The Sea of Glass Mingled with Fire.
With all the mysteriousness of the book of Revelation, one thing we are sure of: that in it we have the summing up of the moral processes of all time. There may or may not be a special meaning discoverable in its pictures, but this there certainly is. The verse which is our text represents, in a highly figurative way, the result of all moral contest. We may call that our subject.
I. Those who had gotten the victory over the beast stood on a sea of glass mingled with fire. What is the meaning of this imagery? I confess that I do not pretend to know in full what is intended in the Revelation by this term "the beast." But, on the principle which I have just stated, I think it certainly means, in its largest sense, the whole power of evil in all its earthly manifestations, everything that tempts the soul of man to sin or tries his constancy with suffering. The sea of glass is evidently the type of repose, of rest, of peace; and fire, with its quick, eager, searching nature, testing all things, consuming what is evil, purifying what is good, never resting a moment, never sparing pain fire all through the Bible is the type of active trial of every sort, of struggle. "The sea of glass," then, "mingled with fire," is repose mingled with struggle. It is peace, and rest, and achievement, with the power of trial and suffering yet alive and working within it. It is calmness still pervaded by the discipline through which it has been reached.
II. This is our doctrine, the permanent value of trial that when a man conquers his adversaries and his difficulties it is not as if he had never encountered them. Their power, still kept, is in all his future life. They are not only events in his past history: they are elements in all his present character. His victory is coloured with the hard struggle that won it. Just as the whole fruitful earth, deep in its heart, is still mingled with the ever-burning fire that is working out its chemical fitness for its work, so the life that has been overturned and overturned by the strong hand of God, filled with the deep, revolutionary forces of suffering, purified by the strong fires of temptation, keeps its long discipline for ever, roots in that discipline the deepest growths of the most sunny and luxuriant spiritual life that it is ever able to attain.
III. There are several special applications of our doctrine to the Christian life which it is interesting to observe. (1) It touches all the variations of Christian feeling. The redeemed world all the strong vitality which that name records will be the fire that will mingle with the glassy serenity of its obedient and rescued life. (2) Here we have the picture of the everlasting life. What will heaven be? I find manifold fitness in the answer that tells us that it shall be a sea of glass mingled with fire. Is it not a most graphic picture of the experience of rest, always pervaded with activity, of calm, transparent contemplation, always pervaded and kept alive by eager work and service, which is our highest and most Christian hope of heaven? Heaven will not be pure stagnation, not idleness, not any mere luxurious dreaming over the spiritual repose that has been safely and for ever won, but active, tireless, earnest work, fresh, live enthusiasm for the high labours which eternity will offer. These vivid inspirations will play through our deep repose, and make it more mighty in the service of God than any feverish, unsatisfied toil of earth has ever been. The sea of glass will be mingled with fire.
Phillips Brooks, Twenty Sermons,p. 110.