To Enjoy Heaven Is To Enjoy God

To Enjoy Heaven Is to Enjoy God

Excerpted from “A Heavenly Pattern for Our Earthly Life” Sermon #1778, April 30, 1884

If you’ve ever felt torn between a desire for Heaven and a desire for God, this text will calm your concerns. These yearnings are properly intertwined. The more we love God, the more we will love the place he has prepared for us. And the more we long for that place, the more we will find ourselves longing for him.

While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. Romans 7:5-6

Spurgeon • Heaven is the place of fellowship with God, and this is a blessed feature in its joy. But in this we are now participants for “indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). The fellowship of the Holy Spirit is with us all. It is our joy and our delight.

Having communion with the triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—we are uplifted and sanctified, and it is appropriate that the will of the Lord should be done by us on Earth as it is in Heaven (Matthew 6:10).

“Up there,” says a brother, “they are all accepted, but here we are in a state of probation.” Did you read that in the Bible? For I never did. A believer is in no state of probation. He has passed from death into life and shall never come into condemnation. We are already “accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1:6, KJV), and that acceptance is given in a way that can never be reversed. The Redeemer brought us up out of the horrible pit of depravity, and he has set our feet on the rock of salvation, and there he has established our paths. Therefore should we not, as the accepted of the Lord, do his will on Earth as it is done in Heaven?

“Yes,” says one, “but Heaven is the place of perfect service, for his servants shall serve him.” But is not this the place, in some respects, of a more extensive service still? Are there not many things which perfect saints above and holy angels cannot do? If we had a choice of a sphere in which we could serve God with widest range, we should choose not Heaven but Earth. There are no slums and overcrowded rooms in Heaven to which we can go with help, but there are plenty of them here. There are no jungles where missionaries may prove their unreserved consecration by preaching the gospel at the expense of their lives. In some respects this world has a preference beyond the heavenly state as to the extent of doing the will of God. Oh, that we were better men, and then the saints above might almost envy us! If we did but live as we should live, we might make Gabriel stoop from his throne and cry, “I wish I were a man!”

It is ours to be in the forefront in daily conflict with sin and Satan, and at the same time it is ours to bring up the rear, battling with the pursuing foe. God help us, since we are honored with so rare a sphere, to do his will on Earth as it is done in Heaven.

Then you say, “But Heaven is the place of overflowing joy.” Yes, and have you no joy even now? A saint who lives near to God is so truly blessed that he will not be much astonished when he enters Heaven. He will be surprised to behold its glories more clearly, but he will have the same reason for delight as he possesses today. We live below the same life which we shall live above, for we are made alive by the same Spirit, are looking to the same Lord, and are rejoicing in the same security. Joy! Do you not know it? Your Lord says, “My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). You will be larger vessels in Heaven, but you will not be fuller; you will be brighter, doubtless, but you will not be cleaner than you are when the Lord has washed you and made you white in his own blood.

Do not be impatient to go to Heaven. Hold lightly to the things of Earth, yet count it a great privilege to have a long life in which to serve the Lord on Earth. Mortal life is but a brief interval between the two eternities, and if we judged unselfishly and saw the needs of Earth, we might almost say, “Give us back the old days of human life, that through a thousand years we might serve the Lord in suffering and in reproach, as we cannot do in glory.”

This life is but the entrance to glory. Clothe yourselves in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, for this is the royal robe of Earth and Heaven. Now begin the song which your lips shall sing in Paradise, or else you will never be admitted to the heavenly choirs.

None can unite in the music but those who have rehearsed it here below.

Alcorn • I’m often asked the following question: “Why talk about Heaven when we can just talk about Jesus?”

The answer, as I hope you’re seeing from Spurgeon, is that the two go together. The right kind of longing for Heaven is a longing for God, and longing for God is longing for Heaven. If we understand what Heaven is (God’s dwelling place) and who God is, we will see no conflict between the two. A woman who longs to be reunited with her husband could well say, “I want to go home.” By home, she means the place she shares with her beloved husband. There is no competition between Christ and Heaven. He loves Heaven, and he wants us to love Heaven and to long to be with him there.

Any bride in love with her husband wants to be with him more than anything. But if he goes away to build a beautiful place for her, won’t she get excited about it? Won’t she think and talk about that place? Of course. Moreover, he wants her to! If he tells her, “I’m going to prepare a place for you,” he’s implying, “I want you to look forward to it.” Her love and longing for the place he’s preparing—where she will live with him—is inseparable from her love and longing for her husband. If she says, “I love you but I have no interest in the place you’re lovingly preparing for me,” then in fact she is not loving him.

I’ve heard it said that God, not Heaven, is our inheritance. Well, God is called our inheritance (Psalm 16:5-6). But Heaven is also called our inheritance (1 Peter 1:3-4). Which is it? It’s both. Every thought of Heaven should move our hearts toward God, just as every thought of God will move our hearts toward Heaven. That’s why in Colossians 3:1 (NIV) Paul doesn’t say to “set your hearts on Christ” but to “set your hearts on things above, where Christ is.” To do one is to do the other.

A Christian leader once told me that people shouldn’t look forward to Heaven; rather, they should look forward only to being with God. But Scripture knows nothing of this dichotomy. It says of Abraham that “he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10, NIV). Or what about God’s people, who are said to “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16)? Shouldn’t they have been desiring just God, not Heaven? No! If they were doing something wrong, God wouldn’t commend them for it in Scripture! In desiring Heaven, they were desiring God. In looking forward to Heaven, they were looking forward to seeing God.

Charles Spurgeon spoke a lot about Heaven, and he did so with passion. But isn’t it clear that he was God centered in doing so? All the joys of Heaven are derived from the overflowing goodness of our God—to enjoy him will be to enjoy Heaven. To enjoy all the derivative goodness he shares with us in Heaven will be to enjoy God.

I’ve talked with people who erroneously assume that the wonders, beauties, adventures, and marvelous relationships of Heaven must somehow stand in competition with the One who has created them. But God has no fear that we’ll get too excited about Heaven. After all, the wonders of Heaven aren’t our idea, they’re his. The wonders of the new heavens and New Earth will be a primary means by which God reveals himself and his love to us. When we love God’s person, we will love God’s place.

Picture Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Eve says to Adam, “Isn’t this place magnificent? The sun feels wonderful on my face. The blue sky’s gorgeous. These animals are a delight. Try the mango—it’s delicious!”

Can you imagine Adam responding, “Your focus is all wrong, Eve. You shouldn’t think about beauty, refreshment, and mouthwatering fruit. All you should think about is God.”

Adam would never have said that, because in thinking about these things, Eve would be thinking about God. Likewise, our enjoyment of what God has provided us should be inseparable from worshiping, glorifying, and appreciating him. God is honored by our thankfulness for his gifts and pleased by our anticipation of Heaven, that magnificent place the God-man is building with his own hands—the place for which he purchased our admission with his own blood.