Ultimate Reality 1974

In that closer walk that we just sang about, all hinges on a vision of Jesus that's clear and real. I'd like to read a couple verses from Colossians chapter 1, starting at verse 15, which are a description of Jesus as he is. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

For in him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities. All things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. Each of our lives is shaped by that thing which we believe to be the ultimate reality.

Now, for most people, the ultimate reality, when it all comes down to it, is death. And although they keep trying to push the idea of death out of their minds, it hangs like a cloud over everything they do. Someday that blue sky will still be up there, but I won't be walking down the street.

My friends will still be getting together, but I won't be around. And every time we go to a funeral and see the body of a loved one or a friend lying in the coffin, we're looking at a preview of how it will be with us. Now, if death is our ultimate reality, in other words, if in spite of all the things we say we believe, we see nothing beyond death, then death shapes our lives.

And all we're doing is trying to get as many goodies as we can before death catches up with us. Or maybe we just get depressed and just sit around and wait. What's the use? I won't be around much longer anyway.

Or perhaps some physical pleasure becomes the ultimate reality for us. Then our memory, our thought, our imagination is shaped by that bottle or that needle or that bed or that pill or that dinner table. If money is the ultimate reality for me, then money shapes my life.

If the revolution is the thing, then I'm going to eat, sleep, and drink the revolution. And if Jesus Christ is the ultimate reality for me, then he's going to get a lot more than one hour a week or five hours a week. He's going to be my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night.

His words will be the foundation on which I build everything, music for my ears, my meat and drink. I will gladly do the things he tells me to do. Now either Jesus is the ultimate reality for us or he is nothing.

If Jesus is not the ultimate reality for us gathered here today, what are we doing here? This whole thing then is a waste of time. But is he? There may have been a time when he was for many of us. And what a difference it made.

Those shining days when Jesus was without any doubt preeminent for us. When he was first in our mind, above every thought, above every desire, Christ in us the hope of glory, filling us with the very fullness of God. At that time, you can remember how his word flowed from your lips, how prayers just rose to heaven, how the power of the Spirit just moved and confirmed the things you said and did.

But as time went on, it seems that this vision of Jesus began to fade. And you found yourself saying words that two or three months before were able to burn through iron doors. And now as we speak the word, we're not even sure we believe them.

But now we're caught, we're locked in. We're busy with work of the kingdom, probably busier than ever. People come to us with their needs.

And we find ourselves able to express very freely the doctrines of the faith. But in our hearts we know that that unshakable certainty which we once had is gone. The vision of him as the reality of our lives is missing.

And we say to ourselves, well, maybe that's the way it is. Maybe as time passes, it's supposed to be this way. Perhaps I'm more mature than I was before.

But you look at the apostle Paul. After years and years of following Jesus, his vision of his Lord gets more sure and more clear and more bright, more well-defined. It never grows stale.

His spiritual eye gets better and better. His body gets older. He goes through all kinds of changes and disappointments.

But the Christ that he met near Damascus so long ago is still his supreme joy. Fresh and new every day. For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.

I'm not afraid of death. I account all things as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord. Now when our apprehension of Jesus as the reality of our lives begins to grow dim, this is always an indication that something has happened in here.

He didn't grow dim. We say, Lord, what happened? Why did you let this happen to me? You were once so real and so close, and now I'm not even sure if you're there. What's the matter here, Lord? And even while we complain, in fact, even at this moment, right now, Jesus is the image of the invisible God.

All things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, are held together by him. He is preeminent. He is the head of the body of the church.

The fullness of the Godhead is pleased to dwell in him. Now if we have lost our grip on that fact, it's not because something has happened to him, but to us. He didn't fade.

We did. There are several things which cause us to lose our vision of Jesus as the ultimate reality. And the first is a cluttered mind.

Jesus talks about the thorns that spring up and begin to choke out the seed of God's word. And he describes them specifically as the cares and the riches and the pleasures of this life. And what do these things do but clutter our minds so that we can't think the things that really matter? He says it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

Why? Because the rich man's mind very rapidly is cluttered by all this treasure he's trying to hold on to and build up and preserve so that he can't think anymore the things that count. Now you say, well, I'm not rich. I don't have that problem.

What about Martha? Jesus had to rebuke Martha because she's upset about her kitchen chores. They're not getting done. Mary isn't helping me.

And Jesus says, your mind is cluttered. It's not worth it, Martha. And there are things for us that are all the time waiting to come right in and foul up our minds and clutter them if we let them.

And pretty soon, we're just going around in circles. Round and round we go. And we are no longer able to discern, to perceive the reality of the Son of God.

Next, a prejudiced mind loses its vision of Jesus as the ultimate reality. Can anything good come out of Nazareth, says Nathanael? And if Nathanael had stuck to his prejudice, as so many of us do, if he hadn't gone to check it out, he would never have met the Son of God. Jesus always has a way of being right on the other side of your favorite prejudice, and that's usually the one that you hide down in your heart so that nobody will know.

If you can't accept Baptists, Jesus is sure to be a Baptist. If you hate the black man, Jesus is for sure black. And if you can't trust any white man, then he's white.

And if you can't stand the suburbanites, Jesus is going to drive right up to your door, wherever you live, in a Lincoln Continental, fresh from the suburbs. And if you have a thing about revolutionaries, he's going to pop up at the May Day celebration in Patton Park. He's going to be Catholic, he's going to be Protestant, he's going to be Jewish, he's going to be Gentile, he's going to be short-haired, he's going to be long-haired, and you're going to lose your vision of him every time until you open the door of your narrow little mind and stop jumping to conclusions about people.

Next, an unforgiving heart, every time, will cause you to lose your vision of Jesus as the ultimate reality. Jesus starts out by saying, Take he to yourself, not the other guy, you. If your brother sins, rebuke him.

And if he says, I repent, forgive him. And if your brother sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times turns to you and says, I repent, you must forgive him for your own good. If you don't, if you insist on holding on to your grudge, then you lose the benefit of everything he won for you through his blood on that cross.

And there are people who were once burning lights in the army of the prince who are now nothing but shriveled, dried up, withered souls because they will not let go of their little grudge. A million times the Lord told them, let go of that thing, forgive that brother, forgive that sister, forgive that neighbor, but they wouldn't do it. And there are doubtless men and women in this place who are at this moment walking in shadows because you won't come out of those shadows.

You're too stubborn to come into the light and forgive your brother. An undisciplined body will cause you to lose your vision of Jesus as the Almighty. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be enslaved by anything.

Food is meant for the stomach, and the stomach for food, and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And if the body is not disciplined in the name of the Lord, it will eat its way, or drink its way, or smoke its way, or sexually indulge its way, or sleep its way, or tamper its way from God's clear light into a dense fog.

There is no such thing as a slob with vision. The sons and daughters of the Lord know that they have to pummel their bodies in order to keep their vision of the Lord. There are things that we have to say no to.

How in the world can we have spirits that are free if our bodies are enslaved to their desires? A vain imagination will cause us to lose our vision of Jesus as the ultimate reality. And how subtle this is, how quickly we can move from the place where we know that we are servants of God, and that's legitimate, to the place where we imagine that we are great servants of God, special servants of God, one of the few decent servants of God left. You know, it's not just the TV personality Christians, or the people on WBFG who have to worry about this.

Everybody has to worry about this. This is why Paul says, By the grace given to me, I say to every man among you, oh, but not me, Paul, I'm humble, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the grace, the measure of faith, which God has assigned to him. Now, how in the world can I maintain a vision of Jesus that's clear when I'm spending 90% of my time trying to build up an image of myself as the ultimate reality? May the Lord help us to see every day, every hour, how weak and how frail we are as we walk in the footsteps of his son.

And finally, the fear of man will cause us to lose our vision of Jesus very quickly. If I start to be afraid of what man is going to do to me, or how he's going to be able to mess up my great reputation, if I look around and try to figure out what people think of me, then man and his threat to my life and my reputation becomes the ultimate reality for me. And then all I'm going to do is run around, run around, trying to keep my image up, trying to keep those people from messing up my reputation.

And that's all I'll do. And how many of us are up to just that? How can you believe, says Jesus, who receive honor one of another and seek not the honor which comes from God only? And behind that search for honor from our brothers is fear of man. How can I have a vision of Jesus that's clear if I'm all the time checking the audience to see what I look like in their eyes? The safecracker was converted, and immediately he saw Jesus and what glory flooded his wretched life.

And then he was invited to speak at a church and give his testimony. And the people were impressed, and they gave him a hundred dollars. Pretty soon he's floating all over the country giving his testimony, the converted safecracker.

And as he does this, this man begins to experience a fear he never knew when he was cracking safes. Better he should go back to his old job. The fear of wondering how he's doing.

Worry about his Christian ratings. Anxiety about his career. He's a professional now, and he has to keep up his record and get ahead of it all the time.

May God preserve us, big people and little people, from the converted safecracker syndrome. From anxiety about being persecuted and from fear of suffering at men's hands. Now if we'll bring to the Lord today those things which we know very well are getting in the way of our vision.

And if we confess them to him, his spirit will come down, his blood will touch us today and set us free. And our eyes will open and we'll see him afresh and we'll be praising him before we leave this place. God will do that.

If we'll only want him to and ask him to and name those things before him. May Jesus right now set us free from these things that have blinded our vision. And enable us once again to see him as the image of the invisible God.

And may that vision that we have get brighter every day. Until our faith in Jesus is swallowed up in his blazing glory. Let's wait upon him right now.

Lord, we confess to you right now that so much of our professing of faith and so many of our praise the Lord's even and so many of the things that we do and say are riding on top of awfully thin ice. We confess to you, oh Lord, that there are many times that we're so confused and bewildered inside. And we're just asking that you'd help us as of this very moment, Lord, to pull out of our hearts those things that have blocked the flow of your spirit.

Enable us, Lord, to pull out that root of bitterness even if it goes down three miles. Get rid of it. Enable us, Lord, to be delivered from the fear of man and from vain imaginations and from these undisciplined bodies and these cluttered minds and these prejudices that we carry around and allow to poison our hearts day and night.

Wash us in your blood, Lord, afresh this day. Touch our eyes that they may see your glory and open our lips that they may truly praise your name. We ask it for your mercy's sake.

Amen.