Part Two, 'Setting our Sights on Heaven', Conclusion

How to wrap-up this book club series? I’ve decided to conclude by citing three quotes, one from Wolfe, one from Baxter and one from the writer of Hebrews.

Chapter 11, ‘If It’s Sunday, It Must Be Heaven’

This chapter was a complement to the sermon series on Ephesians we have just finished at church. Probably the quote that most reverberated with me was the challenge which Wolfe gave at the end of the chapter,

Remember, the church’s worship on earth is a foretaste, not the full taste. Do not harbour unfair and unrealistic expectations. Heaven is there. You just have to learn to see it and make the most of it. So will you open your eyes and learn to see it? Anyone can see the dross. That takes no spiritual acumen. That serves as no sign of Christian maturity. Blessed is the man who has learned to see the gold. Blessed is the man whose eyes behold heaven. Christian, you have come to the assembly. Do you behold it? May it be so. (p. 164)

Anyone can see the dross.

The following chapter looks at how we stop looking to heaven because we don’t want to think about hell. Needless to say this chapter covers the ground that we went through with Laura in our April book club.

Chapter 13, ‘Wayfaring Strangers’

In the last chapter of the book Wolfe goes back to the key verses he examined in Part One, drawing together the various threads of the book he then draws the reader to Hebrews 11,

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. (verses 13-16)

After having gone for a walk through the Botanical Gardens and sitting by the harbour at lunchtime on Friday with clichéd blue skies above and dark blue water below overlooking the Opera House, I marvelled with my companion at the privilege of living in Sydney.

Sydney is not the city that the people of faith in Hebrews 11 long for.

Because beneath the blue skies of Sydney lies sickness, suffering, sin and death. The nip of cold wind that blows over the water reminds me of this.

In his conclusion Wolfe quotes Baxter from The Saints’ Everlasting Rest (so I will too!),

And when thou hast, in obedience to God, tried this work, got acquainted with it, and kept a guard on thy thoughts till they are accustomed to obey, thou wilt then find thyself in the suburbs of heaven, and that there is, indeed, a sweetness in the work and way of God, and that the life of Christianity is a life of joy. (p. 194)

It is a powerful reminder that we look towards the city of God (Revelation 21), and we long for it, and while it seems so very far away we are not so very separate from it. As Christians we are in its very suburbs if indeed, we set our minds on things above (Colossians 3:2).

In reflecting on this book it may not have deepened my insights about the last days and heaven, but it has challenged me pastorally to consider why I don’t focus on heaven and, more importantly, helped me to do so. In meditating more on heaven I can already see the way it is shaping me, in living my life now, in light of what is to come.

Part Two, 'Setting our Sights on Heaven', Day 4

Day 4, Chapter 10,'Love Your Loved Ones'

Thomas Hardy wrote a beautiful poem on the sudden death of his wife, Emma. 'The Going' is a poem of great beauty, but it is centred around despair. Its pathos, for me, lies ultimately in the fact that Hardy cannot grieve with hope. To him, death is the end, he will never see his wife again.

Why did you give no hint that night

That quickly after the morrow's dawn,

And calmly, as if indifferent quite,

You would close your term here, up and be gone

     Where I could not follow

     With wing of swallow

To gain one glimpse of you ever anon! (excerpt from Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Going’)

In this chapter Wolfe writes urging us to prepare our loved ones for our 'going'. It is fitting after a chapter on wisdom living that part of that would be adequately preparing ourselves and our loved ones for our death. Wolfe advocates both practical measures of preparation (ensuring that people we are responsible for are provided for, as well as making sure our general affairs are in order so that we don't cause any problems or squabbles) and spiritual measures to prepare our loved ones for our death.

This is perhaps the shortest chapter in the book, but was the one that I found the most confronting when I first read it. Actually talking about death and heaven with my husband and children, with my siblings, parents and friends? Well, that would make my death real.

In my subsequent read through of the book for this blog this chapter is still confronting, but I’m feeling much more ready to prepare others for my inevitable death. Having set my mind on heaven, it makes sense, it seems like a perfectly obvious thing to do, to talk to others about it.

I want those I love to know I am confident of where I am going because my confidence is in the One who has gone before. Death is not the end for those in Christ. We can say with confidence, ‘I will see you ever anon.’

Part Two, 'Setting our Sights on Heaven', Day 3

Day 3, Chapter 9, ‘Get Wisdom’

In this chapter Wolfe looks at how we don’t set our minds on heaven because of confusion about God’s will. He contrasts a ‘Circumstance’ view of God’s will with a ‘Wisdom’ view. He uses a long (and necessary) build-up to his argument outlining what the circumstance view is (in a nutshell: thinking that you need to uncover God’s specific plan for your circumstances) and the failure of this view to understand the biblical difference between God’s will of precept (commandments, how we should live) and God’s will of decree (what God has said will come to pass, how God orders the world). This is compared to the wisdom view of God’s will.

Wolfe draws these ideas on God’s will to his overall thesis on why we don’t focus on heaven,

…the Circumstance view of the Christian life diminishes the Christian’s sense of the nearness of heaven, because it fosters the suspicion- if not the outright conviction- that death will certainly not come until the Christian reaches the circumstances that God has in mind for him and then lives in those circumstances for some significant period of time. (p. 135)

And following, this particular view of God’s will assumes that God’s will is thwarted if those circumstances remain unfulfilled, thereby “pushing…heaven out of the picture” (p. 135).

Do you do this, perhaps ever so subtly? I know I do.

I think of the plans I have for myself and for my family. Good plans, but plans that fail to take into account that I may not be here to see them realised. The mortal hubris of humanity.

Isn’t it odd that as Christians the one future we are assured of is possibly the one we think about the least? I don’t know if I will finish my Masters. I don’t know if my husband and I will retire in the city or the country, to the bush or the beach. It puts a lump in my throat but I don’t know if I will see my children grow up and set the course for their lives.

I do know that in Jesus I am assured a future with God in heaven.

This is wisdom.

In living wisely we are to remember that our plans are but plans, it is God alone who knows the full scope of our life, “all my days were written in Your book and planned
before a single one of them began.” (Psalm 139:16)

This chapter slots in between two chapters that look clearly and earnestly at the very real presence of our own death. In particular, this chapter follows on a chapter looking at the relative brevity of our life now. Wolfe is encouraging us to remember heaven because that is where God has decreed the Christian will go. And soon (relatively speaking).

Part Two, 'Setting our Sights on Heaven', Day 2

Day 2, Chapter 7, ‘Harps and Clouds’

In this chapter Wolfe looks at how cultural misconceptions about heaven can hinder positive conceptions of it. The chapter made me reflect on experiences in evangelism, particularly with people who live comfortably now, who cannot conceive that heaven would be particularly interesting or exciting for them. This life is the good life and, in fact, it is the only life.

The main problem, as Wolfe admits, is that we have limited biblical knowledge of what heaven is like (heaven both now and the new creation) that we cannot easily answer questions raised about what it will be like.

Wolfe, though, suggests that it is beneficial for us to speculate, to use our imagination, always looking to the Bible as the starting point for this. He cites the Old Testament prophets as examples of this, Isaiah’s picture of the new creation in Isaiah 65, as utilising Isaiah’s life and world to give a glimpse as to what heaven may be like.

He also ties this idea to his overall thesis: that heavenly-mindedness means we have a better focus in living now,

Think of it: if eternal life will fully engage us, mind and body, as we live on glorified solid ground, then meditating upon the glories of that world will give us a renewed- not diminished- appreciation for mind-and-body, solid-ground life in the present. Such meditations, instead of distracting us from earthly concerns, serve to remind us of the goodness of creation as the home of humankind and of the responsibility we bear to make the most if it accordingly. (p. 113)

This is certainly something that C.S. Lewis indulged in in The Last Battle in the ‘Narnia’ series of books. I remember the picture of heaven in that book as quickening my spiritual desire for God and for living for Him and looking forward to heaven when I was younger.

It is something that I need to be reminded of and engage with as an adult.

What spiritual poverty do I allow myself to live in when I am so downcast by the brokenness of this world and forget that Christ will come again to redeem all of creation? What little comfort do I allow myself when I ‘miss out’ on experiences, forgetting that they are but a poor shadow of what is to come? What a fool I have become to believe that the experiences, the enjoyments of this world are all there is, are as good as it gets!

Part Two, 'Setting our Sights on Heaven', Day 1

The second part of Wolfe’s Setting our Sights on Heaven looks at the reasons why Christians find it hard to remain focussed on their future with God. Over nine chapters Wolfe examines why we struggle: from doubts to cultural constructs of heaven, from wisdom on living in this life to the shortness of it. All the way through shepherding the reader lovingly, pointing us forward, moving our eyes upward. There was so much in these final chapters that I really didn’t know what to cover in the final couple of blog posts, so I thought that for a bit of a change I would re-read a section each night and blog on that.

Here is my first for the week.

Chapter 6, ‘Face Forward’

In this chapter Wolfe looks at our ‘orientation’, “…your fundamental orientation can either be looking backward or forward. It cannot be both.” (p. 94) He states that we all have pasts (whether good or bad),

 

We all carry with us memories like these, whether bitter or sweet, but some people, unfortunately, are obsessed with them. The past dominates their thinking. It consumes their energies. It determines their mood. It defines who they are. They are stuck trying to recreate the past, or to erase it, or to avenge it, or to deaden their hearts so that they no longer feel anything about it. They may even find themselves torn, feeling drawn to the past one day and then haunted by it the next. (p. 94)

His pastoral concern comes to the forefront in this chapter. He treads delicately, he is sympathetic, but he will not give any ground away. Wolfe uses the apostle Paul as our example in this. Wolfe unpacks what Paul means by “forgetting what lies behind” in Philippians 3; that it is not a failure to recall (because Paul has just described those very things and recalls his and other Christian’s sins throughout his writings in the New Testament), but it is that his orientation in life is not going backwards, but “straining forward”, pressing on “toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:13-14).

Our future orientation firmly rests on Christ’s death and resurrection in the past, we do not forget them! We have been forgiven, completely, just as Paul was. Wolfe makes this clear. It is in our knowledge of our forgiven state that we can look forward with confidence and hope.

We need to remember. Pain and sorrow, as horrible as they are, point us forward to a time when there will be no more sin and no more death.

(As a side note, my one difficulty with this chapter was the exclusive use of the Westminster Confession for one whole point on God allowing Christian’s to remain in sin for a season (pp.102-3). I certainly would have appreciated some biblical input here!)

The work of the living

In Sydney, last week, not only did we experience the rare event of the transit of Venus, but there was also a partial eclipse of the moon. These events caused me to reflect on the significance of what Wolfe is encouraging us to do in thinking about Heaven.

We cannot see the earth in its fullness ourselves (unless we are one of the lucky few who have travelled into space), or its interaction with the universe, but we know that we are part of it – the sun, moon and stars all tell me that. However, until the middle of the last century we didn’t even have photographs of the earth as seen from space. Watching the partial eclipse last Monday night, watching the shadow of the earth pass across the moon gave a glimpse into the size and scope of our planet, its substance experienced in its shadow.

The third and fourth chapters of Setting our Sights on Heaven draw to a close the biblical teaching on heaven contained in part one. Wolfe focuses here on the apostolic message that calls Christians to “set their minds” on heaven, looking closely at three key passages to do this: 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, Colossians 3:1-4 and 1 Peter 1:13.

Wolfe concludes from these (and “other Scripture texts”) that heavenly-mindedness consists of: meditation, orientation and anticipation, bearing the fruits of consecration and supplication (p. 48).

Given that meditation is a bit of a lost art (and Wolfe means turning one’s mind to a subject and deliberately thinking about it, as opposed to emptying one’s mind altogether) and as previously mentioned I have been leafing through Baxter’s The Saints’ Everlasting Rest and he focuses deliberately on this, I thought it would be useful to look closely at this idea of meditation.

One of the key things that we need to do is to have some substance to meditate on. Meditation is not just reading the Bible. Baxter and Wolfe make this clear. But we need to have something to turn our minds to. Wolfe does this in a practical way in the fourth chapter giving a heavenly-mindedness to topics of marriage (and parenting), money and possessions, mistreatments and misery. Here he is looking not only on our contemplation, but also on how our meditation impacts our behaviour.

Wolfe uses the Bible to inform his meditation on these topics. We are to be like the righteous man who delights in meditating on God’s word day and night (Psalm 1:2). According to Baxter, “meditation turns the truths received and remembered into warm affection, firm resolution, and holy conversation.” (Ch. XII Section 3). How often do we sit and reflect on God’s word when it is not physically in front of our eyes?

Baxter devotes whole chapters to outlining this process and its importance for the Christian. He outlines the use of our memory, judgement and our faith in our meditation. We are to be grounded in the Bible, and Baxter epitomises this as he encourages his readers’ meditations. He encourages us to approach our meditations properly, preparing ourselves in a manner worthy of what we are about to contemplate. Furthermore, he encourages comparison with the world around us, with intellectual pursuits, with our senses, with the “glorious works of creation”, with what God has already given to the Christian, with the Church as it is now, all compared to heaven.

When I look and see the shadow of the earth pass over the moon in a lunar eclipse, I am reminded of the shadow that is our current existence and the life that is to come. The shadow indicates substance; it does not replace it. The world I live in, the things I enjoy can all be in service of my constant delighting in God’s word and setting my sights on heaven: what is there and what is to come.

Having set thy heart in tune, we now come to the music itself. Having got an appetite, now approach to the feast, and delight thy soul as with marrow and fatness. Come, for all things are now ready. Heaven and Christ, and the exceeding weight of glory are before you. Do not make light of this invitation, nor begin to make excuses; whatever thou art, rich or poor, though in alms-houses or hospitals, though in highways and hedges, my commission is, if possible, to compel you to come in; and blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God! The manna lieth about your tents; walk out, gather it up, take it home, and feed upon it. (Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest, Ch. XIV, Section 1)