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November 14 Daily Devotional

Morning and Evening

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him” (1 Thessalonians 4:14).

Bible Reading

1 Thessalonians 4:13–18

Devotional

Let us not imagine that the soul sleeps in unconsciousness. “Today you will be with me in paradise” is the whisper of Christ to every dying saint. They sleep in Jesus, but their souls are before the throne of God, praising him day and night in his temple, singing hallelujahs to him who washed them from their sins in his blood. The body sleeps in its lonely bed of earth, beneath the coverlet of grass.

But what is this sleep? The idea connected with sleep is “rest,” and that is the thought which the Spirit of God would convey to us. Sleep makes each night a sabbath for the day. Sleep shuts fast the door of the soul, and bids all intruders wait for a while, that the life within may enter its summer garden of ease. The toil-worn believer quietly sleeps, as does the weary child when it slumbers on its mother’s breast.

Oh! blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; they rest from their labours, and their deeds follow them. Their quiet repose shall never be broken until God shall rouse them to give them their full reward. Guarded by angel watchers, curtained by eternal mysteries, they sleep on, the inheritors of glory, till the fullness of time shall bring the fullness of redemption.

What an awaking shall be theirs! They were laid in their last resting place, weary and worn, but such they shall not rise. They went to their rest with furrowed brow and wasted features, but they wake up in beauty and glory. The shrivelled seed, so destitute of form and beauty, rises from the dust a glorious flower. The winter of the grave gives way to the spring of redemption and the summer of glory. Blessed is the death of the saved, since it, through the divine power, disrobes us of this work-day garment, to clothe us with the wedding garment of incorruption. Blessed are those who have “fallen asleep in Jesus.”

[June 29]

Extracted from C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening (public domain), language modernized by Larry E. Wilson.

 

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