SEEING WHAT GOD SEES

Introduction

-There was a man named John Paton who was a missionary in the New Hebrides Islands. One night hostile natives surrounded the mission station where they lived and worked, intent on burning out the Paton family and killing them. Paton and his wife prayed during that terror-filled night that God would deliver them. When daylight came they were amazed to see their attackers leave.

A year later, the chief of the tribe was converted to Christ. Remembering what had happened, Paton asked the chief what had kept him from burning down the house and killing them. The chief replied in surprise, "Who were all those men with you there?" Paton knew no men were present—but the chief said he was afraid to attack them because he had seen hundreds of big men in shining garments with drawn swords encircling the mission station.

-What an amazing story and it is a reminder to us that there is so much more going on than what we can see.

-But even though we can’t see everything, there is One who can. And what we learn from the passage that we are looking at today, God allowed certain people to see and know things normally only He sees so that they learned to trust Him with the unseen and the unknown.

-God’s eternal character allows Him to see and know all things, and He calls us to look at life’s circumstances from His perspective and to trust Him when we don’t see or understand the full picture.

~And as a church, as we are moving slowly along the path to a vision for our church, we know that it is His sight and His perspective that will lead us on into the future.

-So, may today’s passage lead us to see things from God’s perspective and trust that the unseen and the unknown are in His complete control.

2 Kings 6:8–23 ESV

8 Once when the king of Syria was warring against Israel, he took counsel with his servants, saying, “At such and such a place shall be my camp.” 9 But the man of God sent word to the king of Israel, “Beware that you do not pass this place, for the Syrians are going down there.” 10 And the king of Israel sent to the place about which the man of God told him. Thus he used to warn him, so that he saved himself there more than once or twice. 11 And the mind of the king of Syria was greatly troubled because of this thing, and he called his servants and said to them, “Will you not show me who of us is for the king of Israel?” 12 And one of his servants said, “None, my lord, O king; but Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bedroom.” 13 And he said, “Go and see where he is, that I may send and seize him.” It was told him, “Behold, he is in Dothan.” 14 So he sent there horses and chariots and a great army, and they came by night and surrounded the city. 15 When the servant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was all around the city. And the servant said, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” 16 He said, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” 17 Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. 18 And when the Syrians came down against him, Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, “Please strike this people with blindness.” So he struck them with blindness in accordance with the prayer of Elisha. 19 And Elisha said to them, “This is not the way, and this is not the city. Follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom you seek.” And he led them to Samaria. 20 As soon as they entered Samaria, Elisha said, “O Lord, open the eyes of these men, that they may see.” So the Lord opened their eyes and they saw, and behold, they were in the midst of Samaria. 21 As soon as the king of Israel saw them, he said to Elisha, “My father, shall I strike them down? Shall I strike them down?” 22 He answered, “You shall not strike them down. Would you strike down those whom you have taken captive with your sword and with your bow? Set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink and go to their master.” 23 So he prepared for them a great feast, and when they had eaten and drunk, he sent them away, and they went to their master. And the Syrians did not come again on raids into the land of Israel.

-I want to quickly look at 4 lessons from our passage:

1) God has perfect eternal eyesight

-Our God is of such a nature that He sees and knows all things all the time. We use the term “omniscience” to describe His “all-knowingness” and we use the term omnipresent to describe His “ever-presentness.” God is present in all places at all times and sees all things in every realm, and so He knows everything that happens in creation.

-But this not only means He is everywhere in creation right now, but He is also everywhere present throughout space and time. He is in the past as much as He is in the future. He sees all things in one great eternal sight.

~ The eyes of the LORD are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good. (Prov. 15:3 ESV)

-We see it in our passage. God sees what the Syrian King is doing and planning, and He reveals it to Elisha.

-What that means for us is that God sees us in our times of troubles—your pain is not hidden from Him. We see this in Exodus when the Israelites were enslaved by Egypt:

7 Then the LORD said, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, (Exod. 3:7 ESV)

-But this also means that God sees our sin and there is nothing we can hide from Him, as indicated in Hebrews:

13 And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Heb. 4:13 ESV)

-But when this truth is combined with the truth that God has a will and a plan for individuals and for churches, we know that God sees where are right now, but He also sees where we need to be.

-God sees the future for the plans He has for us, He sees the obstacles that will come in our way, but He invites us to walk the path as He guides us because HE is the One who sees. And this is so important because of the second lesson:

2) Our vision of reality is limited

-Unlike God, we are not eternal, not omnipresent, not omniscient—our sight (physically and spiritually) is very limited. With limited vision comes limited understanding, and so we don’t see and know as much as we think we do.

-Look at the King of Syria—all he saw was that his plans were continuously being thwarted. But with his limited sight and understanding all he could figure out was that there was a traitor in the camp.

~But even after he was told that it was Elisha who was helping the King of Syria, all he saw was one man who just had some kind of gift. He didn’t see the God who was revealing these things to Elisha. His sight and vision were limited.

-Or, look at Elisha’s servant. All he could see was this enemy army who had surrounded the city to do his master some harm. He couldn’t see the heavenly host that surrounded them to protect them. He couldn’t see God at work in the midst of this situation. His vision, his sight, was limited to what he could see with his physical eyes and understand with his mere worldly understanding.

-But there is so much going on in reality that we remain blinded to. There is an unseen realm that affects what goes on in the visible. There is a spiritual realm that affects the physical.

~On top of that, we aren’t able to see what is going on in the minds and hearts of others. We don’t see when people are hypocritical—acting one way, but really thinking another way. We don’t see when people are duplicitous. We don’t see the motives and minds of men.

-Knowing that our sight and vision is severely limited, we need to be careful on relying on our own wisdom when we lead our lives and make our decisions.

~With such limited vision we are not able to lead ourselves rightly. As a church, we are not able to move forward and walk the path toward vision with clarity because we in ourselves are not ever able to see the whole picture of what is going on around us. We don’t have the right perspective to be able to navigate this world alone.

-And so, from a church perspective, the whole idea of vision is that God is leading us as an individual church that has its own unique personality with its own unique gifting down a path of fulfilling mission in the way that He sees fit, because He alone sees the full picture, He sees from an eternal perspective, and we don’t and never will.

-And so, the next logical lesson:

3) We trust God with what we are unable to see

-Since our sight is limited and God’s is not—since we can’t see the invisible but God can—then we by faith obediently follow and trust Him as He leads us and navigates us through life.

-There’s a lot of amazing things in this passage, but to me one of the most amazing things is Elisha’s faith. There is this big army coming to take him captive. Elisha’s servant is freaking out. And Elisha calmly tells him that those who are with them are more than that large army that they see.

~Here’s the thing. Elisha did not SEE this fiery army that was there to protect them in the normal sense of the word SEE. His eyes did not have the image of the heavenly host in front of them. But with the eyes of faith Elisha saw and knew that they were there. Elisha trusted that God had sent the protection for them.

-Elisha’s servant did not have that faith in God. Elisha’s servant did not trust God to protect them. So, Elisha prayed that God would allow the servant to see with his physical eyes what Elisha was able to see with his spiritual eyes (so to speak). Then the servant saw in the spiritual realm what was really going on. He finally was able to grasp reality.

~But Elisha didn’t need to SEE that army because he trusted God. He had faith in God.

-And that is the realm that we are called to walk in. The apostle Paul calls us to live according to this realm of faith when he says: we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Cor. 5:7 ESV)

-Your physical eyes are not able to see the full picture, and so we don’t live our life and make decisions based ONLY on what we see.

~It reminds me of something that Obi-wan Kenobi told Luke Skywalker in the first Star Wars movie (now known as Ep. 4: A New Hope). When training Luke in the ways of the force he tells him: YOUR EYES CAN DECEIVE YOU, DON’T TRUST THEM

-While that might be the extreme, it is a reminder that our vision is limited, which means our understanding is limited, therefore we need to place our trust in God and walk by faith in the One who does see it all.

-So now, if I am a child of God, I will live my life under the guidance of God’s Word and the Spirit, knowing that God has the full perspective, so I will seek to see things from that perspective and trust that He will guide and protect

-And as a church we trust that He will lead us in the path and give us the vision to move forward, as long as our vision trusts God and looks at things from His perspective

-But there is one more lesson about God’s sight:

4) God saw humanities’ need for a Savior

-And this is so important. Mankind sinned against God and by consequence now has a sinful nature that is completely blind to their spiritual condition.

~Sure, we may know that something is wrong with the world and we may know that there are problems in this life, but we are born blind to the fact that we are the problem.

-I see this pictured in our passage. Elisha prayed to the Lord that God would strike the Syrian army with a blindness of sorts. It wasn’t literal blindness because otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to be led down to Samaria. But it was more of a spiritual blindness—a stupor or a delusion of sorts. And so, they blindly follow Elisha right into the middle of Israel’s capital city in the midst of the enemy army.

-What a picture of what happens to us! Our sin and sin nature blind us to our spiritual state. We blindly follow our lusts and desires and idols without a second thought about what we are doing. And we are blindly led like that army further into the enemy’s territory:

the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Cor. 4:4 ESV)

-But in history, in the world of the five senses, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ to die as the needed sacrifice to atone for sins and rose again unto life—acts which were seen by eyewitnesses.

-And even though we did not see these historical events, when we confess that Jesus is Lord (Master—fully God as much as He is man) and we believe He died for us and rose again, we are saved and we are delivered out our blindness and we are able to see things clearly for the first time. Finally, we are given God’s heavenly perspective. Finally, we are able to see what God sees, although in a very limited capacity.

-And to memorialize this act, Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper—an act that allows us to physically see a witness to a historical event that has eternal consequences. We get to see something and participate in something so that we do not ever forget the great sacrifice that was given so that we would no longer be blind, but be able to see ourselves and the world and reality clearly…