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
“If the state of God’s people be thus sweet and comfortable, and full of well-grounded hopes, that glory shall go further on to glory, and end in glory, then why should we be afraid of death?”
All of us knows someone who has died. How did it make you feel? Did you get that uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach? It probably took time to nail down until at last you realized death itself brought fear to your heart. You realize, “I will someday die.” This realization gives way to thoughts: “Will it hurt? Will I suffer? What will happen to those I leave behind? What will happen to ME?”
There is no coming back from death this side of the judgment. We know this in our hearts. We know that when we die we will not come back to this life. We will leave behind that we have known in this life, and we will be with Christ, if we believe in him and his resurrection.
Death is final. Death is complete. It is a transition from which there is no return. There are no reliable reports outside the Bible of what awaits. Even the Bible does not speak extensively on it. This naturally leaves many with an uneasy feeling. The fear of the unknown is powerful. We want to know what we will experience in full. Where are the YouTube videos of heaven? I want first person accounts of what it’s like.
“Peter on the mount had but a glimpse of the glory of heaven, and he was spiritually drunk as it were, he knew not what he said, Mark 9:6.”
Application / Further Discussion
Peter, on the mount of transfiguration, was so overcome by the sliver of glory revealed that he wanted to build tents and stay there on the mount. Isaiah, Ezekiel, and the Apostle John strain their language to attempt to describe their visions of Heaven. They fired all their adjective bullets and still come short of hitting the mark.
Paul didn’t even bother trying to describe it. “He heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.” (2 Cor. 12:4) He could not even speak of this “paradise” he saw. Untold glory awaits the believer of a magnitude that a mere glimpse left Peter dumbfounded and content to stay on the mount forever.
Thoughts of death leave us afraid. We’re afraid because it is an act of faith to trust God and his word that Heaven is a place of joy, because it is filled with the glory of God. Death is not the end, but the consummation of our sanctification. Glorification awaits. Then, we will see God face to face, and not so dimly as we do now. Then we will see him!
We will go from “glory to glory.” The grace in this life will give way to the glory of heaven as we go to be with him.
“We are afraid of our glory, and of the perfection of our glory.”
If heaven is so great and wonderful and pure, why are we afraid of this glory to come? We cannot grasp this eternal weight of glory that is to come. (2 Cor. 4:16-18) The sheer magnitude of the grace of God that we already posses, and the life to come, are on a level that our sin-damaged minds cannot grasp.
“What that glory shall be at that day, it is a part of that glory to know; for indeed it is beyond expression, and beyond comprehension of our minds.”
On that day that we die, we Christians may pass from this life in fear, or maybe you will have the grace of comfort, yet when we go to be with him we will be glorified. Sin and its damage will be removed. Even then I don’t think we will comprehend it. How could God ever be fully understand by his finite creation?
I do know this; there will be joy. Joy of a kind that is limitless. Joy that never fails or must bow to sorrow and pain. Joy in a fully restored relationship to God. Joy in seeing Jesus Christ face to face. Joy for eons. Joy.
If you are in Christ, don’t fear. Rejoice! You don’t fully know what’s coming. But what you do know is that God is good and will be glorified in the goodness he has prepared for us. Sorrow may be our constant companion now, but Christ and his joy are there. Breaking through a piece at a time until … “those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.”
I can’t even comprehend the glory to come.
I want you to come to Jesus. I want you there with me. Won’t you come?
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Last week, we read chapters 5 and 6a of Glorious Freedom: The Excellency of the Gospel Above the Law.
Next week, we’ll start The Soul’s Conflict.
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