"And the books were opened, and another book was opened which is the book of life. And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books." Two sets of books are here spoken of: first, two books, and then another book. Other passages in God's Word also speak of books in connection with the Judgment. What the character of these books spoken of is we are not at a loss to determine; the one is the book of God's remembrance, and the other is the book of God's Word. Not as if God in reality employs books to make His entries; the all-knowing King needs no such helps to remind Him of men's actions. His all-capacious mind knows all things and forgets nothing. The idea is: Just as men, in their manifold dealings, do not trust to their memories, but use memoranda and records in order to be able to refer to them as occasion requires, just so, in condescension to our way of thinking, figuratively speaking, God represents Himself as keeping a book in which He has an exact record of what has been done by any creature, past, present, and future. And an exact record it will be, accurate in the minutest detail. Not only man's general character, the sum total of his life, whether (taken altogether) he was, on the whole, a worldly or a pious man, or the like, will be taken into account, but every trifling act, good or bad, of which his entire life was composed. The word is: "God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." Everything. Nothing shall be kept back, nothing will be overlooked. That thought that passed so rapidly through your mind as hardly to be noticed, that word that so hastily escaped your lips, all the deliberate and determined actions which have left their stain upon your life, all these, down to the secret sin that you have been so successful in hiding from the sight of man, all, whether done in childhood, youth, manhood, or old age, all that has been committed or omitted, will be opened out to public view by the all-seeing, all-remembering Judge. This is the first book, the Book of Remembrance.
And the divine Arbiter opens another book. We have no difficulty in recognizing it at once. It is to us a familiar volume,—"The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge you in the last day," is the language of the Judge Himself. That book, we contend, is the guide and rule of our faith and actions in this life; it is also the statute-book of heaven, the touchstone by which our hearts and lives are to be tried in the life hereafter. Plain enough are the directions that book tells you. "Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself." Plainly does it speak to you and to all of heaven, of judgment, of eternity, of faith, of holiness, and of the new birth and conversion; plainly does it inform you of Him who redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us, that he that believeth in the Son hath eternal life, and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. In brief, according to that opened Bible man shall be justified or condemned. Here is the standard, the rule.
How important, my beloved, that we should see on what terms we stand with our Bibles now—whether they justify us, or whether they condemn us. Oh, for that oft-neglected divine Book!
But there is a third book to be opened. That is the book of life, and "whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." It was a custom generally observed at the courts of princes to keep a list of the persons employed in their service, of the officers of their armies, and sometimes even the names of the soldiers; and when it is said in the Bible that a person's name is written in the book of life, it means that he particularly belongs to God, is enrolled among His friends and followers. It is also probable that the early Christian churches, like our churches now, kept lists of their members, and that this term "book of life" was derived from such a custom, it being regarded that any one on the list was also an assured member of heaven. And how may I know whether my name is inscribed in this book of life? "He that believeth in the Son hath eternal life," and "he that believeth not in the Son, shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." What determines our eternal destiny, our acceptance or rejection by the Judge, is our personal belief and faith in Jesus Christ; on that depends our salvation, our being enrolled or canceled from the book of life. "Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness, my jewels are, my glorious dress; in these before my God I'll stand when summoned to His own right hand." Nothing else will avail but faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Redeemer. That places our name in the book of life; with that men will stand or fall. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned."
But does not the Record here, verse 12, and the Bible elsewhere, emphasize that we will be judged according to our works, according to what we have done? Indeed, but this does not contradict salvation by faith in Christ Jesus; our faith, to prove itself genuine, must work and does work. If there are no works, we may rest assured there is no faith. At the last day our works will be inquired into to ascertain the nature of our faith. If there is no love toward the brethren of Jesus, no manifestation of Christ's Spirit toward Christ's suffering members, we may take it for granted that faith is dead. Our works come into account as fruits of our faith; but faith in Christ Jesus is the principle on which all stand or fall, for—what will the outcome of that final judgment be? "And they shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." The Bible everywhere speaks, in connection with the Day of Judgment, of mankind being separated into two distinct portions. Now the wheat and tares grow together. There is a difference between them, even at the present, which the skilled eye in many instances can detect, but, as yet, they run together, and there is no severance of them into separate fields or pastures. It will not always be so. Infidels and Christians will one day cease to live under the same roof, or believers and unbelievers to be unequally yoked together, or the children of the devil and the children of God to be intermingled in the same families, firms, and societies. When men come to appear before their Judge, the record is: "He shall separate them one from another, and shall set the good as sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left." In ancient times the left and right hand of a judge meant much. To be placed on the right hand signified acceptance, acquittal; on the left hand, condemnation, rejection. And He shall say to them on His right hand: "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." And, addressing Himself to the other, there break from the lips of the Judge the dark, desolating words: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." One shudders to speak them, but here are the words from the lips of the almighty Judge Himself. Who can alter them? On the one side is an inheritance, a realm of divine blessedness, a kingdom which knows no evil, a life which knows no death. On the other side gapes a lake of unquenchable fire, never, indeed, meant or made for men. Punishments are there, and tears that ever fall, and flames that ever burn, and miseries that never exhaust. Exactly what it is I cannot tell, and wish that none may ascertain. I can only rehearse the expressions of God's Word upon the subject,—"blackness of darkness, worm that dieth not, weeping and gnashing of teeth"; and no representation is more awful than the one employed in the text, "a lake of fire," seething, sweltering, weltering fire, that shall never be quenched, everlasting burning.
And why, brethren, bring before you these solemn truths? Is it to torment you before the time? No, indeed, but as He Himself in to-day's Gospel declares, "that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man," that you be sincere believers and worshipers here on earth, diligent in good works, and on that day be rated among those who shall inherit their Father's kingdom, and to that end:
King of Majesty, tremendous,
Who dost free salvation send us,
Fount of pity, then befriend us,
With the favored sheep, O place us!
Nor amid the goats abase us,
To Thine own right hand upraise us!
Amen.