A Believer's Last Day, His Best
[10.] Tenthly and lastly, Consider this—that the Lord will not leave you—but be with you in that dying hour. "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," says the psalmist, Psalm 23:4. Just so, the apostle, Heb. 13:5, "Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said—Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." There are five negatives in the Greek, to assure God's people that he will never forsake them; five times in Scripture is this precious promise renewed, that we may press it until we have pressed the sweetness out of it. Though God may seem to leave you, you may be confident he will never forsake you. Why should that man be afraid of death, who may be always confident of the presence of the Lord of life? [Maximilian the emperor was so delighted with that sentence, "If God is with us—who shall be against us?" that he caused it to be written upon the walls in most of the rooms of his palace.]
3. The next use shall be to stir you all up to prepare and fit you for your dying-day. Ah, Christians! what is your whole life—but a day to fit for the hour of death? What is your great business in this world— but to prepare and fit for the eternal world? It was a sad speech of Caesar Borgia, who being on his deathbed said, "When I lived, I provided for everything but death! Now I must die, and am unprovided to die." Ah, Christians! you have need every day to pray with Moses, "Lord, teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom," Psalm 90:12; and to follow the counsel of the prophet Jeremiah, "Give glory to the Lord your God before he brings the darkness, before your feet stumble on the darkening hills. You hope for light, but he will turn it to thick darkness and change it to deep gloom," Jer. 13:16.
Old age is the dark mountain which makes a broad way narrow, and a plain way cragged. It is a high point of heavenly wisdom to consider our latter end: "Oh, that they were wise, that that understood this, that they would consider their latter end!" Deut.
23:19. Jerusalem paid dearly for forgetting her latter end.
Jerusalem's filthiness was in her skirts, because she remembered not her latter end, therefore she was dreadfully brought down.
To provoke you to prepare and fit for a dying-day, consider seriously these following things— (1.) He who prepares not for his dying-day, runs the hazard of losing his immortal soul. Though true repentance is never too late— yet late repentance is seldom true. "He who is not ready to repent today, will be less ready tomorrow; his understanding will be more dark, his heart more hard, his will more crooked, his affections more distempered, his conscience more benumbed," etc. Bede tells a story of a certain great man who was admonished in his sickness to repent, who answered, "That he would not repent now, for if he should recover, his companions would laugh at him;" but, growing sicker and sicker, he then told them it was too late to repent— "For now," said he, "I am judged and condemned." It is the greatest wisdom in the world to do that every day, which a man would do on a dyingday, and to be afraid to live in such a state, as a man would be afraid to die in. Ah, souls! you are afraid to die in such and such sins; and will you not be afraid to live in those sins?
(2.) Again, The certainty of death, should cause you to prepare for death. When we would affirm anything to be infallibly true, we say, "As sure as death." "It is appointed," says the apostle, "unto men once to die—but after this the judgment!" Heb. 9:27. [Psalm 89:48; Job 30:23; Eccles. 12:5.] "Once," implies two things— [1.] A certainty — it shall be; [2.] A singularity — it will be but once.
"What man lives—who shall not see death?" says the psalmist; that is, no man lives and shall not see death. In Job the grave is called "the house appointed for all the living." The learned call death, "our long home," where men must abide for a long time, even until the resurrection. To live without fear of death—is to die living! To labor not to die—is labor in vain. Death has for its motto, "I yield to none!" It is decreed that all must die. Every man's death-day is his doom's-day.
The Jews have a saying: "In the graveyard are to be seen skulls of all sizes;" that is, death comes on the young as well as the old; the lot is fallen upon all, and therefore all must die. All men are made of one mold and matter, "Dust you are, and unto dust you shall return,"
Gen. 3:19. "All have sinned, are fallen short of the glory of God,"
Romans 3:23; and therefore death must pass upon all.
(3.) The uncertainty of the time of your death, should cause you with open mouth to be in a constant readiness and preparedness for death. No man knows when he shall die, nor what kind of death he shall die—whether a natural or a violent death. Augustus died in a compliment, Tiberius died in a deception, Galba died with a sentence, Vespasian died with a jest! Zeuxes died laughing at the picture of an old woman, which he drew with his own hand!
Sophocles was choked with the pit in a grape! Diodorus the logician died for shame that he could not answer a silly question propounded at the dinner table! Joannes Masius preaching upon the raising of the woman of Naomi's son from the dead, within three hours after, died himself! Felix, Earl of Wurtemburgh, sitting at supper with many of his friends, some at the table fell into discourse about Luther, and the people's general receiving of his doctrine, upon which the Earl swore a great oath, "that before he died he would ride up to the spurs in the blood of Lutherans;" but the very same night
God stretched out his hand so against him, that he choked to death on his own blood! Bibulus, a Roman general, while riding in triumph in all his glory—a tile fell from a house in the street, and beat out his brains!
(4.) Consider, in the last place—That it is a solemn thing to die.
Death is a solemn parting of two near friends—soul and body.
Remember, all other preparations are to no purpose, if a man is not prepared to die. What will it avail a man to prepare this and that for his children, kindred, or friends, etc., when he has made no preparations for his soul, for his eternal well-being? As death leaves you—so judgment shall find you! As the judgment finds you—so shall eternity keep you! If death takes you before you expect it, and are prepared for it, it will be the more terrible to you; it will cause your countenance to be changed, your thoughts to be troubled, your loins to be loosed, and your knees to be dashed one against another. [He who prepares for his body and friends—but neglects his soul, is like him who prepares for his slave—but neglects his wife.] Oh the hell of horrors and terrors which attend those souls who have their greatest work to do when they come to die! Therefore, as you love your souls
—and as you would be happy in death—and everlastingly blessed after death—prepare for death! [When I was young, says Seneca the heathen, I then studied the art of living well; when old age came upon me, I then studied the are of dying well.]
See that you build upon nothing below Christ! See that you have a real interest in Christ; see that you die daily to sin, to the world, and to your own righteousness. See that conscience is always waking,