Northside Church - Sydney
Elemental – Week 4: Vision
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. Well, I don't know if you've had the same experience, but when you begin to go and do a bit of work and you go down a particular path and then at the last minute you suddenly realise that you've gone totally in the wrong direction. That's what happened with me this week when I was preparing this message. You see, we're talking about vision tonight and so I thought of course, you know, I need to get down to the self-help section in Curon and get myself down there and so I turned up there, asked for the attendant for directions to the self-help section and she said if I told you that, it would defeat the purpose. I didn't really happen, but I'm a bit confused because seriously I tried to research Christian vision and I tried to look at all these different principles and all these different titles came up that should have happened, you know, seven habits of highly effective Christians and putting the mean, the memorable and the power of activation and I'm wondering all these sorts of books should be there and all these principles should be right, like Stereus in the face, the ones about how five-step processes, all that sort of thing and then I realised, hang on, there doesn't seem to be much in there. Why is that? I think it's because we've got to be clear here guys, that the gospel is good news, not good advice and different religions can out good advice us, the secular world can out good advice us, corporations can out good advice us but they can't out good news us and that's what we see in the person of Jesus Christ here, it's why in this subtle little passage in Luke chapter 9 verse 51 it centres all around one little phrase that has stuck with me for years and years, Luke 9, 51, as a time approach for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem, King James translates that literally as Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem and he sent messages on ahead who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him but the people there did not welcome him because he was heading for Jerusalem when the disciples James and John saw this they asked Lord do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them? Such a disciple thing to do but Jesus turned and rebut them and they went to another village. These guys need to do a bit of growing up, that's what we talked about last week when we talked about growth, the way that growth is possible you can grow, growth is essential why because as Peter says in his letter you're silly, you're newborn babies, you need to grow up, that's the pattern of growth but what we're going to see tonight is we talked about this, it was talked about how I asked you the question, have you developed, maybe have you done it this week, have you developed a spiritual syllabus for your growth? I remember the syllabi at school the time particularly in year 12 when you're studying for your HSC and all the different things that you had to do to get the subject right and get the best possible marks, why for what reason? Three simple letters, U-A-I, universities admission index and years and years of schooling was focused to that one single point, that was the vision of that syllabus, it wasn't a spiritual syllabus, so the question is what sort of kingdom vision do we have to that one point, what does that look like, what is it, what we see from this passage here tonight is that kingdom vision, kingdom vision is unconventional, it's upside down, it's not how we expect to be, what do you say that, verse 51 literally says he said he's faced towards Jerusalem, the Jerusalem was more than just a place for Jesus, it was more than just a destination of his little ragtag band of disciples, he'd been hinting at something deeper right throughout his time with these guys and in verse 22 he says that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and the teachers of the law must be killed and again on the third day rise, you see Jerusalem let meant so much more, you see the focus of Jesus' vision was a place of death and that is totally unconventional, you don't see that in the self-help books, I mean can you imagine turning up to an Anthony Robbins seminar, getting that sort of self-help type advice that the secret to success is submission, you'd be going what I paid a thousand bucks for this, the gospel's good news, it's not good advice and Anthony Robbins could out good advice us Christians sometimes, now look I'm not saying that that sort of advice is a bad thing, I'm not saying that the Christian life is here that we beat ourselves into submission and we run around with grumpy faces on and say hey I'm going to my death, I'm not, nor am I saying you can't be successful as a Christian in a worldly sense, what I'm saying is that the God wants to exalt you, just not on your terms, God wants to exalt you but not on your terms, that's why in 1 Peter chapter 5 verse 6 he says humble yourselves therefore under God's mighty hand that he may lift you up into your time, Christian's life is not one that says or you're not going to go anyway, Christian life is not one that says you're not going to achieve anything, the Christian life is not one that says you won't be successful but you want to do it on your terms, that's a different story, he said he's faced towards Jerusalem, when we think of vision in our lives, look the question we've got to ask ourselves I'll talk to young people all the time, it's a story of my life we're constantly getting anxious, we're wondering about our direction, we're wondering what's my sense of purpose, I wonder where I'm going in life, I'm wondering what I'm doing, we're feeling the anxiety starting to rise and my question there is why, you see is your vision, is that a conventional vision or is it an unconventional vision, you see kingdom vision is unconventional even the disciples in this passage were still thinking conventionally because just before that they got into a big argument about who's going to be the greatest for Jesus, that's why he gets a little kid and says whoever becomes like one of these little children, they're the ones that are going to enter the kingdom, the ones that are humble themselves like this little child, they're still thinking conventionally and then of course they go into town, this is Jesus who remember he'd just been transfigured before he gets to this point, says that he's greater than Elijah in the transfiguration, they go in the guy that's even greater than Elijah gets rejected by the Samaritans, what shall we do, let's call down fire on him, let's smoke him, they're still thinking conventionally and Jesus says you want to think conventionally, if you think your vision is one to get your head by means of power, by means of prowess then you fail to realise that my vision is unconventional, it's totally upside down to the way the world would think because there's got to be a death humble yourself under God's mighty hand, why is it so difficult for us to do that, what we see that kingdom perspective is not only unconventional but it's differential, differential means it's dependent or it shows the difference, it manifests it's a difference, so it's not only upside down but it's dependent, the vision is dependent on the very difference that it has and so what I'm getting at is that every, when we look at things, every set of behaviour, every set of action in our lives, every human being operates within a vision of reality, we've all got our own little sets of glasses on even if you've got 20, 20 vision in the natural, we've got our own paradigm, our own perspective as Stephen Covey would say, we've got a set of glasses through which we view the world and the result of that is that our vision of reality affects our whole lives, what we determined to be reality affects our entire life, that's why Jesus in Matthew 622 he says this, he says the eyes, the lamp of the body, if your eyes are good your whole body will be full of light but if your eyes are bad then your whole body will be full of darkness, what's he going on about? He's saying what we let into the physical eye, what we see will eventually begin to affect our hearts and so Jesus saying what we fix the eye of our heart on determines everything else, feeling a bit anxious, feeling a bit worried, wondering about what your vision and purpose is, wondering what's going to happen next, where is the eye of your heart fixed on the world or on God? You see, Kingdom vision is not only unconventional, it's differential, it's different, it's totally different, East Stanley Jones says what gets your attention gets you, so the question is when it comes to the vision for your life what's getting your attention, what is it around you that's getting your attention, what is it that is occupying you, what are the steps, the processes, the track of your vision based on, is it based on a human vision or is it based on a kingdom vision, that Jesus says look you want to know what death to self looks like, watch this, verse 23 says come after me, he says, he says to them all if anyone wants to come after me then they must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me, forever wants to save their life or lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it, so what good is it for a person to gain the whole world and yet lose or forfeit their very self, now the word that Jesus uses there for life is not the everyday word that he would use by us, we've heard what that meant before, that was where we get the word biology from, it means the physical life, instead he uses the word psyche which refers to the self, the psychological life, the inner life, what he's saying is that your old way of having an identity, your old way of building an identity has got to get lost, literally, and he's saying through me you're going to have a whole new identity, a reconstructed identity, a whole new true self, now what he's not saying, he's not saying like on one hand like the eastern religions where the way to a new self, the highest state of being is that you totally lose yourself, you become at one with the creation and so there's no boundaries between you and where everything else ends and so it's just one, one big mush, nor is he saying the western approach to building your identity which is the cantiki approach, that's where 18 through to 25 year old, 30 year old if you've done in the latter stages of life goes over to Europe and they begin to search for themselves and you go and find yourself and you wrestle with the deep parts of you and you try and work out who you are and what you really want and what you really desire and you find that and you read the books and you want to fulfill that and cause a lot of problems because when I went on cantiki, I didn't quite go on cantiki but when I went to go and find myself in Europe then the things that I desired back then are radically different from what I design now and even then back then I had conflicting things that I had desired and so who knows which one is the right one and which one is the wrong one and which one should have supremacy in my life we just don't know, you see Jesus just seems to know us, Jesus says you'll never find yourself by trying to find yourself, you'll never find who you really are but trying to find who you really are. That's what he says to us here, that's the desalination approach, you see I know I've heard about the desal plant down at Cornell but there are other ways of doing desalination, you pump mega liters of this salty water under the salt pans and you allow it just to sit there and to sit there and to sit there and then it begins to eventually evaporate, all the water evaporates and all that is left is salt, you think that's silly, it's just left over, it's junk but actually that's what you're aiming for in the process of desalination, what he's saying is sometimes some things, the desired things are actually a byproduct of the process, that's what identity is, identity is a byproduct of the process of your relationship with God, what am I trying to say, I'm saying you can't inherit your spiritual identity unless you're willing to go through the salination process of simply sitting in the sun, yes I win, oh you got that, see Jesus saying the whole world can't give you a stable self, the whole world can't give you something rock solid, and if you try and get this identity by gaining things in the world and building your identity or anything in this world it's radically unstable and you could lose it and we've talked about this before, if you've built your identity on these things you don't know if you can ever keep them, you don't know if it's coming or it's going, you don't know if it's going to stay there and if it becomes an ultimate thing for you and it's taken away from you, you're not only going to be upset, you're going to want to die, Jesus is saying this stuff is it's shaky ground, instead he says if you lose yourself for me, in other words you're trying to gain things, if you're trying to gain self by gaining things and build everything your life, you're saying basis of not on your career, basis of not on your money, basis of not on your family, look if you do that and lose yourself for me finally you'll have a self that's stable, finally you'll have a self that's unshakable, finally you'll have a self that is true, finally you have a self that you don't need to go discovering, spiritual desalination, just put yourself out there and allow me to evaporate the things in your life and your identity that you don't need, people with a kingdom vision have discovered not only a new reality but a new identity and that's the paradox of the cross, you lose your life in order to gain one, that's what Jesus was saying and we, look our inherent question is well how would you know, that's what young people say these days, how would you know? We finally see the kingdom vision is essential, I got the chance to go out on the Great Barrier Reef when I was up in Hamilton Island, absolutely stunning and I got out there snorkeling in my stingersuit and put the flippers on and paddling over the wonderful reef and my brother-in-law got out on the reef and we were the first ones out there and it was a long boat ride and we got to the very end of the ropes where you did all the snorkeling and there was this old disgusting scary pontoon that was just floating in the water abandoned and it was like something out of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, like there was all sorts of marine life and guano, bird poo, all over it and it was just disgusting and I'm thought I'm going to get dive bombed, I'm going to get swooped, this ugly rotten disgusting pontoon and my brother-in-law then the sort of guy he is says let's go and swim underneath it and I thought I'm not going anywhere near that thing and before I knew it he disappeared under the water and he was gone for like three minutes, I thought he drowned, I thought there was no way I'm swimming underneath that old rickety thing and he comes out three minutes later pops up, his face is absolutely beaming, he said Sam you've got to see this, you've got to see this and I'm like I'm not going to do that, I'm not going down there Greg, this is crazy, he says just trust me and so I swam down underneath and I dove and I dove ten, fifteen metres and all the ruckus of the birds and the guano and all the other junk that was up there seem to just disappear and as I went underneath I went under the big ugly pylons of this pontoon up into this little pocket of air right in the middle and when I got in there we looked down with our snorkels, all the biggest fish, all the best fish, knew that all these little tourists were suckers and they would go on the rest of the road, all the best fish were just swimming around in circles and circles and this gorgeous blue light was shining up in our faces and were the only ones there, it was perfectly quiet, I discovered this entire new world, you see Jesus went to the cross, said his face towards Jerusalem was killed and then raised again, not so we don't have to but so we can join him there, one writer put it, we enter the depths of his divinity through the wounds of his humanity, you see at the cross Jesus shows us as unconventional as it is that this kingdom vision is a reality, that the difference between this world we see, that there is a difference between this world and the spiritual world that we can't see, that there is life after death, that there is a transition from Bios to Zoe from physical life to eternal life, at the cross Jesus says as scary as death feels, as scary as everything looks to you on the outside, you can trust me, I have been there and I have come back out the other side of life, the cross shows us, the cross shows us with Jesus Christ that this process of discipleship and following him it is not optional, in fact it is the pattern of this life that he calls us into when he said he is faced towards Jerusalem, Jesus says anyone that comes after you must, he says anyone that must come after me must follow me, what is he saying, if you want to come after you, if you want to come and experience me, if you want to come and have a relationship with me, if you want to come and do life with me then you have to be my disciple, there is not two types of Christians in the world, there is not the sort of Christian that just does church and then the really keen ones and we call them the disciples, he says what I have mapped out for you is the way that it is meant to be, if you want to discover this other world, there comes a point which you have to trust him and you have to die underneath the water, you have to move into that point where you do not know where you are going to be heading but you can trust him, you need to follow his pattern, you see kingdom vision is not only unconventional it is not only differential but it is essential, following the pattern of Jesus Christ is not just something that he does for the sake of it, he just goes to Jerusalem for the sake of it, Jesus will look at the order in which he says it, Jesus' order was I will go to the cross, so you will follow me, it does not say follow me and then I will go to the cross for you, what it means if you think the obedience and the commitment and the intensity of discipleship you are doing all that just to please him, he said I have already done it, you do not be a disciple in order to be saved in Christianity, you are a disciple because you want to understand what it means to be saved, does that make sense? The pattern is essential, so the question is what sort of vision are you creating for your life, are you always looking for the good advice, self help section, guys all I wanted to do tonight was to paint the picture that some of you might be like me in that scary water there and looking at the birds and the junk of life flying around you worried you are going to get dive bombed, you might get swooped and you have seen everyone else disappear and you think they are not coming up for air, what I want to say to you as a Christian is I have discovered there is another world underneath the water there, there is another world when you not just go through the waters of the Great Barrier Reef but when you go through the waters of baptism, there is another world and the only person that has ever found that, discovered that, come back from the other side is Jesus Christ, that is why his pattern is so essential, so what is the focal point of your spiritual syllabus, if you set your face towards Jerusalem, that is a death to self in order to gain your life, I know we have heard it all before but any Christian understands as they go through the process of maturity that it just gets harder and harder to humble yourself like that as you go further and further along, is your face set to the cross, spiritual syllabus the focal point, it is the UAI, the universal acceptance index, so what are you going to understand on the cross is that Jesus Christ went and he saw your fail and he said I will swap you for perfect marks, when it comes to a spiritual syllabus the question of which unique course is, well it is a no brainer, you have got perfect marks, the Christian life is not look just believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, it is in light of this, in light of the UAI, in light of the cross, in light of the fact that he has come back out under the water, in light of the fact that there is another world, in light of that reality, what sort of person to nine, do you want to become, that is a question, if you know now in light of that reality you can live forever, what sort of person would you like to become, that is the entry point into discipleship, you do not have to have it all together but that is the message of the cross, that is why it is good news, so much more than good advice, new reality, life after death, new vision, is that your vision, kingdom vision, let us pray, heavenly Father, it is moments like these in which we recognise Lord that the challenges of life, the ups and downs of life, just through our human safety, just have the ability to dominate everything that we see in doing this world, Father we pray to night through your Holy Spirit that we might be given new eyes, that you might reveal to each and every one of us through your Holy Spirit, the fresh eyes, fresh perspective, fresh insight into where you are at work in our lives right now Father God, but pray that over everyone here tonight Father, we might have fresh revelation of what you are calling us into through your Son Jesus Christ, Lord I pray for those that are sitting on the surface tonight, those who are afraid to get underneath the water, those that are just unsure if there is another world out there Father, may there be the opportunity for them to pray with us tonight, to ask your Son Jesus into their life and recognise that there is no other way other than his pattern and a death to self, but Lord I pray for this church, I pray for fresh kingdom vision in this place Lord God, vision that you will place on each and every one of our hearts, a vision Father God that will never be fully realised until we go through the process of doing church, when faithful and obedient servants of your Son Jesus Christ come together and share with one another the amazing thoughts and words and pictures, callings that you have placed on each of our lives only then and then Father God, like a jigsaw puzzle do we begin to see the bigger picture being revealed through your precious church. Father I pray that you protect that tonight, you might increase our influence for your name's sake in this community and around the world Lord God and that you birth in each and every one of us, a fresh vision with the way they are at work and the way that we can participate in your wonderful, your glorious, your eternal kingdom. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]