The happiness of heaven is the seeing God; and because our Lord and Saviour is God incarnate, therefore to see Christ was to faithful men a kind of heaven upon earth; and losing sight of Him, as they did at His Passion, was like being banished from heaven.
I. The sight of God was the very blessing which Adam forfeited in Paradise, and which poor fallen human nature, so far as it is not utterly corrupt, has ever been feeling after and longing for. Adam, oppressed and alienated in his mind by sin, hid himself from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden, and he was cast out from the nearer vision of God; but both he and his posterity retained still a blind consciousness of what they had lost, and a blind hope of recovering it. All the holy men before the time of our Lord's first coming in the flesh looked on by faith to the happiness of seeing God. The Apostles and those who were about Him when He came enjoyed in their lifetime that privilege which Job had to wait for till he came to the other world.
II. The Apostles and disciples had one thing wanting to their joy: they saw and touched Christ outwardly, but were not as yet made members of Him. We are members of His body, but we do not yet see Him. These two things, which are now separated, are to be united in the other world; and being united, they will make us happy for ever.
III. Hitherto we have seen Jesus Christ, as it were, with other men's eyes; but the hour is coming when we shall see Him for ourselves. He will appear to each one of us with a different countenance according as we have behaved to Him here. As we see Him then, in wrath or mercy, such He will be to us for ever and ever; and His countenance will be according to our works.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times"vol. viii., p. 87 (see also J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year: Easter to Ascension Day,pp. 14-24).
References: Job 19:26; Job 19:27. J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year: Advent to Christmas Eve,p. 117. Job 19:28. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. ix., No. 505, and vol. xxvii., No. 1598. Job 19 S. Cox, Expositor,1st series, vol. vii., pp. 264, 321; Ibid., Commentary on Job,p. 230.