The Blind Spot

Good morning and welcome to Living Faith Church. I am so excited to be able to worship Jesus Christ with you on this amazing Sunday. If we have never met before, my name is Aaron. My wife Stella and I are honored to be able to serve on the Pastoral team at LFC. Today we are starting a new teaching series based on the vision of this church, called The Gospel In Every Home. Now, I feel as if we cannot preach a message like this and not at least look at Jesus words in Mark 16:16.

Mark 16:15 NASB95

15 And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.

Now, here is a passage of Scripture that some of us are very familiar with. Now, as I read this passage, I can see in my minds eye a picture of how this little exhortation from Jesus went down. Jesus is with his disciples, maybe on a hillside; once in a a movie I saw that he was on a dirt road, and gave them the “go into all the world” speech. I can visualize this because, I grew up in the church, I’ve heard the “great commission” sermon all my life. However, I think we need to rethink this just a bit. Let’s re-visit this context.

Mark 1:1 tells us that this whole story begins with a few women, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, visiting the tomb where Jesus was laid. However, verse seven tells us that a young man met them there and gave them these instructions.

Mark 16:7 NASB95

7 “But go, tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you.’ ”

So, over the next several verses, seven to thirteen, the “Jesus is alive” message is being spread. And look at the response!

Mark 16:11 NASB95

11 When they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they refused to believe it.

Verse twelve gives us the bullet point version of Luke 24 and Jesus encounter on the road to Emmaus. And look at this in verse 13:

Mark 16:13 NASB95

13 They went away and reported it to the others, but they did not believe them either.

So, the two who met Jesus on the road to Emmaus spread their story, and no one believed them either.

Now, we pick up at verse fourteen, which sets the stage for the Great Commission talk, let’s read it.

Mark 16:14 (NASB95)

14 Afterward He appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at the table; and He reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen Him after He had risen.

Look at this- “and he reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen Him.” Let’s look a little bit deeper. So disbelief is why Jesus is with these men and women, let’s look at where Jesus is at. “…as they were reclining at the table…”. So, let’s get this story straight. Jesus find a group of 11 people, these would be His 11 disciples, the twelve minus Judas, they don’t believe that He is alive. They have heard the story, they know personally people who say He is alive, but they still don’t think it’s true. Let’s stop there, does anyone in this room have a co-worker, a neighbor, a classmate, or even a family member that fits this category? OK- Next! So Jesus, He doesn’t say, come to church, or let’s go to this conference, or listen to this podcast; No! My Bible, in Mark 16:14 says- “He appeared, as they were reclining at the table”. Jesus wen’t to their house. Now look six verses later:

Mark 16:20 (NASB95)

20 And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them, and confirmed the word by the signs that followed. And they promptly reported all these instructions to Peter and his companions. And after that, Jesus Himself sent out through them from east to west the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.

The Blind Spot

Now, don’t you hate it when someone can’t follow instructions? For years I told my kids, when you come in the front door, don’t scatter your clothing all over the house. Your coat goes in the coat closet, your shoes on the shoe rack in the garage, and your back pack goes in your room. Until the day they left for college, their coat shoes and backpack somehow didn’t make it into any of those places! How in the world do we miss the fact that for 2000 years Jesus has been telling us take the Gospel into peoples homes, yet, taking the gospel into the home is still the greatest hurdle we face. Can I tell you what I think? I think we have a blind spot.

Several years ago I was on a pastors retreat at Dunes Bible Camp on the Oregon Coast. It was a well needed break from the church planting grind. What most of these pastors did not know is that it was at this retreat that I would be announcing to these pastors that I had been doing life with now for 3 years that we would be merging our church and stepping down as pastors. I woke up the next morning to ponder, meditate and relax with Jesus and I looked out at the beautiful Oregon shore and decided to go for a run. I love running on the beach, especially when you can run barefoot through where the tide comes in and out. The feeling of the water on my feet is so good. I saw a little puddle of water ahead and rushed toward it with excitement. But what I didn’t know is that the puddle of water was actually a 2 foot deep whole! I came to a dead stop when I sunk up past my knees in the whole!

Author and teacher Lou Tice says this:

“We act and behave according to the truth, but only according to the truth as we believe it to be.”

In other words, we honestly believe we are right, we are just honestly wrong. We have a blind spot. Think about the word church. I have done this survey over a dozen times with groups, and individuals. When I ask people, what is the first thing that comes to your mind when I say church; most people say building, a sermon, youth group, or something similar. But the point is this, it all centers around an event, an organized experience of some sort run by hired professionals. Yet the early church, the one that was started by these early disciples to whom Jesus gave the great commission, this was not just an event, and experience, a building or performance. This was modeled after Jesus model, a model much more organic. It was “go where unbelieving people are and act like Jesus”. Which meant it included gatherings and scatterings.

Acts 20:20 (NASB95)

20 how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you publicly and from house to house,

In Acts three when the lame man was healed at the Gate Beautiful, Peter and John begin preaching near by at Solomons Porch. Solomon porch was the Eastern portico of Solomons Temple. It was a 20000 person capacity structure where Jesus and the early disciples did their gatherings.

So, the Bible gives us a gathering and scattering models for this thing called “the church”. And so over the next few weeks, I want us to look at the church from a different point of view. Today, I want us simply to talk about blind spots. Because truth be told, we all have them, and our church as an organization has one. Blind spots are hard to work with because of the nature of what they are. Blind spots are literally areas in your vision where real things exist, but you don’t know they exist.

When I was a kid I had a friend named Jesse. We would often stay at each others house on the weekends. I liked staying at his house because, well, I was always at my house. He moved around a fair bit, and for a little while he lived in an apartment with a swimming pool, right across the street from a Safeway. One Saturday morning we woke and found that this Safeway had samples. They had bacon samples, orange juice samples, it was basically breakfast for free! Now, I have this bad habit of always mentally being in the next moment. So, on our way home after having free breakfast, all I could think about was getting in the swimming pool. So, with bacon in my mouth, and OJ in my hand, I’m marching right out of that Safeway with one thing on my mind, “swimming”. Accept I came to a dead stop when I found myself in a head on encounter with a glass window. Jesse found the glass door, it opened for him, and he was in the parking lot. I found the pane of glass window located just to the right of the door and was stunned for a moment.

When I tell you that you act and behave according to the truth, but only according to the truth as you believe it to be, what I’m telling you is this- there is an area of your life where you have literally filtered truth out, you have filtered reality out. Located directly behind your cerebellum is a network of neurons called the Reticular Activating System, or RAS for short. The reticular activating system is a natural filtering device that allows only useful information into your awareness system. Likewise, it blocks out information that you decide is insignificant. Now, for some of you wives, I have just given you the answer to the age old question, why doesn’t my husband hear me when I talk. It’s because he has a RAS, and works really well!

See, the truth of the matter is, filtering out seemingly useless information is not something new, it’s as old as time. The Pharisees filtered Jesus out. Look at Matthew 12.

Matthew 12:22–24 NASB95

22 Then a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute was brought to Jesus, and He healed him, so that the mute man spoke and saw. 23 All the crowds were amazed, and were saying, “This man cannot be the Son of David, can he?” 24 But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul the ruler of the demons.”

How do you take someone like Jesus, who has just cast out a demon, and say that He is working on behalf of the demons? But the Pharisees were so concerned with the coming of the Messiah, that they couldn’t see - Jesus was the Messiah. So rather than becoming the object of their affection, He became the object of their rejection.

The Template

See, for most people, by the time they are 13, their world view is already set. This means that you have a template for life. This is why one person can be at peace on their death bed, and another terrified. For some believers, they know death is a graduation into heaven, but for many, it is their greatest fear. Same events, different template.

Let’s use your car as an example. If you drive, you know that your car has a blind spot. And this is partially intentional. The purpose of your car is to get you where you want to go. However, because it is traveling at high speeds, it needs to keep you safe while traveling. Just like your world view has been custom created for you by your education system, your parents, the media you allow into your mind. All custom designed to get you to a predestined life destination without derailing.

Do you remember learning to drive for the first time? Your were hyper aware of everything. I still think that being in the car with a new driver is terrifying, because they have not learned to filter things out and so they react unpredictably. I remember one of my kids was terrified of the oncoming semi-truck. had to remind them, the semi truck is in their lane, on the other side of the road, it wont hit you! And now, we get to work and don’t even remember the drive. Now, think about this. What if one of those cars you passed but didn’t even see was a drive by shooter? You wouldn’t have even know that shooter was there because you have learned to filter that information out. And while that is always a possibility, you will drive to work tomorrow and still not inspect every car for a gun because your learned template has taught you- drive by shooters don’t exist on the way to work. That is how templates work. You have been trained to filter out useless information so that you can focus on what is most important.

Both Jesus and the Pharisees believed in the Messiah, the anointed one. The difference was the template. For Jesus, the messiah was a servant who would lay down His life, come to seek and save the lost. For the Pharisees, the messiah was political figure that would establish a physical kingdom to overthrow Roman rule. So the Pharisees had a blind spot that filtered Jesus out because Jesus did not fit their template. Listen to me carefully:

What You Don’t See- Is The Very Thing You Need To See

What if the very information you have been considering as useless, is very information that will change the situation you are currently in? What if the voices you have been trying to silence, are voices that you need the most? Because this is what I know; I never see the whole picture.

In Acts 10 Peter gets a vision from God. In this vision there is a sheet coming down from heaven full of unclean animals, animals that the Mosaic law forbade the Jews to eat. But the voice from heaven echoed, “get up Peter, kill and eat”. When Peter responds to God and says “by no means, I have never eaten anything unclean…” God replies saying:

Acts 10:15 (NASB95)

15 Again a voice came to him a second time, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.”

And for the first time Peter realizes that when Jesus said “I came to fulfill the law…” this was a part of that.

It’s whats in the peripheral that determines the success of the journey.

For the Pharisees; Jesus was the peripheral. Jesus was a man who was getting in the way of their success and they just needed Him to go away, be filtered out.

What is in your peripheral? What have you been filtering out? What information is key to your change that you don’t want to listen to? It could be an addiction that you don’t want to deal with, a spending habit that you are ignoring, a habit you feel is harmless. Maybe you are filtering out things you need. Maybe it’s taking that day off to spend alone with your spouse and kids. Maybe you need to finish that remodel and do something special for yourself. Maybe you need stop stalling and start that business, take that promotion, ask that girl to marry you. Here is one, Maybe what you need is to get in community with other Christians. Sign up for a Life Group and start surrounding yourself with like minded Christians and build some healthy friendship.

This is what I know; you have a blind spot, but someone in your life sees it. Your template for life, the structure that you feel is “safe”, your world view - it’s incomplete, and probably making you blind to the information you need right now.

Proverbs 15:22 NASB95

22 Without consultation, plans are frustrated, But with many counselors they succeed.

Proverbs 11:14 NASB95

14 Where there is no guidance the people fall, But in abundance of counselors there is victory.

Salvation Call

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that for at least one person in this room, Jesus is in your peripheral. Today is the day for you to allow me to be your friend and show you that you need to see Jesus. You need to put Jesus in your focal lens. Jesus told His disciples in Mark 8 that sometimes we have eyes, but we don’t see.

Mark 8:18 NASB95

18 “Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember,

In other words, Jesus is telling these men and women, you have a blind spot. You have eyes in your head, but your heart is blind. This is why Paul wrote these words in the Ephesians 1.

Ephesians 1:18 NASB95

18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,

More facts won’t make Jesus real to you. The issue is not that Jesus has not revealed Himself, He already has in many ways. The issue is that we have not turned to Him.

2 Corinthians 3:16 NASB95

16 but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

Today, you can turn to Jesus by simply declaring by faith that He is Lord and believe that He is risen from the dead for you.

Romans 10:9 NASB95

9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;

In just a moment I am going to pray a prayer and ask you to repeat it after me. I am going to challenge you right now in this next step. If you have not accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, do it now; raise your hand so I know who I am praying for.

“Heavenly Father, I trust You to save me through Your Son, Jesus.  Forgive me for all of my sins.  Make me brand new.  Because You died for me, I want to live for You.  Fill me with Your Spirit, so I could follow You.  Jesus, You’re now my Lord and the Savior of my life.  Take my life.  It is Yours.  In Jesus’ name, I pray.”