Wilt Thou show wonders to the dead?
shall the dead arise and praise Thee?
The great problem
I. Here is a problem common to humanity. Lived there ever a man who has not asked this question in some form or other?
II. Here is a problem that unaided reason cannot answer.
1. Ancient philosophy tried and failed. Witness Socrates.
2. Modern philosophy has nothing but speculations.
III. Here is a problem on which the gospel throws light. What saith the Gospel? (1 Corinthians 15:51). (Homilist.)
Wonders shown to the dead
In these verses we find mention made of four things on the part of God: “wonders,” “lovingkindness,. .. faithfulness,” and “righteousness”--four attributes of the blessed Jehovah, which the eyes of Heman had been opened to see, and which the heart of Heman had been wrought upon to feel. But he comes, by Divine teaching, into a spot where these attributes seem to be completely lost to him;and yet (so mysterious are the ways of God!) the very place where those attributes were to be more powerfully displayed, and made more deeply and experimentally known to his soul.
1. “Wilt Thou show wonders to the dead?” He is speaking here of his own experience; he is that “dead” person, to whom those “wonders” are to be shown. And being in that state of experience, he considered that every act of mercy shown to him where he then was must be a “wonder.” All God’s people are brought by the Spirit’s operations upon their souls, sooner or later, to be in that spot where Heman was. Paul was there, when he said (Romans 7:9). Then, surely, he was “dead”; that is, he had been killed in his feelings by the spirituality of God’s law made known in his conscience--killed, as to all hopes of creature-righteousness, and killed as to any way of salvation which the creature could devise. But the word “dead” carries with it a still further meaning than this. It expresses a feeling of utter helplessness; not merely a feeling of guilt and condemnation, so as to be slain to all hopes of salvation in self, but also to feel perfectly helpless to deliver himself from the lowest hell. But if We look at the expression as it simply stands, it seems to be uttered by one who is passing under the sentence of death before the wonder is displayed. It does not run in the past tense, “Hast Thou shown wonders to the dead?” It is not couched in the present tense, “Art Thou showing wonders to the dead?” The language is not the language of praise for the past; nor of admiration for the present; but that of anxious inquiry for the future” “Wilt Thou show wonders to the dead?” Is it possible? Am I not too great a sinner? Is not my case too desperate?
2. “Shall Thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave?” We have come a step lower now. We had been communing with “the dead”; but now we must go a step lower. We must go to the sepulchre; we must accompany the corpse to the grave. Now, what is “the grave” but the place where corruption riots, where putrefaction reigns? Here, then, is a striking figure of what a living soul feels under the manifestations of the deep corruptions of his heart. All his good words, once so esteemed, and all his good works, once so prized, and all his prayers, and all his faith, and hope, and love, and all the imaginations of his heart, not merely paralyzed and dead, not merely reduced to a state of utter helplessness, but also in soul feeling turned into rottenness and corruption. Now, were you ever there? Did your prayers ever stink in your nostrils? And are all your good words, and all your good works, and all your good thoughts, once so esteemed, now nothing in your sight but filthy, polluted and unclean?
3. “Or Thy faithfulness in destruction?” What is this “faithfulness” of which Heman speaks? It is, I believe, in two different branches; faithfulness to the promises that God has made in His word of truth--and faithfulness to His own witness and His own work upon the souls of His children. The Lord has destroyed your false religion, your natural hopes, your imaginary piety, your mock holiness, and those things in you which were not of Himself, but which were of the earth earthy, and were drawing you aside from Him; and has made you poor, naked, empty before His eyes. But it is in these very acts of destruction that He has shown His faithfulness--His faithfulness to His covenant, His faithfulness to His written word, His faithfulness to those promises which He has dropped with power into your heart.
4. “Shall Thy wonders be known in the dark? and Thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?” Here is another attribute of God about which Heman was exercised. His “righteousness,” God’s righteousness, I believe, here and elsewhere does not mean only Christ’s righteousness, but also the righteous acts of God in dealing with the soul in a way consistent with His own equitable character. This land of forgetfulness seems to imply two things--our forgetfulness of God, and God’s apparent forgetfulness of us.
(1) We often get into this sleepy land of forgetfulness toward God; we forget His universal presence, forget His heart-searching eyes, forget His former benefits, forget His past testimonies, forget the reverence which belongs to His holy name; which, above all things, we have desired most earnestly to remember. It is, then, in this land of forgetfulness, in this dull and heavy country, when, like the disciples in the garden, we sleep instead of watching, that God is still pleased to show forth His righteousness. God’s righteousness runs parallel with Christ’s atonement, for therein is His intrinsic righteousness manifested, that is, His strict compliance with equity and justice, because equity and justice have been strictly fulfilled by the propitiation of the Son of God.
(2) But the land of forgetfulness often means forgetfulness on God’s part--God seems to forget His people (Isaiah 49:13). “Hath God forgotten to be gracious? Hath He in anger shut up His tender mercies?” Does it not seem, at times, as though the Lord had utterly forgotten us, would take no more notice of us, slights us, rejects us, and would not cast one look, or bestow one word upon us? (J. C. Philpot.)
Marvels amidst the tombs
What a sad day in the history of a great country was that when over the gateway of the chief cemetery of Paris was inscribed the sentence, “Death is an eternal sleep”! This hopeless statement was the product of a highly civilized age, that chose to live without God; but the primitive races of men had not sunk so low in religious matters. When the chieftain of prehistoric days was placed in his tomb, before they raised his tumulus they placed with his bones his weapons of stone, or bronze, that he might in “the spirit world” pursue his avocations which he had followed on earth. But when men became philosophers, and studied the grounds of evidence, a cold withering frost of doubt seemed to freeze up their cheering convictions. Even the great Socrates, with his last breath, speaks with a kind of faltering utterance to his judges, “And now we part, and whether it will be best for you, or for me, is known to God only.” Then came the dawn of a nobler day. Christ Jesus walked on earth. In the death-chamber of the little Jewish maiden He recalled the vanished spirit. Thus the Christian answers to the despairing, wailing cry of Scepticism--“Does God show signs amongst the dead?” by pointing to the empty sepulchre; to the white-robed angels, that announce--“He is not dead, He is risen”; to the testimony of the pious women, who found the spices might be reserved for incense to burn in the worship of their Ascended Lord; and to the multitude of sober and sufficient witnesses, who both on the first Easter Day, and afterwards in Galilee, by many infallible proofs, perceived that He was alive, and alive for evermore! And now He holds the keys of death and of Hades--that is, the unseen world--and adoring Christendom bows before His name, who has “shown wonders amongst the dead.” In this faith our dear ones close their eyes, in His peace they rest; “in sure and certain hope “of His resurrection power we lay their earthly tabernacles beneath the green sod. (J. W. Hardman, LL. D.)
The land of forgetfulness.
The land of forgetfulness
There is a fabled river in ancient mythology called Lethe,--simply meaning forgetfulness. The idea of the fabulist was that whoever drank water out of that river instantly forgot everything that had happened; all the past was a forgotten dream. Nay, more than this, consciousness itself was not left after the Lethal water was taken. The man who drank one draught of the water of Lethe, oblivion, was not aware of his own existence; that draught had utterly extinguished him. Men have often longed for a draught of that water; men have sighed for the land of forgetfulness; souls, harps on which music was meant to be played, have desired with unspeakable earnestness to be allowed to die, to forget, to be forgotten.
I. In some aspects the land of forgetfulness is a desirable land. There are moments when we want to enter it and be enfranchised in it for ever. There are things that other people have done to us that we long to forget; if we could wholly forget them life would be sweeter, friendship would be dearer, the outlook would be altogether more inviting. What is it that makes the land of forgetfulness a land in poetry, a land inaccessible? Is there no potion that the soul may take? there are potions that the body may drink, but we do not want to drink our bodies into some lower level and some baser consciousness; we are inquiring now about soul-potions, drinks that affect the mind, draughts that lull the soul.
II. There are other aspects in which the land of forgetfulness is an attainable land. We can so live as to be forgotten. Men can live backwards. Men can be dead whilst they are alive, and forgotten while they are present to the very eyes. What is there to remember about them? Beginning as ciphers they have continued as ciphers; they have never done anything for the world, or for any individual in the world. Where are the parts of character on which we can lay hold and say, By these we shall remember you evermore?
III. But the land of forgetfulness is in fact an impossible land. Effects follow causes: deeds grow consequences. The Lord forgets nothing: but after a process known to us by the sweet name “forgiveness” there comes the state in the Divine mind which is known by the human word “forgotten.” Sometimes we say we can forgive but never forget. Then we cannot forgive; and if we cannot forgive we cannot pray; if we cannot forgive we cannot believe. Forgiveness is the true orthodoxy. Largeness, sensitiveness, responsiveness of heart, slavery to love, that is orthodoxy. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Things that should be forgotten
Let us forget all unkindness, incivility, discourtesy. Let us forget our good deeds. That will be one great step towards the land of heaven. There are some who remember every good deed they ever did, and therefore they never did anything worth doing. No man has ever done anything for God if he has kept account of it. It may be difficult to teach this lesson, and to drive it home; but so long as a man can tell you when he gave pounds and shillings, and when he rendered service, and to what inconvenience he put himself, all that he did is blotted out. The value of our greatest deeds is in their unconsciousness. The rose does not say, I emitted so much fragrance yesterday and so much the day before. The rose knows nothing about it; it lives to make the air around it fragrant. Thus ought souls to live, not knowing how long they have preached, how much they have done, what the extent of their good deeds has boon. They know nothing about it; they are absorbed in love; they are borne away by the Divine inspiration, and whilst anything remains they suppose that nothing has been given. (J. Parker, D. D.)