The Opened Heaven

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 1 - The Lord's People Under an Opened Heaven

Reading: John 1:43-51.

So far as I am concerned, I feel that the Lord has been leading almost entirely in connection with the significance of that little clause in verse 51: "Ye shall see the heaven opened..." - the Lord's people under an opened heaven. I trust that it may be like that in these days; that we shall be able to say afterwards: "They were days of an opened heaven".

There is a preliminary word which comes up out of this portion which we have read, in connection with Nathanael. It is impressive and striking to read backwards after having heard the Master's word to Nathanael: "Ye shall see the heaven opened", and then remember Nathanael's question: "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" (v. 46). That certainly does represent a very big transition. It represents a tremendous movement in a man. It speaks of some real advance spiritually: the beginning of the journey is marked by popular prejudice; the end of the journey is marked by an opened heaven. When you realise all the terrible possibilities which lay in the direction of loss through prejudice, it is a grand thing to see such a change taking place as to make for an opened heaven.

I do not know how many of us here in these days may need to take that journey, how many of us may be at that starting-point, but I am quite sure that all of us can, and need to, move more into the realm of the opened heaven, and that to do so will mean for us what it meant for Nathanael: leaving earthly things behind. For undoubtedly, the transition for Nathanael was from the earthly to the heavenly. And it was a very earthly thing for Nathanael to accept, in relation to such a one as the Lord Jesus, that earthly standpoint of apprehension. It seems that Nathanael leapt into a new position.

I wonder if you notice the change in designation given to the Lord Jesus? Again, it is startling to hear one of those called by the Lord Jesus into discipleship, speaking of Him as: "Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph" (v.45). There is not much enlightenment about that. Only a few steps onward along a certain road which I trust you and I are going to traverse in these days, brought Nathanael far beyond that point, and he exclaimed: "Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art King of Israel" (v.49). Son of Joseph to Son of God in a bound.

There is movement here from earth to heaven, from an altogether inadequate, impossible apprehension of the Lord Jesus, to a wide, open-eyed apprehension of His true value, His true person. If we made spiritual progress like that, beloved, we would be very happy. We speak of people going ahead by leaps and bounds; Nathanael did that. But it was not so simple, or at least, it was not without some meaning; it represented something.

It is very simple when we accept, as Nathanael accepted, and move as he moved, then we come very quickly into the fuller, greater things of the Lord. And I just want, as the Lord enables, to put my finger upon what seems to me to be the way to the opened heaven. That is, the initial step so far as we are concerned. There will be a very great deal more of deeper meaning unfolded, possibly in later chapters, but initially there is one thing without which the opened heaven is quite an impossible thing and is not in prospect for us. Now, in order to get at that I must open out much more fully to larger ranges of background.

I want first of all to remind you of what John had mainly in view in writing his gospel. You will know, from what he says towards the end of it, that by what he had written, it might be seen and believed that Jesus was the Son of God, and believing and seeing that, they might be saved. By his careful selection of Christ's words and works he was aiming to show the momentous truth of the divine Person. You must always remember that when you are reading John's gospel. It is a selective book with that aim always before it. He leaves out much which others write. He brings in certain things which others do not include, and this selectiveness of material, words, and works, is all with this one thought: to bring out clearly Who the Lord Jesus was as pre-eminent, supreme - the Son of God.

Now in that connection you must remember that John wrote later than any of the other writers of the gospels. A great many years had elapsed between the closing of these events and the writing by John of his record, and when John came to the time of writing, he was provoked to do so because a great many questions were abroad as to the person of the Lord Jesus. And one question was: How is it that, if the miracles, for instance, of Jesus of Nazareth were authentic, why is it so few of the people, especially the leaders who were His contemporaries, who lived in His day, believed on Him? Those who raised the question would argue that as the intelligent people of His day, they did not believe on Him, therefore His works were not authentic, were not to be relied upon, were more or less reports and not facts. And so, mainly to bring into view Who Jesus of Nazareth was as the Son of God, and incidentally to answer that question: "Why did not His contemporaries believe on Him?", John wrote his gospel. And when you have recognised that, you have got to the heart of Nathanael's difficulty.

John takes pains to point out that the answer to that subsidiary question as to why the leaders of His day did not believe on Him, was found in the temper and the moral state of the people of His day, and especially of the religious leaders; that they were out of sympathy with Him morally. There was a moral chasm between Him and them, and His presence struck home at their state, challenged their condition, and made them feel uncomfortable. And they were unwilling to admit that there was anything wrong with them, and so they would not believe Him, would not listen to Him, would not give Him a chance.

It was prejudice, born of spiritual and moral distance. You read John again with that thought in your mind and you will see how it reveals the spiritual and moral deficiency of the religious leaders. He is not dealing at all with the intellectual side. He has nothing to say about their intellectual deficiency, but he draws a very vivid picture of their spiritual and moral deficiency. And in that way, He answers the question and says in effect, covering a great deal of ground, that they would not recognise Him, they could not even see Who He was, because they were so religiously earthly, and He was so spiritually heavenly. There was no correspondence with their state. And if you are going to come into the fulness of the Lord Jesus, to know Him, to understand Him, to enjoy Him, you have got to have a heavenly condition which corresponds to Him and to His position.

If you are earthbound, if your interests, even religiously, are earthly, if your horizon is just that of this world, then you will never see the Lord Jesus. You will never be able to understand Him and you will never be able to enjoy fellowship with Him. You will misunderstand Him, you will misapprehend Him, you will just fall short of all the wonderful intention of God for you. That is just what happened there.

It was spiritual distance which caused them, even in the days of His most wonderful works, to fail to recognise the great reality of His person and the great heavenly truth behind His presence. And even miracles will never convince if there is spiritual or moral antagonism. The Lord Jesus as Son of God may be present and may raise a Lazarus from the dead, may do His many mighty works, yet it may make no difference at all if there is not spiritual fellowship and harmony, if there is something wrong in the life which puts us at variance with Him, which antagonises us, or if there is something which we are not willing to let go, something about which we have been convicted, we are not ready to surrender up; some required change of attitude, but we stubbornly refuse to make that change. We know what we ought to do, the Lord has spoken to us, but pride, or prejudice and self-will, something about us, will not yield and then the presence of the Lord in all His glory and power will make no difference to us at all.

Many years afterwards the story will be written that while He was among them, doing His work, revealing His glory, they knew Him not and they were none the better for it. That is what John brings out in his whole gospel: the Lord's constant clash with the Jewish leaders caused by a state that was out of sympathy with His state. There was nothing in them which corresponded to what was in Him.

Coming back to Nathanael, Nathanael seems to have been a victim of a popular prejudice: "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" We do not know what the nature of the prejudice was. It may have been social. If it was, then indeed Nathanael was a victim, because he came from the same place. We will have reason to believe that Nathanael's prejudice was not a very thoroughly considered one; that he had not thrashed it out, and that is the nature of prejudice as a rule. People have not thrashed the thing out; they have taken something on. That is what Nathanael did. If he had only stopped to think for a moment he would have said: "I am from the same place, so I am as bad as any other." You see how superficial prejudice is, and yet how perverse it is.

It may have been social. It may have been political. It may have been historical in this sense, that those who knew the Scriptures knew that the Messiah, Jesus, would come from Bethlehem and not from Nazareth, and so they were unwilling to think that the Messiah could come from Nazareth. No, He must come from Bethlehem. Again, superficial. We now, with our full record, can see by Luke that He did come from Bethlehem and also from Nazareth. A little more investigation as to whether He really did originate in Nazareth would have put them right, but prejudice is always like that; it never takes the trouble to look into the matter. It is pre-judgment, something judged beforehand, before consideration. Or it may just have been a popular saying, a catch phrase: "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" A thoughtless saying which everybody reiterates.

Now, to do Nathanael justice we cannot say that he was very much worse morally from his prejudice. Whatever may have been the nature of it, the Lord Jesus said: "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!" (v.47); "Behold a Jacob - behold an Israel, in whom is no Jacob." The Lord Jesus saw something about him - that he was a good, honest, sincere man, but unfortunately an honest, sincere, good man or woman can sometimes take up a popular prejudice, be caught by something that is floating round, and take it on and say it thoughtlessly, carelessly, meaning no harm whatever, not because of animosity in their heart, but they just become the victim of something that is floating round.

The enemy has many of these things floating in the air which are infinitely perilous. It seems that Nathanael had just taken something on. Oh, but it constituted a threat, and we must always remember that these things always do constitute threats to do us untold harm unless we triumph over that. It was because Nathanael triumphed over his prejudice that he came to the opened heaven. And we have got to take even our superficial preferences or likes - take them in hand and deal with them, or else there may be no open heaven for us.

We have got seriously to take in hand in a practical way those things which we have not seriously thrashed out, which may be so flimsy in themselves, but which, nevertheless, may be the obstacles in our way to an opened heaven. And most of us in the course of our lives have had to, and do have to, revise our accepted ideas.

For some of us the great crises of our lives have just involved the getting on top of prejudice; that has been the breaking-point. God has faced us up with a prejudice and said: "Look here, this thing is in your mind; you cling to it, you act by it. Now face it, look into it, get to the root of it, find out whether it is justified or not." And when we have been perhaps through a good deal of humiliation, been brought down to the place of in a practical way testing out our prejudice, we have discovered there was no ground for it whatever, but it was like a padlock on the door to our enlargement of Life.

We speak what we do know. And we have from time to time to revise our mental stock, and our moral stock, and make changes of attitude and mind in order to get right through to God's clear, open way under an opened heaven. Yes, Nathanael was a good man, but he was unready and circumscribed by his prejudice and when he got rid of that along a practical line, everything opened out and he came to an opened heaven.

Beloved, it is a disaster to hold something for truth which is not truth. I am not sure that it is not a greater disaster when prejudice bars the way to the greatest realities in the universe. I leave you to weigh those against each other. But you see, here was the Son of God, here was the King of Israel, and more, and Nathanael's petty prejudice might have robbed him of all the content of that; and everything is worth investigating if that is the issue. Nathanael was in peril of losing the full meaning of the person of Christ because of his prejudice.

Now what is the thing to do? What did Nathanael do? I am so glad of the way that Philip dealt with him. Nathanael's instant reaction to Philip's word was: "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" Philip did not sit down and have an argument with Nathanael, did not try to argue him through to acceptance; he said: "Come and see." In other words: put it to the test, try it out along the experimental line, do something. And beloved, experience is the only cure for prejudice. Knowledge is the only satisfactory answer to such questions.

"Come and See"

He came and saw. His prejudice might have made him say all sorts of things short of acting: "I have heard this, and that, and it is on reliable ground. I have reason to believe that my informant is a trustworthy person of integrity and righteousness..." and so on. Thus he might have argued, and he would have gone on circumscribed, limited, within a compass much less than that which represented the will of God for him. Yes, a good man, nothing wrong with him morally, no real guile in him, living his life with God and yet limited, smaller than God would have. But he proved there was no guile in him by acting.

Beloved, it is never good enough for us to say: "Well, yes, I believe; I have no bad feelings" and so on. Prove it! In relation to all that the Lord wants you to do, it is not enough for you to say as Saul did in 1 Samuel chapter 15: "I have brought the best of the sheep. I have sacrificed most of the sheep, but I have kept back some." Remember: "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams" (v. 22). The Saul line of action is not good enough. He professed to Samuel that he had been obedient to the voice of the Lord, he would make-believe that he was wholly given to God, but there were those bleating sheep which gave him away and showed that he was not following through utterly.

The Lord does not want us just to say to Him on this matter and that matter: "Well, we want to be wholly for Him, to go all the way; we would never think of holding a thing back from Him". The Lord says: "Prove it; do it." That is the proof of the guilelessness, the proof of the honesty. That is bringing our profession to the Lord.

Well, it is a very simple, beautiful little story, but so full of those things which really cut right to the heart: "Come and see." He went and saw. And because he was willing to just lay aside his prejudice and not be any further influenced by it, but to test the thing out, to prove it, he came to his opened heaven.

The Lord may be saying things to us which bring us up against something which, in our hearts, is something we are not quite willing to let go; something we have cherished, something perhaps we have taken on, something that will threaten to get in the way of the enlargement of the Lord, and then we shall be put to the test as to whether we are really going right through with the Lord, or whether we are going to be held back by considerations which are not worthy of Him, and not worthy of so great a calling.

This little opening word is just given to seek to clear the way for the Lord. We are thinking that the Lord desires His people to live under the opened heaven; we know He does. And yet so few know the opened heaven and it is, in so many cases, because some thing, which in itself is such a petty thing in all when it is compared with the issue, some acceptance, some tradition, some fear, some false apprehension as to what it may cost, just holds back and gets in the way. And we do not get down to business with that thing and say, 'Look here, if it is true what is said here, well, I cannot afford to allow anything to get in the way of that, I can conceive of nothing great enough to hold me back from that. Whatever it may cost, whatever it may mean, I must face this thing seriously. If it means humiliation, if it means taking back of something, I must give the Lord a clear way and act upon that.' That is the way swiftly to an opened heaven.

If Nathanael's progress was a swift progress from the son of Joseph to the Son of God, from the earthly prejudice to the opened heaven, from ignorance of the Lord to a wonderful knowledge of Him, it was simply because, being caught in some thing which was calculated in itself to obstruct his way, he swept it aside and put things to the test and acted. That is the way. You can have nothing simpler than that.

Do you see how Nathanael's conduct is John's reflection upon the Jewish leaders of his day? It seems to me that John's contrasts through his gospel are all so marvellously chosen to show up the others. He gets a Samaritan woman, and she is certainly a rebuke to many others. He will get a Nicodemus, and he will select his Nicodemus and give you the story of Nicodemus in order to put him in such vivid contrast with the rest of his school. He will take Nathanael and he will show you by Nathanael that the whole nation might have come into the opened heaven if they had followed Nathanael's course, but they did not, because there was not that in them which was in the Lord Jesus. The corresponding thing was transparent honesty. That is a heavenly thing. That was in the Lord Jesus, that was in Nathanael, and there was a point of contact, and it made everything possible for Nathanael, and it gives the Lord Jesus an open way.

May the Lord show us the meaning of His Word for us as we enter into what will be marked by some challenges, I expect, a word which will be intended by the Lord to bring us more fully right into the opened heaven. But right at the threshold there should be nothing in us that would be unwilling to yield itself to the Lord.