Marcus Mecum - See the Bad to See the Better
In 1 Samuel 10 we begin to catch a glimpse of why vision matters so much, the importance of it. And the truth is there’s a consequence to not having vision, and the consequence is a grave one. And so, sometimes we get uncomfortable with vision, and the cost of vision, the price of vision. But there’s a higher price to be paid when you’re visionless and this Old Testament story says it so well. Let’s look at it together. Verse 26, it says, «Saul also went to his home in Gibeah, accompanied by valiant men whose hearts God has touched».
I love that verse. Just let God touch your heart. «But some scoundrel said, 'how can this fellow save us'? They despised him and brought him no gifts. But Saul kept silent. So, Nahash, the Ammonites, » so, these are archrivals of Israel. They saw the vulnerability, the weakness in a divided nation, «And he besieged, » so he set up a siege against «Jabesh Gilea. And all the men of Jabesh, » this is an area in Israel. «He said, 'make a treaty with us and we will be subject to you'. But Nahash the Ammonite replied, 'I will make a treaty with you on one condition, that I gouge out your right eye and every one of you so to bring a disgrace on Israel'. The elders of Jabesh said, 'give us seven days, we’re gonna consider this option'. So, the messengers went out into Gibeah of Saul and reported the terms to the people, and so all the people are weeping. And Saul was returning from the fields».
I want you to notice that. Everybody, say, «Fields. Behind is oxen». Everybody, say, «Oxen». Remember that, don’t forget. «And he asked, 'what’s wrong with everyone? Why are you weeping? Why are you so sad'? And they repeated what Nahash, this king, had said. And when Saul heard their words, the Spirit of God came powerfully upon him, and he burned with anger. He took a pair of the oxen, cut them into pieces and sent the pieces by messengers throughout all of Israel proclaiming, 'this is what will be done to the oxen of anyone who does not follow Saul and Samuel'. And the terror of the Lord fell on the people and they came out together as one. They came out together as one». I’mma say it one more time, «They came out together as one». They ended up annihilating the Ammonites after that moment.
I wanna talk to you about, «See the bad to see better». See the bad to see better. It’s important that you know it can get worse. No matter how bad you think it is, it can get worse. When I was growing up, they had a commercial where they would hold up an egg and they would say, «This is your brain». They would crack the egg, put it in a frying pan and say, «This is your brain on». So, when you were a kid, if you saw someone rolling up a joint, you would imagine this is your brain on drugs. See the bad to see better. God does not shrink back from that idea, it can get worse. The gospel does not avoid painting a picture of how bad it can get.
If you read the Bible, sometimes it can be overwhelming when you read about the judgments, and the wrath, and how God is displeased, and how he’s grieved at times, and how the devil roams like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. He’s come to steal, kill, and destroy. The whole thing starts out in the beauty of the Garden of Eden where God said, «Hey, be careful. This is good but the good can go bad». And, of course, we see the serpent. We see sin. We see the fall. It ultimately finds its way to a cross where there Jesus is hanging, and bleeding, and dying. And that’s one thing to see him suffering, the next thing is when you get a picture of it’s your sin. «He was wounded for your transgressions. He was bruised for your iniquities. The chastisement of his peace, » we’ve got the peace, but the chastisement was put on, the correction.
What’s the correction? The anger, the wrath, the judgement, the correction that you deserved was poured out on him. He didn’t deserve it. It was your sin that God judged when he hung there on the cross. And when you get a picture of it, it’s bad. That’s what my sin looks like. That’s what your, «Well, I just made a mistake. I just missed it. You know, well, I just kind of fibbed here, fibbed there. I just slipped up there, slipped up here». That’s not how God tells us about our sin. He says, «Look at Calvary. Look at that man hanging, bleeding, and dying». That is what sin looks like. See the bad so you can see better. Hell, eternal separation from God, it can get worse.
This is how we read the story of Saul who’s just become king, first day on the job. There are those who God has touched their hearts, and they’re with him. Everywhere he goes, they’re there with him. But then, there were others, the Bible says, that wanted nothing to do with Saul. So, he’s king, but the nation is divided. And the moment that the enemy sees this division, like a magnet, he’s attracted to that situation. And Nahash, the king of the Ammonites, sees this nation divided. He shows up. They set up a siege. The siege meant, «Listen, you’re done. It’s over. It’s finished. We’re going to ransack your villages. We’re going to kidnap your children and your wives. We’re going to plunder all of your goods. The battle is coming, it’s inevitable. We’re here and we’re here to fight, and we’ve got you surrounded». But then he comes up with an option. He says to Israel, «All you have to do is let us cut out your right eye».
The right eye is the fighting eye, according to commentaries. «Let us have your fighting eye and you can live. We’ll leave you alone». So, Saul’s first battle as king has to do with vision. How important is vision? How important is it that we keep our fighting eye? Because the enemy just said, «If you let us gouge out your fighting eye, we’ll leave you alone». The right eye is connected to the right hand, which was the sword wielding hand, the spear wielding hand. The left eye is connected to the left hand, which is where the shield was carried.
In other words, he said, «We want your right eye. You can keep your left eye. Just stay focused on self-preservation. Just hide behind that shield. Stay focused on whatever you have to, but remember if you keep your right eye, there’s a high price to keeping that vision. The price is there’s going to be battles, there’s going to be enemies, there’s going to be risk, and threats, and fears, all kinds of possible losses, the attack that you’re going to be under, the wounds that you will suffer, the possible casualties that are going to happen are major. All you have to do to avoid all of that, give up your fighting eye and you can keep that left eye. You can keep the comfort. You can keep the ease. You can relax».
So, the temptation that the nation is facing is this, the price of vision is possibly too high. Who wants to pay the price that they’re going to have to pay to keep their fighting eye strong? This is a big moment for the new king. If he gets this right, he brings the nation together. If he gets it wrong, the nation is further divided. And the Bible says, «The spirit of the Lord comes powerfully upon Saul, » which is the first stage of vision, is God by his spirit comes powerfully upon us. This is how we see him moving all throughout the scripture. The prophet Ezekiel, «The hand of the Lord, » Ezekiel 37:1 says, «Came upon him. The Spirit of God lifted him up, took him to the valley of dry bones and said to prophesy over it».
The first step before he saw the valley, before he prophesied the mighty army, was the spirit of the Lord, the hand of God, came upon him. In the Book of Revelation, John is on the island of Patmos. And on the Lord’s day, he was taken up by the spirit and then he begin to write about the things he saw. But God, by his spirit, came upon John before he saw one thing that we read about in the Book of Revelation. God said, «Hey, I want you to go gather in that upper room in Jerusalem, and I want you to stay there». And the mighty rushing wind filled the room, and tongues of fire set on each one of them. Then they left, then the early church was born. But the first stage is God, by his spirit, must come powerfully upon us as his people.
And so, with the anointing on this young king, he looks out at a field. He sees a pair of oxen pulling the plough, preparing for the harvest. And he goes out with a machete, and he starts cutting those oxen into pieces. He takes the body parts of those oxen and ships them in boxes all over the nation of Israel. People, for the first time, are getting a gift from the new king. And as they open the boxes, they’re opening the boxes with ox heads, and torsos, and blood, and guts, and the stench, and the smell of death, and decay, and attached is a message that, «This is what will happen to the oxen of those who give up their fighting eye. I want you to look at the gore. I want you to smell the stench, because there’s a price to keeping your fighting eye. There’s a price to maintaining a strong, healthy vision for the future. But there’s a greater price to be paid, look at the gore in the box. There’s a greater price to be paid if you’re visionless».
Proverbs says it like this, «Without a vision my people perish». The instruction is look at the gory boxes, see the bad to see better. You have to see the bad. Think about your life, think about who you are. Now imagine that no one had a fighting eye for you, no one had a vision for you, no one built a church, no one made sure that there were Bibles, no one made sure that the gospel was being advanced, no one made sure that you knew the love and the mercy of God, and you now are in that box. Look at the bad. Why? So you can see the better. Someone said, «I’m not going to give up my fighting eye, » because they had you in mind. And now, you have to make a decision, «On the other side of me giving up my fighting eye is a generation in that gory box. A generation that will never know the love, and the compassion, and the grace, and the forgiveness, and the freedom, and the purpose, that you and I have so freely been given».
So, you have to see the bad. There’s a price that will be paid if you don’t have vision. I’m talking to the church. Church, there is a price to be paid without having vision. Spirit of God comes on him and he looks out and he sees the oxes, where are they at? In a field. They’re out in the field gathering the harvest. They’re pulling the plough. He goes and he kills the oxes that are gathering the harvest in the field, and he says to the nation, «This is what will happen if you give up your fighting eye. What happens to this ox is going to happen to your ox. No vision, no fighting eye, no ox, no harvest». Did you catch it?
The harvest is the souls that are waiting for what? They’re white, waiting for the laborer to come. The ox represents that which has the strength to go gather the harvest. The ox is soul winning churches. That’s what the ox is. And he said, «Listen, this is what’s going to happen if we lose our vision, is we’ll lose the oxes, we’re going to lose the strength, and the vibrancy of soul winning churches. And as a result, we will lose the harvest». The Bible says that you don’t muzzle the ox that treads out the grain, speaking of soul winning.
The Bible says, «Where the oxen are, the stalls are dirty». It just talks about, «Hey, listen, when you have ox, when you have soul winning, when you have harvest season, when you’re winning souls, and you’re reaching the lost, guess what? It can be dirty, it can be work. There’s effort to it, but don’t overestimate the price that you’re paying for some dirty stalls, and you lose sight of what happens with some clean stalls». Drive by some churches on the way home, parking lots empty, everything’s clean, everything’s in order. No oxen are in that place. No strength is in that place. No one’s out saying, «We must win more souls». And what happens? Slowly but surely, the doors begin to close. You have to see the bad, for what? To see better. Your eye is the most complicated organ in your body after the brain.
65% of your brain power is used by your eyes. One eye has 7 million photo receptors, 7 million light sensitive cells. You see an estimated 10 million colors. 70% of all your sensory receptors of the entire body are in your eye, the other 30% is your touch, taste, smell, and hearing combined. 80% of what you learn is from what you see. 80% of your memories are based on what you see. I love this part of it. This was my favorite part. The pupil of the eye expands 45% when you see someone you love. When the Bible says we are the apple of God’s eye, what’s it saying? His pupil, his love for us, his eyes, his vision, expands. Doesn’t shrink when he sees us, gets bigger.
It’s how important vision is. As it is in the natural, so it is in the spirit. Vision is to expand because there’s people that God’s called us to love that are still lost. And that’s what today is about, that’s what vision Sunday is about. It’s about God loving us enough that he gave people some big eyes, some big vision. He gave people a fighting eye with us in mind. Is anybody thankful for that? King Saul has all these people opening up these gory packages. This is the picture, «It can get worse. If we don’t step up, things can get worse».
See the bad to see better. The Bible says they see the bad. So, what they do is they get up, they come together as one. Can you believe it? A nation that was divided, a nation that had been pulling apart, a nation that was considering just hiding out behind their shields, all of a sudden, now they come together as one. They step up and they go fight, and they win a great victory because there is no victory if you give up your fighting eye. There is no victory without vision. General Patton, after the victory of Normandy, was asked, «Why did you fight like that»? And he said, «All I had to do was have a vision of my family under Hitler’s control».
See the bad to see better. When we talk about our fighting eye and we talk about vision, you know what happens? It’s scary, it’s risky, it’s overwhelming. First reaction is to think about the cost, the expense of it. My first thought is, «I don’t wanna fight that kind of battle. I wanna hide out. I wanna play it safe. I don’t need no more stress. I don’t need no more struggle». But I have to open up the gory box and look at it and say, «I don’t want to see another soul-winning church slaughtered because we don’t understand we gotta keep our fighting eye».
Seeing the bad isn’t the main point. The main point is see the better. The main point isn’t hell in the Bible, the main point is heaven. But you have to see the bad to understand the glory, and the majesty, and the beauty of the place he’s prepared for us called heaven. Sometimes you have to experience loneliness to understand what it means that he’ll never leave you or forsake you. Sometimes you have to see that bloody cross to realize we were baptized into his death, but the Bible promises as he got up, as he was raised up, we’ll also be baptized in his resurrection.
So, one of the things that you’ve heard all throughout this service is our new mission statement which is, «Expanding heaven one person at a time». And the reason I love that mission statement is several reasons. But the first one is, years ago, in this church, I can remember more people were leaving than were coming, and I felt the Lord say, «You build that church one altar call at a time, one soul at a time». The other reason I love that mission statement is because everyone in this room can do it. Didn’t say, «Gather a crowd». Didn’t say, «Build a big church». Didn’t say any of that. «Expand heaven one person at a time».
Let your vision expand, because there’s people you love that are still outside the Kingdom of God and you can do something about it. At your work, in your school, in your family, God can use every single person in this room to be an ox in the field and win souls. Don’t let the enemy have your fighting eye. Keep your eye open on that family member. Keep your eye open on souls. Let’s keep our eye open and lift it up. The harvest is white and ready. God’s just looking for people to have the fighting eye.