AT A BURIAL (i)
VICTORY
G.W.Brown
1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18; 2 Timothy 2: 3; 4: 7
How often we need, beloved brethren, to encourage one another with these words Paul gives us, and again today. They refer to the victory day. Our brother prayed that we might have a sense of victory. This is the victory day supremely we have before us even today in the presence of death and in the miss that we all have of our beloved brother. It is not the only victory day, of course. What a victory day was the resurrection day! What is here today could not be but for the victory over death. What a contemplation that is! - the victories of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is no Victor like Him; He, the Victor, comes into an occasion like this and lifts our hearts above the sorrow. How should we be but for Him? How should they be that mourn, particularly in the family, but for the service of the great Victor? So again today we encourage one another in the light of the victory day, the great victory of the Lord Jesus. What joy He will have in it, to descend to meet His saints in the air! - those who have fallen asleep, including our brother, those who are living at the time, and it may be some of us. We are encouraging one another in the light of that day which we feel is near more and more we are feeling how near it is. What a joy it gives, even in the presence of death! It brings desolation to nature, yet what hope, what joy, the prospect soon coming, the great victory!
Our brother answered, I think, to that which Paul enjoins on Timothy; he was one who took his share in suffering as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. We recall that he was a soldier of the king and, in addition to the suffering that the populace generally endured in those war days, our brother suffered as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, he suffered the reproach of taking up non-combatant service and he went through. Our beloved brother was not an aggressive soldier, as we know well; a meek and lowly man, but a good soldier of Jesus Christ who took his share in suffering and has been an example to many in that respect. But now the time has come when, having combated the good combat, he has finished the race, he has kept the faith. We thank God for our brother, we can thank God for the grace that has kept him to the end of his life and which formed him so as to be serviceable in his own sphere and a comfort to God's people and an example to us all.
We think of our beloved sister and the family with affection; the Lord thinks of them more than we do and He is more able than we are to sustain and sol ace them at this time. May the example of their beloved one now with Christ stimulate them all and ourselves that there may be that character of testimony with us while we wait for the Lord.