Part 2 The Glorious Prospects of the Believer
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Saints of God! what a sweet encouraging truth is this as you tread the vale of tears towards the mount of God! The world knows us not; the saints but imperfectly understand us. Tender and sympathizing as some are, how often are we compelled to say to them- "There are depths of sorrow in my soul, there are secret recesses in my heart, which you cannot reach. No one can touch those springs but Jesus. None can enter into and illumine the orbit but the Sun of Righteousness." Turning from the ignorance of the world, from the false judgment, the wrong interpretation, the misplaced confidence, the unkind rebukes of the saints, what a reviving cordial and what a soothing balm to the faint and wounded spirit is this truth- "the things which God has prepared for those who love him;" even the "sure mercies of ]David!"
But especially in the Lord Jesus, the Mediator of the covenant, are all great and glorious blessings prepared and treasured up. No conception can fully grasp the greatness of that declaration, "It pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell." Fulness of justification, so that the most guilty may be accepted. Fulness of pardon, so that the vilest may be forgiven. Fulness of grace, so that the most unholy may be sanctified. Fulness of strength, and consolation, and sympathy, so that the most feeble, afflicted, and tried, may be sustained, succored, and comforted. O how imperfectly are we acquainted with the things which God has prepared in Jesus for those who love Him! He would seem to have laid all His treasures at our feet. We go to Pharaoh, and he sends us toJoseph. We travel to the Father and sweet it is to go to Him!- but we forget that having made Christ the, "Head over all things to the Church." He sends us to Jesus. "Go unto Joseph." Precious words! Every need has the voice of the Father in it, saying, "Go to Jesus." Every perplexity is the Father's voice- "Go to Jesus." Every trial is the Father's voice- "Go to Jesus." If it pleased the Father to prepare in Christ all these spiritual things for those who love Him, surely it must be equally pleasing to Him that I, a poor, needy, ignorant, guilty creature, should draw from this supply to the utmost extent of my need. I will, then, arise with my burden, with my sorrow, with my need, and go to Christ, and prove if His infinite willingness to give, is not equal to His infinite ability to provide for me all that I need.
But let us turn to the contemplation of the FUTURE PROSPECTS of believers- of all contemplations perhaps the most sanctifying that can interest the feelings or engage the soul of man. In this sense of the passage it may in truth be said, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for those who love him." We at present dwell but in the suburban parts of heaven. We tread here below its lower streets- the mere outskirts of glory. Now and then we catch a view of what is passing within the celestial city. We gaze for a moment upon its glittering spires, its star-paved streets, its walls of jasper, and its dome of light. An occasional strain of its music floating upon fragrant breezes, falls upon our ear, soothing the spirit and awakening desires to be there. But the glorious vision is not of long continuance. Pisgah's summit is again capped with clouds, and we descend to the valley beneath, to battle once more with sin and sorrow, and learn that heaven, though it soon will be, is not yet come.
I have remarked, that the contemplation of the coming glory is, of all meditative themes, the most deeply sanctifying. Heaven is revealed, and not as a state merely, but as a place, "I go," says Jesus, "to prepare a place for you." And upon the ear of the expiring malefactor He poured these enchanting words, "This day shall you be with me in Paradise." We have sufficient data given to us upon which to found some correct idea of what awaits us in the upper world. We glean from the sacred Scriptures enough knowledge of its nature and society, of its employments and blessedness, to awaken the most intense desire for its fitness and its enjoyment. It thus becomes the focal point upon which the believer's eye loves to fix its longing gaze.
In the race, he views it as his goal; in the warfare, he anticipates it as his prize; in the pilgrimage, he looks forward to it as his rest; and amid the toil of the pilgrimage and the battle of life he is often heard to betray the inward longings of his soul, "O that I had wings like a dove! then would I fly away and be at rest."
How blessed the prospect of attaining in heaven to a state of perfect holiness! This is its most glorious beatitude. Think of possessing a nature as pure and holy as the nature of God. Think of the soul being as a mirror concentrating upon its unsullied bosom all the moral perfections of Jehovah, nothing intercepting or dimming their rays, and returning the image of the Divine and glorious Object it reflects- each sparkling beam presenting a perfect resemblance of God. This is heaven. It is no picture of the fancy, it is no ideal conception of the imagination, but a real, and tangible, and scriptural delineation of the holy state awaiting every believer. "Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we shall be changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."
In heaven we shall be freed from the indwelling of evil, and be delivered from the tyranny of corruption. Sin, now our thrall, our torment, and our burden, will then enslave, and distress, and oppress us no more. The chain which now binds us to the dead, loathsome body of our humiliation will be broken, and we shall be forever free! To you who cry, "O wretched man that I am," who know the inward plague, and feel that there is not one moment of the day in which you do not come short of the Divine glory, whose heaviest burden, whose bitterest sorrow, whose deepest humiliation springs from the consciousness of sin- what a glorious prospect is this! "It does not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see him as he is."
The absence of all evil, and the presence of all good, constitute elements of the heavenly state, which place its blessedness beyond the conception of the human mind. Assure me that in glory all the effects and consequences of the curse are done away- that the heart bleeds no more, that the eye weeps no more, that the spirit grieves no more, that temptation assails no more, that sickness, and bereavement, and separation, and disappointment are forms of suffering forever unknown, and let the Spirit bear his witness with my spirit- that I am a child of God, and a door is open to me in heaven, through which a tide of, "joy unspeakable and full of glory," rushes in upon my soul. And this is heaven. "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."
But heaven is not a place of negative blessedness merely. There is the positive presence of all good. "In your presence is fulness of joy, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore." The soul is with Christ, in the presence of God, and in the complete enjoyment of all that He has from eternity prepared for those who love Him. All soul, all intellect, all purity, all love- 'Eye has not seen, nor ear heard' the inconceivable blessedness in the full ocean of which it now bathes. Its society is genial, its employments are delightful, its joys are ever new. How deeply does it now drink of God's everlasting love, with what wondering delight it now surveys the glory of Immanuel, how clearly it reads the mysterious volume of all the Divine conduct below, and how loud its deep songs of praise, as each new page unfolds the 'height, and depth, and length, and breadth of the love of Christ,' which even then 'passes knowledge!' Truly we may call upon the "saints to be joyful in glory." Sing aloud, for you are now with Christ, you see God, and are beyond the region of sin, of pain, of tears, of death- "forever with the Lord!"
But we cannot conceive, still less describe, the glorious prospects of believers, for, "eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for those who love him." We shall soon go 'home', and experience it all. Then the eye will have seen, and the ear will have heard, and the heart will have realized the things which from eternity God has laid up in Jesus, and prepared in the everlasting covenant for the poorest, lowest, feeblest child, whose heart faintly, yet sincerely, thrilled in a response of holy love to His.
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