Seeing Our Loved Ones In The Morning

Seeing Our Loved Ones in the Morning

Excerpted from “Fallen Asleep”

Sermon #2659, January 29, 1882

When death comes to take away someone we love, we grieve—and rightly so. But for the believer, that grief is infused with hope. Our loved ones are not truly lost—after all, we know where they are, and we will see them again.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Psalm 23:4-6

Spurgeon • There is a dear old friend of mine, now in Heaven. When he came to this church one Sunday, I said to him, “Our old friend so-and-so has gone home.” The one to whom I spoke was an old man himself, one of our most gracious elders, and he looked at me in a most significant way, and his eyes twinkled as he said, “He could not do better, dear Pastor. He could not do better. And you and I will do the same thing one of these days. We also shall go home!”

Our aged friend has himself gone home since that time, and now I say of him, “He could not have done better.” Why, that is where good children always go at night—home.

Oh! Let us not live in this world as if we thought of staying here forever, but let us try to be like a pious Scotch minister who was very ill and, being asked by a friend whether he thought himself dying, answered, “Really, friend, I care not whether I am or not, for if I die, I shall be with God. And if I live, he will be with me.”

But as for those who have fallen asleep in Jesus, we need not fret or trouble ourselves about them. When children go upstairs to bed, do their elder brothers and sisters, who sit up later, gather together and cry because the other children have fallen asleep? Ah, no! They feel that they have not lost them, and they expect to meet again in the morning; and so do we!

Therefore, let us not weep and lament to excess concerning the dear ones who have fallen asleep in Christ, for all is well with them. They are at rest; shall we weep about that? They are enjoying their eternal triumph; shall we weep about that? They are as full of bliss as they can possibly be; shall we weep about that? If any of your sons and daughters were taken away from you to be made into kings and queens in a foreign land, you might shed a tear or two at parting, but you would say, “It is for their good; let them go.”

And do you begrudge your well-beloved their crown of glory and all the bliss which God has bestowed upon them? If the departed could speak to us, they would say, “Bless God for us. Do not sit down and mourn because we have entered into his glory, but rather rejoice because we are with him where he is.”

Therefore, let us comfort one another with these words.

Did you ever notice, concerning Job’s children, that when God gave him twice as much substance as he had before, he gave him only the same number of children as he formerly had? The Lord gave him twice as much gold and twice as much of all sorts of property, but he only gave him the exact number of children he had before. Why did he not give the patriarch double the number of children as well as twice the number of cattle? Why, because God regarded his children who had died as being Job’s still.

They were dead to Job’s eye, but they were visible to Job’s faith. God numbered them still as part of Job’s family, and if you carefully count up how many children Job had, you will find that he had twice as many in the end as he had in the beginning. In the same way, consider your friends who are asleep in Christ as still yours—not a single one lost.

Alcorn • Spurgeon performed countless funerals, but he wasn’t the sort of pastor who didn’t get to know his people until they were dying. In fact, he had a weekly time set aside to meet individually with people who had trusted Christ and wanted to become church members. It appears he came to know by name at least six thousand church members by this one method alone. He heard each of them tell how he or she had come into a relationship with Jesus. So in his sermons, when he speaks of church people who have died, in many cases he knew them well. And he looked forward to a great reunion in which people of the Metropolitan Tabernacle would one day see each other again in the presence of Christ.

Death is painful, and it’s an enemy. But for those who know Jesus, death is the final pain and the last enemy. “[Christ] must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:25-26). We on this dying Earth can relax and rejoice for our loved ones who are in the presence of Christ.

As the apostle Paul tells us, though we naturally grieve at losing loved ones, we are not to “grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13, NIV). Our parting is not the end of our relationship, only an interruption. We have not lost them, because we know where they are. Don’t you love Spurgeon’s point about children going upstairs to bed? Of course brothers and sisters don’t weep over their sleeping siblings, because “they expect to meet again in the morning; and so do we!”

When they die, those covered by Christ’s blood are experiencing the joy of Christ’s presence in a place so wonderful that Christ called it Paradise. And one day, we’re told, there will be a magnificent reunion. They and we “will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:17-18, NIV).

Jonathan Edwards, whose theology of sovereign grace Spurgeon loved, saw no conflict between anticipating our relationships with God and anticipating our relationships with our loved ones in Heaven:

Every Christian friend that goes before us from this world is a ransomed spirit waiting to welcome us in heaven. There will be the infant of days that we have lost below, through grace to be found above. There the Christian father, and mother, and wife, and child, and friend, with whom we shall renew the holy fellowship of the saints, which was interrupted by death here, but shall be commenced again in the upper sanctuary, and then shall never end. There we shall have companionship with the patriarchs and fathers and saints of the Old and New Testaments, and those of whom the world was not worthy. . . . And there, above all, we shall enjoy and dwell with God the Father, whom we have loved with all our hearts on earth; and with Jesus Christ, our beloved Savior, who has always been to us the chief among ten thousands, and altogether lovely; and with the Holy Spirit, our Sanctifier, and Guide, and Comforter; and shall be filled with all the fullness of the Godhead forever!^a

What a world that will be—to live in rich eternal fellowship with the triune God and the great family of his redeemed. I’m overwhelmed just thinking of it. What a great God we’ll enjoy and serve forever! What a great time we’ll have together there! I look forward to meeting every reader of my books who knows Jesus and being reunited with those I’ve known here on Earth. I can’t wait for the great adventures we’ll have with Christ and one another, with Edwards and Spurgeon, with Mary and Joseph, with our ancestors and children who have fallen asleep before us. Deep and joyful human relationships will be among God’s greatest gifts in Heaven—relationships that by God’s grace will never end.

^a Jonathan Edwards, Heaven: A World of Love (Amityville, NY: Calvary Press, 1999), 18.