The Service of God.
I. If we call Christ Saviour, we must also call Him King; we must not pick and choose among the elements of the Gospel, and cast aside such parts of it as may press too hardly on our own craving to have our own way. Even when, in some most comfortable words, He bids us to come unto Him, and promises rest and relief from a heavy load, it is on the condition of taking upon us instead His easy yoke and light burden. The relation between a bondservant, or slave, and a master whose rights over him were absolute, a relation which Christianity was to undermine, but which for the time was suffered to exist, is utilised, so to speak, for the purpose of enforcing this great lesson. Four times does St. Paul, himself the Apostle, as he is called, of spiritual freedom, adopt the title of "a slave of God," or of Christ, a title used also by St. Peter, by St. John, by St. James, and by St. Jude. It is remarkable, too, that in the text the expressions are combined, "His servants shall do Him service for wages."
II. This thought will brighten and elevate the homeliest forms of every-day duty by bringing them under the obligation of personal service to a most equitable and Divinely generous Lord. We can do anything that is good and innocent, and everything that is part of our daily duty, as unto Him. Yes, and all helpful service of men will find fresh motive-power in the service of their and our Saviour. We shall be in a true sense serving Him when we are serving our fellow-men in Him and for His sake.
W. Bright, Morality in Doctrine,p. 130.
Thus, we see, the book closes where it begins. This text embodies all that is contained between its two covers. We have got back to Eden at last; we have got back to the tree of life in the midst of the paradise of God, and to the river of the water of life, and to the land of gold. Very long has been the wandering of the sad human family, the poor, unhappy, cursed, afflicted human race, but the end is reached, and although the curse was pronounced at the beginning, the winding up of all, the close of the matter, is that there is no curse. Consider, then, the curse, its origin, its nature, its penalty, the method of its repeal, and the prospects which its repeal opens to the eyes of believers.
I. The curse is visible. There is a pestilence that walks in darkness; there is a destruction that wastes at noonday; there is the law of sin and death, in which the curse of God is. Remark, again, how it reigns. The region of the curse is the region of the law; it is the region of tribulation and anguish. If we are in the region of the law, we are where the fire burns, and the storm tosses, and the steel pierces, and the poison kills, and the lightning cleaves, and time frightens by its limitations, and space by its contradictions and contractions. On some Mount Carmel God is always answering by fire, and the red curse of the wrath is manifested.
II. "There shall be no more curse." What is implied in this removal? Why, in fact, all experience here tends to teach it concisely. Now, you are to understand that Christ is the great power of God. You perhaps say, "That is nothing new." No, it is not, but it needs to be affirmed and asserted again and again with power. The whole nature of our redemption has no other end but to remove and extinguish the wrath that is between God and man. When that is removed, man is reconciled to God. Where the wrath is, there is that which must be atoned for; there is the cause of the separation between God and man; there is that which Christ came into the world to extinguish.
III. "There shall be no more curse." The sailor longing to set sail passes to and fro upon the shore, waiting the return of the tide, for when the tide returns the ship shall clear the harbour, and fly before the wind, and hasten home, and man can calculate the return of the tide; the astronomer, curious in speculation, waits upon his watch-tower, and notes in the heavenly places beyond the return of a planet or a comet, and by signs he can forecast the return of a luminary to its place in these skies; the feet of affection pace the stones of the station, waiting the return of the train, that the weary heart may be refreshed by the old face, and man can calculate the return of a train. But what of the return of a soul, nay, the return of a race of souls to their home and their allegiance, like weary birds returning to their rest? Then the strain of a glad universe shall be, "No more curse, no more pain, no more separation of lovers and friends, no more sickness, no more sighing, and no more death!" "They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away."
E. Paxton Hood, Penny Pulpit,New Series, No. 375.
The Services of Heaven.
This promise, or prophecy (to a child of God, all promises are prophecies, and prophecies are promises), this prophetical promise, is the last and the best in the Bible. It seems purposely reserved to be the crowning point, for to be with God, to be near God, to see God, to know God, to enjoy God, to be like God, are all subordinate to serving God! But we must unlearn our common ideas, if we would understand this. For "service" has been so abused, by the unfaithfulness of the servants and the inconsideration and severity of the service, that the very name of "service" is degraded.
I. When this promise is to take effect, and that perfect "service" is to begin, it would be presumptuous to attempt to define too accurately. We must be careful in lifting the veil which screens the sanctuary. Yet it is no forbidden curiosity which follows longingly and lovingly those who are gone, and which yearns to ask, "Where are they? What are they doing? Are they cognisant of us? Though we cannot see them, is there any actual communion with us now? In their quiet resting-places, are they engaged, and how? Or is all action suspended a while, and do they wait for us?" This paradise where the disembodied souls of the saints are till the Second Advent, as we gather from the intimations which are given to us is characteristically a state of rest of rest as in some measure contrasted with, and preparatory to, that state of active enjoyment which we shall have when we have regained our bodies, and of which these bodies are the necessary instruments. The images, which are used to describe the condition immediately after death, all point to rest. Seven times we have the expression, "enter into rest." And even sleep is used as the metaphor of death. And we have the analogy of the Sabbath-day and of the entrance into the land of Canaan; and it seems a gracious and fit arrangement, and according to God's tender mercy, and it commends itself to our feelings and experiences, that, after the toils and conflicts of life, there should be a season of special repose and refreshment. It is not to be believed for a moment that this interval is a time of unconsciousness or dull nonentity. St. Paul would not have hesitated, as he did, in his letter to the Philippians, whether it was better to live or die, if the state after death till the resurrection were a state of inaction. It would be better, certainly, to a mind such as his to remain here and work, than to be nothing and do nothing for a great many years. But the rest of paradise, as I believe, will be such a rest as the Christian needs and loves, passed with Christ, contemplating Christ, delighting in Christ, learning from Christ, properly learning, especially such things as shall be needed for future service. Nor can I conceive that even this quiet period shall be altogether without activity, for we are so constituted that we can hardly think of a sphere of positive enjoyment not combined with action. But rather will it be such employment as is most restful. We have the two beautifully blended in that description of the souls in paradise, which is perhaps given us for this very end, to show the union, "They rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness."
II. During that "resting" period, it is pleasant to us to know that they and we are in perfect sympathy in the longing which the whole Church has for the Advent. We are looking to the same point on the horizon, for they too expect, in the perfection of their being, to rise. "How long? How long?" "Even we" as St. Paul says of us "who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body." But when He shall come in whose presence when He lived upon earth all death awoke to life, on that great Easter morning, the souls of saints which sleep shall rise in the springtide of their beauty, and each soul shall mate itself again to its body, no longer, as now, a clog, to drag it down to the dust, but to be wings to its joy, to do all its will; then shall our perfected and glorified being begin to fulfil the far end of its existence: "His servants shall serve Him."
J. Vaughan, Sermons,13th series, p. 69.
Reference: Revelation 22:3. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxvii., No. 1576.
Revelation 22:3 , Revelation 22:5
Servitude and Royalty.
I. "His servants shall serve Him." Such is the title of the glorified. In heaven itself there is no emancipation from the bonds of God. The holy nations are eternally bound in absolute obligation to the will of God and of the Lamb. It is no part of the Creator's promise to raise, to educate, the creature to independence, to self-dependence. That could not be without a profound and fatal contradiction. The created soul could not be the basis of its own being, nor could it be the source of its own joy and power or the law of its own eternity. We read what is but likely when we read that the nearer and the clearer is the sight of the Creator granted to the creature, the better the creature recognises the blessedness of self-surrender. The nearer the approach, the more entire the service. Even within the most living circles of the Christian Church just now the sense of duty surely is not at its strongest. The will to do our Divine Master's will, not our liking, but His bidding; the sober strength of Christian character; the weight and fixity of principle; the jealousy that conscience is kept void of offence in the plain duties of the common day these are not things so often to be found. Nevertheless these things are essentials in the seed sown here which is to issue in the life of heaven. For it is written that His servants there shall serve Him still.
II. "They shall reign for ever and ever." Such is the twin promise of the better life. The bondmen of the Eternal, in that existence of endless duty, shall for ever reign. Even in the present world the true servant of God, in proportion to the reality and simplicity of his servitude, receives some foretastes of his royalty. There is no independence upon earth so strong, and so nobly strong, as that of a Christian who wills wholly to be Christ's servant.
H. C. G. Moule, Christ is All,p. 203.
References: Revelation 22:4. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xiv., No. 824; J. B. Lightfoot, Church of England Pulpit,vol. vii., p. 369; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. v., p. 308. Revelation 22:4; Revelation 22:5. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 282.Revelation 22:5. W. C. E. Newbolt, Counsels of Faith and Practice,p. 57; Homilist,3rd series, vol. iii., p. 200; G. W. Conder, Christian World Pulpit,vol. x., p. 44; Preachers Monthly,vol. v., p. 52.Revelation 22:7. R. S. Candlish, The Gospel of Forgiveness,p. 437.