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
In all the cold expanse of space, the shining stars of a million galaxies, out amongst the swirling gasses of nebula in silent and frigid splendor; in the very depths of unknown veins of gold in Earth’s mountains, the seas teaming with life and color and beauty; out amongst the lofty heights of towering Sequoia trees, in all of known creation near and far; if you owned all that is, the pearl of great price that is Christ is worth yet more. The fullness of all that is cannot compare to the surpassing worth of Jesus Christ.
If Christ could be bought, he is worth all that you have. Can you imagine selling everything you have, and I do mean everything, and buying a field where treasure is buried, or a pearl? If you buy this field you own no equipment to farm it and have no home on it to live in. What can you do with a pearl that you already sold everything to buy? Christ is such a treasure that he is worth all we have.
He is not a business transaction, an investment, or a piece of artwork. He is not a get of hell free card. Jesus is not a sports team you root for or a country club with many locations to relax and be entertained at. He is not a genie who gets you out of tight spots or a great moral teacher who merely informs your decisions. He’s not a third wheel on your life, a wingman, or your co-pilot.
Jesus Christ is creator of all things, the incarnate Son of God, the one who makes atonement for sin.
Application / Further Discussion
Friends, is Christ all to you? We can moralize, and spiritualize, and strategize, and debate a great many things in the Bible. We are excellent at excusing our failings. All that accomplishes is paving the road to hell with the bricks of our sins.
“And the best worldling sells Christ for a very thing of nought, a toy, a pleasure of sin, or a little profit.”
Would you sell the Lord of Glory for a little sin, some cash, fleeting pleasures? Don’t we do this every time we sin?
Jesus Christ is of such surpassing worth and beauty that my language fails to plumb the depths and riches of that fact. When loved ones cling to life in the throes of illness, or sorrow crashes like waves on the beaches of our souls with unceasing violence, when we come to the end of ourselves and stare at the deep chasm and see nothing of value, it is then that we know something of the savor of Christ. In the depths of suffering and pain we begin to know the surpassing worth of our pearl, Christ. Timothy Keller said it well; “You don’t realize Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.”
My fear is the noise of our sheltered and comfortable lives distract us from the only thing of worth in all that is or ever will be. I cannot say strongly enough that all that we have and desire are worthless compared to Christ. Don’t read this and merely agree with it. Explore your life. Take an honest and critical view of your relationship with Christ. Is he the center of your being or merely exists on the end of your tongue, given great lip-service but no heart-felt worship.
Jesus is not your genie, your butler, or your home boy. He is your Lord and your God. Stop treating him like a spare tire. Get down on your knees and renounce all worldly respects in the face of your Creator and Savior. Look to Christ. Behold his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father. Weep in gratitude for his suffering in your place.
“Saved by the Lord, happy art thou! In less temptations as afflictions, or death, that king of terrors, if that should seize on us, consider, What do we lose? Nothing but that which we must one day leave of necessity.”
–
Last week, we read The Church’s Blackness.
Next week, we read The Knot of Prayer Loosed.
One Comment
Comments are closed.