Isaiah 63:15-16 Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of your holiness and of your glory: where is your zeal and your strength… (with Isaiah 6:3, "The whole earth is full of His glory"): — What was the new scene into which our Lord was introduced? He went up into heaven. 1. What is heaven? The place where Almighty God is specially present (John 14:2; John 16:28). But is not the Father present everywhere? (Psalm 139:7-12). What means the being "specially present? Has it any meaning? In the case of men they are present to us, or absent from us; but there is no medium between the two. Presence does not seem to admit of more or less. Either we are here or elsewhere. There are many doctrines of religion, and this is one of them, that can only be apprehended by analogy, or, as the apostle says, "in a glass darkly." The union of body and soul furnishes in this case a very just analogy. There is no part of the human body in which the soul is not present. I mean by the soul simply the animating principle and the principle of sensation. Every member of the living body is endowed with feeling, or sensibility to pain. But that this sensibility resides not in the mass of matter, but in the soul or life, is, of course, clear from the fact that when death separates body and soul, the body has no longer any feeling. Yet, although the soul pervades the whole body, and resides even in its remotest extremities, it has a special connection with what are called the vital parts. A man may pluck out his right eye, and cut off his right hand, or his right foot, without ceasing to live. Assault the heart, and you assault the seat of life. Surely, then, there can be no objection to affirming as, on the one hand, a general residence of the soul in every member of the body, so, on the other, a special residence of the soul in the heart. There is the figure of the truth of which we are in search. Now, let us elicit the truth from it. No district of this fair, broad universe is without the presence of Almighty God. In that Presence stands the being of everything that is. Yet, although the presence of God in and under all things as their support is unquestionable, arc we, for this reason, to deny His special connection with a certain part of the universe above others? No? The earth is but the remote extremity of creation — the universe has a heart, the special seat, the royal residence of that God who quickens with His presence the entire framework of the world. This place, wherever it is locally situated, is the source of all movement in the world, just as the heart is the source of all movement in the natural body. Heaven! The region in which the hand of God immediately operates without any intervention of secondary causes, the region in which His fiat is issued to the firmament, and the firmament pours forth its rain upon the earth, and the earth yields her fruit to the inhabitants, and the heart of those inhabitants is filled with food and gladness; the region is called heaven. This is the region to which our blessed Lord's body was carried up on the day of His ascension; and into which, without seeing death, the patriarch Enoch and the Prophet Elijah were translated. 2. In what sense Christ's people are now with Him in heaven. The apostle intimates that Christians themselves, in their present state of existence, have undergone a similar translation. "God," says he, "who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace we are saved), and hath raised us up together (mark, hath raised us up together), and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." How can language so strong be substantiated? Just consider prayer — prayer offered in the faith of Christ. It penetrates to these regions of which we have been speaking, and has its effect and operation there. A sublime thought indeed, and one of which we may make good use in stirring up ourselves to prayer I Prayer penetrates to a region beyond the stars, and, in the holy audacity of its enterprise, lays hold of that primary will of God from which proceed, through a long series of intermediate causes, all the movements of the universe. And prayer, if genuine, is the voice of the Christian's affections, the outpouring of his heart. Hence, because his thoughts are in heaven, his hope in heaven, his affections in heaven; the Saviour, around whom gather all his thoughts, and hopes, and affections, in heaven; because his prayers move in that sphere and touch the spring of God's will, he himself, according to the spiritual element of his nature, is said to "sit together in heavenly places in Christ." 3. Consider, that this region is "the habitation of God's holiness and of His glory." And here remark a striking and most instructive contrast between the two passages of which my text consists. It is said in the latter of them that "the whole earth is full of God's glory." The seraphim say nothing about holiness as witnessed upon the earth. Alas! what could they say? There is no spot upon the earth where an intelligent and devout eye may not see and adore the glory of the Divine Being. But when upon the stage of this earth we look "for judgement, behold oppression; for righteousness, behold a cry." Holiness, like Noah's dove upon the water, can find no resting-place for the sole of her foot upon this earth. But heaven is the habitation of God's holiness, no less than of His glory. Every heart admitted within its precincts is a mirror which gives back the holiness of the Most High, His hatred of sin, His stern and uncompromising righteousness, His exact justice, His fervent and all-embracing love. There shall in no wise enter into the heavenly, "anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie, but they which are written in the Lamb's Book of Life." 4. Heaven cannot possibly be accessible to any man without a congeniality of mind to its pursuits and employments. A tropical plant cannot possibly thrive in the bleak and raw atmosphere of the North; vegetation generally is blighted and killed by an atmosphere uncongenial to it. And he who loves not praise and thanksgiving, who turns away from the thought of God's presence as an intrusion on his peace, who regards sin with levity rather than with fear, and freely cherishes any animosity, or worldly or carnal lusts — that man's sentiments and character, quite irrespective of any Divine decree, must exclude him from the habitation of holiness to which he hath no affinity. 5. Our blessed Lord's presence in heaven is that which lends to it its great attraction in the eyes of the true Christian. (Dean Goulburn.) Parallel Verses KJV: Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory: where is thy zeal and thy strength, the sounding of thy bowels and of thy mercies toward me? are they restrained? |
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