King & Kingdom Come: Focus

Welcome to an audio teaching from Winter Park Baptist Church in Auckland, New Zealand.

If you would like to look at the message notes or see some questions for reflection that take their lead from today's teaching, head to our website windsapark.org.nz and head to the online tab where you'll see services and series, and you can download different resources from there.

Thanks for joining us, and we hope you're encouraged by today's teaching.

If you're away, I encourage you please return, have a look, hear the stories of how the kingdom of God is coming in our places and spaces in our community here and now.

This lends itself so well as we come into today's passage.

My question, though, as I begin is how good is your eyesight?

Mine is terrible.

As a kid, the doctor gave me a pair of glasses and said, Wear these for the next little while while your eyes grow, get stronger, and you will be fine.

They eventually took my glasses away, and nothing really seemed to have changed.

Here I am, 30 years later, and my eyes are just as bad, if not worse.

My wife Rachel always has me on.

Whenever we go, a classic example to the Warriors or to a big stadium, and we're watching the game and the big screen on the other side of the field, there is the time and the score.

And here I am, squinting like this, trying my hardest to see and to focus.

And she always says, Go get some glasses, man.

So that's my next job.

I need to get some glasses.

What about you?

What's your focus like?

Are you able to hold your focus?

What naturally draws your focus as we read our passage today?

Now this is a long piece of scripture, so do your best to hold your focus.

Luke chapter 17, verses twenty.

Luke 17 · chapter mention

Once on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say here it is, or there it is, because the kingdom of God is in your midst.

Then he said to his disciples, The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it.

People will tell you there it is, or here it is.

Do not go running after them, for the Son of Man in his day will be like lightning which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other.

But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.

Just as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man.

People were eating, drinking, marrying, and being given in marriage up to the others, to the day that Noah entered the ark, then the flood came and destroyed them all.

It was the same in the days of Lot.

People were eating and drinking, buying, selling, planting and building.

But the day of Lot left Sodom and the fire of sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.

It will be just like this on the day of the Son of Man is revealed.

On that day no one who is on the house top with possessions inside should go down to get them.

Likewise no one in the field should go back for anything.

Remember Lot's wife.

Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it.

I tell you on that night two people will be in bed, one will be taken and the other left.

Two women will be grinding grain together, one will be taken and the other left.

Where, Lord?

They asked.

He replied Where there is a dead body, the vultures will gather.

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.

He said in a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about what people thought, and there was a widow in that town.

She kept coming to him with please, grant me justice against my adversary.

For some time he refused, but finally said to himself, Even though I don't fear God or care about people, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice so that she won't eventually come and attack me.

And the Lord said, Listen to what this unjust judge says.

And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night?

Will he keep putting them off?

I tell you, he will see that they get justice and quickly.

However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?

Let me ask you what draws your focus in our passage today.

The reason I was inspired to ask this question is recently I ran a camp called M28 for our senior young people from Windsor and across the North Island.

Paul Jones, the principal of Kerry, our Baptist College, came and showed us this image.

He brought up this painting, and some of you will know it.

Some of you will not, and that is okay.

He asked our young people a question.

What comes into your focus?

What questions come to mind when you see this painting?

Paul proceeded to talk about the three different worlds.

The world behind.

Who painted it?

Who is the person?

Why are they lying there?

The world within, the colours, the distance, the body language, the composition, and the world before.

How does this make me feel?

Where am I in this picture?

What does this image say about hope or resilience?

Again, I ask you what draws your focus?

If you do not know this painting, it is called Christina's World.

A famous painter, Andrew Wyeth, painted it.

It was a depiction of his neighbor who suffered from a disability suspected to be polio that impacted her ability to walk.

She chose not to use a wheelchair and insisted on living essentially by dragging herself around.

He drew upon this inspiration and painted a depiction of her.

It resonated with his own suffering and his own health journey that he had been on.

Again, what draws your focus?

Do you focus on behind?

Who painted it?

Do you focus within?

Why is it that she is in the field?

Or what feelings arise for you as you look before?

We are invited to do the same thing in our passage today.

It is no different.

We can look and see many different things as we are drawn to behind.

Why is it that Jesus is sharing the story?

As we look within, why is it that Jesus is using the repetition of the Son of Man?

And before us, what in this passage am I being called to do?

How is Jesus leading me to publicly respond in this space today?

Luke's account of Jesus' teaching, as we all know, constantly flips these preconceived ideas on their head.

The Pharisees expected the kingdom of God to come in strength and the Messiah who would destroy and wipe out their enemies, bringing justice in such a strong way by the sword.

Even Jesus' disciples would appear to still think that same way.

When we read the passage, it comes clear.

Jesus says the kingdom of God is not something to be observed like a battle, a political coup, or some apocalyptic event.

The kingdom of God is in our midst.

For them it was present with Jesus.

For us today it is the Spirit of God at work, and in both cases the kingdom of God is active and present, as God is reconciling, on mission, bringing all things to himself.

He is always on the move.

The question is, do we see him at work?

We can be quick to pick on the Pharisees through the Gospels.

However, it would appear the disciples, the people that spent every waking moment with Jesus, still haven't got it.

Later in verse 37, they say, Where, Lord?

And what would seem to be a statement of where is the kingdom of God coming?

Where is this coup happening?

Where is the apocalyptic event?

To me, this almost feels like an interesting interaction of Jesus sitting around a campfire, telling a ghostly like story, everybody leaning in, waiting on his every word.

Or they're sitting there hearing this story and waiting for this unexpected twist.

But Jesus has already given them the twist.

They've just missed it.

If we are to understand it right, he has already said the kingdom of God is already here.

If we were to focus on the world behind, why is he sharing this story?

The passage is not an end of times predictor.

This is a perspective shifting opportunity.

Jesus is moving people from hundreds of years of focusing on the kingdom of God coming like an army, to changing it to a process of how he shifts our perspective.

Jesus is actually calling his people to a greater level of faithfulness and a readiness for his one-day return.

If we are to continue asking the question of the world within, focusing on the imagery and the language, this is what gets me going in that preparation space.

There is so much focusing on the tense, the times, the future-focused tense and the present tense.

There is a high repetition of that language of the Son of Man and the times of Noah and the times of Lot.

All of this imagery, but why this in particular?

If we are to understand that it's not a end of times predictor equation, why this particular language?

What particularly stood out to me here today in our language as described in the days of Noah or in the days of Lot.

Now, if I were to get you to close your eyes and to think, what would you think about those stories?

What language would you use to describe it?

They wouldn't be pleasant words or good words.

In fact, the scripture uses words like depravity, wickedness, corruption, violence.

However, in our passage today, to describe those same passages, it uses language like eating, drinking, marrying, being given in marriage, or eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, and building.

They don't seem to match up.

Again, why has Jesus chosen this language?

Well, if we are to take this not as an end times predictor, but instead as Jesus shifting perspective, it becomes clear that the end time is coming when Jesus will return.

And we are not to go inside and get possessions, therefore we are to always be ready.

And the time when Jesus will return will look very similar to that of the eating, drinking, planting, building that we see in our everyday life.

An interesting dynamic shift.

Jesus is calling us to always be ready.

This is really asking us where is our focus?

Are we focused on the things of our world today, or are we focused in an unrelenting, persistent manner on Jesus and pursuing him?

This brings me to the final world within or the world before us.

What is our response?

Initially I couldn't pick why this parable of the persistent widow follows.

Here's a basic Bible study tip.

Anytime that there is a conjunction or the word then, moreover, also or now, always look at what comes before because it will indefinitely be connected and important to what you're about to read.

It wasn't until I had focused on the language used in chapter 17 that I better understood this parable.

In chapter 17, we are reading these languages of again this recurrence.

Whoever is trying to keep their life will lose it.

Whoever loses their life will preserve it.

In the midst of the kingdom language, the return of the Son of Man, of Jesus, and this language of planting, eating, drinking, building, we are called and instructed to pray.

I will leave you with this parable to go and to go study it in your own time.

But Jesus is instructing us to a greater level of focus on our faithfulness to Him, calling us to be persistent in what we do, inviting us not to focus on the end times, not to focus on the building, planting, and eating, but to persist in prayer, pursuit after Him.

When was the last time that you actively prayed before a meeting, during a conversation, when you didn't have an answer to something?

When did you make prayer more than something than you just say before you have a meal?

Let God change and transform you as you relationally connect with Him by the means of prayer, having conversation, knowing that it is in those moments where He intimately intersects into our lives and changes us for the better.

Persist like that widow persisted in prayer.

Prayer to seek after Him for what you want to engage with God about, knowing that He meets you in that place.

There are so many ways to pray.

And today I would love to invite us to finish by using this opportunity called Visio Divina.

In a moment, I will put up an image on the screen.

Or if you are listening in today, I would love to invite you to stop where you are, to focus on one thing around you as I ask a range of questions that help lead us in our focus and allow the Lord to speak to us by his Spirit.

This is a great way to invite the Spirit of God to open up through His creation, through His image and His creativity to speak to us today.

So I encourage you, begin to gaze at the image that you have chosen to look at.

Simply notice what sits within you?

That there are multiple layers that we can read and discover through the words on the page to the creative things that you have placed around us.

Lord, we invite you to come into our world and to shake us up, draw us closer to you, help us to persist in prayer, being ready always, so that on the day of the return of Jesus, whatever that may look like, Father, that we would have persisted in prayer before you, that we would be in relationship and we would be faithful until that day returns.

Lord, we thank you for who you are, how you lead us and guide us.

Bless us, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, I encourage you as you go this week, would you take the time to go through those questions again?

If you would like, you can check out our sermon notes.

The questions to ask around those images will be there, or feel free to ask some of your own questions.

Take the time again this week to grab an image or to look outside at the world around you, asking those questions and allowing the Spirit of God to speak to you.

As we go, if there is something that has risen within you and that you would love prayer for, please reach out and connect with us.

We would love to support you.

Until next week, have a fantastic time.

We look forward to seeing you again.

Thank you for joining our audio teaching today.

If there are ways that we can continue to support you or help you in your journey, please reach out to us.

Head to our website, windsapark.org.nzed, and you'll find various ways to contact us.

God bless.