John 8:56 Visionary or a bat?

Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.

John 8:56 NASB

Seeing

Abraham saw. He was looking for something. An answer. A solution. Living is incredibly hard work. People are dim in their eyes and do horrible things. There must be a remedy. He heard the stories of what happened in the garden, what mankind had then lost. He knew God promised something better. His heart was focused on that something. And through his life, God gave him lessons about the coming Christ. The story of Abraham’s promised son is filled with parallels with the coming messiah. The separation with his ancestors and the journey to a new land. The long, painful wait. The human effort of bringing about the promise outside of God (Hagar and Ishmael). And finally, when his promised son was born, God asked him to sacrifice him. And he did. The pain. The surrender. The love. The devotion. The obedience. Abraham saw Christ. The Spirit of God was his teacher and he had an object lesson in real life like few men have had.

But at his core, Abraham believed. God gave him a promise and he believed it — even though it was painful and seemed impossible because the advancing age of his and Sarah’s bodies. He trusted God, who tutored him in perseverance. And this faith allowed him to pull his future into the present. He was able to see a glimpse of the Christ in his son Isaac. Jesus would come, and Abraham knew after his experience with his son, that one day the promise would be fulfilled. He saw that day in his spirit.

Earthly ambition

Looking and hoping for that man who was to come was the hope of Israel and all who were Abraham’s children in heart. Now, contrast Abraham’s character with the Pharisees Jesus is speaking to.

Of all Jesus’ interactions with people, he was the harshest with the religious. In Matthew 23 Jesus denounces them, calling them “blind!” And later in John 9:39, 41 he says, “If you were blind, you would have no sin, but since you say, “we see” your sin remains.” The kingdom is light. God wants us to see and live in the light of His understanding, not in darkness. It is important to God that we see. And here, Jesus says, that’s exactly what Abraham was able to do. See ahead. See behind. Understand the times and the seasons.

How do I see?

It is not something for which I can grab my iPhone and snap a photo. It is seeing in the Spirit. We are able to see ahead because of the infilling of the Holy Spirit.

This is what Jesus told the disciples later in John,

That He will show you what is to come.

John 16:13

And Paul in his letters again talks about seeing ahead.

However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” — the things God has prepared for those who love him— these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.

1 Corinthians 2:9-10 NIV

I see in my spirit. Marvelous images, coming to light. Projected into my imagination. Touching the very core convictions of my heart. Often in my dreams. A little voice speaking directly into my person. His Spirit, longing for and enjoying fellowship with me… showing me what is to come. Every day the Spirit of God uses the circumstances of my life, the people coming and going, the flows both positive and negative, to give me lessons about what’s ahead. He’s constantly speaking.

The lesson for me from this verse is that I may look on the outside like I’m the the religiously trained, a leader among God’s people, the chosen of God in the world, yet miss the entire picture by my unwillingness to stop, look, and listen to the message in front of me this very moment.

“His kingdom come; His will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

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