Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3346
“There shall be a resurrection both for the just and the unjust.” Acts 24:15.
THE heathen had, somehow or other, spelled out the Truth of God that the soul of man is immortal. Almost all their religions implied this and some of their sages plainly taught it. But never had they imagined that this immortality might belong also to the body!
The Doctrine of the Resurrection from the Dead was peculiar to Christianity. It was so novel and it seemed, at first, to be so absurd that when men heard the Apostles speak of such a resurrection they mocked and laughed them to scorn as fools. They called Paul, “a babbler,” because of this. They believed he must be mad. Had they not seen the body sicken and die? Had they not marked it in various stages of decay? Did they not know that it was frequently dissolved into small dust, scattered to the manifold winds of Heaven, or that its fragments mingled with the waves of the sea, or that its various members were torn by wild beasts and could they, therefore, imagine it to be credible that any sane person could believe that the human body would rise again from the dead? Yet Paul believed this and this he preached—that there would be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust, not that the just and the unjust would merely live as to their souls, but that their bodieswould be restored from the grave and that a resurrection, as well as an immortality, would be the future of every man of woman born, whatever his character might be!
Now, this is the great Doctrine of the Christian faith which we do not doubt, but joyously accept! Our Lord’s Body, that same Body in real identity which was nailed to the tree and laid in the tomb for three days—that same Body came to life again, with the nail prints visible—into which Thomas was invited to put his finger—with the mark of the spear into which the same doubting Apostle was asked to thrust his hand! Christ proved Himself to be not merely a spirit, but a solid, tangible, corporeal existence, for He said, “Handle Me, and see; a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see I have.” And although He appeared in the room, the doors being shut, and thus proved that His body had lost some of the properties of coarse matter, yet, at the same time, He took a piece of flesh and of honeycomb and did eat before them—and let them see that it was His very Self who had hung upon the Cross and died there at Calvary! And so shall it be with us! Though by death our bodies shall lose some of their qualities which we shall all be only too glad to lose, though their corruptions and weaknesses shall all be laid aside, yet my body and yours in definite identity, each for itself, shall rise up from its bed of dust and silent clay, and enter into the rest that remains where Jesus dwells before the Throne of God! Behold at this present, “the whole creation groans and travails in pain together, until now, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body.”
My great purpose tonight, Beloved, is to speak on the majestic fact that the just and the unjust are to live on in a resurrection state. I am not going to debate, discuss, argue as to the fact of it, but, assuming your belief in God’s Inspired Word, declare a few thoughts which that sublime Truth seems to raise in one’s mind. I shall treat the Truth as though it were a lantern—and shall look at some of the rays of Divine Light that stream from it on all sides. And, first of all—
I. What an Ennobling Effect This Truth Has upon Us!
Observe the effect it has, first of all, given our bodies. Paul elsewhere calls the body, “this vile body,” and so it is in comparison with what it is to be, by-and-by! But yet if this body has been redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, and if the Holy Spirit dwells in our bodies, as we are taught in Scripture—and if these bodies are to be partakers of a pure and sinless immortality—then what noble things these otherwise vile bodies become! So noble, my Brothers and
Sisters, that it becomes us to guard them sacredly, as sacred things! Now, our bodies may be defiled, but shall they be defiled after being washed in pure water and after being given up to Christ? You know how they may be defiled. The Apostle speaks very plainly concerning certain carnal lusts whereby members of Christ may be made members of all manner of iniquity. From these things we fly—they should not be so much as named among you, as becomes saints. Our bodies may be defiled by eating and drinking, unless in the eating and the drinking we glorify God. We may by excess in either way bring ourselves into conditions in which the mind will not act and I believe, mark you, that gluttony is as much a sin in the sight of God as drunkenness, and that, in fact, any eating or drinking which makes us unfit for communion with God becomes sinful at once! Any passing beyond that boundary, whatever it may be, whether in eating or in drinking, becomes sinful! The body is clogged and defiled and who would have it so when it has been purchased by Christ’s precious blood and is to dwell with Him forever?
The body, too, may be defiled by outward adornments, for the Holy Spirit has expressly warned Christian men and women against these. There is a holy adornment that we speak of—that of a meek and a quiet spirit—but when men and women hang upon themselves their jewels and their ornaments of an ungodly profession, they sin against the plain precepts of the Word of God and they really defile the bodies that belong to Christ! So every bowing of the knee to that to which I ought not to bow, every yielding of this body of mine to write what is not true, every motion of my tongue to speak that which is not upright and according to the fear of God, every movement of these feet to take me where it is not good for me to be—defiles the body! So there are ten thousand ways in which the Temple of God may be defiled, but I say again that with the thought that this body is to live forever and ever, we ought to guard with sacred care these members of Christ! The body that has been bought with His blood—that is to sleep on His bosom, that is to be awakened in His likeness, that is to dwell with Him forever, molded after His own Image—take care of that body and keep it consecrated unto the Lord!
And while this ennobles the body, let me say that it also ennobles the entire man. If man is a creature. If he is only first among animals, though the most highly organized of all the vertebrate creatures. And if, when he dies, that is the end of him, as that might be of a sheep or a dog, then, looking up to the stars and thinking of man as a mere beast, you need not say with David, “Lord, what is man?” You know what he is! You have got your answer—and a gloomy and a melancholy answer it is. But if man is to live forever and ever, what a noble creature he becomes! And, mark you, men are ready enough to admit this of some of their fellow creatures—kings, queens, princes, senators and men who have heaped up their gold—but when it comes to this, that the beggar, being immortal, is to be honored, they do not like it! I would that men would remember that the same Bible that says, “Honor the king,” also says, “Honor all men”—that is, be they what they may! But men must honor people’s coats—not the men! Or they honor their carriages, or they honor their sovereigns, but they do not honor the men! And yet, in truth, seeing that man is to live forever, that his existence in the future is coeval with the life of God, every man becomes a strange and wondrous thing! If you could pile up a mountain of gold, a huge pyramid of it, and then by the side of it a pyramid of precious stones, yet all these put together could not be valued with the soul of the pauper’s child that has been in the workhouse from its very birth! Despise not, then, despise not a man made in the image of God—a man redeemed with the blood of Christ, a man immortal, a man a mystery if he is immortal—a mystery of mysteries!
As I begin to look at him in the light of my text, which is far above all the fictitious surroundings to which men attach so much weight, he appears to me now to be a greater being than stars or suns, for these may die out and their brightness become extinct—but here is a star that shall shine on forever! A sun that shall flash its beams throughout eternity! We must not, therefore, if we are poor, broken, despised—at once go into sin as though we were too mean to be capable of excellence! We must not begin to say, “I cannot be saved—I am so illiterate, I am so obscure.” Why not? If you are not saved, you will have to live forever in misery! Can you understand that? You are endowed with an immortality from which it is impossible for you to escape! In that respect, by that wondrous gift, God has put you on an elevated position and I pray that you may look at it as such—may, by His Grace, not fling yourselves away, nor trifle with yourselves, nor do the devil’s bidding—but seek Him who has promised in His Word that they that seek Him shall find Him!
Thus much on that one thought. And now a second one. If there is another state, as you know there is, for body and soul—