Table of Contents:
Seeing what God sees: what does Jesus want to teach us?
Let’s break it down into 3 subjects:
a) Seeing what God sees: our hearts, thoughts and desires!
The further we are away from God, the less we know of what bad things there are in our hearts.
The religious people in Jesus’ day just didn’t know what was in their hearts.
Jesus had just said:
No one can serve two masters.
Luke 16:13
Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and money.
Well, they all sneered at Jesus and they thought: ‘How ridiculous! We’ve all got loads of money, but that doesn’t stop us from worshipping God!’
But then Jesus said to them:
You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts.
Luke 16:15
What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.”
They just could not see that their love of money was detestable to God.
If we are far from God, then we will have difficulty in seeing the motives of our hearts.
In other words;
What is the real reason why we did something, and not what it looked like from the outside.
Paul wrote:
The Lord will bring to light what is hidden in darkness, and will expose the motives of people’s hearts.”
1 Corinthians 4:5
So how much badness and darkness is there in our hearts?
Jesus said:
For from within, out of the heart come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.”
Mark 7:21
When Jesus the Prophet starts to shed light upon us, by the power of His Word, we begin to see into our own hearts.
We discover the darkness that lurks within us.
So do we willing come to the light to have some things exposed in our lives?
Jesus said:
This is the verdict;
John 3:19
Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come to the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.
But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done, has been done through God.”
b) Seeing what God sees: how hollow the things of this world are:
Before Jesus our Prophet teaches us about real treasures, we set up all of our happiness here on this earth.
All of our hopes, our desires, and all of our affections are centred around the life that we live here and now.
See this article on temptation and how Jesus tackled it.
There was someone in the Bible who was incredibly rich, he stopped at nothing in getting pleasure for himself, he also pursued learning and creating wonderful buildings and gardens, etc, etc.
His name was king Solomon.
Let’s take to heart what he wrote after he had experienced all these things and had achieved all these things. He said:
I denied myself nothing my eyes desired;
Ecclesiastes 2:10
I refused my heart no pleasure.
My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labour.
Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done, and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”
In the Old Testament God seems to wage war against humanity – a Mediator is needed.
People called Jesus a prophet, was he THE Prophet as prophesied in the Old Testament?
Jesus harmonises the Old and New Testaments and his Spirit speaks through both.
Should God forgive everyone? Why Jesus came as a human.
Why is that? The answer is found in what Jesus said:
…where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Matthew 6:21
While our heart is concentrated on this earth, our treasure becomes the things of this world, but those things will ultimately fade and fail.
For true happiness our heart needs to be focused upon Jesus in heaven.
c) Seeing what God sees: how excellent the unseen things are:
Paul wrote:
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.
2 Corinthians 4:18
For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
We need to have the same focus as Moses had:
By faith he left Egypt not fearing the king’s anger;
Hebrews 11:27
he persevered because he saw Him who is invisible.”
Have we experienced Jesus, the great Prophet, opening our hearts and our eyes to eternity, and of His love, and for revealing to us great things about the Kingdom of God.
More detailed articles covering: Jesus’ ministry – Jesus the King
The prophet Jesus is greater than Moses Part 2
What is acceptable worship – Jesus the High Priest 2
Jesus the Prayer Warrior 3
Jerusalem Times: ‘Galilean won’t rise from the dead’ says authorities