fell in the day of its pride. In that day the patience of the saints will gain its full recognition. The Divine acceptance comes to the “sheep of the right hand,” “they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” But this final day of God’s judgment is no present thing; it is a vision of the far-away. It may even be turned wrongly, and made a discouragement to Christian souls, for it may seem as if all the blessedness of that day were reserved for those saints who were alive when the great judgment-trumpet should be sounded. The writer checks himself to say a gracious and comforting word to those who might be troubled with such thoughts and fears. The harvest of the earth is a long-continued process. The angel of the harvest is the death-angel, as well as the angel of ingathering for those who are “alive and remain at the coming.” Therefore this comforting word may be spoken—nay, write it down, for it is certain; write it down, for the saints of all the ages will want the gracious assurance. Not only blessed are the dead which have died in the Lord, whom you have seen in vision harping in the glory, and singing their new song, but blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth, from this very hour right away to the judgment day. “Yea, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.” They are all stored safe in the garner of God, until the harvest of the earth is complete. Then, having given this comforting assurance, the writer can return upon his visions of the end of all earthly things—his visions of the harvest-day of God. It must prove to be a double harvest. Christ Himself will see to the ingathering of the saints. His angels will execute His will upon those who have refused His gospel, kept their sin, and worked against all the gracious purposes of His love.
I. The first-fruits of God’s harvest of the earth.—“The dead which die in the Lord.” We may think of heaven as the great storehouse, granary, of God. His harvest is the harvesting of years. His grain ripens in all the ages. The reaper we call death cuts down the golden grain; but no stalk is lost—every one is borne into the garner, and safely treasured there until the harvest work is complete. It is but a resting time for the saints; they never pass out of God’s memory and regard. “Their works do follow them,” and all will be taken into due account in the great day of Divine appraisement. It is a most helpful way in which to think of our dead, and of our own dying. They are but first-fruits of harvest, carried in early to God’s barn. They are only waiting awhile, until the day when the earth-fields can be swept once for all, and God’s harvest of the earth be complete.
II. The remainder of God’s harvest of the earth.—A day must come when the arresting hand must be placed on the earth’s story, the stalks may no longer stand in the earth-fields. All must be gathered in. That is presented in symbol in the visions of the angel offering the sickle to the Son of man, reminding Him that the harvest is almost over-ripe, and must at once be reaped. Of this we are assured: the succession of the dying will not be continuous. The number of Christ’s redeemed ones will one day be completed. And what He will do for them in the great forever they shall know when the last stalk has fallen before the reaper.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Revelation 14:13. The Blessedness of the Dead.—What this text means in its fulness of application no one now knows. But its suggestions are manifest and manifold.
I. God’s saints, at death, enter into rest.—Rest—not, indeed, from service, but from labour—which implies the disagreeable, exhausting, discouraging side of toil. In the higher sense of service they rest not day nor night, serving God in His temple. But the hindrances without and within all cease, and the service is unmixed delight.
II. Their works do follow them.—This, in a threefold sense, is true:
1. Follow them in witnessing to their fidelity.
2. Follow them in contributing to their reward.
3. Follow them in perpetuating their influence for good.—Anon.
Dying in the Lord.
I. What is it to die in the Lord?—One has said that it “implies a previous living with Him.” Living with Him involves the exercise of certain elements. These are found in Revelation 14:12.
1. Faith: “The faith of Jesus.” No man can live with or die in the Lord without faith in Him. With it he can live and die triumphantly.
2. Obedience: “They that keep the commandments of God.” Living with God is obeying God. The obedience of faith—the obedience that is vitally connected with faith—enters into the preparation for a happy death, or death in the Lord.
II. Why are those who die in the Lord blessed or happy?—
1. The happiness of contemplation. The Christian has a bright prospect. He can look forward, not to a dark uncertainty, but to the pleasures of home. When dying, one said, “I wish I had the power of writing or speaking, for then I would describe to you how pleasant a thing it is to die.” Another, “I have experienced more happiness in dying two hours this day than in my whole life.”
2. The happiness of release from toil, sorrow, pain. Rest—“That they may rest from their labours.” Christians are not free from trials; it is not according to the Divine plan that they should be. But those trials cannot pass beyond the gate of death; and when the Christian passes into the beyond he leaves his trials.
3. The happiness of being with Christ after death. The psalmist said, “In Thy presence is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” Again, “I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness.” Paul said, “I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.” Great joy here, but fulness of joy with Christ.—Anon.
“The Blessed Dead.”—No book is fuller than this Apocalypse of the struggles and victories of the Church on earth; but it also opens a door into heaven. It shows that heaven is not all future, but, as it were, contemporary with present history, and bound to it by the closest ties. Messengers pass and repass; tidings come and go; and the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne presides alike over time and eternity.
I. The answer which the text gives to the question, How is the heavenly blessedness attested?—We all profess to believe in the reality of heaven; but why?
1. There is the evidence from, miracle, or the presence of the supernatural in the form of power. This great apostle heard a voice from heaven. But before this, John had looked on One whose life was crowded with miracle. He had witnessed His risen glory as He came back from heaven, and His ascension glory as He returned to heaven. If miracle could vouch for heaven, its existence was confirmed.
2. The testimony is, in itself, Divinely credible. Its internal character vouches for its authority.
3. There is a living and. experimental evidence of the reality of heaven. It is written in living epistles, written, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God.
II. How is the heavenly blessedness secured?—
1. The doctrine here is that the title to heaven depends on faith “in the Lord.”
2. But there is also a preparation for the heavenly state by holy obedience. “They rest from their labours,” implying that they prove their faith by works.
III. How is the heavenly blessedness enjoyed?—
1. Heaven is the rest of the worker. It is not sloth, torpor, or inactivity; but while there is no apathy there is rest to the body and the spirit. No more out in the billows, toiling in rowing, when the wind is contrary, but in smooth water, and with the ripple breaking on the shore.
2. Heaven is the continued influence of the work. “Their works do follow them.” Every moral act, truly good, will last for ever. The simplest act of self-denial for Christ’s sake, the mother’s faintest prayer, record themselves in the soundingboard of eternity, and never die away.—John Cairns, D.D.
Revelation 14:15. The Harvest of the Earth.—The expression is a singular and, indeed, a striking one. As his fields are to the farmer, so, we are permitted to think, the whole earth is to God. The farmer works for a harvest of his fields and trees, and God may be thought of as working for the harvest of the whole earth. God’s work in the world is like ploughing, sowing, weeding the fields. God’s work has its reward when He carries home the last loaded wain, and His garner is filled with the good corn of the earth of humanity. Can we follow out the figure, and find in it the suggestion of helpful truths?
I. God prepared the earth for His seeding.—Scientific men may wrangle over the ages and order of creation. It is enough for us to know that, at a given time, God had prepared the earth to be the scene of a moral trial for a new race of beings. It is full of interest to inquire into all the mystery of nature. Of its study man never tires. But it is of far greater interest to observe in how marvellous a way the earth was adjusted and adapted to the beings who were to be placed upon it. The relativity of creation to a being with five senses, and these particular five senses, has never yet been shown with the precision and fulness that it demands. The farmer cleans, and ploughs, and manures, and harrows, and ridges, his fields, in precise adaptation to the crop that he intends to grow upon it; and earth is the prepared field of God, made ready for His sowing.
II. God seeds His prepared earth with men.—Scattering the seed all over the earth, that man’s probation may be carried on under every varying condition of soil, and landscape, and climate, and relationship. God keeps on seeding the earth with men; every seed with a great possibility in it; every seed set where its possibility may freely unfold, and where the God provided influences all tend to the nourishment of all its best possibilities. Men, men everywhere, are the seed of God. They are quick with Divine life, and sown in the earth to grow into a harvest for God.
III. The harvest God seeks from His seeding is character.—God sows His earth with moral beings, in the hope of reaping moral character. But what is moral character? It is the proper fruitage of the earth-experience of moral beings. But can we understand it a little more fully than that? A moral being is one that can recognise a distinction between good and evil, and, when the distinction is seen, can choose for itself which it will have, the good or the evil. But a moral being must be put into such circumstances as will offer it the choice between good and evil. And substantially the test amounts to this: good is doing what is known to be the will of the Creator; evil is doing the will of the moral being himself, when that is known to be not the will of the Creator. The picture-scene in the Garden of Eden is the typical trial of moral beings. But what we need, for our present purpose, to see with clearness, is that when, under enticement of the senses, the moral being has chosen the evil, he is said to have fallen, but he has really started the possibility of moral character, which is the issue of the conflict in which the will, biassed by the indulgence of the senses, is brought back to the choice and obedience of God’s will, and recovered from all the sad experiences and conditions resulting from the choice of evil. The story of a life is the story of that conflict. It is the growth, through the long months, of God’s seed into the “full corn in the ear” of established moral character. It is the unfolding of what God would gather in from His seeding of men, the righteousness of the accepted will of God. One thing only does man take through the great gates—the character that he has gained. It is the full ear that heads the stalk, and ripens for the reaper.
IV. God has anxious times while His seed of men is growing into His harvest of character.—Every blade that breaks the earth in the farmer’s field has to fight for its life with varied foes: insects, worms, mildew, rust, living creatures, varying temperatures, crowding weeds; the growth of every blade to stalk and ear is a hard-won victory. The stalk can do its best, and be its best, only at the cost of unceasing struggle and watchfulness. And the field of earth is but a type of the world of men. Every character is the product of a stern experience, the issue of a hundred fights; a triumph from an unceasing struggle. Think of each man’s life-story, and this is true. Think of the histories of nations, and this is true. Think of the story of humanity as if it were the story of one man, and it is God’s Adam, planted in God’s earth, and growing amid the thousandfold influences for good and evil, through all the long ages, and showing at last the golden grain of moral character, rich and ripe, that can be gathered into God’s garner, as the glorious reward of His toil; For over every phase and feature of the struggle in every man out of which character is born, God presides. The problem of each man’s dealings with his surroundings—helpful be they, or injurious—God is intensely interested in. He is anxious as the farmer is anxious over his growing blades. He is anxious as the parent is anxious over the unfolding of character in his child. He may let the struggle alone. He may interfere. But we may be sure that He is deeply concerned. We speak of the “making of a man,” or the “making of a nation.” The one thing of profoundest interest to God is the making of characters in His great earth-fields. Be it so; then a fact of infinite sadness has to be faced. The issue is disappointing, for God’s harvest-hope of reaping character from His sowing of men is only partially fulfilled.