The Saint’s Happiness (YWS week 30)

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

It’s good to be back in the heavenly Doctor’s wheelhouse; sermons that exhort and encourage us to pursue Jesus Christ. The Saint’s Happiness took the straightforward task of explaining that the Christian’s happiness is tied to their communion with God. Seems pretty simple, right? Yet we so often forget, neglect, or ignore this simple truth in our quest for experiencing God. I say experiencing because so many have the knowledge of God, but desire transformation or deeper communion with him.

We all hear or have thought something like, “I just wish I’d hear directly from God!” What it tells me is we have a misunderstanding of God and his word. He preserved and delivered inspired, infallible, and inerrant Scripture. The word of God is on the book shelves of most American homes. If we want to hear from him, read what he said! But is that all we need to experience deeper communion with him? It’s certainly not less.

“For It is the happiness of the creature to be near the creator; it is beneficial and helpful.”

Application / Further Discussion

Going back to what I said above, many desire a deeper experience of God. There are also many who do not. This differentiation of affections helps determine where the heart is set. Are your affections on Christ? Is your nature bent toward pleasing him? Obeying him? Worshipping him?

“A wicked man may be convinced that heaven and grace are good things; but his corrupted affections persuade him it is better to live in pleasure and lust … But a good man preferreth drawing near to God above all, and therefore we should labour for this conviction of our spirits.”

It is not enough just to know that God and grace are good. Anyone can know that. The test is in whether our hearts desire God and his grace for ourselves. “Nothing can make us happy but drawing near to God. If there were nothing in the world better than man, then man would be content with himself.” So simply true. Even in those of us who have repented and believed, who have a new nature to love and serve God, we desire him yet more and more. And this is natural! Our nature has been changed and desires Him above all things. “Man’s happiness is in communion with God.” That communion comes through the apprehension of truth (knowledge about God and his Grace) and the action of spiritual disciplines. (Things we can do to care and feed that relationship and burn the flame of faith brightly.)

Practically then, what do we do to draw near to God? Sibbes lays it out beautifully.

1. His first application is wonderful and worth reading again and again for so many who struggle with God’s grace and love.
   “Now, for use of this, it should teach us how to think on God, not as all justice and power, hating sin and sinners, but as a Father, now laying aside terrible things that may scare us from drawing night to him, and as a God, stooping down to our human nature, to take both it and our miserable condition upon himself, and see our nature not only suffering with Christ, but rising, nay, now in heaven united to God; and this will feed the soul with inestimable comfort.” Yes. Yes!
2. “Labor to be more near to him,by the more full participation of his Spirit.”
   Here the Christian is exhorted to be spiritual. How so? Hear the word of God preached. Receive the Lord’s Supper. Converse with other Christians in fellowship. Be much in prayer. If you believe that God exists, talk to him! Observe the first motions of sin in our hearts, in order to repent speedily.
3. “Labour to maintain humility.”
   This is crucial. We cannot draw near to God and his righteousness when we are so near to ourselves and our own righteousness. He says it brilliantly here, “He that lifteth himself up, maketh himself a god; and God will endure no co-rivals.”
4. “Labour for sincerity in all our actions.”
   “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Cor. 10:31) Do his will, not yours.

We will finish with one of the most important actions we can take to draw near to God. Repentance. Martin Luther said, “All of life is repentance.” All of life is turning from sin, a daily taking up of the cross, and a daily renewing our fellowship with God. We do not earn salvation daily by keeping up with such things, for salvation is called “eternal” not “temporal.” Like all relationships that can ebb and flow, repentance is the desire to remain close to Him.

“Repentance must be every day’s work, renewing our covenant, especially every morning and evening; repair breaches by confession; and considering the crossness of our hearts, commit them to God by prayer.”

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Last week, we finished looking at Sibbes’ treatment of the Song of Solomon, and our overview of hermeneutics.

Next week, we read The Church’s Blackness. Here is an audio recording of Mark Dever reading it in its entirety.