Hearing His Voice #159

[Jesus said,] “If you don’t believe me when I tell you about earthly things, how can you possibly believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”

John 3:12

Jesus has just taught Nicodemus about the necessity for everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, to be born again. It’s a divine truth about the spiritual life. Yet a few verses later, Jesus implies that this is an “earthly thing.” It’s basic revelation. Apparently, there are “heavenly things” that can stretch a human mind much further than this.

That means that one of the deepest truths in the Gospels is, according to Jesus, just the beginning of what He wants to reveal. He is conversant in the realities of both heaven and earth, yet He has to hold his tongue when talking of heavenly realities. Why? Because His hearers can’t handle the truth. Not yet. He later informs His followers that He has much more to tell them, but it’s more than they can bear (John 16:12). He has to measure out revelation a little bit at a time. Human beings can handle only so much.

God isn’t going to speak “new revelation” to us—at least not in the sense that cults and counterfeits have claimed in the past. The Bible is a complete revelation. But it isn’t the end of God’s speaking and guiding. He continues to give us deeper insights into His Word, greater glimpses of His glory, and hints of how ancient scriptural truths play out in our world today. He isn’t unveiling new doctrine, but He continues to unveil Himself in greater measure—a never-ending process for an eternal and infinite God. He never runs out of things to show us.

Will we grasp them? Only if we open our hearts to “heavenly things” that go beyond the “earthly things” that seemed heavenly to us when we first heard them. God’s words are always calling us out of our boxes and deeper, higher, further into His heart and His Kingdom. And only those who are willing to be stretched can hear them.

Stretch me, Holy Spirit. Reveal to me the things of heaven. Help me grasp the truths that blow other people’s minds.