Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 842
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, November 22, 1868, by C. H. SPURGEON, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington..
“For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in Hea ven.” Matthew 22:30.
WE must, all of us, develop one way or the other. Manhood, as we see it here, is but the green blade, or, at the best, the corn in the ear—the full corn in the ear will only be seen in the world to come. We must either descend or ascend— none of us can remain in the position which he occupies today. Some are sliding every hour downward, descending by the force of evil habits. More and more do they become the serfs and slaves of Satan, and by consequence, more and more developed into his image. They can find their doom written in these words, “Depart into everlasting fire in Hell, prepared for the devil and his angels. You followed Satan, you grew more and more like he is, and now receive the heritage appointed for him.”
On the other hand, he who by repentance and faith is brought into the fellowship of the Gospel, receives Grace upon Grace—he advances from glory to glory, in a more perfect resemblance to heavenly beings. And, at the last, angels having rejoiced over his repentance—angels to whom he had become as—carry his soul into the bosom of God! Which shall it be with you, Man? Will you ripen for the golden sickle and for the harvest-home of Heaven, or will you blacken for the scythe of iron which shall mow you down to be bound up in the bundle with your fellows and consumed as tares? One or the other it must be.
O may infinite Grace overcome our natural tendencies and may we be among those who go from strength to strength until they ascend into the hill of the Lord and are made like the angels! Without further preface, the subject of this morning’s discourse will be in what respects the life of spirits before the Throne is like that of angels. And then, secondly, we may have, perhaps, a few practical thoughts about the commencement of the angelic life while yet here below.
I. First, then, IN WHAT RESPECTS ARE THOSE SAINTS WHO HAVE PASSED THE STREAM OF DEATH LIKE THE ANGELS? The likeness, though it lies in many points, more or less prominently may be seen, I think, distinctly in five particulars.
1. The saints of God are like the angels as to the qualities of their persons. In one matter they always were alike, namely, that both angels and saints are creatures of God and must, by no means, be looked upon in any higher light. A false church has commanded its votaries to pay religious homage to angels, contrary both to the example and the express precept of Holy Writ. The angels are no more to be adored than saintly men, and neither the one nor the other can be worshipped without incurring the sin of idolatry.
Take two parallel cases. When John, seeing an angel, taking him for his Lord, bowed down to worship him, the answer was, “See you do it not, for I am of your fellow servants, the Prophets. Worship God.” When the heathens, at Lystra, brought forth bullocks and sheep and were about to do sacrifice unto Paul and Barnabas as unto Mercury and Jupiter, these holy men tore their clothes and declared that they were men of like passions with others. Angels and holy men refuse all kinds of worship—they unanimously sing, “Not unto us, not unto us, but unto the name of Jehovah be all the praise.” Oh, the longsuffering of God in tolerating that apostate and accursed church which has dared to set up both saints and angels, men and women, and I know not what besides, as objects of reverence in rivalry of the Lord of Hosts!
That is but incidental, however. The saints of Heaven are like the angels in their persons in the fact that sex is forever obliterated there. “They are neither married nor given in marriage”—from which I do not gather that so much as may be spiritual in the feminine character, or anything that is mental in the masculine character will be destroyed—but that in the bodily frame all that which divided the sexes will be no more.
I imagine that saints before the Throne of God may, some of them, exhibit that exquisite tenderness, that heroism of affection which will indicate them to have been holy women here below, and that other spirits in their special force and vigor, courage and zeal may reveal, even in Glory, the fact that in the Church militant they were among the valiant men of Israel. Why not? Yet all else that is carnal in male and female must be gone and we shall be one in Christ Jesus—in whom there is neither male nor female.
Marriage will be out of the question. This is linked with a further likeness, namely, that the spirits above are like to angels in their immortality. They cannot die. Such a thing as a funeral knell was never heard in Heaven! No angel was ever carried to his grave—though angels have been in the sepulcher—for there sat two, at the head and the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. They were visitors, not dwellers there. There is nothing about angels upon which the death-worm can feed. No sepulcher could encase their free spirits and the bonds of death could not hold them for a moment.