EYES TO SEE

HE SAW FARTHER

“And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem.” Luke 9:51

Here is the consciousness which created His far-reaching vision. "It came to pass, when the days were well night come that He should be received up….," (Luke 9:51) He is coming down. He has just turned His back upon the mountain of transfiguration, and has set His face to the valley, and has immediately cast the devil out of a boy, and is still moving down to the valley of darkness. He is moving toward the day in which "He should be received up." Here the declaration is an incidental one, but in the Gospel of John we find how perpetually our Lord looked upon His mission in its entirety. "I came out from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go unto the Father." (John 16:27-28) He saw THE CROSS, but He saw THE RESURRECTION. He saw the TRAVAIL, and shrank from it, but He saw the TRIUMPH, and hastened to it, we run as Peter and all the rest. He saw the HOSTILITY in Jerusalem, the cruel, brutal hostility. He knew exactly what was awaiting Him, but He saw beyond the HOSTILITY to the CROWNING and the VICTORY, and the POSITION He was to occupy when He was received up. He was going down, but the descent was the preliminary to an ascent. The setting of His face toward the darkness was the lifting of His face toward the light, and although He set His face steadfastly toward Jerusalem, and the sorrow, and the shame, and the pain, and the dying, He set His face toward the victory, and the joy, and the triumph. To Him The Cross Was The Way Of Ascent To The Throne. To Him all the travail that waited for Him was the very process that made possible the triumph upon which His heart was set. From the glorious height of the Transfiguration Mount He had seen the mists as they lay along the valleys through which He must pass—the strange and chilly mists of death; but He had seen them from the height of glory, and they had been purple as the light shone upon them.

And He tells us to pick up our cross and follow. Do we shrink or do we follow. His vision knows what lies beyond the hard times. He knows following Him involves tough issues but He knows where and what follows after. We know not what we face but He does and He walks with us through the valley to the regal activity thereafter and the perfection we make known to the principalities and the powers in the ages to come (eternity) (Eph. 3:10). Only for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. To the rest this is foolishness.