Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1081
Delivered
“He is not here: for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.” Matthew 28:6.
THE holy women, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, came to the sepulcher hoping to find there the body of their Lord which they intended to embalm. Their intention was good and their will was accepted before God, but, for all that, their desire was not gratified for the simple reason that it was contrary to God’s design. It was at variance with even what Christ had foretold and plainly declared to them. “He is not here: for He is risen, as He said.”
I gather from this that there may be good desires in our hearts as Believers and we may earnestly try to carry them out, yet we may never succeed in them because through our ignorance we have not understood, or through our obliviousness we have happened to forget some Word of Christ that stands in our way. I have known this to be the case in prayer. We have prayed and we have not received because we had no warrant in the Word of God to ask for the thing we
did.
Perhaps there was some prohibition in the Scriptures which ought to have restrained us from offering the prayer. We have thought in our daily life, amidst the pursuits of business, that if we could gain such-and-such a position, then we should honor God—and though we have sought it vigorously and prayed about it earnestly, we have never gained it. God had never intended that we should and, had we succeeded in compassing our own project, it might have been evil rather than advantageous—an entail of trouble instead of a heritage of joy. We were seeking great things for ourselves! We forgot that expostulation of the Lord, “Do you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not.” Do not, therefore, expect to realize all those desires which seem to you to be pure and proper. They may not happen to run in the right channel. It may be that there is a Word from the Lord that forbids your ever seeing them brought to pass.
These good women found that they had lost the Presence of Him who had been their greatest delight. “He is not here,” must have sounded like a funeral knell to them. They expected to find Him but He was gone. But then the grief must have been taken out of their hearts when it was added, “He is risen.” I gather from this that if God takes away from me any one good thing, He will be sure to justify Himself in having done so and that very frequently He will magnify His Grace by giving me something infinitely better.
Did Mary think it would be a good thing to find the dead body of her Lord? Perhaps it would have given her a kind of melancholy satisfaction—or so she thought according to her poor judgment. The Lord took that good thing away. But then Christ was risen and now to hear of Him, then presently to see Him—was not that an infinitely better thing? Have you lost anything of late around which your heart had intertwisted all its tendrils? You shall find that there is good cause for the loss! The Lord never takes away a silver blessing without intending to confer on us a golden gain! Depend upon it—for wood He will give iron and for iron He will give brass—and for brass He will give silver and for silver He will give gold!
All His taking is but preliminary to a larger giving. Have you lost your child? What if you find your Lord more dear than ever? One smile of your Lord will be better to you than all the cheerful frolics of your child. Is He not better to you than 10 sons? Have you lost the familiar companion who once cheered you along the valley of life? You shall now, by that loss, be driven closer to your Savior! His promises shall be more sweet to you and the Blessed Spirit shall reveal His Truth more clearly to you. You shall be a gainer by your loss.
There is many a plant that has been protected by a great tree whose spreading branches covered it from the drenching rain and the downfall of hail. But the tree has been cut down by the cruel woodman’s axe. At the fall of that tree the little plant has been ready to cry out for fear. Henceforth it will remain unprotected. Not so—these sad bodings quickly vanish—for now the sun has come upon it as it never came before and the dews have fallen more plenteously, and
the rain has penetrated to its roots! And the little tender plant springs up to a stature it could never otherwise have known, seeing it was dwarfed by the comfort it enjoyed.
You shall find that full many of the comforts taken from you were drawbacks to your high culture and in the absence of them you shall get an abundant compensation, a tenfold blessing. “He is not here”—that is sorrowful. But, “He is risen”—this is gladsome! Christ, the dead One, you cannot see. You cannot tenderly embalm that blessed body. But Christ, the living One, you shall see! And at His feet you shall be able to prostrate yourself! And from His lips you shall hear the gladsome words, “Go, tell My Brethren that I am risen from the dead”! That lesson may be worth your remembering! If God applies it to your soul it may yield you rich comfort.