Lift Up Your Eyes

Lift Up Your Eyes

I am doing a study of Genesis right now with my focus group girlies and I was studying our materials for tomorrow night and reading James Boice’s Commentary on Genesis when I came across his chapter entitled “Lift Up Your Eyes.” This chapter struck my heart so deep and has inspired me in such a huge way and I just wanted to share some of it with you all. 

First read Genesis 13:14-18 (those are the verses that this is referring to) 

Some background info: we are talking about Abram and Lot and when they have to split up because of their herdsmen quarreling. Abram tells Lot that he can choose where he wants to go and Abram will go the other way (even though Abram is the older and entitled one to choose). This is after Lot chooses Jordan because it looks better than the highlands. The Lord tells him to lift up his eyes….and he blesses him with all the land and the promise of his offspring being many.

There is an incident in Luke 18:18-30 where a young rich man comes to Jesus and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. You all know the story and if you don’t check it out because it is a cool one. There are some key parts to this story in relevance to Abram’s story though.

1) Jesus tells the disciples that although it is difficult for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven, it is not impossible. For “what is possible with men is possible with God.” 

2.) Jesus also tells them this, “I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and in the age to come, eternal life.”

This is important because Abram had temporarily lost prime real estate in Canaan by giving Lot the first choice in the matter of land. But God came to Abram to say that Abram had abandoned nothing that would not be more than compensated for - both in this life and in the life to come. 

But he would have to do two things: 1)He would have to lift up his eyes and see what God was giving and 2) he would have to walk through the length and breadth of th land and thus possess it piecemeal.

Different Kinds Of Looking 

There is the literal translation in which Lot uses and has a longing or covetous view of the land (Jordan) and then there is the looking that Abram does, which is that of obedience.  As Abram obeyed, the site of surrender became a place of possession through his already growing faith.

This passage of lifting up your eyes speaks to everyone but should be especially encouraging to those who are discouraged and feel like God’s will or the path he wishes you to go is hidden.

When people think like that their eyes are cast down. They are looking at the earth and focusing on their own little problems. They cannot see God, so they suppose God cannot see them. To this God says Look Up! Look at the stars if you are unable to see anything else. Ask, “Who has made all of these? Who named them, remembers them, guides them?” The ponder whether he does not know you and is not able to guide you, you of little faith.

Jesus made the same point on the sermon of the mount. Check it out Matthew 6:28-30

Another thing the Bible tells us to do is to Look up and see God the Father, particularly inprayer. 

Are you weary? Tell God about it. Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you. For anyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, the door will be open” - Matthew 7:7-8. Also look at James 4:2, 1:5, and John 14:13-14.

These verses tell us that God delights to give good gifts to his children. So if we do not have them, the fault does not lie in God. It lies in our failure to lift up our eyes to heaven and ask for them.

We don’t live in a praying age. We live in an age of hustle and bustle, of man’s determination, of man’s confidence in himself and in his own power to achieve things, an age of human organization, and human machinery, and human push, and human scheming, and human achievement, which in the things of God means no real achievement at all. 

What we need is not so much some new organization, some new wheel, but the spirit of the living God in the wheels we already possess.

The third thing we are encouraged to do is lift up our eyes to see Jesus. We as Christians don’t see Jesus in everything and with everything subject to him, because our sin often hinders us in the Christian life. We are so often distracted by other visions and loyalties. Like Peter on the mount of transfiguration (Matthew 17:4).

We live in the midst of a conflicting cacophony of voices. They come from without and within - from the world, the flesh, and the Devil - and one reason why we are so confused and ineffective as Christians is that we listen to them all. The cure for that is to do what Peter was admonished to do - lift up his eyes to Jesus and listen to him only. 

We are also told to lift up our eyes to God’s harvest. Check out John 4:35-36 This is the story of the woman at the well and how she becomes saved. Her reaction was to leave her waterpot - she had forgoteen about lesser things - and returned to the city where she told the people, “Come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” (John 4:29) They responded to her invitation and made their way to Jesus in large numbers. 

Jesus taught the disciples by telling them, ” Open your eyes and look to the fields! They are ripe for harvest.” The disciples were blind to the harvest, but the harvest was streaming toward Jesus. They were about to miss it because they were not looking up. They were only thinking about their stomachs. 

The harvest is also ripe today!  It has been ripe ever since Jesus’ ministry here on earth. Are you aware of the moving of the Spirit of God in our time? It is evident in many places: in the cities, on the campuses, throughout the third world. Are you awake to these opportunities? If not you must life your eyes to the harvest and ask God to use you as one of his laborers. 

We do not do it without effort though. It is one by one and with great effort. But though it is often discouraging, those ‘one by ones’ do come and God is honored. Lift up your eyes! It is happening all around you!