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Essence of the Core: Vision
February 10, 2008 Rev. William “Buck” Day
We want to turn to the word of God, now. We are going to turn to three scriptures this morning. We are going to look at Isaiah, Proverbs and then Hebrews. So let’s turn to God’s word today.
First from Isaiah 51:1 Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, who seek the Lord: look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the quarry from which you were dug.
Then from Proverbs 29:18 --One of my all time favorite verses
Where there is no vision, the people perish. Pretty straight forward.
Then from Hebrews 12: 1-2 …..Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us. Looking to Jesus the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith…..
Would you pray with me please?
Lord we do look to you because you are the one who sets the gold standard. Lord we ask that as we look at that today, that you would open our hearts to hear what you have for us by your Spirit. It is for your glory that we ask that in your name. Amen.
Well, there is a story that has been around for a while. I think one person actually told me it was true, at one point. But it is a story about a community that was on a rocky coastline on a great body of water. This was before the time of modern navigation for ships and on these rocky shores it was not uncommon for sailors to crash their ships and be washed ashore and be broken apart by the waves. As a result, many of the sailors lost their lives as well. The community that lived there saw all this happen and they wanted to do something about it but they weren’t quite sure what to do. So over time, what they decided to do was they would put together a life saving station. A group of men would go out and they would rescue the sailors as best they could when the ships would crash on the shore. So that’s what they did. They were good at it. They went out in all kinds of weather; they sacrificed life and limb; all for the purpose of trying to save these sailors. As their success grew they became known around the area for their heroism and their bravery. Soon there was a small building that was built to house some of their materials as well as a chance for them to gather and share stories, maybe something similar to this.
Over time, as their success continued, people would come and gather in their little station to hear the stories because they loved to hear the stories of how they saved the sailors and how they risked it all so that they might save some. Over time, slowly at first but then more rapidly, the life saving team became more interested in telling stories than saving lives, to the point that they liked people coming and hearing their stories. Well there was a few of them that said, “Nuh, uh, we are about saving lives.” So over the course of time they said, “You know what? We have to be about what we think we’ve been called to do, so we are going to leave you guys and we are going to go up the coast and start another life saving station.” So they moved up the coast and they started all over from scratch. Lo and behold, they too saved many lives because boats still crashed, sailors still lost their lives. They became well known in the area and they too fell into the same trap, more about entertaining the people that hear the stories, than saving lives. Once again and once again it repeated itself and a group broke off from them and moved down the coast a little farther to start another life saving station. As far as we know that continues even to this day.
Well that story can illustrate lots of things, but the thing that I would like us to focus on around this story is the divergence of vision that happened there. They started out hoping to accomplish something, didn’t they; but over time it became something very different. So they began to lose sight of what they were seeking to accomplish. Sadly I think that is an illustration of what happens many times in our churches as well. When we came to the point of understanding what it means to be a follower of Christ, we knew that we wanted to grow in our faith; but over time that had not happened to the degree that we had hoped it would have. There could be lots of reasons for that. It could be cultural; it could be personal; it could be even programmatic in terms of what is offered at a church and what is not offered at a church. But the result is that they are not what they hoped they would be in Christ. Lives were not transformed so that they could live lives of joy and of peace and of freedom that they believed they could have when they said, “Yes I want to be a follower of Christ.” So over time as many of us have lived with this sense of loss, maybe the sense of frustration, this sense of uncertainty, a couple things begin to happen. For some of us, we begin to grab at whatever we can to the next big spiritual thing, whatever that might be. The bottom line is we become spiritual consumers; we are kind of grazing on the next thing that is spiritual -- a spiritual grazer, how is that for an image for you?
That is one of the ways we could go. Sadly one of the other ways we could go is we simply walk away from our faith. We say, “You know I entered into faith believing this was how it was going to be and it turned out being something different than what it could be or what it should be. This is not what I signed up for,” and so you walk away. Well we are in the second part of a four-part series called The Essence of the Core. We started it last week and we talked about the core is the part of ourselves from which everything else takes it lead. It is kind of who we are at our center. And we talked about laying out a roadmap for spiritual transformation to help that core begin to take on that character of Christ. We talked about a roadmap for change and we laid it out with the acronym VIM, vision, intent and means. Today we start down that road by looking at vision. We must have a vision for spiritual transformation and have an understanding of what that looks like; because if we don’t have a vision of what spiritual transformation looks like, we will never decide to take the necessary steps to grow towards that vision, just like the people in our story. If they had not decided they could do something to help the sailors when they crashed, they would have never made the decision to go ahead and go forward with the life saving station. So the question is, where do we start in the vision? What do we do? Where do we begin to understand what it means to have a transformed spiritual life? What does that look like? Well the answer is found in Christ. Jesus is our answer and he is the best picture that we have of a person who lived a transformed spiritual life. Jesus says “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” He says, “I am the gate in which the sheep enter and enter into pasture.” When we think about those verses, we typically think of about them in terms of a person coming to faith, and they are. That is what they are definitely used for. But I think it also speaks beyond that. It speaks to a life that Christ offers us, a way to be in him, if you will. So a vision for a Christian spiritual life is then to look at Jesus and do the things that Jesus did; and that is, in fact, what he tells us to do. That’s what Paul says “is putting on Christ.” When we put on Christ what we are doing is we are doing the things that Jesus did. We grow when we think, when we speak and when we act like Christ. That is what Christ’s likeness means and that’s the goal of spiritual transformation. We talked about Dallas Willard last week and he gives us a definition that I think is right on the money and I invite you to read it. It says, “Spiritual transformation is characterized by single minded and joyous devotion to God and His will, to what God wants for us and to service to Him and to others because of Him and being God.” If you look at that definition, doesn’t that describe Jesus? Isn’t that how Jesus lived his life? Jesus lived with the Father at the very center of his being. His life was centered around God the Father. He lived a God centered life, if you will. A God centered life is what Jesus’ character was. When we think about character, personal character, what is that? Well a person’s character is kind of revealed by what a person feels or does when they are not thinking about it. Bill Hybels wrote a book called Who Are You When No One’s Looking? What a great definition of character. Who Are You When No One’s Looking? A person’s character leaks out, I think, it leaks out of who we are when we are not trying to impress anyone, when we are maybe not trying to guard our words. When you look at Christ Jesus’ character leaks out all over the pages of scripture.
When we begin to think about that and we begin to think about Christ’s life and the character that leaks out in scripture, one of the things that we can say is that his life was driven out of faith and love. That was this God centered nature in which Jesus lived in his life. As we begin to look at this faith component, we will start with that, there is a couple things that begin to emerge and one of them is that Jesus knew why he was on earth. He knew clearly. He said “I have come to bring the kingdom of God,” or the kingdom of heaven, those terms are synonymous, they mean the same thing. He said “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” That notion of bringing the kingdom of God – and that’s why he was here – that speaks to that single minded and joyous devotion to God and His will. When we think about this term kingdom of God, we’ve talked about it before, here; but I think a way to think about it again is the kingdom of God is that area where what God wants gets done. What God wants, it gets done; that’s where God’s kingdom is. Wherever Jesus went, God’s will got done, didn’t it? His will got done, whether it was healing someone, whether it was feeding masses amount of people, whether it was praying for somebody, whether rebuking, or calling people to repentance, he was about bringing God’s will. Where God’s will gets done is the kingdom of God. Jesus knew that’s why he came to earth, that was how he was faithful to God. That’s where he lived his life. He lived his life out of who he knew the Father to be. It was the very center of his being.
Jesus not only demonstrated that the kingdom of God had come in the coming of Jesus; but he also shows us what life in the kingdom looks like, how we live in the midst of that kingdom as well. As part of that, he says that “we become partakers of his divine nature in our lives.” He says that can happen in the here and now not just in the future. We always think to heaven and say, “O.K. we’ll be like God when we get to heaven.” You know, the truth is that God calls us to begin to move toward that in the here and the now. So a vision for spiritual transformation means partaking of our divine nature in our present life here and now. It is something that can happen right now. There are a couple verses here that I think are just excellent. This first one that speaks to this is from 2Peter and says “Thus he has given us through these things his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape the corruption that is in world because of lust and may become participants of the divine nature.” That is not a future thing, it is a present thing. Then, from 1John, “See what love the Father has given us that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are.” Boy, feeling a little down on yourself, kind of feeling like you have been beat up by the world a little bit, just take the first part of that verse, live with that, let that settle over your soul. “You are children of God;” then it continues, “Beloved we are God’s children” When? Now. “We are God’s children now.” What we will be has not yet been revealed but what we do know is this, when he is revealed, he being Jesus, we will be like him for we will see him as he is. We become partakers of the divine nature. That is part of who we become as we become transformed and take on the character of Christ. That speaks to this “what God wants for us;” that’s what God wants for us. That’s what He desires for you.
As we continue we think about this faith heading that we talked about. Jesus gave his followers a mission. The mission is to continue bringing the kingdom, that idea of where God’s will gets done on earth, to our day; that’s our goal. That’s the reason we are on earth. That’s why we are called to do the things that we do. The kingdom of God is still here and it informs everything that we do and our call is to expand that area where God’s will gets done. That’s part of this service to Him and to others that Willard talks about. As part of that, I think, also God wants us to understand very clearly that we are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe. As partakers of the divine nature, this is part of who we are. We need to understand that this world has no power over us. That helps us live with abandon for Christ because our destiny is secure in God’s hands.
So as followers of Christ, when we are in Christ, when we have made that commitment, and say “Jesus you are my Lord”, then what happens is we begin a transformation internally. We become new creatures, as this text says, and we begin to internally realign ourselves with God and His will, His kingdom if you will. We are turning away from our kingdom, our will, our self-centeredness, where what we want gets done; we turn away from that and we turn towards God. That’s what Jesus lived out. Jesus lived that out fully for us and He teaches us what God intends for us and then gives us the ability to make that possible. Jesus was God centered. God the Father was at the very center of his being. As followers of Christ, we too then are to have God at the very center of our being, everything we do radiates out from God being our center. But for us, our center is Jesus. Jesus is to be our center. We are to be Christ centered, for Jesus said, what? “If you’ve seen me, you have seen the Father.” So as we put Christ in the center of who we are, that is the place where we can begin to then to radiate out and begin to be changed. For that is what Jesus did. Jesus came saying, “I’ve come to do the will of my Father.” He is not doing his own. He said, “I’ve come that I might do the Father’s will.” We know in that process that the Holy Spirit was his connection with God, wasn’t it? It helped him live out his calling. The Holy Spirit descended upon him to help him live out this high calling. And guess what? The good news is that we too have that same Holy Spirit to help us and to guide us to begin to live as Christ did so that we can become Christ centered and walk in the Spirit for we too are not our own. Jesus says, “You have been bought with a price. You are not your own anymore.” Then he gives us the Spirit. He gives us the Spirit to begin that process to shape our inner life so that we can become Christ centered. We are not left with our own devices to make that happen in our own strength. It is by the power of God, the Holy Spirit within us.
So as we think about Christ and his faith with God, Jesus calls us to the life that he led and he enables us to know why we are here. We are to live as expressions of the Kingdom of God in this world. We are to know our destiny is sure in the hands of God and as a result we can live with abandon for God and then we are given the power, the power that we need to accomplish what we can not possibly do on our own; and, in this case, we are talking about character transformation. That is where we move from self-centeredness to Christ centeredness. That is all part of what God wants for us and that’s why he gave Jesus and his life, so that it can be an expression of that vision that we can take in. If Jesus’ life was driven out of faith to the Father, it was also driven by love from the Father. He lived the kingdom of God and that empowered him to love as God loved. That’s how we are to live. We are to live out the kingdom of God and love as God loved. Look at Christ. Look at how he lived out that love. Think of some of the stories, there are tons of stories in scripture, but think about how he welcomed the little children to himself. He said, “Come to me. Don’t deny the little children. Let them come to me.” His relationship with Mary and Martha and Lazarus, they were tight. They were buds. So he wept as he saw Mary and Martha weeping over Lazarus’ death. There was a connection there. There was love that was shared in their relationship. Or how about the love through compassion that he showed the woman that he healed after she touched him after she had been bleeding for many years. They were in a big crowd of people and everyone was crowded around and Jesus said, “Who touched me? Who touched me?” And the disciples said, “Well Jesus, everybody has been touching you, what are you talking about?” He said, “No, no, no. Who touched me?” He turned around and the woman knew that she had been caught so she came forward and fell at his feet and she explained her story; and what did Jesus do? He listened. He listened to her story and what was his response? “Your faith has made you well. Go in peace.” Or how about the words to the prisoner that hung on the cross next to him? “For today you will be with me in paradise.”
That same love helps us love; helps us love those who we are perhaps too frightened to love. That same kind of love helps us love those we are too angry to love. Anybody here have an enemy? You think it is impossible to love an enemy? That is part of the process. It may be for us right now, but it is not impossible. Love helps us love in our day to day attitudes as we embrace this process so that our attitude can become the attitude that is laid out in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus shows us and teaches us things like compassion, like purity, like good will and all of that can grow from the inside of us out towards the world. Jesus lived in a way that lived out his faith and his love and he gives us a vision in that for the way that we should go. He shows us what it looks like. He tells us that we are not left to our own devices to make that happen. All the power of God is available for us to put on the character of Christ, for each one of us to put Jesus at the very of our lives. That is available to us. As we begin to think about that for your life and my life, one more piece to consider and that is that the spiritual transformation that we are talking about that we are envisioning today is one that will eventually affect every area of our life. Putting on the character of Christ is not just a spiritual life thing. It is not just, “Here is my spiritual life, O.K. Jesus can have that part, this other part over here, my work life, my family life, my relational life, …” No it runs into every area of our life, but it starts at the innermost part of who we are. There are lots of names for that but we will be using, as we go through these next couple series, the idea of heart, will and spirit are all interchangeable at the core of who we are. Living the Kingdom of God starts at our core and slowly, with grace, tons and tons of grace, and with obedience, begins to move into the rest of our being, into those areas like our mind, which includes our thoughts and our feelings, and moves into our bodies. Can you imagine spiritual transformation affecting our bodies? Yeah, I can. It affects our social settings and eventually affects what Willard calls our soul, as well. We will talk all about that as we go through the following weeks, but it moves through the rest of our being. The good news is that the kingdom of God resides within you right now as followers of Christ, it is here and it is for us. So I invite you to let that settle over your heart, to let it sink in. Think about what it means to grow a vision of who God sees you to be and who He wants you to become. Amen.
Let me pray for us.
Lord God, thank you. Thank you that you are here and that you are present. Lord we thank you that you are ever moving us gently, persistently towards you. Lord we thank you for the vision you have given us and the power to move towards that Lord. So Lord, help that vision to grow in us, help that vision to excite us, help that vision to give us a good start for where we would go in transformation to put on your character. Thank you Jesus, in your name. Amen.
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