Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age.
The death of the Christian
I. Death is inevitable. “Thou shalt come.” This remark is very trite, simple, and common. But while this is a truth so well known, there is none so much forgotten.
II. Death to the christian is always acceptable. “Thou shalt come to thy grave”; intimating a willingness, and a cheerfulness to die. Thou shalt not be dragged or hurried. A Christian has nothing to lose by death.
III. The Christian’s death is always timely. “In full age.” But good people do not live longer than others. The most pious man may die in the prime of youth. The text does not say “old age,” but “full age.” A “full age” is whenever God likes to take His people home. There are two mercies to a Christian. He will never die too soon. And he never dies too late.
IV. The christian will die with honour. “Like a shock of corn.” I believe we ought to pay great respect to saints’ bodies. “The memory of the just, is blessed.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The good man’s grave
If this passage be taken in its restricted application to the mere animal existence of man on earth, the promise it contains will be found to be fulfilled in only a few comparatively of the people of God. But in the ease of such, life means something more than mere duration, or the mere succession of outward events. A good man’s life consists chiefly in the extent to which he realises the fruits of his godliness, and the fulness of his age is reached in the maturity of those graces which are implanted within him by the Spirit of God. In this light the passage may be regarded as verified in the case of every really pious man, whatever be the term of his continuance here on earth. The passage suggests the following thoughts--The spiritual life in man is always progressive. Where real spiritual vitality exists, maturity is always reached before the individual is removed by death. The whole process is under the watchful eye of the Great Proprietor of all. And we are reminded of the true nature and real purposes of death to the child of God. It is simply the agency by which he is transferred from a scene where his longer continuance would be injurious, to a higher and nobler sphere. The question naturally arises, In what relation the two terms of existence, which lie on either side of the point of transit, stand to each other? Had the question been asked in the case of an unfallen being, there would be no difficulty in answering it. The difficulty concerns fallen but redeemed man. For them the grave is robbed of its terrors. Around it gather associations, not of defeat but of victory; not of humiliation but of honour. Through its portals the weary pilgrim passes to his home. Paganism, conscious only of the presence of decay, kindled for the dead the funeral pyre; but Christianity, expectant of the resurrection, lays their bodies reverently in the dust, and inscribes upon their sepulchre, In Christ he sleeps in peace,” (W. Lindsay Alexander, D. D.)
A pious old age
I. In what does this ripeness or fitness for heaven consist? There must be in such a character sincerity. I mean there must be integrity in their first transactions with God. A shock of corn fully ripe reminds us of steadfastness. To be spiritually minded is also implied in a Christian’s ripeness or fitness for glory.
II. In what respects is such a good old age desirable? There is nothing desirable in old age itself.
1. It is a proof of sincerity.
2. It gives opportunity for considerable growth in grace.
3. It recommends religion to others.
4. It tends to an extraordinary fitness for heaven.
Such are some of the advantages of a religious old age. And this is a subject in which all are deeply concerned. Improve the present season, for “what a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” (S. Lavington.)
Ripe for the harvest
The life of man, morally and spiritually considered, must not be measured by length of days, but rather by the degree to which the end of existence has been attained. Consider this interesting promise.
1. The emblem under which it is conveyed suggests to us the care and affection with which the great Head of the Church regards the progress and the end of His servants.
2. The comparison of the text implies that progress belongs to the very nature of religion, and therefore is its invariable and indispensable law.
3. There is a state of grace attainable on earth which may be fitly described as a state of maturity. Consider in what that maturity consists.
4. It should reconcile us to such losses to reflect that a state of maturity necessitates the reaping. (Daniel Katterns.)
Preparation for death
I. A consideration of the change to take place in the dissolution of the body. Through man’s transgression death entered the world--“so death passed upon all men.” Our first parent came from the hands of God, created after His likeness, impressed with immortality.
II. A consideration of the period of death’s arrival. How few die in old age! It is “full age” with us when we are prepared to depart--when the work is done we have to do.
III. The manner of death’s arrival. The last enemy wears a thousand forms.
IV. Some reflections. Christians do not repine at God’s decree. The Christian is taught to believe that whilst the spirit is in God’s keeping, the body also is not undeserving His cognisance. (George Anthony Moore.)
The parable of harvest
This text literally reads, “Like as a shock of wheat that is lifted up.” It is a perfect vision of the closing days of harvest. It is the consummation of the year; the last triumphant act in a long drama of skill and patience.
1. The first parable of harvest is, that harvest is God’s memorial, and the parable of His love. His promise is that while the bow is in the heaven, springtime and harvest shall not fail. God sets the bow for a sign, a bright watcher or minister, to declare His goodwill to us. How miraculous a thing is the wheat harvest of the world! The wheat harvest in the East is the one supreme event of the year. This is the first and chief lesson of the harvest; we are God’s pensioners, and He spreads the table in the wilderness.
2. The order of the world is use first, and beauty second. There are many things more beautiful than corn. True, it has a certain humble grace of its own, but it is the democratic grace of the worker, not the aristocratic grace of the idler. You could live in a world without roses, but not in a world without corn; you like to have perfume, but you must have bread.
3. The harvest is the parable of life itself. How little spoils both. How irrevocable the tendencies of each! A slight error spoils the year’s husbandry, as slight errors often spoil a whole life. See in corn an illustration of the solidarity of life itself. The corn travels the wide world over. It has no local limit, it is cosmopolitan. It has no personal life; its life is for the race. In these respects the parable of life is revealed. We live in infinite relations, beyond our relation to the soil we thrive in, and the age we are said to live in. We sow ourselves as corn is sowed, and others reap; even as we before reaped what others sowed.
4. The harvest is the parable of death. What is death? We know that decomposition is recomposition. Nothing perishes, for there is no waste in nature. Here we have the revelation of the true purpose of life--which is use; and of the true triumph of life--which is to be sacrificed, as the corn must be plucked and ground before it can become bread. (G. W. Dawson.)
How to grow old gracefully
Or how to grow old so that age, as it advances, may be an honour and comfort to us, and terminate in peace and happiness.
1. Bear in mind that we must grow old. This is the law of our being, fixed and certain as the law of mortality.
2. If we would grow old gracefully, we must possess true piety; faith in Christ as our Saviour, and hope in God as our everlasting portion.
3. We must cultivate a love of nature.
4. We must continue to take an interest in the young, and in whatever is moving around us, affecting the welfare of society and the cause of Christ.
5. There are some peculiar faults and sins--incident to age--against which we must be guarded, if we would grow old gracefully. Such as peevishness. “There are two things which a man ought not to fret about,--what he can help, and what he cannot.” Avarice or covetousness. Jealousy of whatever is new, and a proneness to think that things are growing worse because they are different from what they were in former days. And an unwillingness to let go of the duties, responsibilities, and honours of life, retire from the stage of action and be forgotten. This is indeed a hard lesson to learn.
6. There are certain virtues which demand to be cultivated, if we would grow old gracefully. Such as patience, liberality, cheerfulness, hopefulness, readiness to yield the field of labour and responsibility to them that are younger; and an habitual and cheerful posture of readiness to leave the world and go to be with Christ. (J. Hawes, D. D.)
Christian maturity
By a natural instinct, man reads in all the short-lived objects around him the images of his own decay. Nothing is lovelier to look upon, nothing is more evanescent in its loveliness, than the varied vegetation which clothes the landscape. And in its evanescence man has ever contemplated the emblem of his mortality. These emblems are not altogether mournful. While there are those suggestive of an untimely fate, there are others that delineate the end of man in its seasonableness as a natural close, a full consummation, a ripeness as of the harvest. Contemplate the true maturity of man.
I. The maturity of man in its characteristics. To die old seems a natural wish. Death in old age comes not with a shock, as of something abrupt, unexpected, but as a natural issue--the culmination of life’s manifest destiny, the measurement of the full circle of life’s journey. It carries the associations of the sunset, of the harvest--tender, but not sombre and sad. And these are right and religious feelings. For man’s life on earth is a great thing, a sacred power, a most momentous and immeasurable trust. The error of mankind is not that they place life too high, but that they think far too little of its true value, of its most awful responsibility. Scripture has not taught us to think lightly of life, or to wish an early removal from it. It cultivates the appreciation of life as a great and holy thing. Used as a power of getting and of doing good, life is a glorious privilege. Life on earth has its completed circle--its threescore years and ten--when it has rounded that little orbit, the bodily life has reached its maturity, beyond which it is not fitted to survive, and sinks into the dust as naturally as the ripened corn falls into the ground. But if that were all, it were hard to tell why it should be a thing of Divine promise. That were a poor consolation, to have the full term of life, and to come to the grave in however ripe an age, if the grave were all. But the body is not the man--only the vehicle and tabernacle of the man. It is the soul that is the man; and the man is then only “as a shock of corn in his season,” when he is mature in the spiritual and immortal part. The decay of the body imposes no inevitable decline in the soul’s higher life. Time leaves no mark on the mind, except of growing power. If, then, the full age of man be of the spirit--ripeness for immortality--what are the characteristics of one ready to be garnered into heaven?
1. Christian maturity is the fulness of spiritual life. Man is of “full age” when the whole circle of Christian excellences is present in the character, and each unfolded in its due proportion. When all the graces meet in a person, they robe him with a glory known only to Christianity. The last attainment is completeness. Christianity is the union of all the graces, not only in their completeness, but in their individual fulness. In our second birth are included all the elements of final perfection--not then come to their full measure, but from that moment the formative principles of character should advance to maturity.
2. Christian maturity is the fulness of spiritual experience. We associate experience with life--Christian experience with the Christian life; and this adds elements and aspects to the piety, which are not found in its first rise--mellowing, sobering, enriching the whole spiritual man, as with the golden glow of autumn. There is a wide difference between the effect of worldly experience and of Christian experience. The former disenchants the heart of all its youthful illusions, and makes it distrust all appearances and persons, and hope for nothing better than vanity and vexation of spirit. The effect of Christian experience is to transfer the hopes and affections to the realities of a higher world, and to deepen their power. The follower of Christ is conducting a great experiment as to the power of the Gospel. And he finds as he goes on, that it justifies all his confidence. Faith becomes experience--less liable to be moved away by blasts of unbelief, or by assaults of temptation. The disciple becomes an established Christian.
3. Christian maturity is completed by spiritual usefulness. Christianity will make a man useful in every way, secular as well as religious. But no measure of secular service can be accepted as an apology for the neglect of the higher work, which is laid to every man in Christ’s kingdom. Spiritual life and experience are the preparatives and the power of usefulness. As they are enlarged, they nourish and enrich that spiritual fruitfulness which puts the crown on Christian maturity.
II. The conditions of christian maturity. How is it prepared? The shock of corn is the result of a process. Christian maturity represents the whole course and combination of influences that have been at work in the man. Nothing can mature that has not life. Among the conditions of a Christian maturity we name--
1. Early decision for Christ. True piety takes its rise in a cordial surrender to Christ, and it reaches its maturity in the completeness of that surrender.
2. Progressive piety. There would be no harvest if the seed plant only rooted and sprung up above ground, and never advanced any further. There is a succession of stages of growth--“first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.” No man, at whatever stage of his Christian course you find him, is all that he needs to be. There must be progress in Christian intelligence, growth in Christian faith--which worketh by love. There must be assiduous cultivation of piety, which will include a growing love to the sanctuary, to the Bible, to the service of prayer, to the scene of communion. There will be a growing devoutness approaching ever closer to the spirit of heaven, and waiting the call to enter into the joy of the Lord. (J. Riddell.)
Death in a ripe old age
Many men avoid all consideration of death, and never venture to speak on the subject. If this be the result of ignorance, it is to be lamented; if it be the result of doubt as to their future existence, their reserve and silence may tend greatly and unnecessarily to perpetuate and increase the doubt. A future life was the expectation of the sages of antiquity, seeing that such an end of man as appears at his death is unworthy of the great powers conferred upon him by the Creator, and inadequate to man’s knowledge and earnest thought and prayer about an endless life. Jesus Christ has brought life and immortality to light by His Gospel. He has with great simplicity and beauty revealed to us the character and providence of His Father and our Father, of His God and our God. This is the highest evidence of, and surest testimony to a future life possessed by our race. It is worthy of universal reception, and brings light to the understanding and solace to the heart. Death has a mighty power to destroy many things that mar the happiness of life. What a lesson it reads to the covetous, the malicious! What a beautiful scene, or what a painful and miserable scene, a death bed can be made! But in the case of the truly good, the power of the life will be greater than the impression of the death. (R. Ainslie.)
Corn husking time
“As a shock of corn cometh in in his season.” There is difference of opinion as to whether the Orientals knew anything about the corn as it stands in our fields. After harvest in America, the farmers gather, one day on one farm and one day on another, put on their rough husking apron, take the husking peg, which is a piece of iron with a leathern loop fastened to the hand, and with it unsheath the corn from the husk, and toss it into the golden heap. Then the waggons will come along and take it to the corn crib. Possibly the Hebrews knew about Indian maize, and husked it just as we do. Lessons--
1. It is high time that the king of terrors were thrown out of the Christian vocabulary. Many talk of death as though it were the disaster of disasters, instead of being to a good man the blessing of blessings.
2. First frost and then sunshine. We all know that husking time was a time of frost. We remember we used to hide between the corn stacks, so as to keep off the wind. But after a while the sun was high up, and all the frost went out of the air, and hilarities awoke the echoes. So we all realise that the death of our friends is the nipping of many expectations, the freezing, the chilling, the frosting of many of our hopes. But the chill of the frosts is followed by the gladness that cometh in like a shock of corn cometh in in his season.
3. The husking process. The husking time made rough work with the ear of corn. The husking peg had to be thrust in, and the hard thumb of the husker had to come down on the swathing of the ear, and then there was a pull, and a ruthless tearing, and a complete snapping off, before the corn was free. If the husk could have spoken it would have said, “Why do you lacerate me?” That is the way God has arranged that the ear and the husk shall part. That is the way He has arranged that body and soul shall separate. You can afford to have your physical distresses when you know that they are forwarding the soul’s liberation. This may be an answer to the question, “Why is it that so many really good people have so dreadfully to suffer?” Some corn is hardly worth husking. With good corn the husking work is severe. There must be something valuable in you, or the Lord would not have husked you.
4. Husking time was a neighbourly reunion. There was joyous feasting together when the work was done. Heaven will be a time of neighbourhood reunion.
5. All the shocks come in in their season. Not one of you having died too soon, or too late, or at haphazard. Cut down at just the right time. Husked at just the right time. (T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.)
Consolations in the death of aged Christians
“Thou shalt come to thy grave in full age.” In this text there is the promise of a comfortable death. Thou shalt come to thy grave with freedom of mind, and without reluctance, satisfied with life, waiting for a release, and at full maturity, dropping kindly like ripe fruit, or as a stack of corn fully ripe is gathered into the barn or storehouse at the time of harvest. Aged Christians--
I. Lay under the common sentence of death all their days. They were under the sentence of death all the while they lived in this world, and a long life was only a longer reprieve. We knew that our friends were mortal, all the while they lived with us.
II. It is comfortable to consider how long they were spared and continued to us in a useful state. What great reason for thankfulness to God for sparing the comfort of their useful lives. Often, then, recall the more remarkable instances of their former usefulness, and exemplary character while they lived. We have not done with our departed friends when we have lodged them in the grave; we must remember what was eminent and exemplary in the several stations of life, and circumstances of things through which they passed.
III. Consider the great honour put upon them who were long serviceable in this world. They have had a greater exercise of Divine care over them, and a larger experience of Divine goodness in the many expressions of a gracious concern for their good, of seasonable interposure, and distinguishing favour. What a mercy it was to our deceased friends to ripen by long standing, in wisdom and experience, and to be successful instruments of the Divine glory, and of good to the world, for a great while together!
IV. Consider how often the aged outlive their own usefulness. It is no wonder if active natures and brisk spirits, long exercised in painful service, begin at length to decay. The more zealous and industrious they are in the service of God, the more likely they are to find their natural strength abated in advancing age. Sometimes good and useful men are disabled for service by the weakening of their intellectual powers. Then their death becomes less grievous.
V. Consider how well prepared they were for death and how ripe for another world. It is a melancholy thing to think of an aged person dying unprepared. But when they are prepared in the habitual temper of their minds and a blessed composure of spirit, what an evidence this becomes of the truth and value of religion.
VI. Consider the merciful release from the long fatigues and conflicts of life. They are set free from all the burdens of nature, which sometimes are very grievous, and all the afflictions of life, which often create them a great deal of trouble. All the labours of life and difficulties of service cease. They are delivered from the power of all their spiritual enemies, and set out of reach of all their attempts.
VII. Consider the blessed state they are entered upon and the infinite advantage of a removal. They leave a state of sin and sorrow, of the burdens of nature and miseries of life, for a state of purity and peace, of liberty and enlargement, where all their burdens are removed and their desires satisfied. Consider with pleasure the high advancement and honour of our deceased friends, the noble enjoyments, the pure delights, the perfect satisfaction and joy. An undue concern for the death of good men, looks a little selfish, and like envying their happiness.
VIII. Think of the nearness of our own dissolution and how soon we shall meet together again. We are following them apace to the other world. What a comfort it is to be followers of them who, through faith and patience, inherit the promises.
IX. It is a considerable reason of comfort that there are many surviving relations left. We can never say that we are wholly bereaved. Men sometimes live in their posterity several ages. (W. Harris, D. D.)
The grave relieved of its terror
Eliphaz urges Job to repent of his wickedness, and promises him great good as the consequence. His words suggest--
I. That old age will help to relieve the grave of its terror. Life to those in old age has lost its genial glow; desire has failed; the limbs have lost their vigour; the appetites their relish; the senses their keenness; the faculties their activity; the heart, most of its friendships, its hopes, its aims. They have outlived their interest in the world; their old friends are in the dust; they are surrounded by strangers; they bow beneath the weight of years, and oftentimes welcome the grave. Yes, apart from religion, there is much in old age to make the grave even attractive. But how few of the human family are allowed to reach the grave in this way.
II. That spiritual maturity will help to relieve the grave of its terror.
1. True religion is a life which grows in this world to a certain maturity.
2. When this maturity is reached in a man, his removal from this world will take place. It ripens in some much sooner than in others.
3. The removal of such from the world will be no terror to them. It will take place under the superintendence of the great Husbandman. This spiritual maturity it is that deprives the grave of its terror. Here then are two helps to relieve for us the terror of the grave. Old age is one. Spiritual maturity of character is the great relieving power. (Homilist.)
The Christian ripe for the garner
I. Mark the analogy between corn and a good man. “Thou shalt come to thy grave,” etc.
1. In both cases there is labour. Spontaneous harvests do not spring up in this world. If a larger yield is to be produced, and a better quality obtained, he puts more management into his land, and bestows more labour upon It, and the result, in most instances, is a rich crop.
2. The life of a good man, like corn, is a great mystery. If the little, tiny seed which grows in your field baffles you, how much more God’s work in the human heart! We need not trouble ourselves about the process; the great question is, “Has the incorruptible seed of the Word of God entered into my nature?”
3. Corn has life in it, and will grow! The men who tell us that Christianity is being played out, are the men into whose souls it has never been played in!
4. The good man, like corn, is nourished by various influences. Through how many processes must a tiny seedling pass, and to how many influences must it be subjected, before it becomes bread on our tables? And how many influences are necessary to form and mature the character of a good man?
5. The great agent is the Holy Spirit, who softens the heart to receive “the incorruptible seed.”
6. Adversity helps to mature a good man’s character. It is said that each day’s sunshine, in the month of June, is worth a million of money to our farmers; but if all the days of summer and autumn were unbroken sunshine, would that be helpful to full barns and big hay stacks? No! David said, “It was good for me that I was afflicted,” and millions have made the same confession. These blights and disappointments of life are designed to remind us that eternal fields are within our reach--fields which are always rich in golden harvests. Temporal loss often leads to spiritual gain, and millions have exclaimed, with Richard Baxter, “Oh! healthful sickness! Oh! comfortable sorrow! Oh! gainful loss! Oh! enriching poverty! Oh! blessed day that I was afflicted!”
II. And what is meant by a good man coming to the grave in a full age. “Thou shalt come to thy grave,” etc.
1. That he has filled up the measure of human life. We often measure life by length; God measures it by depth and breadth. We look at quantity; God looks at quality. Many a man has died full of good works, long before he has reached forty years of age. Others have passed the allotted span of human life, and left no good works behind them.
2. Coming to the grave like a shock of corn, fully ripe, means the maturity of Christian character. The farmer knows the proper time for cutting down the corn. If he cut it down too soon the ear would not be filled, and if he waited too long, the best of the corn would be shaken and wasted. Our times are wholly in the hands of unerring wisdom and unsearchable goodness, and He will not allow death to overtake us too soon, or be delayed a moment too long.
3. And observe the certainty of all this. “He shall come.” Some bestow great labour on that which yields them no profit. The old age of a good man is always richer than his youth. God cares as much for the poor remnant of an old man’s life that remains, as for the fresh and stainless period of his youth. And one of the most enviable sights out of heaven, is that of a good old man, waiting, with undimmed powers and unsoured temper, till his Master shall say, “He is ripe for the garner.” Indeed, when such a man dies, it is heaven’s testimony that he’s ready for heaven. The great Dr. Clarke, in old age, looking back on a useful life, and forward to a glorious rest, said, “I have enjoyed the spring of life: I have endured the toils of summer; I have culled the fruits of autumn. I am now passing through the rigour of winter, and I am neither forsaken of God nor abandoned of man. I see at no great distance the dawn of a new day: the first of a spring which shall be eternal. It is advancing to meet me. I run to embrace it. Welcome, eternal spring.” Did you ever meet with a godly man who was not prepared to die when death came? Never!
4. A good man, like a shock of corn, is safely garnered. Corn is laid up to be preserved; but that is not all. It is also laid up that it may be used. The best use of corn comes after it has been cut down. Some people imagine that heaven will be a place of perpetual indolence and selfish delights. That is not the Bible conception of heaven. I know that heaven is a place of rest, but then, as Baxter says, “it is not the rest of a stone, but a rest consistent with service; an activity without weariness, a service which is perfect freedom.” When a good man dies, he is not flung away as a useless instrument, to be no longer employed in his Master’s service, but passes from the humbler services on earth to the nobler service of heaven; from an obscure to a loftier service, “where His servants do serve Him.” The sanctity of a good man’s soul is not lost at death, but will continue to grow forever.
(1) To the unconverted we say, “Sow to yourselves in righteousness” (Hosea 10:12).
(2) To the Christian we say, “Be not weary in well doing,” etc. “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true,” etc. (Philippians 4:8-9).
(3) Let the aged be encouraged. (H. Woodcock.)
The ripened life garnered
I. To produce the shock of corn, there must have been seed sown.
II. The seed sown must have contained the principle of corn life.
III. There must have been a prepared and proper soil.
IV. The seed must have grown gradually.
V. The plant must have been supplied with nourishment from the root inwardly and by air, rain, etc., outwardly. This is absolutely necessary in nature, or the plant will wither and die. It is the same in the kingdom of grace. “The trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord” (Isaiah 61:3), must be sustained by the sap from the root, and by the Spirit’s operation through the Word and ordinances.
VI. In growing up it must have been exposed to many vicissitudes. Cold, heat, drought, flood, and tempest are common between seed-time and harvest; and our Lord has declared to His disciples, that in this world they shall have tribulation.
VII. It must have had sunshine to ripen it. No harvest without sunshine; nor can the soul ripen without the shinings in of the rays of the Sun of Righteousness.
1. Of the truth.
2. Of God’s countenance.
3. Of heaven. Conclusion--
1. The husbandman sows seed for the purpose of reaping a joyful harvest. He cuts down the corn when it is golden in the ear that it may not be lost, and when the Lord’s time is fully come, He sends forth His reapers.
2. The husbandman separates the grain from the straw, so the Lord separates the spirit from the body. “The body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness.”
3. The ingathering is profitable and joyous.
(1) To the husbandman. Christ sees the travail of His soul, and is satisfied.
(2) To the angels and Church above.
(3) To the glorified spirit.
4. Shall we then mourn or regret our loss? (W. P. Tiddy.)
A ripe old age
We have here pictured a ripe and venerable old age--a good man coming safely out of all the drill and discipline of the present life, taken up from all, and housed forever in the glory and garner of the sky. Polishing and ripening are rough and warm work. The soul of man undergoes rough and trying treatment here; but the path of sorrow is the way to joy; and the path of suffering is the way to glory.
I. The suggestive simile by which the life of the aged saint in this world is depicted. Corn, ripe corn, ready for the husbandman and home. Corn suggests the ideas of preciousness, maturity, diversity of influences, and manifoldness. Let us seek that our lives may be valuable as ripe corn, and not valueless as empty chaff.
II. The glorious destiny for which the aged saint in this world is being disciplined.
1. The saint as well as the sinner has to meet the same inevitable lot, so far as the body is concerned.
2. The saint goes to his grave, but the wicked is driven there.
3. The good are not destroyed when they come to the grave, but are gathered into the garner. Let these reflections cheer us in remembrance of our departed, sainted friends, and in anticipation of our own departure. (F. W. Brown.)
The ripe Christian
The illustration is drawn from agricultural life. It is the close of harvest, and the busy reapers are carrying home the spoil. There are few scenes to be witnessed upon earth more pleasing and attractive. How suggestive of comfort and plenty! What a picture of happy industry and well-rewarded toil. How exquisite the patches of colour! How merry and melodious the song! Mark how skilfully the reaper handles his sickle, and clutches the corn; one sweep, and the whole armful is down, and laid so neat and level that when the band is put round the sheaf almost every straw is of equal length. The single stem is called “a stalk of corn”; the armful, which the reaper cuts down with one sweep of his hook, is called “a sheaf”; whilst a bundle of sheaves, placed together and set upright, ready to be borne away to the homestead, is styled, from an old Dutch root, “a shock of corn.” Well, what an interesting and significant metaphor this is! and how suggestive! How much there is in that bundle of wheat-sheaves, now ready to be carried home, to remind you of the aged Christian, who has served his generation by the will of God! What anxiety has been expended upon that corn! Through what risks and storms has it come! A thousand contingencies might occur to check the growth or affect the quality of the grain, and the value of the harvest. But now it has been brought safely through all these risks. The little green thing has become a vigorous and fruitful stalk. The farmer’s solicitude is over; his months of anxious toil are ended; the grain is safely gathered in--how much in all this to suggest the closing scene in the life of a ripe believer. “Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season.” As we read the text we naturally think of the old and grey-headed saint. How many years of anxiety have been expended upon him! How many storms have swept over him! Through what a variety of experience has he passed! Perhaps in early life he gave little promise of a long and useful career. Yet here he is, come to life’s close in happiness and honour. He has weathered the blasts, he has borne his fruit, he has served his generation, and all that remains for him is just to be gathered in--gently borne away to the homestead of heaven. Yet I would not have you run away with the idea that the text applies exclusively to the aged. This prominent idea is not so much old age, as ripeness, maturity. It does not say, “Thou shalt come to thy grave in old age,” but “in a full age.” There is a difference. Old age is not absolutely promised to all God’s people; but a “full age” is. It is noticeable that, although in the early history of the human race many lived to a great length of time, even to hundreds of years, it is not recorded in Scripture of any of these that they died “in a good old age, and full of years”; not until we come to Abraham is such a record given; although his term of life was but a fourth of that of many who had gone before him; the reason probably being that, though Abraham’s years were fewer, yet his virtues were greater; his life was a life of faith, and therefore of completeness. I have seen a matured saint cut off at twenty; and another man, not nearly so ripe, at threescore and ten. You may remember how, addressing young men, Solomon, with characteristic sagacity, makes the distinction I am indicating. “My son,” he says, “keep my commandments: for length of days, and long life, shall they add to thee”; intimating, of course, that the natural tendency of virtue is to lengthen a man’s days; but that, whether such a man’s days shall be many or few, he shall, at all events, have “a long life,” in the sense of a full and complete one.
“They err, who measure life by years,
With false and thoughtless tongue:
Some hearts grow old before their time,
Others are always young.
‘Tis not the number of the lines
On life’s fast-filling page;
‘Tis not the pulse’s added throbs,
Which constitute true age.”
Amongst moral and responsible beings, that life is really the longest, however brief its outward term, into which the largest amount of beneficent activity is condensed. Thoughts suggested here in regard to a good man’s death.
1. It is not unwelcome. “Thou shalt come to thy grave.” He is not driven or dragged to it, as may be said of many an ungodly man. God makes him willing when He has made him ready. I have often been struck with the fact that, when the end of a Christian’s life begins to draw near, however reluctant he had been hitherto to leave the world, and however he may even have dreaded his departure, all that reluctance and fear melts away.
2. The death of a good man is seasonable. “As a shock of corn cometh in in his season.”
3. As death is welcome to the ripe believer, and seasonable, so it is honourable. It is no ignominious blow; it is not a crushing, humiliating stroke; it is a release, an enfranchisement, a coronation. (J. Thain Davidson, D. D.)