2. The more heavenly you are in your lives, your right is the more evident, and you are more ready for possession. You are in the next meetness : Col. i. 12, ' Who hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.' A man reconciled to God and sanctified is in a remote meetness; but the heavenly-minded, the heavenly walkers, are in the next preparation. The first meetness gives us a right, the next meetness a ripeness, like a shock of corn that comes in in its season.
3. This heavenly conversation doth more honour God in the world ; when we carry ourselves as men of another world, we do the better con- vince them of the reality of our profession and hopes. By your serious diligence you condemn the world : Heb. xi. 7, ' Noah condemned the world.' Make the world wonder : 1 Peter iv. 4, ' They think it strange you run not with them into the same excess of riot.' Awaken the world to think of God : 2 Thes. i. 11, 12, ' Wherefore we pray always for you, that God would count you worthy of his calling, and fulfil all
VER. 20.] SERMONS UPON PHILIPPIANS III. 157
the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power : that the name of the Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you.' Christ is glorified and you rewarded.
But what is this heavenly conversation ? When we so believe as to prize it, so prize it as to seek after it in the first place.
[1.] Do we believe it ? Surely they that are drowned in the cares of the world and voluptuous living have no sense of the world to come. That is known by mortification rather than confident presumption : 1 John v. 4, 5, ' And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God ? '
[2.] Do we prize and esteem it ? for nothing is sought and laboured for but what is prized. Do we prize it, not with a speculative, but practical esteem ? Rom. ii. 18, 'Thou approvest the things that are excellent.' The practical esteem is that which draweth our hearts. Is it our treasure ? Mat. vi. 19, ' Lay up treasure in heaven.' Do you esteem it comparatively above all other things ? Mat. xiii. 45, 46, ' Sell all to buy the pearl of great price.' All is nothing in comparison of this blessed estate. Do you esteem it copulatively, cross and crown, means and end ? Ps. cvi. 24, ' They despised the pleasant land, and believed not his word ; ' Phil. iii. 11, ' If by any means I may attain unto the resurrection of the dead.'
[3.] Do you seek it ? What do you do for it ? Our great business in this life is seeking after heaven. Many would be glad their souls might be saved at last, but we cannot believe they are in earnest. Where is that seeking, watching, striving, working, that serious diligence, those lively endeavours, that conscionable care for obtaining so great a benefit ? What ! seek it, and have no heart to pray for it, hear and meditate of it ? Alas ! for seeking, watching, working, striving, men are as far from these as they are like to be from heaven itself.
[4.] Do you seek it in the first place, so that all other works and labours are but by the by and subordinate to this ? Alas ! how can you say so, when religion is looked upon by the by, and you are out of your element when you are employed in the duties of it ? You cannot endure to be long held to prayer, or hearing the word ; your hearts are not suited to these things.
SEPvMON XVI.
From wlience also rue look for our Saviour and Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ — Phil. iii. 20.
Here is the reason and encouragement of the heavenly conversation. Why do believers behave themselves as belonging to that city? Because from thence we look for a Saviour.
Doct. That the earnest expectation of Christ's second coming doth both bind and encourage the saints to have their conversations in heaven.
158 SERMONS UPON PHILIPPIANS III. [SeR. X"VX
I shall handle the point in this method —
1. Touch upon the truths contained in the words of the text
2. How all these do draw up the thoughts and affections of believers to God and heavenly things.
I. The truths contained and implied in the text are these — First point. That Christ is corporeally and locally in heaven, and not upon earth. Here is his spiritual presence: Mat. xxviii. 20, ' And lo, I am with you to the end of the world ; ' but there is his bodily presence : Acts iii. 21, ' Whom the heavens must receive until the restitution of all things.' He is there, because he hath business to do there — (1.) To intercede with God ; (2.) Powerfully to administer the mediatorial kingdom for the comfort of the elect, and destruction of his adversaries.
1. To intercede with God : Heb. ix. 24, ' He is gone into the holy place not made with hands, there to appear before God for us ; ' that is, before the throne of the supreme judge, that, by representing his blood shed, he may procure remission of sins for penitent believers. As the high priest under the law, when the sacrifice of atonement for the whole congregation was slain and burnt without the camp ; the high priest was to present himself before the mercy-seat with blood and a sweet perfume ; so the Lord Jesus having offered up himself a sacrifice of atonement, is gone into the holy place : ' Not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption for us,' Heb. ix. 12. There is some little difference among interpreters about the time of his entrance, whether at his solemn ascension, forty days after his resurrection, when he was taken up into heaven, or else immediately upon his death, when he had given up the ghost, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst from the top to the bottom, and his soul, separated from the body, and commended into his Father's hands, entered into paradise ; then it seemeth our great high priest did enter into heaven, for it may more properly be said that he entered into heaven with his blood, when his soul was separated, than when his body was risen and made immortal, and both body and soul jointly ascended. The sacrifice of atonement was not complete till the blood was presented before the throne of God in the inner sacrary ; so then Christ did present himself as slain in heaven before the supreme judge, as having suffered death, and satisfied justice for the sin of man. Now whether the first or second way of entrance, certain it is he is now in heaven interceding for us.