Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2659
“Some are fallen asleep.” 1 Corinthians 15:6.
Writing concerning the brethren who had seen the Lord Jesus Christ after His Resurrection and of whom “above five hundred” were present at one time, Paul said, at the date when he was writing this Epistle, “the greater part” remained alive, “but,” he added, “some are fallen asleep.”
We might have thought that God, in great mercy, would have preserved the lives of those 500 brethren to an extreme old age, that, in every part of the globe, there might be extant, as long as possible, someone who would be able to say, “I beheld the Son of God when He was upon the earth. I heard Him preach. I saw Him die on the Cross and then I looked upon Him again after He had risen from the grave.” Every one of these witnesses would have been worth his weight in gold to the Christian religion! Wherever such a man lived, he would have been, under the blessing of God, the means of convincing many people of the truth of our glorious faith! Yet, dear Friends, it does not appear that these invaluable brethren were spared the shafts of death. These witnesses of Christ’s Resurrection died as other men did. They had no immunity from death and no extreme old age was granted to them, for the Apostle, writing not so very long after the event, said, “Some are fallen asleep.”
From this fact I gather that lives which appear to us to be extremely necessary, may not be so regarded by God! Your own observation will, I am sure, agree with mine, that the Lord sometimes takes from us those whom we can least spare. Those who seemed to be the pillars of the Church have been suddenly removed. The fathers among us—those who have been the bravest confessors of the faith—or the most useful servants of the Savior, have been called away. This should teach us—if we are wise enough to learn the lesson—to regard the most invaluable person in our own Israel as being only lent to us by the Lord, for a season, and liable to be summoned to higher service at any moment! Possibly, God takes some men away from us because we think them absolutely necessary. He will not let us trust in an arm of flesh—and if He is so condescending as to use human feebleness and we go and confide in the feebleness—and suppose that God’s strength is tied up to it—in secret jealousy He removes the instruments that He has used, that men may learn not to glory in their fellow men, or to make idols out of their Christian brethren and fathers!
It is probable that these witnesses of Christ’s Resurrection enjoyed a large measure of reverence from the members of the Christian Church. Had they lived very long, they might have been regarded with a superstitious and almost idolatrous reverence. God intended that His Church should increasingly live by faith, not by sight, so, while she was in her infancy He gave her the prop of miracles and also the support of living witnesses. But when she had somewhat increased in strength, He no longer gave the power to work miracles, but left her to rest upon His Word, alone. And as she further progressed, He, in a few years, took away the earthly witnesses of Christ’s life, death and Resurrection, that the Eternal
Spirit, working through the Word, might stand, to all time, as the living and unfailing Witness of the fact that Jesus lived, died and “rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.”
The lesson for us all to learn is just this—let us not set too much store by any of God’s servants and, especially—let us never reckon that we are essential to the carrying on of His work! The fly upon the chariot wheel was easily to be dispensed with and so are we. Like shadows we have come—like shadows we shall go. We may be missed—I hope we shall all live so that many will miss us when we are gone. But they will brush their tears away and both the world and the Church—and especially the Church—will continue to go on without us! While Jesus lives, whoever may die, we shall never have to say, “My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!” But still shall the Church of God flourish and increase, for the Spirit of God is with her.
Paul wrote, “Some are fallen asleep.” Of course all the witnesses who personally saw Christ have long ago fallen asleep, but, among ourselves, it is also true that, “some are fallen asleep.” And the Truth of God is impressed upon us more and more forcibly every week. I never expect, now, to come to this place on two succeeding Sabbaths without hearing that some one or other of our friends has departed. Our death-rate, for many years, has been wonderfully small, for God seems to have favored us by sparing us to one another. We must not forget that in past days more of our number were young than is the case with us now and, as we all march onwards towards the inevitable river, the deaths will naturally be more numerous among us than they have been. They are beginning to be so, already, and I am continually hearing of one or another of our most useful Brothers or Sisters being “called Home.” Almost every day this Truth of God is impressed upon me—“Some are fallen asleep.” I suppose that all the year round, almost as regularly as the clock ticks, about two a week of our Church members, beside others out of the congregation, are taken up to dwell in the Master’s Presence. So my subject concerns us just as much as it did those of whom and to whom the Apostle wrote.