I just want to read one verse
to you, Psalms 116 and verse 15. I intend to continue what I've
started to practice a couple of weeks ago to go 20 minutes
or so, so that's what we'll try to do tonight, OK? Psalms 116
and one verse, verse 15. In the sight of the Lord is the
death of His saints." Now, that's worth repeating, isn't it? Precious. In the sight of the Lord is the
death of His saints. I don't know of a subject that
I could talk about or we could talk about in private with one
another that would cause us most of the time to recoil. as we
think about it, is this subject of death and dying. There is
no doubt in our minds that it will be well with a saint when
he comes down to die. In that hour, the Lord will give
him dying grace. Some will need more and some
will need less. But it will be well with the
righteous at his death. We know that. Death may be somewhat
Difficult to face for some saints, and it has been, but it will
be well with a saint at his death. There's aspects of dying and
death that causes us to recoil, and let me give you just about
four things right quickly. First of all, death is unnatural. Death is very unnatural. Somewhere
at conception, somewhere in our mother's womb, You and I were
joined together, body and spirit. We come into this world that
way and we live that way, body and spirit, body and soul. Death
separates those two. And you and I know nothing apart
from that. And to be laying on a bed or
in a car somewhere when the body leaves the soul, that's one of
the most unnatural things that you and I can began to think
about. A separation of the body and
the soul. Isn't that drastic? That makes
us recall death. What will that be? Secondly,
we recall death because it can be attended with great physical
pain. Man, how many people have we
seen in the hospital? How many loved ones have you
and I watched die? and they almost become repulsive
in their own eyes and in the eyes of those who take care of
them. You've seen it and I've seen it. Utter dependence upon
someone else in every aspect of their life to do for them
now what just a short time earlier they would have been humiliated
to think that you would do for them. We recall it that, don't
we? Death and dying, what will happen
to us? What will happen to our flesh
and our being as we die? Death will sever every earthly
union and bid farewell to the most beloved relationships that
we have. We have wives. We have husbands. Death will sever that. We have
families, we have children, we have dads and moms. Death will
sever that. All the associations that we
have in this lifetime are temporal. When we go out through the door
of death, all of those relationships will cease. And fourthly, we think of this. Death is the door by which we
enter eternity. Boy, that's sobering, isn't it?
All we know here is temporal. Everything is fading. Even the
joys of this earth is fading. Everything we see, everything
we handle is passing away. We're entering a lifetime that
we know nothing hardly about except what little we find from
the Word of God. But it's in an eternal home. The door of death will usher
us out into eternity. We read a little bit about it
in the Word of God. We seem to feel something about
the powers of the world to come, the sweetness of it in our soul,
but we know so little about it. And we just know enough sometimes
that we recoil. Yet beyond these four things,
there is another side of death. that our text tells us about
here that you and I must consider, we desire to consider. Our text
said precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His
saints. If death causes you to recall,
then it is totally opposite in the eyes of our Lord. There is
nothing in the death of the saint that causes our Lord any concern. or any anxiety or any disappointment,
but contrary wise, precious in the sight of the Lord is the
death of his saints. And the word there means highly
valuable. It means of great worth, esteem,
weighty, dear. We find this word used several
places in the Scripture. Let me give you just three where
this word precious is used. It's used in Psalm 49, verse
8, and it says the redemption of the soul is precious. The redemption of the soul is
precious. It ceases forever. The soul itself
that's redeemed is a precious soul, isn't it? The Lord Jesus
taught us how to value the soul. How much value did He put upon
the soul? He said if a man should gain
the whole world and lose his soul, if there's some way that
you could gain all of the world and all the possession of this
world and lose your soul, then you've lost everything. If a
man loses his soul, he's lost everything, hasn't he? He's lost
himself. The soul is the most valuable
thing between the eternities in this earth. The soul is valuable. The redemption of that soul,
therefore, must be valuable. What is it that redeems the soul? Well, listen to this. You weren't
redeemed with corruptible things of silver and gold, but with
the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. How precious is
the redemption of the soul? It's His blood. How precious
is His blood? Secondly, the scriptures not
only tell us that the redemption, the price of the soul's redemption
is precious, but the scripture tells us that Christ himself
is precious. He's disallowed indeed of men,
but he's chosen of God and he's precious. He's God's dear son. In God's eyes, he's precious.
Isn't it strange that what God counts most precious, the world
despises? The world disallows him and God
looks upon him and says, this is my beloved son. He's precious
to me. And I'll tell you something else,
he's precious to you if you believe on him. To you which believe
on him, he's precious. If he's redeemed you, he's precious
to you. And then we have those precious
promises. Peter said, the Lord has given
to us exceeding great and precious Promises. Precious promises. Great promises that only God
can give. God's a great promiser, isn't
He? And the reason He makes us great promises is because only
He can fulfill the promises that He makes. Listen to this. I will
go with you always, even to the end of the world. How much does
that mean? That means something, doesn't it? I go to prepare a
place for you. That's my promise. And if I go
to prepare a place for you, I'll come again and receive you unto
myself. What a precious promise that
is. If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive
us our sins. How important is that promise?
How often have you taken that precious promise to Him and said,
Lord, You promised. You promised. He loves it when
we bring, Spurgeon said, when we bring a check down and let
him write it out to him. He said, write out the biggest
check you have, because he can cash it. Precious promise. Precious in the sight of the
Lord is the death of His saints. In our own eyes, we may recall
that death. And we may be saddened when a
dear brother or sister in Christ dies. But listen to this. It's
not so in His eyes. In His eyes, the death of the
saint is precious. How precious? Precious as His
blood. Precious as Christ Himself. Precious
as the promises that He gives. Precious in the eyes of the Lord
is the death of His saints. Whose death is precious in the
Lord's eyes? Not everybody. Not everybody. He'll take no pleasure in the
death of the wicked, will He? No. The saint. Not only the saint, but look
here how personal He makes it. Precious in the sight of the
Lord are the death of His saints. His saints. They are His special
people. They're the ones that He's called
out. They're the ones that He suffered great pain just to redeem
them and to cleanse them. His saints, His friends, His
sons and His daughters. My soul, He wrote their names
down in the Lamb Book of Life, didn't He? They're His. They're
His. They're His by virtue of a great
price that only He can afford. There's nothing about them in
their own selves. That's theirs. You're not your
own. Nothing you have is yours. Nothing
that you possess, your time, your thoughts. Whatever you have,
dear child of God, you've been purchased, lot, stock and barrel. You're His. You're not your own. You're bought with a price. Oh,
the death of the saints, therefore. are precious in His sight, because
they're His. They're His. Somebody may give
you something to watch over and keep for them, and you won't
keep much of an eye on it. But I'm telling you, you let
you have something, that it's yours, and that you've got it
at great cost and labor to yourself. It'll mean something then, won't
it? These are His saints. They're His. And think of this. The death
of His saints takes place in the very sight of their Lord. Precious is the death of the
saints in His sight. He's watching. He's looking on.
We don't keep an eye on something that's trappling to us, do we?
You can turn your eyes away from something that you're not interested
in, but let there be an object that you love, that is precious
in your heart. What do you do? You keep an eye
on it, don't you? How many times have we heard
someone famous, they've died? And for us to know how precious
they were and esteemed they were to the family, the article goes
on to say that they died with her family looking on. That means
something, doesn't it? What does it mean then, brothers
and sisters, for a person to die with heaven looking on? The eyes of the Lord looking
on. How much is the death of the
saint esteemed in the eyes of heaven? Heaven's Lord. He's looking on. He's looking
on. If you had a dear child dying,
would you sit while your child was dying? Where would you be
if your precious child was dying? You'd be standing over them,
wouldn't you? Your eyes would be fixed on that precious child.
That's what this prophet is saying. That's how precious the death
of the saint is in the eyes of the Lord. Do you and I think
the Lord Jesus standing at the death of Stephen was the exception?
I bet it is the rule. I bet it is the rule. I bet you
every saint that dies, Jesus Christ the Lord is standing watching
the death of that saint. And think of this, the death
of the saint is precious in his eyes. Because it is after their
death and in their death, while they are dying, that the Lord
will become more indispensable than ever to His saint. When will He be glorified in
them more than anywhere else as far as them honoring Him? in their dying hour. It's there
that they will trust Him. It's there that they will feel
in their souls that He is absolutely more indispensable than He's
been anywhere else in their lifetime. Now we mistrust our place. Don't
we? We mistrust. We mistrust. We put our trust in some flesh. We misplace our trust. Don't
we do that sometimes? Don't we trust to the arm of
flesh sometimes? You know something, brothers
and sisters, death will strip us of all of that. When our father and our mother
and our friends stand back and they can't help us at all, and
we don't have anybody to trust but our God, and we cast our
soul upon Him, And then and there is where he
will be more glorified. That's why his eyes are upon
his saints. That's why he says it's precious,
because he looked and said, look how they trusted me now. Look
how they feel about me now. I'm indispensable now. One man said, perfect dependence,
simple and absolute trust upon him that is able to keep that
which we have committed to Him against that day. Precious in
the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints in His sight. And lastly, think of this. The
death of the saint is precious in His sight for this reason.
There are precious things that Christ cannot show His people
except after death. So many, many things that He
cannot show us here until we go through that door and enter
eternity. He was writing to the Ephesian
church and He said, Be thou faithful unto death. And what then? I will give thee a crown of life. A crown of life is not for this
life, is it? A crown indicates reign. When
you crown somebody, they reign, don't they? The Scriptures indicate
that when the saint dies, they will reign. What do we reign
over here, brothers and sisters? Nothing, do we? Do we reign over
anything? Absolutely. What reigns over
us here? Just about everything, doesn't
it? Our infirmities reign over us. They bring us down. We have to submit to them. We
go to the doctor to get help. We take medicine. Sin, in so
many senses, reigns over us here. Can you get rid of it? Can you
do anything without it? Sometimes guilt brings us low. Our circumstances reign over
us. What will reign over the saints younger? Nothing. There
they will be crowned. What will it be to lead this
life with all the infirmities that we've known, submitting
ourselves to everything around us, under bondage to almost everything,
and as soon as we take our last breath, the Lord Jesus says,
here's a crown. Reign with me. What will that
mean? Can you imagine it? I can't even
begin to imagine. Perfect holiness without any
shadow of sin. Can you imagine that? No sin to molest the thoughts. Can you imagine that? The rain
of joy. A reign of joy without any mixture
of sadness. At Thy right hand, there's pleasures
forevermore. In His presence is fullness of
joy. That we can't experience here,
can we? But yonder will reign in joy. I wonder what that passage in Romans
chapter 5 and verse 17 means. I've often thought of it. when
the Lord says, I will give you a crown of life? They shall reign
in life? They shall reign in life? That will take place yonder.
Now death reigns over us. It's nipping at our heels. But
yonder they shall reign in life." What does that mean? It surely
has something to do with sin and death that came to us through
Adam. It will be eternally annihilated. There will be life without a
shadow of death. And those things that come to
us through Adam's sin, things like sorrow, and tears and pain
and dying. Be thou faithful unto death,
and I will give thee a crown of life. If we suffer with Him, we shall
also reign with Him. Don't just have a tendency to
take the bitterness away from it. The way you look at death,
dear child of God, for yourself. But you have to consider it in
this light. How your death will appear in
the eyes of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has redeemed you. These things
aren't for this side of death, but they're for the other side.
Therefore, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His
saints, for they're and they're only. And they will experience
those things that He's got laid out for them. They're in heaven. Salvation's a marvelous thing.
Right now and right here, it's a marvelous thing. Because what
it does, it takes us from the sorrows of pain and death and
hell and immediately loosens us and gives us a good hope in
our death. Oh, salvation's a wonderful thing.
Look what He said here This chapter that I read to you, Psalms 116,
the writer here was feeling it. In verse 3, the sorrows of death
come past me. Oh, he's feeling it in his conscience,
maybe in his body. The pains of hell got hold upon
me. I found trouble. I found sorrow. Then called I upon the Lord,
O Lord, I beseech Thee, deliver my soul. And he said, Gracious
is the Lord and righteous, yea, He is merciful. And then he goes
all the way over to verse 16 and he says, With great confidence,
O Lord, truly, I am Your servant. I am Your servant and the son
of Your handmaid. Thou hast loosed my bonds. What does Christ the Savior do
for us? He looses these bonds, doesn't He? The bonds of sin
and guilt and the curse of God's law and the fear of death. He looses us. And then we cry
out, Oh, I'm Yours. I'm Yours. Poor soul, if you are here tonight
and the Lord is calling you, then call upon Him. Look to Jesus
and live. Look and live, never to die again. Look to Him and live. Bring your
weary soul to Him and lay it down upon Him and His accomplished
redemption. Come and lay yourself down and
rest upon the Lord Jesus Christ. Then and only then will the pains
of death and hell be loosed from your poor conscience. Unto Him
shall the Gentiles seek. And his rest shall be glorious. Lord bless his message. Let's
pray.