Beth Moore - Vision Testing - Part 2
Do you have eyes and do not see? Because we can have eyes with 20/20 vision and he's still going like, "Can you not see"? Well, what is it you're trying to show? Can you not see? What are you... can you not see? Now, here's what I want to ask you. Is it possible that the verses that come right after it are also correlating, even though they don't mention the sight? Look with me, 'cause we know the one before does. Then we go into this scene, this very unusual scene with this two-stage healing, and now watch what happens. "Jesus," it says, "went out with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the road he asked his disciples, 'Who do people say that I am?' They answered him, 'John the Baptist; others, Elijah; still others, one of the prophets.' 'But you,' he asked them, 'who do you say that I am?'"
And Peter gives the right answer, "You are the Messiah". And I mean, he is given an A by the teacher, "Way to go". You are the Messiah. You are the Christ. You are the Son of God. I recognize it. Only God, Matthew's Gospel says, could've revealed that to you. Flesh and blood could not reveal that to you. A+, Peter. "Then he began to teach them, that it was necessary for the Son of Man to suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes and be killed, and rise after three days. He spoke openly about this". Peter takes him aside. We need to really go into this with him 'cause I want you to know here is Jesus telling this very profound thing. Peter has the audacity to go, "I'm gonna need a minute with you". Takes him to the side. I am so sorry we don't know what he said. And he rebukes him. And man does he get rebuked back. Because Jesus is like, "You know what? You get behind me because you have in mind the things of man and not the things of God".
How is it Peter saw the one thing so clearly, but how suffering could ever, ever be part of the equation, how the cross could ever be part of the path to the kingdom was a complete blur? And so, that's so often us. See something so clearly, and people are impressed, and we get A's from people. Speak on it, write on it, blog on it. Instagram it, tweet it, Facebook it. Everybody's so impressed. And then, we who were so brilliant with part of our sight are as dumb as dirt on something else. My feeling is that all of us have blind spots like this. It's part of the way of the human. I just need some clarity. I need some fog to clear. I need to see this thing. How is it we can see something so clearly when something else is a complete blur to us? How does that happen?
This eye is so interesting. You know, it comes apart. This is the optic nerve right here, it's in the back of it, where all this gross stuff is. If we take it apart, we find out that this, of course, is the cornea. We got the iris and we got the pupil. And all of this is working like a camera of sorts. It's the iris in the pupil that act together as the shutter. They control how much light is getting through. And then what happens next is that the lens, which is right here, so this is the cornea, and then the lens right here, and the cornea take in that light and they refract it, and then they sharply focus it on the retina. And I want to show you where on this particular visual aid the retina is. Because this miracle that is in our eye is this little dot right here. Right here, right here. And it's where it's sharply going to focus.
And when it receives it, of course, and you've heard this before, it comes to it upside down. But in that fraction of a second that we, most of us, never even see, the retina is sending it through neurons back through that optic nerve to the brain, and the brain instantly flips it. And that which was upside down is now right side up. How often we see something utterly upside down. Because the mind that those spiritual neurons are sending it to still think in the thoughts and concerns of man instead of the concerns of God. How early do we see in the Scriptures that God could see? I want you to leave something here in the eighth chapter of Mark, and I want you to go with me to Genesis chapter 1, Genesis chapter 1. We get no further than the fourth verse before we are told blatantly that God is a God who sees.
Now, what we know by that time already, we know the first thing we learn about God in the entire Scriptures is that God is creative. I love knowing that. I love knowing that because in the beginning, God created. Well, actually, the first thing we know is that time was created first because there had to be in a beginning. Before there was a beginning, there was the eternal realm. There was no start to it, there is no finish to it. So, the first thing that God technically did was create time. So, in that moment when he said, "Let there be light," there was like the first tick tock on the clock. And then it says that God said, "Let there be light," and there was. So, then we know, okay, well, God speaks. He's not only a God who's creative, he is a God who speaks.
But by the time we get to the fourth verse, we are seeing that it says, I'm gonna go with three, "Then God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light". Verse 4, "God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light 'day,' and the darkness he called 'night.' And there was an evening, and there was a morning: one day". It goes on again to say in verse 10, "And God saw that it was good". It goes on to say as there are six days of creation in verse 12, God saw that it was good. Verse 18, God saw that it was good. Verse 21, God saw that it was good. Verse 25, God saw that it was good. And we find out in 31, God saw all that he had made, and it was, I love the CSV in this particular rendering, "And it was very good indeed". He is a God who sees.
I want you to notice with me in 1:27, "He created him in the image of God, he created them male and female, both in the image of God". Verse 28, "God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful, 'multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.' And God also said, 'Look.'" That's gonna become important to us. "Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the entire earth, every tree whose fruit contains seed. This will be food for you". And he tells them about the wildlife, every bird of the sky, every creature that crawls on the earth, "'Everything that I have given the breath of life in it. I have given every green plant for food.' And it was so, and God saw all that he had done, and it was indeed very good". He's saying in verse 29, "Look, look, look. Look how good this is". What is he saying to them in effect? Look and see it like I see it. 'Cause I mean, this is so good. This is so good. Look around you and see this as I see it.
Now, would you look with me in Genesis 3, verses 1 through 7? "Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God really say, You can't eat from any tree in the garden?' The woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden. But about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, "You must not eat it or touch it, or you will die".'" Verse 4, "'No! You will not die,' the serpent said to the woman. 'In fact, God knows that when you eat it, your eyes,'" you can already see where this is gonna have bearing on us, "'your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.' The woman saw that the tree was good for food and was delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. The woman saw".
If you write in your Bible, I just want you to circle that particular phrase. 'Cause remember, he had said, "Look, look". And they're about to see, all right, but they're about to see it from a whole different angle. "The woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. And she took some of it, and she ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves". You see, a blindness of sorts set in with those eyes popping open because the Scripture says that their eyes were opened. They didn't become gods, but their eyes were indeed opened. But their eyes were opened to the darkness and not to the light. Oh, our eyes can pop open, all right. They can pop right open to the dark.
Here's what I want to suggest to you. How many times did they see that tree? They lived around that tree. And all that time, they've been thinking, we don't know how much time had gone on. But all of that time prior to the serpent bringing that particular temptation, they had seen that tree as God told them to see it, as God had taught them to see it. It wasn't that they just then saw the tree. They knew that that was the tree they weren't to eat from. And they saw it the way God taught them to see it. But all of a sudden, it was not that they just suddenly saw the tree, it's that they suddenly saw the tree the way the serpent wanted them to see it. It is not just about what we see, but how we see it. Because what was happening here is that they had seen it all that time like God wanted them to see it, and then suddenly they saw it the way the serpent wanted them to see it.
Anybody remember what point number one was? We have access to a great physician who restores vision. This is point number 2 in our final point of this evening's lesson. We have an enemy who is also trying to doctor our eyes. Let me tell you something. We're gonna see things, not just sensual temptations, I want you to think across the board. We're gonna see things that make us so mad, make us so angry. And Lord, how do I see this? How do I see this in such a way that I'm not responding perhaps more sinfully than what I'm mad about? Anybody know what I'm talking about? When my anger then exceeds whatever it is that I'm even upset about, Lord, how do you see this? Help me to see it like you see it. We could see without the blur of our offenses and egos, and instead see it with the eyes of Christ.
What makes people do the things that they do, say the things like that, what brokenness is beneath their bad behavior? Who has hurt that person who is hurting you? 'Cause something has. Or abandoned that person who has abandoned you, someone has. Our eyesight will always be impaired here, always. But what if we would allow him to continually be healing us as much as human eyes are able to see? Here's what I want to pitch out to you 'cause I'm convinced of this, and I want you to give it some thought. One reason we're here is to get over our fear of seeing. Because I want to suggest to you that we are scared to see. One thing, we have a comfort level with what we've already seen, and we don't want to see anything that is now going to confuse us. Anybody in this with me? So, it's like I just want to see what I've seen, and I don't want to see anything new. 'Cause I can't deal with anything new, I just want to deal with the old. I'm just gonna stick with this.
So, I'm comfortable with my fog, anybody? I'm comfortable with not knowing a zero from an eight. I feel good about it, I feel fine about it. I feel fine about it. We don't want to be forced to see what we don't want to see and what we're scared of seeing. So, I want to suggest to you that we're here to get some optic nerve. I want to tell you a couple things, and this is so important. This is one of the things I pray for constantly, constantly I pray this verse out of Psalm 119:18, "Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law". And when we think about that, we think law, we always think commandments. Something, you know, Exodus 20 of the Ten Commandments. That word is torah in Hebrew, and it means your teaching, your teaching.
Remember that at the end of Luke chapter 24, it says that Jesus opened their mind to understand the Scriptures. And so, I'm already knowing when I get up in the morning for my Bible reading that I don't have the capacity. I need eyes that really do see. I'm just gonna be looking from my human understanding, my human vision. Going to be looking with these, when he's going like, "You know what? I could give you better sight than this". Lord, I need you to open my eyes that I'll just see some of the wonders in here. Impress me with it. Mesmerize me with it. Open my mind to understand it, the wonderful things in your law. We're afraid if we have our lenses cleansed, I truly believe this, we got to in our minds, maybe some of you right now, "I don't want to see more than this because when he opens my eyes, I'll only see what's bad".
That's not true. Isaiah chapter 6 says the whole earth is full of his glory. The whole earth is full of his glory. That everywhere we're looking, they're just, they're glimpses of glory. We just don't have the eyes to see. What if we had guts enough like Moses to say to him, "Show it to me. Show it to me"? Very often when I say that Scripture to the Lord in the morning before my reading, I'll say to him, "Lord, show me the wonders of your Word". Then I'll say, "Show me your wonders everywhere. Show me your wonders in a person that I get to encounter today. Show me your wonders in nature. Show me, Lord, show me". Go with me, I think this is where I'm ending you anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Go with me to Joshua 5, I want to show you something. Joshua has the Israelites there on the edge of the Promised Land. They've come across the Jordan River, and they're camped, thinking toward what's going to happen when they go into that town where they've already seen through the eyes of the spies that those people are so big and so dominating that they felt like grasshoppers in their sight. And it says in verse 13 of Joshua chapter 5, "When Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua approached him and asked, 'Are you for us or for our enemy?' He says, 'Neither. I have now come as commander of the Lord's army.'" In other words, "I do not take sides".
And it says, "Then Joshua bowed with his face to the ground in worship and asked him, 'What does my lord want to say to his servant?' And the commander of the Lord's army said to Joshua, 'Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.' And Joshua did that. Now, Jericho was strongly fortified because the Israelites. No one was leaving or entering. And the Lord said to Joshua," look carefully, "'Look, I have handed Jericho, its king, and its best soldiers over to you. Go march around that city.'"
My husband Keith is a consummate outdoorsman. And from the time he was a little bitty guy, he was trained to see things that most of us never see in nature. And he was given such an appreciation of being outside and being able to look through what would camouflage into something that had life, that an eye that had not been trained to appreciate it would completely miss. He's the kind that will see a bird on the limb that nobody else would've noticed. He'll point out an owl to me that I wouldn't have seen, maybe a hawk. We live in the country, so this kind of thing happens all the time. There are times that he'll look through limbs, and he'll lean me in and go, "Do you see that doe right there"? Or maybe he'll see a fawn that's in under a shrub that's like 200 feet from us because he's got eyes trained that way.
And one of the things that he does with me is he'll get me over with him 'cause I'll say, "I don't see it. I don't see it, I don't see it". And he'll say, "Come over here, come over here". And he'll lean me into his right shoulder and have me put my head on his right shoulder. And then he takes his arm as straight as can be and points his finger. And he has me lean into it, he says, "Elizabeth, look all the way down my arm and look exactly where my finger is pointing". And every time, I see it. "Joshua, look. I have given them to you". He's got all this anxiety over there going like, "Whew, what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do"? All you're gonna have to do is march around it. He's not feeling like, I mean like, "They're ours". He's going, "Joshua, look, look. See it the way I see it. I have given you this victory".
All of us are looking for something, everything that has eyes, even the Lord. 2 Chronicles 16:9 says that, "The eyes of the Lord roam throughout the entire earth, looking for someone who is wholehearted toward him so that he can show himself strong in their behalf". 1 Peter 5:8 says that, "Satan is like a prowling lion, roaring and looking for someone, anyone to devour". Job 1 presents him the same way. God asks him, "Where have you been"? "I've been roaming through the earth," he says, "going to and fro, walking up and down on humans, constantly looking for something, someone, anything, anyone". And the voice of John the Baptist echoes through the centuries, through the eternal Word of God that is still warm with the breath of inspiration. And he says, "Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world".