Seeing the World as God Sees It - Life of Christ Part 71

Now, does the name Ed Flanders mean much of anything to you? No, Ed Flanders, I don't think so.

Well, maybe it will if you're a fan of the classic series St. Elsewhere. Ed Flanders was the man who played fatherly Dr. Westfall on St.

Elsewhere. And in fact, he won an Emmy for that role. As a matter of fact, he won three Emmys in his career, as well as a Tony Award for being in Eugene O'Neill's play A Moon for the Misbegotten. He had quite a life. In 1986, he realized his lifelong dream of owning the world. He owned a ranch.

He bought a 190-acre ranch in California. He was 60. He was handsome. He was in good health. He had lots of money. He had an 8-year-old little boy who adored him and whom he adored.

And on February 22nd of this year, 1995, he put a 30.06 rifle to his right ear and pulled the trigger. And by doing so, Ed Flanders joins the ranks of Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis, Vincent Foster, John Belushi, and thousands of other Americans every single year who from the outside, who from a distance, look like they have so much going for them. In fact, in many cases, they look like they're living Cinderella lives. But the truth is, their lives are meaningless, empty caverns.

And every year, thousands of Americans take their own lives to prove that that indeed is the way it really is with them. You know, Bette Midler did a song, and I'm not a Bette Midler fan. I don't even like Bette Midler.

I don't like what she stands for. But she did a good song that has a message, and the song's called From a Distance. Here's some of the lyrics. She said, from a distance, the world looks blue and green, and the snow-capped mountains white. From a distance, the ocean meets the stream, and the eagle takes to flight. From a distance, there's harmony. And it echoes through the land. It's the sound of hope. It's the sound of peace.

It's the voice of every man. From a distance, we all have love, and no one is in need. And there's no guns and no bombs and no disease, no hungry mouths to feed from a distance. You say, Lon, what's the point? The point is, my dear friends, that things are not always what they appear to be from a distance.

That from a distance, things can look great. But when you really get into the reality of things many, many times, once you get past the affluence and the materialism and the plastic optimism of our world, the truth really is people are incredibly sad and hurting and lonely and lost in this world of ours. Now, God's been trying to tell us that in the Bible for centuries.

This is not new news. And I believe the greatest need we have as Christians today living in 20th century Washington is for us to begin seeing this world of ours not through the eyes of Madison Avenue, not through the eyes of Nike and Budweiser commercials, but to really see this world of ours through the eyes of Almighty God, the way He sees our world. And that's what our passage this morning is all about. I want to talk to you about seeing the world the way God sees it because I believe if you and I as Christians begin to do that, it will change the way we live.

So let's talk about that. I'm in Luke chapter 19, beginning in verse 41. Let me just remind you, Jesus at this moment is part of a big parade. It's called the triumphal entry, part of a huge crowd coming over top of the Mount of Olives on their way into the eastern gate of the city of Jerusalem. And it says in verse 41 that as he crested the Mount of Olives and as he began to approach Jerusalem and as he saw the city. Now, if you've ever been to Jerusalem and you've ever been up on the Mount of Olives, you know the panorama that Jesus had. It is breathtaking.

It's fabulous. There in front of him sat the Kidron Valley just in front of him with all these gorgeous olive trees and the wall of Jerusalem. Then the temple would have been sitting right on that corner of the wall and all of its splendor shining in the sunlight. Then the rest of the city spread out below him, Mount Zion in the distance, the Dead Sea off to the left, down through the valley of Jehoshaphat. I mean, it's just unbelievable the view.

Just it'll take your breath away. And the Bible says that here Jesus is. He's coming over the Mount of Olives. He's riding on a donkey. He has all these hundreds of people around him going, Hosanna, Hosanna, here comes the Messiah. Just like it says in the Old Testament, open the city, welcome him.

He's got one of the most gorgeous panoramas in the world in front of him. And you would think at that moment Jesus would have turned to Peter and said, Peter, you know, it just doesn't get much better than this. But he did. It says that as he approached the city and saw it, look at verse 41, he wept over the city. The Greek word means here that he sobbed.

He just didn't tear up. He broke down and sobbed over the city of Jerusalem. There's a verse in the Old Testament that says man sees the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart of things. And you see from the outward appearance, Jerusalem was fabulous.

From the outward appearance, the temple and everything was just magnificent. But Jesus wasn't seeing Jerusalem the way everybody else was. He wasn't seeing it on the outside. He was looking into the heart of Jerusalem, into the people. And what he found there was so tragic that Jesus began to weep. He said, well, Lon, what did he see? Well, look at verse 42. And he said, if you, even you, Jerusalem, had only known on this day what would bring you peace. But now it's hidden from your eyes.

You're so blind. He saw all of these people running around doing all their religious performance, trying to work their way to God, trying to earn their way to be right with God, trying to get some peace, trying to get some assurance about eternal life, wasted effort in the sight of God. And he said, if only you knew where you could get real peace, you could get it from me.

I can give it to you. But you don't want it from me, and you're blind, and you're hard, and you're rejecting me. And then he went on to say, the days will come upon you because of your rejection of me, enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you.

You would not respond and accept me as Messiah. So not only is there this sense of tragedy and loss in all of these broken people missing what really could bring peace to their life, but beyond that, there's the judgment of God that Jesus said is coming. Less than 40 years after Jesus spoke these words, in 66 AD, the Jewish people revolted against Rome, and in response, the Roman emperor sent four legions of his army to Israel. They surrounded the city of Jerusalem. They besieged it. A great famine broke out in the city. People were starving to death.

People would sneak out of Jerusalem at night trying to forage for berries and leaves and anything they could eat. When the Romans caught them, they would take them the next day, and in the sight of the city, they would crucify them around the city. Josephus, the great historian, tells us that they were crucifying so many people every day that they ran out of crosses to crucify people on and just began nailing Jerusalemites to the wall.

They just took the nails and nailed them right into the wall. Finally, in 70 AD, when the city fell, Josephus tells us that the Roman armies ran into the city and were like bloodthirsty animals killing everybody they could find. 1.1 million people they killed.

97,000 more they took into slavery, wives, children, men. They tore the city down, burned it to the ground, leveled the city, and set up the temple of Jupiter where the temple of God once had been. And standing here on the Mount of Olives as God, Jesus could see this was coming. Seeing the lostness of the people standing there, seeing the blindness of their hearts, seeing the emptiness of their lives, seeing all the little children playing in the street, many of whom one day were going to have Roman nails through their wrists and be hanging from the wall. Jesus could see this. And worst of all, most tragic of all, knowing that all of these people who rejected him were going out into an eternity separated from God forever. It was more than Jesus could handle. And he stood there on the Mount of Olives and he fell apart and he sobbed.

If you ever go to Israel, there's a neat little chapel right up on the Mount of Olives. It's called Dominoes Flavus. You know what that means in Latin?

Come on, somebody took Latin. It means the Lord wept. That's the name of the chapel. And it's a little spot right on the Mount of Olives where tradition says Jesus stopped and he wept over the city.

Now I don't know if that's the exact spot, but it's got to be real close. It's a gorgeous little chapel. And every time I go to Israel and we have some time coming down the Mount of Olives, I always make sure I duck in there. Because, you know, once you've stood at the top of the Mount of Olives and you've looked over at the city and you've seen the scenery and you've been gripped by the beauty and the awesomeness of being there, it's real easy to be so taken in by that that you miss the perspective on Jerusalem Jesus had.

So I always go into that little chapel and try to take a moment just to sit there and remember this passage and say, you know, Lon, be careful. All those people living in Jerusalem today are just like the ones living there 2,000 years ago. They're still rejecting their Messiah. And if Jesus were here today standing where you stand, Lon, he'd be weeping over the city again.

Don't get too excited about this now. I know it's pretty, but see Jerusalem the way God sees it. Don't see it the way the world sees it. You say, but Lon, if God cared so much about the Jewish people, how come he didn't give them a second chance? How come they didn't get a third chance if he really loved them all that much? Oh, my friend, they did.

They did. Don't you understand for three years Jesus had been walking around offering them chance after chance after chance after chance after chance, and they've been rejecting him. And even after he's dead and been resurrected, he's going to take 35 more years to offer them a second chance.

I mean, there was James and Peter and Paul and John all in Jerusalem for 35 years talking about Christ, presenting Christ, offering Christ to the nation. Read the Book of Acts. Hey, God is the God of the second chance. He's the God of the third chance. He's the God of the 50th chance. But, hey, at some point the patience of God comes to an end and the judgment of God takes place.

And this is what's going to happen to Jerusalem, and Jesus knew it was coming. Let me just say that if you're here this morning, this is a good time to say this, and you've never trusted Jesus Christ in a real and personal way as your Savior, as your Messiah. Hey, God's given you some space too. God's given you second chances and third chances. You're here this morning listening again.

Who knows how many times you've listened before? God's given you space. But be careful.

I need to tell you this. Be careful about saying no to God for too long because at some point the patience of God stops and then God judges. And I don't know when that point is, and you don't know when that point is, the Israelites wouldn't have believed Jesus even if he told them when that point was going to be, but it happens.

If you're here and you've never trusted Christ and you're thinking about it, let me urge you. Don't think about it too long. Make a decision because God's only patience so long and the Israelites found out.

We need to learn a lesson from them. Well, that's the end of our passage, but it leads us to ask a really important question, and what is that question? So what? Yeah, Lon, you know, what did this just make for me today?

Well, I'm going to try to tell you. I don't know whether movies are getting better or I'm just getting kind of slobbier in my old age. Maybe it's a combination of both, but it seems like I can't go to the movies anymore without taking a handkerchief. Anybody else have that experience?

I mean, it didn't used to be that way. I mean, I could even cry at action movies. I could go see Rambo and I can get choked up.

Say, Rambo? Well, yeah, there's some touching parts to that. On this trip, Brenda and I were on a couple weeks ago. We were at a place where we could go see, they had a different movie every night, and they were good movies. And so we went to see Forrest Gump.

I cried. They said, let's all go see The River Wild with Meryl Streep. I said, I don't want to see that. That's a stupid movie.

I don't want to go see some environmental movie. And they said, no, no, no, come on, come on. So I went, great movie. Absolutely great movie. I cried.

Went to see Love Affair. Terrible movie. Movie stinks. It's an awful movie. I cried.

Doesn't matter. The movie was awful, but it was still kind of emotional, you know. In fact, it's so bad that I was taking my younger son, Jonathan, and one of his friends to the movie theater a while ago, and they were riding in the back and didn't think I was listening. We're driving to the theater, and I heard Jonathan say to his friend, he said, now listen. He said, don't worry if you see my dad cry. My dad cries at all movies. He'll be okay. Don't worry about it. For which I appreciate my son preparing his friend.

Because I did cry. Now, all of us know people like that, don't we? You know, people we work with, relatives we have, you know. I mean, something will happen, whether it's at a movie or something. And we all just go, don't worry. I mean, they'll be okay.

It's just them. I mean, you know, we want to be sensitive and everything, but it's just kind of like, eh, you know, they cried everything, you know. It's not that big a deal.

You know, some of us have little girls or whatever, you know, and I mean, they go outside, you know, and the flower petal gets crinkled. It's okay. Be all right. Well, let me just say to you that Jesus was not like this. If you look through the Bible, do you realize that only twice in the entire Bible does the Bible ever say God cried? Twice in the whole Bible.

The Bible covers 1600 years. You know, that's not much crying for 1600 years. Once was at the tomb of Lazarus, his good friend. When Jesus saw the pain and the anguish that death brings to people, the grief, he cried. And the only other time the Bible ever says that God cried was right here. As he looked at the city of Jerusalem and as he looked on the lost estate of the people in the city, it brought him to tears. Now, I don't know about you, but I see a message in this. I mean, if God only cried twice in the whole Bible, it seems to me that those must be fairly significant times.

Those must be fairly significant events, and there ought to be a message in that for us. Golly, if something was important enough and serious enough to move God to cry, it ought to be pretty important. If Jesus Christ came and walked the streets of Washington, D.C. today, what do you think he'd weep over?

You ever think about that? You think he'd weep over the national debt? No, I don't think so. You think he'd weep over our level of military preparedness, whatever you might think of that? Nah. You think he'd weep over our nuclear waste problem? Nah. You think he'd weep over the future of the snail darter or of the logging industry?

Nah. How about the financial condition of the D.C. government? Do you think he'd weep over that? Now, that definitely is a tragedy. I don't think he'd weep over that. How about if he sat down and watched the Senate and the House interact on C-SPAN? Would that bring him to tears? We're getting closer.

We're getting closer. But no, I don't think that would. You know what I think? I think Jesus Christ would go down and walk the streets of Northeast Washington, and I think he would look at all the kids there with no fathers and no discipline and no moral guidance, and he'd see these young kids trying to stay alive on the streets with bullets flying everywhere, and he'd watch as they turned to drugs and sex and gangs to try to find what only he could provide for their soul, and I think he'd sit down on the street corner in Northeast and I think he'd weep over these kids. And I think Jesus would go to Dupont Circle, and I think he'd sit there at Dupont Circle and he'd watch the homosexual community trying to convince itself that it's happy, trying to convince itself that its lifestyle was going to meet the needs of people's souls. I think he would watch as these sad men and women try to wipe away the pain that they feel from absent dads and from abusive moms by turning to homosexuality while Jesus sat there and knew that he was the only one who could heal those hearts, but they wouldn't come to him. And I think Jesus would sit there on the fountain in the circle, and he'd weep. I think Jesus would visit the high schools around here, and he'd watch as insecure young people groped to try to find a real reason for living, and he would watch as the system keeps telling them that belief in God is old-fashioned, belief in God is nice but quaint, and as the system keeps trying to convince them that secularism and humanism was the way to real freedom when Jesus actually knew it was the way to bondage and slavery. And I think Jesus would watch as thousands of well-meaning, sincere young people got led away into the lies of Satan, and I think he'd weep right there in the halls. I think he'd visit the hospitals and the nursing homes and the hospices of the area, and he'd watch as people hung there right on the edge of eternity, as they clung to remedies for sin that won't work, as they lay there in bed and said to themselves, I was a good person. I did go to church. I did try hard.

I was an upstanding member of the community. That's got to count for something with God. I'm sure if anybody goes to heaven, I will. And Jesus would stand there realizing none of that was going to work, realizing so many times these people had been offered a personal relationship with Christ and turned it down and still were turning it down, and realizing they were heading out into an eternity that was Christless and awful, and I think he'd weep. Friends, I think Jesus would visit our offices. I think he'd ride on our metros.

I think he would walk down the streets of our neighborhood, go to our health clubs. I think he'd ride down the beltway and sit at the mall and watch the crowds go by, and everywhere he went, he would see modern-day Jerusalemites who were lost and lonely and hurting and broken, people who either didn't know about or refused to listen to what he was offering them, and I think he'd weep. See, 2,000 years ago, Jesus stood on the Mount of Olives, and he looked beyond the outward appearance of things. He looked beyond the beauty of the scenery.

He looked beyond the splendor of the temple. He saw hurting, blind, lonely people separated from God, all because they refused to embrace him, and he wept, and I think if he were here today, he'd weep over the very same stuff. Now, my question is, as Christians, is this how we see our world? Can we, as Christians, see past our world's plastic, pasted-on exterior, the smokescreen they put up to see the real state of people in this world, the people in our office, of the people in our neighborhood and in our family?

See, I think if we saw the world the way God sees the world, it would change the way we live. Does the name William Carey mean anything to you? You say, William Carey, is he on St. Elsewhere, too? No, no, he wasn't on St.

Elsewhere. In fact, William Carey's been dead for 200 years, but William Carey is a name you should know. William Carey was a young man born in England, 1761. He was a cobbler. He was a shoemaker, and he came to know Christ as a teenager, and as a young man in his 20s, somebody gave him a copy of a book to borrow and read. The book was named Voyages. It was written by Captain James Cook. Captain James Cook was a great explorer, and he had been around the whole South Pacific exploring. He had discovered Hawaii. He discovered Tahiti. He discovered the South Sea Islands. He discovered New Zealand. He discovered Australia for the British Commonwealth, and he wrote a book about the gorgeous scenery and the incredible beauty of these islands that he was discovering in the South Pacific called Voyages, and in 1784, a copy of it was loaned to William Carey to read as a young man in his 20s, and he read the book. He was fascinated by all the descriptions in the book of the beauty of these places, but then he came to a place in the book where Captain James Cook said that on one of the islands, one of these little South Sea islands, he had gone up to the very pinnacle of the island, and he had set up a big old wooden cross, dug it into the ground on the top of this mountain, but he had made no attempt, Captain Cook had, to tell the natives what it meant. He just put a big old cross on. Well, that night, William Carey, when he went to sleep, had a dream. In fact, better, a nightmare, and he dreamed in his dream that he saw this island that Captain Cook had described, and there were all these natives walking slowly up the mountain, walking right up to the cross and walking right past the cross and over the edge of the mountain and falling to their death in the fires of hell below, walking right by the cross but having no idea what it meant, no idea what its significance was, and perishing, even though that big old cross was on that mountain. And he woke up in a cold sweat, and he realized that behind the beauty of all of those islands lay thousands of lost souls for Jesus Christ. And he said to himself, somebody has got to go tell those people what that cross means. He went to the ministerial society in England and said, guys, we've got to do something. We've got to go reach these people. And in a very famous interaction between him and the leader of the ministerial meeting, the ministerial leader said to him, and I quote, sit down, young man, sit down and be still.

When God wants to convert the heathen, he'll do it without consulting you or me. Now sit down. But you see, Carey couldn't rest. He wouldn't rest. He developed an enormous passion for these people over there that Captain Cook had found. And finally in 1792, six years later, the first modern mission society in the Western world was founded, the Baptist Missionary Society of England. And guess who its very first missionary was? It was an ex-cobbler named William Carey who set out the next year to go to the Pacific Rim and share Christ with these people. One biographer said, the church owes more to William Carey than to any other man since the Apostle Paul.

And he's right. This was the beginning of the modern missionary movement in the church. And everything you see happening around the world in terms of the missions work of the church today can all be traced back to one man, William Carey. One man, listen carefully, one Christian who was able to see the South Sea Islands, not the way Captain James Cook saw them, but as Almighty God saw them. One Christian who was able to look past the beauty and see lost souls. That's why we have a missions program of the church today. Now I want to ask you as a Christian, how do you see Washington, D.C.?

How do I see Washington, D.C.? Do we see it in terms of monuments and memorials and museums? Do we see it in terms of budgets and proposals and deadlines and deals and sales figures and cash flows and politics and traffic? Or can we look beyond all of that and see it the way God sees it? God doesn't see all that stuff. God sees lost people, friends.

God sees people, kazillions of people, real eternal souls who desperately need Jesus Christ in their life. That's how God sees Washington. Is that how you see it when you leave your house every morning? Is that how I see it? And if we see it that way, what are we prepared to do about it? Are we prepared to be William Carey's to our world? Are we prepared to get out there and take the risk and deal with the backlash to share Christ with people and move people towards Christ? Are we just going to enjoy being kind of a country club here and say, sure is nice, we found him. God bless those other people.

What are we going to do? I've got another question for you. Say, Lon, I don't think I can take any more questions.

All right, I've only got a couple more. When was the last time, here's one for you, that somebody being lost, that somebody being outside of Christ that you cared about, when was the last time that that person's lost estate moved you as a Christian so much that you wept over them? When was the last time you got on your knees before God and you were praying for somebody to come to know Christ and you were so gripped by their lostness that you just broke down and cried? Say, Lon, I'm not sure I can remember ever doing that.

Well, I'm not sure I've done it very much either. But, friends, if we haven't, this is how Jesus saw Jerusalem. How do we see our Jerusalem?

If we don't see it like this and it hasn't gripped us this deep, then I'd like to suggest to you we've got some room to grow. Because this is the heart of God for Washington, D.C. God doesn't care about the Senate. He doesn't care about the House of Representatives. He doesn't care about the D.C. budget. He doesn't care about how many missiles we have. He doesn't care about the health of the Social Security program. He doesn't care who gets confirmed to the Supreme Court.

Those are not key issues. God cares about millions of lost people. You understand where I am? You understand where the heart of God is? That's what I want to challenge you to. Friends, if we as a church family could see Washington the way Jesus saw him, and if we responded the way William Carey did, we could change this city for Christ.

It could happen. Be easy, really. I'm convinced the greatest need of the Christian world today is not more money, more buildings, more budget, more staff. It's to see the world the way God sees it. Let's bow our heads together.

And what I'd like you to do if you're a Christian here this morning is in these quiet moments. I'd like you to think of somebody, a guy or a gal, who doesn't know Christ that you're so concerned about. Picture them. Maybe it's a mom or a dad. Maybe it's a brother or a sister.

Maybe it's a child, a grandchild. And I'd like you to take a moment and let's pray for them right now. Let's let God break our heart for them being lost, separated from God right now. Now I want you to ask God a question. I want you to say, God, what do you want me to do about this person? Want me to pray for them every day? Want me to go talk to them? Want me to invite them to Tuesday night to hear Senator Coats? Want me to write him a letter?

Send him a tape? What do you want me to do? And then you tell God whether or not you're prepared to do that. Heavenly Father, I pray that you would bring each one of us as Christians to the place where we could begin to see the world the way you see it. Lord, for all these people that we've thought about this morning, for millions of us, the heart of God is breaking. Forgive us, Lord, for getting so caught up in our routine that we don't have time, we don't have energy to really let our heart break for lost people. Help us change the way we live, Lord.

We're going too fast and spending far too much time on stuff that doesn't really matter for eternity. And for all these people we've prayed for this morning, people we love, people we care about, I ask that you would do everything you could justly and righteously do to bring them to Christ. Honor our prayers, Lord, for these and for others. Give us a heart as a church family for lost people. Help us be willing to pay the price to reach lost people. The price that you pay, that William Carey paid. Change this city. Change this city because some people develop an ability to see the city the way you see it. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.