The Royal Family

Many are the weights which drag us toward earth, and the cords which bind us to it.

Among these last our families are not the least.

We need an upward impulse. Oh that we may find it in the text!

There is a blessed connection between saints below and saints above.

Oh to feel that we are one family!

I. LET US UNDERSTAND THE LANGUAGE OF THE TEXT.

1. The keyword is ‘family.”

   • A building sets forth the unity of the builder’s design.
   • A flock, unity of the shepherd’s possession.
   • The title of citizen implies unity of privilege.
   • The idea of an army displays unity of object and pursuit.
   • Here we have something closer and more instructive still: “family.’
   • The same Father, and thus unity of relationship.
   • The same life, and so unity of nature.
   • The same mutual love growing out of nature and relations.
   • The same desires, interests, joys, and cares.
   • The same home for abode, security, and enjoyment.
   • The same inheritance to be soon possessed.

2. The link-word is “whole.” “Whole family in Heaven and earth.”

   • There is but one family, and it is a whole.
   • On earth we find a portion of the family—
   • Sinning and repenting: not yet made perfect.
   • Suffering and despised: strangers and foreigners among men.
   • Dying and groaning, because yet in the body.
   • In Heaven we find another part of the family—
   • Serving and rejoicing. Sinless and free from all infirmity.
   • Honoring God, and honored by him.
   • Free from sighing, and engrossed in singing.
   • The militant and the triumphant are one undivided family.

3. The crowning word is “named.”

   • We are named after the first-born, even Jesus Christ.
   • Thus are we all acknowledged to be as truly sons as the Lord Jesus; for the same name is named on us.
   • Thus is he greatly honored among us. His name is glorified by each one who truly bears it.
   • Thus are we greatly honored in him by bearing so august a name.
   • Thus are we taught whom to imitate. We must justify the name.
   • Thus are we forcibly reminded of his great love to us, his great gift to us, his union with us, and his value of us.

II. LET US CATCH THE SPIRIT OF THE TEXT.

Let us now endeavor to feel and display a family feeling.

1. As members of one family let us enjoy the things we have in common. We all have—

   • The same occupations. It is our meat and drink to serve she Lord, to bless the brotherhood, and win souls.
   • The same delights; communion, assurance, expectation, etc.
   • The same love from the Father.
   • The same justification and acceptance with our God.
   • The same rights to the throne of grace, angelic ministration, divine provision, spiritual illumination, etc.
   • The same anticipations. Growth in grace, perseverance to the end, and glory at the end.

2. As members of one family, let us be familiar with each other.

3. As members of one family, let us practically help each other.

4. As members of one family, let us lay aside all dividing names, aims, feelings, ambitions, and beliefs.

5. As members of one family, let us strive for the honor and kingdom of our Father who is in Heaven.

Let us seek out the lost members of the family.

Let us cherish the forgotten members of the family.

Let us strive for the peace and unity of the family.

Choice Words

The Scripture knows but two places for the receipt of all believers, either Heaven or earth. So when the apostle will tell us where all they were who were gathered under Christ as their Head and Redeemer, he ranges them in these orders, “things in Heaven, and things in earth.” (Ephesians 1:10); the apostle forgot limbo there, and purgatory here. As the Scripture does know but two sorts of saints, so but two places, Heaven for the triumphant, earth for the militant.—Paul Bayne.

“The whole family in Heaven and earth,” not the two families, nor the divided family, but the whole family in Heaven and earth. It appears, at first sight, as if we were very effectually divided by the hand of death. Can it be that we are one family when some of us labor on, and others sleep beneath the greensward? There was a great truth in the sentence which Wordsworth put into the mouth of the little child, when she said, “O master, we are seven.”

“But they are dead: those two are dead’

Their spirits are in Heaven!”

‘Twas throwing words away; for still The little maid would have her will,

And said: “Nay, we are seven.”

Should we not thus speak of the divine family? for death assuredly has no separating power in the household of God.—C. H. S.

“When I was a boy,” says one, “I thought of Heaven as a great shining city, with vast walls and domes and spires, and with nobody in it except white tenuous angels, who were strangers to me. By-and-by my little brother died; and I thought of a great city with walls and domes and spires, and a flock of cold unknown angels, and one little fellow that I was acquainted with, he was the only one I knew in that time. Then another brother died, and there were two that I knew. Then my acquaintances began to die, and the flock continually grew. But it was not until I had sent one of my little children to his Grandparent—God—that I began to think I had got a little in myself. A second went, a third went, a fourth went; and by that time I had so many acquaintances in Heaven that I did not see any more walls and domes and spires. I began to think of the residents of the celestial city. And now there have so many of my acquaintance gone there, that it sometimes seems to me that I know more in Heaven than I do on earth.”—Handbook of Illustration.

Stein, a great German statesman, head of the Prussian government in 1807, wrote in 1812 to Count Münster:—“I am sorry your excellency suspects a Prussian in me, and betrays a Hanoverian in yourself I have but one Fatherland, and that is Germany; and as under the old constitution I belonged to Germany alone, and not to any part of Germany, so to Germany alone, and not to any part of it, I am devoted with my whole heart.”

Thomas Brooks mentions a woman who lived near Lewes, in Sussex, who was ill, and therefore was visited by one of her neighbors, who to cheer her, told her that if she died she would go to Heaven, and be with God, and Jesus Christ, and the saints and angels. To this the sick woman in all simplicity replied, “Ah, mistress, I have no relations there! Nay, not so much as a gossip, or acquaintance; and as I know nobody, I had a great deal sooner stop with you and the other neighbors, than go and live among strangers.” It is to be feared that if a good many were to speak their thoughts they would say much the same.