In these material days, one sphere after another yields in succession to the genius of the human race. And in a very special sense the ancient word of the preacher is being fulfilled: “They have sought out many inventions.” But though telescopes have been constructed by which men may see distant objects, they have never yet seen an angel. And though powerful X-rays will reveal the frame of man, they never catch a glimpse of his soul. For angels, and souls, and “spiritual things” are in a realm apart. God’s fiat still holds, inexorably true and fundamental: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” and all that pertains to it.
The natural man is born blind to the great spiritual world. It is God’s ordination that only through his “second birth” can a man get his “second sight,” the supersight of faith, which enables him to see the great spiritual world that surrounds him, and to know God. So blindly, pathetically, men live their lives, unseeing.
“They pass us by like shadows, crowds on crowds,
Dying hosts of men that hover to and fro,
Hugging their bodies round them like their shrouds,
Wherein their souls have perished long ago.
Alas! poor souls, the anointed eye can trace
A dead soul’s epitaph in every face!”
Yet having received the “second sight” through faith, the great bulk of true believers are still in the pitiable condition of the man of Bethsaida (Mk. 8:24), who truthfully confessed, “I see men as trees walking.” For most do not realize that better sight is possible. And so the Saviour’s desire for Nathanael, “Thou shalt see greater things than these” (Jn. 1:50), needs to be worked out in the life of every child of God.
But many believers are only too content with the partial sight they have. Many do not realize that there is more to see. I knew a lad once, a keen naturalist, who spent his holidays collecting every species of birds’ eggs. He could never make out why his younger brother could always find the nests so much more quickly than he, till, after years of effort, his eyes were tested. It was discovered that he was extremely short-sighted. When his sight was corrected, a new world of vision dawned on him. But what a loss! All those years, without knowing it, he had seen “through a glass darkly.” And that is just how many Christians spend their lives, continually hindered and handicapped, because they do not know God as He is, as He might be in their lives. The poet aspired to the gift “to see ourselves as others see us.” But if we could see ourselves as God sees us, and then further, to see Him as He is, what a revelation it would be!
What tremendous plans God has for each of our lives. Human parents naturally have great ambitions for their children. But they mostly remain only dreams, for they have not the power to bring them to pass. But how different it is with God. His commands are His enablings. What He graciously plans for each, He is willing and able to bring to pass. God is a Father who has far-reaching ambitions not only for His ten-talent children but for the one who seems to have no talents at all. All that is needed is that we yield to Him, prove Him, having on our side “great expectations.”
Undreamed of Possibilities
What is so wonderful, so unique in the Christian life, is that in every believer there are such undreamed of possibilities. On the human plane, we are so hopeless and helpless. But when a child of God steps out in faith and on God, and discovers the secret of taking hold of God, of taking Him at His word by faith, then a new factor is introduced which confounds all calculations, and nullifies all estimates. For then begins, in an increasing measure, the wondrous fact: “All things are possible to him that believeth” (Mk. 9:23).
Then, as we trust and obey, and begin to use what little talents we possess, God in His loving bounty begins to give more. “To him that hath (and useth) shall be given,” is His unvarying rule. So let none of us despair. One with God is a majority, and each of us can by faith be linked to the power of God. For God soon begins to develop talents quite undreamed of in our lives, which so far have been “laid up in a napkin.” These He will unwrap if we will let Him, if we will humbly prove Him, that He may make them a praise and a glory to Himself. Let us get this fact fixed in our minds, that God always has further ambitions for us that so far we have not realized. These ambitions are not, of course, that we should be great. Thank God, no; but that we should become ever enlarging channels of blessing, that more and more we should be “well pleasing” to Him. Some of the most precious lives ever lived have bloomed and died almost unknown to the world, but watched and tended and delighted in by God.
Nathanael’s “Greater Things”
For Nathanael the time had come when he was to realize some of the ambitions the Saviour had for him. The Lord “saw” Nathanael under the fig tree when he was beyond human sight, because Philip had to “find” him to bring him to Jesus. But the Lord “saw” more than the outward man. He “saw” into a heart, the heart of “an Israelite indeed,” in whom was no guile. This “seeing” by the Saviour was so evidently miraculous that it drew from Nathanael the worshipping cry: “Thou art the Son of God!” So was born in him the second sight of faith.
But at once the Saviour’s love and desire for Nathanael far out-leapt the present, and He gave utterance to that everlasting promise to the believer, “Thou shalt see greater things than these” (Jn. 1:50). It is all in keeping with His regal magnificence. He desires a man not only to be “born again,” but to be well born, not only to be “saved,” but to be mightily saved, not only to have spiritual sight, but to “see greater things.”
But His promise further out-leaps the present. He goes on to add, with a wealth of feeling and love, “Hereafter ye shall see heaven open.” This is ever so: an opened heart, abandoned to the Son of God, results in an open heaven. There are various degrees to this promise, the final fulfillment of which is still future.
Thus there was a continuous opening of heaven to men as the Saviour “opened to them the Scriptures.” It was opened wider for the three apostles at the Transfiguration. It was opened still wider for all believers on the day of Pentecost, when it became possible, and God’s will for each to enter in by faith, that He might make us habitually to “sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
John’s “Greater Things”
How fitting that this blessed promise and prospect of seeing greater things, of seeing heaven opened, was recorded by the Spirit only through the Apostle John, the “seer of Patmos,” the one who of old triumphantly testified: “We behold His glory!” How much he had seen of the Holy One and the Just, in his long life! From the time he was “leaning on Jesus’ bosom,” till the day in the prison isle, when he was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day,” and saw the prophetic sweep of the ages, he was ever a “seer.” Let us follow with bowed hearts the inspired record, as it comes word by word to the pen of the aged John. And then let us with holy boldness, afresh determine that, by the grace of God, each of us will “see greater things than these” of our past experience, each will be a better “seer” of the Saviour in the present, never to rest till we, too, by grace, and the Holy Spirit, are seated habitually “in Heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
For it is true of these material days as it was of the dark days of Israel, that the “Word of the Lord is precious” (1 Sam. 3:1) and rare today, and there is “no open vision.” But that makes it all the more urgent that we who have opened hearts and an open Bible, should use it to get a fresh vision of God, to see ever fresh beauties in the Saviour. So our glorious Lord, who by His death has opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers, shall ever become more amazing, more wondrous, more worshipped to our adoring eyes.
My Own “Greater Things”
But what greater things am I to covet, to make the goal of my life? What is this ambition that is so safe, so commended by God? For in another place I am warned: “Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not” (Jer. 45:5). And for my clear guidance, two men emerge from the host of witnesses in the Living Word. The first is a self-made man. He speaks with boldness and self-confidence. For he was a successful man in the world’s eyes. In boastful accents he proclaims his ambition: “I will pull down my barns and build greater.” And I have God’s mind on the whole matter in the one short doomful sentence: “Thou fool!” (Lk. 12:20). And there is a further weighty and tender warning about such mere carnal prizes: “If riches increase, set not thy heart on them.” God give us grace to take good heed, for these are not the “greater things” He covets for us.