Sustaining Vision 1978

From Revelation 21, starting at verse 2. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away. When we first taste the labor of the harvest and experience what it's like to move through that devastated battlefield and see these bodies all over the place, when we begin to experience what it's like to be able to see beneath the surface of people's apparently comfortable lives, to the actual anguish that's there, and to begin to hear their cries of their hearts coming up to us, and when we begin to taste the joy and the thrill of finding that it's actually within our power to raise these devastated bodies up again simply by giving them living water from the divine spring who is Jesus, it's so wonderful we can hardly believe it. It takes us back, that we should be able to have the privilege of seeing the word of God fulfilled in our own experience, in our own lives, and that this is not something some great evangelist is supposed to be doing, it's something that we find ourselves now involved in.

And everywhere we turn, we begin to see light. We hear the command as applying to us, the fulfilled promises of the Lord taking place before our very eyes. He who believes in me, the works that I do, shall he do also, and greater works than these will he do because I go to the Father.

And we see it happening on our jobs, in our neighborhoods, and among our relatives and friends. Now, if it could be that in about two weeks time of going through the battlefield, we could raise everybody up on their feet and then together march into the city of God, how simple and how wonderful it would be. But here's where the problem comes in.

Time passes, months stretch out into years and sometimes years into decades. And one day we wake up and realize that for all our effort here in the harvest field of raising people from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God, lifting them out of their death, for all that, we discover that we haven't even made a dent in the harvest field. And as far as the eye can see to the north and to the south, bodies are still stretched out there on the desert floor.

People who have been laboring with all kinds of enthusiasm begin to grow weary. The joy is drained from their faces. They start to snap at each other.

Opportunities are missed. Sometimes we walk right by people who desperately need us and we don't even see them. How long is this going to go on, you say? I would have thought that by this time, at least we would have arrived at the city of God.

I'm sorry, but I'm tired and I'm going over by that boulder and I'm going to lie down in the shade and I'm going to rest for a couple of days. Two weeks later, somebody walks by the boulder and sees your body lying there almost dead and realizes that if something doesn't happen very quickly, the vultures are going to be picking at your bones. They rush to the spring and come back with two flasks of water and pour them down your throat.

Here, my friend, drink. And as you begin to revive, you say, thank you, thank you, whatever happened to me, I can't understand what went wrong. Just then, your old companion from the wilderness of forgiveness appears and says, you lost your strength because you lost your vision all the time you're working.

Make sure that you continue to look at the city of God right there. That's where your home is. That's where your king is.

That's what you were made for. And you will only be able to continue your labor if you keep your eyes there. If we are, in fact, going to be able to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons and somehow freely give without expecting anything return in return and not wear out or grow weary.

We're going to have to continue to have a sharp vision, a clear vision if we fail to see the city of God, if we fail to stop from time to time and listen to the music that floats out from its towers, if we fail to breathe the atmosphere it sends forth to us, if we neglect to drink from that stream of living water that flows from beneath its gates, we will lose our strength and we will sink down into death. But precisely what does it mean for believers in the 20th century to continue to have a vision of the city of God? Three things are necessary. One, we have to have our eyes there.

Two, we have to make sure our treasure is there. And three, we have to make sure our name is there. First, if we're going to have a vision of the city of God that remains, we're going to have to fix our eyes there continuously.

From Daniel chapter six, then the presidents and the satraps sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom, for they could find no fault, but they could find no fault for complaint nor any fault because he was faithful and no error was found in him. Then these men said, we shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God. Then these presidents and satraps came to agreement to the king and said to him, O King Darius, live forever.

All the presidents of the kingdom, the prefects and the satraps and the counselors and the governors are agreed that the king should establish an ordinance and enforce an interdict that whoever makes a petition to any God or man for 30 days, except to you, O King, shall be cast into the den of lions. Now, O King, establish the interdict and sign the document so that it cannot be so that it cannot be changed according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, which cannot be revoked. Therefore, King Darius signed the document and the interdict.

When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem and he got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously. If there was ever a man who had reason to be discouraged. Under the pressure of problems and dangers and enemies and misunderstanding and ingratitude, it was Daniel.

The only way this man could survive was by being able to get away daily and look toward the city of God, which for him was Jerusalem. And even though he knew that now he was being watched and that this was endangering his very life, he continued to do it because what's my life worth if I can't do this? And so he climbs through his chamber to those windows that open out to the West and looking to a place far beyond where his eye could see hundreds of miles to the West to Jerusalem. He gets down on his knees and prays and gives thanks to his God.

And by this means he continues to keep his vision alive. And if you and I are going to keep our vision alive, the stronger the opposition, the more hassles we have, the more we experience the pressure of time, the more problems that crop up and the more ingratitude that throws itself against us, the more essential it is that we make ourselves look toward the city of God, our father, who are in heaven. Well, I thought God was everywhere, but heaven is the city of God.

Heaven is that destination toward which we move another dimension, a place where the things that we wait for will be fulfilled, not pie in the sky by and by because we taste it now. The reason we gather here week by week really is to be given by God a foretaste again of the city of God here, even with all the confusion and all the disruptions and all the strange things that happen here from week to week. God gives us a taste of heaven.

He gives us bread and wine, which is the banquet of the new kingdom, the body and blood of the Lamb of God, but also the foretaste of the coming glory. He pours out upon us the Holy Spirit, who is the atmosphere of heaven itself, and by this means we continue to keep our vision bright. God help us to do that.

Second, if we're going to continue to have a clear vision of the city of God, we have to make sure that our treasure is there. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Fear not, little flop. It is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom, sell your possessions and give on.

Provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Now, if you need transportation, there's nothing wrong with saving to buy a car, your roof leaks, save and get the thing fixed or put a new one on.

It's not sinful. Whatever it is that we need in the material realm like this, you'll have it, get it. But the problem is that we begin, if we're not very careful to get caught up in these things, if we're not very careful, the next thing that happens is that we get so bobbed down with the cares and the riches and the pleasures of this life that we lose our vision of the city of God.

Now, he says, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth. For many people, the treasures on earth have to do with money. OK, but it's not only and always money, it may be money or it may be something that money can buy.

But it's important for those of us who don't seem to have that problem to also understand that your treasure could be, for instance, your labor in the harvest field so that you're thinking of it no longer as God's work, but your work so that the most important thing in your life now is not God, but your work. For instance, if Messiah Church or Operation Mobilization or the catacombs or the Word of God community or any of these things become supreme in our lives, then we have laid up treasures for ourselves in this world and we have lost our vision of the city of God. And so for this reason, we have to constantly be on guard.

Another thing that happens to us is that we sometimes invent a new ambulance for the harvest field to go around and pick up these bodies so that now, instead of only being able to pick up 10 a day, I can pick up 100 a day with my new gospel ambulance. Then I'm worried about finances for my gospel ambulance. Then I'm troubled about the mechanical difficulties of my gospel ambulance and its brakes and its carburetor.

And I have again laid up treasures for myself in this world. So our Lord tells us to continuously trim down to make sure that we neither get too complicated or too comfortable. Fear not, little flock, it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Sell what you have and give alms, whatever you have to sell. Provide yourselves with bags that don't grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief breaks in and where maws do not destroy. For what your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

God help us to continuously make sure that our treasure is in the city of God and not here. And the third and final thing that is essential, if we're going to have any kind of continuous vision of the city of God, is that our names have to be hidden there. From revelation to him who conquers, I will give some of the hidden manna and I will give him a white stone with a new name written on the stone, which no one knows except him who receives it.

He who conquers shall be clad in white garments and I will not block his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my father and before his angels. Now, if our lives are hid with Christ in God, this particularly includes our names.

Our names do not belong, if we're born again and walking with Jesus in this world, they belong in the city of God. There is absolutely no way that I can go through this world, even the religious world, trying in one way or another to enhance my name and still keep my vision of the city of God. Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Wherefore, God is also highly exalted him and given him Jesus, a name which is above every name that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow. Of things on the earth and above the earth and under the earth, angels, men, demons, that at the name of Jesus, not unto us, Psalm 115, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name, give glory. And the tendency is, you see, for us to do the very opposite.

And our name then becomes such a cumbersome weight as we walk through the harvest field, seeking to lift people out of their bondage and out of their disease and out of their darkness and still look after our name. And when we do this, see, when we continue to drag our our little names through the harvest field, what happens is that instead of reviving these broken lives, we begin exploiting them in thousands of ways. You know, we point to people that we raised up.

It's almost as if we want to put labels on and tags on everybody that we think we were instrumental in saving or helping. The minute we catch ourselves letting our names get in the way, may God help us to immediately bury them again in the city of God and leave them there. And when people ask us who we are, we in our hearts at least need to know that in this world, we really, truly have no name.

We are the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord. Where there is no vision, the people perish. And strange as it may seem, the most critical phase of the journey for the city of God is when we get so close to it, we can almost touch it.

The harvest field where we're operating and living and moving and serving right under its very gates. Because there it becomes a great temptation to be so engrossed in our labors. Or so busy trying to protect ourselves from the dangers or so taken up with our own importance that we lose our vision.

May God help us never to let a single day go by without renewing our vision by fixing with an act of will, our eyes upon the city of God, putting our treasure there, making sure our name is hidden there. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling of God is with men.

He will dwell with them and they shall be his people and God himself will be with them. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be any mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away.

When we make ourselves remember. Who it is who waits for us there and has prepared a place for us there and is soon coming for us from there, we will renew our strength in the midst of our labors. We will mount up on wings as the eagles.

We will walk and not be weary, will run and never faint. Let's pray. Father, we just ask that you would help us in whatever way is needed in each of our individual lives to know how to run the race without getting tired.

To endure the long periods of of monotony, as well as the the crises that come along. Father, enable us to be faithful in season and out of season. Enable us to be able to minister to the ungrateful and never look for anything back.

Help us to keep our eyes where they need to be and find our joy, our hope, our expectation and everything we need. At your throne and in your spirit and in the face of your beloved son, our Lord Jesus. We ask it in his name.

Amen.