Seeing the Invisible from 9.9.16
Personal Matters
We started our time of prayer with this text, “But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.” (2 Cor 10:12). Comparisons between pastors, churches and ministries based on size, style and influence are common in Australia. Even more distressing “2/3rds world” Christians often in imitate the style of the Western Church. Can’t they see the terrible problems plaguing or families, marriages and congregations? The answer is “No!” they cannot see. All who wish to imitate us rather than Jesus have a deep inner problem. We all need “the eyes of our hearts enlightened” in order to truly discern the ways of God; for in scripture one sees God with one’s heart (Eph 1:18). Sometimes however the Lord doesn’t make himself visible.
Heart Disease
The LORD has disappeared from sight by the time Satan entered Eden. This is intentional, for God’s absence created a space for human temptation to take place. This divine purpose is made clear later in scripture, “God left him to himself, in order to test him and to know all that was in his heart.” (2 Chron 32:31). Such heart testing exposes one’s real treasure; “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matt 6:21). When Eve “saw that the tree… was desired to make one wise” the tree had became her treasure and her heart had moved from the LORD to a creature. In other words, the tree had become an idol. And as idols are spiritually blind so are their worshippers (Pss 115:4-8; 135:15-18). Whenever humans exchange the glory of the “invisible God” for the glory of things they can see with the natural eye our hearts are plunged into darkness (Gen 3:6; Matt 6:23; Rom 1:20). Since “the pure in heart see God” and this is precisely what we sinners are not God has become essentially invisible to us (Jer 17:9; Matt 5:8; Heb 2:13). Who is free from this terrible problem; the LORD rebuked the godly Samuel when he was impressed by the physique of David’s brothers; “the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”” (1 Sam 16:7). If we do not see as God sees, through a pure heart, we can never see that God is seeing us. There is hope however. It is said of Moses, “he considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt…for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.” (Heb 11:26-27). Yet a great stumbling block remains in the way of us being freed from our idolatries, one which religious people are seldom able to see (2 Cor 6:16-7:1; 1 John 5:21).
Worshippers of What!
John 12 is a paradoxical part of the Gospel that few contemporary Christians comprehend. Crowds have been following Jesus because of his “signs”, which on the surface of things made the invisible God highly visible (John 12:37; 14:11). But Jesus, like the absent Creator in Eden, “hides himself” from the throng “lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.” (12:36ff). This seemingly callous act only makes sense when we read a little further on; “many…believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue” (12:42). These crowds acted like the devotees of popular Israelite religion always had. In the time of the prophets the people looked to the visible temple worship for their security, rather than turning to the LORD (Jer 7:4). Now in Jesus’ day the populace placed synagogue attendance above following Jesus as Lord. They were in fact “synagogue worshippers” i.e. worshippers of synagogue religion. Since their treasure was the synagogue their hearts could not turn to Christ. Following this pattern of worshipping religion itself we cannot avoid the conclusion that many Christians are Church worshippers i.e. they worship Church, Church is our treasure. Many hearts are more bound to Church than to Jesus; this is why “they measure themselves by one another”. No wonder the Lord is presenting himself as one who doesn’t see what we are doing (Ezek 8:12; 9:9). Such is the destiny of all idolatry! From such things only Christ can save us.
Jesus’ Invisible Father
In Jesus the God “no one has ever seen” has been revealed (John 1:18). Despite popular thinking however the character of invisible God cannot be made visible by miracles external to the transformation of the human heart. The temptations which Jesus resisted reveal that such a route of power is actually the way of the devil (Matt 4:3, 5). As a true Son Jesus’ only interest was to see what the Father was doing; the eyes of his heart were fixed on the Father as his sole treasure (John 5:20). The cross represented the supreme challenge to Christ’s purity of heart. The cross is the strange and alien place of God’s wrath where Christ must be “left to himself” so that what is in his heart might be exposed (2 Chron 32:31; Isa 28:21). The consequences for Jesus of the disappearance of God are however radically different from that for others. When the spiritually blind lose sight of God the eyes of their hearts remain fixed on their idols, but in Jesus case he can see nothing at all, ““Who is blind as my dedicated one, or blind as the servant of the Lord?….why have you forsaken me”” (Isa 42:19; Mark 15:34). Since there is nothing in the heart of Jesus but the treasure of his Father’s love the conditioned of the crucified Christ is one of utter emptiness. He loses sight of all the promises of God. In bearing our sin Christ is separated from the Holy Spirit of promise and can no longer see himself as the one who will be raised from the dead (Acts 2:33; Heb 11:3, 13; 1 Pet 2:24). The resurrection however turned Jesus’ faith into sight so that now he perfectly sees God as he is (Heb 12:2). He is the one to whom we must look so as to see the Father through the purity of the eyes of his heart. This is what Jesus has accomplished for us.
Conclusion
Whilst seeking to remain thankful to God for all he is doing I am not “seeing” the Lord in the way that I desire. It seems to me that these words of scripture are true for so many of us; “But to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.” (Deut 29:4). There can be no other cause for this blindness than idolatry. Believers in both the Western and non-Western Church are guilty of imitating a razzmatazz (noisy and showy) display of spirituality for two reasons. Firstly, we imagine that our prosperous spirituality enables us to disguise the real treasures of our hearts from God and one another. Secondly, this worldly religious performance avoids the very suffering and persecution which makes the invisible promises of God visible to our hearts. We are reluctant for our idol worship to finish because it would mean the end of comfortable religion as we have known it. The cost of this sort a religious revolution proved too much for Israel of old and is too hard for most Christians today. But a great promise remains, whoever turns away from visible treasures in the Church to worship the invisible God will see in S/spirit “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph 3:8; Col 2:3). This is what my heart desires but I have absolutely no idea how it can come about. I imagine it will happen as it always has, through some unprecedented humbling of the people of God. Please Lord bring it on, and bring it on quickly.