Book Overview - The Pleasantness of a Religious Life: Life as good as it can be.

The Pleasantness of a Religious Life

Matthew Henry

 

This was a wonderful little book that the Lord used in my life recently.  Its theme has been repeated for generations… all the way back to the first followers of Jesus:

“So Jesus said to the Twelve, ‘Do you want to go away as well?’  Simon Peter answered Him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life’” (John 6:67-68).

It goes back to Moses:

“By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter,  choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin” (Hebrews 11:24-25).

And it was first experience by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

It has been promoted through the ages by those who have experienced the joy of God.  I’ll summarize the theme in my own words.  A life pursuing the enjoyments of God is a life of satisfaction and fulfillment far beyond a life pursing the enjoyments found in sin… or anything else for that matter.  Church history is packed with cheer leaders crying out to wake us up to this truth.  Mathew Henry was one of the cheer leaders of his generation. 

I personally gained more from Henry’s appeals in this book than some of the men and women of our generation who are screaming this same appeal.  Henry does a great job reasoning for this conclusion.  His is a Scriptural and emotional appeal too, but primarily a Scriptural/rational appeal.  I feel that our generation leading cheer leaders have slipped into more of a Scriptural/emotional appeal than a Scriptural/rational appeal.  I’m more motivated by the latter more than the former because I’ve seen people give emotional appeals that are disastrous and tends to turn me away from the conclusion.  Maybe it’s my personality.  Give me reasons!  Give me reasons from Scripture; give me reasons from life; give me reasons from God’s character.  Get them where you will find them (and we can weigh them when you bring them), but just give me reasons.  That is my emotional appeal.(!) 

Read this little book.  Your soul will benefit from it greatly.  Start with Packer’s introduction; that is helpful too.  If you have not read much from the 1700’s you need to be ready to redefine the words “piety” and “religion.”  Religion was the practice of pursuing God on a personal level as well as a communal level.  Today, the definition of religion glosses as a man-made system of do’s and don’ts.  That is not what Henry is promoting.  He is promoting a souls satisfying relationship with God.

Let me summarize the content briefly.  The book is in seven chapters; 150 pages which are the outworking of a series of sermons.  In the first chapter, Henry explains his premise and where he is going with the book.  The next three chapters give different reasons for the pleasure of living for God (“being religious”).  In chapter five he demonstrates the truth through the Biblical illustration of a pleasant path.  In chapter six Henry refutes possible objections to the doctrine.  Finally, in chapter seven, he gives some helpful applications of the doctrine and gives a special appeal to youth.

I’ll name two ideas from the book that helped me, though the whole book is underlinable. 

Several times Henry appeals to us to think of ourselves as having two sets of desires or pleasures.  Just as we have body and spirit, so we have bodily desires and spiritual desires.  The pleasures which give us the greatest enjoyment come from those which we experience with our spirit.  The bodily desires are right and good when used at the right time and place - eating, sleeping, exercising, etc.  But the spiritual desires are those which will cause us to soar above this earth.  The pleasures of our body are pleasures we have in common with “beasts,” but the pleasures of our spirit are those we have in common with angels.  Henry expounds on this idea throughout chapter two, giving a dozen such spiritual joys that we have as believers in Christ that far outshine satisfying our body’s desires/pleasures.  I used this illustration to close a sermon recently.  Click here if you would like to listen to that.  The illustration starts at about minute 39.

Another helpful thing that Henry did throughout the book was to name specific pleasures that are thought to bring joy or happiness and show that their enjoyment (outside of the boundaries God provides) are empty and dangerous.  It is so helpful to expose our mind to the deadly snares of the devil.  How empty these temptations are when considering their end. 

Here are a few quotes that I hope will motivate you to pick this book up and read it.  You can get it free as it pre-dates copyright (Click Here), but I think it is worth buying so you can mark it up.

“A holy, heavenly life spent in the service of God, and in communion with him, is, without doubt, the most pleasant and comfortable life any man can live in this world” (43).

“Here is bait that has no hook under it, a pleasure courting you which has no pain attending it, no bitterness at the latter end of it; a pleasure which God himself invites you to, and which will make you happy, truly and eternally happy…” (45).

“We have no joy of our enjoyments, no true joy of them, till we are led by these streams to the fountain” (56).

“A good conscience is not only a brazen wall, but a continual feast; and all the melody of Solomon’s instruments of music of all sorts, were not to be compared with that of the bird in the bosom, when it sings sweet” (86).

“God is a good master, and hi service not only perfect freedom, but perfect pleasure” (95).

“I have found that satisfaction in communion with God, which I would not exchange for all the delights of the sons of men, and the peculiar treasures of kings and provinces” (98).

“There is nothing got by departing from God, and nothing lost by being faithful to Him” (103).

“If the world was made for man, certainly man was made for more than the world; and if God made man, certainly he made him for himself: God then is our chief good, it is our business to serve and please him, and our happiness to be accepted of him” (138).

“The soul is the man, and that is best for us, that is best for our souls” (139).

“All is well that ends everlastingly well.  That pleasure ought to have the preference which is of the longest continuance” (139).

“Let us live as those that believe in the sweetness of religion, not because we are old it, but because we have tasted it” (147).