The Eyes of the Heart. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened. Ephesians 1:18

Transcription

1 The Eyes of the Heart I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened. Ephesians 1:18 Two men are seated across from each other in a dark room. Outside, a thunderstorm rages in the night, shaking the old house to its foundations. This is the first time the two have met, though they have been searching for each other most of their lives. One of them, a tall black man dressed in all black, carries the aura of a spiritual master. The younger, trying to conceal that he is frightened and uncertain, might become a disciple. It all depends on a decision. MORPHEUS: I imagine that right now you re feeling a bit like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole? NEO: You could say that. MORPHEUS: I can see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he s expecting to wake up. Ironically, this is not far from the truth. Do you believe in fate, Neo? NEO: No. MORPHEUS: Why? NEO: Because I don t like the idea that I m not in control of my life. MORPHEUS: I know exactly what you mean. Let me tell you why you re here. You re here because you know something. What you know, you can t explain. You feel it. You ve felt it your entire life. There s something wrong with the world. You don t know what it is but it s there. It s like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. Morpheus goes on to ask Neo about the Matrix, telling him that he has been blinded from the truth by the Matrix. Then Morpheus opens both palms. He is holding two capsules, one red, the other blue. He is offering Neo a chance to know the truth MORPHEUS: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill the story ends, you wake up in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Neo takes the red pill Lucy steps through the wardrobe Aladdin rubs the lamp Elisha prays that the eyes of his servant would be opened Peter, James and John follow Jesus up to the Mount of Transfiguration. And all of them discover there is far more going on here that meets the eye. The film, The Matrix (I m referring to the first one in the series only), could serve as a modern day parable. And the question Morpheus asks of Neo is one that could easily be asked today of us: Do you want to see? There is another man, an older man, a spiritual master. Life for him has also been full of adventure and battle and trial by fire. He, too, knows something that we do not. And he, too, is trying to help us see. He writes: Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what The Eyes of the Heart Ephesians 1:18 9/23/07 Page: 1 of 6

2 is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4: Wow, check that first line out! Seriously, somebody knows how not to lose heart? I m all over that I am all ears. Because you see, we are all losing heart. Sometimes we can tell it. Sometimes it sneaks up on us but we all start to question reasons, motives and the very substance of our lives. The image of God, over the years just seems to start to fade. We once lived with passion and energy. But it slowly turns into SSDD. But this man claims to know a way out. Does his life have the credentials to show he knows what he s talking about? I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. 2 Corinthians 11:23-27 His life has been hard. It has been war. Somebody has been trying to shut him up or shut him down for years. He knows something. He has the secret. So, how, Paul how? How do we not lose heart? So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. 2 Corinthians 4:18 Oh great! Mix a little mysticism with dripping spirituality. Life is an illusion. Look at what you can t see. Thanks for that. Or is there more here than meets the eye? He also said: I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened. Ephesians 1:18 Maybe we really don t see. A sower went out to sow some seed A man fell into the hands of robbers Suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one There were ten virgins Think about it for a minute. Imagine you re the Son of God and you have come to rescue the human race. It s your job to communicate truths truths that people will be lost forever without. Would you do it this way? Stories? What s up with all the stories? Maybe they are what we need. We are children of the Internet...cell phones satellites CNN and the Weather Channel. We think we are enlightened. Sgt. Joe Friday (there s an oldie for ya) said: Just the facts And that s us. What s the bottom line? The facts that s what we need. And, truthfully, facts are helpful. Denver is the largest city in Colorado. Water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. 2+2=4. But facts fail when it comes to the weightier things in life. It is a fact that the Civil War was fought between 1861 and It s a fact that hundreds of thousands of men died in the Civil War. But those facts can hardly describe what happened at Bull Run, or Antietam, Cold Harbor, or Gettysburg. You don t begin to grasp the reality of the Civil War until you hear the stories. The Eyes of the Heart Ephesians 1:18 9/23/07 Page: 2 of 6

3 That s even truer with the Christian faith. God loves you! You matter to Him! CROSS. Those are the facts, and most of us have heard them many times. QUESTION: WHY, THEN, AREN T WE THE HAPPIEST PEOPLE ON EARTH? OR AT LEAST, THE MOST GROUNDED AND CONFIDENT PEOPLE ON EARTH? I believe it s because the message hasn t reached our hearts. Facts stay lodged in the mind. They don t speak at the level we need to hear. Stories speak to the heart, which is why, by the way, we have been telling them to each other since the beginning of time. It is our way of communicating timeless truths of passing them down. God has long used stories to communicate truth to us. In fact, I believe that even the great fictional stories, the ones of mythic proportion which stand the test of time, communicate truths to us the writers may not have even recognized, because in Jeremiah 31 God said he would write his law on the hearts of men. And, it is one reason why, when Jesus comes to town, He speaks with stories, to our hearts. Because stories help us to see with the eyes of our hearts. And all great stories, those of mythic proportion, nearly always speak to us: Three Eternal Truths. 1. Things are not what they seem. Dorothy wakes up and steps out of her old farmhouse into a strange new world the Land of Oz. How brilliant of the filmmakers to have waited for this moment to introduce color. It causes Dorothy to whisper a famous line: Toto I don t think we re in Kansas anymore. Alice falls through the rabbit hole into Wonderland. Neo is awakened from the death-sleep of the Matrix to discover it s not 1999 but 2199 and the world he thought he lived in was a massive deception. God uses stories also. Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the LORD Genesis 28:10-13 Jacob awakes, more awake than he s ever been in his life, and thanks to the dream, realizes for the first time that there is more going on around him than he ever imagined. Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it. Genesis 28:16. Isn t that the lesson of the Emmaus Road? Two followers of Christ are headed out of town after the Crucifixion. They are as dejected as a person can be. Their hopes have been shattered. They staked it all on Jesus, and now he was dead. Their hopes and dreams dashed, the slump towards home when a stranger joins them on the road. Question: who is the stranger? Jesus! But they don t know it yet. As the stranger talks, the two are surprised he doesn t know about the recent events in Jerusalem. They tell the stranger: but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. Luke 24:21 I have a few things in my life that I had hoped would be different how about you? So you get where they are in the story? Their hopes appeared lost. Remember how it ends? When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared The Eyes of the Heart Ephesians 1:18 9/23/07 Page: 3 of 6

4 from their sight. They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" Luke 24:30-32 Why do you suppose God gave us this story? It just might be to remind us that things aren t always as they seem. That s precisely what the Bible has warned us about. We live in two worlds one part we can see, and one part we can t see. There is more going on in our lives than meets the eye. 2. This is a world at war. Four kids stumble into Narnia, and find a world imprisoned under the spell of the White Witch. Frodo barely makes it out of the Shire with his life, and the ring of power only to discover the 9 Black Riders are already searching for the little hobbit with evil intent. Darth Vader and the Dark Lord just about have the universe under their evil power when a pair of droids fall into the hands of Luke Skywalker. The Scriptures have been trying to wake us up to a similar message. Wake up, O Sleeper be very careful, then, how you live because the days are evil. Ephesians 5:14-16 Christianity is not simply a religion about going to Sunday School, potluck dinners, youth car washes, and sending off our second hand clothes. Those are all good things. But there is much more. This is a world at war a war, as we spoke of last week for the hearts and souls of real people including ourselves. Sometimes the war rages in us Luther same time saint and sinner. It is always going on around us. And events in our lives have deeper meanings if we are open to looking for them. The story in Daniel 10 is a dramatic reminder of what I am saying. Daniel has been receiving troubling visions. In one instance, Daniel mourns, praying and fasting for 3 weeks. Something has happened he doesn t understand. He seeks an answer from God and nothing is forthcoming. If Daniel were like most of us, he would believe that either he is blowing, God is holding out on him, or some combination of the two. And he would be dead wrong. On the 21 st day of his fast, and angel shows up. The angel sort of apologizes and explains that God has dispatched him to answer Daniel s prayer 3 weeks ago. He goes on to explain that head had been locked in combat with a mighty fallen angel a demon of dreadful strength. And, that he finally had to get Michael, the great arch-angel, to help him break free so that He could get to Daniel. You should read the whole chapter. There it is eternal truth number two. We live in a far more dramatic, more dangerous story than we ever imagined. The reason we love The Chronicles of Narnia, Star Wars, The Matrix, the Lord of the Rings and other great stories is that they are telling us something about our lives that we never get on the evening news or from most pulpits. They grab our hearts because they echo something that is true: that we live in dangerous and meaningful times. Our hearts sense it in the theaters, but when we leave our lives boil down to fast food, bills, and s big deal. No wonder the Enemy works so hard to keep us from seeing this truth. Remember what Jesus said last week? The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10 Has it ever crossed your mind that the people who have tried to wake us up to this reality were usually The Eyes of the Heart Ephesians 1:18 9/23/07 Page: 4 of 6

5 killed for it? The prophets Jesus Stephen Paul Peter almost all the disciples etc. Did it ever occur to you that someone was trying to shut them up? Things are not what they seem. This is a world at war. And now, for the most stunning news of all. 3. We have a crucial role to play. We are only one generation away from the truth of the Gospel being lost to the world. Our role is crucial and if you and I are going to understand our days our reason for being we have to understand this. In the Matrix, Neo saw himself only as Thomas Anderson, a computer programmer for a large software corporation. As the drama heats up and the enemy hunts him down, he says to himself: This is insane. Why is this happening to me? What did I do? I m nobody. I didn t do anything. That s a dangerous conviction in the movie, and also for you. Frodo is, as the book states, the most unlikely person imaginable, to be the Ring Bearer. Dorothy, who brings down the wicked witch of the west, is just a farm girl from Kansas. Luke Skywalker just a kid on a remote farm. Where do these stories come from? They come from the truth of the Scripture. A man who has trouble speaking in front of others addresses Pharaoh and leads a nation. A young shepherd slays a giant. A loud-mouthed fisherman, who lives his life under the principle ready-fire-aim will lead the church. A whore with a golden heart and a jar of perfume well, this is what Jesus says of her: I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her." Mark 14:9 Not only are things not what they seem we are not what we seem! John Eldredge writes: Of all the Eternal Truths, this one is the hardest to believe. This is the one we doubt most of all. Our days are not extraordinary. They are filled with the mundane, with hassles mostly. And we? We are a dime a dozen. Nothing special really. Probably just a disappointment to God. Let me tell you something. You are not what you think you are. CROSS/ gives you value. There is a God-given glory to your life. You possess God-given talents that are specifically packaged by God for you. And God is calling you to step up into a new way of living to boldly go where you have not gone before. He is calling you into His mission for a world at war. He is calling you to sacrifice and service. There is a glory to your life that the enemy fears and the enemy is hell-bent on destroying that glory God gives you before you ever put it to work. I know this may sound unbelievable to you. It did to me at first. But remember what Paul warned: Wake up, O Sleeper be very careful, then, how you live because the days are evil. Ephesians 5:14-16 You matter! But I promise you the road will not always be easy. For God calls us to battle, in order that His light may shine even in our fractured lives. Look at what Paul writes: For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness, "made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 2 Corinthians 4:6-8 The Eyes of the Heart Ephesians 1:18 9/23/07 Page: 5 of 6

6 Even in the midst of your weaknesses, you are of value. In fact, it may be your weakness that first attracts people as they see God s strength go where you could not go on your own. In the theatrical trailer for the movie, The Fellowship of the Ring, scene after scene races before the eyes of the viewer as Gandalf describes the tale, and these lines cross the screen: Fate has chosen him. A Fellowship will protect him. Evil will hunt him. With some wording changes it could be said that this is the reality of everyday life into which Christianity is the door. If we could come to believe that about our lives, everything would change. We would be so much more able to understand the depth of the riches of God s love, mercy, and grace. We would see the richness of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and what it means for us. And I think we would better be able to interpret the events unfolding in our lives. I believe that we would also discover the tasks that God has truly wired us for in His Kingdom. And we would find the courage to walk boldly into the doors God opens for our service. But for that to happen, we must see that we have been deceived, and we need to ask ourselves a question: Where is my heart? We ll do that next week. For this week remember, things are not always as they seem. Ask God to open the eyes of your heart to see the meaning behind the things that take place in your lives. AMEN. The Eyes of the Heart Ephesians 1:18 9/23/07 Page: 6 of 6