Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3129
“The king’s mowings.” Amos 7:1.
CERTAIN lands belonged to the king so far that he always took the first cut of grass for himself and left any aftermath to those who worked upon the land. Now, our great King has His mowings, too. His Church is the field which He has enclosed and blessed. At set seasons the King takes His mowings. Lately, beyond any other time in my life that I remember, the King has been taking His mowings in and around the Church of which He has made me overseer. One has spent many hours at the bedsides of the dying and in trying to console the bereaved. Our loss, if I may venture to call it a loss, as a Church, at the opening of this year was extremely heavy. The King has been taking His mowings among us and has cut down here, one, and there, another. When churches commence with a great many young members, there would naturally not be so many deaths at first, but as we all grow old together, there must be a large proportion of removals from this world into the land above. I purpose to speak a little upon that subject and I shall do so in a threefold way— first, by way of consolation. Then, by way of admonition. And then by way of anticipation.
I. First, by way of CONSOLATION. It is a sorrowful matter that our Beloved Brothers and Sisters should be taken from us. We were not more but less than men if we did not sorrow. Jesus wept and by that act He sanctified our tears. It is not wrong, it is not unmanly—much less is it sinful for us to drop the tear of sorrow over the departed—yet let us help to wipe those tears away with a handkerchief of sacred consolations.
First, seeing that “all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass,” do you lament that the King has been mowing? Then let this thought chide you. The King Himself has done it There is no such abstract thing as death—an unloosed monster devouring the saints at will—“Drinking the blood of men and grinding their bones between his iron teeth.” This is a poet’s raving! No destroying angel is sent forth to slay the Israel of God! There is a destroying angel, it is true, but He comes not near those who bear the blood mark. It is not in the power of disease or accident to kill the children of God except as instruments in the Divine hand. No saint dies otherwise than by the act of God! It is always according to the King’s own will—it is the King’s own doing. Every ripe ear in His field is gathered by His own hand, cut down by His own golden sickle and by none other. Every full-blown flower of Grace is taken away by Him, not smitten with blight, or cut down by the tempest, or devoured by some evil beast—
“When mortal main resigns his breath,
‘Tis God directs the stroke of death.
Casual however the stroke appear,
He sends the fatal messenger.
The keys are in that hand Divine—
That hand must first the warrant sign
And arm the death, and wing the dart
Which does His message to our heart.” The Lord has done it, in every case, and knowing this, we must not even think of complaining! What the King does, His servants delight in, for He is such a King that, let Him do what seems good to Him and we will still bless Him—we are of the mind of him who said, “Though He slays me, yet will I trust in Him.”
Again, those who have been mown down and taken away are with the King. They are the King’s mowings! They are gathered into His stores. They are not in “purgatory” (a Romanist lie). They are not in the limbus patran, much less are they in Hell. They are not wandering in dreary pathways amidst the stars to find a lodging place. Jesus prayed, “Father, I will that they, also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am; that they may behold My Glory, which You have given Me: for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” And this prayer has fixed the saints’ abode! We shall enter into no question, now, about whether Heaven is a place, or where it is, or whether it is merely a state—it is enough for us that where Jesus is, there His people are—not some of them in lower seats, or in lower rooms, or sitting outside, but they are all where He is! That will certainly content me. And if there are any degrees in Glory, you who want the high ones may have them. The lowest degree that I can perceive in Scripture is, “that they may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My Glory”—and that lowest degree is as high as my most vivid imagination can carry me! Here is enough to fill our souls even to the brim.
And now do you sorrow for those who are with Christ where He is? Do you not almost blame your tears when you learn that your beloved ones are promoted to such blissful scenes? Why, Mother, did you ever wish for your child a higher place than that it should be where Jesus is? Husband, by the love you bore your wife, you cannot grudge her the Glory into which she has entered! Wife, by the deep devotion of your heart to him who has been taken from you, you could not wish to have detained him a moment from the joy in which his soul now triumphs with his Lord! If he were gone to some unknown land, if you could stand on life’s brink and hear the roaring billows of a dread mysterious ocean and say, “My dear one has gone, I know not where, to be tossed like a waif or stray upon yonder tempestuous sea,” oh, then you might mix your own tears with the brine of that ocean! But you know where they are, you know with Whom they are and you can form some idea, by the joy of Christ’s Presence here on earth, what must be their bliss above!—