Two Eyes

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Matthew 6:22-23

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Well, we're back this morning in Matthew 6 as we press on in verses 22 and 23, and as we've been reading this passage here in the sort of middle of chapter 6,
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I think you'll be able to see a little bit more today how these three sayings are related.
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Here we have two I's, a good I, a bad I. The last time we began we had two treasures, a treasure on earth and a treasure in heaven, and next week we'll see two masters.
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A master that can only be served rightly is a master in heaven. We're not able to serve
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God and also serve man at the same time. So, two treasures, two I's, two masters.
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And you see that at the very core of these three different emphases is the teaching of Jesus regarding the way we look at our lives, the way we look at the world around us, the way we operate with material possessions.
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All these things are held forth. And that context is very helpful when we look at perhaps the more enigmatic of the three with verses 22 and 23, a very difficult passage on its own terms.
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When we look at the context, we can start to understand a little bit about the point that Jesus makes. And then understanding a little bit of the language here, some of the idioms that Jesus is employing, that's also very helpful.
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So, hopefully what seems to be a rather difficult or obscure saying will be clear for us to see by the end of this morning.
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So, Matthew 6, verses 22 and 23. The lamp of the body is the eye.
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If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
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If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness?
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Well, remember what we established a couple of weeks ago, really the whole point of the ethical import of Scripture.
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If you boil down all of the wisdom writings, if you understand where we begin in Psalm 1, if you understand essentially the message of Scripture, there's a covenant of works and there's a covenant of grace, which is fully realized in the new covenant.
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Essentially, there are two categories to which all of us belong, one or the other.
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Everyone in this room is either under a covenant of works or they stand in the covenant of grace, a result of the new covenant, which is established in the blood of Christ.
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There's only two categories, two groups that divide all of humanity. Essentially, there's only two ways to live.
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And at every point, as we begin chapter six, we see Jesus pressing this home, drawing out those who will leave a domain of darkness and come into his marvelous light.
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Those who will leave the bondage and dominion of sin and now operate in a way of grace, in a relationship with the
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Lord God, in this new and living way that Christ has opened for us. So there's only two categories to which we belong.
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There's only two ways in which we can live. There's the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked, the way that leads to life everlasting, the way that leads to ruin eternally.
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There's ultimately only two ways to live, and Jesus is drawing this out. And as we begin chapter six, you remember, when you give alms, you're speaking to the way that we operate toward our neighbor in relation to God.
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We do it in a way that our right and our left hands are completely exclusive from one another.
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We don't know what they're doing because it's an inward act of devotion and service unto God that happens to bless our neighbor in the process.
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We don't go trumpeting our charity on the street corner. When we pray, we have a simplicity and a childlike devotion to God.
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When we fast, we don't announce it and make a big parade about our piety. We rather seem to be normal toward others when inwardly we're humbling ourselves before God.
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So Jesus has been driving, as soon as we began chapter six, this matter of true communion, a sincere heart of faith and devotion to God.
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And that's no different with the two treasures, the two eyes, or the two masters. Jesus is showing this stark contrast between two ways that we will live.
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And in this way, in so doing, he's revealing the nature of faith. He's revealing our spiritual condition.
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Very important we understand this. These are challenging sayings, and our
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Lord is using them to help us understand and examine the nature of our faith, the condition of our soul.
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That's what Jesus is doing. Jesus seeks to reveal our true spiritual condition so that we can discern whether or not we really are his disciples, whether or not we've actually entered into his kingdom.
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And so here in verses 22 and 23, he does this by showing the contrast between the good eye and the bad eye.
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Verse 22, the lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.
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We considered two weeks ago that where our treasure is there, our heart will be also.
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Now we're moving from the heart to the eye. But both of these are being used in a figurative way.
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Both of these are speaking to the whole condition, the whole body of a person. Jesus, in other words, is not looking for a fragmented follower.
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Jesus is not interested in two -thirds of a disciple. He wants all of you or he wants none of you.
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All right, be hot or cold. If you're lukewarm, you get spit out. Jesus is not interested in having a fractional disciple.
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He wants the whole thing. So even though he's pointing to the eye or pointing to the heart, he's speaking to the whole, the sort of shalom, the integrity, the sincerity of a follower.
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And he does that here in verses 22 and 23 with the eye. If treasure reveals our heart, the eye reveals our desire, our inclination, our motive.
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Last time we saw the eye, we were in chapter 5, and there it was a little less figurative. The eye really just speaking almost realistically.
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If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out, cast it from you. It's better to enter to the kingdom with only one eye than to have both and perish everlastingly.
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So that's the last time Jesus employed this language of the eye. That was a little more literalistic.
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Now it's a little more figurative. The ancient world in general, this is not unique to Jewish, Greek, or Roman culture, but the ancient world generally understood the eye to be the vessel or the aperture through which light entered into the body.
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And in some significant ways, out of which light emitted from the body, or in a manner of speaking, a way that evil could enter in or a way that evil would be let out.
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There's a lot of writing from the ancient world on this. I forget the scholar's name, but he wrote a three -volume set on the evil eye in antiquity.
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All right, there's so much source information about the evil eye. I remember visiting some of the ancient sites, like the ruins at Pompeii, and you see some rather bizarre carvings on some of the street corners and over the shops and ruins of the taverns, and the tour guides always make up these fanciful stories about the debauchery of ancient
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Rome, and that's true. Ancient Rome was debauched, but these are what scholars call apotropaic devices.
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In other words, they're that which is meant to distract the evil eye. So evil spirits, an evil eye, an evil desire or inclination from someone that's passing by will be distracted toward that visual scene.
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It's a way of actually protecting the shop owner, the homeowner, the master from being the recipient of an evil eye, the evil gaze.
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The idea is there's something malevolent about. So this is the ancient world to which
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Jesus addresses this metaphor of the eye. He says the lamp of the whole body is the eye.
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The body is something that's like a vessel or like a room, and the eye is this aperture that either blocks or allows light to enter.
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And Jesus says, listen, if your eye is healthy, if your eye is sound, that light will enter in and it will illuminate your whole body, your whole life.
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But if your eye is unsound, if there's a block, if it's not functioning rightly, if you can't see, then your whole body, your whole life will be full of darkness.
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That's the bad eye, the evil eye. So you see that in light of the last passage, we're moving from the eye, we're moving from the heart to the eye, but still the same purpose is in view.
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Jesus is concerned about what's interior to us, what's true in the deepest sense about who we are.
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What's my chief desire? What do I treasure most? What's my motive? What are my desires?
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What's my inclination? That will be revealed in a manner of speaking by my heart, and also here in verses 22 and 23, by my eye, by my gaze, by the things
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I fixate upon. Sinclair Ferguson points out, fixing the eye and fixing the heart amount to the same thing.
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I think he's right to say there's a parallel here. It's whatever we focus our attention upon.
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It's whatever we concentrate our energy toward. The eye speaks to understanding, but also, more importantly,
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I think, motive, desire, as I say again, inclination. You remember how the fall was described in Genesis chapter 3.
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What happened when Eve was walking around Eden and the serpent began to lead her astray? As he planted these suggestive thoughts to rebel against God in her mind, what does the narrative record?
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The woman saw the fruit of the tree that it was pleasing and greatly to be desired.
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You see, she had an evil eye, an evil inclination. She had a desire, a fixation, a movement toward this thing that God had forbidden.
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And you see, that's all connected with this idea of the sight of what she beheld. Charles Spurgeon draws us all toward the motive.
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He says the eye of the soul is one's motive. If it's clear, the whole character, the whole personality, the whole lifestyle is full of what is right.
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But if that sight is polluted, if that motive is defiled, then the whole being is polluted and defiled.
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So let's begin with the good eye. That's where Jesus begins. What does Jesus mean by the good eye? Well, he's employing some wordplay.
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It's part of what makes this verse so difficult on a surface reading. What does
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Jesus mean by the good eye? Well, there's two things, I think, held out by the good eye. And you'll see the bad eye also carries two general meanings, a twofold meaning.
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This is what wordplay does. It's drawing in two or more concepts to make a point. Well, the first, most basic understanding of what the good eye is, is the good eye is a generous eye.
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The good eye is generosity. You remember, again, where Jesus began, chapter six, when you give alms, when you are generous toward others, right?
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And even as we saw with the two treasures, there's this way of not hoarding treasures on the earth. All that's going to decay.
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What good is it to you to amass that all into a barnhouse if the Lord requires your soul on the very night?
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And so there's a way, without saying, there's a way of understanding God allows there to be blessedness so that his people can live in freedom and in generosity.
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Certainly, that's the basic meaning of good eye. In fact, when we take that language, the phrase good eye, out of the
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Hebrew Bible, that's almost always how it is translated. You have the language of a bad eye or a good eye used as an idiom in the
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Hebrew Bible. The phrase tovayim, the good eye. It's literally just brought into translation in English as generous.
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That's what good eye means, generous. So this is just a basic surface level reading. We are to have a certain way of being generous.
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Proverbs 22, 9, one who is generous, if you're reading that literally in Hebrew, one who has a good eye, one who is generous will be blessed because he gives of his own food to the poor.
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This is a basic reading. The way you're looking at others, the way you're looking at your possessions, your motive, your inclination, what's your natural instinctive response to the needs and to the plight of others.
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This is all part of either having a good eye or an evil eye. The noun form of the adjective is also translated generosity.
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So in the New Testament, we have this noun form of the Greek, and that's translated into English as generosity.
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In Romans 12, the one who gives to give generously. It's the same word in the noun form.
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Or in 2 Corinthians 8, when Paul is speaking of the churches of Macedonia, and he says, even in their great affliction, they had an abundance of joy.
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And though they were deep in poverty, they overflowed with an abundance of generosity, with an abundance of, in a
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Hebrew way, good eyes, good sight. That's the idea. Now, it's not surprising to find this idiom here.
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Again, context really helps to elaborate a difficult saying. And the context is between two treasures and two masters.
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How we view treasures on the earth versus storing up treasure in heaven. The master that we seek to serve.
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We cannot serve God if our whole lives are about serving mammon, serving money, serving possession.
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And so Jesus is situating this difficult saying about our sight, our generosity, our life being filled with either darkness or light in between two treasures, two masters.
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Here he's discerning again. Which of the two ways are you living? Are you living like the righteous or like the wicked?
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Are you living like my disciple or like one I've never known you? Are you living like one who stands in a covenant of grace, has received the spirit of adoption and is sort of wringing out of their lives the fruit of God's spirit?
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Are you living under this covenant of works? You view God as this vengeful taskmaster.
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And often when conviction comes, you make your little dress of fig leaves and run and hide.
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Two treasures, two eyes, two masters. There's only two ways to live.
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And Jesus here is also showing us with these idioms, treasures, mammon, the eye of generosity, that how we view possessions will go a long way in exposing the condition of our heart and our soul.
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How do we handle our goods? How do we view our resources? Do we have loose hands or tight grips?
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Are we known to be generous? And this is going even beyond basic material things.
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But are we known to be generous, abundant kinds of people? Are we known to be misers?
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What would our neighbors think of us? What's the report? If someone's new to the neighborhood and they go over across the fence to introduce themselves, what do they say?
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What do they say about you as a Christian? They say, you got to watch out for this one. What do they say?
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Have you met them? Oh, you're going to love them, right? Maybe it's somewhere in between, but what kind of neighbor have you been?
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An evil eye, a bad eye is going to hoard earthly possessions because its hope is fixed on the earth.
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It cannot live with a hope in heaven. It cannot store up treasure in heaven. This is a life that is in total bondage to mammon.
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It's not able to serve God as the king who gives freedom and light and loves mercy, delights in the oppression of the poor, being relieved.
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A sound eye will not be able to look on others with envy. It won't be full of jealousy and discontent.
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It's not looking at the things of life as though they're ultimate, as though they can find satisfaction and peace in anything, whether material or relational, whatever it may be.
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It's not ultimate. It doesn't have an idolatrous sway over their life. They're able to understand they're living for a future hope, a future glory.
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They're looking for treasures in heaven. That's part of having a generous eye, a good eye, clear sight, a life of faith, the way of the righteous.
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So that's the first meaning of the good eye. The second meaning, we go from generosity now to singularity.
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Simplicity would be another term. Generosity, simplicity, singularity.
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This also is contained in the term, the term that we have translated here, good eye, when it's brought over into the
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Greek, the Greek term, the adjective is haplos, and that's often understood to be sincere, simple, single -minded.
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And so you have, for example, in the King James translation, if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
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You see, they're just pulling out one meaning of that adjective, singularity, a simple, straightforward, sincere focus, undistracted, undivided.
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If your eye is singular, if your eye is completely focused in a good way, in a right direction, your whole body will be full of light.
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We saw this, for example, we didn't realize it, but Colossians 3 .22, part of which we memorized at the church retreat.
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I won't ask people to stand up and recite it. Bondservants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service, notice the significance there, eye service, as men pleasers, but in sincerity of heart.
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What do you think that phrase has as its root? Sincerity of heart. Single mindedness, a good eye, fearing
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God. So singularity, integrity, uprightness, it's the kind of single focus that Paul has in Philippians 3.
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He says, one thing I do. That's an amazing focus.
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He says, you want to know how I look at my life? You want to know how I see this world? You want to know what my faith is like?
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Do you want to know the condition of my soul? One thing I do, I look to Christ.
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I press on to his upward calling. I live in a singular direction.
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I orient my sight and my gaze in a single way. The sincerity of the integrity of my faith is all fixated upon and devoted to God himself.
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Undivided attention. This kind of simplicity unites the heart, the mind, the will, the conscience, the affections.
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No wonder Jesus says your whole life, your whole body will be full of light. It's a single eye that discerns the will of God.
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It's a single life that lives for the glory of God. Undivided, undisturbed, undistracted.
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That's exactly where we're going in Matthew 6. It's the kind of life that seeks first the kingdom of God and its righteousness.
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It's not disturbed and distracted with anxiety and toils and cares. It's singular.
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It's focused. It's fixated. No wonder the whole life is full of light, do you see? We should also say this singular good eye, this generous eye, has no time, no interest, no place for superficial
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Christianity. This kind of sight, this kind of life can't just go through the motions, not for long.
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It can't just jump through the initial hoops to try to maintain a certain reputation, a certain projection.
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No, it sees rightly. It draws in light. It's unavoidable.
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Where there is a steadfast devotion to the Lord, the understanding is opened. Light enters into the soul.
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It begins to exude itself in a person's life. It's galvanizing that believer's faith. For us, we can be so dull, so dim, we hardly notice it.
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Jesus sees the difference through and through. The disciples barely recognize their own darkness.
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They barely recognize light exuding, shining, illuminating people that are drawn to faith.
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Jesus sees it for what it is. It's the light in the Gospels when he sees the
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Father bringing someone out of darkness into life. When he says to the centurion,
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I haven't found faith like this in all of Israel. He's reacting to the light. The disciples didn't even pick up on it.
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When the Syrophoenician woman is saying, yes, but even dogs eat crumbs. Oh, great is your faith.
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He's delighted. He's amazed to see the light now enter the soul and exude in this confession.
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This is what it means to have the good eye, the upright life, the singular life, the generous life.
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This is the abundant life of faith. Well, secondly, let's look at the bad eye.
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If that's the good eye, a single eye, a generous eye, what's the bad eye? Jesus says, if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
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Again, there's only two ways to live. You're in either of these categories. You're not between them.
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You're not at a fork in the road. You're not making a decision about which eye you'll have. You either have the good eye or you have the bad eye.
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What does Jesus mean by the bad eye? Well, if the good eye is generosity at first glance, the bad eye is a certain heartless envy, greed, selfishness.
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If the good eye is a sincere eye that imitates God's generosity in relationship, how
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God has been toward us, we seek to be to others. Again, this is beyond material possession. Has God been patient with me?
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I'm generous in my patience with others. Has God been merciful to me? I am rich in mercy toward others.
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Has God been charitable to me, not whipping me for every fault and blemish?
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Then I too will exude charity toward others. Do you see? This is what it means to have the good eye, the right motive, a proper righteous inclination.
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The bad eye symbolizes a person that is so selfish, so self -consumed that this desire to relate to the neighbors, relate to fellow image bearers, it hardly registers in his mind or conscience.
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This is not someone who has an inclination toward the needs of others. This is someone who neglects the needs of others, willfully.
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This Jesus describes as darkness, darkness. If you have a bad eye, he says, your whole body is full of darkness.
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In Job 18, Bildad is speaking of the life of the wicked, and he uses the same imagery of darkness. He says, the light of the wicked indeed goes out.
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The flame of their fire does not shine. The light in that tent is dark. The lamp next to him is put out.
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There's no light of life. It's just darkness. Darkness is an important theme for Matthew.
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In fact, if you look up darkness in Matthew, at key passages when Matthew is recording
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Jesus giving warnings about the judgment to come, Matthew 8, 22, 25, whenever Jesus uses darkness as a destination, for those that God judges, he says, they will be cast into darkness, great darkness, and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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Jesus always combines that statement. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is a horrid darkness.
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Now, we impulsively react against that. I remember
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Steve Wiley pointing out at a NERF meeting many years ago, as R .C. Sproul said, about hell.
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It's at least fire. It's at least fire.
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It's horrific. Our minds can't even go there, to be honest. The culture makes, you know, you get hell, the devil with the pitchfork, and people sitting around.
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Remember a Far Side comic of, you know, people sitting at the bench, and there's all these devils holding pitchforks, and one is whispering to the other, the coffee is cold here, you know.
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That's the popular imagination of hell. It's kind of tongue -in -cheek. Oh, you know, you get kind of poked, and it's not the best place to be.
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We can't even go there. Our minds can't even go there. It's at least fire. So we impulsively react against that.
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Jesus says that the darkness that a wicked person, a sinner, is cast into, this outer darkness, the only description
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I'll give to you, again and again and again, is it's a place where there's weeping and grinding of teeth. That's what he says.
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Now, we react against that. What we often fail to do is to react against what
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Jesus sees, what Jesus finds surprising. It's not just the outer darkness that the wicked are cast into.
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It's the inner darkness. Jesus reacts to the inner darkness. We're so dull, so slow to perceive.
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We don't have much of a reaction. We don't have what Bildad is saying. The wicked's light goes out. It's just a place of darkness.
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You stumble around and trip and get wounded. There's no light in that tent. It's dark, dark, dark.
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And Jesus is saying, how great is that darkness? The darkness without just corresponds to the darkness within.
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The light without just corresponds to the light within. Your destination is either the place of darkness or the place of light.
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It corresponds to what's filling your life, your soul, your faith. Light or darkness? Darkness within, darkness without.
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Light within, light without. That's the first point. This sort of image of a person caved in on themselves.
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They're so self -obsessed that they've become heartless. Almost, you could say, soulless.
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How great is that darkness? No conscience. They're animalistic.
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Like David when he came to repentance and he recognized, I was like a beast before you. Thoughtless. I didn't hesitate.
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I was simply reacting to every pull and impulse of my flight. I was like a wild animal before you.
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That's the kind of darkness within. Corresponds to the darkness without. And you see also in this term, if good eye is singular, then the bad eye is doubled.
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The adjective in Greek, haplos, singular, single, diplos in Greek is double, single, double.
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It's just on the face of it. The good eye and the bad eye both have this nuance of either singularity toward the one or a sort of dual, duplicitous nature to the other.
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And we see that also in Proverbs. So the good eye is charitable. It's singular.
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It has integrity, in other words. The motive, the inclination is right. Well, with the bad eye, look at Proverbs 23, 6 and 7.
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Don't eat the bread of a selfish man. Notice again, the selfish. He's caved in on himself, can only consider himself.
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No regard for others. And what do you think is behind that translation selfish? It's bad eye.
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The man with the bad eye. Do not eat the bread of a selfish man or desire his delicacies.
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Why? Because he thinks within himself, so he is. He says to you, eat and drink, but his heart is not for you.
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In other words, he's double -minded, double -hearted. It's a dual life. He doesn't really have a regard for you.
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He's probably just going to use you. So the opposite of having a good eye, a single heart, a fixed devotion, is to have a double heart, a double mind, a duplicitous nature.
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And you see what is meant to be undivided and whole is now split apart. There's a certain spiritual schizophrenia at work.
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This person is trying to straddle earthly treasure and heavenly treasure, serving an earthly master and a heavenly master.
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Everything is dueled. It's doubled. But Jesus here is commending single -mindedness.
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If our eyes are healthy, we see clearly, we have a single focus, we'll live generously, abundantly. If our eyes are evil, if they're diseased, whether because we have not been given sight or because we need to maintain the clarity, we need to wipe our eyes clean from those things that are obstructing our sight, we'll see double.
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And James says we become unstable in all our ways. We become double -minded, double -hearted.
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In vain, we're trying to keep one eye on the things of faith, on the things of the kingdom, and the other eye toward the things of the earth, toward our possessions and our ambitions in our flesh.
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You see how seeing double leads to living double. This is the point. Jesus wants his disciples to be whole.
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He doesn't want fragmented followers. Where your heart is, there your treasure will be also.
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If you have a good eye, your whole life will be full of light. So as we bring this passage now toward application, what
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Jesus is doing in verses 22 and 23 is he's calling for us to see clearly.
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Again, just like good wisdom literature, he places the contrast front and center.
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You're either going to have a good eye or a bad eye. Your life is either full of light or full of darkness. He doesn't admit to relativity.
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He doesn't put things on a scale. He just puts it in stark contrast. White or darkness? Good eye, bad eye?
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Generous, stingy? Mind toward God and others or mind toward self? These are the contrasts.
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This is the contrast. And it's a call to see clearly. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness?
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Of course, darkness is not light. Jesus is using this sort of ironic language. If the light that's supposed to be within you is actually just darkness, how great is that darkness?
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You know how frustrating it is when you walk through a house and your bulbs are burned out. You walk into a room and you're just flicking the switch and nothing turns on.
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Jesus is putting out this call for us to see clearly. In other words, it's a call to self -examination. It's not as apparent in Matthew 6, but the parallel in Luke 11 is crystal clear.
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Jesus says, the lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore, when your eye is good, your whole body also is full of light.
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When your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness. Therefore, take heed that the light that is in you is not darkness.
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That's what Jesus is doing. He's putting out the call. Take heed. Here's a warning to you.
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You either have a good eye or a bad eye. Your life is either full of light or full of darkness. You might think you're somehow balancing or straddling.
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That's not how God sees it. Jesus does not highlight the light.
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Notice, he highlights the darkness. It's really important we understand where he lands with that.
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He doesn't describe the good eye and then describe the bad eye and then say, if therefore you have the good eye, how full of light your body is.
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Isn't it wonderful? The emphasis comes in on the darkness. He says, if the light you're supposed to have, the light of being an image bearer, the light of God's creation, of God's special revelation, renewing your inner man, if that light in you is actually just darkness, how horrific is that darkness?
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Jesus speaks of darkened sight, darkened minds later in Matthew, Matthew 13.
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Jesus has been teaching in parables and the disciples are curious. Why is that you're explaining? You know, if you're trying to explain things, you're going about it in an interesting way because your explanations are actually very hard to follow.
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And it seems, Jesus, like when you're trying to explain things, people leave confused. And so Jesus tells his disciples in Matthew 13, well, here's why
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I'm speaking in parables. Because seeing, they don't see. Hearing, they don't hear. They don't understand.
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And I'm fulfilling what was said by the prophet Isaiah, hearing, you will hear, but you won't understand.
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Seeing, you will see, but you won't perceive. For the hearts of this people have grown dull.
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Their eyes are hard of seeing. Their ear is hard of hearing. Lest they should see with their eyes, hear with their ears.
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Lest they should understand with their hearts, in turn, that I would heal them. So Jesus says that, first of all, the reason
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I'm speaking in this way enigmatically is because only those who have been given light, been given sight, will be able to understand and perceive what
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God is doing. Those who may have whole bodies, whole eyes, sound hearing.
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God's actually put a spirit of stupor. He's actually veiled his revelation. He says to his disciples in that passage, but blessed are your eyes.
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They see. Your ears, they hear. So Jesus regularly is using this language, employing this metaphor of light and darkness, of seeing and blindness, of hearing and deafness.
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All the things that announced his ministry in Luke 4, again, using Isaiah. I've come to give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, to cause the lame to walk.
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Jesus is doing this. It's only his disciples who can perceive and see and hear and understand.
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Light is entering into their life. It's transforming them. There's an effect. Jesus says, examine yourself.
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Can you hear? Can you see? Do you understand? Has there been a work wrought in your life as a result of faith that has been granted to you?
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Light that has now shown into your body. In other words, Jesus is challenging all of us. He's exhorting all of us.
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Can you see clearly? Is your body full of light?
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Are you singular or divided? Are you devoted or are you distracted?
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Can you see clearly? Do you perceive? Do you understand? Do you belong to me? Do I know you?
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Do you know me? I remember, and I think you all know this experience, but going into an optometrist's office, right?
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And I don't know why, it's always one of those things where you're nervous in a way you shouldn't be.
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It's not like you're gonna get a F or something or there's any consequence, but it's always like, oh, I hope I get this right.
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And you're going and they're like, start on the fourth line. You're like, oh, the fourth line. It just looks like a bar of gray. And then you're like, well,
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I'm just getting, they're like, try to read it. And you're like, well, I can't see it. And they're like, just try. And you're like, do I just throw out letters and just guess?
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And you're like, well, what if I get them right randomly? And then you're gonna give me the wrong person. It's like, it's all of a sudden you're like sweating.
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You're nervous. And then they keep switching between the lenses. Is this better? Is this better? And you're like, it's the same.
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No, no, no, it's not the same. Is this better or is this better? You're so nervous about messing up.
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Jesus is like the optometrist. And he's saying, let me test your sight. Let me see how clearly you're looking at your life, looking at God, looking at my kingdom, looking at the world around you, the relationships you have.
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Let's see your sight. Let's prescribe to you the condition of your soul.
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You start to realize, and this is the outcome of a successful appointment with an optometrist.
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You didn't even know how bad your sight was until it was corrected. You finally get that prescription.
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I have like mild astigmatism, but it's not so severe that I need corrective lenses or anything. But even so,
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I remember getting an eye exam and you finally get that prescription and you put those glasses on and it's like, wow.
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You didn't even realize how bad your sight was until you began to see clearly. You just took it for granted.
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I see as well as anyone can. I know how to put one foot in front of the other and I can drive a car.
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And then you get your sight checked and you realize, oh, I have not been seeing clearly at all, far from it.
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You don't even know how bad your eye was until you get a good eye, in other words. And this is true spiritually speaking.
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The effect of having a bad eye is you lose your awareness. You lose your conviction. You lose your sensitivity to your spiritual condition.
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Someone with darkness, someone with a blockage in their sight is unable to examine themselves or write.
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You can't actually see your condition. Others can. That's why I've said over the years,
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I've always said this. Woe to you if others are more concerned about your spiritual state than you are.
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That's one of the worst places to be. When you have a certain amount of people in the church that seem very concerned about you and you're like, what's the big deal?
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Get off my case. That is a bad place to be. It means they're seeing something that your mind, your eyes, your perception is so dark and dull, you can't see in yourself.
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The effect of a bad eye is bad sight. Bad sight means you can't see clearly. It means you don't have sensitivity, awareness.
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A room always seems clean when it's dark. You don't notice the cobwebs. You don't notice the stains until the light dawns.
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And you find that this kind of darkness allows all sorts of corruption and defilement. This is why a heart gravitates toward the things of the earth and not toward the things of heaven.
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This is why a heart will be enthralled with mammon rather than seeking to serve the only true master and the provider of all.
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If your heart is possessed by what this world and this life offers according to the world, the flesh and the devil, you won't be able to see clearly.
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You'll be blinded. You're essentially gouging your eyes out spiritually and saying, I'll just figure out how to walk after the fact.
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So Jesus is exhorting. He's calling us to examine our sight before the Lord. Again, the rich young ruler is a case in point.
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For all that he understands, for all the blessedness of his upbringing, he can't see.
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He goes away sorrowful. He just can't see. It's darkness in his life. Everyone else is thinking, look at the light.
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This is the most promising young man in the village. Jesus tests his sight and it turns out he's blind.
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So he walks away sorrowfully because he had many riches. That's just a real world example on the other side of this teaching.
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Jesus is testing our sight. Do we answer the challenge? Do we enter that narrow and difficult way that presses our flesh in so many awful ways that the only way to actually press forward in faith is dragging a cross with you and putting that flesh to death?
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That's what it means to answer the call of Jesus. Again, if not the rich young ruler, think of Demas. What does
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Demas do? He's with Paul. You know, I don't hold it against anyone if they depart the faith after hearing my sermons, but to hear
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Paul preach, to see what Paul was doing, miraculous signs and wonders that were attesting to the apostolic ministry.
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And Demas, Paul says, he abandoned me. He's in love with the world. Looked like there was a lot of light.
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He was Paul's right -hand man, a co -worker, a co -labor in the things of the gospel. But he was trying, however secretly, he was trying to straddle two affections, two masters, two treasures.
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He was trying to find the middle way between the only two ways one can live and ended up abandoning
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Paul, abandoning Christ because he was in love with the world. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness?
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Jesus is teaching in a way that he wants to cleanse our sight. He says, listen, maybe you really are my disciple and I've actually brought you out of darkness into light.
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You were blind and now I've caused you to see. But though you can see now in a way that you're no longer blind, your eyes are clouded.
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The dust of the earth has been kicked up into your sight. You have blinders that have been produced by your own flesh or by your ambitions in the world.
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You have blinders, you're not able to see clearly. Jesus is exhorting us to see clearly. It's like when I was working at the shop and we had the sort of OSHA corner where if some chemical splashed into your eyes, you'd run to this corner and pull this red tag and you'd take this huge contraption and put it in front of your face and it would basically power wash your eyes to try to blast out whatever chemical was gonna rob you of sight.
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You're like, well, that's gonna, that's literally gonna blast my eyes out of my skull. I'd rather deal with the chemical than this thing.
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This is like 50 pound brass contraption you strap to your head and let it power wash your eyes.
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And Jesus is saying, you need your eyes to be washed. You take this word to heart because there's ultimately only two ways to live.
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You have to take it to heart. Do you see clearly? Are you straddling between two treasures?
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Are you seeking to serve two masters? Jesus is saying, these are the kinds of questions that you have to answer.
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This is the kind of examination that you need to conduct. You need to sit in the bench and tell me, what does that third line say?
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And we find that when we read the gospel accounts that the metaphor of blindness is constantly rehearsed.
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And you get the idea that the life of faith is often characterized in the example of Jesus giving sight to the blind.
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Of course, as I mentioned from Luke 4, that's very clear on the surface. We find, interesting when
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I was looking at it this week, you find that whenever you have a healing episode of the blind, you almost always have the same elements.
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It was really surprising to me. I'll just give you an example of three separate accounts, but they all have the same elements to them.
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And you start to realize that a blind person receiving sight, someone who had a bad eye, who had a life full of darkness being given sight and light now entering their life, has this almost become a paradigm for what it means to come to faith.
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So let me just point this out. Okay, Matthew chapter 9. I'm just going to read and I'll comment toward the end.
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Okay, Matthew chapter 9. Jesus departed from there. Two blind men followed him crying out saying, son of David, have mercy on us.
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And when he had come into the house, the blind men came to him and Jesus said, do you believe I'm able to do this? And they said to him, yes,
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Lord. And he touched their eyes saying, according to your faith, let it be to you. And their eyes were opened and they followed him.
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Matthew 20, beginning in verse 29. Now, as they went out of Jericho, a great multitude followed and behold, two blind men were sitting by the road.
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And when they heard that Jesus was passing by, they cried out saying, have mercy on us.
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Oh Lord, son of David. The multitude warned them to be quiet, but they cried out even more saying, have mercy on us, oh
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Lord, son of David. So Jesus stood still. He called to them and said, what do you want me to do for you?
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They said, Lord, that our eyes would be open. Jesus had compassion and he touched their eyes and immediately they received sight and they followed him.
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Mark chapter 10, the last miracle recorded in Mark's gospel. The only named blind man we have,
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Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus we too find crying out to Jesus, Lord, son of David, have mercy on me.
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Bartimaeus cries, have mercy on me. He was a beggar sitting by the gates at Jericho.
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He would always beg for money, maybe even saying, you know, be merciful to me, be compassionate to me, have a good eye toward me.
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But when he catches wind that the Messiah has come, the son of David, he cries out, just like Matthew 20, just like Matthew 9, have mercy on me.
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Jesus, again, elicits his faith in the same way. What do you want me to do for you? That I might see, and Jesus says, even as you believe, so it is.
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And then we read that Bartimaeus followed him. So you notice the same elements. You have blind men that though they are physically blind, they perceive
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Jesus is the one who's able to give sight. Jesus is the promised one who is to come. Jesus is son of David.
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David's son, but also David's Lord. He's the Messiah. So you have the disciples that are confused, though they're seeing, and you have blind men that actually see very clearly.
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The blind men also notice, in all of these episodes, the blind men cry out for mercy. Of course, culturally, the stigma of blindness, as the disciples ask in Mark 10, why is this man blind?
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Was it because of his own sin or because of his parents' sin? In other words, it's definitely sin. And Jesus repeats them, and he says, it's so that the works of God can be manifest in him.
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In other words, not to say Bartimaeus or his parents or anyone is without sin.
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Blindness is a condition of sin. It's a condition of the fall. We're born blind, all of us, every one of us.
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Born blind to the things that we must see, that we were made to see. The blind men in the gospel healings, they all recognize the
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Messiah, but they recognize him in a way that they're caused to cry out for mercy.
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In every episode, have mercy. My point is, even though they're blind and yet to be healed, they're already beginning to see.
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Light has entered into their heart and soul. They understand and see Jesus before they can see him physically.
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They see him with eyes of faith. That's the point. I think the gospel accounts are written in this way. They recognize
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Jesus in this way. You're the Messiah, which means you need to show us mercy. All we can do is beg.
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Have mercy. They don't barter. They don't negotiate. They also don't delay. In two of the accounts, the choir is just saying, be quiet.
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This is the master. He's very busy. And they just cry out even more. They don't say, oh, you're probably right.
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We'll wait for him to come through again. It's like, this is my chance. I'm going to cry for mercy until I get it.
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That's light entering a person's soul. And so they begin to see clearly. Again, why is this the paradigm?
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Well, look at how Matthew's gospel began in Matthew 4, quoting Isaiah, the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.
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Those who sat in the shadow of death, light has dawned upon them. And then the very next verse, from this time forward,
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Jesus began to preach saying, repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. So that's the paradigm for Matthew.
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Light has come. Everyone's blind. Everything's pitch black. Light comes.
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And that light looks like, repent and believe. The kingdom is here. And what that looks like individually is, even though I'm wallowing in the darkness, enough light has entered into my soul that I can say,
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Jesus, you're the savior. You're the promised one. You're the only one who can heal me, who can make me whole, who can save me, who can take me out of darkness into your light.
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Have mercy. In other words, I do repent. Forgive me, cleanse me, watch me. And then how does every episode end?
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They follow him. It's a paradigm for what the life of faith looks like.
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Born blind, seeing Jesus, crying for mercy, receiving sight, following him.
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And here in Matthew 6, 22 and 23, Jesus says, have you been given that kind of sight?
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Are you following me? Do you see clearly? If Jesus has opened our eyes, if he has granted us faith by the spirit of God, then we must follow him.
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We follow him. A point that's been made over several weeks.
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We follow him with faith. We follow him.
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He sees fit where we are, what we're going through, what we're bearing, what we're dragging with us, what we're entering into, what we're coming out of.
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It's all part of his design. He just says, follow me. He doesn't say you need to know where you're going.
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He doesn't say you need to understand why these things are happening. He just says, you need to follow me. Can you see clearly?
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Do you have a good eye? Where's your treasure? Who are you serving? Follow me.
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These blind men, they didn't receive their sight and go, all right, now let's have terms. Can we sign a contract? I'm willing to be a
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Christian and follow you insofar as these conditions. Just say, follow him. All right, where are we going now? You don't even get the pause of like, wow.
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Wait till my parents get a load of this. I got to go find all my neighborhood friends.
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Tell them what they, none of them do that. It's like, all right, where are we going now, Lord? I'm just going to follow him now. You start to see that a result of light, a result of sight, a result of faith always corresponds to a whole, singular, abundant following of the
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Savior. It's why we've gone from treasure to motive or inclination, and lastly, to service.
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Who do we serve? The order of these things is very important.
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And you see the theme of faith, the theme of sight, of light entering a life is always that light overcoming distractions, obstacles, trials, difficulties, temptations, and snares along the way.
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Was it Matteo during the prayer night, he mentioned being blessed in the paralyzed man, his friends digging through the roof.
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Do you have friends like that? Listen, I'll bring you to the threshold, and I'll ring the doorbell.
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Good luck. Do you have friends that will kick in someone's roof? That's faith.
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That's like, it's not even the paralytics faith. It's the friend's faith. It's like, you are a captive audience.
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We're dragging you to the kingdom if we have to. You don't have a say.
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We're just gonna drop you right in front of the Savior. You think of the woman with this flow of blood, uncontrollable.
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She burns through her fortune trying to find a cure. If ever there was a woman full of despair, hopeless, helpless, and she has to overcome this absolute fear and anxiety of being exposed to the whole crowd.
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It's like God designing like, lady, you're not gonna find Jesus in the alley. You're not gonna have some private encounter.
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It's not gonna be some solitary walk through the park where everything's comfortable for you. You wanna go find the
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Savior? You're gonna have to face your biggest fear. Risk it all.
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You remember that's one of my favorite episodes in the Gospel of Mark because it's sandwiched with Jairus and his daughter.
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The whole village has all this concern for this little girl. You can picture them carting and everyone's wailing and praying and there's this whole commotion all about Jairus, this respected godly man and his precious daughter.
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And here's this anonymous woman. No one even looks at her. And she's suffering immensely.
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And she's risking it all just to lay a hold of the garment thinking he's the one that can heal me. And when
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Jesus turns and now it's like fight or flight. Now she's exposed. Every eye is on her.
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And that rolodex of horror, he's gonna expose. I've just defiled.
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I'm gonna get dragged out and stoned. And Jesus says, daughter.
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No one in the crowd saw you as the precious daughter. He says, daughter, your faith has made you well. Thinking of Jairus.
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He's halfway into begging the Messiah to come heal his daughter when the messengers come and they say, she's dead.
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And he doesn't slink away. He just says, still come. That's light entering his soul.
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Faith pressing through against impossibilities. You think of the,
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I mentioned the Syrophoenician woman who's begging for crumbs. And even the disciples are really cruel to her.
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Sometimes disciples can be cruel. They basically say, scram. Beat it.
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And she doesn't. She's like, just give me anything. A crumb, anything.
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You remember the father of the boy that was demon possessed. When his disciples, Jesus' disciples, because of the amount of transfiguration, they come down.
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And Jesus' disciples have been unable to do anything for this poor man. He came with all this hope. I know that.
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I know that there's all sorts of miracles being wrought here. And so he comes with all this anticipation. And disciple by disciple by disciple by disciple, none of them can do it.
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And his faith is getting shot out of the sky, turn by turn by turn. And when Jesus finally comes down, he's barely got any faith left.
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And Jesus asked him, do you think I'm able to do this? And the man, he's being honest.
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He says, I believe, help my unbelief. He's basically saying, yes and no.
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I believe and I don't, if I'm being honest. I believed a lot more when I got here than I do now.
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You see the point that every turn, when light enters your eye, when your life, your body, your soul is filled with the light of Christ, it's not the way getting easier.
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It's not the path becoming broad and plain so you can just coast your way into glory. Light has come and now you see this narrow and thorny path that everyone else is avoiding.
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You can barely see the treachery and the pitfalls and the snares ahead. But now you can see enough and you realize the
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Savior has gone through it. And he's saying, if you want to belong to me, come follow me. If you want to enter my kingdom, start taking those steps of faith.
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That's what it looks like to have sight, to see clearly. Peter says, don't be surprised by the fiery trial, which is to try you.
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And every Christian, every time gets surprised. I didn't sign up for this.
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Why is this happening? If I could just understand, then I could really put up with it. If I could just fix it, send me that podcast, give me that blog, build that relationship, just give me the cure.
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And we fundamentally misunderstand what sight and light and faith revolve around.
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At times our sight is compromised. Of course, it's not just the things out there that comprise darkness or block our sight.
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It's the things that we allow to enter into our eyes. I remember as a young boy,
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I was probably 11 or 12 when we took this trip up to Nova Scotia. And somehow I got, it was like Canada Day and I got looped into like some local group and they were building this parade float.
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And my parents were like, yeah, you know, you should go do that. I'm like, great. So I'm muttering and sputtering. This is the last thing
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I want to do. And they're chainsawing these logs for this float. And this huge chunk of wood smacks into my eye.
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And for three days, I was in the camper in the backyard, like staring up at the little light, putting in eyedrops.
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And like, I couldn't blink without incredible pain. And I was seething at my parents.
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If I hadn't listened to you, I wouldn't be strolling in this way. I felt like Paul for three days.
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It's like waiting for the scale to drop from my eye. The world, the flesh, the snares and temptations of the evil.
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And these are things that all compromise our sight. We're not seeing clearly.
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You know, in Gethsemane, when Jesus' disciples were being pressed to keep watch with him, we read, their eyes were heavy and began to close.
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They couldn't see clearly. They were weary. They were exhausted. It's hard to see clearly when you're exhausted, when you're weary.
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It's very hard to see clearly. It's a way that darkness enters into your life.
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You become provoked. You become irritated. What is Jesus going to say in the next chapter? Why do you go up to your brother and you're trying to pull out this splinter that's so irritating to you and you have a two by four sticking out of your forehead?
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What good are you? You see, again, we can have such bad sight, such darkness that all the splinters irritate.
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They provoke us to anger, to frustration, to envy. And we have no idea that we have a lumber yard that we're wearing on the bridge of our nose.
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You start to realize you can tell a lot. And Jesus, I think, this is part of the point, you can tell a lot about how someone sees themself when you learn how they see others.
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You learn a lot about how they've examined their own sight, their own faith, where their treasure is, the master they serve, when you understand how they're viewing others, how they treat others.
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These are all ways that our sight becomes darkened. This is the way that our minds become doubled.
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Rather than hosting the light of Christ, which chases away the shadows and darkness in our lives, we inhabit the darkness and the shadows.
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We begin to host them. So again, Jesus is asking the question, are you seeing clearly? Are you seeing clearly?
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Has light come in such a way that now this narrow and difficult way is open before you?
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You see clearly the master who's calling you to follow him and you know it will cost you your whole life to drag that cross to the finish line.
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Do you see clearly? Do you see clearly? Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
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If your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. And if that light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness?
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But if your eye is good, if you've been delivered from the power of darkness conveyed into the kingdom of the son of God's love, if you're proclaiming the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, if your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.
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Are you seeing clearly? Let's pray. Father, we thank you for these words, these challenging words of warning, of exhortation, but Lord, also of invitation.
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For we recognize, Lord, that you are the one who causes light to shine in the darkness. You are the one who again and again removed the blinded eyes and hardened hearts of your people to give them eyes that could see clearly, ears that could hear and understand, hearts that could rightly order affections and govern a will toward your will.
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And we pray, Lord, in the same way that each one here would examine themselves and ask in light of this passage whether we're seeing clearly, whether this light has given us a faith that causes us to follow you in the narrow and difficult way that few find, in the very personal and intimate way that you call us to crucify our flesh in its desires.
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That narrow path, that difficult way may look slightly different for each individual here, but it will always be narrow and difficult for all of us.
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And Lord, we pray that you would cleanse our sight even further, Lord, remove those splinters, those obstacles, those blinds that cause us to trip and stumble our way forward.
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Help us to walk uprightly, Lord, abundantly. And the way that we look to you with singularity, with devotion, the way we look at our neighbor with generosity and care,
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Lord, these things as you teach here are at the very heart of what it means to belong to you, what it means to be part of your kingdom, what it means to be a disciple that's following you because of the light that you have shown.
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May we as a church be those people that are singular in their gaze, that we like Paul could say one thing it is that we do, everything else falling far beneath.
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And with that singularity, with that generosity, Lord, that we would become light as Matthew 5, 14, and 15 say, light that begins to cast darkness out of the room, not being hit under a basket.
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The very light of the world. May your radiance be entered into our bodies and emitted therefrom.
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These things we ask in your Son's name. And Father, if there be anyone in this room who has this horrid darkness in their life, this spiritual schizophrenia of straddling the earth and heaven, of serving two masters, might they hear your voice clearly?
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As blind Bartimaeus, may they perceive even spiritually now who you are.
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And beg for mercy and be given eyes to see and faith to follow.