20/20 Vision (Week 2)
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Wednesday evening changes.
LifeGroup signups. SLIDE
Youth meeting after service.
Recap
Recap
Last week we kick off our new series for the year, 20/20 Vision. I gave brief Webster definitions for Vision before we began to look at what Scripture says about it.
One thing I want to clarify that often gets confused is Vision vs Mission. Organizations, businesses, and even churches get these two mixed up all the time. The vision is typically the bigger picture of what you hope to overall achieve. This doesn’t usually change.
For Chick-fil-A it might be to make the best chicken sandwich. Under Steve Jobs Apple’s vision statement was, “To make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind.” But they make phones and computers and watches and mp3 players. Amazon’s vision statement is, “Our vision is to be earth's most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” You know how much my family loves coffee, so Starbucks shares its vision statement as, “to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.”
These are large, bold, broad-stroke statements that can remain for quite some time. What ebbs and flows, however, is how you achieve these statements, how you reach these goals so to speak. That is where you mission comes into play. Mission statements are important because they help you strategize and plan on practical ways to reach your vision.
God’s vision for you won’t change, but how it gets accomplished may take different forms and variations depending on different seasons of your life and the choices and circumstances that accompany you.
I shared with you this verse that is often read or quoted when talking about vision.
18 Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law.
We discussed how the first antithetic clause in this proverb of having no prophetic vision applies not simply to the OT prophets because of what history tells about the seasons they arrived on the scene. We saw that the Holy Spirit is vital to us having 20/20 Vision and guided direction, guardrails along the way even, that keep us in our life’s lane.
What I didn’t mention last week that I love about this verse is how it ties the Law and the Prophets, the Word with the Spirit so to speak. In the same verse, we get the importance of both unction and command. It is not enough, IMO, to have only the Word without the Spirit to bring it to life in our lives. Having prophetic vision for your life will require the Holy Spirit making real the Word of God in your life. I am talking about revelation. I am taking about the Spirit of God bringing vision to your life in 2020.
Jesus said:
25 “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you.
26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
I hope you prayed with me this week Paul’s prayer in the first chapter of Ephesians (1:15-23).
Verse 17 says this:
17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.
Let me visit one more passage to show you how the Spirit is involved in the process of us knowing the Heavenly Vision for which God has for us.
6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.
7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.
8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
9 However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”— the things God has prepared for those who love him—
10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.
11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.
13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.
14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments,
16 for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
What has been hidden Jesus now wants you to live with purpose and vision in this New Year. He desires you to have 20/20 Vision of who He is and how He sees you as His son and daughter. He wants you to have the Spirit’s vision. So this week I want you to ask the Lord to give you revelation through His Spirit. Ask Him to give you through His Spirit of wisdom and revelation what it means to have vision for your life in 2020. Answer these with me this week:
What does it mean to have vision for your life in 2020?
What does it mean to have vision for your family in 2020?
What does it mean to have vision for our church family in 2020?
What does it mean to have vision for our city in 2020?
Our nation in 2020? For God to reach our world in 2020?
Let’s have 20/20 Vision!
TRANSITION
The next few weeks, I am going to unpack the vision we have as a church. It relates to each one of us one a personal level, a corporate level as a church, as well as a global level as the Body of Christ at large.
You have seen it, heard it, maybe even worn it.
ENCOUNTER | CONNECT | GROW
Today, we will discuss the importance of having a vision for encountering God. Encounters often leaving different. They leave us wanting more, creating a desire within us that can only be satisfied one way-meeting with the Lord again. Encounters, and not Close Encounters of any kind (Third or otherwise), can often leave us dumbfounded and overwhelmed.
STORY
I remember when I lived in LA, we were out celebrating my Australian friends birthday. We were eating at a restaurant right outside of UCLA campus, and as we were walking down the street we saw this incredibly nice car. That wasn’t that uncommon in LA. But this particular car looked familiar. I felt like I had seen it on some TV show before. It was a convertible with custom leather seats that included the Superman emblem. As we were gawking over the car, we looked up across the street from where it was parked and inside KINKO’S (yes, the copy place) there was this very large African-American man. He turned around, and we immediately recognized Shaquille O’Neil. He was massive. We waited till he finished his business in that store and got a group photo with him and his car. He was a giant towering over the rest of us. It was an encounter with a celebrity for sure.
TRANSITION
What about when we encounter God? How can we position ourselves to encounter Him? What can we expect as a result? Meaning, what are normal outcomes and responses to encountering the Lord?
These are all things that as we examine Scripture we can see not only the desire and regularity that it occurs, but what responses were common.
Let’s look together.
ADAM & EVE
:
From the very beginning we can see presidents set for God’s desire to have relationship with us. For me this is a primary purpose of encounters with Him. When we fellowship with God we a.) see Him for who He is, understanding His nature & character more fully b.) foster relationship & rightly relating to Him as He is.
8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”
10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”
11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
In this first occasion, we see God desires to commune and have fellowship with us. It must not have been the first time that Adam and Eve had experienced this because they recognized the sound. They knew what that noise meant, that it was the Lord God walking among them. They had fellowshipped with Him before but without shame or guilt.
vs. 8 “They heard the sound of the Lord God.”
EBC: The judgment scene opens with the “sound” (or “voice,” qôl) of the Lord. There is irony in the way this scene is depicted. The expression “the sound of the LORD God” (qôl yhwh ʾelōhîm) occurs elsewhere in the Pentateuch, especially in Deuteronomy (5:25; 8:20; 13:18; 15:5; 18:16; 26:14; 27:10; 28:1, 2, 15, 45, 62; 30:8, 10), where along with the verb “to hear/obey” and the preposition be (šāmaʿ beqôl yhwh ʾelōhîm) it expresses the Lord’s call for obedience: “You shall obey the voice of the LORD God.” It can hardly be without purpose that the author opens this curse scene with a subtle but painful reminder of the single requirement for obtaining God’s blessing: “obedience to the voice of the LORD God” (lišmōʿ ʾet-qôl yhwh ʾelōhênû; cf. v. 8).
The coming of the Lord to Mount Sinai is also foreshadowed in this scene of the Lord God’s coming to the first disobedient couple. In and 18:16 (cf. ), when the Lord came to Sinai, the people “heard the sound of the LORD our God” (lišmōʿ ʾet-qôl yhwh ʾelōhênû). The response of Adam in the garden is much the same as Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai. When they heard the sound of the Lord at Sinai, they were afraid “and stayed at a distance and said … ‘Do not have God speak to us or we will die’ ” (). When Adam and his wife hear the sound of the Lord in the garden, they also fear and attempt to hide.
8 The judgment scene opens with the “sound” (or “voice,” qôl) of the Lord. There is irony in the way this scene is depicted. The expression “the sound of the LORD God” (qôl yhwh ʾelōhîm) occurs elsewhere in the Pentateuch, especially in Deuteronomy (5:25; 8:20; 13:18; 15:5; 18:16; 26:14; 27:10; 28:1, 2, 15, 45, 62; 30:8, 10), where along with the verb “to hear/obey” and the preposition be (šāmaʿ beqôl yhwh ʾelōhîm) it expresses the Lord’s call for obedience: “You shall obey the voice of the LORD God.” It can hardly be without purpose that the author opens this curse scene with a subtle but painful reminder of the single requirement for obtaining God’s blessing: “obedience to the voice of the LORD God” (lišmōʿ ʾet-qôl yhwh ʾelōhênû; cf. v. 8).
The coming of the Lord to Mount Sinai is also foreshadowed in this scene of the Lord God’s coming to the first disobedient couple. In Deuteronomy 5:25 and 18:16 (cf. Ex 20:18–21), when the Lord came to Sinai, the people “heard the sound of the LORD our God” (lišmōʿ ʾet-qôl yhwh ʾelōhênû). The response of Adam in the garden is much the same as Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai. When they heard the sound of the Lord at Sinai, they were afraid “and stayed at a distance and said … ‘Do not have God speak to us or we will die’ ” (Ex 20:18–19). When Adam and his wife hear the sound of the Lord in the garden, they also fear and attempt to hide.
Encountering the Lord reveals His holiness and in contrast His otherness to us as fallen in our state of sin. He reveals Himself and a response is innately expected to seeing Him for who He is.
Let me jump to the encounter Isaiah would have with the Lord Most High.
ISAIAH
1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.
2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”
4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.
5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar.
7 And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
8 And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”
Isaiah 6:1-
Isaiah was a prophet who preached righteousness. He had called hypocrites to repentance. In Isaiah chapter one, he was calling the people of Israel back to a life of righteousness and following God. He names their sin and says:
18 “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.
In Isaiah chapter three, he predicts coming judgment for Judah and Jerusalem because of their blatant disobedience. In chapter five, Isaiah continues to preach what he had himself been living:
20 Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
So, when we get to chapter six, this wasn’t a man who was unaware of what the Lord’s voice sounded like and the obedience that He asked for in walking with Him rightly. But when He sees the Lord for who He is Isaiah see his contrast to God.
TRANSITION
In 2020, I want you to have a vision for meeting with the Lord. I want you to know you was God’s original design for you. I want you to know that when you meet with Him, you will see Him more fully, more clearly, and He is not like us. He is not one of us. The uncreated Creator is altogether separate; there is none like Him.
As you set aside to meet with God whether it is this morning at church, tomorrow before you head to work or school, and Thursday evening as you put on some worship music in your house and get out your journal and Bible. The Lord want to encounter you. As you set aside this time in your life you are going to find transformation taking place in your life, from glory to glory.
ABRAHAM
In Genesis chapter 12, we read about a 75 year old man named Abram whom the Lord appeared to and asked him to leave his land, his family, and his home to go to a land that God would show him. God had a plan to bless Abram so that he could bless others (literally the nations).
I’m not even sure if Abram knew who was speaking to Him, but he believed he was the One True God. He had a willingness to obey, and he followed in obedience to pack up and leave his family and go to a place he knew nothing about. He was rewarded for his obedient response of faith to God.
We learn that when God appeared to him, promises were made, covenants cut, and a response of faith rewarded.
JOSEPH
In , We learn from a young boy that there are times that God will reveal things to us that have both a proper SEASON and AUDIENCE with whom we should share. Prematurely sharing or casting pearls before swine can back-fire in ways unimaginable.
In the end, we learn that God’s sovereignty trumps the nastiest attempts of the enemy to tear apart God’s purposes for our lives.
MOSES
In , we learn from a man who was working for his father-in-law, keeping flocks in the wilderness. The passages says this:
2 And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.
3 And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.”
4 When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.”
5 Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
6 And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
Exodus 3:2-He turns aside to see a burning bush that isn’t consumed. God is a consuming fire in our life. Regardless if we encounter Him in a fire, His nature will operate similarly in our life.
He turns aside to see a burning bush that wasn’t consumed. The Scripture makes note that because Moses turned aside to see this great site the Lord saw and said. This portion always makes me wonder how many times the Lord had tried to appear to Moses, but he hadn’t turned aside? Or how many times had the Lord tried to appear to other individuals but they never noticed what God was doing around them.
This day was different, and we learn some things about the nature of God from this encounter. We that God is a consuming fire in our life. Regardless if we encounter Him in a fire, His nature will operate similarly in our life.
His fire will distinguish.
It will purify. (like GOLD)
SHORT STORY
The fire will also reveal, and in the fire we will receive our assignment.
Out this encounter, Moses received a call and a commission to lead God’s people out of slavery. He received an assignment to confront an evil empire and display God’s power and glory for all to see. From this encounter, Moses was equipped to make history.
PEOPLE OF ISRAEL
In Exodus chapter thirteen, we read that the people of Israel had there own sort of encounter with a God they didn’t want to fully know lest they have to change their ways. They were led out of slavery not the straight and narrow path but in a roundabout way through the wilderness towards the Red Sea. The Lord led them with a cloud by day and fire by night. He would supernatural guide them to freedom, and walk them across dry land miraculously. Only the Lord could do this, only He could get credit.
JESUS
PAUL
Last week, I mentioned Paul’s recount of his Damascus Road experience where He encountered the Lord. Paul told King Agrippa about his encounter with Jesus on that road. He encountered the one he was fighting against, and left that road with purpose, clarity and a restoration of true spiritual site even though his physical site was lacking.
PIANO MAN
FROM GLORY TO GLORY
Paul compares the glory that came as Moses encountered the Lord on that great mount to the glory we reflect beholding Christ under a better covenant. He says:
7 Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end,
8 will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory?
9 For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory.
10 Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it.
11 For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.
12 Since we have such a hope, we are very bold,
13 not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end.
14 But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away.
15 Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts.
16 But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.
17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
The Lord designed us for fellowship and encounters with Him.
Though He accepts us as we are, we must not mistaken this fact with a changing in who He is. He will reveal Himself to us, and when we see Him for who He is we can’t help but be transformed and changed.
Draw near to God. He will be faithful to take steps back towards you. He will reveal Himself to you.
PRAY