Two Kinds of Vision [A]

Listen Online:

Transcript:

Turn with me to Proverbs chapter 29 and also Colossians chapter 1. Proverbs 29, go ahead and turn there and you might put something in to mark your Bibles at Colossians chapter 1. As we continue on with this series we’ve been in on some of the most misused passages of Scripture, we’ve sort of, a pattern has emerged, it hadn’t been on purpose, but we’ll go ahead and continue on with it.

of in the morning talking about the idea that people get wrongly from the passage and addressing it in light of other scriptures, and then on Sunday nights talking about what the passage really does mean. And as I looked at the passage that we’re going to glance at this morning and then study in depth tonight, I realize I’m guilty of having misused this passage in the past, as well as some other good godly men that I know have misused this passage in the past, I hope inadvertently. But it also tells me that just because we take the passage out of context doesn’t mean the conclusion is wrong, but that still doesn’t mean we should use the passage out of context to arrive there.

Sometimes we can make the right decision. Sometimes we can come to the right conclusion and get there the wrong way. Since we’ve been talking about voting this morning, I’m reminded of the 2006 election for governor in Oklahoma.

We had two choices on the ballot, as always. We had one, the incumbent governor, a Baptist deacon who had nearly single-handedly brought the lottery into the state. And we had a Mormon congressman who stood with us on all these other values, stood with us on marriage and abortion and all these things.

And really we didn’t have, I thought, you know, what are we going to do here? And I had come to the conclusion I was going to vote for the Mormon congressman, even though I completely disagree with the teachings of his church. I said, okay, I’m going to vote for him because he stands in the right place on these other issues.

And he had a, and no, that’s not a backdoor endorsement of Romney because this man had a stronger track record on those issues. Anyway, I said, what are we going to do? And I came to the conclusion that what I needed to do was to vote for Congressman Istook, the Mormon.

And I knew some other people that we were talking about it, and I’m not trying to attack her because she’s a good friend, but several of us were talking, and we had all sort of come to the same conclusion. And this one lady spoke up and said, well, I think I’m voting for Is Took, too. And we said, why?

She said, well, because I met his wife once at a fundraiser, and I like her. And part of me wanted to say, okay, you don’t get to vote anymore. I’m sure they both have nice wives.

That’s not a reason to vote for her. And I thought, okay, at least from my standpoint, right conclusion, wrong way of getting there. We can make decisions that way sometimes.

We can sometimes come to the right conclusion and get there the wrong route. It’s not just in voting. I’ve told you all stories about our dogs before, and one of them is blind, and on top of it, she’s nuts anyway.

But we’ll go to feed her or something or give her a treat, and she will never take the most direct route, the route she’s memorized through the house of what’s clear and how to get there. She’ll always walk under the table and around the table legs and have to hop over the little bars on the bottoms of the chairs. And I think, why on earth did you come that way to get the treat?

See, she ultimately got to the right spot. She just went completely the wrong way to get there. And that’s sort of how I feel about this passage we’re going to look at today in Proverbs chapter 29.

When I say I’ve been guilty of misusing it, and others have too, it’s not that the conclusion is wrong. I believe the conclusion is supported elsewhere in Scripture. It’s that this passage that’s so often used to back up the conclusion has nothing to do with it.

Proverbs 29, we’re going to look at more of the area around it tonight, but Proverbs 29, verse 18 says, where there is no vision, the people perish, but he that keepeth the law happy is he. And you may have heard that verse before. The first church I pastored before I was the pastor there, I was just the associate pastor and the interim pastor there that I was serving under, a godly man.

I have the utmost respect for him. But he got on to the idea that we needed to make some plans and make some strategies and do some outreach and things, and we needed a vision for the future. Not a bad idea.

And again, I maintain not one that’s unsupported by Scripture. To do some things intentionally. And I don’t mean we plan everything out and then say, God, get behind our plans, but I mean prayerfully, we seek the Lord’s will, and we say, okay, this is what God has directed us to do.

How are we going to get there? And we begin to intentionally do things that God has led us to do. That’s what I’m talking about.

And he said, this is what we need to do, and I think he was at the right conclusion. And I say, I misused the Scripture too, because I preached some messages on this very topic when he was really pushing this. We even had a banner that he made that went across the podium at the front of the church that had this verse on it, where there is no vision, the people perish.

And it sounds good. We think of vision. We think of vision today in terms of having a plan for the future.

When we say he’s a visionary or he’s a man of vision, we see somebody who’s thinking years down the road and he’s out in the forefront and he’s got plans and ideas and there’s a picture in his head of what he wants to accomplish and where we’re going to go. And we’re told that churches need a vision. And I agree with that.

I agree. We need to know where it is we’re going. Where is the Lord leading us?

Where are we going? How do we know when we get there? How do we know whether we’re being obedient unless we know where we’re being led?

There’s nothing wrong with the idea of vision. It’s just not supported by this text. When you get into the Hebrew word behind it, and I had it memorized yesterday, but I couldn’t tell you today what the word was.

When you get to the Hebrew word behind vision here, I looked it up, and every place, because I heard people say that this means something different. So I looked it up for myself, and every time, or the vast majority of times, that this word that’s translated vision here is used in the Old Testament. The word there in English is used vision, but it’s referring to some kind of revelation from God.

It’s not referring to somebody who has ideas and plans and strategies in their head. It’s referring to somebody who’s received some kind of revelation from God. It talks about the vision of Isaiah, the vision that he received from God.

It was a revelation from God when God spoke to him as a prophet and said, this is what you’re to go and say to Israel. He called it a vision. And just about every time in the Old Testament that this word is used, it refers to God revealing something to His people, not with us making plans.

And to dig further into this passage, into this verse, and again we’ll go more in depth in this tonight, but what it’s saying here is that where there is no revelation, where revelation is lacking, where revelation is not heard, where people do not pay attention to the voice of God, says the people perish. And that word perish means to be loosed. It doesn’t necessarily mean to die, although if we’re without the revelation of God, we die spiritually.

We have no way of. . .

Folks, we would have no way of knowing the gospel. We’d have no way of eternal life if He hadn’t revealed it to us. We’re completely and utterly dependent on the revelation of God.

But the essence of this passage, and I believe it’s supported by the verses around it, is that without the revelation of God, without God speaking to us, without God moving us, without God imparting His wisdom, the people run amok. And I think we need to look no further than the world outside of these four walls, and maybe sometimes inside these four walls, but definitely the world outside these four walls, to see that when people do not hear and heed the voice of God, they run them up, don’t they? Am I the only one that’s noticed that?

I hear all, not all of you, but I hear several of you talk on a weekly basis. Maybe y’all are tired, even though you’ve got that extra hour of sleep this morning. I hear many of you talk on a regular basis about how awful things have gotten in our society.

And I think we can all trace the root of that back to the fact that people stopped listening to God. That we as a society quit listening to God. Folks, that’s what this passage is about.

But as I said, I don’t believe it’s completely unsupported by the Bible to maintain that we need to have some idea where we’re going. Now that doesn’t mean that we call the shots, we make the plans, we get the ideas in place, and then we ask God to bless them. I think we’re supposed to be about His work, not Him be about our work.

But I heard some things. I was going to give you a brief report on the state meeting tonight. but I was talking to Brother James earlier and I asked him if he had anything he wanted to share.

He said, no, really. There’s not a lot to tell. It was a fairly uneventful meeting which is good sometimes.

Sometimes the meetings are eventful and not a good way. Not just the BMA of Arkansas. Any kind of, you get a bunch of Baptist preachers together sometimes it’s better for it to be uneventful.

There wasn’t a whole lot to tell but what I can tell you is that I heard some things this week or I heard some things this weekend at the meeting that convicted me that made me think about this very concept. Something was said, and I can’t remember exactly what it was, but something that was said made me think about the last year here. I’ve been here a little over a year, and it took a little while to get settled in and get to know you all and get the lay of the land and some things.

But I look back at the last year, and I thought, we’ve seen some good things happen here. We have. We’ve seen some good things happen here.

We’ve seen a few people get saved, and we can praise the Lord for that. We’ve seen a few people get baptized, and we can praise the Lord for that. We’ve seen people join the church and we can praise the Lord for that.

I’ve seen some of you start taking the disciple way classes and start growing. And several of you tell me on a weekly basis, I’ve never seen that before in the scripture. I never knew that before.

And that’s fine. But what makes me even happier is being told, you know, I study my Bible and some of these questions, some of these study strategies that we’re learning, they just pop into my head and I never would have used them before. People are learning about how to study their Bible and they’re putting it into use.

And I love that. We can be glad for that. We can rejoice in the fact that people are growing here.

But what convicted me about all of it was that the growth we’ve seen, not only in numbers, but spiritually has largely happened by accident. Please understand what I’m saying about that. I don’t mean that it was news to God that He was surprised by it.

But I mean, we haven’t had any particular big plans to speak of how we were going to accomplish what God put us here to accomplish. God put the church here to accomplish some things, didn’t He? Otherwise, we’re just playing church.

He put us here to accomplish reaching people with the gospel. He put us here to accomplish discipling people. He put us here to accomplish glorifying Him.

And folks, if we don’t know what that looks like, if we don’t have that goal in mind, how do we know when we’ve accomplished it? How do we know if we’re on track? And I told one of our ladies last night after the fall festival, we were talking about it, and I said, I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of drifting from Sunday to Sunday by accident.

Anybody else? When I came here, and we’re going to turn to Colossians in just a moment. Go ahead and turn with me to Colossians chapter 1.

When I came here, I had expectations and hope that God was going to do something great. And by the way, I’m not resigning if it sounds like that’s where this is headed. No, I’m not.

I came here with expectations that we were going to accomplish great things, that God was going to do great things in and through us. And folks, I still believe He can. But ultimately, saying, okay, we’re just going to.

. . Well, ultimately, it’s very easy to get into a rut of we’re just going to do the things that we do because that’s what we do.

And if you don’t know what I mean by that, okay, I’m going to read my Bible because I’m supposed to. And we don’t go into it with the idea of God’s going to speak to me today. I’m going to learn something from God’s word that I’ve never seen before.

I’m going to find something I can apply to my life. And we go into it sometimes. And I’m not saying every time.

We go into it sometimes and say, I’m going to read the Bible because that’s what I’m supposed to do. Well, I’m going to pray today because I need to pray today. Or I’m going to go to church today because that’s what’s expected of me.

And I won’t ask you to raise your hands, but how many of you ever get up in the morning and think, I really don’t want to go to church today, or I don’t feel like it. I won’t say you don’t want to, but I don’t feel like it. It’d be easier just to stay home, but I’m going to go anyway because everybody expects me to be there.

Now, hopefully for the majority of you, that’s not how you feel every Sunday. But we do have times when that’s the case where we go because that’s what’s expected of us. And whenever I felt that way, you know, I’ve always been glad I’ve gone after all.

God’s done something. God’s shown me something. And I’ve left out of there thinking, man, I’m so glad I didn’t back out.

But we go to church because that’s what’s expected of us. We worship and we sing songs because that’s what’s on the agenda first. We’re going to do that. Sometimes we preach and teach messages from the pulpit and from Sunday school because, well, people are going to be there and that’s what my job is today, so I’ll do it.

And folks, we can very easily get into a point of drifting from Sunday to Sunday or from day to day accidentally. And when God does something in our lives that we weren’t looking for, oh, that was nice. When we accidentally accomplish something for God, oh, that was nice.

Yay. I submit to you, I’m tired of drifting from Sunday to Sunday by accident. Folks, God called our church to accomplish some things.

We need to know what they are, otherwise we will never be sure of how we’re doing. We need to have some vision and some goals in mind. No, I’m not supporting that from Proverbs chapter 29 because that has nothing to do with it.

It’s a good passage in its own right anyway. But I want to look at this morning at what Paul says in the book of Colossians because Paul outlined, he says in several places, he talks about, I’ve done this because of this. He talks about the purpose or the goal he has in mind in ministry.

And he lays out some things that he hoped he would see happen. And I’ll tell you, I think there’s some things that we can learn from Paul that should be the same things we should shoot for. Paul had a fruitful ministry.

I heard men talking at the meeting about missions. I heard men talking at the meeting about outreach, and I thought, these are things we need to be doing. And we do some outreach.

Folks, we don’t do nearly enough. I don’t do nearly enough, and you don’t do nearly enough. That’s not an indictment against you.

I’m just telling you the truth. We could be doing more than we are. We need to be doing.

. . I heard a man talking about his goal is to get to the point of sending missionaries out from his church and supporting them from his church without saying, we’re going to rely on Little Rock to fund it and endorse it.

We’re going to send missionaries out from our church. And I thought, yes, that’s what we need to be doing. And I’m not saying, no, I got ideas from them and we just need to copy them and be like they are.

These are things that are in the Bible laid out for us to do. Sending missionaries, being missionaries ourselves, making disciples. We have jobs to do as a church.

I would love to see a day, hopefully not the too distant future, where Eastside also sends out missionaries from among us. Maybe we send missionaries to Elkins. They’re nearby.

Maybe we send somebody out to start a church in Farmington. Maybe we send somebody out to start a church and reach people in West Fork. Maybe we send a missionary across the state line into Oklahoma.

They need it. They need missionaries. Maybe we send somebody out of this church to go to Africa.

And if you’re thinking, oh, he’s talking about me. Not necessarily. You go where God sends you and you do what God sends you to do.

But I’m also hoping we send missionaries, even starting today, from this church, out into Fayetteville, out into Springdale, out into Greenland, out into Farmington, wherever you live, and we reach people. And as this church reaches people, as we send missionaries from us today to go out and do our job, that this church grows and we can send out and support missionaries from this place. Folks, I look forward to the day when God uses Eastside Missionary Baptist Church as a missionary sending center.

I look forward to a day. I would love to see a day. And these are just some ideas floating around in my head.

I would love to see a day where Eastside is a church that people come to because they know the reputation we have in the community, and people are broken, they’re beaten down by life, they’re hurting, and they know that this is a place where they can come and be loved. This is a place where they can come and hear about Jesus, and this is a place where lives are changed. I would love to see a day when people come into this church and they’re discipled.

We’re working on that, but we could be doing more. where people are not just led to Christ and abandoned, but they’re grown up in the faith. They’re taught what it means to be a Christian, not just what we believe, but what Christians do, like the things we’re learning in Disciple Way, Bible study, prayer, worship, serving, giving, evangelism, where people are trained what it means to be a Christian.

I would love to see a day where this is a place where people send their children to learn about God. I would love to see a day where young men come to this church to be trained up in the Bible, to be trained up in ministry, Now I have nothing against Bible college or seminary, but there was a time not so long ago when it was the job of the local church to train young men for ministry. And I do hope for myself in the not too distant future to start taking some online master of Bible courses.

But I’m here to tell you, my training in ministry was in the local church, and I loved every minute of it. And I learned from men who were doing ministry what it meant to do ministry. Folks, I would love to see a day when this church, myself included, and each and every one of us got serious, got as serious as we could be about the things that God has called us as a church to do.

Paul outlines some things in Colossians. When he’s talking to them about his ministry to them, we can look in here and see some goals that he had in mind. In Colossians chapter 1 starting in verse 23 he says, If ye continue in the faith, continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven, whereof I, Paul, am made a minister, who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church, whereof I am made a minister according to the dispensation of God, which is given to me for you to fulfill the word of God, even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints.

He starts out talking to the church at Colossae a little bit about his ministry, a little bit about his hopes for them, that they would remain grounded in the faith and settled in the faith and that they would continue and not be moved away from the hope of the gospel. That they would not be influenced by false teachings that led them to reject the idea that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Anything else than that?

We studied that last Wednesday night, didn’t we? The Five Solas. And if we take away any of those five points or we change it in any way, it stops being the gospel.

And he talks about rejoicing in his sufferings for them. Paul was made a minister and he suffered as a result of it. He suffered as a result of preaching Christ. He suffered as a result of standing for Christ. He suffered as a result of traveling around to these different churches and parts of the world where they didn’t want to hear his message, where they didn’t want to hear from the churches, and traveling to them to teach them, to strengthen them, to encourage them.

He suffered for it. He said, I rejoice in it. And he talks about the mystery of the gospel.

He talks about the mystery which has been hid from ages and from generations but is now made manifest to the saints, that God would save not only the Jews but the Gentiles as well, that He would redeem all men to Himself whosoever will, that He would make reconciliation available between them and between them and God through His blood and put us together as one body, the church. To whom God would make known what is the riches of glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. And he begins to point to the fact, he begins to, I believe, lift up Jesus Christ and talks about Him being in them and the hope and the glory.

And speaking of Christ, he says in verse 28, and I mentioned this passage a couple weeks ago when we were talking about Matthew 7, whom we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus, whereunto I labor, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily. For I would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts might be comforted being knit together in love and all riches of the full assurance of understanding to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God and of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And we’ll stop there this morning.

Now you may be thinking, what does this have to do with vision? What does this have to do with goals? Folks, Paul lays out some things in here that he says, this is the reason I do it.

This is what I’m hoping for. Paul never, well, he doesn’t in this passage come out and say, here’s a list of goals that I have. But as he’s talking about the church at Colossae, as he’s talking to the church at Colossae, he shares some things that he has that he hopes for them.

He shares some things that he’s tried to accomplish. And I submit to you that three things I see in here this morning, and there may be others, but three things I see in here this morning should be things that all churches, ours included, should aim for at the very least. And when I say the very least, I mean as general goals. Now, as we determine what God wants us to do, it’s probably important to set specific goals.

If you set goals for yourself, you know, how many of you have set a goal at New Year’s and said, I’m going to do better about reading my Bible this year, and it’s lasted maybe a day or two. Well, that’s so vague. That’s so general. It’s probably better for us to say, okay, I’m going to make sure that every day I read at least one chapter.

I’m going to make sure this happens. I’m going to read a book and learn how to study my Bible better. I’m going to read at least one book a month, something like that.

Specific goals that we can look to and evaluate our progress. But in terms of, in general, the things that we should strive for as a church, the things that Paul strove for in his ministry. There are three here this morning.

I see one of them being that we should aim for Christ-centered worship. Christ-centered worship. Throughout this passage, there’s nowhere where he talks to them about the church service.

There’s nowhere where he talks to them about the singing, about the specials, the things that we tend to think of as worship. But all throughout this passage, he points them to Jesus Christ. He talks about the glory of Jesus Christ. He talks about the hope that we have in Jesus Christ. He praises the riches that we have available in Jesus Christ. He talks about the wisdom and the knowledge that are full in Jesus Christ. He points them to Jesus Christ and He lifts Him up. And He said here in chapter 2 verse 2, that their hearts might be comforted.

When He said that there, what He’s saying is, my hope is that these things would happen. And He ends up with saying, well, He says that they would be comforted, that they would be knit together with love. That talks about fellowship.

Unto the riches of the full assurance of understanding, that they would understand the truth of Christ, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God and of the Father and of Christ, the gospel of Christ, and that He speaks of Christ in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Folks, He speaks of Christ to them in the most glowing terms and says, I have done this, I have hoped. My goal has been that they would understand, that they would see Him for who He really is.

And there is a problem if. . .

I’m not saying there is a problem, understand me. I’m not saying there is a problem here. I’m saying anywhere there is a problem if we come to worship.

And by the way, worship is not only what takes place here between the welcome and the preaching. Worship should go on all throughout the week. But we do come here to this place to worship together.

And there is a problem if we come into this place with the idea of I’m going to sing some songs so I can enjoy the songs or I’m going to listen so that I can enjoy their voice or I’m going to do it just because it’s what needs to be done. That’s what’s on the schedule, so I’m going to do it. Ladies and gentlemen, our worship as a church, our worship as individuals must be Christ-centered.

We must approach worship. We as a church and we as individuals must approach worship with the idea that we are coming before the very throne of God to exalt Him and to lift up His Son, not only for our own good, because it is good for us when we submit to Him. It is good for us when we glorify Him because that’s what we were created to do.

But also so that other people will see us exalt Him and be pointed to Him and see Him for who He really is. Our goal in worship, our goal as a church must be that we aim for Christ-centered worship. If our focus in worship is on ourselves and what we get out of it, we’ve all probably left church at some time or another and thought, I didn’t get anything out of it today.

It’s okay if you say that. I didn’t get anything out of the sermon today. Well, it’s not okay, but I’m not going to be mad at you for telling me that.

That’s what I mean by saying it’s okay. Because I felt that way too. We’ve all probably left church at some time and thought I didn’t get anything out of the sermon today.

I didn’t enjoy the music today. Folks, if we come into worship thinking it’s all about us, we’re wrong. If we come into worship thinking, everybody’s going to see me here.

What are they thinking about me? Am I doing the right thing? Folks, we’re focused on ourselves.

We’re focused on other people. That’s energy we’re not putting on focusing on Christ. Everything that Paul did was designed with the intention in mind of exalting Jesus Christ so that He would be glorified amongst other people. We as a church should come here.

Not only should we serve throughout the week, serve Christ and worship Him throughout the week with the intention of exalting Him, of lifting Him up, but especially when we come together to worship Him together corporately. We should come together with the idea in mind We are going there today to exalt Jesus Christ. That should be the one and only thought on our minds as we come together to worship Him. In song, in prayer, in study of His Word, that we’re here to glorify Him.

Second of all, we should aim for Christ-centered preaching. We should aim for Christ-centered preaching. Now this is not one that you have.

. . You’re kind of off the hook on this one.

A little bit. A little bit. This is not one that you have to get up every day and make the conscious decision that you’re going to do.

You do have some say in it, in the fact that if I start preaching anything else, if I start preaching another gospel or false doctrine, fire me. You have that right, and quite frankly, you should if I start doing those things. But I, as a preacher of the gospel, and folks, I’ll extend this to anybody who teaches in any capacity in our church.

Our teaching, our preaching should be Christ-centered. We should come to our work, to our vocation, to the joy that we’ve been entrusted with. We should come to it every day.

You hear me, Sunday school teachers, children’s church workers? We should come to it every day with the idea that we are going to present the truths of God’s Word and point people toward their need for Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. I’ve discovered more and more over the last few years how all of the Scriptures point to Jesus Christ. Everything in there just about points to Jesus Christ. You can’t read any passage of the Bible, really, or for any length of time, and not see something that talks about Jesus Christ. There are the prophecies that we spent all last fall studying that pointed to Him coming the first time.

And all these prophecies for thousands of years, they’ve been talking about things, and they were talking about Jesus Christ coming to be the Messiah. We look at the things in the New Testament, and there are different concepts. And I know people debate back and forth on election, and I came to the realization Jesus Christ is the elect one.

Jesus Christ is the one in

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Powered by atecplugins.com