Episode Transcript
In the last chapter, I wrote of the necessity of having the eyes of the heart enlightened. The Word of God, throughout its sixty-six books, places tremendous emphasis upon the need to “see.” Many times the observation is made, “they have eyes, but see not.” Indeed, the Lord Jesus Himself said:
Therefore, speak I to them in parables; because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. Matthew 13:13
Even more striking is the fact that He spoke to the church in Laodicea, to born-again believers, and said:
Because thou sayest, I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art the wretched one and miserable and poor and blind and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me ... eyesalve to anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see. Revelation 3:17–19
Is it possible for a child of God, saved by the grace of God and born of the Spirit of God, to be blind? Evidently so! It is clearly a possibility to suffer delusion, believing that one is rich and has need of nothing, whereas the Lord’s estimate is altogether different. He speaks of His church, and of His child, as “the wretched one and miserable and poor and blind and naked.” In the enormous discrepancy between the self-estimate of this church or the individual believers in it and the Lord’s estimate of the true condition of both, we see the absolute necessity of vision.
What do we mean by the “eyes of the heart”? It is recorded of Moses that “he endured, as seeing him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:27). How can anyone see One who is “invisible”? We should carefully note that with Moses this was not a one-off “vision.” He “endured” as seeing Him who is invisible. In other words, it was an ongoing experience. David had the same kind of experience when he declares:
I have set the Lord always before me: Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. (Psalm 16:8)
By a new birth, God has constituted the child of God with a spiritual ability to behold the Lord. It is not physical, but spiritual. The writer of the Hebrew letter speaks of “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith” (12:2). The apostle Paul likewise writes:
But we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit ... For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. II Corinthians 3:18; 4:6 NASB
This is not in any way to devalue genuine physical visions of the Lord, both in the Old Testament period and in the New, and in the history of the true Church of God. Spiritual sight, however, is basic and essential to the well-being of the child of God.
The Word of God states that:
Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint. Proverbs 29:18
We have the same Hebrew word in I Samuel 3:1:
And the word of the Lord was rare [mg] in those days; there was no frequent vision.
This word, translated in English by “vision,” comes from a root word in Hebrew meaning “to behold.” Whilst this word can refer to ecstatic visions, it also has the meaning of prophetic vision, or prophetic understanding. Hence the NASB marginal rendering, “Where there is no revelation ...” It is also important to note that the Hebrew word translated in the KJV “perish” and in the ASV “cast off restraint,” simply means “to unbind,” “to let go,” “to go to pieces,” and thus “to perish.” Wherever there is vision, a prophetic understanding given by the Holy Spirit, a living revelation of the heart and mind of God, the eternal purpose of God touches the earth; and some stage in its fulfillment is reached. This has been true of the whole history of the Old Testament period, of the New Testament period, and throughout the history of the Church. Likewise, whenever there has been no prophetic understanding of the heart and mind of God, a spiritual paralysis has developed, with all its consequences: disorder, lack of direction, confusion, and spiritual death.
Abraham the Father of All Who Believe
One of those great turning points in history was reached with Abraham. Speaking before the Sanhedrin, Stephen recalls:
The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran, and said unto him, Get thee out of thy land, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall show thee. (Acts 7:2–3) The writer of the Hebrew letter records:
By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a land not his own ... for he looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God. (Hebrews 11:8–10)
We should note that this vision of the God of glory changed Abraham’s whole life. It was not merely an ecstatic vision which left him the same. Everything changed. According to Jewish tradition, Abraham came from one of the great aristocratic and ruling families of Ur of the Chaldees. The wealth of the family came from idol making, and Abraham was one of the top salesmen. When the God of glory appeared to Abraham, he was blown into another dimension. On no single level of his life were things ever the same. From being a city dweller, he became a pilgrim, a transient. From being a wealthy landowner, he became a landless nomad. From being a pagan and producer of idols in gold, in silver, in wood, and in stone, he became the worshiper of the living and invisible God, and, at the same time, a dealer in sheep and goats, in camels and donkeys! What was it that changed him?
When the one true and living God, the Creator of all things with neither beginning nor end, appeared to Abraham, he never worshiped an idol again, nor spirits in mountains, or in rocks, or in rivers; he became a true worshiper. He became a believer in the living God. This gift of faith was so real and so powerful, so foundational to his whole life, that he came to be called “the father of all who believe.” Indeed, Paul writes that we, who are the recipients of the same living faith, are blessed with “believing Abraham” (Galatians 3:9 JND). Even when Abraham failed, as with Pharaoh, and Abimelech, and over Ishmael, he never returned to idol worship. Something had gripped Abraham, and it never left him. In the God of glory, he saw salvation, deliverance, and a new beginning, with a new life and a new destiny.
It is remarkable that the Lord Jesus declared:
Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad. John 8:56
The vision Abraham had of God was a prophetic revelation. In one sense, he saw the whole of human history centered in the coming and the work of the Messiah Jesus. In this sense, he was clearer than many Christians today! The Lord had said to Abraham:
I will make of thee a great nation ... and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Genesis 12:2–3
Abraham understood that his life and his seed, through Isaac, were somehow bound up with both the salvation of Israel and the salvation of the Gentiles, and he saw that salvation centered in the Messiah Jesus. Daniel, much later in history, was also to understand that his life and ministry were similarly bound up with the coming of the Messiah and His finished work (see Daniel 9). The Lord Jesus said that Abraham rejoiced to see His day, emphasizing that fact by adding: “he saw it, and was glad.” It was not some fleeting and flimsy idea that Abraham had, that somehow, in the distant future, a Messiah would come: it was something so substantial and real that Abraham worshiped and rejoiced.
When Abraham saw the God of glory, in some manner he saw the city of glory. By the vision he had, and the understanding given through it, he saw the city of God as somehow the key to world history. In fact, he saw the Messiah and the Bride of the Messiah, the wife of the Lamb. He had left no mean city when he left Ur of the Chaldees. So great was the vision he received that he never returned to it, not even as a tourist! That great city, with all its sophistication and power, left him cold. He discerned that it did not have eternal foundations. Instead, he sought for that city which has those foundations, the heavenly Jerusalem. In the whole of Abraham’s life, as far as we know, he never lived in Jerusalem for even a short period; yet his life was bounded by its divine significance and meaning. We could say that the Jerusalem which is above was the mother of Abraham (see Galatians 4:26).
In seeing the God of glory, Abraham saw the city of God’s glory, and understood God’s eternal purpose. For him, the history and destiny of the world was divided into two cities: on the one hand, Babylon or Babel, of which spiritually Ur was part, and, on the other hand, Jerusalem. Every human being has his birth registration in one or the other. So great is the grace of God that you can be born in the former and re-registered by a new birth in the latter (see Psalm 87). Abraham was spoilt for anything less than God’s best. In that vision of the God of glory, Abraham heard the divine call and by faith obeyed, and “went out, not knowing whither he went.” The living faith with which God had gifted him, flung him into the arms of God. It was a journey which was to end in eternal glory.
The Principle of Spiritual Vision
This principle of spiritual vision, and the life-changing understanding that it brings, is everywhere in the Bible. Whether it is Jacob who, fearful and alone, devastated by the revelation of his own hopeless self-life, would not let the Lord go, crying “Bless me,” and who described that experience at Jabbok as "the face of God,” changing him from Jacob the twister into Israel the prince with God. Or whether it is Moses and the revelation of the Being and the Character of God which he received when God appeared to him in a thorn bush in the desert. The I AM was in that thorn bush: He was the fire, Moses was the dead bush; He was the fire, and Israel was the dead bush. Or whether it is Isaiah, when the Lord gave him a vision of Himself, high and lifted up, His train filling the temple. Out of that vision, and the understanding of it, flowed one of the richest prophetic ministries in the Word of God. In these lives, and many more, this principle of spiritual vision is underlined.
The Example of Paul
Another great turning point in history was the conversion of the apostle Paul. In his testimony before King Agrippa, Paul said:
at midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them that journeyed with me. And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice saying unto me in the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?
It is hard for thee to kick against the goad. And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest ... Wherefore, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision .. (Acts 26:13–15, 19)
That this was what has been described as an “ecstatic” vision is clear. What is also as clear is the fact that out of this vision came a revelation of the heart and mind of God. For Paul, this vision was the seedbed of his entire ministry, which he described as preaching “the unsearchable riches of Christ”! Whether he understood it immediately or progressively in the years that followed, its source was in that vision.
When the Lord confronted Saul of Tarsus, He did not say: “Why are you persecuting My followers, the ones I am saving?” He said, “Why are you persecuting Me?” and emphasized it even more when He went on to say, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” Paul could have said, “I am not persecuting You; I am persecuting Your followers.” It was out of this vision that Paul’s whole understanding of the church as the body of Christ came (see, for example, Colossians 1:18; Ephesians 1:22–23; Ephesians 4:15–16; I Corinthians 12:12, etc.). He understood the essential unity of the Lord Jesus with those whom He saves.
Indeed, the apostle Paul saw the whole purpose of God centered in the Lord Jesus. The phrase which most adequately describes his ministry is “in Christ.” He understood that our whole salvation was in Christ; all the blessings were in Him; all the supply of our needs was in Him; all the fullness of God was in Him, and we are complete in Him (see, for example, II Timothy 2:10; Ephesians 1:3; Philippians 4:19; Colossians 2:9–10). He saw everything of God as being in Christ, and nothing outside of Him. He would have understood the Gospel of John very clearly in this light.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God .. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth ... No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. (John 1:1, 14, 18)
I am the bread of life ... (6:35)
I am the light of the world ... (8:12
I am the door of the sheep. (10:7
I am the good shepherd ... (10:11)
I am the resurrection and the life ... (11:25)
I am the way, and the truth, and the life ... (14:6)
I am the true vine ... (15:1)
Before Abraham was born, I am. (8:58)
It is all Christ!
When the apostle gave his testimony before King Agrippa, he summed up all he had to say by stating: “wherefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.” Faith and obedience are living twins, never to be divided. Obedience is, in fact, the real and the tangible evidence of living faith.
“The Hope of His calling”
It is interesting to note that the writer of the Hebrew letter describes the vision that Abraham had as being something to do with “calling.” In other words, when the God of glory appeared to Abraham, He called him to begin the journey that would lead him to glory. Certainly with the apostle Paul, this matter of divine calling was all-important. For instance, he says: “I ... beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called.” And, a few sentences later: “even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling” (Ephesians 4:1, 4). Writing to Timothy, he speaks of the God: “who saved us, and called us with a holy calling” (II Timothy 1:9). I have already written about the prayer burden that Paul had for the Ephesian believers, when he prayed that God would give them a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ, having the eyes of their heart enlightened that they would know what was “the hope of His calling ... Is this divine calling only to do with salvation, or does it entail something more? Why is there such an emphasis on the hope of one’s calling? In the apostle’s Roman letter, he wrote:
We know that to them that love God all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to his purpose ... whom he foreordained, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. 8:28, 30
This quotation would seem to suggest that it is concerned only with salvation. No human being can be called of God without first having been saved by His grace. We should note that our salvation is a full and complete salvation; there is nothing to be added, and there is nothing to be subtracted: it is the finished work of the Lord Jesus. No human being can reach the divine goal or purpose without that salvation. Within it, all the grace of God, and all the power of the Holy Spirit, is available to the weakest and most hopeless sinner to enable them to reach God’s end.
Nevertheless, our salvation is the means to the end, and not the end.
We must take serious note of the use of the word “hope.” It is the hope of our calling. In what is the most remarkable testimony in the Bible, the apostle Paul declares:
Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13–14
If the great apostle could declare that he did not count himself yet to have laid hold, where does that leave you and me? This “high calling of God” is in the Messiah Jesus! There is no divine calling apart from Him: it is only in relation to Him. In Christ Jesus, there is a high calling of God, a goal to be reached, and a prize to be won! We need the Holy Spirit to come upon us with the same devoted determination to win that prize.
