I had a letter this morning from a friend whose wife died just a few months ago. I last saw her almost fifty years ago, when we belonged to the same Saturday night fellowship, but I knew of her illness, which she had battled with for the past three years. Reading the letter made me realise once again what an immeasurable blessing it is to have Jesus Christ as our Saviour. When my friend first learned the nature of her illness it came as a deep shock, but she was content to put her trust in God whatever the future held for her. And so the Lord took her to be with himself, but not without real tokens of his love and presence at the last.

Another death comes to mind, this one over 40 years ago now and yet I remember it as though it had happened only yesterday. John Thomas was the minister of Bethlehem Presbyterian Church, Aberavon, where Dr Lloyd-Jones ministered in the 1930s. John was unexpectedly taken ill and died less than 24 hours later. He was known and loved throughout Wales and beyond; in many ways he seemed to be a key man in the evangelical cause, but the Lord took him. Just a little while before his death he preached on this text, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, not knowing that his own death was so close. He spoke with deep earnestness of our need to prepare ourselves for death, and of the blessedness (happiness in the highest sense) of those who die ‘in the Lord’. Whether we die slowly or are taken suddenly, it does not matter. It is not how we die that matters, but where we go after death. That sermon was later published and as I read it I can still hear his voice and its earnest tones.

To die well is a great thing. We live in days when men and women give little thought to death. It is regarded as a very gloomy and depressing subject. Make preparations for your old age by all means, even for your funeral; but for death itself and what follows people have hardly a thought. And yet to die without Christ is to die without hope. Robert Murray M'Cheyne also preached on this text, in 1840. Listen to him for a moment: ‘It is not all the dead who are blessed. There is no blessing on the Christless dead, they rush into an undone eternity, unpardoned, unholy. You may put their body into a splendid coffin; you may print their name in silver on the lid; you may bring the well-attired company of mourners to the funeral, in suits of solemn black; . . .you may cut a white stone and grave a gentle epitaph to their memory - still it is but the funeral of a damned soul. You cannot write ‘blessed’ where God has written’ cursed’. ‘He that believeth shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be damned’!

The secret – and it is an open secret – of dying well, yes, and dying happily, is to die’ in the Lord’, that is, to die in a faith-union with Jesus Christ. By dying, he has conquered sin and death and hell. He has satisfied all the demands of law and justice, so that whoever by faith takes refuge in him is safe. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). As the hymn puts it:

‘Be near me when I'm dying,
O show thy cross to me;
Thy death my hope supplying
From death shall set me free.’

The cross is our refuge and hiding place, and never more so than when we are dying. As the hymn continues:

‘These eyes, new faith receiving,
From Jesus shall not move;
For he who dies believing
Dies safely through thy love.’

Will you die safely? Have you made that good preparation for death by fleeing to Christ for refuge? Is he all your trust and all your salvation? Death has no sting and no terrors for those who die in the Lord; they are of all men truly happy, now and in death.

 

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