Opening the Eyes of the Heart
PRELUDE Ushers will collect Prayer cards during the first hymn.
WELCOME
CALL TO WORSHIP
“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters. . . .
Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live” (Isa. 55:1, 3 NIV).
*HYMN OF PRAISE #128 “One Day”
*INVOCATION (the Lord’s Prayer) Lord God, holy and eternal, who dwells in the high and lofty places and in the places of the repentant and humble, we come before you seeking to be cleansed by the power of your grace that we may give you praise, both now and forevermore.
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
*GLORIA PATRI (Sung together) #575
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Amen.
PSALM of the DAY unison Psalm 47
1 Clap your hands, all you peoples; shout to God with loud songs of joy.
2 For the Lord, the Most High, is awesome, a great king over all the earth.
3 He subdued peoples under us, and nations under our feet.
4 He chose our heritage for us, the pride of Jacob whom he loves.
5 God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet.
6 Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises.
7 For God is the king of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm.
8 God is king over the nations; God sits on his holy throne.
9 The princes of the peoples gather as the people of the God of Abraham.
For the shields of the earth belong to God; he is highly exalted.
FAITH COMES BY HEARING
CHOIR
DEDICATION Ava Sardinha
SCRIPTURE READING Acts 1:1-11
1 In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning 2 until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. 3 After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. 4 While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” 9 When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. 11 They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
OFFERING TO GOD “Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in the Lord” (Ps. 4:5 KJV)
*DOXOLOGY (Sung together) #572
*PRAYER OF DEDICATION Dearest God, you who are Father of all, may we live as your children—brothers and sisters in Christ— so that your kindness will be natural in our hearts. Give us generous and cheerful spirits that our witness will be natural to the uttermost parts of the world.
*HYMN OF PRAYER INSERT
“Open the Eyes of my Heart, Lord”
Open Our Eyes
PASTORAL PRAYER “Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” Luke 6:28
As we worship together on the last Sunday of the Easter Season “In our walk to the cross and beyond, who will roll the stone away and show us the empty tomb? Only you, Lord, as you revealed yourself to three women early on that Resurrection morning. Only you, Lord, as you revealed yourself to hesitant and frightened disciples in the Upper Room and showed your wounded side. Only you, Lord, as you revealed yourself through the power of your Holy Spirit on that Pentecost morning and reveal yourself today through tongues of fire and through the gentlest of breeze, through revelation and revolution in hearts and souls. In our walk to the cross and beyond, who will roll the stone away? Only you, Lord. Only you. Show us the empty tomb, our Risen Messiah.—John Birch
*HYMN OF PRAISE # 200 “The Church’s One Foundation”
Scripture Reading Ephesians 1:15-23
15 I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. 17 I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, 18 so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. 20 God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. 22 And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
MESSAGE “Opening the Eyes of the Heart”
Let me set the stage for you as author John Eldredge does in his book “Waking the Dead.” 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. Flashes of lightning are dimmed by heavy curtains, which have been drawn because it is a secret meeting. This is the first time these men have ever met, though they have been searching for each other most of their lives. Not a moment too soon, their destinies have crossed. One of them, a tall black man dressed all in black, carries the aura of a spiritual master. The younger man, trying his best to conceal the fact that he is frightened and uncertain, might become his disciple. It all depends on a decision.
This situation, if you haven’t figured it out, comes from the movie “The Matrix”. In this scene, Morpheus is trying to convince Neo that there is much more to life than what meets his eye on an everyday basis. Now, he has come to a crossroads. Morpheus gives him a choice. He says, “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.” If you have seen the movie, you know that Neo chooses the red pill. He wants to see what he has been missing this entire time. Which pill would you choose?
Now, all of us here this morning can see. Some of us may need the aid of glasses and some of us do not see as well as we used to, but we can all still see the physical world around us with our eyes. However, what if I were to tell you that if we just look at the world through these eyes, we are settling for the blue pill? I want us to step out this morning in faith and take the red pill. Not to see how deep the rabbit hole goes, but to see how high, how wide, how deep is the love of God and all that He has planned for us. Let’s see through a completely different set of eyes this morning. Eyes that God has made available to us. This morning, I want to do some surgery to open the eyes of our heart. Let’s see what I am talking about by looking at Ephesians 1:17-19 as translated in The Message
But I do more than thank. I ask—ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory—to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for his followers, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him—endless energy, boundless strength![1]
This morning, I want us to allow the Holy Spirit to explain to us through the word of God what it means to open the eyes of our hearts.
What Does It Mean?
How many of you know the difference between book smarts and street smarts? Pete is an engineer of some sort. He went to Penn State and graduated with a near 4.0 grade point average. He then went on to get his Masters degree at MIT where he finished again with a near 4.0. He is a very smart kid.
Pete went on a mission trip to Peru. At the end of the trip, he and a friend took a trip to a marketplace which was the equivalent to a flea market. His friend had been to many flee markets and such, so he knew that every price is negotiable. One can also barter and haggle for the best deal possible, and this is the same whether done in the states or in Peru. As his friend went among the booths, he gazed upon a hand carved chess set that he wanted to purchase for his brother. It was beautiful. He asked for the price, and it came close to $85 American money. He had gone with a Peruvian native earlier in the week to work out a deal to buy some clothing, so he knew that they had a system to their pricing. The first price they give to gringos is always twice as high. They hope that you will pay that much not realizing how much money you are actually paying due to the exchange rate. Then, if you say no, they will give you a much better deal. They usually take half off the price so you think you are getting a steal. They are still making a killing off of you though if you pay this price. So, his friend haggled with this person knowing that he did not need to buy this set unless he got a great price. Finally, he said, “No Gracias,” and walked away. Instantly, the price feel to about $15 as the vendor chased him down. He ignored him. The price fell again. The friend ended up paying a little more than $12 for the set.
Now, as he got on the bus, he noticed that his friend Pete had bought a very similar chess set. Curious, he asked him how much he paid for it. He responded with the amount in Pesetas (the Peruvian currency). Doing the math quickly in his head, he said, “That’s like $75!” Pete said, “Yeah, but he originally wanted over a hundred for it. I thought I got a decent deal.” Then, Pete saw that his friends chess set, and asked, “Well, how much did you pay for yours?” As a friend he barely had the heart to tell him that he had paid $12 for the same set Pete had paid $75 for.
So, what was the difference here? Pete was an extremely smart kid when it comes to book learning, but his growing up in a wealthy suburb of Philly did not help him when it came to negotiating a good price at a flea market. The friend had done that since he was a kid, and had the experience earlier in the week of dealing with the people in a business deal. He had not learned this art from a book. He had learned it from actually experiencing the same type of thing earlier in his life. He had the “street smarts” so to speak.////
When God tells us to open the eyes of our hearts, he is basically saying that book smarts are only part of the equation when it comes to knowing Him. Paul, right after praying for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation to be given to the believers, adds that he hopes the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened as well. What does he mean by this? Well, how do most of us get our information about God? We learn about Him by reading in His Word. We learn about his attributes. We learn about his nature. We learn about his character. By reading God’s word, we can know a lot about God, but we cannot move beyond book smarts if we only get to know Him through His Word. We must also experience Him.
I want you to all pretend that you are single for a few minutes. Now, there are about 50 million websites in which you can go on to find a person to date. Let’s say you go on one of those sites and you find several people you are interested in because of what they have written in their profile. How many of you would immediately go and marry the person who had the best written profile? I don’t think any of us would. We still need to spend time with the person and get to know them before we can truly decide that we love them. The same is true with God. We can’t truly grow to love Him just by reading about Him in His Word. It should intrigue us to read about his miraculous and loving nature, but we can only fall in love with Him by starting a relationship with Him and having our own personal interaction with Him. That’s what we do when we open the eyes of our hearts. We move beyond seeing Him only through our physical eyes by reading and learning about Him through the Bible and we see Him for who He truly is – a loving God who wants a love relationship with us that moves beyond head knowledge.
Pastor J. David Hoke put it this way. “It is much like music, or a sunset, or a delicious dinner. You can represent these things logically and analytically if you so choose. A musical score, for instance, is the mathematical representation for music. A marvelous concerto or symphony can be represented by the notes on a page. Or you can represent music by means of an audioscope where you can analyze the varying wavelengths of sound. But this is not experiencing music. Looking at notes on a page doesn’t thrill you like being surrounded by a full orchestra soaring to the heights. Likewise, you can describe color mathematically. But you must see color to really know how orange looks. You can describe taste anatomically. You can describe the chemical reactions which occur when we bite into a lemon. But you will never experience the pungent sour taste of a lemon until you bite into one yourself. // We can describe God theologically. We can list His attributes, and describe His work in creation and redemption. But unless we experience God ourselves, we will never truly know Him. ‘Taste and see that the Lord is good,’ says Psalm 34:8.”
Basically, Paul is saying that we need to really experience the Lord’s presence. If you were hungry, would a picture of a thick and juicy steak satisfy you? Would the steak itself satisfy you if you never took a bite? No. If we want to satisfy our hunger, we must eat the steak if we truly want to know what it is like. So, if we are to hunger and thirst after God, it means we have to do more than just know about Him. We must open the eyes of our hearts to see and know Him more. What can we see when we do this? Let’s look to our Scripture for the answer.
What Can We See?
1. The hope to which he has called us. Have you ever become discouraged in your Christian walk? Have you questioned why you are even walking with God at times? Have you ever thought about giving up on God and going a different direction? I think that most of us have been there at some point or another in our lives. Why is that? It’s because the Christian life is tough. It is not an easy road all the time.
In Romans 5:2-5 we are given a great teaching. It states, “And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” Or as the Message clarifies for us: By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him, make us fit for him—we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that’s not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.
There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit![2], [3]
So, we all want hope in our lives don’t we? Hope is a wonderful thing. In fact, Paul puts it in the top three with faith and love - as the best things in the world. The problem is that we cannot just get hope. According to the Scripture, we must go through sufferings, perseverance, and character building until we can get hope. That can be a long road.
The problem when we go through trials and hard times is that we often only look at them with our physical eyes. And, when we do that, we cannot see past our current situation and the circumstances going on in our lives. But, what happens when we open the eyes of our heart? Like I stated earlier, opening the eyes of our heart is the equivalent of experiencing God in a personal relationship. When we see Him in this way, we know that we have a loving God on our side that is looking out for our good. We remember what the Scripture says about going through tough times in order to get hope. We have trust and love built up for God that allows us to accept His plan no matter what it is because we know that He truly loves us.
2. The riches of our glorious inheritance. Have you ever tried telling someone how wonderful a place is? It is almost impossible. I’ve seen so many pictures and movies about Hawaii and heard the stories of those who had been there before, but they are not the same as actually going there and seeing it firsthand.
The same is true of heaven. We will never know how glorious it is until we experience it ourselves. We will not get to do that until we die and go there though. However, when we live in the way that we are meant to by having a relationship with Jesus Christ, we can begin to get a glimpse of what heaven will be like. I often hear about the streets of gold and the mansions, but what is going to be the best part of heaven? It’s going to be the presence of God. So, if we open the eyes of our hearts and see Him in His glory here on earth, we are going to unlock a little bit of what God has promised us in the end. When we begin to see how great our inheritance is going to be, we will do two things. We will want to strive to please God all the more because we will want to do all we can to get there, and we will want to show everyone how great it is going to be.
When the church acts like the true church, it is like a little slice of heaven. We will experience true friendship and brotherhood. We will experience joy as never before by doing His work. We will get to know Him more and more everyday. And, in so doing, we will begin to see, through our spiritual eyes, the glory that is heaven. But, we have to open the eyes of our heart to truly experience it.
3. His incomparable great power. Do you have a lack of the power of God in your life? Why are we so weak in our faith and why don’t we see the miraculous wonders and signs like the disciples performed? God had promised that we could do even greater things once the Holy Spirit came. Timothy tells us that God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of love, power, and of self discipline. So, why are we so weak and timid? /// We are only using our regular eyes.
We put a lot of stock in our eyes. After all, if something happens that is out of the ordinary, our favorite phrase is, “I’ll believe it when I see it for myself.” For too long, we have gone without seeing God do the miraculous, so we begin to doubt that it can happen. Sure, we read about it happening, but we are a lot like Thomas. We want proof. We want to see it for ourselves before we truly believe. And, because we haven’t seen it happen, we begin to believe that it will never happen. We have to open up our other eyes.
As we spend intimate time with God, He will begin to reveal more and more about himself to us. We will be tuned in to His plan and we will begin to see where He is working and what He is doing. With our own eyes, we can only see what is in front of us and we have to guess where God is working. When we open the eyes of our hearts, He shows us where He is working and we can go there. And, where God is working, there are miracles and power. So, when we go there, we will experience these things as well. Our physical eyes cannot see God’s plan and God’s will. Only our spiritual eyes can do that. So, if we want to see His incomparable great power, we must spend time with Him so He can reveal to us where He is at work and we can go there with Him.
How Can We Take the Red Pill?
So, do you want to see more? Do you want the red pill or are you satisfied with the blue pill? Do you want to see more than what your physical eyes can see, or are you satisfied with the way things are? If you want more, you have to ask for it. When Paul talks about having the eyes of our heart enlightened, he is doing it in a prayer. He states, “I keep asking that God…the glorious Father, may give.” Only God can open these eyes. We can not do it on our own.
Think about Saul’s conversion. He was persecuting Christians, and then, on the road to Damascus, his physical sight was taken from him. But, after an encounter with the Lord, his physical sight was restored and he was given new, spiritual sight as well. So, if you want to see in a way far beyond what your eyes can see, you have to keep asking God for it until He grants it. And, in the meantime, you have to continue to get to know Him better. But, only part of this comes through reading the Word. The rest comes from you entering into a personal relationship with Him in which you experience God.
After taking the red pill, Neo turns to Morpheus and asks, “Why do my eyes hurt?” And, Morpheus responds, “It’s because you have never used them before.” Sadly, I think many of us are guilty of the same thing. We take in all of the sights with our physical eyes, and we neglect to use the eyes of the heart. And because of it, we are missing the bigger picture that God wants us to see. /// Alfred North Whitehead once commented that “A merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God’s earth.” We need more than intellectual understanding. We need to really see. We need to see the hope to which He has called us. We need to see the riches of our glorious inheritance. We need to see His incomparable great power. We need to step out in faith, take the red pill, and get to know God in a more intimate way than we ever have before. Will you do that this morning? Join me in prayer.
*HYMN OF RESPONSE #92 “I Know of a Name”
*SENDING FORTH
*POSTLUDE
----
[1]Peterson, Eugene H.: The Message : The Bible in Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs, Colo. : NavPress, 2002, S. Eph 1:17-19
[2]Peterson, Eugene H.: The Message : The Bible in Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs, Colo. : NavPress, 2002, S. Ro 5:3-5
[3]Peterson, Eugene H.: The Message : The Bible in Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs, Colo. : NavPress, 2002, S. Ro 5:1-3
