Sermon

by Septimus Sears

“To die is gain.” Philippians 1: 21

Can a man stand on a more solemn spot than when his life — his span of life — is behind him, and a vast, unbounded eternity before him? In fact we may all be said to stand continually on the margin of an eternal world: for what, at the longest, is our life? It is “even a vapour, that appeareth for a short time and then vanisheth away.”

But there are times when individuals seem especially to be on the edge of that deep without a bottom — that ocean without a shore — a vast, inexpressible, incomprehensible eternity. Now to the apostle Paul, at the time he wrote this epistle, it seemed as if death — death in a fierce form — were levelling its darts at him. It seemed as if death had got his tremendous eye upon him; his hand upon his bow; and anxious to let fly an arrow at his heart. That lion (Nero) appeared to be grinding his teeth at him; and, growling and grumbling, was waiting for the opportunity to pounce upon him, and put an end to such an enemy to the kingdom of Satan (in whose kingdom Nero was so conspicuous a member) — whose life was the means of extending the kingdom of that blessed Redeemer to whom Satan is so much opposed.

Now, in circumstances like these, what a favoured man was the apostle. He could composedly look at life, and say, “For me to live is Christ; and if it is best for me to live, as it seems to me, I shall live.” He could look at death with tranquility and calmness — without one drop of anguish or fear — without one tremor — because his faith twined peacefully around death’s conqueror, and could say, “For me to die is gain.” What a blessed testimony!

Have you ever lain apparently upon eternity’s margin? I know what it is to lie seemingly on the brink of another world in the greatest mental misery — filled with the guilt of my sins, and with slavish fears; and I have known what it is to lie, not many months ago, apparently upon that solemn brink with the love of God sweetly shed abroad in my heart. A man with his eyes open can die peacefully with Christ; but he cannot die at peace without Him. If he can say “Thou art with me”, he can exclaim, “I will fear no evil.” Grasping a precious Christ by faith will alone rightly make death easy.

But to come to the words of our text:

1. Let us speak of the circumstances mentioned: “to die”.
2. We will show to whom it will be no gain to die.
3. To whom it will be gain to die, and
4. What the Christian man will gain by dying.

Now this is a solemn subject. May our minds be solemn, and may the Holy Spirit deign His gracious help, and shower down His heavenly blessing.

I. The Circumstance: “to die”.

1. I observe it is a certain circumstance. There have been two, and but two exceptions. “Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.” Elijah went in a fiery chariot with a transformed body to glory. And those who shall be alive and remain to the coming of Christ shall be changed “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye”. The day is coming when we shall each of us drop into eternity. The day is coming when trembling hands, when a sweating brow, an oppressed heart, and a struggling chest, will announce the grim monster’s dart has reached our bosom, and that our feet must ford the cold waters of the Jordan. It is a certain circumstance to each of us. We must! We must! We must die!

2. It is a near circumstance. What is human life? It is compared to the sweep of the thread from the weaver’s shuttle across the frame. It is a vapour; a nothing; a shadow that vanisheth away. Have you not from a boat watched upon the wide sea the approaching shadow of a flitting cloud between the earth and the sun? It’s coming — it’s come — it’s gone. Such is life. In a very short time — at the very longest — we must come to the solemn hour of death. Death’s key must soon unlock eternity to us.

3. It is a solemn circumstance. Can there be any thing more awfully solemn? When you think that death is a circumstance that not only tears the fond wife from the bosom of her husband; that it not only snatches the parent away from his helpless children: but that it is a moment when you enter into an unchanging state of existence; that the moment after death you will commence a wail that will never close, will drop into a bottomless hell; or you will begin an endless song of praise in the celestial regions — you will strike the keynote of an everlasting anthem; you will commence to scale a height the top of which you will never reach — and bask in the beams of a sun that never will set. Man — woman — a tremendous eternity is before you, where you must howl in ceaseless anguish, or sing in undying raptures the praises of the Lamb of God.

4. And then it is a circumstance that can never be repeated. I do not know any thing about death that has struck me more than that. To die unregenerate is to be unregenerate for ever. If you die unsprinkled with blood, you can never return to seek that precious gift. If you die unclothed in Jesus’ righteousness, you can never then cast away your filthy rags and cry for the best robe. If you die without a work of grace in your heart you go where such a work can never be wrought. If you die wrong, you are wrong for the unchanging condition of weal or woe that death takes you to. Can there be any thing more important than this solemn circumstance?

II. To whom will it be no gain to die?

Let us not go outside the chapel, but from seat to seat; and may each one be communing with his own heart, as if solitary before God; because it may be out of the few who are here present, there may be some to whom it will be no gain to die. If this were your dying-bed instead of a pew in a chapel, it would be a solemn moment to you.

To whom will it be no gain to die?

1. To the worldling — the thoughtless, eager, money-scraping worldling will find it no gain to die. Jesus has drawn the picture of a worldling — a man who prospered in the world — who succeeded well in business. “What must I do to bestow all my goods? I will pull down my barns and build greater.” And, having done all to make his carnal heart happy, he threw himself as it were on a bed of down, and said, “Soul, take thine ease.”

As if an immortal soul breathed from God, that can only be happy at its source; as if the soul that God is the author of, and God must be the end of, could ever be satisfied or happy with such garbage as earth can give (though we would not speak slightly of the mercies of God’s providence). “Thou fool,” said God to the man, “this night thy soul shall be required of thee.” What thousands in England are running this race! are eagerly grasping and grasping to get a sufficiency, saying “I will soon retire, and then think about eternity. Let us make hay while the sun shines: get all we can, use all the tricks and arts of trade and make provision for an independent old age.” O worldling, O man, laying up treasure for yourselves, and not rich towards God, so living and so dying, it will be no gain for you to die.

1. It will be no gain for the pleasure seeker to die. O frivolous pleasure seeker, if one should have crept in here tonight — living in what the flesh delights in, living after the flesh. Hear what God says about you, “If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die.” Death would prove no gain to you, except you can reckon it gain to gain a burning fire — a worm that never dies; except it be gain to gain a place among those who will call in vain for mountains to crush them, and for the rocks to bury them; a place where there is nought but the unendurable frown of the God whose wrath is hell, and whose smile is heaven.

2. Again. It will be no gain to the Pharisee to die: he being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about establishing his own righteousness, has not submitted himself to the righteousness of God. This is weaving the spider’s web. “But their webs”, says God, “shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works.” It would be no gain for the man to die who is building on the sand. He may call his sand Catholicism — Protestantism — Independency — Baptism — Penitence — Reformation: he may call it by whatever name he pleases. All is sand in the matter of acceptance with God but one piece of ground, and that is Calvary! He builds for hell, wherever he builds, and who does not build at the Cross. He builds too low who does not build on the righteousness of Him Who “ever liveth to make intercession for all who come unto God by Him.”

3. It will be no gain to the notional professor to die — the man who with sound doctrines and a clear creed is graceless: the man who, though graceless, makes his boast, “I am no Arminian; I am no Pharisee; I believe in election; I believe in God’s sovereignty; I believe that Jesus died for the church and none but the church; I would not be an Arminian.” I am glad of that: but Balaam believed what you believe, and he is in hell. The devils believe what you believe, and they are under the wrath of the Most High.

“True religion is more than notion,
something must be known and felt.”

1. It will be no gain for the fanatic to die. You must not believe a person necessarily right because he has a feeling religion. There is true and false feeling, there is false hope. There is the fear of the wicked, as well as God’s fear. There is the desire of the sluggard as well as the desire of the righteous. There is the hope of the hypocrite, as well as “a good hope through grace”. There is the joy of the man whose “excellency mounts up to the skies,” and yet shall “perish for ever”, as well as the joy of the true believer. There is the “raging confidence of a fool”, as well as the blessed confidence of a gracious man, who can say with the apostle, “We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” This is a serious question that exercises the hearts of God’s people often. Is my experience genuine? You can never make a child of God think he has never been miserable; he knows he has, or that he has never had desires after God, or that he has never joyed in believing: he knows he has. But then the serious query with him sometimes is. Have these been spiritual convictions and desires, and enjoyment? I believe the professor never comes where the Psalmist came, in that solemn Psalm we have just read, Psalm 19. He never says sincerely, “Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults.” “O make me right; right for time to serve Thee; right for eternity to enjoy Thee.”

III. To whom will it be gain to die?

O, that we may be the means of picking up a child of God here. I would not build up slight walls and daub them with untempered mortar. He that knows the worth of his own soul knows the worth of the souls of others. None, however, can sympathise with a tempest-tossed vessel of mercy as he can who has passed through the storm and tempest. The Lord told his people to be kind to strangers, because they had been strangers in the land of Egypt. “You know the heart of a stranger.” You know when the iron galls his flesh; you know where the chain pinches him, and the load crushes him. Hence sympathise with him, and I think the Lord’s own servants are often led through deep exercises that they may be the more “able to comfort others with the comfort wherewith they themselves are comforted of God.”

1. I may say, doctrinally, it will be gain for the chosen to die. When the Lamb stood on mount Zion, they that were with Him were “called chosen, and faithful”. Some of you may be fighting against electing love. It will be in vain to kick against the brazen mountain of God’s decrees. It will be in vain thus to rush upon the bosses of His buckler. “He is stronger than thou; and He giveth account of none of His matters.” How much better to be the soul lying at the footstool of mercy, crying out to be assured that he is one of the chosen, than to be stumbling over the great decrees of God: kicking against the pricks.

There was a time when my heart loathed this doctrine; I speak it with shame, I repined and rebelled against it; and now I feel it is one of the most wondrous mercies that God should ever have seen fit, instead of letting all men be damned as they deserved — as he let fallen angels be damned — in goodness and grace to have chosen and ransomed millions from the fall, and appointed them a portion in the skies — unfading and enduring.

1. Again, to the redeemed it will be gain to die: for it is “the ransomed of the Lord” that “shall return and come to Zion,” and He shall “see” in them “of the travail of his soul and be satisfied.” There is a day coming when all for whom He suffered in Gethsemane — when all whose sins crushed His holy soul at Calvary, will be presented by Him — washed in blood, clothed in spotless righteousness, faultless, without blame before the Most High Jehovah.

2. It will be gain to the quickened soul to die. All whom the Lord quickens will die no more. “I am the Resurrection and the Life; whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.” Those who believe in Christ have “passed from death unto life, and shall not come into condemnation.”

“And never shall they die again,
Who in this life believe.”

It is the first work of God’s Spirit to put new life into the immortal soul that previously was “dead in trespasses and sins”. This important work of the Spirit of God takes place in a moment, and is His sole work. “To God the Lord belong the issues from death.” No creature had any hand in quickening us either naturally or spiritually. “It is the Spirit that quickeneth.” He that possesses this life manifests it by certain signs.

Life, I might say, has its sorrows. Not necessarily. Adam had life once, and no sorrow. But under certain circumstances it has its sorrows. An imprisoned corpse would be without sorrow: but let life enter that corpse, its imprisonment becomes a source of sorrow. It you have spiritual life, your greatest trouble will be sin.

“O thou hideous monster sin!”

There are several things in sin that the living soul finds to be its trouble; sin’s presence is its trouble; sin’s load is its trouble; sin’s power is its trouble; sin’s lustings are its trouble; sin’s tyranny is its trouble; and when the living soul cries out, “Take away all iniquity,” — deliver me from my transgressions — he means something more than “deliver me from hell”. It is, “Deliver me from sin’s guilt — sin’s load — sin’s filth — sin’s power; and finally, from sin’s inbeing.”

Life has also its wants. He that is alive must have food, clothing, friends, communion. Where there is life, there are wants; and in a living soul there are wants that lie exactly parallel with the supply that is in Christ Jesus. If you are really alive, you want exactly such a Christ as is revealed in the Bible; you want just such a salvation as was effected on Calvary: you want exactly such a fulness as is treasured up in Emmanuel; you want a Saviour with offices and characters like Jesus. If a living soul, you have wants, and if without Christ you could not be satisfied; but if you have Christ, you are happy; all is well. When God gives a Christian Christ, he has given him His treasure; He has given the bride the Bridegroom; the pilgrim his home; the mariner his harbour; the refugee the city of refuge; the hungry one bread: the famished one water of life: He has given him all his desires: all his most ardent wishes; the object of his affections; the ground of his trust; the centre of his hopes; the springs of his joys, and the source of his brightest anticipations. In giving him Christ, God gives him ALL. Many a living soul is unable to lay hold of Christ, but he has in him an aching space that nothing else can fill.

It will be gain for you to die if you truly can say.

“Thou, O Christ, art all I want.”

Then again. Life has its comforts. Living people, in nearly any circumstances, are seldom without some comfort; and spiritual life has its comforts.

What a comfort to the living man are the invitations of the gospel! What does not the longing soul see in those precious invitations! They seem to him just like sending an invitation to a feast which he prefers going to above all other feasts; an invitation from the Eternal Provider of the banquet of grace. “In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried. If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.” Do you not understand what it is for those broad invitations to be necessary to meet your soul? “Any man.” “Whosoever will.” John Berridge said, that he liked the word “Whosoever” better than if it had been “John Berridge” for he might have thought there were other John Berridges in the world for whom it was intended. “Whosoever will.” The soul can say, “Lord, Thou knowest I will. My heart has been made willing in the day of Thy power; willing to be saved by Thee, and willing to serve Thee.”

“The dearest idol I have known
Whate’er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from Thy throne,
And worship only Thee.”

I might mention how the different promises and declarations of the gospel are made a comfort; but, put all together, Christ, Christ, He is the sum of the Christian’s comfort: He is the well whence he draws his gladness; He is the sun in whose beams he basks and gets comfort; he is the Friend in whose communion and fellowship he can get consolation; He is the Priest, the Counsellor, into whose hands he can commit his case, and get comfort; He is the King in whose power he can confide and get comfort. O, if you want to know what is the greatest misery of the Christian — it is sin — sin; the greatest comfort of the Christian, it is Christ. Christ to teach him; Christ to save him; Christ to influence him; Christ to govern him; Christ to lead him; Christ to bring him safe home, and Christ to be his everlasting song and ALL.

1. It will be gain to the refugee to die. We read in the Scriptures that they have ground for “strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before us.” Shall I illustrate this by Noah’s ark? Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us that in some respects we are in a similar position to what the world was in the days of Noah. How did things stand with the world then? Noah had erected an ark, and preached while it was being erected, and when it was completed. He preached two things — destruction for all without the ark; salvation for all within it. Everybody ridiculed and doubted him, but a certain few, his own little family, who believed the threat against the world and the promise to Noah. And what did they do? They fled the ark. And oh, when the heavens gathered blackness, and the sea tossed and foamed, and the fountains of the great deep were broken up — when the billows rolled over the shores, and the clouds began to shower down their tremendous contents — oh then, who were the gainers, who were the losers?

Those who could do without the ark, and could afford to laugh at the ark, and at Noah, who built a ship in-land on the dry ground: they were the losers. They were the gainers who rode in safety on the bosom of the watery deep, securely shut in the ark. And if you are convinced of the filthiness of sin; if you are made to feel the holiness of God; if you are convinced you must perish out of Christ; and are brought helpless and poor, and lost, to throw yourself with all your weight of sin and guilt and helplessness and woe beneath the shadow of the Saviour’s cross, it will be gain for you to die.

To what shall I compare the church and the world? It is just as if that mighty cross — that bleeding scene were in the centre of the earth, and round the centre a circle were thrown, and inside it written, “Life — life — gain — gain.” Inside the circle all who are brought to believe that outside the sacred boundary is death and loss, and inside is life and gain, and through mighty grace to flee to the shadow of that cross, shelter in atoning blood, and screen their hell-deserving heads beneath a Saviour’s spotless righteousness. “Happy is the people who are in such a case; yea, happy is the people whose God is the Lord.”

It will be gain for such to die.

1. It will be gain to the good trees to die, that bring forth fruit. I believe there are three things the people of God especially cry out for, and cannot be satisfied without: salvation, fruitfulness and glory. They want salvation to be the starting point, fruitfulness their race course, and glory their goal. And if they cannot get these three, they cannot be content. Salvation they learn can only be got from Christ; fruitfulness they learn can only be got by abiding in Christ. I believe, however, real fruitfulness which is grace is like the human eye: it can see anything but itself. If ever you see a person who thinks himself sufficiently humble, or sufficiently spiritual, you may doubt whether such a one ever really knew anything of right fruitfulness. “Not as though I had already attained,” says the Apostle. There was an humble man praying for more humility; a tender man breathing for more tenderness; a living man panting for more life; a believing man seeking for more faith; a gracious man longing for more grace.

“I want nothing,” said one, when an earthly gift was offered him, “but more grace.” Do you know what “Give me Christ” means? And the getting hold of Christ as your salvation? Does your heart cry, “More grace — more grace”? Then it will be gain for you to die. Nobody ever cried out for more grace — none in this dark world ever wanted sin crushed in them — but the joint heirs with Christ.

“Crush, dear Babe, its power within us.” They only pant to live the Christian’s life, as well as to die the Christian’s death. Can you come in here? Do you know anything in any measure of what it is for sin to be your grief; and for salvation by grace through faith, and the sweet invitations and truths of the gospel, to be in any measure your soul’s comfort? Do you know what it is to pant to live a fruitful life in separateness and dependence on God?

IV. What will the Christian gain by dying?

Oh, dear people of God, whose deepest wounds may be traced to that offence “that brought death into our world, and all our woe” — whose sweetest balm has been fetched from yonder tree, where Emmanuel bled: dear people of God, whose souls and hearts cry out, “I would be holy”.

“I would be near Thy feet,
Or at Thy bleeding side:
Feel how Thy heart does beat,
And view the purple tide:
Trace all the wonders of Thy death,
And sing Thy love in every breath.”

For you — for you — it will be gain to die. Death’s arrows levelled at thy bosom, though bitter to thy flesh, shall but kill thee into life. Even death shall prove thy friend; for

“Now his office is to wait between the saints and sin;
A porter at the heavenly gate to let the pilgrims in.”

Were you a slave in fetters bound, it would no more grieve you to have your chains smashed by a sledge hammer than to have them broken by an instrument of gold. O Christian, the day is not far distant when it will be gain to you to say, “Adieu to earth.” It will be a gain to you to be separated even from what is dear to you on earth — a gain to you to hear the welcome voice, “Child, your Father calls you home.”

1. What will the Christian gain by dying? He will gain by a loss, so to speak. He will gain freedom from every load. “We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened.” He will gain a liberation from the bondage of corruption, from the burden of the flesh, and enter into eternal joy and felicity: his manacles will drop off; the prison walls fall, when the disembodied prisoner, the long caged-up bird of paradise shall soar away and commence to warble amidst the heavenly songsters of the Eden of glory.

2. He will gain a crown — the conqueror’s — the victor’s crown — the successful racer’s laurel. He is running the race now — he is battling with the enemy now — soon that head of yours, that is sometimes weary with the din of war, will wear a fadeless crown; soon your great and glorious Leader, in the presence of angels and archangels, of ransomed spirits made perfect, in the presence of the Eternal, will put the laurel on your brow, and say (most wonderful thing for Him to say to you), “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” O, it will be gain for thee to die!

3. You will gain a throne. Now you are often sadly subjugated — then you’ll rule, then you’ll triumph, with your enemies trampled under your feet. “God shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.” “He that overcometh shall sit with Me in My throne, even as I overcame, and am set down with My Father in His throne.”

4. You will gain a home. No longer a weary, way-worn pilgrim, but a child at home. Your soul will find its centre then, which even now attracts it. Broken off from your former centre, Calvary has attracted you by its mighty magnetism, and toward that centre you tend. Death will place you in your destined orbit, and then, through revolving ages, you’ll circle amid the glittering stars of heaven, the throne of the Eternal.

The wanderer will there find a home; the weary one a resting-place; the sea-worn mariner a haven; the hungry one an immortal banquet. All your most earnest wishes will there be more than fulfilled. You’ll find

“All you desire or wish below,
in the bright world to which you go.”

Christian, what a gain is death! “To die is gain.”

I must utter a few closing remarks. First, examine yourselves whether it will be gain for you to die. Is sin hated? Is your own righteousness distrusted? Is Christ leaned upon? Is He your only refuge? Do you want to have more grace? If so, it will be gain for you to die.

Must I not say a solemn warning word to those still without? Can I leave without a word more to those still in a state of nature? I feel that especially laid upon me to “warn every man”. I know you cannot help yourselves. You are dead; you cannot live by any effort of your own. And yet will I cry with the prophecy. “O ye dry bones; hear the word of the Lord.” I will prophesy to the bones; but all will be in vain without the wind. Prophesy to the wind then, O Christians, join me while I cry, “Come from four winds and breathe upon these slain that they may live.” You poor graceless sinner, you will find, if grace prevent not, death, the ugly jailer, to introduce you to the dark prison of eternal and inexpressible horrors, while the dear partaker of Jesus’ grace will find death the welcome messenger to conduct him to his Father’s place, where through the long ages of a blissful eternity he’ll accompany the chords of his golden harp with lofty hallelujahs to God and the Lamb.

Amen.