Take Your Blinders Off

Quick question.

Have you ever struggled to find something, even if you're staring right at it?

Have you ever had a situation like that?

I'm gonna use my son as an example because he's in the room.

What's up, Liam?

Dude, you have shoes that are bright yellow.

There's there, and I will tell you to go get your shoes for a basketball game, and I'll tell you where they are, and you can't find them.

It's amazing.

You know what I'm talking about when that happens?

Yes, he does.

I get it, because when I was a kid, I was the same way.

I don't know if you guys have memories of something like this from your younger years.

Like I remember one of the most stressful situations in my life would be whenever my dad would ask me to go to the garage and get him a tool.

He'd say, like, hey, go get a Phillips head screwdriver.

And he'd tell me where it was.

He'd say, It's on the second shelf by my car, and I would go to the second shelf and I would stare at it.

And I would I would look right at it and I would scan it, and it was not there.

And I'd go back to my dad and I'd be like, it's not there, dad.

And he would sigh, go like, he'd walk with me, and and there it would be, like exactly where I was staring.

I look at my dad like, I don't know how to explain this.

I I looked at it, I promise you, it was not, I don't know what's going on.

If you and mom have something going on, like there's a code, and when I go, she goes and puts it there.

You know, did anyone else ever have an experience like that as a kid?

You're like, it wasn't there, I swear.

Okay.

I think it's like a kid thing.

It's a kid thing, because my kids do it too.

Sometimes we can miss what is right in front of us.

Sometimes we fail to see what's right in front of our eyes.

That almost happened in my life in my relationship with Megan, with my with the woman I'm married to.

Um, we went to high school together for three years almost, and we both played basketball for our school, and so we rode buses together all the time.

We sat at the same table at lunch, we hung out with the same friends, but we did not begin dating until right before I graduated.

Like I almost I almost missed it.

Now I noticed Megan, I remember the first time I ever saw her, I was 16 years old, and I got onto a bus, and she was on the back of the bus, and I thought she was gorgeous, and I made it a very, very big priority to flirt with her immediately.

And she let me know in no uncertain terms that that was never gonna happen.

It was like I got I got shut down.

And I don't mean like with a glimmer of hope.

I was a year older than her, so I came in with a little bit of swagger and I left literally bleeding swagger.

It was just, it was like coming out of me because she shut it down.

I got none, and I did what any 16-year-old guy does in that situation.

I pressed on, I kept at it.

I didn't care if I would be rejected.

I was willing to risk all of my reputation and all of my, I was willing to be vulnerable, put myself out there for her, right?

Um no, that is not what 16-year-old boys do.

I uh I quickly moved on to someone else who seemed more interested in me than she did.

That's what you do, right?

You go for the safe bet.

And so, you know, I I tried to date other girls and other girlfriends.

Megan had boyfriends and stuff like that, but we we always kind of hung out together because we had similar friends, and so we were around each other a lot.

We always got along.

We we went to the same church, same youth group.

I mean, we were just around each other all the time.

For a while, I thought I was I was gonna date one of Megan's best friends.

And so in that season, I even hung out with her more to get like the inside scoop, you know, because as a guy, you need all the help you can get.

You need like a team of people helping you to get a good girl.

And so I'm hanging out with Megan.

I thought that this thing with her friend was gonna happen because I asked that girl to homecoming at the start of my senior year, and she said yes.

And then later that day, a friend of mine came up and said, Dude, I asked her to homecoming, and she said yes.

And I was like, that's weird, because I have the same story from earlier today.

So we gotta figure this out.

And uh, and it's a true story.

I walked up to her in the hallway and I said, Hey, um, you remember, I don't know, like three hours ago when I asked you to homecoming, and you were like, Yeah, let's do it.

Funny thing, because Evans said that he did like an hour later, and you also said yes.

And she said, Yeah.

She said, Here's the thing, I just feel bad.

Can you two figure it out?

She literally said that.

She said, Could you two just sort of like sort it out?

I'll just go with whichever one of you sorts it out.

And I was like, Well, you have made my decision very clear.

And so I backed out.

I was like, Evan, she's all yours.

Um, and after that, I kind of checked out of the whole dating thing.

I was like, I'd already decided to go to college a thousand miles away, and I just gonna finish my senior year and get ready for that.

And I was really just over it, over high school.

And so prom rolls around.

And I just was like, I probably should go to prom.

I want to go to prom.

Who can I go to prom with?

Meanwhile, I've been hanging out with Megan, talking with her, think she's awesome, go to church with her, on the bus with her, she's just the best.

And I'm like, who in the world, like, who is someone that I could go to prom with and have a really good time?

It's like a flashback to me looking for a screwdriver, you know, in the garage.

Like, where in the world?

And so all of a sudden, like like a ton of bricks one day, I was like, oh, Megan.

Yeah, and I asked her to prom strictly, I was very clear, strictly as friends.

And she said yes.

And it worked out really well because we're still friends to this day.

Um, so it's good.

It's all it's all gone really well.

But you know, it actually blows my mind though to think about how tight that window was.

Because like I almost missed it.

I she was right in front of me for years.

I thought she was amazing, I thought she was awesome.

But I came this close to moving a thousand miles away, and I would have I would have missed it.

And she's the best.

Sometimes we can miss what is right in front of us.

We have an uncanny ability as people to do that.

Today we're wrapping up a series called 2020 vision.

We've been talking about this since the start of the year, and the idea behind this is very simple.

We do not have 2020 vision.

We do not see straight as people.

I think Paul puts it so well in 1 Corinthians chapter 13.

1 Corinthians 13 · chapter mention

He says, We don't yet see things clearly.

We are squinting in a fog, peering through a mist.

If we had 2020 vision when it comes to life, we would never find ourselves in situations where we would say, Man, I never thought I'd be here.

We wouldn't say that because we would have seen every situation coming, but we we don't live that way.

We don't.

The beauty is God does.

God sees everything.

He sees everything as it is, he sees everything as it could be, as it will be.

He has perfect vision.

And when we live connected to him, we can actually catch a glimpse of what he sees.

And we need that.

Proverbs 29, 18 says that without vision, where there is no vision, people perish.

And when it when it says vision there, it's not talking about your own your own goals, your own ambitions, your own plans.

It's not talking about you going and developing a vision for your life.

That's fine, that's that's good, but that's not what it means.

It's talking about vision that comes from God.

In fact, some translations will take Proverbs 29.18 and say, where there is no divine guidance, people perish.

And that's an accurate translation.

Divine guidance.

We need that.

There's actually a word that that sums all of that up.

It's a biblical word, it's the word revelation.

Revelation.

We see this in 1 Corinthians 1.21.

Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe.

In other words, this is saying that we will never be able to observe all that we need to know when it comes to God.

We can't do it.

We will never be able to just pay really close attention, figure things out, figure God out, figure life out.

You can try, many have, many have tried, none have succeeded.

We need God to reveal himself to us.

It says that God saw to it that man would never know him through human wisdom.

So what did he do?

He revealed himself to us through Jesus.

We need God to give us revelation, divine guidance.

And we've talked for the last few weeks about what that what that kind of looks like as we as we desire to have 2020 vision, to have the ability to see God's perspective in our lives, his vision for our lives.

What's the revelation that we need?

We talked about scripture.

Psalm 109, 105 says that your word is a lamp for my feet, it is a light to guide my path.

And so we started the chapter challenge a few weeks back, reading one chapter of scripture four days a week.

Uh, if you have our mobile app, go to our website if you don't have that.

You can follow along with us.

Don't worry about trying to catch up, just jump in where we're at.

We're just trying as a church to say, hey, what if we were just in the word more often than not?

What if we're just reading scripture more days than we don't?

And let's see what would happen if we did that together and trust that God's gonna speak to us.

We talked a few weeks ago about the Holy Spirit.

Jesus says in John chapter 14, verse 6, he says, I will, or verse 16 rather, I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate who will never leave you.

John 14:6

He is the Holy Spirit who leads into all truth.

Jesus talked a lot about the Holy Spirit, but a lot of times in modern American church, especially bigger churches trying to reach all different types of people, the Holy Spirit doesn't really get talked about much.

It's like the Holy Spirit's the weird cousin that no one wants to be at the party.

Like, don't, you're gonna freak people out.

You're weird, don't just stay over there.

But the truth of the matter is, and I said this a couple weeks ago, I just I mean it, if I were to stand here and try to encourage you and challenge you to live the life that God has for you, but but I were to somehow leave out the fact that the only possibility you have in doing that is to be filled with the Holy Spirit, to literally be empowered by God's presence within you, I would be, I would be a fraud.

I would be asking you to do something that you are incapable of doing.

I'd be putting a weight on you that you couldn't bear because none of us has the strength in and of ourselves to live this life.

But but God empowers us, he gives us his spirit.

Scripture says that when you put your faith in Jesus, God's spirit joins with your spirit, and this beautiful partnership happens.

Where now it's not just you and God, it's you and God living life together.

And so we want to learn to be led by the Holy Spirit, not our emotions, not just our own logic, but led by the Spirit.

We talked about that a few weeks ago.

You can listen to that message if you want to.

Last week, we talked about Jesus.

We talked about Jesus like every week, but but last week we specifically talked about the fact that we just we've got to get our eyes on Jesus.

We've got to look at Jesus.

Hebrews chapter 1, verse 3 says that the Son, Jesus, radiates God's own glory and expresses the very character of God.

Hebrews 1:3

Jesus, he's God.

When we look at Jesus, when we see him for who he is, we see God.

He's the clearest picture of God that we will ever have.

So we've got to keep our eyes on him.

That's why Hebrews chapter 12, verse 1 says, Let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us.

Hebrews 12:1

We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.

We just we gotta look at Jesus.

Every single day, we've got to think about him.

We've got to have him on our minds.

When we're frustrated, when we're stressed, when things are going really well, it doesn't matter.

We've just got to make sure that our mind's eye is it's just it's on him.

Jesus, what what would you have me do?

How would you have me go about my day?

Sometimes it's just looking at Jesus and not asking a question, just being like, Jesus, you are incredible, you are amazing.

I recognize who you are, and I want to live with you at the center of my life.

So that's what we've talked about up to this point, to understand revelation and God's vision guiding our lives.

But before we wrap this up, I just I want to acknowledge the reality that we just kind of got done talking about a few seconds ago, that sometimes you can be looking right at something.

You can be staring right at it and still miss it.

And I think we have to acknowledge the fact, even as people who are either passionate Jesus followers, semi-passionate Jesus followers, or at least interested in becoming semi-passionate Jesus followers, we have to recognize the fact that we we can sometimes miss it.

That we can sometimes look and and have our eyes exactly where we we think they're supposed to be, and for some reason we're not seeing what we're supposed to see.

Sometimes you can miss what's right in front of your eyes.

That that happened with Jesus, right?

There were a lot of people who looked at him, who watched him do all the things that he did.

They saw the miracles, they listened to his teachings, they were there firsthand, and yet while while many looked at Jesus and said, Wow, I will give up everything and follow him.

Others looked at Jesus and said, No thanks.

In fact, it was the ones who should have been, who should have seen Jesus come a mile away.

It was the ones who should have been the most excited about Jesus that missed him.

Like he was right in front of their eyes, and they just missed it.

You know, the Pharisees, we talk about them a decent bit.

They were the religious leaders of the day, and and if you read the stories of Jesus, you'll always find them.

They're always just kind of hanging out.

It's funny, like they don't have anything to do.

I always wonder what did they do every day?

Because you'll read stories about Jesus, and it'll just say, and some Pharisees who were nearby, um, they're just like always hanging around, getting offended, causing a stir.

You know, the Pharisees, they saw everything that Jesus did.

And they they missed it.

And it's actually a tragedy.

Because these these are men who would have studied the scriptures like you couldn't believe.

They would have had the Jewish scriptures memorized.

They were living in anticipation of a Messiah.

And having having spent all that time, invested all that work, all that time into learning the scriptures and praying and all the things that they were supposed to do, and even living with the anticipation that God was going to send a Messiah one day.

They did all that, and then there he is.

There's Jesus right in front of them, and they they can't see it.

They completely, they missed it.

It doesn't make sense.

We'll go back to a story that we looked at the very first week, John chapter 9.

John 9 · chapter mention

Jesus has just uh healed this man who was born blind.

And he healed him in an interesting way.

He didn't just touch him and take his blindness away.

He he actually goes to this blind man and then he makes a bunch of mud and he puts mud all over the guy's eyes.

And then he says, Hey, go wash the mud off, and when the mud is washed off, you'll be able to see.

So the guy does that, washes off the mud, he can see, but by that time Jesus isn't there anymore.

So he's he's never seen Jesus at this point, but he can see.

Now, when people find out what's happened, when they see him, they they go, Wow, this is amazing.

What are we gonna do?

How do we process this?

So they say, Hey, let's take him to the Pharisees.

That's their idea.

We pick up in verse 14.

Then they took the man who had been blind to the Pharisees, because it was on the Sabbath that Jesus had made the mud and healed him.

The Pharisees asked the man all about it, so he told them, He put the mud over my eyes, and when I washed it away, I could see.

Some of the Pharisees said, This man is not from God.

This man Jesus, he's not from God, for he's working on the Sabbath.

They had this whole thing, the Sabbath is supposed to be a day of rest.

And so, by Jewish law, you were supposed to rest on the Sabbath.

And therefore, Jesus, in their mind, was breaking the law because he healed someone on the Sabbath, and that's work.

And you gotta understand, these guys, they're meticulous.

They take this stuff way too seriously to a point that God never intended.

In fact, if you had an apple tree in your backyard and you picked an apple off of it on the Sabbath and ate it, they would say that you harvested on the Sabbath, you broke God's laws because you picked an apple off your own tree.

That's how that's how like intense these guys were, how legalistic they were.

And so Jesus heals a man of blindness, and they're mad because of the day of the week that it happened.

Right?

So we continue on.

Others said, How could an ordinary sinner do such miraculous signs?

So there was deep division of among them when it came to their opinions.

Then the Pharisees again questioned the man who had been blind and demanded, What's your opinion about this man who healed you?

I love that question.

Like, you've been blind your whole life.

You've never been able to see.

It's completely and totally wrecked and ruined any chance you have of a normal life.

All of a sudden, this man he comes up to you, he heals you.

What do you think about him?

Like, what's what's the guy supposed to say?

Well, you know, he put mud in my eyes.

And anyone who puts mud in my eye, they're a jerk in my book, and I want to find him, tell me where he is, because I I got some I got some words for him.

Putting mud in, like, no, what like what's your opinion of the guy who healed you?

And the man says, Well, I think he must be a prophet.

Like, I I I think he might be from God.

I don't know, just a hunch that I have.

The Jewish leaders, they still refuse to believe the man had been blind and can now see, so they called in his parents and they asked them, Is this your son?

Was he born blind?

If so, how can he now see?

And his parents replied, We know this is our son and that he was born blind, but we don't know how he can see or who healed him.

Ask him, he's old enough to speak for himself.

His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders who had announced that anyone saying Jesus was the Messiah would be expelled from the synagogue.

That's why they said he is old enough.

Ask him.

So for the second time they called in the man who had been blind and told him, God should get the glory for this, because we know this man, Jesus, is a sinner.

I don't know whether he is a sinner, the man replied, but I know this.

I was blind, and now I can see.

But what did he do?

They asked.

What did he do?

He's like, How did he heal you?

Look, the man exclaimed, I told you once, don't you listen?

Why do you want to hear it again?

Do you want to become one of his disciples?

And then they cursed him and they said, You are his disciple, we are disciples of Moses, which by the way, is such a lie.

They're not, because Moses wouldn't have missed Jesus.

I promise you that.

We know God spoke to Moses, but we don't even know where this man comes from.

Why, that's very strange, the man replied.

He healed my eyes, yet you don't know where he comes from.

We know that God doesn't listen to sinners.

By the way, he's just repeating the lines of the Pharisees there.

They they keep saying that.

Well, I mean, you keep saying that God doesn't listen to sinners, but but he's ready to hear those who worship him and do his will.

Ever since the world began, no one's ever been able to open the eyes of someone born blind.

If this man were not from God, he couldn't have done it.

You were born a total sinner, they answered.

Are you trying to teach us?

And they threw him out of the synagogue.

Can you I mean, just imagine this, guys?

I'm like, this is not even a stretch.

This is someone who like shows up to our building and they have some massive issue, and there's no solution for it, but like people come and pray over this person, and then miraculously they're better, and we're really mad about it.

So we kick them out of our church.

Like that that's exactly what happened.

You know, these these men they live their entire lives claiming to worship God, and here they are uniquely blessed, that they've gotten to witness a miracle.

It happened there on their doorstep.

They get to be eyewitnesses to a work of God that no one had ever really even thought about at that point in time.

And rather than being like, wow, I can't believe this happened, I can't believe we get to experience this, I can't believe that we get to be the ones that witness the power of God on display.

They're angry about it, they're mad, and they kick them out.

And you want to look at the Pharisees and be like, how can you miss it?

How can you be so blind?

Jesus is right in front of you, he's staring you in the face, and you've you've totally missed it.

It's mind-blowing.

But the sad truth is it actually happens often in the story of Jesus because sometimes it's really easy to miss what is right in front of you.

How tragic is it for these men to have spent their entire lives training, studying, devoting themselves to God, and then to reject the very God that they they claim to love.

The truth is the reason that they they missed it is because they they have blinders on.

I don't know if you're familiar with the concept of blinders.

Any of you who have ever ridden a horse, you would know what a blinder is.

You put blinders on horses because you want to make sure their vision is very narrow, that they don't get spooked by what's around them.

I said in the first service, any horse people would would know this.

And then I realized when I said that that a horse person is actually a really terrifying thing.

That's like a centaur.

And uh we don't have any horse, no horse people go to our church, okay?

Because I've never seen a horse person here, not once.

Uh but but anyone who has familiarity with horses, you know, horses wear blinders, but the the truth is sometimes we wear blinders too.

Sometimes it's on purpose, sometimes most of the time, I think, not so much, but just through life, with our attitudes, with our mindsets, we we put blinders on.

And when we put blinders on, we have such narrow thinking, we have such narrow vision that we we actually miss the very things that God might be doing right in front of our eyes.

That's what happened to the Pharisees.

And what I want to do as we we wrap up this series today is just challenge us and encourage us to take take blinders off.

If we have them, if we ever become aware of a blinder that's that's on our eyes, that's keeping us from seeing what God has for us, we just gotta take our blinders off.

I want to look at two today that the Pharisees display that Jesus directly addresses.

We'll go through this really quickly.

Number one is pride.

The Pharisees were blinded by pride.

Let's go ahead and pick up our story.

In verse 35, when Jesus heard what had happened, he found the man and asked, Do you believe in the Son of Man?

That was the term that Jesus used most often to describe himself.

The man answered, Who is he, sir?

I want to believe in him.

You've seen him, Jesus said.

He's speaking to you.

And all of a sudden, like it clicks.

This guy, he hears the voice, and now he's realizing, Oh, you're the one.

Yes, Lord, I believe, the man said, and he worshiped Jesus.

And then Jesus told him, I entered this world to render judgment, to give sight to the blind and to show those who think they can see that they really are blind.

Some Pharisees who were standing nearby, again, this is what these guys do.

They're just always around, you know, like, geez.

Some Pharisees who were standing nearby heard him and asked, Are you saying we're Blind?

If you were blind, you wouldn't be guilty, Jesus replied.

But you remain guilty because you claim you can see.

Jesus has a really really cool way with words.

You know, he's saying, No, no, no, no.

If you were really blind, you would you you'd have an excuse.

But your problem is that you think that you can see, you claim you can see, you have so much pride that you have already seen.

You can see it in the story.

You can like literally hear it coming out of their mouths.

We're disciples of Moses.

We're the ones who decide what is from God and what is not from God.

Who are you to teach us?

It's pride.

Pride is blinding.

Jesus says, you are so filled with pride that you you've claimed that you're the ones who see, you're the ones who get God, you're the ones who understand it, that now you're not able to receive it at all because you have no humility in you.

Truly receiving God, it requires humility because understand this, and I know a lot of us have experienced this you you cannot receive God unless you surrender to Him.

It's an act of surrender.

And surrender requires humility.

Pride is blinding because if you're truly filled with pride, if you're truly filled with pride, it means you can never envision yourself being wrong.

You just can't picture the problem being you.

And if you can't picture the problem being you, if you can't envision that you're off track, how in the world can you have the humility to let God guide you back on track?

It'd be like if you were driving and you've got GPS on, and all of a sudden you make a wrong turn, and the GPS says to you, hey, you need to make a U-turn, and you get offended and you shut it off.

How dare you tell me that I made a wrong turn?

But guys, like that's a common, that's a common attitude in our world, is it not?

I mean, let's be honest, let's be honest.

And I want to say this real quick.

I I don't know that many people, I know a few, but I don't know that many people who are truly prideful.

Like in every area of life, they are just filled with pride.

I know some.

But I know a lot of people, myself included, who are at the very least very prideful in in maybe one area of life.

It's very easy for us, pride is sneaky, to have at least one area of life that we are very prideful in.

That we just think that we've got it.

We're the expert, we know what to do.

Pride's a sneaky thing.

But it's it's funny because like you would think that we should be so good at humility naturally, right?

Because we're wrong all the time.

Like, think about how often you're wrong.

Think about how many times you've been way wrong in life.

Like, it's it's it's a lot.

I promise you, whatever it is, it's a lot.

I'm wrong all the time.

Ask the staff.

I'm wrong often.

And ask, you know, don't ask my wife, don't ask her.

Um, but like, ask my nine-year-old son.

I'm I'm wrong a lot.

And actually, it's funny because I'm getting to this point as a parent now.

This is really, really humbling, where uh where I'm sometimes wrong in front of my kids and they catch it, and they're like, Dad, they kind of look at me like that, and I'm like, oh yeah, my bad.

Um, you know, in fact, even the other day, I woke my son up, and our family's been super sick, everyone's been sick.

In fact, Megan had pneumonia uh all last week.

She got diagnosed with pneumonia, and so uh I'm the only one in the family who hasn't been sick because either God loves me the most or uh or he's punishing me because I'm the only one who can take care of everyone else, and I've I just haven't slept in like a week.

Um, everyone Lily's sick right now, so it's just me and Liam today.

But like I'm I've been so off track because of how sick everyone's been, and I've just been out of my schedule that on Thursday morning I woke Liam up to go to school, and I was like, Liam, good news, it's Friday.

So let's get up, let's do this, and then it's the weekend.

And he was like, Dad, it's Thursday.

You know?

I was like, oh yeah.

You know, as a dad, I don't, he's you got your nine-year-old telling you what day it is.

That's a really humbling place to be as a parent.

But we're wrong all the time.

And here's what's funny, you would think that because we're we're so often wrong, we would be so good at saying, I'm sorry, I was wrong.

Because surely we've been here before.

But how how rare is it to find someone who really just has the humility to say, you know what, my bad.

Yeah, that was clearly I was way in the wrong.

I made a huge mistake, I'm really sorry.

But that's that's a pretty rare person, unfortunately.

What's very common is to find people who make excuses, who point you know fingers and blame other people for their mistake, who think like victims, and it's always someone else's fault that they're in the position that they're in.

They don't take any responsibility for it.

It's easy to find people who who say, I this is my favorite, who say things like, I'm sorry, but you know, when someone says I'm sorry, but what they usually follow that with is actually that they're not that sorry.

Uh, and it's kind of your fault that they did the thing, you know what I'm saying?

Humility should be our default because we're wrong so much, but it's not because we have this condition in our hearts called sin.

And so what happens is we make mistakes, but it's like we just dig in our heels and become more and more prideful and make excuses.

We've got to be so careful with that.

Pride is it's blinding, it keeps us from seeing what God has for us.

And here's the sad truth about pride: God really, really doesn't like it.

In 1 Peter chapter 5, we're told this all of you dress yourselves in humility as you relate to one another, for God opposes the proud.

1 Peter 5 · chapter mention

But gives grace to the humble.

God opposes the proud.

I don't know what your plans are for the next week, but I would not recommend standing in opposition to God.

Like if you're going, what are you gonna do this week?

I think I'm gonna oppose God.

Uh just see how that works out, you know?

It doesn't work.

But pride, pride, it is an opposition to God because it goes completely against his nature.

That's the crazy ironic reality, is that God is perfect and he's not proud.

Philippians chapter 2 says that we should have the same attitude as Christ.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

We should have the same attitude, the same mindset as Jesus.

Though he was God, he did not cling to equality with God, he humbled himself and took on the position of a slave, dying on the cross.

He humbled himself.

So God who is perfect humbles himself, and yet very often we who are so imperfect elevate ourselves.

Pride is blinding.

And the Pharisees, they couldn't see Jesus even though he was right in front of them because they had they had pride.

They were blinded by it.

And if if you got pride, if you just become aware of pride in your life, aggressively attack it.

Our faith actually has some some practices built into that.

One is called confession.

Um, starting next Sunday, we're gonna build a booth over there.

And uh after each service, I'm just gonna sit there for hours.

And I just I want to hear all your mistakes.

I want to hear every one of them.

Uh can't wait.

It's gonna be awesome.

I'm gonna have so much dirt on all of you, it's gonna be awesome.

Um, I'm teasing.

We don't do confession that way.

Um, that actually wasn't the way confession was done in the early church.

That's that's what happens when whatever.

But confession, confession as a practice is really powerful.

It's really powerful.

James tells us to confess our sins to one another so that we experience forgiveness.

It's funny, he actually says, confess your sins to one another and God will forgive you.

But it doesn't say confess your sins to God and and he'll forgive you.

He forgives us of everything, but it but it says confess to one another.

When you have the humility to go to someone else and say, hey, I really messed up.

I just want you to know that.

God sees that, he really honors that.

And it humbles you.

It humbles you.

The question I'll ask and we'll move on to the next one, we'll we'll wrap up is do you have someone in your life who you have given explicit permission, you've told them like you can correct me.

I give you permission to tell me when I'm wrong.

Is there anyone in your life?

I'm not talking like you think a person feels okay doing that.

I mean, is there anyone who you've got you've actually gone to and said, hey, if I'm ever off base, I want you to let me know about it.

I highly recommend that.

I've got three or four people in my life who I have made it clear like, look, if you ever see me off track in some area, let me know right away.

And I'll take it seriously.

Even if I don't, even if I think I'm right, I'll I'll stop.

Do that because it'll humble you.

And the reality is either you humble yourself or life's gonna humiliate you.

So so seek humility.

Take that blinder off.

The second, the second blinder is an impure heart.

Jesus says this in Matthew chapter 5, verse 8 God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God.

Matthew 5:8

If your heart is pure, you will see God, but if you have an impure heart, you won't.

Now we we read like impure heart and we're thinking, oh, this must mean like someone who has like issues and challenges and like you know, like people stuff.

Like, oh, my heart's probably pretty impure.

It's not what it means.

It's actually way less intense sounding uh meaning than it sounds.

So an impure heart is just someone who has mixed motives.

That's what it literally means.

The word for impure, it means like uh a metal that isn't pure, it's mixed with something else.

And when it's used in scripture, it's talking about people whose motives are always mixed.

They're not doing the right thing for the right reasons, they've always got some ambitious goal in mind.

The Pharisees were always like that.

Jesus actually talked about it in detail.

Read Matthew chapter 6, for example.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

Jesus goes through Matthew 6 and he says, Hey Pharisees, you you guys, you give a lot.

You give, but you make sure everybody knows about it.

You want everyone to see how much you've given.

I remember when I was a kid, we started going to church when I was a fourth grader because a criminal invited us to his church.

He got arrested the next week.

That's a true story.

It's awesome.

Um, I'm so glad I think he's still in jail, but I'm glad that he invited us because I became a Christian and wouldn't be here if not for him.

So we start going to church, and my parents got really into it, and we were there every Sunday, and my parents they gave, and this is an old church, and there was this plate.

Anyone ever go to a church with a plate?

It was a wooden plate that had like a velvet center.

You didn't have like that plate.

Some company made those plates, and I hope they're they're still doing okay.

It was a it's a very specific plate.

And my mom she she wrote a check and then uh she handed it to me to put in the plate as it came by.

And I noticed how much was on the check, and I was really impressed.

Like my fourth grade self was like, wow, my mom and dad are generous.

And so I folded the check outwardly uh because I like I wanted, I was like, people need to see what my parents are doing.

You know what I mean?

That was my fourth grade self.

Thankfully, my mom caught it and she was like, What are you doing?

Because you know, when you grow up in church, that's how your parents talk to you in church.

That's like anything you're doing, like stop it.

You stop right now, like that, like all the time, you know.

And so she took the check and she folded it back the end way, and then she explained to me after church, it's like, hey, we we do that privately.

That's not something we don't want anyone to see that, you know.

But it that didn't make sense to my fourth grade mind.

I'm like, no, no, no, like if I do something awesome, I want everyone to see it.

And and Jesus said the Pharisees were like that.

He said, Oh, yeah, they're generous, they give a lot of money, but they make sure everybody knows about it.

They're doing the right thing for an impure reason.

He said, Oh, the Pharisees, they they pray, they love to pray, they'll pray out loud, they'll be the first to raise their hand and pray to bless a meal, and they will take their time, they will use big words, they will pray with passion, but it's so that they impress the people around them.

He said, Oh, the Pharisees, they'll fast.

They'll fast and and they'll go days without eating, but they'll make sure everybody knows that they're fasting.

Everybody knows.

They'll have this sunken face and they'll they'll just walk around.

You know, the Pharisees are always standing around somewhere, and someone sees them and they're like, Man, what's wrong with you?

Like, oh, I haven't eaten in days because I'm fasting, because I'm more spiritual than you are.

Um, that's what that's like what the Pharisees did.

And Jesus says they do all the right things, but they do them all for the wrong reasons.

They have impure hearts, they have impure motives, and so they do not see God.

Because when you have an impure heart, when you're when you're in it to get something out of it, like you're just not gonna see God for who he is because that's just not the way he operates.

That's why we're told in scripture that we're to have no selfish ambition of any kind in our hearts.

But here's the truth and worship him, you guys make your way out.

Uh that's a really hard thing to do.

Like, just to be like, hey, just do everything, do the right thing for the right reason all the time.

Got it?

Easy.

Come on, guys, let's do it.

That's really hard to do.

When Megan and I were first married, we didn't have kids yet.

And uh, Liam, it's not that I I look back to those days fondly.

I I love you, but man, man, when we didn't have kids and like we had a day off, the things we could do.

Oh man, it was so great.

And so Megan had a different day off than I did.

I was off on Mondays and she would work.

I had the whole day to myself.

I could do whatever I wanted to do.

And most days I would clean up the house a little bit, I'd do a few things, you know, like make sure that when she got home, it was nice.

And then I just kind of, what do I want to watch a movie?

Do I want to go somewhere?

I just did whatever.

But every once in a while there'd be a Monday where that night there was something I really wanted to do, like maybe leave and go with some friends and do something.

Maybe there was a big game on that I knew she wouldn't want to watch.

So on those days, what I tended to do was just go crazy and clean the house like you couldn't believe, and I'm wiping everything off and I'm vacuuming, and like I comb the dog's hair, I do laundry, I'm doing all this stuff, all this stuff.

And then she would come home and she'd be like, Wow, wow, thank you so much.

You don't know what it means to come home from a hard day's work, and your husband has cleaned the whole house, and like, oh my goodness.

And I was like, Oh yeah, baby, and I even ordered dinner.

And she's like, Justin, thank you.

And I'm like, also, I'm gonna leave.

Uh if that's okay with you, I mean, I'll stay if you really want me to, you know, but I just there's a game, and me and the guys are gonna go, and she would be like, Well, of course, no, you go.

Like, I did I did it for that reason.

Yes, I wanted to bless her.

I also wanted to make her feel incredibly guilty for saying no to me, right?

It's just the truth.

And it took me a while to like click that I was doing that, because that's the funny thing about people, we we do things selfishly sometimes, it's just natural.

But but my my motives, they weren't, they weren't right.

And I sometimes have to catch myself sometimes.

Like, I might be doing something, and I'm like, wait a minute, am I am I doing this for the right reason?

Am I doing this because of what I'm gonna get out of it, or am I doing this just selflessly?

And and the truth is it's it's hard, it's hard to navigate that.

But the beauty is you don't have to do this on your own.

Please hear this.

This message, we're not wrapping up the series with a try harder message.

So stop being so proud and stop having impure motives.

That's just religion.

If you ever leave this place and you feel like a weight's been put on you, and you the takeaway is like, I have to do better, it's on me, we've missed it, we've missed it.

Because we don't live for God, we live of God.

We have his spirit inside of us.

Even Jesus knows what it feels like to have mixed motives, to have like a little bit of emotional turmoil going on.

Read Matthew chapter 26, 39, when he's praying right before the garden.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

He's like, My father, if it's possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me.

Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.

It's a powerful, powerful statement.

Jesus is saying, Hey, my emotions are pretty mixed right now, God.

Like I want to, I want to go to the cross, I want to fulfill my purpose, but I kind of don't.

I kind of want to live.

I think we can all understand where Jesus is at.

But then he prays this prayer.

He says, Not what I want, but what you want.

In other words, he's saying, Father, you change my heart.

You make me align with your will.

I think one of the most powerful statements, powerful statements ever written, Psalm 139, 23 through 24, and gosh, I just pray that this would be the attitude of our heart as a church.

If we had a whole church full of people who prayed this on a regular basis and meant it, wow.

Search me, oh God, and know my heart.

Test me and know my anxious thoughts.

Point out anything in me that offends you and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

And guys, please keep that up for just a second.

Because notice that the active agent in all of that is God.

It is not us.

He's not saying I search myself, so I try to know my own heart.

I test myself and try to know my own anxious thoughts.

I try to point out anything in me that offends me.

I try to lead myself and really push myself along the path of everlasting life.

No, no, no.

That's that's religion.

This is being led by God.

This is the Holy Spirit.

Like, God, you search me.

You know my heart.

If you find anything that is out of place, if you find anything that isn't right, God, I give you permission to work on me, to help me, to reconcile those things.

Lead me, God, take me where you want me to go.

We're all gonna find ourselves in situations where we have mixed motives.

And that's a blinder because those with a pure heart, they see God.

But we don't have to do this on our own.

We go to Him and we trust Him and He gives us what we need.

He gives us what we need, He leads us, He's faithful to us.

So at the close of this whole series, this 2020 vision thing, I just want to challenge you, encourage you.

God, He sees you.

Whatever you're going through right now, He sees He sees the way through it.

You might be in the biggest challenge of your life, He knows how to get out of this, He knows, He knows the path for you to take.

You might be in a situation where you're waiting on something to happen.

You need something to change, you need something to break, you need a blessing.

God sees you, He knows what that is, and there's gonna come a day when it is sitting right in front of you, it's right in front of your eyes, and you want to make sure on that day you don't miss it.

He has vision for your life, and he wants you to catch a glimpse of his vision.

And that happens when we have a heart that says, I want to see, and I wanna see you, and I'm gonna read your word and submit to you, and I want to be led by your spirit.

And Lord, if if if I've put blinders on in any aspect of life, if I've unintentionally or even intentionally put myself in a place where I've blinded myself to you, take my blinders off because I want to see you and I want to see what you have for me.

When that's the attitude of our heart, guys, watch out because God is gonna do some things, He's gonna take us places we can never go on our own, and that's that's for all of us.

God, we want to see.

We want to see, we want to see you.

So take our blinders off.

Let's pray, Lord.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Lord, for all that you do for us.

Thank you, Lord, for how good you are to us.

We love you so much, and and Lord, as we've talked for the last few weeks, we we just want to see what you see, we just want to have your perspective.

We need you to reveal to us the things we can never observe on our own.

We want to live by your vision, not by our own.

And we trust, Lord, that when we surrender to you and we live according to what you see, to what you say is true, we trust that you will lead us to a good place.

We trust that you will lead us to our purpose in life.

We love you, Lord.

And it's in your name we pray.

Amen.