Heavenly Mindedness (48)

 

“We have already seen that even in the promised land the patriarchs remained tent-dwellers. God had a wise purpose in thus postponing for them personally the fulfilment of the temporal promise.” G. Vos (See previous post for full quotation to get context.)

 

The Patriarchs were ever on pilgrimage, even though they were in the Promised Land. Even though we are also in the Promised Land, our Lord Jesus Christ, we also are ever on pilgrimage; for though we know our Lord Jesus and are known by Him, we are called to know Him in ever-deepening communion and relationship. We travel many places in Him, pitching our tent in Galatians one day, Isaiah another day, 1 Samuel yet another, the book of Hebrews another. A time comes when we are enveloped in the fulness of the Word, when the many become one, when we “see” the Bible as a whole, a complementary unity, and when the image of Jesus Christ radiates from Genesis to Revelation.

 

Has our pilgrimage brought us to Nepal? Having arrived at Nepal, have we journeyed to base camp? Having journeyed to base camp, have we acclimated to the altitude and environment? Having acclimated, have we begun our ascent of Everest? Are we ascending in the company of others? Having ascended, are we now living as Sherpas, guiding others into the heights of Everest? Are we showing others the Way?

 

“Although Canaan was a goodly land, it was yet, after all, material and not of that higher substance we call spiritual. While capable of carrying up the mind to supernal regions, it also exposed the danger of becoming satisfied with the blessing in its provisional form. That this danger was not imaginary the later history of Israel testifies. In order to guard against such a result in the case of the patriarchs God withheld from them the land and its riches and made of this denial a powerful spiritualizing discipline.” Vos.

 

Just a word of caution, when we read, “it was yet, after all, material and not of that higher substance we call spiritual,” we want to be careful not to denigrate the natural and material, for God is the Creator and His creation, even in its fallen condition, remains His creation and is good – even though it is tossed and turned and in upheaval. Let’s remind ourselves that the entire creation is waiting for the manifestation of the sons and daughters of God (Romans 8:19).

 

Vos tells us that the Patriarchs had the blessing in a provisional form, that is, they were given a down payment, a foretaste of the fulness of what was to come. Even so we have been given the Holy Spirit as a foretaste of the fulness of our inheritance in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:13 – 14; 2Cor. 1:21 – 22). When Vos uses the word “provisional” he does not use it (I think) in the sense that the blessing may be withdrawn or lost, he uses it in the sense that we are living in a provisional time when the age to come overlaps the present age, and the blessing of the fulness of time in Christ (Eph. 1:9 – 11) reaches into our hearts and souls to draw us into its glory.

 

Vos points out two things that can occur as we experience God’s blessing of the age to come, we can either allow it to draw us upward and onward on pilgrimage in Jesus Christ, or we can settle for what we have and build a permanent home. If we make the immediate blessing our goal, if we are satisfied with a measure and not the fulness, then we will lose what we think we have and learn the ways of the people of Canaan, that which was to have been a land of promise will become a land of idolatry. On the other hand, if we allow the blessing to create greater desire for more of our Lord Jesus Christ, then our pilgrimage will continue and we will see Him in His unfolding fulness.  

 

When Israel ceased to conquer the land of Canaan, when they became satisfied with a measure of their inheritance, they learned the ways of the pagans and traded their inheritance for idols and promiscuity. We can allow God’s blessing to lift us up, or we can pull the blessing down and attempt to preserve it. God’s blessing is like manna, we are to consume it today trusting Him for more tomorrow; but if we attempt to hoard His blessing it will decay and rot.

 

We are to build on foundations, not live solely on foundations. We are to live in a house that is on a firm foundation, Jesus Christ and the Apostles and Prophets (Eph. 2:20), and we ought to be leery of attempting to introduce any other foundation (1Cor. 3:11). Foundations are laid so that buildings can be built, how strange it would be to see a community in which people lived on building lots with only the foundations laid; with no walls or roofs or windows or plumbing or electricity. Stranger still would it be if the citizens of this community considered this normal.

 

I think we have this strange condition throughout Christendom, for we have taken blessings given to others in previous generations and have frozen them in time, making them permanent homes, rather than building on them and allowing those blessings to draw us upward and onward into Jesus Christ. Show me a tradition, show me a movement, show me a denomination, and I can likely show you an illustration of what I’m saying. The very fact that we name ourselves after blessings and understandings given to previous generations, the fact that we make these names our identities, demonstrates this point. We think of ourselves as of this or that tradition before we think of ourselves as members of the Body of Christ. We don’t build on the past as much as we fossilize the past. We encase significant people who have gone before us in glass tombs, and we pay homage to them.

 

This is not pilgrimage, this it not living in tents – this is entombing ourselves.

 

To live in tents is to be good stewards of that which we have inherited from those who have gone before us, to pass on what we are receiving in our own generation, and to allow Jesus Christ to transform us from glory to glory (2Cor. 3:17 – 18) so that we might leave an inheritance to others. There is a sense in which all blessing in this age is provisional, but its measure should be ever increasing as we are ever on pilgrimage.

 

We are all living in tents, let us not be deceived about this. When the Psalmist writes, “I am a stranger in the earth, do not hide Your commandments from me,” he is not only referring to the planet earth, but also to the body in which he lived. Peter writes, “I consider it right, as long as I am in this earthly dwelling, to stir you up by way of reminder, knowing that the laying aside of my earthly dwelling is imminent…” (2Pt. 1:13 – 14).

 

Paul writes, “For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” (2Cor. 5:1). He then tells the Corinthians that “we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven.” Looking forward to that time when “what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.” Then Paul refers to the down payment, the foretaste that God has given us, “Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge.”

 

How can we live like this? By learning to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2Cor. 5:7). We, by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, learn to “see” as we were meant to see, to understand as we were meant to understand, looking not at the things seen, but rather at the things that are unseen (2Cor. 4:18).

 

We all live in tents, we are all camping out. Are we allowing God to use this awareness to draw us closer and closer to Himself, deeper and deeper into Himself? O what a glorious future we have in our Lord Jesus Christ, unfathomable in its glory and joy, in its love and splendor. O how He loves you and me…and how He desires that we share His love with others.

 

 

Heavenly Mindedness (47)

 

Continuing our reflections on Geerhardus Vos’s Message on “Heavenly Mindedness” from Hebrews 11:9 – 10:

 

“There are two more aspects of the patriarchal faith of heavenly-mindedness to be briefly considered. The first is its spirituality. Heavenly-mindedness is spiritual-mindedness. This pervades like an atmosphere the entire Epistle. We have already seen that even in the promised land the patriarchs remained tent-dwellers. God had a wise purpose in thus postponing for them personally the fulfilment of the temporal promise. Although Canaan was a goodly land, it was yet, after all, material and not of that higher substance we call spiritual. While capable of carrying up the mind to supernal regions, it also exposed to the danger of becoming satisfied with the blessing in its provisional form. 

That this danger was not imaginary the later history of Israel testifies. In order to guard against such a result in the case of the patriarchs God withheld from them the land and its riches and made of this denial a powerful spiritualizing discipline. By it they were led to reflect that, since the promise was theirs beyond all doubt, and yet they were not allowed to inherit it in its material form, that therefore it must in the last analysis relate to something far higher and different, something of which the visible and sensual is a mere image. 

Thus the conception of another sphere of being was introduced into their minds: henceforth they sought the better country. Not as if the things of sense were worthless in themselves, but because they knew of something transcendent that claimed their supreme affection. Their tastes and enjoyments had been raised to another plane. The refinement of grace had been imparted to them. For bodily hands there had been, as it were, substituted spiritual antennae, sensitive to intangible things. They had come to a mountain that could not be touched and yet could be felt. In all the treasures and promises of religion the one valuable thing is this spiritual core.”  Geerhardus Vos

 

Now we come to yet another “dense” passage in Vos, but of course the entire message carries a gravitas and density that we are unaccustomed to, whether we find ourselves in pews, in small groups, or standing behind a pulpit or lectern. I image we’ll take a few posts to work through the above…I wish I could teach this in person to a group.

 

As you carefully read and reread the above, what do you see? What attracts your attention? What makes little sense to you? What questions do you have? If you could speak to Vos right now, what would you ask him?

 

I’m sure we’ve probably heard the statement, “Some people are so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly good.” That is a lie that we ought not to believe. Yes, some people are more practical than others, and some live in the abstract more than the concrete, but in the Biblical sense, to be supremely heavenly – minded is to be equipped to make a difference in the here and now. Peter, Elijah, Isaiah, Deborah, Mary Magdalene, Paul – they all had distinct personalities and distinct ways in which they displayed Christ and His glory; they were heavenly–minded and they made a difference to the people around them. Let me assure you, that the church’s problem isn’t that it’s people are so heavenly-minded that they are no earthly good; it is that we are so earthly-minded that we have lost our identity as the sons and daughters of the Living God.

 

Here is a little principle; to be earthly-minded seals us off from the heavens, while to be heavenly-minded opens up for us a sacramental view of earth. When we are earthly-minded we can’t see the heavens, but when we are heavenly-minded we see both the heavens and the earth.

 

What was the immediate effect of Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked…” (Gen. 3:7). Now I don’t fully understand this, I probably don’t understand it even a little, but what I do know is that the way Adam and Eve saw life changed when they disobeyed God and ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. There is irony in the words, “Then the eyes of both of them were opened,” in that this opening of their eyes to physical and material realities blinded them to eternal things, to the realm of the unseen.

 

And so Paul writes of not looking at things that are seen but unseen, for the things that are seen are temporal, while the things that are unseen are eternal (2Cor. 4:18). In other words, Paul learned, by the grace of God, to “see” differently than he had prior to knowing Jesus Christ. We can identify this theme throughout Scripture; from Noah, to Abraham, to Jacob, to Moses, to Samuel (a seer!), Elijah and Elisha, to Paul, and to John’s Revelation – throughout the Bible there are men and women who live in the heavens, see in the heavens, and who act and speak on earth with the Voice of Heaven.

 

Paul often speaks his of hearers receiving his teaching as the Word of God. The people who heard Jesus were amazed because He taught them with authority, and not as the scribes. If we are going to teach from heaven then we are called to do so with authority, as we live under the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Have you ever noticed that people who claim spiritual authority often have no business doing so, making things up as they go along, exercising their communication and marketing skills over people; while others who love Christ and His Word do not have the confidence in Him to speak as the Word of God?)

 

Paul writes that the “mind set on the Spirit is life and peace” (Rom. 8:6). Paul also writes, “fix your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth” (Col. 3:2). Vos says that heavenly – mindedness is the atmosphere of the entire Epistle of Hebrews; indeed the entire Bible has this atmosphere but we often lack the eyes to see and the ears to hear. God wants us to see what only He can see, what only He can reveal (see 1 Cor. Chapter 2).

 

Ponder this for a moment, have you ever considered that your heavenly Father wants you to see what only He can see? Have you realized that our Lord Jesus Christ wants us to hear what only He can hear?

 

“At that time Jesus said, I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Matthew 11:25 – 27).

 

If we know anything that is eternal, we do not know it because we are smart or intelligent or have spent countless hours plumbing the depths of the cosmos; if we know anything of worth it is because it has been given to us by God. Most certainly, in any degree that we know the Father and Son, it is because they have chosen to reveal themselves to us through the Holy Spirit and the illuminated Word.

 

“Jesus answered and said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life” (John 4:13 – 14).

 

What is our source of life? Our source of water? Do we find it in the earthly or the heavenly? Vos tells us that to be heavenly-minded is to be spiritual.

 

Do we believe him?

 

More importantly, do we believe Jesus Christ when He tells us that we are not of this world? (John 15:18ff; 17:13ff).