8.10.2005
The Glorious Excellencies Of God Being Our End
To John & Sean (I believe the only eyes who see this common act of randomness)-
Let me ask this question: How do you walk with a Holy God? If He is truly a consuming fire, how do you stay in step with Him, enjoying his company without being consumed by His glory?
As we have jaunted through the powerful and cryptic book of Isaiah I have been waiting with excitement to come across the profoundly prophetic Chapter 53. It is one of the great lynchpins of the Christian faith – A preview of God’s historical work of redemption. As my eyes scroll across this ancient foreshadowing of Christ my mind is gripped with the immense weight of the truth that God was always the end. The purpose of the example of Christ was not to just perform awesome miracles or to reveal sin or to be the salvation of mankind – the purpose in which Christ was satisfied was to be consumed with God being His breath, His movement, His words, His life, His end, His all.
So the question, in view of the example of Christ, is not how do you keep from being consumed by God but rather, how can you be so humble and broken before God that you are consumed? How can Jesus Christ be your first thought in the morning, your greatest joy in life, and your soul consuming passion throughout eternity?
Let’s let someone we can trust give us some advice . . .
"The redeemed have all their objective good in God. God himself is the great good which they are brought to the possession and enjoyment of by redemption. He is the highest good, and the sum of all that good which Christ purchased. God is the inheritance of the saints; he is the portion of their souls. God is their wealth and treasure, their food, their life, their dwelling place, their ornament and diadem, and their everlasting honor and glory. They have none in heaven but God; he is the great good which the redeemed are received to at death, and which they are to rise to at the end of the world. The Lord God, he is the light of the heavenly Jerusalem; and is the ‘river of the water of life’ that runs, and the tree of life that grows, ‘in the midst of the paradise of God’. The glorious excellencies and beauty of God will be what will forever entertain the minds of the saints, and the love of God will be their everlasting feast. The redeemed will indeed enjoy other things; they will enjoy the angels, and will enjoy one another: but that which they shall enjoy in the angels, or each other, or in anything else whatsoever, that will yield then delight and happiness, will be what will be seen of God in them."
(The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999], pp. 74-75)
Let me ask this question: How do you walk with a Holy God? If He is truly a consuming fire, how do you stay in step with Him, enjoying his company without being consumed by His glory?
As we have jaunted through the powerful and cryptic book of Isaiah I have been waiting with excitement to come across the profoundly prophetic Chapter 53. It is one of the great lynchpins of the Christian faith – A preview of God’s historical work of redemption. As my eyes scroll across this ancient foreshadowing of Christ my mind is gripped with the immense weight of the truth that God was always the end. The purpose of the example of Christ was not to just perform awesome miracles or to reveal sin or to be the salvation of mankind – the purpose in which Christ was satisfied was to be consumed with God being His breath, His movement, His words, His life, His end, His all.
So the question, in view of the example of Christ, is not how do you keep from being consumed by God but rather, how can you be so humble and broken before God that you are consumed? How can Jesus Christ be your first thought in the morning, your greatest joy in life, and your soul consuming passion throughout eternity?
Let’s let someone we can trust give us some advice . . .
"The redeemed have all their objective good in God. God himself is the great good which they are brought to the possession and enjoyment of by redemption. He is the highest good, and the sum of all that good which Christ purchased. God is the inheritance of the saints; he is the portion of their souls. God is their wealth and treasure, their food, their life, their dwelling place, their ornament and diadem, and their everlasting honor and glory. They have none in heaven but God; he is the great good which the redeemed are received to at death, and which they are to rise to at the end of the world. The Lord God, he is the light of the heavenly Jerusalem; and is the ‘river of the water of life’ that runs, and the tree of life that grows, ‘in the midst of the paradise of God’. The glorious excellencies and beauty of God will be what will forever entertain the minds of the saints, and the love of God will be their everlasting feast. The redeemed will indeed enjoy other things; they will enjoy the angels, and will enjoy one another: but that which they shall enjoy in the angels, or each other, or in anything else whatsoever, that will yield then delight and happiness, will be what will be seen of God in them."
(The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999], pp. 74-75)
