Vision or Fantasy 1980

The entrance of thy words giveth light, says Psalm 119. Light meaning vision. When we receive a word from God into our hearts, it causes our eyes to open to see something which we could not see before.

But if we don't take this vision which God has given to us and act on it, then this vision which we have is perverted and warped into fantasy. And we'll continue to live in the fantasy instead of the vision until God jolts us out of it with some form of judgment. From Luke 17.

As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage until the day when Noah entered the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, as it was in the days of Lot, they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built.

But on the day when Lot went out of Sodom, fire and brimstone rained from heaven and destroyed them all. So it will be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed. And in every crisis leading up to that last day, the pattern is the same.

There is a Noah of some kind warning of coming change. There is a call to repentance going forth and normally being confirmed by clear, unmistakable signs from God. Always before God brings judgment, he first brings vision, puts the vision right in front of the people's eyes, forces them to see that much.

And then they have to choose whether they're going to live in the vision or whether they're going to retreat from the vision into some fantasy, which usually is the pretense that things are going to stay the way they are. Nothing to worry about. Prior to the year 586 BC, when Jerusalem was destroyed, Jeremiah for years had been calling the nation to repentance for its sin.

Warning of judgment. Things began to happen. It would confirm what he was saying.

Nobody paid attention. Finally, the whole city was surrounded by the Chaldean armies. And here's Jeremiah still calling the nation to repentance, warning of judgment.

But by this time, Jeremiah is vastly outnumbered by prophets who prophesy peace and sound like prophets of old saying, don't worry, God is with us. That sounded like a perfectly biblical message. But which one was the word of God? One was a message of vision because it coincided with the word of God.

With the nation's sin and the inevitable judgment, which had to fall on that if it wasn't repented of. The other was a message of fantasy, which coincided with the way people wanted to see the world, even though the world was crumbling before their very eyes. The same principle can be applied to the world situation as we see it now.

The whole world knows that things are in crisis. And God calls his church in a thousand ways at this hour to get out of Sodom. And we're constantly perverting the vision God gives us into fantasy.

And every time we choose fantasy and it's as if a timer begins to tick off the hours or the years or whatever it is until the fantasy blows up. We have that choice. See, but the real choice between vision and fantasy is on a deeper level, deeper than the economy or the election or the signs of the coming, if something doesn't happen, of World War III.

Whether Detroit still stands 10 years from now or whether it's just a radioactive hole in the earth, which it could well be, whether we're alive 10 years from now or on the other side of death, which we could well be. It's not as important as the choice we now have to make between vision and fantasy in terms of our relationship with God himself. God speaks a word to us, and we have to decide whether we're going to live in the truth of that word, which we know to be true, live in the real world of the real God, or whether we're going to once again wrap ourselves in some perversion of that truth, some fantasy and hide in the fantasy until the thing blows up in our face.

But how do we keep from drifting into fantasy? How do we stay inside the vision? So many times we and other people begin walking in the light that God gives us. Next thing you know, we're fast asleep in the garden of illusion. We will stay in the vision if we do what the vision calls for.

The vision will be perverted into fantasy if we hear and see and see and hear and say, Amen, Hallelujah, praise the Lord, but never do. Listen to this threefold ending to the Sermon on the Mount. Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns or figs from thistles? So every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit. A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.

Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, you will know them by their fruits. You can tell who's a false prophet by observing his or her deeds.

The test is in the doing. Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, to me shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you.

Depart from me, you evil doers. There's a difference between saying, Lord, Lord, and doing the will of God. Again, the test is in the doing.

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall because it was founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and great was the fall of it. Again, there is the difference between hearing and doing and hearing and not doing.

Hearing and doing produces vision. Hearing and not doing produces fantasy, creates blindness. Now, whether we're living in vision or in fantasy, we'll soon be tested by the storm.

There will be a storm that will test each of our lives and then it will become clear whether we've been building our house on the rock or on the sand. Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them, obviously, Jesus was referring to the sermon he had just completed, but that same principle can apply to every word Jesus ever spoke. The Father has seen fit to preserve a few simple words of the words Jesus spoke, only a fraction, you can be sure, of the words he spoke during his ministry.

But all we need, and all these words that Jesus spoke, call for action. If we do them, we get vision. If we hear them, discuss them, study them, even teach them, but fail to do them, then we live in fantasy.

All the words that Jesus ever spoke in scripture can be gathered together in three simple commands. Come to me, follow me, proclaim me to the world. And each of these commands becomes the doorway to vision or fantasy, depending upon what we do with it.

For instance, come to me, come to my cross, receive my forgiveness, put your life in my hands, join your heart to mine, eat my flesh, drink my blood, get under my yoke. This invitation becomes vision for us if we respond to it with our whole life. If we do it, if we really, literally come to him with our sins, with our problems, with our needs, with our bodies, with our past, with our present, with our future, with our minds, with our possession.

When we get up every morning and literally put our lives into Jesus' hands again, when we make the primary object of our life to know Jesus, to really know him and walk with him, then we get vision. And that vision continues to increase all our life long and on through and beyond death. If, on the other hand, we respond to Jesus' invitation to come to him, always and only with our mouth or with a few little goosebumps on our arms or our back, an occasional trip down to the altar with a few tears, but we never get around to, in fact, doing what he tells us to do, bringing our life to him, in fact, everything we've got, then what we have here is fantasy.

Our relationship with Jesus, even if we do say, Hallelujah, praise the Lord, is fantasy. And it will be undermined when the storm comes because all we did was build on sand. Our Lord's second command, follow me.

In other words, walk in my steps, do mercy to others as I have done mercy to you. Spend yourself, pour out your life, give your strength in the service of others in my name. When we do that, when we literally seek in the place where we are to begin to show mercy and do for others and spend ourselves and forever, quit forever measuring how much we're giving out in terms of how much we're getting back, but just simply give, then we begin to experience growing vision of God and of his purposes and of his people and of the needs that are around us.

We begin to see with new eyes. On the other hand, if all we ever do is say, Lord, Lord, but never get down to showing mercy, even starting with the people where we're at, husband, wife, child, brother, sister, enemy, employer, employee, fellow worker, if we never get around to doing it, then what happens is that we finally find ourselves floating around in a fantasy and we just go right on buying and selling, eating and drinking, planting and building until the fire falls. And it will.

Then comes the third command, which we think sometimes in our hearts doesn't really apply to us, yet it does. You can't take Jesus seriously and not take seriously his command to make me known to the world, proclaim my name to the world. Now, if we take that one literally and in fact do it, we get vision.

If we, in fact, deny ourselves, take up our cross and begin to proclaim Jesus Christ and him crucified in the places where we are, our eyes open again. But if, on the other hand, all we ever do is talk about the gospel to each other, or if all we ever do is mouth Christian platitudes or even proclaim a tremendous gospel and even cast out demons in Jesus name and do mighty works and prophesy, but don't match up our lives with what we're saying, then what we've done is produce again some fantasy and we'll be sucked in by that fantasy ourselves. And one day we're going to say, Lord, Lord, don't you remember us? We cast out demons in your name.

We prophesied in your name. We did many mighty works in your name. And he will say, I never knew you.

Depart from me, you doers of iniquity. Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall because it was founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and great was the fall of it.

There is today, and there will be increasing in the days to come, a resurgence of interest in the Christian gospel in Jesus. Some of this interest will produce vision. Much of it will produce fantasy because it will be hearing without doing.

While it's possible for us to identify the false prophet by the fact that he says, but does not do. It's not possible for us to go around measuring everybody else's life. We can't separate the wheat from the tares.

And the Lord instructs us not to. We really are not able with these eyes to evaluate where people stand with God. Thank goodness.

Thank God that we can't do that. And so we leave that alone with the Lord until the storm comes and shows who's weak and who stares, but we can know where we stand with God because it is we who choose every moment and every day, whether we're building on the rock or on the sand, let's take some time and prayer. We're asking heavenly father that you would show us precisely those places in our own lives that are cluttering us and blurring our vision and dulling our witness and draining our strength and prepare us.

Oh God, for the work into which we're now being called individually and corporately and help us to get rid of the clutter and throw off the unnecessary baggage. Grant Lord God that wherever we're walking in fantasy, we may be delivered at whatever the cost and that we may be in fact, the people of vision.