“Bound for the Promised Land”

I love corporate worship. I realize this more and more as the years go by it seems. In the corporate gathering of the saints as we worship God, I see things more clearly than just about any other time. It is as if the reality of heaven breaks through my clouded vision and those realities I profess at other times are all the more clear. The sin which tempts me so during the week is then exposed as so clearly ugly and despicable. The truth of God’s character shines more brilliantly convicting me, assuring me of grace, strengthening and ennobling me. The reality of heaven is more concrete, sweeter as the truth of my mortality is felt more keenly. And the blessedness of experiencing this worship with my brothers and sisters is felt deeply.

One example of this occurred this past Sunday as we sang “On Jordan’s Stormy Bank I Stand.” I have sung this hymn many times and really appreciate it. However, this time I was struck and overwhelmed by the audacity of the truth we were professing in the chorus,

“I am bound for the promised land.”

What a crazy, amazing, audacious, wonderful claim this is for sinful people like us! It is a declaration not merely a wish. Based on the certainty of the gospel, in faith we make this claim because God has seen fit to redeem us in Christ. So, despite the suffering, frustration, and betrayal we experience, despite our continual failures we can hold fast knowing that for all those who are in Christ, we are indeed bound for the Promised Land!

Puritans, Your Best Life Yet to Come

There is much wisdom to be gleaned here, both in how we live and in how we shepherd the souls of people. When you think of the pastoral role in terms of “preparing the saints to leave this world in peace when their time comes”, you automatically leave behind much of what goes under the name of pastoral ministry today. We need this perspective simply to understand the Bible and to persevere, but also to shape us into shepherds guiding souls to the Celestial City rather than hawkers of just one more bauble to add to life.

“Third, these Puritans were great hopers. One notable strength of the Puritans, setting them far apart from Western Christians today, was the firmness of their grip on the biblical teaching about the hope of heaven. Basic to their pastoral care was their understanding of the Christian’s present life as a journey home, and they made much of encouraging God’s people to look ahead and feast their hearts on what is to come. The classic works here are Richard Baxter’s massive Saints’ Everlasting Rest, written to show how the hope of glory, analysed by biblical study and internalised by meditation, should give believers energy and direction for present living, and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, both parts of which reach their climax with triumphant passages through Jordan to the celestial city. The vividness of the vision of heaven in both Baxter and Bunyan is remarkable by any standards; sanctified imagination gives concreteness and colour to theological perception, resulting in extraordinary power to convey the flow of glory to the Christian heart. The Puritan point, which was first, of course, a New Testament point, was that Christians should know what their hope is and draw from it power to resist whatever discouragements and distractions present circumstances may produce. The unreadiness of pain and death that Western Christians too often reveal today contrasts unhappily with the realism and joyful hope that the Puritan masters inculcated in order to prepare the saints to leave this world in peace when their time came.” (334)

- Packer, J.I. A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1990