Vision That Moves Us 1978

I'd like to read a few verses from Luke chapter 10, starting at verse 21. That entire 10th chapter of Luke is one that we could well soak up and just keep soaking up until it becomes part of us. Luke 10, 21 through 24.

In the same hour, he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babe. Yea, Father, for such was Thy gracious will.

All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. Then turning to his disciples, he said privately, Blessed are the eyes which see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings have desired to see what you see and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it.

What was it that they saw? Whatever it was that they saw is what brought about a total change in their lives. As far as people's relationship with God is concerned, you could say that there are two ways of moving them, motivating them. One is to make them conscious of how rotten they are inside, impress upon them their guilt to the place where they're almost, well, until they're totally overwhelmed with that guilt, and then demand action from them.

This will always bring results. People will enter their pockets, give you all their money. They'll work themselves to the bone to try to somehow relieve the pressure of guilt within them.

The only problem is that this kind of response only lasts so long. When people are trying to work off this guilt that they have and everybody has, they will ultimately either collapse with exhaustion or they will find a comfortable half-baked rut where they will have finally mastered the skill of just doing enough work for God to drain away the pressure from their moral abscess. And this is the kind of life that a vast number of believers live and the kind of life that you and I live all too much of the time.

The other way of moving people is to somehow enable them to see, give them a glimpse of how awesomely good God is. If somehow the goodness of God can be brought in to the very heart of a person, they will again be overwhelmed with that goodness, overwhelmed to the point where they will have to do something to show their gratitude for what God is and what He does. And again they will begin to do things, but now they will be motivated by thanksgiving and joy and praise and worship and love.

And when people are moved by such things, they never wear out. It boils down to two visions that move us. The first is the vision of our inner rottenness that moves us to try to somehow atone and make it right and keeps grinding us right down into hell.

The other is the vision of God's unspeakable goodness, which so gets hold of us once we see it that we just have to offer back to Him the best that we have. And if we're not giving Him the best that we have, this is an indication that we are really not seeing God's goodness. And this vision lifts us right up to heaven.

Now granted, a lot of people sometimes think that they are offering God thanksgiving and praise when in fact what they're trying to do is deal with this expanding poison in their hearts. For instance, the Pharisee. A lot of people think that they're, you know, giving God thanksgiving and praise like the Pharisee who goes up to the temple and he says, God, I thank Thee, and it looks like thanksgiving indeed, but what's he thanking God for? For God's goodness, His mercy, His kindness? No, he doesn't even see God.

God, I thank Thee that I am better than other men. I'm not an extortioner. I'm not unjust.

I'm not an adulterer. I'm not like this publican over here. I fast twice a week, give tithes of all that I possess.

And see, there's nothing wrong with fasting and there's nothing wrong with tithing or more as long as your eyes aren't on yourself when you're doing it. But because underneath all this talk, the man has his eyes on himself, the truth is that he has not been able to relieve the pressure of the guilt inside him. He's still fighting that, trying to do something about it.

And because of this, because he isn't getting his eyes off himself and seeing God, all his religious duties, all those good things that he is doing are actually bringing him not one inch beyond the curse of having to see nothing but himself. He never gets his eyes beyond himself to God. On the other hand, here's the publican who appears to be overwhelmed with the moral rottenness within him and yet sees beyond it.

He knows he's a mess, but he doesn't stop there. He comes up to the temple and he says, beating his breast, God be merciful to me, a sinner. But he sees God's mercy, looks for that mercy, receives it, and finds peace.

The difference between the scribes and Pharisees and all these religious people who knew their Bibles inside out and could win every argument and looked like they were exemplary citizens of Israel, on the one hand, and this motley crew of men and women following Jesus around, on the other hand, was that the men and women around Jesus messed up as their lives have been and may still be in some way. These men and women have had their eyes open and they begin to see how good God is. They see a God who heals the sick, opens the eyes of the blind, turns water into wine, fills our nets with fish, forgives our sins, wipes them away.

And when you begin to see such a God, what can you do but love Him? How can you hold the love back? How can you give such a God anything but your best? Your best! I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding, the religious experts. Reveal them to babes. Yea, Father, for such was Thy gracious will.

All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. Then turning to His disciples, He said to them privately, Blessed are the eyes which see what you see. For prophets and kings have desired to see what you see and haven't seen it, to hear what you hear and haven't heard it.

There's never been a time in this assembly, this fellowship, where there's been a greater need for laborers. On every level, people just have to have attention. Children to have somebody show them the way, teach them, love them, discipline them, show them.

Souls that just want somebody to come and reach down to them by the hand and lead them out of the morass. People to take care of the day-to-day duties that have to be taken care of if we're going to do anything at all. You know, people to provide transportation.

People to help keep this building looking like it was dedicated to the use of God. People to do some communicating, phone calling, people to do the adding and subtracting, all these things we've talked about. Now the shortcut to getting all the laborers we need is to stir up people's guilt.

Come on, you slouchers! Can't you see the need? Wake up! The only problem is when you do that, harnessing people to guilt, they aren't going to last very long. Nor will they in any way be able to bring comfort and life and hope to those people out there who are already bogged down under the weight of their guilt. How can I bring deliverance to somebody who's laboring under guilt if I'm doing the same? All I can say is, come up here, brother, and get on the treadmill with me and try to work off your guilt like I'm doing.

And that's what it amounts to very often. But if God should give us a revelation of Himself, open our eyes so that we can begin to see Him as these disciples saw Him, taste that goodness with our mouths and our bodies and our souls and spirits, then laborers will come up out of the dust of the earth and from our midst. And if we won't do the job, God will raise up 15 people in our place who will.

But it will come. Now, God is giving us such a vision of Himself. Notice how it was in the New Testament there.

How did these people, these men and women, begin to see God? They saw because Jesus opened their eyes. If He hadn't opened their eyes, they'd still be blind. If He hadn't opened their ears, they'd still be deaf.

No one knows who the Father is except the Son. Nobody knows who the Son is except the Father. And if you're going to know the Father, it's only because the Son reveals Him.

Now, the same Son who revealed the Father, the living God, what He's like to those men and women way back then is doing exactly the same thing among us. And He, if we only have the hearts to receive it, is giving us visions of things that prophets of old and kings longed to see and never saw while they were in this world of flesh and blood. The evidence that God is doing such work in our midst right now and in our personal lives is manifold.

Look at your own life. Look what's going on in your life right now and see if it is not true that God is, through His Son, Jesus, causing you to see the reality of the living God in certain areas more clearly than you've ever seen Him before. For instance, Jesus is making us, causing us, to see God at Calvary.

Now, Calvary is the following head of every vision of God that has ever been or ever will be. But it's not self-explanatory. Thousands of people saw Jesus hanging on that cross and saw nothing going on.

A martyr, a fool, dying. Millions of people have stood before paintings of the Crucifixion and art galleries all over the earth and saw nothing. I've seen nothing.

But when the Spirit of Jesus begins to move upon us, then we begin to see the connection between this ugliness in here, what we really are, this mess, and that death. And we see God tearing His own heart out, kneeling on that cross in order to wash away the guilt and literally set us free, and we experience that. We know it's true because it happens to us that we are set free from this mess.

Jesus is enabling us to see God by continuously sending into our lives these days the gift of the Holy Spirit. And the evidence that the Spirit is moving in our lives is again manifold. For instance, He's giving us utterance in prayer.

Now, of course, you're not going to have utterance in prayer if you don't get a part someplace to pray. But every one of us who's doing it, in any place at all, is finding utterance in prayer. Liberty to speak the name of Jesus.

Again, you don't get liberty to speak the name of Jesus if you don't open your mouth. Revelation straight from heaven coming down through the Holy Spirit. A spirit of praise and thanksgiving welling up among us.

Victory over weaknesses and hang-ups and compulsions that have made a mockery out of us all our lives is coming to us through the power of the Holy Spirit. Dozens and dozens here right now have been testified to that. Jesus is opening our eyes to see God by opening to us the Scriptures.

Enabling us to see God in the Scriptures. Then it says in Luke 24, Then He opened their understanding, their mind, their understanding, so that their minds could begin to grasp the Scriptures. Opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, literally He said.

Until He opens our mind to understand the Scriptures, the Scriptures are nothing but an assembly of fantastic tales and impossible rules. But when He opens our minds, we begin, in the midst of all that, to see the same God that David saw, Isaiah saw, Hannah saw, Mary, Magdalene saw, Peter and John and the rest of them saw. And then you go to the Bible, not to prove your point, not to put in your religious time, but to meet the living God.

Jesus is enabling us as never before. If we had the eyes to see, hearts to open there, enabling us to see God in our circumstances. Even if our circumstances are tragic, even if they're difficult, He's enabling us to see God in that.

You having a problem at home? He's trying to teach you something. I got a ticket on the way to church today, going around, making the rounds to pick up somebody for Sunday school. A policeman pulled me over, no mercy, 20 bucks.

Took me about a half an hour, maybe a little longer, and Sunday school, bing, the light came on as I was listening to one of the brothers say something. What God was telling me through that? And, you know, it was a lesson I needed to learn. I've been trying to learn for 50 years now.

May it stick this time. You're having problems on your job, crisis on the job. Again, no doubt God is leading you into something more.

You've had a disappointment. How many times the disappointment becomes the threshold to a new experience of God beyond anything you ever saw before? He's helping us to see God in our circumstances. Jesus is helping us to see God in our circumstances.

We've been inclined to see God in our brothers and sisters. Most of us have been inclined to see filth in our brothers and sisters, fault in our brothers and sisters, hypocrisy, oh my, what hypocrisy, in the church. God, I thank you that I am not as old as they are.

But now, we begin to look at the same brothers and sisters that we've been tearing apart in our hearts, and somehow he helps us to see where they were three months ago and look at them now, five years ago and look at them now. Look what God is doing in the midst of all their problems. Awesome, awesome.

Where did he get the power to change like that? Where did she find the patience that she has? Where did that wisdom come that's coming out of that mouth? That spirit of forgiveness, where does that come from? And now we have to look at our brothers and sisters and really tremble with awe at what God is doing in their lives. What an encouragement this is to us all. Jesus is enabling us to see God overcoming the power of Satan, the prince of this world.

On the surface it looks like the prince of this world is winning the battle. Everything is falling apart, things are getting worse and worse. True.

Then the Lord pulls back the veil and you see Satan fall as lightning from heaven. And you begin to see that beneath the surface, the demons themselves are losing their boldness. The battle has already been won and all that's left of Satan's kingdom really is a shell.

And that shell is already cracking under the weight of God's approaching glory. And finally, Jesus is enabling us to see God bringing history as we know it to an end. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death.

And you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. Wait a minute, I thought we were supposed to have prosperity. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another and many false prophets will arise and lead many astray because wickedness is multiplied.

Most men's love will grow cold. But he who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached.

Throughout all the world as a testimony for all nations and then the end will come. And everything that we have thought of as being solid and sure already as our eyes open, all these things are swaying like jelly, melting into water, going down the river toward the waterfall until there's nothing left but God himself. Then turning to the disciples, he said privately, blessed are the eyes which see what you see.

For I tell you that many prophets and kings have desired to see what you see and did not see it and to hear what you hear and did not hear it. It's still within our power to turn away from that vision of God he has given to all of us and go right on that mediocre rut that leads to hell if we choose. But if we receive the vision, there's strength enough in that vision to enable us to forsake our old self-centered ways and offer to him, the living God, the best that we have in thanksgiving and praise as laborers in his vineyard.

Let's pray. We're asking that now you will confirm the truth of whatever truly has been spoken. Father, we're asking that you would enable us to get our eyes off our attempts to justify ourselves, accept the fact that we need forgiveness, get our eyes on you, Lord God, and move out of ourselves into your very heart.

Enable us to leave behind us our mediocre half-baked ways and give you our best by your mercy, by your grace, by the power of your spirit, Heavenly Father, in Jesus' name. Amen.