Welcome to a year of reading Richard Sibbes together! The reading plan for the entire year can be accessed here. I encourage you to stick with us, allow yourself time to read, and soak in the riches of this gifted and prolific Puritan preacher. You will be edified and encouraged.
If you have trouble with how Sibbes used words, check out the Lexicons of Early Modern English for definitions from the period.
Summary/Engagement
Sibbes sermons series on the Glorious Feast of the Gospel is sourced from Isaiah 25:6-9. This passage of scripture details the feast of the righteous, and here Sibbes meditated at length. He took the mountain to be a type that pointed to the antitype that is the Church of Jesus Christ. This feast then is for all that believe in Jesus Christ. It is fulfilled both here, and in the end of time when Christ come to judge the lost and welcome the redeemed.
Sibbes notes that believers must bring their appetites for spiritual things, that Christ will remove the veil from those who believe so that they can behold him and his feast, our enemy death will be fully and finally swallowed up, and our tears that we have so many of now will be wiped away.
Sibbes relates the feast to the ins and outs of the Christian life. We are invited to the feast by God himself, just as he invites us in salvation. Though we are invited to this feast, we must bring something. (458) Yet even what we bring is nothing but an overflow of the grace that he has given us. Anything we know and understand positively of God is granted by his Holy Spirit to us. Without God removing the veil from us, we are darkened and separated from him and cannot understand fully his truth.
“When kings conquer, they bring fundamental laws; and when we are taken from Satan’s kingdom into the kingdom of Christ, the fundamental laws are then altered. Christ by his Spirit sets up a law of believing, and praying, and doing good, and abstaining from evil. The law of the spirit of life frees us from the law of sin and death.” (479)
Application / Further Discussion
Have you been moved from Satan’s kingdom to the kingdom of Christ? Sibbes gloried for page after page in the glorious feast that is to come for those that know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. We who know Christ will delight in his excellencies and beauty and truth for eternity. We will enjoy fellowship with the God who made us. This enjoyment is not of us, no, it is the grace of God. Indeed, as Sibbes notes;
“There is nothing in the heart of man but a contrariety to divine light.” (465)
From birth we are veiled from God because our sin separates us from him. We are walled off from him, yet we know he is there. Our reaching out to him is but grasping in the dark because we don’t know the way.
Christ has made the way.
Jesus Christ, God born in the flesh, lived a perfect and sinless life as God demanded. Yet he was crucified at the hands of sinful men and died on the cross for our sins. God’s wrath was poured out on him for the sins of all who would believe. He was buried. On the third day, he was resurrected, proving his power over sin and death. He now holds out the possibility of salvation to all who would repent, turn from their sins, and believe that he is who the Scriptures say he is.
“Repentance must cost us tears.” (482)
That invitation is available to you. You are invited to repent and believe in Jesus Christ and be forgiven of your sins. You are invited upon believing, to the glorious feast mentioned in Isaiah chapter 25. This life is not all there is. You know that, you feel that deep in your heart. Death and sorrow and loss are not how it was meant to be. And one day, Christ will come again to set all things right. Those who do not confess and believe in him will be judged and sent to hell. Those who believe in him and receive the righteousness of Christ will enter heaven.
Will you be at the table with me? Will you be there on feast day? Will you be there rejoicing, never to cry again? Will you be there to experience life as it was truly meant to be; reconciled to your God?
I hope so.
Trust him. He is faithful to forgive all who call on his name.
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Last week, we covered Sibbes’s sermon, “A Breathing After God.”
Next week, we’ll read “Christ is Best.“
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