New Focus - Eyes Fixed on Jesus

Happy New Year

Happy New Year

At this time of year we become incredibly self-focussed.

We sit down and we reflect on our lives and how we can make ourselves better.

How we can be fitter, more talented, less lazy, more well read, smarter, etc. etc.

And all of those things are fine and maybe even good. It’s good to want to be better than you currently are.

But so often in striving to become a better version of ourselves we spend all our time focusing on the outcomes rather than the motivations.

Or to use Christian language, instead of having a changed heart, we long for changed fruit.

You might remember from Luke 6 when Jesus said

Luke 6:44 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

Each tree is recognised by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thorn-bushes, or grapes from briers.

Luke 6:45 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.

Jesus says that if we want to act differently then we need to change our hearts. And with a changed heart will come a changed life. Changed speech (out of the mouth the heart speaks) changed actions. (The good man brings good out of the good stored in his heart).

So we’re going to spend the next 4 weeks in January thinking not about how we can be better people, better Christians by doing more good stuff. Rather, we’re going to spend the next four weeks thinking about how life lived with Jesus will radically transform you and will give you a new perspective, or a new take on life. And we’ll see that this deep change, this change of motivation, will lead to the change in behaviour many of us long for at the beginning of every year.

New Year, New You

How following Jesus gives you a new start and a new take on life.

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New Focus - Eyes fixed on Jesus - 2 Cor 4:16-18

New Motivation - Running the race of faith Hebrews 12:1-3

New Expectations - taking up our cross - Luke 9:21-26

New Purpose - do everything for the glory of God - 1 Peter 4:7-11

New Focus

Where we focus change changes what we see doesn’t it?

Take a look at these two pictures

A beautiful picture of some lovely green foliage with some annoying person in the front

A beautiful picture of a woman with a nice green backdrop

Two totally different pictures based on what was focused on.

Or did you see the paper plates that broke the internet?

Basically you look at these plates and they’ll all look upside down until you see one which is the right way up and then they’ll all flip.

Your focus completely changes how you see this picture and I’m told the internet hasn’t been this divided since it couldn’t decide if that dress was blue or gold.

What you focus on matters. And non one knew this better than the Apostle Paul who wrote those words we had read to us from 2 Cor this morning:

Paul’s Focus - 2 Cor 4:16-18

2 Corinthians 4:16–18 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

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 is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Context

Paul had it tough. He had worked hard with the church in Corinth. Leading them and helping them. And since he’s moved on to plant more churches in other places, these other people have turned up, calling themselves ‘super-apostles’ and they are leading the Christian’s away from the gospel Paul had preached.

So not only was his church under attack from these false ‘super apostles’, but also he was in a constant struggle with many other issues as well.

He writes in v8-9 of chapter 4 of 2 Corinthians

2 Corinthians 4:8–9 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.

Hard pressed, perplex, persecuted, abandoned and struck down.

And one would think that he would give up and go home. But of course those words of despair each had a partnering word of hope didn’t they:

hard pressed but not crushed

perplexed but not in despair

persecuted but not abandoned

struck down but not destroyed.

How is Paul so resilient in the face of such hardship?

Because of his Spiritual reality. Because of the fact that Jesus is working in their hearts and life, transforming them all the time to be more like Jesus.

That’s what he says in v16

2 Corinthians 4:16 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.

2 Corinthians 4:17 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

How is it possible that Paul can feel like this? That he can speak these words? In the face of great hardship he calls them light and momentary troubles? Why because he knows there is something going on eternally that is far more important.

His focus could very easily be on the pain in his body, the heartache over his church going astray, his many persecutions, his abandonment by people he loved and trusted deeply. And yet it is not. It is on what Jesus is doing in and through them.

2 Corinthians 4:18 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

He has his eyes fixed not on the suffering and pain in his life, but on the eternal glory of what God is doing now and forever.

So what’s all that got to do with us and living new lives in 2019? Well, the first step in living a new life in Christ is also changing focus from yourself, to Jesus.

Stop looking at you and start looking at Jesus.

This is the very first step all of us take when we become Christians.

Since the fall of Adam and Eve, which we read about in Genesis 3, humanity has become endlessly self-focussed. Self obsessed.

The sin of Adam was to take their focus off God and all the good things he had given them and instead focus on the one thing they couldn’t have.

Sin is not just about doing the wrong thing. It’s much deeper than that, it’s about living life self-focussed, or under the rule of self instead of God focussed or Gods rule. This self-rule, self-focus is at the heart of our society today. In a highly individualised society we all want to be able to do whatever we want whenever we want and we don’t want anyone to stop us.

Even our new years resolutions can be motivated by this can’t they. We want to be better selves so we can feel better about ourselves.

Well when we meet Jesus this whole way of living is turned upside down.

For Jesus comes and lives a life that is all about others. He lives a life completely under God’s rule. He says no to sin constantly and yes to God. His focus is on what God has called him to do, and not on what he wants. And though his life results in him being hung on a tree, dying the most shameful death you could die in the 1st century. Eternally he was defeating death and winning for himself and all who trust in him eternal glory with him.

If you want to live differently in 2019 then you need to stop making life all about you and start making it all about Jesus. You need to shift your focus.

Paul’s antidote for living an absolutely terrible life, humanly speaking, of having things constantly go against him, was to focus on Jesus. Perhaps 2018 was rough for you. When we focus on Jesus and allow him to work in us, these hardships don’t become easier, but our perspective changes. With Jesus at the centre of our lives we can begin to call these struggles, these heartbreaks, light and momentary troubles.

What power there is in fixing our eyes not on ourselves but on Jesus. And yet how hard for us to do this.

Take me for example. I live and breath church. I’m a professional Christian. And yet I can make my ministry and my job a self focussed career. I have to battle constantly with the temptation to think this church is all about making me look good. When I share stories about the amazing things God has done over the past 12 months in this place, even though I know for certain they have all being miraculous provisions of God, it’s easy to deep down start thinking that they have happened because of me. Just this week I had some good news about something amazing God had done in our church and as I shared it with some fellow ministers I caught myself sitting there hearing their encouragement and excitement thinking yes I am a good leader aren’t I. This is all about me. I do deserve their praise.

Sinful. Self focussed human being that I am. My heart is tempted to take credit for things that it has no claim to.

I know yours is too.

And the solution to not giving in to that temptation, or walking out of it when we do. Is to fix our eyes on Jesus. On all he has done for us. On the fact that his glory not only outweighs our sufferings as Paul says in 2 Cor 4:17, but also that sharing in his glory far outweighs anything we could achieve on our own.

Jesus is offering each one of us today a new start. He’s asking us to stop focussing on us. And start focusing on him. We you do that, when I do that, we gain a whole new perspective on life. We gain a God perspective. And that is truly transformative.