Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2554
“And when He thus had spoken, He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave clothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus sail unto them, Loose him, and let him go.” John 11:43, 44.
PERHAPS the legitimate topic of this discourse, after such a text, ought to be the resurrection of the dead. Lazarus had died—he had lain in his grave. At the invitation of his sisters, Jesus Christ came to see them and His visit answered the double purpose of comforting the bereaved and restoring the dead. It would be a blessed and an excellent topic were we, for a little while, to dilate upon the wonders of the resurrection. We shall do so for a few moments and then we shall come to the principal theme of this evening which will rather concern spiritual resurrection from a spiritual death, than that natural resurrection which is to take place upon us all, by-and-by.
The very fact that Lazarus came from his grave, after he had lain there four days and was corrupt, and that he was called from the sepulcher by the mighty voice of Jesus is, to us, a proof that the dead shall rise at the voice of Jesus at the Last Great Day. Every Christian believes that there is to be a resurrection of the dead, but, unfortunately, the great Doctrine of the Resurrection is not, by most of us, made so prominent as it ought to be. In old times, the Resurrection was preached by the Apostles as being the sum and substance of the Gospel. Wherever Paul went, we know that he spoke concerning the Resurrection of the dead—and then, “some mocked.” But now, usually, if we speak concerning the after state of the departed, we generally treat of immortality, not of resurrection. Now, immortality was known to the ancients before the Gospel came. They believed in a kind of immortality, but resurrection never entered into the thoughts of the heathen. Many of them believed in the immortality of the soul. Those who had been enlightened by powerful reason, or remnants of ancient tradition, believed that the soul did not die, but lived on in a future state. But immortality is not resurrection! And the immortality of the soulis very different from the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body. We believe that the soul is immortal and shall last forever, but we believe something more than that. We believe that the body is immortal, too! And that after this body shall have been sown in the grave—in the Lord’s good time it shall be raised again and shall either be translated to Heaven, there to enjoy eternal bliss—or else be sent down to Hell to suffer forever and ever.
The Doctrine of the Resurrection of the Dead belongs peculiarly to the Christian dispensation. It was never taught by any rationalists or philosophers. They might hold the transmigration of souls, but the resurrection of the body they did not hold. But we, as Christians, really believe that this body which we now inhabit, though it must die and see corruption, shall be raised from the dust—that, though consumed on the funeral pyre, its ashes, scattered to the winds, shall yet come together again! We believe that do what you will with the body—divide it, scatter it, mingle it—God, by the fiat of His Omnipotence, shall rebuild the fabric to become the habitation of the living soul forever and forever. We dare not in fact, deny this, because we are so expressly taught it in the sacred writings and it has been so fully and satisfactorily proved by the Apostle Paul.
And oh, my Friends, is it not a blessed fact that we shall rise again? I see among my audience some whose garb of woe betokens that they have lost a friend. I see some whose time-worn countenances tell me that they must have buried a mother or a father. Others, I know, have laid beloved infants in the dust. Others have had a precious husband or wife severed from their bosom. I mark among you some whose dress tell me you have been lately widowed, or bereaved of one tenderly beloved. Ah, despair not, you mourners! Here is a fact for you—not only that your soul and the soul of your loved one shall meet in eternity—but that the same body on which you doted shall, if you are Believers, be seen by you in Heaven! The eyes of the tender and pious mother which once dropped tears on you shall behold you in Heaven! And the hands of that pious father, now lying in the grave, that once lay on your head and consecrated you to the Lord shall be grasped by you in Heaven! Not only shall the soul of that infant live forever and ever, but its beautiful body, which is dear to you as the casket which contained the soul of your child, shall live again! It shall not be a fictitious resurrection—it shall not be a new race of ethereal creatures—but actual bodies shall be ours.
And oh, my Brothers and Sisters, if you have been bereft of all your friends—if they have departed in the faith of Jesus, you shall see them again! “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yes, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them.” But yet more blessed are they to be, “for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible,” and we shall see the bodies of those we once loved on earth. Those bodies we once silently gazed upon, as they lay in all the stiffness of death, we shall see quickened and glorified! That mortal shall “put on immortality.” That corruptible shall, “put on incorruption.” It was “sown in weakness” and we wept when we saw it lowered into the grave—but it shall be “raised in power.” It was “sown a natural body” and though it shall be “raised a spiritual body,” yet it shall be a body to all intents and purposes, as it was before. And we shall recognize it as such—