Eyes of the Heart | Dr. Joel C. Gregory

7:09 That's kind of you, Craig. Thank you. What a delight, honor, and privilege it is to be back by the grace of God, yet even still one more time at the beloved Koinonia Church and at the invitation Well, here I am. You know what's interesting?

8:14 All things work together the good. That sure got your attention, didn't it? I want to thank my dear friend now of the decades, your founder, pastor, Bishop Rosie O'Neill. What a privilege to be here at her invitation. And I know that you'll want to pray for her. as she's there honoring her parents in this precious time together. You know, the command of the Word of God is when you're little to obey your parents and then when you're mature to honor your parents. And she's honoring them in a way that'll be a special memory. And I want to honor the reality that you're in a month of prayer this August. And to that end, I want you to join me in looking at one of Paul's prison prayers.

9:16 There's a lot of things you could do if you're in prison, but Paul set a high watermark by leaving us four prison prayers. Two in the book of Ephesians, to which we'll turn. One in Philippians and one in Colossians. And none of them are about him. He's praying for you. Notice in our text today, in the book of Ephesians, Paul is in jail in Rome. He's writing this church that is in Turkey. And he's in jail praying for this church. Now, in Ephesians 1.15, I want you to listen to the words of his prayer. I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints.

10:14 And for this reason, I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him. so that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he's called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for those who believe according to the working of his great power.

11:15 God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named not only this age but in the age to come. And he's put all things under what? His feet. And he's made him the head over all things for the church, his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Now, I want you with laser attention to put your focus on that phrase, the one thing he prays for in this 169-word prayer, the eyes of your heart might be enlightened. Would you be seated in the presence of the Lord?

12:15 that the eyes of your heart might be enlightened. In physical creation, God has given unusual gifts of vision even to the most peculiar and smallest of his creations as well as the biggest. For example, the eyes of a horse are on either side of the horse's head. A horse cannot look straight ahead. In fact, a horse has to look this way and that way in order to see what's in front. That's a big vision. But then there's a vision, a little vision. The dragonfly has a compound eye. And that enables the dragonfly to see in slow motion so it can zap another insect. God gave that to the dragon.

13:18 Isn't that an unusual vision? The common pigeon sitting out on a billboard somewhere is able to see a range of colors that you can't see. A house cat A house cat cannot see colors. It sees shades of gray. But God gave a house cat the ability to see depth of vision so when it leaps, it lands exactly where it wants to land. Out here off the coast, God has given the kingfisher bird two kinds of vision. One kind of vision is it hovers over the waters, but when it dies beneath the waters, it gets an entirely different kind of vision. God gives curious kinds of vision. But in our text today, you read a phrase that is only here in all of Holy Scripture, the eyes of your heart.

14:19 And he prays this, that the eyes of your heart might be flooded with light so you can see what otherwise you cannot see. See, that's why Jesus told that old religionist Nicodemus when he came to him by night. Remember him, Nick at night?

14:41 All three times he's mentioned, he's Nick at night. And he said, Nick, unless you're born again from above, you cannot see. That's why Paul uses the phrase the eyes of your heart David Cortland is a novelist and he told about walking down the National Mall in Washington DC That big mall between the Washington Monument and the Capitol building and he saw a group of people coming toward him And as they got closer to him, he saw that it was a group of the blind They had distinctive white canes tapping their way along, but when they got close to him and sensed that he was there, their leader handed him a camera and said, Would you take our picture?

15:32 Now that took him aback. A group of blind folks wanted him to take their picture. He said, I thought about that the rest of the day. And he said, I came to the conclusion that even though they could not see, they believed in sight. Now, if you are a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, you have bet your life on things you don't see with your physical eyes. That's why Hebrews 11 said, Faith, what, is the substance, what? Of things, and the what? Evidence of things not seen. That's why 2 Corinthians 4.18 says, Fix your eyes on what you cannot see.

16:31 And I came by this morning to talk about Paul's prayer that the eyes of your heart might be flooded with light so you can see things that you otherwise would not see. You know, the eyes of the heart are able to see things that experts can't see. Right over here at Wake at Southeastern Seminary, a friend of mine taught Old Testament for decades, John I. Durham. He was a Bible scholar. He was a Baptist preacher. He knew nothing about art. And yet, he spent his hobby looking at the biblical paintings of the famous Dutch painter Rembrandt. One-third of Rembrandt's paintings were biblical scenes. The man never had a lesson in art. He couldn't draw a straight line. He wasn't an art historian. He'd just go and look with the eyes of his heart. He'd stay in museums so long looking at the Rembrandt paintings, he'd make the guards nervous.

17:31 But you know what? He became the world expert on Rembrandt's biblical paintings, not because he looked with physical eyes, but because he looked with the eyes of the heart. There's some things that you can only see if the eyes of your heart are flooded with light. I'm going to hand those to you and sit down. They come straight out of the text. They're right here in the Word of God. It says when the eyes of your heart are flooded with light, you're able to see hope where nobody else can see hope. Thank you. It's right there in the text. Did you see it? There they are. The eyes of your heart, enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you. The apostle Paul lived with a sense of having been called.

18:28 It was behind him, it was alongside of him, and it was in front of him. There was a call behind him. Remember the story of Paul? The man who wrote 13 letters in the New Testament started out as the number one Christian hater in the world. In Acts 9, he was on his way to murder Christians in Damascus when suddenly he had a call. You remember it? Acts 9, out of the heavens, Saul, Saul. And he was flooded with a light brighter than the sun. That call was behind him. But then in 2 Thessalonians, there was a call alongside of him right now. He said, he is calling me to walk worthy. But then in Philippians 3, there was a call in front of him. He said, I press toward the mark for the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. He lived with a sense of call, one behind him when the Christian life started, one alongside him every day, Jesus calling him, and one out in front of him that day when he would be caught up, called up to be with the Lord.

19:32 I wonder about you. Do you have a sense of those kind of callings in your life? Can you look back at a time, a place, a day, a way, a room, a church, when he first called you? And you heard it. It was the Lord. Are you hearing him right now beside you? You see, he's not a Lord just of your past. He's the Lord who, according to 2 Thonson 111, is calling you to walk worthy every day. But then, you know, church, this is nearer to me than it's ever been. That call that's out ahead. I'm pressing toward the mark for that day when I get the upward call in Christ Jesus. Three ways that he's got.

20:27 I want to ask you a question. If I could sit down at your kitchen table over a cup of coffee or tea, we'd say, is he calling you? You know what's going to happen this morning to somebody here or somebody listening beyond here? You're going to hear him call, and you're going to respond. But what's that call? Did you see it? It's a call to hope. Now, stay with me. That doesn't mean hope in terms of the way you feel because what's going on inside of you. You can feel any way in the world. This is not a subjective emotional. You say, oh, I sure don't feel very hopeful. That's not what it's talking about. It's not talking about, I sure do hope so. No. That kind of hope is flimsy. It's vaporous.

21:19 It's smoky. If you have a bad meal or don't sleep or have a fight with somebody, that kind of hope can vanish like vapor. No, no, no. This is speaking of a hope that is outside of you and beyond you, lodged in the resurrected person of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's what the hymn writer meant when he said, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' love and righteousness. You see, if you live a hope based on how you feel, you're going to have a hard time holding on to your hope.

22:00 You can have a headache or indigestion and lose that kind of hope. No. This is the kind of, well, when we say this, it's hope outside of me. If I look at the quarterback of the ball team and say the hope of the team is in the quarterback, that's not how I feel. That's where the hope is. If I say the hope of the company is in its new CEO, that doesn't have anything to do with how I feel. It has to do with the CEO. If I say my hope for this operation is the skill of the surgeon, it doesn't have anything to do with how I feel. It has to do with the skill of that surgeon. And that's what he's saying. The eyes of your heart can see. You can see that your hope is lodged in the crucified, buried, resurrected, ascended Lord Jesus Christ. And when your hope is there, nothing can touch your hope. Where's your hope today?

22:56 Unless you look with the eyes of your heart, you won't see hope anywhere else. I don't even have to give you the list today. Look at the international situation. You think there's hope there? If you think Vladimir Putin is going to stop with the Ukraine, I think you're wrong. He plans to take more. You look at China largest nation in the world Telling us if we keep allied with the island of Formosa the democratic Chinese nation They're gonna go to war with us I could just give you a catalog of everything threatening us on the international situation You don't see hope with your eyes you say well, let's look at the country. We'll welcome

23:42 In my lifetime, I've never seen our nation more divided If you think there's hope looking at our nation, take another look. It's divided in virtually every way it can be divided, left and right, red and yellow, black and white, immigration, non-immigration. You say, well, look at the finances. Well, the finances right now look like a bad EKG. Do you understand what 8% inflation means? That means in 10 years a dime will be worth 2 cents. There's no hope to be seen. And that doesn't even touch our own personal lives and situations. Under the roof where we live, in the office where we work. I'm saying this, church, physical eyes, if you scan the horizon, can see no hope. But if your heart is flooded with light, the eyes of the heart can see hope.

24:47 Native of this state, world-famous historical evangelist, Billy Graham, with the Lord now. 1954, when he was a brash, untested, young, relatively unknown Baptist evangelist, he was asked to come to London and hold a crusade. March 1st, 1954, he started that crusade and it was against the opposition of the State Church of England, the Anglicans. They didn't even want him to come. They said he'd set Christianity back. A member of the Labor Party in Parliament tried to keep him from getting off the boat. It was said that no one would rent him anywhere to preach. He looked hopeless. He rented the Haringey Arena and the press said he wouldn't get 2,000 people. Billy Graham didn't think he'd get that many.

25:43 And yet, you know what happened? For three months, he filled it full every single night. And here's what happened. The most famous man in the world in 1954 was Winston Churchill. He was so curious about the young evangelist, he asked him to come to number 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister's residence. And Billy Graham showed up, walked past the Duke of Windsor, into the room where sat the most famous man in the world. He waved his cigar at him, said, sit down over there.

26:18 And he said, young man, I see no hope. Now, here's the irony. Winston Churchill had been the embodiment of hope for an entire nation. But he told the young evangelist, I see no hope. The man who knew more about the world than anyone else looked at that young evangelist from North Carolina and confessed sadly, I see no hope. Is there any hope? And that young evangelist had the opportunity to tell the most famous, hopeless man in the world about the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me tell you something. If you look at our world with physical eyes, you will see no hope. That's why the apostle prayed, may the eyes of your heart be flooded with light so you may see the hope of his calling.

27:21 I wish you'd pray this morning. Open the eyes of my heart, Lord Jesus. open the eyes of my heart so that you may see the hope of his calling. Wait a minute. Lean into this another way. Do you see the next phrase? This is just in the text. This is Paul praying in jail for the church of all time. I pray the eyes of your heart will be flooded with light so that you will see your value in that you are what God wants to inherit. Did you see that? He said, the eyes of your heart, enlightened in order that you might see the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints. You know, inheritance is a strange word.

28:16 When I say the word inheritance, I look at folks, if they got one, they look happy. If they didn't get one, they look sad. inheritance what is an inheritance it is the legacy of a life it's what's left over after a working life that you leave for someone else now I got it and I didn't tell you about this ever I I have the Gregory oil inheritance you know we got a lot of oil over in Texas and my great-aunt Beulah my paternal grandmother's sister the oldest of 12 children died at 103 she died without a will and she had an oil well and when you die without a will in Texas they have to look up all of the descendants of all of your siblings and you get part of that oil well and that's that's my oil inheritance every few months I get a check for less than the stamp on the envelope.

29:20 Oh, I am a Texas oil man. that's a disappointing inheritance. But what does it mean when it says, the eyes of your heart see the riches of your inheritance in the saints? That is, see that you are what God wants to inherit at the end of the day. Now, stay with me a minute. It's strange to think about God inheriting something in it. What does God want to inherit?

29:59 He made the cosmic universe Does he want to inherit a galaxy a nebula a solar system a planet? He made everything But you know what Paul dares to say here the eyes of the heart can see that you Christ followers born again redeemed, conformed to the image of his son, that's why God created everything.

30:29 That's a big statement. Right now, beginning in July, we saw those incredible pictures coming back from the James Webb telescope that was launched into outer space. You've probably seen them on TV or in the newspaper, things that have never been seen ever before in the vastness of this universe. Millions of galaxies, just like the Milky Way, that we didn't even know were there. Doesn't God want to inherit all that? No. Let me tell you why. God's not impressed with big. He can do big anytime he wants to. All he has to do is say, let there be, and there is. I was preaching several years ago over at First Baptist Church in Raleigh, and they sent me for dinner in Raleigh with a Duke University astronomer.

31:24 And I've got to tell you, I was intimidated. I was saying, what do you talk to an astronomer about? Twinkle, twinkle, little star? I didn't know what to say. We were sitting there eating our pulled pork sandwich, and I said, how big do you people at Duke think the universe is? And he shot right back at me. He said, 14 billion light years. Well, I swallowed a piece of sandwich and thinking, what does that mean? And he said, well, if you harnessed a beam of light and wrote it at 186,000 miles a second, it would take you 14 billion years to get to the edge of what we think the universe is. And I'm thinking, whoo, here I am on this little planet, 25,000 miles around at the circumference. My car has four times that many miles on it. A tiny speck.

32:18 And here I am, one human being on that tiny speck. But come close to me. The apostle says, when the eyes of your heart are flooded with light, you will understand that in everything God created, You, born again, blood washed, saved, redeemed, Christ followers are what God wants to inherit. God can't fellowship with a galaxy that's made out of gas and atoms. God leans over this planet. Remember what Jesus told the woman at the well? The woman at the well?

33:10 He said, God seeks people like you to worship him in spirit and in truth. Everybody wonders, where do I get self-esteem? Where do I get value? Well, let me tell you where you don't get it. You don't go down to the bookstore to the self-help section. That's like anchoring the boat by throwing the anchor on the deck Where you get it is who God says you are And God says you And you and you Are what I want to inherit In that day when the stars stagger out of the sky like drunks out of a bar And it rolls up like a scroll I'm going to inherit you Now that ought to make you feel good about yourself. Now I don't mean proud. You say, well, that makes me think too much of myself. Then look at that person at the other end of the pew.

34:07 That person is on a way to be inherited by God himself as the finished product of what he intended to do when he created this universe. Yes. You see, well, when Theodore Roosevelt was president, lived out at Oyster Bay on the north shore of Long Island. He had a beautiful house. You can still visit there. It's a beautiful presidential shrine. He'd have a naturalist, Walter Beebe, come and spend the night with him, and they'd walk out on the lawn of Sagamore Hill, and they'd look up to the starry night, and Theodore Roosevelt would say, there is the constellation Pegasus, and that faint glow in it is the Andromeda galaxy, It's got a billion sons bigger than our son. It's 750,000 light years away.

35:06 You think we're small enough? Why don't we go to bed? But see, that's the wrong deduction. When that disappears, what God wants is redeemed, born again, saved, transformed, Christ followers. You are what God wants to inherit Now you'll only see that with the eyes of your heart The rest of the world Probably thinks today you're crazy as a loon if you believe that But if you look with the eyes of your heart And they're flooded with light You'll see that you are what God wants to inherit When everything is wrapped up When every star has burned out whenever a galaxy is evaporated. You, forever and ever.

36:00 You look at that person up and down that pew from you and recognize up and down that pew is someone who will live forever and ever with God as what he wants to inherit as the legacy of what he did in sending his son to this earth. I got to sit down, but one other thing. This makes all of it possible that you see the next, the third thing that you see only with the eyes of the heart. And that is the greatness of his power for you who believe. It's right here in the text. We're talking about a prayer. He prays the eyes of your heart will be enlightened. And look at verse 10. That you might see what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe according to the working of his great power.

36:58 Now, it's good to know that I have hope, and it's right to know that I'm who God wants to inherit, but let me tell you what Joel Gregory needs today. I need the power of God in my life. And Paul says, only when the eyes of your heart are flooded with light will you be able to see his power. Now, here's an interesting thing. In the original language of Scripture, it's written in the Greek language, this is the only place that Paul uses all four words for power. There are four words in that language. One of them means you'll be able to see his reserve power. Think about a battery, something that holds power in reserve. The other one means you'll be able to see his active power. The next word means you'll be able to see his power that can overcome resistance.

37:58 And the last one is you'll be able to see the sheer strength of his power. It's every way you can talk about power. Reserve power, active power, resistance, overcoming power, power as sheer strength. He says you only see God's power with the eyes of the heart. Now here's what's interesting when Paul had written all that he put down his his his quill and he said I'm still not satisfied So he put in front of that in the language of the New Testament the word mega God's mega power It's literally the word he uses got you know we use megastar mega mega power And then he put his pen down. He still wasn't satisfied So he added the word hyperbole hyperbole means over the top literally translated only the eyes of the heart can see God's mega hyperbolic power. He exhausted the language.

38:54 He went through the sart. He emptied the dictionary and he's still frustrated talking about the mega hyperbolic power of God. Now, wait a minute. Don't be confused about that. Human power makes a lot of noise. Shoot a gun, launch a missile, go down on the coast. It shakes everything. And we say, isn't that powerful? God's power is a different kind of power.

39:26 Somewhere this morning in Greenville, the sun came through the shears into a baby's nursery. And that light was so quiet it didn't even wake up the baby. Do you know that same sunlight at that same time was lifting tons of water out of the Atlantic? Creating the winds that blow it over the land and emptying it. And that power didn't even wake up the baby. Wait a minute. This morning when the sun came up, it struck all of the beautiful green things here in North Carolina. I always get jealous when I come over here. Texas is all burnt up this time of the year. You got it. But that sun struck everything green. Now, you know why that stuff is green?

40:20 It's because something called chlorophyll. And without chlorophyll, we wouldn't have an atmosphere. But nobody got up this morning drinking coffee at the breakfast and table said, honey, the sun's hitting the chlorophyll. And yet, there's no power on earth like that quiet power. Now, come close to me. That's how God's power works. Here's a man. That man has been handcuffed, shackled, manacled with some habit. He's not been able to break that habit for a lifetime. And then the power of God comes into his life. And suddenly he is released. He's liberated. He's loosed. It didn't make headlines. You didn't hear a lot of noise. That's the greatest power in the world. Here's a woman. She's been fearful, fearful of everything.

41:13 You know, there's 800 named fears, all the way from acrophobia, fear of open spaces, to claustrophobia, fear of closed spaces. There's arachnophobia, that's fear of spiders. There's 800 named fears. There's even a fear called homilophobia. It's fear of sermons that you're going to...

41:33 That I'm going to keep you here all day. There's 800. there's 800 names and this she has been paralyzed by fear all of her life and then she comes to meet the risen Christ and hears him say fear not and all of a sudden she recognizes God's not given us a spirit of fear but of love and power and a sound mind and there's release that's how God's power works that's God's hyperbolic mega power. But you know what? Only the eyes of the heart see that. Is that power operating in your life? You know, it's one thing to believe that God's power operated back in Bible days. Operated in Moses parting the sea.

42:27 Operated in Elijah calling down fire. Operated even in the resurrection of Jesus Christ out from among the dead. When those eyes closed in death, that tongue stilled in death, those hands stiff in death, those feet paralyzed in death, got up and walked out of that tomb. But do you believe that same hyperbolic mega power is available for you? That's what the Christian faith is about. You know, there's a big difference in hymns. What about the hymn that Fanny Crawford wrote when it said, this is what, my story? This is my song? We don't sing that because it said, this is your story and this is your song. No, this is my story, and this is my song. Is God's hyperbolic mega power working in your life? Paul says you only see it when the eyes of your heart are flooded with light.

43:29 Now, let's step back away from this text just a moment, and I'll sit down. This is a prayer. prayed by the great apostle in jail in Rome, not just for the church at Ephesus, the one thing he prayed for. There's one petition in this prayer, one request, that for all the ages, the eyes of the hearts of those in the church might be flooded with light so that you'll see hope. Hope is the oxygen of the soul. If you don't have hope, you will suffocate.

44:13 Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, said, the only spiritual sickness that is unto death is hopelessness. Somebody walked in this place this morning out of hundreds of people or there beyond here where you're listening, In your kitchen or your bedroom or your den or in your vehicle somebody's listening to this and you honest to God if you confess the truth you Don't have hope

44:41 The only place to find it is to let God Enlighten the eyes of your heart So that you can see the hope that his calling and Jesus is calling someone right now and that call is to hope you hear a voice beyond mind you hear something inside of you that can't be attributed to this preacher that's the spirit of christ calling you to hope somebody else came in here today yeah we have in texas the expression you're lower than the snake's belly you're down underneath that somewhere you feel you have no value you've lost any sense of worth life has pushed you down. Only the eyes of the heart can help you understand that of everything God created in this cosmic universe, he wants to inherit you conformed to the image of his son where you will live with him and praise him forever and forever. And you say, I don't feel valued. I don't feel loved i don't feel worth pray this morning open the eyes of my heart lord i want to know you and then remember the third thing only the eyes of the heart see his hyperbolic mega power Someone here is wrestling with a problem so deep and so serious that you'd be embarrassed even to tell your psychiatrist about it.

46:17 And more than anything else, you need God's power. Only the eyes of the heart can give you that. Once again, what Jesus told Nicodemus, he'd say to you today, you must be born from above to see the reign of God. I'm going to ask Pastor Trey to come down a moment in a way that's appropriate for this house to ask that you'd respond to this message. I didn't come here just to make a talk. I came here like an attorney arguing for a verdict. And I want someone today to say I need the eyes of my heart to be open. Come on, Pastor Trey. Lord, now in this moment of appeal, as the doors of the church and the kingdom are open for us to be apprentices of Jesus, I pray your spirit will speak.

47:30 I pray to that person who knows this message had his name on it, has her name on it, that you'd speak in power and that the pull of your spirit would cause the eyes of somebody's heart to be flooded with light. We pray it.