Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3425
“As the days of Heaven upon the earth.” Deuteronomy 11:21.
As this text was originally written, it referred only to the length of life and the length of endurance which God promised to His obedient Israel. If they walked in His statutes, the Kingdom was to abide from generation to generation, without end, “as the days of Heaven upon earth.” But it seems to me that such a phrase as this ought to mean something more, if it did not, and might be used to express—and must be used to express many of those happy seasons which we have enjoyed when the Lord has manifested Himself to us—and which have been to us “as the days of Heaven upon the earth.” But is not the expression exaggeration? Is it not too strong? Brothers and Sisters, I think not. There were days of Heaven upon earth once. Every day upon earth was a day of Heaven before our first parent stretched out his hand and broke his Lord’s command. When he walked through the Garden of Eden, by the side of the rippling Hiddekel, or the streaming Euphrates, which rolled over sands of gold. As he reclined under the shadow of the trees from the heat of the sun, and plucked the generous fruit, God was with him as his Companion and manifested Himself to His favorite creature. Those were, indeed, days of Heaven upon earth! There was no strife, no sin, no sorrow—everything was happy! It seemed as if this world was but one chamber of God’s great house, one of the many mansions in our Father’s house, the vestibule of Glory, the portal of the skies—the ground floor, if I may say so, of the Master’s palace which reached high up beyond the clouds! There were days of Heaven upon earth—and we know from the sweetest prophecies, as sure as they are sweet, that there will be days of Heaven upon earth again, and that for a continuance! He who went up to Heaven from Olivet will so come, in like manner, as we have seen Him go up into Heaven! And when He comes, then will He reign in the midst of His people. And we are in the habit of speaking of that glorious reign with intense delight. No strife shall vex Messiah’s reign! There shall be no sorrow, then. They shall hang the useless helmet in the hall and study war no more—halcyon days! A millennial period! Peace like a river! Righteousness like the waves of the sea, for He shall live and to Him shall be given of the gold of Sheba! Prayer, also, shall be made for Him continually and daily shall He be praised! We are looking for the advent of the Lord, praying for it, desiring to be found in a working and waiting posture whenever He may come! And when He comes, then, to the letter, there shall be a long-continued series of days of Heaven upon the earth! But, dear Friends, it is of little service to mourn the past, and though it may be of much benefit to expect the future, yet what shall we say about the present? I think the present is not without some happy seasons which may be likened to the days of the text.
My first business at this time will be to mention some of the days which are fit to be called days of Heaven upon the earth Then, secondly, I shall answer the question—why do we not have more of them? And then, thirdly, I shall try to show the best ways of getting more of them. First, then, though man is born to sorrow, yet—
I. WE HAVE MOST HAPPY AND BLESSED PERIODS—DAYS OF HEAVEN UPON EARTH. And the first I will mention is the day in which we first look to Jesus and lose our sins. Our Revival Hymnbook sings—
“Happy day! Happy day! When Jesus washed my sins away.” The long time of conviction, the dolorous winter of sorrow made the day of our release the happier and the brighter, just as the oasis is all the greener in contrast with the dry, sandy region over which the traveler has passed. The first day of our conversion, when we know Christ and have peace through Him, is a peculiarly green and happy spot in our life’s pilgrimage. We can never forget it. Some of us had a very distinct time and place of conversion. To us the day when we looked to Jesus is as fresh as though it were newly coined from the mint of time. Other days have lost their peculiar image and superscription. We can scarcely recollect any one of our birthdays, perhaps, unless something very remarkable has happened on them. But that day, if we were to live to be as old as Methuselah, we would still remember and count it to be the true day of our birth, the day when we truly began to live—for all before it was but dead! Dear Friends, do you remember the excessive joy of that day? It must have been so with all of you—but with some of us the joy was more than we could bear! We were like Simeon, when he saw the Lord and said, “Lord, now let Your servant depart in peace.” We made no stipulations with God. We would have been content to rot in a dungeon, or to lie tossing on the sick bed of a hospital, now that we had found Christ! We needed nothing beyond! We could have dared the very gates of Hell in that day to stop our joy! Satan, himself, could not have made us cease from singing, so joyous were we. Probably others noticed it and asked why it was—and they learned that the Lord had done great things for us, whereof we were glad. Oh, I wish this evening some of you could find the Savior! Some of you, perhaps, did not come here to find Him, but you want Him. You are feeling your sins, perhaps, pressing heavily upon you. Your guilt is like a burden upon your back—I do hope you will look to the Cross of Christ, for if you do, the strings will crack that bind your burden to your back and you shall leap for joy to find that you are free! There is life for a look at the Crucified One! And with that life there comes such a flood of joy that I would not wonder if you were almost ready, when you get home, to begin singing in the house even though there might be some there who could not sympathize with your joy! It is one of the days of Heaven upon earth when a soul casts its anchor upon Christ and says, “I am at rest, at rest forever!”