Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2324
“These are they which follow the Lamb wherever He goes. These were redeemed from among men, being the first fruits unto God and to the Lamb. And in their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the Throne of God.” Revelation 14:4,5.
WHATEVER the saints are in Heaven, they began to be on earth. There is, no doubt, a perfection of character in the world to come, but the character must be formed here. In the next world there will be no real change—where the tree falls, there it will lie. He that is filthy will be filthy, still. He that is holy will be holy, still. I am going to talk to you, tonight, about those who surround the Lamb and are with Him in the blaze of His Glory, singing to His honor. I say that what they are in Heaven they were, in a measure, on earth. The life of Glory is the life of Grace. That life which men have in Heaven comes to them in regeneration on earth. When they are born again, they are born for Heaven—then it is that they receive the life which lives on throughout the eternal ages. If you do not have that life, here, you will never have it. If you die dead in sin, there is nothing for you, forever, but the abode of the dead, “where their worm dies not and their fire is not quenched.” Today is the only time which we have for forming our character. Earth is the great place for making instruments of music—here they are tuned and prepared. Up there, they play them! But they will never play them, there, unless they have had them made and tuned here.
The subject of my discourse will be, first, a survey of the outline of character of those who are to be with Christ hereafter. And then, secondly, a contemplation of the perfect picture of the saints with Christ in Glory, where I trust we, too, shall be, in the Lord’s good time.
I do not know whether these verses describe all the saints in Heaven. If they do, then you must be like they, or you can never be among them. If, however, they describe the elect of the elect, the innermost circle of Heaven. If they describe the bodyguard of Christ, the immortals that perpetually surround Him, nearest to His Person, the most divinely like He. If they describe a kind of aristocracy of the skies, the nobility of Heaven—and it seems to me that they do, for they are the first fruits and the rest of the righteous may be regarded as the harvest afterwards reaped. If these words describe some special saints, then we should seek to be like they. I would cultivate a holy ambition to be among the brightest stars of God! Why should we not reach to the highest prize of our high calling? If there is any specialty among the redeemed above, should it not be our earnest desire to attain to that standard?
I. So, first, here is AN OUTLINE OF THE CHARACTER OF THOSE BLESSED ONES WHILE THEY ARE
Here
And, first, notice their adherence to the Doctrine of Sacrifice while they are here—“These are they which follow the Lamb.” There are some professing Christians who talk much about the example of Christ, but deny the efficacy of His atoning blood—they are not of those who will be in Heaven. There are some who magnify the philosophy of Christ—all His ethical teaching is greatly to their taste—but, as to His being a Substitute offered up as a Sacrifice on account of human guilt, they cannot agree with it. Very well—they cannot enter Heaven, for, “these are they which follow the Lamb.” Not Christ, only, mark you, but Christ as the Lamb of God’s Passover! Christ as the Lamb of God slain before the foundation of the world, Christ as the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world. You cannot be of that blessed number if you reject Christ as a Sacrifice.
As for me, and I trust for you, also, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!” Christianity without the blood of Christ is a dead Christianity—it has nothing to give life to it—“for the blood is the life thereof.” If you take away the Doctrine of Sacrifice, you have taken away the core, the heart, the pith, the marrow of all Christianity. You have left bones for dogs, but you have not left food for immortal spirits. Whoever will be saved, before all things, it is necessary that he should believe in Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son: that whoever believes in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Look, look, look unto Him and be you saved, all you ends of the earth, for He is God, even the bleeding Savior! He is God and beside Him there is none else. May it be said of you all, dear Friends, that you followed the Lamb by your adherence to His atoning Sacrifice!