Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 989
Delivered by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“The time of my departure is at hand.”—2 Timothy 4:6.
SO NEAR, SO VERY NEAR THE CHANGE—his removal from this to another world; and so very conscious of it; yet Paul looked back with calm satisfaction; he looked forward with sweet assurance; and he looked round with deepest interest on the mission that had engaged his life. As you must have noticed while we were reading the chapter, in his case “the ruling passion was strong in death.” Writing what he well knows is the last letter he shall ever write, its main topic is care for the church of God—anxiety for the promotion of the truth—zeal for the furtherance of the gospel. When he is dead, and gone from the post of service, the scene of suffering, the field of enterprise, on whom shall his mantle fall? He desires that in Timothy he may find a worthy successor, strong in the faith, sincere of heart, and having dauntless courage withal, one who will wield the sword and hold the banner when his hand is palsied in death. Men have usually shown us what lies at the bottom of their heart when they have come to die. Often their last expiring expressions have been indicative of their entire character. Certainly you have before you in the last sentences of Paul’s pen a fair epitome of his entire life. He is trusting in the Savior; he is anxious to show his love for that Savior. The welfare of the Christian church and the advancement of the holy cause of the gospel are uppermost in his mind. May it be yours and mine to live wholly for Christ, and to die also for him. May this ever be foremost in our thoughts, “How can I advance the kingdom of our Lord and Savior? By what means can I bless his church and people?” It is very beautiful to observe the way in which Paul describes his death in this verse. According to our translation he speaks of it as an offering. “I am now ready,” saith he, “to be offered.” If we accept this version he may be supposed to mean that he felt as one standing like a bullock or a lamb, ready to be laid on an altar. He foresaw he would die a martyr’s death. He knew he could not be crucified as his brother Peter had been, for a Roman citizen was, as a rule, exempt from that ignominious death. He expected to die in some other manner. Probably he guessed it would be by the sword, and so he describes himself as waiting for the sacrificial knife to be used, that he might be presented as a sacrifice. So I say the words of our translation would lead us to think. But the original is far more instructive. He here likens himself, in the Greek, not to an offering, but to the drink-offering. Every Jew would know what that meant. When there was a burnt-sacrifice offered, the bullock or the victim then slain was the main part of the sacrifice. But sometimes there was a little, what if I say an unimportant, supplement added to that sacrifice—a little oil and a little wine were poured on to the altar or the bullock, and thus a drink-offering was said to be added to the burnt-offering. Now, Paul does not venture to call himself an offering,—Christ is his offering. Christ is, so to speak, the sacrifice on the altar. He likens himself only to that little wine and oil poured out as a supplement thereto, not necessary to its perfection, but tolerated in performing a vow, or allowed in connection with a free will offering, as you will find if you refer at leisure to the fifteenth chapter of Numbers, from the fourth to the eighth verses. The drink-offering was thus a kind of addendum, by which the person who gave it showed his thankfulness. So Paul is resolved to show his thankfulness to Christ, the great sacrifice, and he is willing that his blood should be poured as a drink-offering on the altar where his Lord and Master was the great burnt-offering. He rejoices when he can say, “I am ready to be presented as a drink-offering unto God.”
We have mainly to do with the second description which he gives of his death. What does he say when the hour that this grim monster must be grappled with is at hand? I do not find him sad. Those who delight in gloomy poetry have often represented death in terrible language. “It is hard,” says one—
To feel the hand of death arrest one’s steps,
Throw a chill blight on all one’s budding hopes,
And hurl one’s soul untimely to the shades.”
And another exclaims—
“O God, it is a fearful thing
To see the human soul take wing,
In any shape, in any mood!
I’ve seen it rushing forth in blood,
I’ve seen it on the breaking ocean,
Strive with a swollen convulsive motion.”
Not so the apostle Paul. I do not even hear him speak of flying through the gate as our grand old poet has described death. He does not say, “The hour of my dissolution is at hand”—a very proper word if he had used it; but he is not looking so much at the process as at the result of his dying. He does not even say, “The hour of my death is at hand,” but he adopts a beautiful expression, “The time of my departure”—words which are used sometimes to signify the departure of a vessel from the port; the pulling up of the anchor so that it looses its moorings, when about to put out to sea—so he feels himself like a ship lying at the harbor for awhile—but he says, “The time for pulling up the anchor, the time for letting loose the cable, and cutting from the mooring is at hand; I shall soon be launched upon my voyage.” And he knew right well where that voyage would end, in the fair havens of the port of Peace in the better country, whither his Lord had gone before him.