God's vision for you: (re)building a better future
Notes
Transcript
33 For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
34 Then they said to Him, “Lord, give us this bread always.”
35 And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. 36 But I said to you that you have seen Me and yet do not believe. 37 All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. 39 This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. 40 And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”
Family, these past Sundays in March we have considered the person Nehemiah. He worked with the/his Jewish people to rebuild the physically wall of Jerusalem. Numerous people partnered to rebuild the wall, to re-set the iron gates (at the openings in the wall), to restore Jewish life, culture, society, to restore the people's collective relationship with God. Before Nehemiah's leadership, the people, recovering from exile, were living in great distress and reproach. Nehemiah, deeply impacted from what he learned of the people's condition, envisioned a better future was possible and (so) connected with God to make the vision come true.
My hope is that you will make space and find courage to lean deeply into what you see to be a better future for those around you. May your curiosity be so intense that you petition God for clarity that what you envision may be a dream come true.
Our world needs the life-giving vision you have to offer. The future of those around you might be tied to your willingness to see different, to leave what's stable and comfortable, to lean into your personal strengths and the favor God gives you.
History tells us the person Nehemiah had a stable, trusted role as the King's cup-bearer but Nehemiah longed for better conditions for his people.
Today, as we approach resurrection (Easter) Sunday, I am reminded of Jesus who also left a stable, comfortable place--Jesus' place in heaven with God--left to help out a people not doing so well, for whom God envisioned a better future.
Jesus said
38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.
Moreover, the prophet Isaiah captured the nature of Jesus' sacrifice in writing
5 But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
Today, I want to extend what we have been learning from Nehemiah to talking about God's vision for you.
I will tittle this message
God's vision for you: (re)building a better future.
God's vision for you: (re)building a better future.
(PRAY)
Next Sunday we will acknowledge the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The preceding Friday (Good Friday) we will remember Christ's cruxifixction, death, burial.
Today, we will touch on God's vision that led Jesus's actions.
God has vision for you.
Like an inventor has plans for her creation, God has plans for you.
I was always struck, once I understood more of the context, by God's message to the Children of Israel during a time in the peoples' life (that was a time of captivity):
11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
God has both a vision for you and a vision of you.
God sees you...in a way I think few people do.
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
From the beginning, (God could see you--had vision of you) God had vision for you. God considered the Trinity--God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit--God held that image and made mankind.
In creating mankind God set His vision in motion. (God created what He saw. God saw you.)
David confesses
1 O Lord, You have searched me and known me.
2 You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You understand my thought afar off.
3 You comprehend my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways.
4 For there is not a word on my tongue,
But behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.
5 You have hedged me behind and before,
And laid Your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is high, I cannot attain it.
7 Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,”
Even the night shall be light about me;
12 Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You.
13 For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.
17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How great is the sum of them!
18 If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand;
When I awake, I am still with You.
In the beginning God made Adam and Eve. In the course of Adam and Eve making decisions, they strayed from God's vision--saw themselves differently from how God saw them and so strayed--from how they were instructed to live, from who they were instructed/intended to be.
(The consequence was separation from God.)
This divergent vision (di-vision) continues today, from how God sees people and how people see themselves. And for many there is this/a separation from God that God did not intend (and does not desire.)
God desires to be with us. "Immanuel" - "God with us" (Matthew 1:23)
God, because He sees something better for you, for me, worked (and works) to remove any separation, employing Jesus Christ as the avenue to restore our relationship with God.
So what does God see? (You may be asking, "Do I even want to be a part of God's vision? Do I want what He sees in me and for me?")
God sees you...
alive...in the fullest sense of what it means to live.
The reason Jesus came is so that we may have life.
Jesus said:
10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
Jesus said
16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Let it not escape us that God's vision for us is motivated by love.
Agape love...(love without condition; love without a requirement for performance)
And not just love for you and for me, but love for the world. (Where (misguided) religion may keep people out who don't perform. God's love is to build a relationship to/that bring(s) people in who believe.)
God sees us together with Him and not estranged...God sees us as one family.
While the man Jesus was of Jewish lineage, God envisioned Jewish people and non-Jewish people (Gentiles) to be joined in one family through Jesus the Christ.
6 Indeed He says,
‘It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant
To raise up the tribes of Jacob,
And to restore the preserved ones of Israel;
I will also give You as a light to the Gentiles,
That You should be My salvation to the ends of the earth.’ ”
God is big enough for all of us; through Jesus Christ we have a pathway to God.
What does God see for you?
We get a description of God's vision for His people (Israel) when God speaks through the prophet Isaiah regarding the Childrens of Israel/Jewish people.
Jesus read these words in the synagogue.
16 So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. 17 And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
19 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
20 Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him.
God sees His people...
Included in the family--where otherwise overlooked and disregarded (and kept disempowered). (In the Year of Jubilee, every 50 years, debt was forgiven and property restored.)
Whole, healed (heal the damage that sin brings)
Hopeful and empowered (seeing for the first time; seeing color for the first time)
Free
What (also) continues through to this day is God's love for people, God's love for you.
God's vision is Motivated by love and also held together by love.
John 3:16
31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? 33 Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written:
“For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
37 Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. 38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Family, what God wants for you, God wants for others.
God's vision for you is motivated by love. John 3:16
God's vision for you is wrapped in peace. Je 29:11
God's vision for you is available.
Romans 10:13 (NKJV)
For “whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.”
Let you vision be.....
bring more people into life,
bring wholeness
ignite hope and empowerment
set people free (from any and every bondage)
for the price you will pay will be...
The greater the vision the greater the sacrifice.