SEPTEMBER 3, 2024
“They shall not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun smite them: for he that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs of water shall he guide them.” (Isaiah 49:10)
It is most striking how the Apostle John, in the seventh chapter of the Revelation, as he is describing the heavenly scene and the blissful state of the glorified saints, borrows language from Isaiah, who is describing the high and holy privileges enjoyed by the Lord’s sheep here on earth, who come from the North and from the South at the call of the great Shepherd. In fact, John’s words are almost identical to the words of our text.(See Rev. 7:16, 17) The difference is that while Isaiah is speaking to the saints here on earth, John is seeing the saints in glory.
Jordan is a very narrow stream. It made a short boundary for Canaan, but it hardly sufficed to divide it from the rest of the world, since a part of the possessions of Israel was on the eastern side of it. Those who saw the Red Sea divide and all Israel marching through its depths, must have thought the dividing of Jordan (even in flood stage) allowing the people to pass through it into Canaan as a much smaller thing. The greatest barrier between believers and heaven has been safely passed. In the day when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, was passed through our Red Sea, and the Egyptian of our old sins were drowned. Great was the marvel of mercy! To enter fully into our eternal inheritance, we have only to cross the narrow stream of death; and scarcely that, for the Kingdom of Heaven lies on this side of the river as well as on the other.
We need to remind ourselves of this truth, lest we imagine that we are separated by a great gulf, and we must endure a life of separation until we, at last, break loose of this mortal coil and enter heaven. But it should not be so with us. “Our conversation is in heaven” now. (Phil. 3:20) Some versions have it“citizenship,” but the word means much more. We might say that our citizenship and everything we are about is in heaven. We no longer feel at home here. Heaven must be in us before we can be in heaven; and while we are yet in the wilderness, we may spy out the land, and eat of the clusters of Eschol. There would be much less of a distance between earth and heaven if we did not live so far below our privileges. We live on the ground while we might rise as on wings of eagles. We are all too conscious of the body. How wonderful it would be if our experience were such that we could say with Paul, though we are not caught up into Paradise, “Whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell!”
Let this be the aspiration for every child of God. This is the high privilege of every believer. To unbelievers, none of this can apply. They have no knowledge of such things; neither do they desire them; nor do they believe them. But to you who are “begotten again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” this is for you. Remember what you are by grace and know that what you will be in glory is already outlined and foreshadowed in your life in Christ. Being born from above, we are the same persons that we will be in heaven. We have in us even now the Divine life – the same life that will enjoy eternal immortality. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.” The life which shall last on forever has begun.
At this moment we as believers are already, in many respects, the same as we ever will be. We are already in possession by earnest of the very delights that will make heaven, heaven. The inheritance that will be ours tomorrow is in very truth ours today; for in Christ, we have received the inheritance, and have the earnest of it in the present possession of the Holy Spirit, Who dwells in us. It has been well said that “all of the streets of the New Jerusalem begin here.”
“God grant that we, your children, be brought consciously nearer to the state of glory by more complete enjoyment of the privileges that our state of grace affords us. May we every day enjoy rich foretastes ofheaven on earth.”
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