Word of Salvation – Vol.39 No.17 – May 1994

 

A Matter of Perspective

 

Sermon by Rev. M. De Graaf on Revelation 22:6-9

Reading: Daniel 10:1 – 11:1

 

Brothers and Sisters,

If you were a native from a very hidden and isolated part of Papua New Guinea and you went to Port Moresby, the capital of that country, for the first time you would be overwhelmed.  After all, you would find contrasts – between your small village with its grass huts and this big town with its large eight story buildings – incredible!  In your village you would do your shopping at the small local market place; in Port Moresby there are large supermarkets.  In your village everyone walks from place to place but in Port Moresby there are hundreds of cars and trucks.  The contrasts would be incredible! – as they say – mind-boggling.  But of course, that ‘overwhelmingness’ depends on your perspective!  It depends on your previous experience.

When I went to Port Moresby I saw it as being pretty average!  It was considerably less impressive than suburban Australia.  There were fewer buildings, less shops and considerably less cars.

From my perspective, Port Moresby was not very ‘overwhelming’ at all.  After all I live in a city which has the same population as the whole of PNG!  Now of course, this thing of perspective goes on and on.  For example, for a person from New York, Sydney must seem to be a pretty ‘average’ sized town.  After all, his city has a population of my whole country!  Once again it depends on your perspective – and his would be quite different from mine!

Everyone has a particular perspective on the world by which they measure its values, its sizes, what is important or impressive and what is not.  Perspective affects very many things.  Just think of money.  What one person calls a lot of money, another calls ‘petty cash’, what an Australian calls a big car an American calls ‘a compact’.  As we said, it goes on and on!

I hope you can see that understanding or even just recognising your own perspective on things, and getting it as straight as you can (in view of the wider world) can be very important.  After all, if you don’t, you can make quite a fool of yourself!  For a classic example just look at John in this morning’s text!  I mean you can’t really blame him can you?  From his immediate perspective, bowing down and worshiping that angel must have been a logical thing to do.  Just like it must have been logical for – Zechariah – the father of John the Baptist – to be ‘startled and gripped with fear’ when that angel appeared to him in the temple.  Or for Gideon to be so afraid that he thought that he was about to die.  Or just think about the shepherds in that field outside Jerusalem; they are described as being terrified!  And at the other end of Jesus’ time on earth, the soldiers guarding His tomb weren’t much better off.  They are said to have become ‘like dead men’.  Which is fair enough, when you consider that the angel was described as having an ‘appearance like lightning, with clothes as white as snow’!

In chapter ten of his book, Daniel describes an angel as: ‘being dressed in white, with a belt of gold around his waist, his body was like chrysolite, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of polished bronze, and had a voice like the sound of a multitude’.  Once again – quite understandably – his response to that incredible sight was also to fall down, helplessly, in sheer terror!

If John’s angel looked anything like that – and from his descriptions in chapter 10:1, we can assume that it did – then, as we’ve said, from our viewpoint this action is quite understandable – especially if you think about all those things that John has just seen.  He saw great wars, and strange creatures and plagues and incredible wonders!

I don’t know if we would have reacted differently.  John must have felt so overpowered, overwhelmed, awe-struck by what he had been shown.  He must have felt so small and insignificant that things in his mind were being pulled out of proportion, out of perspective!

The angel, of course, quickly corrects that.  He says, in effect: ‘Hey, don’t worship me.  I am a created being just like you.  We are both servants of the great King.  It is to Him that our worship is to be directed!’ The rest of Scripture also makes that point very clear.

In the wider scheme of things, places like Hebrews 2:5-7 make it clear that angels even have ‘lesser value’ (if you can say that) than we do!  Sure, they are powerful and their relationship with God was never broken through sin.  Yet, on the other hand, they are not heirs of God like we are.  The Son of God did not die for them – as He did for us.  We can call God ‘Father’ in a way which no other creature can!

And even though their unfallen knowledge is vast, as 1Peter 1:12 reminds us, through the Holy Spirit we have a knowledge that they are longing to look into!  In the eternal perspective, in the light of God and His power and the incredible things He has done – angels are just simply ‘worshiping’ creatures like you and me!

John needed to be reminded of that.  As verse 6 clearly underlines, he needed to see who the real source of power was!  And sometimes we need to be reminded of these things also.

Artists will tell you that getting perspective right in paintings and sculpture is very important and at times it can be very complicated.  Well, think of it.  Imagine that you would stand a mile away from the Eiffel tower.  And you placed a friend between you and that tower, just three meters away from you.  Who or what is bigger?  Your friend of course.  The Eiffel tower is only this big … and your friend is enormous!  Or at least that is what our mixed up and foolish perspective could be telling us!

Paul gives a good example of the same sort of thing in Colossians 2:16ff, when he says: ‘Do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink or with regard to religious festivals or a Sabbath day.  These are a shadow of the things that were to come, the reality, however, is found in Christ.  Furthermore, do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize.  Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions.  He has lost the connection with the head.’  He has lost true perspective on spiritual reality.

We may not struggle with angel-worship as such.  Yet in worship we can still put the instruments and the tools on a pedestal, instead of God!

But the same can happen outside of this place.  Our next career move, or the buying of a new home or whatever… can seem to loom so large in our vision that the wider Kingdom, or the spread of the Gospel can become a tiny point in our lives!  Our perspective gets shot.

In the light of eternity and the wonder of God, in the light of what this book illustrates, namely, the majesty, the power, the awe of God, it is incredible how the things in our life can change value.  Even life and death become something entirely different.

It’s not that suddenly the gifts of God should lose all their value, or that we should become totally ‘other worldly’.  That doesn’t glorify God’s name.

It is just a matter of perspective.  What gets you excited?  What do you lay awake at night thinking about?

As Jesus would ask: ‘Where is your heart?’  Are you serving the King or serving the world?

AMEN