OUR PLACE
‘But ye are come unto Mount Sion, and … to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. See that ye refuse not him that speaketh.’
This ‘place’ requires faith to apprehend it; it requires faith to understand it. ‘Ye are come to the Mount Sion, the city of the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem.’
I. Mount Sion must be in a certain sense upon earth.—Because we are the children of the Heavenly Jerusalem, as St. Paul tells us, ‘Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.’ Here, then, is a great city, of which we are the children; and yet it is heaven, God dwells in it, Christ dwells in it; we shall come to it, and yet we have come to it. Then the general assembly and Church of the first-born which are written in heaven. It is generally supposed that this refers to the saints in heaven. I scarcely think that it does, because it is said written in heaven, their names are written in heaven.
II. Just think what an inestimable and inconceivable privilege it is to be in the Church of Christ.—If you consider the Church of Christ as a mere established body made by the breath of man, having some Bible lessons, as it were, communicated to it and doled out by it, then, of course, you cannot apprehend this, the greatness of being in the Church; but if you consider that yourself and every one of your fellow-members are parts and members of One Who is now at the right hand of God, then there is an amazing difference. Now, if we are to look at the Church as we should look, we must remember that every person in it who has been baptized and continues in the fellowship of it has some secret, not merely communication by prayer, but some secret bond of union with a Man at the right hand of God in the highest place of the universe.
III. What that communication is we cannot see with our eyes, but it is clearly revealed when it is said by the Apostle, ‘the Church, from whom the whole body by joints and bands ministered and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.’ What does that mean but an astonishing, mysterious, unspeakable communication betwixt Jesus Christ and every one of us?
Rev. Prebendary Sadler.