As a church intern, I saw something firsthand. A family had taken on a high niche child. I can’t remember if it was a foster adoption, something to that degree. The wife particularly had asked, maybe demanded a lot of help from others in the church. Several families had come together and brought meals. They arranged for extra care, and they really rallied together for the family. I was a part of this, too, as an intern. A while later, the family left the church because their complaint was the church wasn’t doing enough to help them. I know there were several ladies in the church who were sorely tested by this. It’s like, What do you mean? We’ve done so much for you. And even saying, I’ve given up so much of time and effort to help you. And they had. They had done a lot. I’m sure you’ve had this experience where maybe you’ve helped somebody and you haven’t done a whole lot. And they are so profuse with thanking you that you feel guilty because you really didn’t do much. And then there are times where you’ve really gone out of your way and You’ve effectively given them, as it were, a kidney with all that you’ve done.
And they’ve looked at you and, what, you’re going to keep the other one? And we’ve experienced that. What struck me from this was how someone could be so sure of what they saw, even if it was wrong. And we’ve seen this, how people who view circumstances and things around them, or even how they view God himself, the things in their life. That inner dialog of our hearts that can corrupt our vision. And we can allow the circumstances of our lives, our emotional upheavals, the temptations of the evil one, our own pride, and even our expectations to skew our sight. And with a corrupted horizon in front, people have walked out of marriages, they’ve walked out of families, walked out of friendships. They have listened to this internal narrative that can keep them from seeing what the Lord is actually doing around them. Well, the Lord comes and challenges that inner dialog, and you and I must allow him to reshape and correct our sight. In Ephesians 1, Paul is commending the faith of these Ephesians Christians. And notice that in his prayer for them, that as the Father would give them a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the Eyes of their hearts, enlightened.
And Paul recognizes that their growth as a Christian depends entirely on the living God who gives generously to his children. And he prays for them that they would have a spiritual insight to see what God has done on their behalf. Now, this certainly speaks of their conversion. The eyes of their heart have been enlightened in coming to faith in Christ, but it’s beyond that as well. When it speaks of the heart, it does so in the biblical way, not referring simply to our emotions, but the biblical understanding of the heart is at the center of who we are, that physical, spiritual, mental, it’s the whole of our inner life. And this new heart has been given. With it, a new sight is prayed for according to this spiritual transformation. Paul wants them to see the hope that they’ve been called to, the riches of the glorious inheritance, the immeasurable greatness of the power of God. He wants all of us to be a part of the life, the vision, as it were, of God’s people. It’s an amazing prayer that God would open the eyes of their hearts. It is entirely possible for believers to get stuck in what they see, to miss these glorious truths that the Lord has put into their lives.
My pastor friend Jeff Hamlin from Bozeman, from Trinity Church there, in a conversation he and I had, he made this statement. He said, Realize it or not, you live your life according to some narrative, some story that you’ve constructed about the world and your life. You don’t necessarily choose the one that’s true, just the one you like. And that happens so often. We create this narrative of our life that is convenient for us. But we can be so sure of it that we miss the new site that Jesus calls us to. How is that possible? Well, we’re going to look a bit at a very strong believer in the life of the Prophet Elijah, first Kings 19. Elijah was very sure of what he saw. Now, he was a prophet in the northern Kingdom of Israel. It’s during the reign of King Ahab. Israel had become two Kingdoms, and it had been so for about 50 years. This was the Northern Kingdom. There wasn’t a faithful king in the bunch, and Ahab was certainly near the bottom of the barrel. And Elijah is probably best known for this dramatic showdown on top of Mount Carmel.
He had prophesied there would be a drought for three years, and now it’s coming to an end, and he challenges the prophets of Baal or Baal, depending on how you want to say it, challenges them to this power encounter at the top. 450 prophets of Baal were there to offer to their God, and They were there to whoever would answer in fire, of course, was the God. They were praying all day long and nothing happened. Then Elijah steps forward. This offering to the Lord, and he has it doused with water three times. It was completely wet. And he goes forward to offer this to the Lord, and fire comes down, and everything is consumed. Elijah then pray, and the drought comes to an end in a dramatic rainstorm that follows. The great power of the Lord is on full display before the people. There’s no doubt of the legitimacy of the Lord their God and of the prophet who he called. The amazing highlight. And then we get chapter 19. After all this incredible of these events that took place, it said Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah. Now, she is the queen, she’s Ahab’s wife, and she’s wicked to the core.
And she said, May the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life as one of them by this time tomorrow. So she threatens Elijah. It says, he was afraid. He arose and he ran for his life, and he came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and he left his servant there. He ran from the northern kingdom to the southern kingdom. He’s a long way from danger now. And it goes on. Verse 4, it says, But he himself, when a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a tree, and he asked that he might die saying, ‘It is enough now. Oh, Lord, take my life, for I’m no better than my father’s. ‘ One writer says of this, he says, Elijah’s words reveal something much deeper deeper about him. His sense of hopelessness, of disillusion, despair, futility of any further effort. And then an angel provides for him. Elijah then travels for 40 days and 40 nights to Mount Sinai. Why did he go there? It’s in the mountain where God had revealed himself to Moses after the Exodus. Some scholars think that Elijah was there to renounce his calling as a prophet.
In a series of abandonments, Elijah first has abandoned his calling to his own kingdom. Then he goes to Judah. Not just Judah, he goes into the wilderness. Finally, to the desert, far to the south, He’s totally alone. And there, hiding in a cave, the Lord comes to him and he says, What are you doing here, Elijah? And when God asks a question in the Bible, it’s for the benefit of the one he’s asking. God has given Elijah this dramatic victory. He has provided miraculously for Elijah all through the drought. And yet here he is, some 250 miles away from where he started because of the threats of Queen Jezebel. And he answered, I’ve been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, for the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, throw down your altars, killed your prophets with the sword. I, even I, only am left, and they seek my life to take it away. Now, this is not entirely true, as the Lord is going to point out. There are some 7,000 faithful to the Lord still. But Elijah paints everything in very stark terms. He’s filled with self-confident assertions that are partial truths.
He allows these partial truths to deceive him. They support his own corrupted vision. He’s sure of what he sees. If you him in a modern setting, he’d be the guy at the bar, whining to the bartender about all of his hardships and everything he’s had to overcome and how difficult it was and all the expectations the Lord has put on him and how great the opposition was. Or maybe he would be on some talk show, some Oprah program, where he would talk about the difficulties of his life and how he’s really been a victim of circumstances, of all these hardships that he, as a prophet in the least evangelized city on the planet, had to deal with. And his story, no doubt, would elicit sympathy, familiar nods and, Oh, you’ve had it so bad. And maybe he would win some all-expense-paid weekend to a spa somewhere. He could get in touch with himself once more and relax. But how does his sight get changed? How can he be moved from the sureness of what he thinks he sees to the Lord, giving him new and fresh He’s stuck. He’s stuck in what he’s sure of.
Back to Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1. It calls on us to look out and away from ourselves towards God. A great marriage book, The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller. He has this really wonderful insight there, and I put it in your bulletin. And there he says this. He’s talking about relationships and marriage, but it’s true of many things. He said, One of the main factors that hides our own self-centeredness from us is our own history of mistreatment. When you begin to talk to wounded people, it’s not long before they begin talking about themselves. They’re so engrossed in their own pain and problems that they don’t realize what they look like to others. They’re not sensitive to the needs of others. They don’t pick up on the cues of those who are hurting, or if they do, they only do so in a self-serving way. Me. Now, if you are over a certain age, you’ve seen this in the lives of someone else. In fact, you probably, hearing that description, have already put a couple of names out. Truly, it is easy to see in others. But what about ourselves? If other people do this, then we do it, too.
If other people get stuck in a wrong way of seeing God and seeing the world around them, surely we do as well. That’s the thing we start with, is these things are common to all of us. There were very religious people in Jesus’ day that saw the great things that he was doing, and they actually attributed it to the devil. And Jesus said of this, he said, If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness? And he’s speaking metaphorically about our inner side, about our spiritual horizon. But don’t make the mistake of thinking this is just a warning to unbelievers, because believers do this, too. Think of Peter, who after confessing, You are the Christ, and Jesus tells him about what’s coming next, he corrects Jesus. If you’re in a spot where you’re correcting Jesus, you need to step back a little bit. That’s not a good place to be. Jesus rebuked him. What did he say? Get behind me, Satan. You’re not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.
His vision, what he saw was corrupted. It wasn’t what the Lord was proclaiming. Jesus rebukes him for it. We have to embrace God’s purposes to have a good eye. If we don’t see the purpose of God, we can look at something that God is doing and see evil in it. We can see darkness in it. Well, looking back then to Elijah. He’s there at Mount Sinai, and God says to him, Go out, stand on the mount before the Lord, and says, Behold, the Lord passed by in a great and strong wind, tore the mountain and broke it in pieces before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind. ‘ And after the wind, an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, and after the earthquake, a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire, the sound of a low whisper. Translations vary on that. Now, there’s a lot of wrong conclusions drawn from this passage. The idea is not that God just comes to us in a still small voice that we have to really try hard to hear. Like, what’s that God? We quiet everything out so we can really focus on God.
That’s not the point. The Lord has come to his people at times in a strong wind, in an earthquake, in a fire. But now he comes to Elijah in a way to get his attention. Again, no one’s quite sure of exactly how to interpret the words here. It’s the sound of silence, literally the voice of thin silence. Whatever it was, it was distinct. Elijah had witnessed the Lord coming in great fire on Mount Carmel. He knew of the wind and the Earth-shaking events that Moses had on this very mountain which he’s standing, where God had come in those ways. But the prophet who had repeatedly had the word of the Lord coming to him in power is now confronted by a strange silence, a presence in an absence, even as this prophet has been absent from his own calling. However it comes to him, it’s such that it says, Elijah heard it, wrapped his face in his cloak, and he went out and stood at the entrance of the cave, and behold, there came a voice to him and said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah? ‘ The second time God asked him this question, and the response from Elijah is identical to the first one.
But what’s surprising to us is the Lord seems rather unsympathetic to Elijah’s plight. There isn’t an assurance of help or understanding. Instead, he gives them a new commission. One writer puts it. He said, The address to the prophet who’s still licking his wounds is a massive imperative, a command. Go, go back to the conflict, go back to the trouble, go back to the risk. The text says, The Lord said to him, ‘Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus, ‘ which is far now to the north. And when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazel to be king over Syria. And then Jehu, you shall anoint to be king over Israel. And Elijah, you shall anoint to be the prophet in your place. See, Elijah is transformed not by the Lord attending to his bruised ego and crushed spirit, but by a new call to action. Elijah does not need to understand. He needs simply to receive. It’s God’s grace and kindness. He provides Elijah even in his flight from his responsibility and his calling. God provided for him. And now the Lord gives him fresh direction, a new mandate. Elijah may have decided to give up on God, but God had not given up on him.
In Paul’s prayer, he looks up and away from ourselves to what the Lord has done. He pray, Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that’s That’s not something we do. That’s something God has done. The Father would give them a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, God. That they would know or see the hope that he has called them, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, the imaginable greatness of his power towards those who believe, according to the working of his great might. Paul points us all to look to God, to look what God has done, how easy it is to get off track, to have our vision distorted and corrupted. I think back to that woman who was so disappointed in the efforts of so many. No doubt she was overwhelmed and exhausted by the challenges that she faced in definitely difficult circumstances. But to be able to step back and see what the Lord had done through others, Where she could have just said, Thank you, Lord, for the generosity of your people in the meals and the personal support, to war against her own sense of entitlement, which strips us of thanksgiving.
And then to begin to pray for others, to renounce the darkness of her own sight, to open and to hear and to be challenged, to have half-trues and distortions corrected, to see that she was not alone, that Jesus was before her in the lives of her people. And this requires humility for us to do this. And there’s something strange. We consider this account of Elijah when the Lord asked him, Where are you? He goes, Why are you here? And we would have loved to have seen Elijah go, Because I took my eyes off of you. And In my own strength and power, I was easily overwhelmed. Forgive me. That’s not what he did. But God didn’t give up on him. God brings him to a new place and a new understanding because God is good and kind. And when you think about that in your own life, or maybe think, How do I help someone who’s stuck? We’ve all been stuck We all know people who get stuck. What do we do? How do I help somebody here? Well, certainly there’s a gentle call to count and see God’s blessings, to help point people to what God has already done in their life, to see that.
Because we easily forget. We get this vision that locks in and we see only dark things in absolute terms. Nobody has ever done this, and I’ve been all by myself, and everybody else is gone, and I’m abandoned. And all the things you hear Elijah saying, we say the same things. To come beside somebody and to challenge that, to help them to take their eyes off of themselves and to look upward to the magnificence of what God has done, to see the beauty of the restoration of Jesus in their life. We can be so blind to the glory and the Majesty of Christ because of the circumstances around us we don’t like, because we are finding fault with the God of the universe, because he’s put us in places we don’t appreciate. And into the midst of this, he comes. He gives a new command, a new mandate. He doesn’t abandon his people. And part of that mandate is, again, look away from yourself. Find somebody pray for. Find somebody to come alongside. And not in that way of, Oh, you think you have it bad? Well, let me tell you. We’ve all done that to somebody, and somebody has done that to us, and nobody likes it.
But to be able to come and to hear of the difficulty and the sufferings of somebody else, and to genuinely pray for them, to enter into it and care for them. Why? Because that’s what God has done for us. We’ve had the eyes of our hearts enlightened. We have had him show us the inglorious inheritance of the saints, of his magnificent power, of his spirit of knowledge and understanding. God has done that for us. And so we are called then to continue to do that in those moments. To question when our thinking is distorted and thinking, I’ve seen this in other people. I wonder if I’m doing the same thing right now. Probably. And when you see it in someone else, how do I come into their life as a brother or sister to be able to help shift this focus? They’re not abandoning their calling. They’re not running away. They’re not leaving family and spouses and friends and everything else to the best that we can to come alongside and to help them, to lift them up to see. Lift them up away and to start interacting in the lives of other people. Because that’s what God has called us to do, to use the gifts that he has given to be a blessing to the body of Christ so that he would be glorified, that he would be lifted up.
That’s what it looks like to have a new sight in Christ. To be able to enter in to a newness of thinking, a transformation that takes place, the Holy spirit who dwells in us, calling us to that greater calling, that greater vocation, to be able to look past the circumstances around us, to the glory of the Kingdom that he is advancing. And God has not given up. He is right there in the midst of our own self-wallowing. He’s in the midst of our own self-illusions. And he is there calling us to his son. And brothers and sisters, if that is you or that is in the life of somebody else, to come beside them and to minister, as Paul is doing in this prayer, to minister the reality and the greatness and the vision of Jesus to them. To move them off the spot. That would be a great thing to see in the body of Christ. Pray with me. Father, as we come before you, we confess we need you to correct what we see. We need you to correct our hearts. They’re so easily tripped up. Father, we are so easily impangled by our sins and our circumstances.
And Lord, we would ask first that you would forgive us, for we have sinned against you, for we have sinned against your people. And Lord, that in that, that you would continue to restore us to a new sight, a new vision in Jesus. Father, help us to see what you are doing in, through, and around us according to your word. And Father, we pray that you would be pleased to use us for the purposes of your kingdom. Lord, that we would stand in those places that are difficult and hard because you are there before us, and that you would receive glory in the lives of your people. We pray and ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Please stand, blessed.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.