ONLY A STEP

1 SAMUEL 20:3

A. "AS THE LORD LIVETH THERE IS BUT ONE STEP BETWEEN ME AND DEATH"
  1. Brave men have their moments in life when they feel depressed, and believing men have moments of discouragement:
    1. Job complained in the bitterness of his soul - Job 3:1-6
    2. Elijah begged God to let him die - 1 Ki. 19:4
  2. To be alive is to be in the shadow of death:
    1. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" - Ps. 23:4
    2. "It is hard to feel the hand of death arrest one's steps, throw a chill blight over one's budding hopes, and hurl one's life untimely into the shades."
B. OUR TEXT AND THIS SERVICE BRING TO OUR MINDS THREE GREAT TRUTHS
  1. The uncertainty of life:
    1. The frailty of the body and the enumerable dangers to which our frail lives are exposed constantly give added strength to our text.
    2. What occurs to others so often, so suddenly and so unexpectedly, may occur to us; we have no assurance that it will not.
    3. The Word of God speaks plainly - Eccl. 11:12; Jas. 4:14; Luke 12:20; Prov. 27:1-3
  2. The solemnity of death:
    1. It breaks our earthly connections - Job 7:7, 8; Luke 12:20. We shall never return to the life we are enjoying now.
    2. Death terminates our probationary time - Heb. 9:27, 28; Eccl. 11:3. This fact alone should enable us to use this present life to prepare for the life to come.
  3. The necessity of watchful preparation:
    1. What the Lord told a sick king - Isa. 38:1-3
    2. Be ready always - Luke 2:29, 30; 2 Tim. 4:6
    3. Be diligent and perform your duty faithfully while you have time - Eccl. 9:10
C. WHAT IS HEAVEN'S ANSWER TO OUR SORROWS?
  1. You will miss hearing that familiar voice of your loved one:
  2. But when an earthly voice can no longer comfort us, a voice from heaven will be heard:
    1. That means that so long as death reigns in our mortal bodies, sorrowing ones will need the consolation from heaven.
    2. "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord" - Rev. 14:14, 15. That word "blessed" signifies that the dead in Christ are secure, they have nothing to fear, they will rise again. "Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him" - Isa. 3:10
    3. But not so with the wicked - "Woe unto the wicked! It shall be ill with him" - Isa. 3:11
  3. A change will come: Rev. 21:1-3; Hos. 13:14; Job 14:14


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