Battle Ready: "Blue or Red?": Ephesians 1:18-19 Pastor Daniel Reese

If you have your Bibles, we'll be in Ephesians chapter 1 this morning.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

Almost done with chapter 1.

How's scripture memory going?

Two men are seated across from each other in a dark room, outside a thunderstorm, rages

in the night, shaking.

The old house to its foundation, flashes of lightning, are dimmed by heavy curtains,

which have been drawn in because it is a secret meeting.

This is the first time these two men have met, though they have been searching for

each other most of their lives.

Not a moment too soon, their destinies have crossed.

One of them, a tall black man dressed in all black, carries the aura of a spiritual master.

The young man, trying his best to conceal the fact that he is frightened and uncertain,

might become his disciple.

It all depends on a decision.

The situation, if you haven't figured out by the name of the sermon, or that description,

comes from the movie The Matrix.

One person, thank you.

In the scene, Morpheus is trying to convince Neo that there is much more to life than meets

the eye on an everyday basis.

Now he comes to a crossroads.

Morpheus gives him a choice.

He says, this is your last chance.

After this, there's no turning back.

You can take the blue pill and the story ends.

You wake up in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe.

Or you can take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland.

And I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

If you've seen the movie, you know that Neo chooses the red pill.

Although it has to be a pretty boring movie.

He wants to see what he has been missing the entire time.

Which pill would you choose?

Now all of us can see this morning, I think.

Some of us may need the aid of glasses or contacts.

And some of us don't see as well as we used to.

But we can all still see the physical world with our eyes.

However, what if I told you that if you were just to look at the world through these eyes,

through your physical eyes, you're taking the blue pill.

I want us to step out in faith this morning and take the red pill.

Let's see through a completely different set of eyes this morning that God has made available

to us.

And so let's see what I'm talking about here.

Ephesians 1, I know we did it last week, but I'm going to start in verse 16 just so we

can complete the thought, okay?

I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord,

Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation and

the knowledge of him.

Here's our text this morning, verse 18.

Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which

he has called you.

What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints?

And what is the immeasurable greatness of his power towards us who believe according to

the working of his great might?

This morning I want us to allow the Holy Spirit to explain to us through the Word of God what

it means to open the eyes of our hearts.

What exactly does it mean to have the eyes of our hearts opened?

How many of you know the difference between street smarts and book smarts?

Right?

Yeah, hopefully most of us.

Let me tell you a true story where I saw this play out first hand.

Now, maybe it's because I understand that all men are sinful, okay?

Maybe that's the reason that man on his own is not going to do good.

Or it might be because I don't have the spiritual gift of mercy.

But here's the story.

Our last house in La Mesa, it was situated on a busy street similar to La Claire Road

out here.

However, our driveway didn't back up into the main road.

It was off a side road.

Across the street from my driveway, there was this rundown trailer house.

Now, at this point in my life, I knew that some people are more poor than others, right?

We know that.

But I also knew for some, it was life decisions that led them to live in a house like the

one across from my driveway.

After a few weeks, I began to notice the pattern of the guy who lived there.

He was home all the time.

So I knew he wasn't going to work.

But I also know that you have to have a job in order to pay for things like rent and food

and utilities.

So that was common sense to me.

Then I began to notice that this man was popular.

He had a lot of guests each and every day who also seemed to be struggling financially

because they would ride up on bikes.

As time went on, his front yard began to look like a bike graveyard.

There were some bikes out there that had missing seats.

There were some bikes out there that had missing wheels.

But nonetheless, a bunch of bikes out in the front yard.

It didn't take me long to understand that this is a dude selling drugs.

A friend would come up, ride up on his bike, take it into the house.

And a few minutes later, he would leave that house, not on the bike, but he would be walking

with a backpack.

Then a little while later, another dude would walk up with a backpack, go into the house,

and then leave on a bike that was different than the one that the other dude just rode

up and on.

And we could see this going on each and every day.

We had some friends come, a friend from college come visit us for a few days and they were

staying in our house.

Now the wife was smart.

She was in the top of her class in high school.

She graduated college early with honors.

Even while she was still working to pay for it, she was book smart, but not street smart.

She was naive.

She was sheltered.

She had the world view that everyone was good because that is what she had experienced

for the most part in her life.

She looked over there at this house and says, how cool is that?

How cool is that?

I remember doing that when I was a kid.

Riding my bike over to my friend's house, leaving it in the front yard and then going

inside and having a good time.

Her view was shattered.

When I told her, they weren't hanging out, playing PlayStation and drinking Kool-Aid.

So what's the difference here?

Jessica was an extremely smart kid when it comes to book learning.

But growing up in a wealthy suburb of Abilene, Texas did not help her when it came to recognizing

the real life situation around her.

I've been around that since I was a kid.

I grew up in El Paso.

I'd seen drug deals go down in my middle school.

They used to pass them around.

You know those M&M things that you pop the top and there's like these little M&Ms?

Those things are passed around with all kinds of sorts of stuff in it.

I'd been around it.

I had watched this guy for weeks on end the same routine over and over again, but the

dude never left his house, never went to work.

I'd not learned that from a book.

I had learned it from actually experiencing the same type of thing earlier in my life.

I had the street smarts, so to speak.

When God tells us to open the eyes of our hearts, he's basically saying the book smarts

are only a part of the equation when it comes to knowing him.

Paul, right after praying for the spirit of wisdom and revelation to be given to all believers,

adds that he hopes the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened as well.

So what does he mean by this?

Well how do most of us get our information about God?

We learn about him by reading his word.

We learn about his attributes.

We learn about his nature.

We learn about his character.

By reading God's word, we can know a lot about God, but we cannot move beyond book smarts

if we only know him through his word.

We must also experience him.

I want you to all pretend for a moment, some of you I hope this doesn't bring you joy,

but I want us to all pretend for a moment that you're single for a few minutes.

Now there's a whole bunch of websites out there where you can go to to find a person

to date.

Right?

You can swipe right, I don't know, what direction do you swipe if it's good?

I don't know.

I don't, thankfully, I don't know.

Let's say you go on one of those sites and you find several people you're interested

in based on what has been written about them in their profile.

How many of you would immediately go and marry the person who had the best written profile?

Well, it depends on, you know, level of whatever, but I don't think any of us would.

We still need to spend some time with that person to get to know who they are before

we can truly decide that we love them.

The same is true with God.

We can't truly grow to love him just by reading his word.

It should intrigue us to read about his miraculous love, his miraculous nature, but you can only

fall in love with him by starting a relationship with him and having our own personal interaction

with him.

That's what we do when we open the eyes of our hearts.

We move beyond seeing him only through our physical eyes by reading his word and learning

about him through the Bible, and we see him for who he truly is.

A loving God who wants to have a love relationship with us that moves beyond just head knowledge.

It's much like music, right?

Or a sunset or a delicious dinner.

You can represent those things logically.

You can represent those things analytically if you choose.

A musical score, for instance, is the mathematical representation of music, but that's not experiencing

music, is it?

Looking at notes on a page doesn't thrill you by being surrounded by a full orchestra.

I can pull a sheet of paper that has the words and the chords on it, but it doesn't have

the same impact as the worship band... sorry, Paul.

Sorry.

It doesn't have the same effect, does it?

Likewise, you can describe colors mathematically, but you must see color to really know what

orange looks like.

You can describe taste anatomically.

You can describe the chemical reactions that occur when you bite into a lemon, but you

will never experience the pungent, sour taste until you take a bite of it yourself.

We can describe God theologically.

We can list his attributes and describe his work in creation and redemption, but unless

we experience God ourselves, we can never truly know him.

Basically, Paul is saying that we need to really experience the Lord's presence.

If you are hungry, what a picture of a big, juicy steak satisfy your hunger.

Would the steak itself satisfy your hunger if you never took a bite?

No, if we want to satisfy our hunger, we must eat the steak if we truly want to know what

it is like.

So if you are to hunger and thirst after God, it means we have to do more than just know

about him.

We must open the eyes of our hearts to see and know him more.

What can we see when we do this?

Let's look at our scripture this morning.

The first thing we can see is we can see the hope, the hope to which he has called us.

Have you ever become discouraged in your Christian walk?

Have you ever questioned why you are even walking with God at times?

Have you ever thought about giving up on God and just going a completely different direction?

I think most of us at some point in our Christian journey have come to that point in our lives.

Why is that?

It's because the Christian life is tough.

It's not an easy road at all times.

Paul says in Romans chapter 5, he has this great teaching.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

It states in Romans chapter 5 verse 2, it says, through him we have also obtained access

Romans 5:2

by faith into this grace in which we stand.

And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance.

And endurance produces character.

And character produces hope.

And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts

through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

So we all want hope in our lives, don't we?

Hope is a wonderful thing.

In fact, Paul puts it in the top three next to faith and love that are the best things

in the world.

The problem is that we cannot just get hope.

According to the Scriptures, we must go through suffering and we must go through perseverance

and character building until we can get that hope.

And to be honest with you, sometimes that hope can be a long road.

The problem we see when we go through trials and hard times, we often only look at them

through our physical eyes, what we can actually see.

And when we do that, we cannot see past our current situation or our current circumstances.

We can't see past those things going on in our lives.

But what happens when we open the eyes of our hearts?

Like I said earlier, opening the eyes of our hearts is the equivalent of experiencing God

in a personal relationship.

When we see Him in this way, we know that we have a loving God who's on our side.

And He's looking out for our good.

We remember what the Scripture says about going through tough times in order to get hope.

We have trust and love built up for God that allows us to accept His plan no matter what

it is because we know that He truly loves us.

We have this hope.

Second thing we see is we see the riches of His glorious inheritance.

Have you ever tried telling somebody how wonderful a place is, how beautiful a place is?

You've traveled around the world and you come back and you know, you've got to go here.

This is fantastic.

Can you pull out the photo album?

I mean, it's almost impossible, right?

A picture never does it justice.

I saw so many pictures and movies about the Grand Canyon and heard the stories of all

those who had been there before, but they did not do it justice to actually going there

and seeing it firsthand.

The same is true of heaven.

We will never know how glorious it is until we experience it ourselves.

We will not get to do that until we die and go there though.

However, when we live in a way, when we live in a way we are meant to by having a relationship

with Jesus, we can begin to get a glimpse of what heaven might be like.

I often hear about the streets of gold and the mansions, but what is going to be the

best part of heaven?

It's going to be that we are in the presence of God.

We're in His place.

So if we open our hearts and our eyes to see Him in His glory here on earth, we're going

to unlock a little bit about what God has promised us in the end.

And when we begin to see how great our inheritance is going to be, we'll do a couple things.

We will want to strive to please God all the more because we will want to experience that

when we get there.

And we'll want to tell everyone how great it's going to be.

That will cause us to witness like never before.

When we have the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we'll be the best witnesses on the face of

the earth.

When we have the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we'll see, begin to see sin for what it really

is, trying to rob us of the presence of God.

When the church acts like the true church, it will be a little slice of heaven.

We will experience true friendship and brotherhood for the first time.

We will experience joy as never before in doing His work.

We'll get to know Him more and more every single day.

And in so doing, we will begin to see through our spiritual eyes the glory that is heaven.

But we have to open our hearts.

Our hearts have to be enlightened for us to truly experience it.

The third thing is we will see His incomparable great power.

Do you have a lack of the power of God in your life?

Why are we so weak in our faith that we don't see the miraculous wonders and signs that

the disciples performed?

God had promised that we could do even greater things once the Holy Spirit came.

Timothy tells us that God did not give us a spirit of fear or timidity, but a spirit

of love and power and self-discipline.

So why are we so weak and timid?

Because we're only using our regular eyes.

We put a lot of stock in our eyes, right?

After all, if something happens and it's out of the ordinary, our favorite phrase is,

I'll believe it when I see it.

I'll believe it when I see it for myself.

For too long, we have gone without seeing God do the miraculous.

So we have a doubt that He can even happen.

Sure we read about it happening, but a lot of us are like Thomas.

We want proof.

We want to see it for ourselves in order to truly believe what's happening here.

And because we haven't seen it happen, because we haven't experienced it, we believe that

it's never going to happen.

We have to open up our other eyes.

Too many of us in the church are only seen through our physical eyes.

As we spend intimate time with God, He will begin to reveal more and more about Himself

to us.

We'll be tuned into His plan, and we will begin to see where He is working and what

He is doing in the world around us.

With our own eyes, we can only see what is in front of us.

And then we have to kind of guess where God is working.

When we open the eyes of our hearts, He shows us where He is working, and we can go there.

And where God is working, there are miracles.

Where God is working, there is power.

So, when we go there, we will experience those things as well.

Our physical eyes cannot see God's plan and God's will.

Only our spiritual eyes can do that.

So if we want to see His incomparable, great power, we must spend time with Him so that

He can reveal to us where He is at work, and we can go with Him there.

So the question is, how do we take the red pill?

How do we move past?

Just let me get the blue pill and get this over with.

How do we take the red pill?

So do you want to see more?

Do you want to see more?

Do you want the red pill, or are you satisfied with the blue pill?

Do you want to see more than what your physical eyes can see, or are you satisfied with the

way things are?

If you want more, you have to ask.

If you want more, you have to ask.

Paul talks about having the eyes of our hearts enlightened, he's doing it in a prayer.

He states, I keep asking that God, the glorious Father, may give.

Only God can open these eyes.

He's the only one.

We can't do it on our own.

Think about Saul's conversion.

He was persecuting Christians, and then on the road to Damascus, his physical eyes were

taken from him.

But after an encounter with the Lord, his physical sight was restored, and he was given new spiritual

sight as well.

So if you want to see far beyond what your eyes can see, you have to ask from God until

he grants it.

And in the meantime, we have to continue to get to know him better.

But only part of this comes through reading the Word.

The rest comes from you entering into a personal relationship with him in order to experience

him.

After taking the red pill, Neo turns to Morpheus and asks, why do my eyes hurt?

Why do my eyes hurt?

Morpheus responds, it's because you've never used them before.

Sadly, I think many of us in this room are guilty of the same thing.

We take in all the sights with our physical eyes, and we neglect to use the eyes of our

heart.

And because of that, we're missing out on the bigger picture that God wants us to see.

I love this quote by Alfred Whitehead.

He commented, a merely well-informed man.

A merely well-informed man is the most useless, poor on God's earth.

We need more than intellectual understanding.

We need to really see.

We need to see the hope in which he has called us.

We need to see the riches of his glorious inheritance.

We need to see his incomparable great power.

We need to step out in faith.

We need to take the red pill, and we need to get to know God in a more intimate way than

we ever have before.

Will you do that this morning?

You know, some of us in this room are, that scares us, right?

We don't want the Holy Spirit breaking out too much in here.

We don't want a lot of dancing going on.

We're bad.

We need to see far beyond the physical world.

We need to experience God.

And so I'm going to ask us to spend some time this morning just praying, asking God to give

us these things.

God help us see the world around us like you see it.

God help us see the world so that we can go and be a part of what you're actually doing.

Help us see my workplace like you do so that I can go be a part of the work that you're

doing.

Help me see my family the way that you do so that I can continue to do the work that you're

doing so I can be a part of it.

Because I know what my inheritance is.

I know what you're capable of.

The same power that raised him from the dead is available to us.

And we're like, I'm good.

I'm good with where I am.

I'm good with seeing what I can see.

You understand the same power that raised him from the dead is available to you?

And we don't want more of that.

We don't want to experience more of that.

I do.

And so sometimes I have to come along somebody that's experienced it and he cannot walk with

me through it.

Because I grew up old school Baptist we don't touch the spirit.

We don't touch them because somebody might break out in a weird language that we don't

understand.

Somebody might be speaking into my life that they shouldn't know about.

I want more of him in this place.

Right?

I want to experience more of him in this place.

How many of us have sang that song open the eyes of my heart, right?

That I may see you.

How many of us have said that song, sang that song and didn't mean a word of it?

Open the eyes of my heart that I may see.

What song did we sing earlier?

Give me a glimpse, right?

Give me a glimpse of the greater things that you're doing.

Was that the right words?

I don't know.

Close enough.

Close enough.

And so I'm going to ask the worship team to come lead us in song.

And as we respond I want you to plead with God.

Let me see more.

Ask Him for it and don't stop asking Him for it.

Why can't we be like Paul in that?

I am never going to stop asking the Lord for the church at Cornerstone to understand the

revelation and the wisdom and the inside.

I'm never going to stop praying that the people of Cornerstone will have their hearts enlightened

so that they can see God move.

And so I don't know how you need to respond.

Maybe you need to come right up here and just start pleading with the Lord for them.

Maybe you need to grab somebody and say, this is what I feel like the Lord's doing.

Help me discern.

Is this the Lord's voice or is this mine?

Right?

There's some great people in this church that can help you discern that.

Let's experience the Lord together.

I'm going to ask the prayer team, if you're available, if you're willing, to come up front

and let's just pray for people to experience the goodness of the Lord.

I'll sit right here in the front row, the awkward row, where nobody wants to sit in

the front row.

I'm going to sit right there.

And if I can pray with you, if I can encourage you, then get your butt out of your seat.

Did I say that?

Yeah.

That's not a bad word.

And let's take some steps of faith this morning.

Can we do that?

Let me pray for us.

Father God, I pray.

I pray right now that your Holy Spirit would fall in this room and you would speak.

I pray God that you will open the eyes of every single person's heart in this place this morning.

Help us not be weirded out when miracles start breaking free.

Help us not be weirded out when the Holy Spirit moves in power.

Help us be a church that sees not just with our physical eyes, but with our spiritual eyes

as well.

I pray God that you move in this place.

It's in your name we pray.

Amen.