GIVEN OUT OF HEAVEN
Andrew E Mutton
John 3: 27
We have been occupied already, brethren, with what is in heaven and Who is in heaven - a great and glorious matter. Everything that belongs to the heavenly realm (the extent of it as we have referred to) thrills your heart - to think that the knowledge of it is available to the Christian.
I would like to speak, with the Spirit’s help, about what comes out of heaven. This scripture is very clear: “A man can receive nothing unless it be given him out of heaven”. I think we can take the liberty of speaking of the fact that this refers to spiritual things. It also refers to temporal things, in a way, but I would like to apply it as referring to spiritual things, “A man can receive nothing unless it be given him out of heaven”.
By way of contrast, I think we are all very familiar with what is earthly. Things that we have, possessions, houses, cars, jobs, family, all of these things, they are earthly. I distinguish that from what is worldly; I am not talking about what is worldly; I am talking about what is earthly, things that belong to this earth. What is earthly will never enter into heaven. If what you have is only earthly, it cannot enter into heaven. I trust everyone here has the knowledge of Christ as their Saviour. That is a heavenly blessing, it is an essential heavenly blessing, and if you have that you will enter into heaven. But all of those earthly things that you or I fill our lives with, they cannot enter there. If you remember the parable of the rich man (Matt 19: 21), he could not set everything aside. Could you? If you had to speak of it in a percentage, and you could divide the things that you have between those that are earthly and those that are heavenly, which would be the greater? That is a test. You have to do things on this earth, you have to go to school, to college, to work, look after the home, to bring up the family, and all these kind of things, but they are earthly. What is heavenly, what comes out of heaven, is so much greater and you have nothing unless you have these things.
John the baptist knew this. He did not have very much that was earthly; he lived in the desert, he ate locusts and wild honey, quite frankly that is not something I would enjoy! He had set aside all those things, all the earthly things that could have been for his benefit and temporal blessing, because he had found Christ. He was here - the Lord Jesus says of him “there is not arisen among the born of women a greater than John the baptist”, Matt 11: 11. Yet John the baptist was found in the desert, with a garment of camel’s hair, having a very limited diet, and walking there apart from men. He did not value what was earthly; he valued what was heavenly; he valued what came from heaven.
We read here that he speaks of the Lord Jesus, and that is the first thing I would like to speak about, the One who came from heaven. He says, “He who comes out of heaven is above all”, v 31. We have spoken of the place that He has now in heaven, but this was before the Lord ascended, and John the baptist knew in his affections that the One who came after him, the One whose paths he had come to make straight, came out of heaven and He was above all. There is a slight repetition of what we spoke of earlier, but dear brother, dear sister, can you really, truly say, that the One who comes from above, is in your heart, in your affections, and dare I raise the challenge, in the whole of your life, that this One is above all? Not above just in priority, but He is of a different order. He comes from a place that is superior altogether. He now resides there, but He came out and was found here, as we said this morning, “in figure as a man” (Phil 2: 8); He was found here but He had come from heaven, and “He who comes from above is above all”. This is the One that John had learnt to love. He says, “Behold the Lamb of God” (John 1: 29) - I love those words in scripture, “Behold”, and elsewhere it says, “Lo”. Dear brother, dear sister, have a fresh look at Jesus, have a fresh look at the Man who is above all, the One whom God has exalted and the One who in this time in which we are now, brings out of that great divine treasury, things that are for your blessing and encouragement. John the baptist knew what it was. They ask about the Lord Jesus baptising, and that people are going to Him, and he speaks of his own joy in the fact that the Lord Jesus had come out of heaven, “the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices in heart because of the voice of the bridegroom: this my joy then is fulfilled”, v 29.
How many of these earthly things are your props? How many are there? If these things were stripped away one by one - and some have had these things taken away one by one - be it health, family, employment, whatever it might be, one by one these earthly things may be stripped away - but could you still say, that in your heart, “He who comes from above is above all”? Does it shake your faith as the exigencies of the testimony and the difficulties of life bear in? Does it make a difference to your appreciation of Jesus? Does it make a difference to your joy in the fact that you have a Saviour and a Lord, or a difference in the certainty of what He has done, and what He will yet do? Does it make a difference? These are testing things, and I share in them, but they are testing things that should not impinge on the place that Jesus has in your heart, because He sympathises, and He knows them. He is the One that is from above.
In Acts 9 we find two other things that are from above; Saul was travelling on the road to Damascus, and as he travelled along that road two things came out of heaven and he fell to the ground. Firstly, “and suddenly there shone round about him a light out of heaven”, Acts 9: 3. I wonder whether you have had that experience of a light out of heaven shining round about you. If you know Christ as Saviour you will have known that light, but was that the last time you knew the light out of heaven? The “light out of heaven” fills the heart, the mind, the soul; it causes the Christian to rejoice and it causes other things to fade and disappear. I like to think of this man as he lay on the ground, everything that was earthly disappeared. He lay there and the light shone round about him - did he see the road? No. Did he see in the distance the city where he was going? No. Did he see the people round about him? No. The light came and, simply, it put everything else in the shade. Everything else disappeared. Everything else that had been so important to him, his urgent journey, the place to which he was going, the letters he was carrying, all of those became irrelevant: “there shone round about him a light out of heaven”.
We can know that same light, because that light comes from the exalted Man. That light comes from Jesus Himself. Have you known what it is to have that light? You may say, ‘I do not really as I do not understand; I do not understand a lot of what is said; I do not understand much that it is in the scripture. I do know that I am saved, and thank God for that, but where can I get this light?’. This light comes from one Man alone; it comes from the Lord Jesus. This light shines towards the Christian. It shines towards a believer who is set for Christ in a world that wants to have nothing to do with Him. The light fills the heart, soul and mind of a believer so that he sees that things are of no value here on this earth. He sees and understands things now. You will know what I mean when I say that you have sometimes been sitting in a meeting and you heard something said, and suddenly you saw it. You see something of Jesus or of His glory; you see something of what God has in His heart for you that you never saw before; even when you heard the same scripture read. How many times have you sung the precious hymns that we have in the hymnbook, and maybe sung a particular hymn for the fiftieth, sixtieth, seventieth time; and one line jumps out? Then a brother gets up and refers to it in thanksgiving, and something in your heart responds to the light that is coming from heaven. You see something new, you see a different facet of what God has in His heart, and you see something that is shining towards men that could not be bought with any price from here in this world, because it comes from another world where Christ is exalted. This light is very precious.
We sometimes refer to our responsibility, and we use the expression when we talk about it that we have been ‘given a lot of light’ and - I speak for myself - I can perhaps appear to be a little disparaging, often saying as to other believers, ‘according to the light that they have’. I have stopped myself saying that now as I think it is a little patronising - that light is light from heaven. However little or however much you have got, it is a little of the real thing. It is light that shines from God Himself, the great source of everything in the universe and it shines towards you in Christ. If you understand today something that you did not understand before, that is because light has shone into your heart, into your mind, from heaven. Wonderful thing! That is not my doing, no one else’s doing in the room; it is a transaction between heaven, a divine Person, and you. It is very precious to have that light.
One other thing came from heaven as Saul lay there; there came a voice: I wonder if you have ever heard the voice of Jesus? We sometimes sing the hymn at the start of the gospel:
Come! - ‘tis Jesus gently calling
(Hymn 154).
When you came to know Jesus as your Saviour, how did you hear His voice? Do you remember how you heard His voice? I was interested in this because, as probably most here know, a couple of weeks ago Billy Graham, the famous preacher, died. He had been asked in an interview not long before he died whether he had ever heard the voice of Jesus, and he said, ‘Not as you mean it’; he said, ‘I have not heard an audible voice, but I have known His presence’. How has Jesus spoken to you? If you have answered to the call in the gospel, if you have opened up your heart to His ministry and to the great knowledge that comes as we enter in, as having the Spirit, to what God has for us, how have you heard His voice? He says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me”, John 10: 27. I should know His voice, I should recognise His voice; so should we all recognise the voice of Jesus:
Come! - ‘tis Jesus gently calling.
Does that stop when we have received Him as a Saviour? I do not think so. Jesus still speaks. He speaks to you, He speaks to me, He speaks to His people, nourishing and cherishing them, supporting, adorning the assembly, giving us everything that we need so that that vessel is built up now for that time when He will present her to Himself. Jesus speaks now. This voice came, and it came along with the light, “Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me?”, Acts 9: 4. Just in those few words, the voice of Jesus communicates so much. I wonder whether you have proved that in your testimonial life that the voice of Jesus communicates a lot. I have found it, not as much as I should, but you find it sometimes, and you say, ‘Perhaps it is coincidence’. I do not think that that is what happens in the things of God; I do not think that coincidence happens in divine things. Sometimes you find that things work out in a way that you never thought possible. Things come into the meeting when you are sat down, maybe on a weekday evening, having the reading, and you say, ‘That answers my question that I had two days ago’. Sometimes you just read the Day Dawn calendar, and think, I was just reading that in the Bible; and yet it has been there on the Day Dawn calendar since the day they printed it probably six or seven months ago. It is no coincidence! The voice of Jesus is present. You have the meeting for prophetic ministry and you find that the voice of Jesus comes just for the present moment, you find that a word comes just for you where you are - never mind the person next to you, who may receive something different from it, but it comes to you. You find that you are in a difficult place, perhaps at college, university, in school, or at home, you find that you are in a difficult fix; the voice of Jesus will come. Will He give you the answer you hope for? Maybe not always. But will He help you through it? He certainly will.
I remember a brother speaking to me when there was a particular test in my life; and I said I just want the confirmation of what to do and I am not getting it. Eighteen months later in the exercise I am still not getting it! The brother said, ‘He may not give you the direction before, but He will certainly give confirmation after’. Jesus speaks in His own time in the best way to bring about your development in the truth and in the testimony. If every time you had a need, if every time you had something that you wanted to know, and you turned straight away to Jesus and He gave you an answer five seconds later, how much would you really learn? How much would I be dependent? That is not how it works. Jesus may do that; the divine answer may come, and it may come very quickly. For Saul, the answer did not come straight away. After they had spoken the Lord says, “rise up and enter into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do”, v 6. No doubt Saul wanted to know right there and then, but that was not how it was to be, and so it is for us. All of those earthly things that he had relied on before were of no use. The voice and the light of a risen glorified Lord, the same voice and light which would bear upon you and me today in the testimony, were now directing this man who had been so opposed. We have been opposed to Jesus; we have been opposed in our lives; it may have been many years ago, but sometimes even now our wills are opposed. This man thought he should do much harm against the Christians who were here in Damascus, and they were afraid of him, but this light and this voice, again I say, the same light and voice that is still available from heaven, struck him down on that road and made him a Christian - one who is like Christ. He set him on his pathway to becoming one who Jesus could refer to as “an elect vessel to me”, v 15. This was the start of it; that the light and the voice of Jesus came directly upon him.
In Acts, one other thing helps us, and we have only referred to it in passing today, but I refer to it now - we find something else that comes out of heaven, a sound. It says, “And when the day of Pentecost was now accomplishing, they were all together in one place. And there came suddenly a sound out of heaven”, Acts 2: 1, 2. This was the great coming of the Holy Spirit, coming here to indwell believers and to adorn and to beautify the assembly for Christ, to gain and to make ready His bride, to bring about something that would answer to the heart of that blessed Man. Here was the great moment when that happened. This was a moment of power. The number of Christians who were there was quite small and they were to be persecuted and opposed by the authorities, by the religious powers and so on, but there came, “a sound out of heaven as of a violent impetuous blowing, and filled all the house where they were sitting”. It says in the note, ‘not ‘wind’, but they heard blowing, as of hard breathing … ‘Blast’ is too sudden and passing’ (note g). These things are important to get right because this was the great movement of a divine Person into this scene. It was the coming of the Holy Spirit, another Comforter, One who would help and guide us into all the truth, One who would lend His power, His strength, to our weakness, One who would guide us, who is able to look after the interests of Christ while He is absent. He has done so for these two thousand years of which we have spoken since the Lord Jesus ascended. He sat there “on the right hand of the greatness on high” (Heb 1: 3), and the Holy Spirit is here working in the hearts of men, women and children, to bring about this great answer for the heart of Christ. This great movement also came out of heaven; the sound was heard.
Here we have the three things: the light, the voice and the sound, the power coming out of heaven towards the believer. What resource you have to be here for Christ! What resource is available, direct from heaven itself for the Christian! Do you avail yourself of these things day by day? I know probably almost everyone in the room knows them to be truths, but what it is actually to grasp them for yourself, to know daily the voice of Jesus, to know light entering into your soul when you are surrounded by the darkness of everything that is around us here! It seems on every hand to get worse and worse, and I know - and I repeat again - those of you who are in schools and colleges and universities bear the brunt of what the enemy is doing at the present time. The enemy is making a real bid for those who are in these institutions, who are going through studying, because that is when your mind is at its keenest and your thoughts are being formed, but do not worry: you have the greatest resource that there can be in the whole of the world; you have the resource of a glorified Man and of the Holy Spirit here below. All this is bringing, not just encouragement, but bringing something that is substantial out of heaven to fill the heart of a believer with things that are eternal and will last, and last and last. All of those things that disappear when we are taken to be with the Lord, all the things that we shore ourselves up with will be as nothing, but these things that come directly out of heaven, these are the things that will last and are for your blessing.
All of these things bring about something which James refers to in his epistle: “Who is wise and understanding among you; let him shew out of a good conversation his works in meekness of wisdom; but if ye have bitter emulation and strife in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This is not the wisdom which comes down from above, but earthly, natural, devilish. For where emulation and strife are, there is disorder and every evil thing. But the wisdom from above first is pure, then peaceful, gentle, yielding, full of mercy and good fruits, unquestioning, unfeigned”, James 3: 13-17. “Wisdom which comes down from above”, I can say quite clearly that this is not how wisdom is perceived where I work, and I dare say where you work or where you study, that is not the case either. But in divine things this wisdom is available from heaven. “Wisdom from above first is pure”; that is important; it is not tainted with what I think, not tainted with my own thoughts, or the received wisdom of other men around me; it is from above, and it is pure. Then it is “peaceful, gentle, yielding, full of mercy and good fruits” - would you not like this kind of wisdom? Would you not like the light that comes from heaven, and the work and the power of the Holy Spirit to bring about this kind of wisdom in your heart, this kind of understanding? This yields fruits as well; it brings about activity and actions from the Christian that are in keeping with what proceeds in heaven. We are very concerned a lot of the time to be in keeping with what proceeds on the earth. I know that sometimes you are asked about what you think about something, and you say, ‘What does so and so think?’. “The wisdom from above first is pure … gentle, yielding”, it brings about a conviction in the heart that no persuasion or pushing from man’s wisdom can ever achieve. It brings about something that is solid, something that brings a peace. The Lord Jesus said when He came in amongst His own, “I leave peace with you”, John 14: 27. This wisdom brings about that character of peace. “Full of mercy and good fruits, unquestioning, unfeigned”; it is a wisdom that means you have God’s thoughts, God’s view of things, God’s understanding; all of these things. How wonderful that that is our portion here, even before we get to that eternal day, this is our portion. May we grasp it.
There are two other things, two other great events that are written of in the scripture, that are spoken of as coming out of heaven. One of them is a Man who will come again; He has come once from heaven, and He will come again. 1 Thessalonians 4 tells us about “the Lord himself, with an assembling shout” (v 16); He will come. Are you looking for that? Is that the culmination of all the things you are gathering up in your life here? Is that the focus, the anticipation that you have in your heart? It is going to happen. It is a future thing, but it could be so close, and He will come out of heaven. My whole exercise as to these occasions is that our eyes and our focus are turned upward to look on the Man in the glory. That is where the next movement from God’s side is going to come. Yes, there is work going on now and we are being built up and encouraged, the assembly is being adorned now, but the next great movement from God’s side is going to come from heaven. The Lord Jesus sits there at the right hand of God and He is waiting for the Father’s word. He does not know the time or the hour; it is in the Father’s hand, and the Father will give that word, and then the Lord Himself will come. How real is that to you? It should be as real every day, every day waiting for the Lord to come. I trust it is. As a Christian, I cannot wait to be in the presence of my Lord, to see Him and to meet Him in the clouds and to be like Him and to be with Him. I may have to learn patience to be here, but it is so close, we are on the cusp of it, on the cusp of being ushered into the realm where He is. He is seated there now and it is the Father’s desire and His desire that we should be there too.
One other thing that happened when He went there is that He prepared us a place. He told His own that, “I go to prepare you a place”, John 14: 2. There is a place waiting there for you and for me now in heaven. You might say it is empty at the moment, but it is waiting for you and it is waiting for me. I cannot wait to find my part in that place.
Then, the last thing I refer to is the fact that there will come, after that, a vessel out of heaven. At the end of Revelation, it speaks of that, “the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God”, chap 21: 10. What I would like to leave with the brethren as to this is that that will include you, and it will include me. We will come down as part of that great vessel, “coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God”. It is a wonderful thing. We have spent our whole lives here in what is insubstantial and what is passing, but there will come a moment when we will come out of heaven, with Him, for that great day of display. We will come out of heaven. It is something that we do not speak of too much, but I think God would have it to fill our hearts because it is a great part of what gives Him pleasure and it is a great part of our blessing and our inheritance.
May it fill our hearts! May we be encouraged by these things. For His Name’s sake.
London
17th March 2018