This sermon series, Hearing God's Voice, navigates the intricate dance of discerning God's voice in our lives, from the rustling leaves to the pages of Scripture. Today, with a lighthearted twist, we even explore what happens when the Bible gets a Gen Z makeover, proving that the language of God is not only profound but also adaptable. Closing the sermon with a meditative journey, we invite you to reflect on the images and symbols that resonate with your spirit, fostering a deeply personal connection with Jesus.
This sermon was recorded at a Sunday morning gathering at Church of the Lookout in Longmont, Colorado.
Speaker — Jennette Ross
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This sermon series, Hearing God's Voice, navigates the intricate dance of discerning God's voice in our lives, from the rustling leaves to the pages of Scripture. Today, with a lighthearted twist, we even explore what happens when the Bible gets a Gen Z makeover, proving that the language of God is not only profound but also adaptable. Closing the sermon with a meditative journey, we invite you to reflect on the images and symbols that resonate with your spirit, fostering a deeply personal connection with Jesus.
This sermon was recorded at a Sunday morning gathering at Church of the Lookout in Longmont, Colorado.
Speaker — Jennette Ross
Visit Our Website — https://thelookout.church
Take Your Next Step--- https://thelookout.church/connect\
Connect with Us --- https://thelookout.church/new
Give to Support the Ministry --- https://thelookout.church/give
Visit our website
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on Instagram
Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast. Church of the Lookout is in Boulder, colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in His presence, growing in His family and living on His mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love. Visit us online at thelookoutchurch.
Speaker 2:Good morning. How is everybody? I just woke up really excited today and I've been jumping around, I don't know. I'm just excited to get into this topic of hearing God's voice Because for me, I don't know, I don't think there's anything better than when you have a moment where you feel like God has spoken to you. So we are in the series Hearing God's Voice because we want to empower you all to hear God's voice. I trust you, he loves you and he is speaking things to you. So with the series, we're hoping that we're unlocking some new ways that God is communicating and just helping you.
Speaker 2:So last week, luke got into the internal ways that God speaks to us through things like dreams or our emotions, sometimes those prompting ideas, and it's basically that still small whisper. He talked about how to quiet ourselves so that we can hear that. He gave some great examples and advice about how to distinguish between our voice and God's voice. So if you missed that last week, I encourage you to go back and take a listen, because it's really helpful. So we're going to actually flip the script this week and we're going to talk about Vox Externa, those outward ways in which God speaks from the outside in. But can we just address an elephant in the room which is it doesn't really matter if God's speaking internally or externally. If we don't understand the language and what she's speaking, it makes it really difficult. I feel like this is perfectly illustrated through this hilarious video that my daughter sent me a couple of weeks ago, so we're going to play that here.
Speaker 3:Recently I did hear about a new translation out called the Gen Z Bible, where someone had taken the scriptures and translated it into Gen Z language. Now I'm going to read part of this. I do want to let you know I would never dishonor God's word. I have triple checked this to make sure this is exactly what Luke 1 communicates when the angel talks to Mary. Check this out.
Speaker 3:Mary was a pick me girl for God and was simping for him in prayer when the angel Gabriel appeared to her and said Ayo, you're a real one and the top G is feeling you. But she thought his compliment was sus and gave him the side eye. So he said baby girl, chill. God sent me to tell you you've passed his vibe check. Lowkey, he wants you to have the main character. You name him Jesus and they will all say he's him. She said how can this be, since I promised him my body count will always be zero. Respectfully he said this ain't about cuffing season, for the Holy Spirit will live rent free in you and your boy Jesus will be a divine bro. Beside your cousin Elizabeth is with child she who is already older than a boomer and whose husband is way past beekeeping age. So Mary said, bet Gabriel left her on red and she let the Holy Spirit cook.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. All right, I got to admit, if I did not know the actual story told in the Bible in my language and my lingo, I would be lost. And then if I didn't have the addition of having some Gen Z in my household that are saying these words and I have to be like what does sus mean? You know, when they're like using it, I would not know what that video was talking about. So I think it's the same way with our relationship with God. We have to be in relationship and we have to have familiar familiarity with him, and I don't think it's much different than our romantic relationships or deep friendships or family, right. It's normal for people that are around each other to kind of have their own little private code, right, and you could say, well, this is not really fair of God that. Why doesn't he just make it simple? And I would say I do think in the beginning, when we first come to Jesus, god does everything to meet us where we were at and he is talking to us in ways that we can understand because he wants relationship. But then at some point, I think the lover kicks in and that deep friendship kicks in and God is bidding us come close to me. I want you to know me in a deeper way, and I want to know you in a deeper way, and we're going to do that through me speaking to you in a way that I don't speak to just anybody, and so it's really him wooing us and drawing us closer, that he speaks in this language that we have to learn. It requires us to lean in and to learn how he's talking to us, and so we're going to get into some practical things to help us break that down in a minute, but first let's talk about some of these external ways in which God is communicating, so that we can recognize and be able to see how he's talking to us. So the first one that I want to talk about this morning is Scripture. This is where you're reading the Bible and it feels alive. It doesn't just feel like words written on a page hundreds, thousands of years ago, but it feels like something is jumping out of the page, grabbing your heart and yanking you in right. Have you ever had that moment where you just feel like this is speaking to me right now, in this moment?
Speaker 2:And I remember the summer either I was seven or eight years old. My parents sent me off to summer camp. It was a Bible camp and I had grown up in the church and went to Sunday school and the whole thing. But that particular summer camp they presented the idea about us really owning our relationship with Jesus and asking him to be our Lord and Savior and praying that prayer of dedication, of saying God, you're not just the God of my parents or my older siblings, but I want a relationship with you. Will you come and lead me and be my Lord?
Speaker 2:And after praying that prayer, I remember coming home and just having this intense hunger to read the scripture, to where my parents actually bought me an upgraded Bible because I just had the little children's illustrated Bible, so they bought me a real adult Bible. And I would just highlight I love the Psalms in this season and I just the whole entire. When I look back at that childhood Bible, all of the Psalms is highlighted in different colors and there's all this notation on the sides. And it was because and I even journaled in my journal, my little eight-year-old journal that I just felt like God was talking to me through the scriptures. And I remember paying attention and just hanging on every word of the pastor at that season and not doodling on my bulletin like I used to, because I just it was alive and this is the Holy Spirit. This is how God set it up. We're not meant to just read it and it not impact us. God wants to talk and communicate to us through his scripture, so that is a common way. So if you notice that you're like feeling this connection to a particular story or a particular person in the Bible, that could be God talking to you about something related to your life and some marker that they had. He is doing in you as well. Okay, so scripture.
Speaker 2:Another thing, and I would say I don't think this is super common, but angelic visitations is a way that God can speak and the Gen Z video was talking about that. Right, gabriel came and gave a direct message to Mary. If I were to poll everybody in the room, there'd probably I don't even know there might be some people that have had that experience where you can see, you know, reach out and touch an angel that brought a message. I have not experienced that in my life. I've had moments where I thought was that person an angel that just helped me. But I won't know until heaven, but I definitely know I've not had an angel come and say, jeanette, you're going to be with child, so right, but it can happen. So we did want to mention it, okay.
Speaker 2:Another, not so common but it is possible, is God's audible voice. This is where you literally can hear God speaking with your actual ears. We're not talking at like spiritual ears, but your physical ears. And the closest thing that I've experienced to this is I was young, fresh out of college, in my first apartment, and I had just laid down to go to sleep and all of a sudden I heard my name like so loud Jeanette. I mean it sounded like a train running through my room and I bolted up out of bed and my heart's racing and I'm oh my gosh, it startled me so much. And then I didn't hear an audible voice, but I had the thought go to the front door and lock your front door and I was like that's so weird. I always lock my door and it kind of felt stupid, honestly, like am I really going to get out of bed and go check my door? Because I really love sleep, if you know that, if you know me, you know I love sleep. So I was like but anyway, so I got out and went to the front door and, sure enough, it was unlocked. So I locked it and that is the end of that story, which I'm glad. Who knows what would have happened if I hadn't heard that voice to wake me up and lock my door.
Speaker 2:My dad had a more intense kind of experience where it was a season where my brother my older brother was in college as a biology major and he wanted to switch to a music major and my dad was really upset.
Speaker 2:He felt like biology was sensible music. How are you going to make money? So he was, my dad was praying and kind of talking to the Lord about this and he heard the audible voice of God tell him support, baird your son and and let him switch his major. And now, in hindsight, my brother was a worship pastor for years and currently he is the music director for both band and choir at a Christian private Christian school in Massachusetts and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people that have honed their gift and have, yeah, taken the skills and things that my brother has helped cultivate and they're using that and it gives God glory. And so I'm really thankful that my dad heard God's voice, because it wasn't going to happen if God hadn't spoken, and I will say my experience is that's usually the case. So if you feel bad that you haven't heard God's audible voice, it's probably because you're hearing him otherwise and he hasn't had to like go okay, last resort. Hello listen to me.
Speaker 2:I keep pushing this thing down. Okay, so another way that God can speak to us is through community. So this is different than the prophetic, okay, because in this instance this is somebody, you're in a conversation. They don't have any awareness that they're talking to you. And I mean, they have awareness that they're talking to you, but they don't have an awareness that what they're saying, that you're feeling like, wow, god is speaking to me right now, right?
Speaker 2:So for me, I remember it was that same season I was fresh out of college and found myself in Wichita, Kansas, and had attended this church and there was this really attractive, handsome young man who had I saw him kind of lead worship and then he also preached and I was just like pretty smitten. So I called my mom up and I said, mom, I want to invite this guy out to lunch because I want to get to know him. I'm very intrigued by him and I, you know, we had not met and she was just, you know, motherly advice. This wasn't like a prophetic word from where she was like I don't think that's a good idea, which I thought was weird because I was a young, independent woman and had invited people out on dates before. But it was in that moment I felt like God was speaking to me. So I hung up the phone with her and I just said, lord, I, you know I'm kind of frustrated that you're telling me that I can't call this guy and invite him out. I want to go to lunch with him, and so I'm like, okay, but I won't, I won't do it, I'm just gonna trust you. But you know my wish, you know what my desire.
Speaker 2:And so that Sunday I walked in and in the lobby he was right there and I thought I gave like the most awkward smile. But he says he just saw me and my face lit up, and so he came over and introduced himself and we talked. But I was like I'm not doing it. God told me, do not invite him out. So we just talked and had our pleasantries and then service happened, and then after service, this other guy that I was friends with it was just a friendship he said hey, what are you doing after? You want to go to lunch? And I said, sure.
Speaker 2:So we went over to Boston Market. If you've ever been to Boston Market, you know it's the type where you order your food, you take it on a train, you sit down. So we're sitting there eating and enjoying our lunch when all the bells and the door opens and this whole stream of 20-somethings from the church that we just attended come walking in, and in that group is Travis Ross, who I had been. You know that I had my eye on and I had wanted to invite to lunch, and so Travis ordered his food and the table where all his friends are sitting has filled up and so he could just go and sit down and make a new table, or he's like oh, there's that girl that I just met sitting with Chris, who I know, so I'm just gonna go sit down next to her so he comes over and sits down. And then I didn't hear this, but I'm pretty sure Holy Spirit, jesus and God, we're just all laughing and they're like see, girl, we got your back, I got my wish there.
Speaker 2:I was having lunch with Travis Ross, and then we get married, and not that instant, but eventually. So all that to say I'm really glad that God speaks through community, because if my mom hadn't said, don't call him like, we probably would not be married and I probably wouldn't be here and I'd have five people our children who would be sorely disappointed because here's the bit that you don't know Travis had been in a relationship with this other person two months prior and there was some weird dynamic in their relationship where she was kind of pushy and power differentials were not equal, right. So he knew, like my next person, that I date. I can't let those power things be weird. So he told me, if you had called me up and I didn't know you and you were like, hey, can I take you out to lunch, that would have been like a red flag, like oh, this woman is, you know, this is she's coming from Satan as a temptation to like pull me back into this, you know, weird relationship thing again. So anyway, god speaks to us through community, but he also he does speak to people and it is a prophetic thing where they have the person that's receiving has total awareness that God is speaking to them for the other person and I was asking the Lord for an example of this and he directed my attention to this journal and when I picked it up this is how long it's been I literally had to brush dust off.
Speaker 2:Okay, I had totally forgotten about this instance, but to set it up, I was going on a trip with a couple friends here from the church to Costa Rica. It's August of 2019. So I literally did not know anybody except the people that were on the trip with us. This is what kind of where I really met Amy Joyner. I was like I want her to be a close friend, lord, and I began praying at that moment. Can you bring them to our church? So you're welcome. I think there were a lot of people praying that, but anyway, we love you, amy, anyway.
Speaker 2:So I don't know anybody and I notice we're like in a worship service and I notice this woman and what will happen to me sometimes is I'll like see a person, but then I see something in my mind's eye. It's not that I'm physically seeing it, it's just this impression. So I'm looking at this woman and I see this impression of feathers growing out of her arms, which that's kind of weird, right. But then in this vision, I mean she's not actually doing this thing, but I kind of get this impression again of her opening her arms. And let me see let me read it so I don't screw it up as she stretched her arms open, they transformed into wings that allowed her to soar to new heights. So I walk over to her and I share the vision, and then I ask to pray for her and while praying I saw another vision of her teaching women, revelation she was receiving from God, from this new, heightened vantage point with him. She told me that earlier during worship she was reminded about a hidden dream to teach and disciple young women, but always thought that this was her idea and not God's. But now, as I was sharing with her, she knew it was God, confirming that it was in fact him, and she felt the encouragement she needed to step out into this hidden dream. So I could have just saw that and thought that's weird and I don't want to go over to somebody and tell them they have feathers coming out of their arms, you know. But it was when I stepped out and then I began to pray that the rest of it came together, which then, you know, made sense to her in her moment and was an encouragement. So God does love to speak to us about other people so that we can bring them a timely word.
Speaker 2:Okay, another way that God will speak externally is through art, and what's so fun about that is A God is like the most artistic right and B there are so many expressions within art. Right, you've got dance, you've got, you know, film. I mean we could just go poetry, I mean, there's just so much art. So I'm just going to highlight two of them. So the first is music. I think God uses music as a medium through which he can reach out, through the notes of the music, grab the strings of our heart and start playing its own tune, right?
Speaker 2:So we're going to have a little exercise here and we're going to play a song that moves me, and I'll tell you what God has spoken to me at different times through this song. It might be one that you're familiar with, it might be not, but it is Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber. So what I want you to do they're going to play it here in a second. I want you to just close your eyes and we're just going to say Holy Spirit, we welcome you into this place. We know that you're here, we acknowledge your presence, but we are welcoming you to speak, to bring any message that God might have for us through this song. Okay, go ahead and play it. Okay, you can open your eyes.
Speaker 2:So this week, on Wednesday, when I was really putting this message together, every time I would hear that song. I just was reminded of those valley seasons that are hard, and the Lord was just showing me, like how he was there with me, I wasn't alone, and then I could lean on him and pull strength from him as he walked me through the valley. And then on Saturday, when I was practicing this and I was listening to it, I was thinking about childbirth and just the struggle of childbirth. But then there's this joy and reward, the end with the child you know, that you get to hold in your arms after intense pain. And then, just now, I was seeing this dry kind of soil, but this life sprung through and as the song was going, it was growing and, you know, in fast time, and this flower appeared. For me. There's just this pain, this grief, this struggle that's so evident in the music that Samuel Barber composed and the strings carry, but it's overshadowed with this hope, you know. And so God is using that kind of as a medium, as a substance through which to communicate that. So if you heard something, that's awesome. If you didn't, don't worry. There's lots of ways that God speaks and there's lots of ways that he's going to speak this morning too. So, anyway, art, music is a way that God can speak. Paintings is another way that God can speak, so he goes beyond the color, the pigment, the brushwork, composition and shapes to speak. So they've already shown the picture.
Speaker 2:This is Mark Rothko paintings. He's an abstract expressionist painter that was producing work from the 1950s through the 70s and it is common even today they still have his stuff up in museums that when people do as they are doing here in the images that I showed, where they stand and they are in a gallery and they're looking at these big pieces, it's common for people to weep and to get really moved with emotion. And you might be like me. I have not had the experience of being able to stand in front of an actual Mark Rothko piece. I've only seen images of it. I'm like, really People weep. I mean, come on, it's blocks of color, it's squares and rectangles of color. So listen to what Mark Rothko said of his own paintings, and then I'm going to share some things that others have said. He famously wrote the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience as I had when painting them.
Speaker 2:Tamara Avishai of the Lonely Palette podcast says of Rothko paintings he allows us to create our own relationships with the emotional reactions that surface from looking at his paintings and to consequently fill our own personal cathedrals to the rafters. If there is a God. My friend Claire once wrote he is looking back at me kindly from the center of a Rothko square and this profound spiritual use of color makes it difficult to describe a Rothko painting without getting into poetic or associative terms. There's not much to describe. We can look at number one from 1961, for example, and to put it plainly, it's rectangles of greenish, black and purple and red. But yet it's not just that.
Speaker 2:People actually say the most beautiful things about a Rothko Like it's what came before God separated light and dark in the opening lines of Genesis. It's being a kid and gently pushing your fingers against your closed eyelids to watch the color swirl and churn, not knowing what's going to come next. It's, as the songwriter Dar Williams put, a blue that speaks so full. It's like a beauty one can barely stand. It's a green like the peace in your heart. Sometimes it's the luminescent light behind the horizon before the sun rises. It's the depth of black when your eyes adjust to darkness. And finally, writer James Elkins recounted a time gazing at a Rothko painting like this, he said.
Speaker 2:Rothko paintings offer me a space of perfect stillness, a space that brings me face to face with nothing other than the power of who I am. These canvases have the potential to show me the stillness, thus the life inside of me, and it is a stillness so naked that there is nowhere to go but to tears. So my question is, are these people just super spiritually sensitive? I mean, maybe, but maybe it's what Luke had kind of talked about last week. And there is something too, when we still ourselves, because these people are standing there still for a moment in the quiet of a gallery, and that God will use that moment to speak through something very simple as a color swatch of a square right.
Speaker 2:I don't know where Rothko was in his relationship. He's no longer here with us on the earth, so I can't interview him to say so what's your relationship with Jesus? I don't know where any of the people that I quoted their experience, where they are in relationship to God, but from their own confessions, it seems like God used what to me appears very simple painting to speak profound mysteries of himself to these people in very deep places of their soul. So God will use anything to speak to his people because he loves us. Another way that God can speak externally is through nature.
Speaker 2:I think we have the benefit of being able to look right out those mountains. They're majestic. It pulls something in our soul to be like, wow, aw, wells up, and it puts us in our place of realizing we're very tiny and there's something. Something created all this stuff that's way massive and has been here way longer than me, right? God can? I think he likes to use the substance of the things that he created mountains, rivers, trees, animals and use those to speak to the ones that bear his image. And he can speak to us through seemingly mundane elements in our life if we're open to pay attention in here.
Speaker 2:So in a minute we're going to listen to an interview that is from the podcast Makers and Mystics. It's of an artist, speaker and writer by the name of Bruce Herman, and he was sharing how, when he was seven years old, he had this moment where God came to him in a very mundane moment. And what's amazing to me about this story is that he wasn't raised in a Christian home, he didn't have parents that were believers and he wouldn't actually come into a relationship with Jesus until he was an adult. So let's listen to this moment where Bruce Herman describes this moment at seven.
Speaker 5:I'm about six years old. I'm home from school. I love school. I love first grade. I hate missing school. But I'm home again sick, and I hated being sick, but I was sick a lot in my early childhood and usually respiratory problems. And so my mom says Bruce, are you okay? I'm going to just go next door and have coffee with Mildred, is that okay? And I said sure. She said just, you know, if you need anything, just come next door and grab me. And I said okay. So she left, she walked out the door and there's a door shut. That stirred up some dust in the room and I happened to be lying on the floor with my cat. I had my head right on my cat's body. The cat had no self-respect at all. It would just let you use it as a pillow. Most cats would scratch you for doing that.
Speaker 5:But I would just lie in there on my cat and lazily noticing the dust specks swimming in a shaft of light coming in the window after my mom would close the door, and I noticed those specks of dust and I had the thought, and it's clear, it's so clear as though it's happening now or happened moments ago. I had the thought oh, those little specks of dust are like planets, they're like stars, they're like the solar system, swimming in the light. That is God. And as I had that thought, I was flooded with love, with a sense of beauty and poignant, piercing kind of love. And for a moment I was completely unaware of the room or the dust specks or the shaft of light. I just felt swept up into an ocean of light, an ocean of love. And I felt absolutely certain and this feeling has never really left me that everything was going to be fine. Everything, always, everywhere, was going to be okay.
Speaker 2:And that beautiful dust, specks of dust floating in the sunlight, and God used that moment to reach out to a little boy and let him know that he was loved. So I think the common theme with all of these things, with these external ways that God is speaking, can be boiled down to just a holy noticing, and what I mean by that is just kind of two parts One, taking time to pay attention to the things and the moments that are happening around us right throughout the day, but then two, coupled with that, is just the reality, us carrying, a reality that God can use those very everyday moments to speak and that he will and that he wants to. So, getting back to kind of what we were joking about in the beginning with the elephant in the room and like, you have to know God's language. It's actually not hard to decipher the language. We just have to know how God is speaking, and he's given us a beautiful manual and then also a helper, a helper in the Holy Spirit, to help us kind of learn the language of God that he's speaking to. You know the deep, intimate places, but then we also have the Bible. That is full of symbols and metaphors and pictures. God loves to speak to us through that. And so if we have an understanding of what those symbols mean, then we begin to understand what God is speaking.
Speaker 2:So, for example, if I say what do you think of with the color white, purity? Why do we think that it's part of our culture, right? We have women wearing white gowns on their wedding day because they want to symbolize that they're this pure gift to their husband to be. All comes from the Bible, isaiah 118,. God says come now and let us reason together, says the Lord, though your sins be a scarlet, they're white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. So God's using the symbol of white to represent purity. And then Holy Spirit. He has symbolized many ways fire, wind, water and one of those is in Isaiah 551, where God says all who are thirsty come to the water and drink. So he's giving this imagery of you know that we take the Holy Spirit in right and that we're taking God in and it brings us, it renews us and brings refreshment. So you can just flip through the Bible and just look and there's all kinds of colors and there's all kinds of imagery and symbolism and God's going to use that as like material through which he's talking to you. So like you get images in your mind and you might say why am I noticing this white shimmer or something you know? And maybe God's speaking about purity, but he also uses our own imagery and symbolism within our culture.
Speaker 2:So when we have a door that's open, right, we'll say that that's what Like an opportunity, right? So maybe you're sitting in a doctor's office waiting for them to call you, for it to be your turn to go see the doctor, and you just keep noticing the door opening and the nurse coming out and calling the next patient, and you keep noticing this door opening over and over again, right? Maybe in that moment, step back and ask the Lord huh, are you speaking through this door opening? Why am I noticing that? And then maybe God will say, yeah, you know that thing that you've been praying about whether or not you should do it. I'm trying to tell you like, yes, go for it. I'm giving you an open door, or I mean, who knows what God's going to say? But the point is asking, you know, stepping back and asking, and I think that this is how God designed us to be from the very beginning, and what I mean by that is that we are meant to see that our eyes are meant to be. Our physical eyes are meant to be a gateway through which God can meet with us and talk to us. And this began in the garden. So here we go with our stakeholder verse at the end of the sermon, verse 3, 1-11,.
Speaker 2:Now, the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman Did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman you will not really die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. And then the eyes of both were opened and they knew they were naked and they sewed fake leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said when are you? And he said I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. And he said who told you you were naked? Okay, so backing up here, the serpent comes and says that if she eats the fruit, her eyes will be opened.
Speaker 2:Now we know that the serpent's not talking about her physical eyes, because we see right after that. The Bible tells us the woman saw that the tree was good, right, and this is happening before she bit the fruit. So her physical eyes have the ability to see. So the serpent is talking about something different. He's saying that she will see good and she will see evil. And why is this important? Because prior to them reaching out, touching the fruit, taking it and eating it. They were seeing, but they were only seeing good. They literally could not see evil, because God designed us. His original intent for us is that we would only see good.
Speaker 2:So when Adam and Eve are looking around in the garden and they see a giraffe, they're like Good, right. They see a lake, good. They see lettuce, onion, tomato, good, good, good. They see each other and they're like Very good, right, they're only experiencing good. And you might say, well, she saw Satan and he's not good, yeah. But also Paul tells us in 2nd Corinthians 1114 that Satan disguises himself as the angel of light. So perhaps we you know the imagery that painters paint and stuff is this like snake? But really we know later that when the consequence for the serpent that came was that he wasn't going to have the ability to be up off the ground anymore.
Speaker 2:So we don't really know what Satan looked like in this moment. Perhaps he was beautiful. Perhaps this serpent you know had like the iridescent scales and the whole thing was like gorgeous. All I know is that God had designed them to only see good and it was when they mistrusted God's goodness, right. There was something like that.
Speaker 2:The enemy came in and spoke these words like, yeah, you're experiencing good, but there's something else, there's this evil. And he made it sound like it was something that she was missing out on, that she would want. So there wasn't anything wrong with her having a doubt. You know that doubt moment. The problem was that she acted on it, right, and she said, oh, maybe there is something more than what I'm experiencing. So she reached out to eat the fruit and when she did that, then all of a sudden, that brought in evil and the ability to see and recognize, now, good and evil. And that wasn't what God wanted. He only wanted us to experience good.
Speaker 2:But now shame and guilt has marred and twisted their vision. Right, because, listen, think about this Prior to eating the fruit, they're naked, right, and they're looking at each other in their nakedness and they're saying good stuff, right, this is good. When they eat the fruit, now it ushers in the ability to see good and evil, and they're looking at each other and they're like we're naked. Bad, what had changed? Nothing physically had changed at this point. Right, they're the same. The only thing that changed was their perception.
Speaker 2:This is why God comes and says who told you you were naked? In other words, who told you that your nakedness, that I gave you as a freedom and liberty, is now this bad thing. And so this is why Jesus had to come, because we're all born into that marring and twisting perception and seeing good and evil. And I'm not saying this is different than discernment. Yes, there's evil in the world all right, that we need to be able to siphon out. But our intent and our purpose was supposed to be walking around and seeing good, and so Jesus had to come to bring us back and restore us to that.
Speaker 2:So in Isaiah 35, 4 through 5, the prophet Isaiah sees this coming day when our marred and twisted version and perception would be changed, and he says behold, your God will come with vengeance and with recompense of God and he will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and then Jesus comes as a man in the flesh, and one of the first things that he declares and says is found in Luke 4, 18, where he says the spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind. Now we know that, literally, he laid hands on people and their physical eyes that couldn't see were made to be able to see. So the blind saw, but every single one of us, our spiritual eyes, were marred and blind and could not see. And Jesus said I was coming back to make those spiritual eyes be able to see, to restore you, to be able to see good, like we did in the garden.
Speaker 2:And then God declared to Paul, an early follower of Jesus and his new purpose in Christ, which is ours as well today. In Acts 26, 16 through 18, it says but rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you, their sight, for this purpose to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me again. Sight and to those in which I will appear to you again. Sight, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles to whom I am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God. And this, my friends, is our purpose. This is why Jesus came. We don't have to walk around not seeing. We can join Jesus in our new creation eyes and the kingdom work of God and we can begin to rebuild, restore, reimagine, renew and we get the opportunity to walk around and say where is the good? That's what I'm looking for. Where is the activity of God? Where is Jesus? And I'm going to use my eyes, both physically and spiritually, to be looking for the good. That is what we get to do. So we get to ask where are you showing up, jesus, in my conversations? Where are you showing up in the art around me? Because art is all around us? Where are you showing up in nature?
Speaker 2:I love the author, anne Voskamp. She talks about this moment where she's just washing dishes in her sink. I mean, can you get any more mundane? Anyway, I'm glad when they're done, but don't like the doing, you know. But anyway, she's just noticing the iridescent bubbles in God speaking to her through the beauty of bubbles in the dishwashing sink. God will use these mundane moments. They're ripe for beauty and wonder because God is reaching through to touch our heart. We just have to be open and ready to receive. Amen.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we're going to try a real quick exercise. They're not going to put it up yet. They're going to wait until I tell them to. In a minute, talia's going to put a slide up that's got four quadrants and they're numbered 1, 2, 3, 4. I want you to very quickly scan over all the pictures. Don't think about it. Just which one are you drawn to? 1, 2, 3, or 4. We're not going to analyze it, just whatever one, and then I'm going to give us the rest of the instructions. Okay, so go ahead and bring that up. Okay, 1, 2, 3, 4. Take a look. All right, I want you to raise your hand with which number you feel most drawn to this morning. So, everybody ready, raise your hand with the number 1, 2, 3, or 4. Let's go, let's go, let's go. I'm just making you make a decision, it's okay. Okay, good, now we're going to take about two minutes.
Speaker 2:Byron's going to play his anointed stuff, okay, and I'm going to pray, and what you're going to do is you're going to ask the Lord, god, why was I drawn to that picture? What are you saying to me through that image this morning? Okay, and you're not going to like yeah, but or disqualify anything that you're hearing. Just take it as what it is. Okay, all right. So, holy Spirit, we welcome you to come and speak through these pictures. Anything and whatever God wants to say to each and every heart this morning about why they were drawn to that picture. Okay, god's still speaking, then just ignore me. Anyone feeling brave enough to share, or it? Okay, rose, come on up. You don't have to, you can just stay down there, it's okay, oh, okay.
Speaker 6:I like picture number one and when I close my eyes I kind of sensed it's singular, it's beautiful, the deer is fragile and it's just so exquisitely beautiful getting ready to walk across this road. And then I kind of sensed and saw a little bit Jesus and he had his hand on the deer and he was just stroking the deer and it's like I see the deer, I see the deer, and then he just quietly ushered that little deer across the road and bid it goodbye, and then he was stroking me and he said I see you, I see you in your singleness, I see you in your struggle and what you're dealing with now. You are unique and as I see that deer, I see you. And as the deer will cross the road, so I will cross the road with you. And that's what I got. It's cool.
Speaker 2:I'm attacking this Because, you know, with that imagery there's all kinds of things that God could say. Right, and that wasn't one that I guessed, you know. It could be about something blocking the path, you know, and like something getting in the way. Or it could be about being directed off a path if you were supposed to follow the deer, like a deer pants for the, you know. Whatever that scripture is about, desiring God, anyway. So we just have to give room for God to speak and trust that he wants to talk to us, and when we do, he will. And if you didn't hear anything in this exercise, that's okay, just keep looking.