Ezekiel 36:28

Ye shall dwell in the land. .. and ye shall be My people.

The blessedness of the saints

I. The abundance of the blessings of grace. A newborn infant is the most helpless of all creatures. In its nakedness, weakness, dumbness, how dependent on a mother’s love; yet not more so than God’s people are on His care and kindness. Theirs are therefore circumstances in which His promises are exceedingly precious. The condition of believers closely resembles that of a man of boundless affluence, whose wealth lies, not so much in money, as in money’s worth; in bills and bonds, all to be duly honoured, so soon as they become due. With these promises the poorest Christian is really a richer man than other men, with all their possessions; nor would he part with one of them for the world’s wealth. Are you cast down because, while others have shallows, you have depths, dark depths of sorrow and suffering to pass through? Be it so: it is as easy for God to march “the host” through the wide, deep sea, as across the bed of Jordan. Are your corruptions strong? Be it so: Samson found it as easy to snap a new spun cable as withes fresh gathered on the river’s bank; and believe me it is as easy for God to break thy tyrant’s strongest as his lightest chain. A chain of iron and a thread of flax are all one to God. The blood of thy Saviour cleanseth from every sin; and nothing being impossible, nay, not even difficult to Omnipotence, be assured that in your battle, and watch, and toil, you shall find this promise true, My grace is sufficient for thee.

II. The happiness which God’s people enter on at death. God’s people are like His ancient Israel. They have enemies who will harass them in life, and follow on their track to the very shores of time; but whoever or whatever these may be--sin, sorrow, poverty, temptations, trials, fears, doubts, Satan himself--oh! a death bed shall be the death of them all. This is what the redeemed escape from, but what they escape to, oh, the joys they enter on when they are with Christ, who can tell? We know that to die is--not shall be at a future time, and after some intermediate state--but to die is gain, gain immediate. One step, and what a step! the soul is in glory. And what and where is heaven? I cannot tell. It looks to the eye of faith, much like a star to the eye of flesh. A shining object, we see it gleaming in the dusky fields of space, but see nothing more, even when our eyes are assisted by the most powerful telescope. By what beings it is inhabited; what forms they have; what tongue they speak; what the character of the landscape in these upper worlds, we do not know, and perhaps never shall, till we have cast loose a body which, like an anchor, moors us to this earth, and with a soul unchained, free perhaps as thought, we are left to roam the universe, and pass, as on the rapid wings of a wish, from world to world of our Father’s kingdom. Never, till then, shall we know either where or what heaven is. The best description of it is to say that it is indescribable.

III. The complete blessedness of the saints at the resurrection in the restoration of all that sin forfeited. There were periods in creation; progressive stages. Step by step the work advanced to its consummation. Like creation, the Gospel has had its periods of progress. It gradually advanced in its development from the date of the first promise given by God; when He, the Judge, and the culprits, man and the devil, stood face to face upon the ruins of Eden. There yet remains an aspect of redemption in which it is not complete. All that death and Satan hold they must relinquish; all that Christ has purchased He shall possess. The soul wants her partner; and although the exile may return no more, nor see his native land, the redeemed shall come back to claim their bodies from the earth; aye, and claim the very earth they lie in. The saints shall inherit the earth. Under laws accommodated to a new economy, this wide world shall become one smiling Eden, where, exempt from physical as from moral evils, none shall shiver amid arctic frosts, nor wither under tropic heat; and these fields of snow and arid sands shall be all flowered with roses. From the convulsions of expiring, or rather the birth-pangs of parturient nature, a newborn world shall come; a home worthy of immortals; a palace befitting its King. The blood that, falling on Calvary, dyed earth’s soil shall bless it; and this ancient theatre of Satan’s triumph shall be the seat of Emmanuel’s kingdom, and the witness of His glory. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)