Jeremiah 4:20 Destruction on destruction is cried; for the whole land is spoiled: suddenly are my tents spoiled, and my curtains in a moment. I. Our first sorrowful theme is SUDDEN BEREAVEMENTS. Alas! alas! how soon may we be childless; how soon may we be widowed of the dearest objects of our affections! Ah! this were a sad world indeed, if the ties of kindred, of affection, and of friendship all be snapped; and yet it is such a world that they must be sundered, and may be divided at any moment. 1. Let us learn to sit loose by our dearest friends that we have on earth. Let us love them — love them we may, love them we should — but let us always learn to love them as dying things. Oh, build not thy nest on any of these trees, for they are all marked for the axe. See thou the disease of mortality on every cheek, and write not "eternal" upon the creature of an hour. 2. Take care that thou puttest all thy dear ones into God's hand. Thou hast put thy soul there, put them there. Thou canst trust them for temporals for thyself, trust thy jewels with Him. Feel that they are not thine own, but that they are God's loans to thee; loans which may be recalled at any moment — precious benisons of heaven, not entailed upon thee, but of which thou art but a tenant at will. 3. Further, you who are blessed with wife and children and friends, take care that you bless God for them. Sing a song of praise to God who hath blessed you so much more than others. 4. And then permit me to remind you that if these sudden bereavements may come, and there may be a dark chamber in any house in a moment, and the coffin may be in any one of our habitations, let us so act to our kinsfolk and relatives as though we knew they were soon about to die. II. SUDDEN DEATH, AS WE VIEW IT MORE PARTICULARLY IN RELATION TO OURSELVES. There are a thousand gates to death. How many there be who have fallen dead in the streets! How many sitting in their own homes! Well, our turn must come. Perhaps we shall die falling asleep in our beds after long sickness, but probably we shall be suddenly called in such an hour as we think not to face the realities of eternity. Well, if it be so, if there be a thousand gates to death, if all means and any means may be sufficient to stop the current of our life, if really, after all, spiders' webs and bubbles are more substantial things than human life, if we are but a vapour, or a dying taper that soon expires in darkness, what then? 1. Why, first, I say, let us all look upon ourselves as dying men, let us not reckon on tomorrow. Oh! let us not procrastinate; for taken in Satan's great net of procrastination, we may wait, and wait, and wait, till time is gone, and the great knell of eternity shall toll our dissolution. 2. And then take care, I pray you, that you who do know Christ not only live as though you meant to die, but live while you live. Oh, what a work we have to do, and how short the time to do it in! 3. And let us learn never to do anything which we should not wish to be found doing if we were to die. We are sometimes asked by young people whether they may go to the theatre, whether they may dance, or whether they may do this or that. You may do anything which you would not be ashamed to be doing when Christ shall come. III. THE SUDDEN CHANGE WHICH A SUDDEN DEATH WILL CAUSE. You see yonder Christian man. he is full of a thousand fears, — he is afraid even of his interest in Christ, he is troubled spiritually, and vexed with temporal cares. You see him cast down and exceeding troubled, his faith but very weak; he steps outside yon door, and there meets him a messenger from God, who smites him to the heart, and he is dead. Can you conceive the change? Death has cured him of his fears, his tears are wiped away once for all from his eyes; and, to his surprise, he stands where he feared he should never be, in the midst of the redeemed of God, in the general assembly and church of the first-born. If he should think of such things, would he not upbraid himself for thinking so much of his trials and of his troubles, and for looking into a future which he was never to see? See yonder man, he can scarcely walk, he has a hundred pains in his body, he is more tried and pained than any man. Death puts his skeleton hand upon him, and he dies. How marvellous the change! No aches now, no casting down of spirit, he then is supremely blest, the decrepit has become perfect, the weak has become strong, the trembling one has become a David, and David has become as the angel of the Lord. But what must be the change to the unconverted man? His joys are over forever. His death is the death of his happiness — his funeral is the funeral of his mirth. ( C. H. Spurgeon.) Parallel Verses KJV: Destruction upon destruction is cried; for the whole land is spoiled: suddenly are my tents spoiled, and my curtains in a moment. |
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