Joining Heaven’s Celebration Now

Joining Heaven’s Celebration Now

Excerpted from “God Rejoicing in the New Creation”

Sermon #2211, July 5, 1891

For all eternity we will rejoice in the redemptive work of Christ. But we don’t have to wait until then to start the party. We should get a head start on Heaven by celebrating here and now.

The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. Zephaniah 3:17

Spurgeon • I have often said to you that when the Lord made the material world, there was not much in it to touch his spiritual nature, so he simply spoke and said, in plain prose, “It is good.” That was all: he said it was good. But when the Lord makes the new heavens and a New Earth, when he is finished, when the bride of Christ shall be brought to him, “he will exult over you with loud singing.” Did you ever get into your hearts the idea of the Lord God singing? God singing over his church, over his Jerusalem, over his new creation! God singing!

I can understand the angels singing for joy over God’s work, but here is God singing over his own work. I will tell you something more wonderful than that: it is that you should be a part of that work and that God should sing over you! Is he not the Father, and does not the Father sing over his prodigal son who wandered but came home? Is he not the Savior, and will not the Savior, who bought us with his blood, sing over us who were purchased with his agonizing death? He is the Spirit, and shall not the Spirit, who has striven with us and wrought all our works in us, sing when his work is done and we are sanctified?

Father, when your eternal purposes are all fulfilled, you will rejoice over your people! Son of God, Redeemer, when all your agonies shall have been rewarded in the salvation of your redeemed, you will rejoice over your chosen! Holy Spirit, when all your bending down and indwelling within us shall have accomplished its design, you will rejoice in your people!

Come now, beloved, rejoice in unity with the divine heart! When the father found his son, he made the whole household merry. Shouldn’t we be merry? When the woman found her coin, she called together her friends and neighbors and said, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost” (Luke 15:9). Shall not we rejoice with the Spirit over the lost that has been found? When the shepherd brought home his sheep, he said, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost” (Luke 15:6). Come, then, rejoice with the Father, rejoice with the Son, rejoice with the Spirit.

And if the Lord God, as the Trinity in unity, invites us to be glad and rejoice in that which he creates, let us not hold back! Let us sing of his matchless love and new-creating power and infinite wisdom. I am sure you will sing—you must sing even now—if you know yourselves to be part of this celebration.

Nobody will ever rejoice in this new-creating work of God while he is rejoicing in his own works and trusting in himself and boasting his own merits. It is a sign of grace when a man is sick of self and is in harmony with God. When he ceases to rejoice in what he can do and comes to rejoice in what God has done and is doing, then a change has been made in him.

Some of you are trying to save yourselves and make yourselves right before God. It cannot be done. You must be made new by a power you have not within yourself—by a divine power. You must be born again, and this is the work of God, not your work. We shall know this heavenly work is begun in you when you cease from rejoicing in anything that you are or can be of yourselves and then shall you with us rejoice in that which God creates in you.

Alcorn • Spurgeon sees God’s rejoicing over us, his redeemed people, as a prompting for us to rejoice: “Come now, beloved, rejoice in unity with the divine heart!” Sick as he was throughout his lifetime, Spurgeon emphasized all the more our reason to celebrate. God’s redemptive work is what we will celebrate for eternity, and Spurgeon encourages his church not to delay the celebration, but to commence it here and now.

Always concerned about the souls of those who heard him preach, and even more concerned in light of his failing body and the likelihood that he wouldn’t preach much longer, Spurgeon addresses those who haven’t yet grasped the truth of the gospel: “Some of you are trying to save yourselves and make yourselves right before God. It cannot be done. You must be made new by a power you have not within yourself—a divine power. You must be born again, and this is the work of God, not your work.”

Only God can offer forgiveness. Only God can empower people to receive his offer.

You may think that you don’t deserve forgiveness after all you’ve done. That’s exactly right. No one deserves forgiveness. If we deserved it, we wouldn’t need it. That’s the point of grace. On the cross, Jesus experienced the Hell we deserve so that for eternity we can experience the Heaven we don’t deserve.

Once forgiven, we can look forward to spending eternity in Heaven with Christ and our spiritual family (John 14:1-3; Revelation 20:11–22:6). We need never fear that God will say, “If I’d known you did that, I wouldn’t have let you into Heaven.” Every sin is washed away by the blood of Christ. God has seen us at our worst and still loves us. No sin is bigger than the Savior. If God weren’t willing to forgive sin on the basis of Christ’s sacrifice, Heaven would be empty.

Our intimate link with Christ in his redemptive work makes us inseparable from him, even now. As we walk with him and commune with him in this world, we experience a faint foretaste of Heaven’s delights and wonders.

Though it’s true that Christ is with us and within us while we’re on Earth, it also works in the other direction—we’re so closely united with Christ that we are seated with him in Heaven: “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6, NIV).

Notice that the following description, written to believers alive on Earth, is in the present perfect (not future) tense, so it expresses a completed action: “You have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect” (Hebrews 12:22-23, NIV).

In a metaphysical sense, as God’s children we’ve already entered Heaven’s community. By seeing ourselves as part of the heavenly society, we can learn to rejoice now in what Heaven’s residents rejoice in. They rejoice in God, his glory, his grace, and his beauty. They rejoice in repentant sinners, the faithfulness and Christlikeness of believers, and the beauty of God’s creation. They rejoice in the ultimate triumph of God’s Kingdom and the coming judgment of sin.

Heaven, then, isn’t only our future home. It’s our home already, waiting just over the next hill. If we really grasp this truth, it will have a profound effect on our holiness. People who see themselves seated with Christ in Heaven—in the very presence of a God to whom the angels cry out, “Holy, holy, holy” (Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 4:8)—won’t spend their days viewing Internet pornography or gossiping on the phone or cutting corners on business deals.

No wonder the devil is so intent on keeping us from grasping our standing in Christ!

Have you confessed your sins to the Father? asked Christ to forgive you? responded to the Spirit’s prompting and placed your trust in Christ’s death and resurrection on your behalf? asked Jesus to be your Lord and empower you to follow him? “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near” (Isaiah 55:6).

Wouldn’t it be tragic if you read this book about Heaven but didn’t end up going there?