ISRAEL'S HOPE ENCOURAGED; OR, WHAT HOPE IS, AND HOW DISTINGUISHED FROM FAITH: WITH ENCOURAGEMENTS FOR A HOPING PEOPLE.
The Psalmist therefore, by exhorting us unto this duty, doth put us in mind of four things. I. The best things are yet behind and in reversion for the saints. II. Those who have believed will yet meet with difficulties before they come at them. III. The grace of hope, when well exercised, is the only way to overcome these difficulties. IV. Therefore, they who have hope and exercise it as they should shall assuredly at last enjoy that hope laid up for them in heaven.
For the first of these, the best things are yet behind and in reversion for believers; this is manifest by the natural exercise of this grace. For 'hope that is seen, is not hope; for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it (Rom 8:24,25). Hope lives not by sight, as faith doth; but hope trusteth faith, as faith trusts the Word and bears up the soul in a patient expectation, at last, to enjoy what God has promised. But the very natural work of this grace proves that the believer's best things are behind in reversion.
You may ask me, what those things are? and I may tell you, first, in general, they are heavenly things, they are eternal things, they are the things that are where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God (John 3:12; 2 Cor 4:18; Col 3:1). Do you know them now? They are things that 'eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor that have entered into the heart of man to conceive of' (Isa 64:4; 1 Cor 2:9). Do you know them now? They are things that are referred to the next world, for the saints when they come into the next world; talked of they may be now, the actual being of them may be believed now, and by hope we may, and it will be our wisdom to wait for them now. Still, to know what they are like them, or in the enjoyment of them, otherwise than by faith, he is deceived that saith it. They are things too big as yet to enter into our hearts and things too big if they were there to come out or to be expressed by our mouths.
There is the imperial heaven itself; does anybody know what that is? There is the mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, and the innumerable company of angels; does anybody know what all they are? There is immortality and eternal life, and who knows what they are? There are rewards for services and labor of love shown to God's name here; and who knows what they will be? There are mansion-houses, beds of glory, and places to walk in among the angels, and who knows what they are? There will be badges of honor, harps to make merry with, and heavenly songs of triumph; doth any here know what they are? There will be a knowing, an enjoying, and a solacing of ourselves with prophets, apostles, martyrs, and all saints, but in what glorious manner we all are ignorant of. There we shall see and know, and be with forever, all our relations, as wife, husband, child, father, mother, brother, or sister that have died in the faith; but how gloriously they will look when we shall see them, and how gloriously we shall love when we are with them, it is not for us in this world to know (1 Thess 4:16,17). There are thoughts, words, and ways for us that we never dreamed of in this world. The law was but the shadow, the gospel the image; but what will be the substance that comes to us next, or that instead we shall go unto, who can understand? (Heb 10:1). If we never saw God nor Christ as glorified, nor the Spirit of the Lord, nor the bottom of the Bible, nor yet so much as one of the days of eternity,, and yet all these things we shall see and have them, how can it be that the things laid up for us, that should be the object of our hope, should by us be understood in this world? Yet there are intimations given to us of their goodness and greatness.
1. Of their goodness, and that, (1.) In that, the Holy Ghost scorns that things here should once be compared with them; hence, all things here are called vanities, nothings, less than nothing (Isa 40:15-17). Now, if the things, all the things that are here, are so contemptuously considered, when compared with the things that are to be hereafter, and yet these things so great in the carnal man's esteem, as that he is willing to venture life and soul, and all to have them, what are the things that God has prepared for them that wait, that is, that hope for him? (2.) Their goodness also appears in this, that whoever has had that understanding of them, as is revealed in the Word, whether king or beggar, wise mean or fool, he has willingly cast this world behind him in contempt and scorn, for the hope of that (Psa 73:25; Heb 11:24-26, 37-40). (3.) Their goodness even has testimony in their very consciences that hate them. Take the vilest man in the country, the man who is so wedded to his lusts that he will instead run the hazard of a thousand hells than leave them, and ask this man his judgment of the things of the next world, and he will shake his head, and say, They are good, they are best of all. (4.) But the saints have the best apprehension of their goodness, for the Lord doth sometimes drop some of their juice out of the Word, into their hungry souls.
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