The Grave Spoiled I will ransom
them from the power of the grave. I will redeem them from death.
O death, I will be your plagues. O grave, I will be your destruction. Hosea 13 verse 14 Christian, the grave is lit with
Emmanuel's love. The darkest of all clouds, that
which rests over the land of Hades, has the brightest rainbow
in it. These gloomy portals are not
to hold your loved and lost ones for ever. The land of forgetfulness,
where your buried treasures lie, is not a winter of unbroken darkness
and desolation. A glorious springtime of revival
is promised, when the mortal shall put on immortality, and
the corruptible shall be clothed within corruption. The resurrection
of the body, it is the climax of the work of Jesus, its culminating
glory. Paul represents a longing church
as waiting for the adoption, the redemption of the body. It
was the preeminent theme of his preaching. He preached unto them
Jesus and the resurrection. It was the loved article in his
creed which engrossed his holiest aspirations, if by any means
I might attain to the resurrection of the dead. It was the grand
solace he addressed to other mourners. It is not, when speaking
of the immediate bliss of the departed spirit at the hour of
death, but it is when dwelling on the last trump, the dead,
rising incorruptible, and caught up in their resurrection bodies
to meet the Lord, that he says, Therefore, comfort one another
with these words. Blessed Day, the dawn of the
Sabbatic Mourn, the Jubilee of a Triumphant Church, Christian
mourner, go not to the grave to weep there. Every particle
of that mouldering dust is redeemed by the oblation of Calvary, and
the great Abolisher of Death is only awaiting the ingathering
of the elect to give the commission to his archangels, regarding
all his saints, which he gave of old regarding one. Loose him, and let him go. And
who can paint the glory of these resurrection bodies, reunited
to their companion spirits, fashioned like their lords? every sense,
every faculty, purified, sublimated, overflowing with holiness, emulous
with ardor in his service, eager to execute his will, retaining,
it may be, the personal identities of earth, the old features worn
in the nether valley, the Lamb in the midst of the throne, leading
them and feeding them, climbing along with them, steep by steep
in the path of life, and saying at each ascending step in the
endless progression, I will show you greater things than these. Meanwhile he has himself risen
as the pledge of this resurrection of all his people. The great
sheaf has been waved before the throne as the pledge of the mighty
harvest. Christ the first fruits, afterwards
those who are Christ's at his coming. Blessed and holy is he
that has part in the first resurrection.