Sermon Tone Analysis

The Valley of Vision

/Isaiah 21:1//,2 -"The burden of the desert of the sea.

As whirlwinds in the south pass through; so it cometh from the desert, from a terrible land.

A grievous vision is declared unto me; the treacherous dealer dealeth treacherously, and the spoiler spoileth.

Go up, O Elam: besiege, O Media; all the sighing thereof have I made to cease."

/

/In chapter 22 we see the balancing vision of how God looks at His people.

God was showing Isaiah how He saw Israel – 100 years before she fell./

/Isaiah 22:1// "The burden of the valley of vision.

What aileth thee now, that thou art wholly gone up to the housetops?

/

/II Corinthians 4:18// – “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”/

Between chapter 21 and 22 God gave insight to the prophet Isaiah as to how He sees things.

Our limited vision and knowledge gives us such a tiny glimpse at what is really going on.

Babylon at this time was a nation that was coming to great power - moving forward while Israel was in a decline.

As a man of God, Isaiah was deeply concerned about that.

This was his nation that he loved and wanted to see blessed by God and yet he was frustrated by their sinfulness.

At the same time he saw this wicked idolatrous nation rising.

Seemingly being blessed, seemingly having it all together, but their sins were worse than Israel.

This was the time period when the city of Babylon was being built.

The wall around Babylon was over 14 miles long and more than 135 feet thick.

Isaiah was hearing these rumors about an unconquerable city.

One of the gates – the gate of Ishtar had 575 enameled dragons, bulls, and lions.

The palace of Nebuchadnezzar was beautiful with a banquet hall 56 feet wide and 168 feet long.

This was a city of the renowned hanging gardens of Babylon – one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

History sources say this -   

/"The Hanging Garden has plants cultivated above ground level, and the roots of the trees are embedded in an upper terrace rather than in the earth.

The whole mass is supported on stone columns... Streams of water emerging from elevated sources flow down sloping channels...

These waters irrigate the whole garden saturating the roots of plants and keeping the whole area moist.

Hence the grass is permanently green and the leaves of trees grow firmly attached to supple branches...

This is a work of art of royal luxury and its most striking feature is that the labor of cultivation is suspended above the heads of the spectators".

/

We could go on and on about this city of Babylon – her riches, glory, power, rising all the time.

Isaiah saw his nation at the same time on the decline.

But when God spoke of this glorious city of Babylon, He calls it the “desert of the sea.”

What we see with eyes around us looks so grand and glorious, and that the wicked prosper.

A whirlwind that would come, many man-made things that would get man’s attention, but God saw something that was empty and lifeless.

Isaiah – I’m going to use this desert place for my purposes.

Then God shows the prophet how He looks at His people.

I’m going to have to judge them, for sin requires judgment.

But God calls Jerusalem – a valley of vision.

Geographically, it’s really a high hill with a lot of other higher elevations around it.

In reference to the prosperity of the wicked, David said, “As for me, my feet were well nigh slipped – until I went into the sanctuary – then I understood their end.”

I recently saw a fascinating slide show on the human brain, and one of the slides contained a picture of a couple intimately embracing.

The interesting thing is when that picture was shown to small children, most of them saw nine dolphins.

The young children couldn’t see the couple.

Why?

Because they didn’t have a cognitive category; they didn’t have a prior memory associated with that picture.

/What we see is determined by what we know.

Our experience and our education in large part determine what we see and what we don’t see./

I think it was evidenced by the recent Vice-Presidential and Presidential debates.

Depending on who is doing the analyzing determines who won.  It’s obvious who won, right?

Let this be a reminder to you – get out and vote Tuesday.

This fact also comes into play with our spiritual understanding.

One simple reason that we don’t act upon God’s work in our lives is that we don’t have a cognitive category to be able to recognize it.

There are certain things that we don’t know what to do with.

Philip Yancey wrote a book called Rumors and I want to relay a couple of stories he told.

Ferdinand Magellan, if you remember from a history class, was the first European to sail through what he called the Tierra del Fuego, and as his ship sailed around the tip of Argentina, the crew noticed fires burning on the shore but the natives who were sitting around those fires totally ignored the ship as they sailed through the strait.

It was later discovered through interpreters that the natives ignored the ships because they thought they were an apparition.

They had no cognitive category for ship.

They had never seen anything like them; they lacked the experience to decode the evidence that was right before their eyes.

Hold that thought.

Yancey tells another story about Elizabeth Elliott, the widow of Jim Elliott, who was martyred by natives in Ecuador.

Elizabeth continued the work and found favor amongst the tribe and years later, Elizabeth Elliott took one of the Auca women, Diuma, to New York City, and she tried to explain the cars and fire hydrants and sidewalks and red lights, but it was sensory overload for Diuma.

Diuma had no prior memory, no experience, no category for any of those things.

Then they went to the top of the Empire State Building and Elizabeth Elliott is pointing out the tiny yellow cab and she is wondering what is going through her mind but she wasn’t saying anything, but then finally Diuma pointed to a large white spot, I’m guessing white paint, on a concrete wall and said, “What bird did that?”

It was the only thing she could relate to.

What in the world does that have to do with us?

There are some topics in modern Christianity that are largely ignored because people don’t know exactly what to do with it.

We have no prior memory, if we have no experience with it, if we haven’t really thought about it or studied it, it’s like ‘what is this?’

I mean, at first glance, there is some wild and wacky stuff, and we are a lot like the natives who couldn’t see the ships or Diuma who couldn’t put New York City into perspective.

We don’t have a category.

I think that paradigm relates to anything in Scripture – if you don’t have experience with it, it is very difficult to put it into perspective.

Not only do we struggle with being able to see what God is doing – there are times that we can’t comprehend what we see because God is bringing us to a place that we’ve never been before.

But the Word and Spirit will familiarize you with where God is taking you!

/II Kings 6:8-17// - //When the king of Syria was at war with Israel, he would confer with his officers and say, “We will mobilize our forces at such and such a place.”/

/But immediately Elisha, the man of God, would warn the king of Israel, “Do not go near that place, for the Syrians are planning to mobilize their troops there.”

So the king of Israel would send word to the place indicated by the man of God.

Time and again Elisha warned the king, so that he would be on the alert there./

/11 //The king of Syria became very upset over this.

He called his officers together and demanded, “Which of you is the traitor?

Who has been informing the king of Israel of my plans?”/

/12 //“It’s not us, my lord the king,” one of the officers replied.

“Elisha, the prophet in Israel, tells the king of Israel even the words you speak in the privacy of your bedroom!”/

/13 //“Go and find out where he is,” the king commanded, “so I can send troops to seize him.”/

/And the report came back: “Elisha is at Dothan.” 14 So one night the king of Syria sent a great army with many chariots and horses to surround the city./

/15 //When the servant of the man of God got up early the next morning and went outside, there were troops, horses, and chariots everywhere.

“Oh, sir, what will we do now?” the young man cried to Elisha./

/16 //“Don’t be afraid!”

Elisha told him.

“For they that be with us are more than be with them.”

There are more on our side than on theirs!” 17 Then Elisha prayed, “O Lord, open his eyes and let him see!”

The Lord opened the young man’s eyes, and when he looked up, he saw that the hillside around Elisha was filled with horses and chariots of fire./

I wish it was as easy as praying a prayer and you being able to see what God sees.

Sometimes it’s hard to comprehend what God is doing when we are surrounded by things that would seem to be evidence that we are outnumbered and in a hopeless situation, but don’t lose heart!

Elisha’s servant didn’t have the Word.

He had never heard the promise that David shared with us in Psalm 34:7 /-// //The ////angel of the Lord// //encamps all around those who fear Him, and delivers them./

/In the midst of impossible situations, God has the answer!

The Word is our link to the unseen!/

/The God that cannot lie – Titus 1:2, who changes not – Mal.

3:6, who is always the same – Heb.

13:8, whose promises are as natural as the cycle of rain – Is. 55:10,11/

/The// enemy says that we should be frightened; we have no promise of what the future holds./