The Eyes of the Lord
Updated: Sep 1
Pastor Stan Mons
Sermon Transcription:
This morning, the Lord has given me a word titled, The Eyes of the Lord. The eyes of the Lord. And I love taking a good look into people's eyes. Some of you know. Because eyes can tell you a lot about a person. You've heard it said many times, eyes are the window to the soul, and there's a reason for sayings like that and their common use. Because when you look into someone's eyes, and they can't look back into yours, you know there's something in the soul they don't want you to see. Something that they would like to keep hidden. And when someone looks in their eyes, they feel exposed. And so, a shift happens. Eyes can tell you so much about a person. They can tell you if that person is faking their happiness. And their smile, the eyes don't match the smile. You ever seen that?
You can see eyes. There needs to be no smile on the face at all, but you can just taste the joy that is inside that person's heart. You can You can see peace in someone's eyes. Or the gross lack of peace. Eyes can tell you so much about a person. I always tell people, and you may have heard me say it from the platform, I love the eyes of a person that has gotten saved. Every person that has seen with the eyes of their heart the Lord with the eyes of their heart, they've seen that the cross was there just for them, the blood was shed just for them, so that they got away with all of their sin, and they got life instead of judgment, they got freedom instead of bondage. The eyes of the heart, when they have seen the salvation of the Lord for themselves, even the natural eyes are changed. Every single time, I can tell by somebody's eyes if the eyes of their heart are still closed or they've actually seen, it's been revealed by the spirit of God to their spiritual eyes, so to speak, that that Jesus is their Lord, their savior. Eyes can tell you a lot about a person, and then the next thing that can tell you a very much a lot about a person that has to do with their eyes is what they have an eye for.
Some people have an incredible eye for details, and they can just walk into a room and get the details that everyone else seems to easily overlook. They just know how to get it in order. They, if your outfit is a little crooked, they notice it right away, and they make sure you look good before you go out there on the platform, or before you walk out into your wedding day, or before you walk out of the front door. When you have a person that has an eye for detail, they know how to take care of the details. When you have a person that has really an eye for design, they usually overlook the details cuz they're not that important. But, where the keyboard needs to be on the platform in order for people to not be distracted, but in order for people to be able to focus on Jesus, they just they just have an eye for it. They just know the moment they see it what needs to happen. A mechanic, a car mechanic, just has an eye for things that are out of place. They walk under a car, and they can just tell if a backyard mechanic has been in here before, or whether this is a really good solid car. The miles don't matter that much on this one, cause it has been well taken care of. What do you have an eye for?
Eyes can tell you a lot about a person. Me myself, I have an eye for boats. Always had an eye for boats. I grew up spending my summers on big boats in my country, the Netherlands. And as far back as I can remember, as soon as I could walk, my grandfather would walk me over the dock, and we would walk from dock to dock to dock. Every harbor we would visit, we would walk, and we would just look at boats. And we would notice how this boat was designed different, and they had that set up quite different, and wouldn't that work better, and oh my word, isn't that ugly. We would notice everything and just walk around looking at boats, to the point where when I grew up, it became my career, and I ended up designing super yachts. But, boats have always been something I have an eye for. And then, as we began to serve the Lord, my wife and I discovered that our hobby together is fixing up boats. So, we'd buy a broken or a cheap or an auction boat, and we would Inna would come in, and she would have the vision for how she wanted things, and I had to do it. And time after time, as we had more kids, we needed bigger boats, and we recently acquired our next project. And the boat that we're fixing up now, as we were walking through it, and Inna was waiting for the negatives to hit her mind as to why we shouldn't jump into this, the negatives just wouldn't come. And so, Papa had to jump into it. And now, walking through it, everything works, but everything could be better. And having an eye for these things, it is easy for me to see what's next. It's easy for me to see what things could become and how they should become and how to do it.
Even though everything works, it could be so much better. Even though everything functions, there's so many upgrades that really could and should take place. Now, is it worth the amount of time? Is it worth the investment of the money? Some may challenge that, but I have an eye for it. It's what I'm good at. And then, in parallel to that, when Jesus comes into your life, and He purchases you, and you become a vessel for the Holy Spirit, He begins to look around in your heart, and He begins to look around in your mind, and everything does function, but there's so much that could be better around here. And He starts renovating, and He starts fixing things, and He starts working on things that we cannot change ourselves because He has an eye for it. This is what he does. This is what he is good at. The eyes of the Lord. I'm going to take you into a story of King Asa.
We're going to go to 2 Corinthians 16. We're going to start in verse 1: "In the 36th year of Asa's reign, King Baasha of Israel invaded Judah and fortified Ramah in order to prevent anyone from entering or leaving King Asa's territory in Judah. Asa responded by removing the silver and the gold from the treasuries of the temple of the Lord and the royal palace. He sent it to King Ben-Hadad of Aram, who was ruling in Damascus, along with this message. Let there be a treaty between you and me like the one between your father and my father. See, I'm sending you silver and gold. Break your treaty with King Baasha of Israel so that he will leave me alone. Ben-Hadad agreed to King Asa's request and send the commanders of his army to attack the towns of Israel. They conquered the towns of Ijon, Dan, Abel-beth-maacah, and all the store cities in Naphtali. As soon as Baasha of Israel heard what was happening, he abandoned his project of fortifying Ramah and stopped all work on it. Then King Asa called out all the men of Judah to carry away the building stones and timbers that Baasha had been using to fortify Ramah. Asa used these materials to fortify the towns of Geba and Mizpah.
At that time, Hanani the seer came to King Asa and told him, "Because you have put your trust in the king of Aram instead of in the Lord your God, you missed your chance to destroy the army of the king of Aram. Don't you remember what happened to the Ethiopians and the Libyans and their vast army with all of their chariots and charioteers at the time that you relied on the Lord and he handed them over to you? The eyes of the Lord search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him. What a fool you've been. From now on, you will be at war. Asa became so angry with Hanani for saying this that he threw him into prison and put him in stocks. At that time, Asa also began to oppress some of his people. He forgot the eyes of the Lord, and Hanani comes and says, "Do you not remember that your God has eyes that are continually seeking to find somebody whose heart is wholly committed to him?"" A simpler translation would just be that trusts wholeheartedly in you. Have you forgotten that the Lord is literally looking constantly for a man, for a woman whose heart completely rests in you? And have you forgotten what happens when the eyes of the Lord find a man or a woman that trusts in him? That God gives his own strength away to win battles and victories that you could never win. Have you forgotten? And And this man has forgotten, and what happens? Anger fills his heart that causes him to begin to shut out the living word of God. They didn't have a Bible back then the way we do.
They had prophets. And he throws the prophet who's bringing him the word of the Lord, he throws him in prison. He doesn't want to hear it anymore. When people begin to forget that the eyes of the Lord are constantly looking into our heart until He finds somebody that will trust Him without a backup plan, without any reservations. When when we forget the eyes of the Lord, sooner or later there are portions of scripture, there are things that God says that we don't want them to apply to us anymore. And we may not be putting a prophet in prison, we may just be leaving our Bibles on the nightstand. Closed. Unable to speak. It's a small frustration with all these things that yes, I believe they're true, but I don't want them right now. It frustrates me. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to listen. And the second thing that happens is that he begins to become a harsh person. I'll read it to you again. Verse 10: "Asa became so angry with Hanani for saying this that he threw him into prison and put him in stocks. At that time, Asa also began to oppress some of his people." He became oppressive. He became harsh. It became okay for him in certain situations to be mean or to single people out. There's always a progression in a man's life who no longer gives God all of his trust. A man that has forgotten that the eyes of the Lord are eagerly looking for childlike faith in a heart that says this is an impossible situation, but I'm not going to do everything I can to work this out.
I'm going to trust in my Lord. One day, a long time ago, I was on my way to hell, and there was no way for me to work myself out of that one. And when I put my trust in Jesus Christ, my God showed up. My God delivered. My God changed. My God broke away the chains. My God set me free. Surely, He can handle this problem. Surely, He can meet me in this difficulty. He forgot the eyes of the Lord, and the cry comes forth, "Don't you remember what happened at the time that you relied on the Lord?" Second Chronicles 16:9, here's how the ESV reads it. "For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless towards him." Think about that for a moment as we meditate on on how much you can tell about a person through their eyes. The eyes of the Lord, they they run to and fro throughout the whole earth to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless towards him. God wants to give his own strength so gladly away to people in impossible situations. Impossible sin debt. Impossible to work it off with God. Impossible to become good in my own strength. Impossible to make ends meet at the end of the month. Impossible to find some kind of a a good relationship with your boss at work, impossible to get back in touch with your kids, impossible to make it through the school year, whatever your impossibility may be, whatever you may be facing, whatever relationship is on your heart or in your mind, or what difficulty is towering over you like a giant, the eyes of the Lord are watching and waiting until he finds a man that will simply put all of his trust in the God that did not abandon him in the worst of all possible situations. Because God delights to give his own strength away to deal with what you and I could never deal with.
These men, these women, their hearts trust in Him. They trust His plan. They trust His way. And they look for it. The eyes of the Lord are looking for that man or for that woman in this generation to give away his own strength to deal with our situation, and not just for sin. This is not just for sin struggles you may be going through or you may have been already carried through by the Lord. It's not just for things we are constantly doing wrong. This can be any challenge you face in life. God is watching. Waiting to see who will trust him because he got an eye for fixing impossible situations. Church, it also means that as the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the rows this morning, that He passes over every person whose heart does not wholly trust in Him. A person that makes their own plan. Think about that for a moment. Imagine the eyes of the Lord finds you. And then they turn away. They move on looking for someone else. Very often, church, trust means that you don't make a plan because God has a plan. And and you follow His plan even if you don't know what it is. You just seek after His plan. You want to understand His plan. You may not always get it right. But you do not fall back into trying to figure life out in your own plan, in your own strength, in your own understanding of how things may just work out for you.
You see, the portion of this story that is so saddening to my heart is that King Asa, who had a history of testimony, victories that supernaturally were won in his life. King Asa made God look weak in his generation. A generation can make God look weak to a world that needs a Christ who has all power and authority to forgive and cleanse and set free and give out eternal life. God wants to demonstrate that he has power that He's willing to give to undeserving people in everyday situations, that when people begin to ask you for the hope that is in you, that you can say, my Jesus has paid the price for my forgiveness. The reason people begin to listen to you is because they've already seen little nuggets of strength in your life that really shouldn't have been there. The world needs to see a church, a people of God who allow God to do a work of strength, His strength in their life, in their situations. Not limited by what you can do, and the only difference between you and trouble and them in trouble is you go to church on Sunday, you got one day less to to to work or to make money or or do whatever you want to do, hang out at the beach. That's the only difference for some.
Church, the eyes of the Lord are looking. He's waiting until He finds a heart that has said, no more plan. God is my plan. I'm trusting God. I'm relying on God. If he's not going to do it, I'm going to go down for the count. My situation is going to fall to the ground. There's no backup plan. I'm letting go, and unless God picks it up, it is going to fall to the ground and scatter. That is a choice of wholehearted trust. God, I trust you'll keep your word. I trust you'll do it in my life. I trust the cross has already brought me into favor. I trust the cross has already brought me into childship. I trust you're going to treat me the way that you say you will treat your bride. I believe you, and I trust you with my life. Church, your plan will always make God look weak. Stop doing it. Just stop doing your plan. Trust Him. Trust His plan. He's looking into every single one of our hearts at this very moment as well.
He's looking for total absolute trust. Trust is a complete word. It's not a partial thing we can do. But the reason He's testing your heart, the reason He's looking for you to make that what almost feels sometimes like a dumb decision in the flesh. That's how it feels. Unreasonable, you don't want to tell anybody about it cause everybody's going to talk you out of it. That's how it feels. The reason God is looking for a heart that will wholeheartedly trust Him, it is because God wants to give his own strength away to battles you and I could have never won, and the world is watching. The people you want to tell about Jesus, they're watching. And they need, in so many cases, they need to see some strength until they start listening to what God wants to speak through your life. God desires for his strength to be seen in this world, a dying world. Here's the altar call.
Proverbs 3:5-6 is your altar call this morning. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take." Here's the promise, the direction and the promise in God's word, trust Him. Stop depending on what you're trying to figure out in your mind. Stop depending on that plan. Just seek after His will, and though it may be hard to know what His will is, though you may not have a clue right now to go left or right or sit down or or stay where you're at, here's the promise, and He will show you which path to take. If you believe that this morning, and you say, "God, I want to trust you, and I believe that you're going to show me what path to take." I want to invite you to come and join me at this altar so that I can pray with you, and we can seal this word in our hearts.
-Pastor Stan Mons
