Eyes For Justice and the Love of the God

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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You can turn your Bibles to the Gospel of Luke chapter 11, we're going to be now going through verses 33 to 44.

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When you have that, please do stand for the reading of God's Word. Luke chapter 11, verse 33, no one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket but on a stand so that those who enter may see the light.

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Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light. But when it is bad, your body is full of darkness.

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Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part darkness, it will be wholly bright as when a lamp with its rays give you light.

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While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked Him to dine with Him. So He went in and reclined at the table. Pharisees were astonished to see that He did not first wash before dinner.

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And the Lord said to Him, now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup, of the dish, but inside you're full of greed and wickedness, you fools.

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Did not He who made the outside make the inside also? But gave all as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.

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But woe to you, Pharisees, for you tithe mint and rue and every herb and neglect justice and the love of God.

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These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. Woe to you, Pharisees, for you have loved, for you love the best seed in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces.

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Woe to you, for you're like unmarked graves and people walk all over them without knowing it.

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This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Well, if you didn't know, we are going to continue for the foreseeable future, until I depart from you, the sermons from Luke in the morning and in the afternoons.

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And so just to give you guys a little bit more of Luke's gospel, we're going to attempt to do this now every

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Sunday in the morning and in the afternoon service. And so we're going to continue on in our gospel series in Luke by looking at these verses that we were just reading.

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Today's message is called Eyes for Justice and the Love of God. One of the things that Jesus does often is that he uses day -to -day imagery to communicate divine truth.

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He uses this in his parables when he talks about farming, agriculture, seeds, farming, all these types of things.

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But he also uses the body as a mechanism to teach us about kingdom truth. And one of the things that Jesus focuses on often in his teaching is the use and the importance of the eyes.

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You see, your senses are important to you. It's how you can delineate between reality. It's how you can determine what is right, what is wrong, what is before you.

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Obviously, if you have eyes to see, your eyes are important to you. They're valuable to you.

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Those of us who have health issues surrounding our eyes know maybe even a little bit more how true that is.

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Your eyesight is precious. To see, just the fact that you wake up in the morning and that you can see, what a blessing that is.

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Your eyes are so valuable. We underestimate the value of our eyes. If someone were to offer you a million dollars for your eyes, you would probably turn that down.

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Even if you could really use a million dollars, well, why would you turn it down? Because you know, well, what good is a million dollars if I can't see what it will bless me with?

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If I can't see what the outcome will be? What good is to have a million dollars and buy a big, big

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TV if you'll never see the images on that TV? I've asked this question once, and there's a smart aleck in my previous church who says,

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I'd sell it for a million dollars. His reasoning was that he could just give it to his kids and say, well, that's great, but then you'll never see your grandkids.

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There's a lot of reasons why we have to consider the worth of our eyes. Jesus also recognizes the worth of the eyes, the worth of sight when he gives us this teaching in verse 33 when he says, no one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand.

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So those who may enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body.

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When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it's bad, your body is full of darkness.

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Again, sight, light, all things that are of great value and importance.

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We also take light for granted in this Western Hemisphere. One time

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I went to Puerto Rico as a kid, and we went to this little island right off the coast of Eastern Puerto Rico called

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Vieques. It's part of Puerto Rico, but it's like a little tiny island, and Puerto Rico is notorious for its blackouts.

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The power is constantly coming out, and even more so in this little island. And so when

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I was visiting this island, we stayed at a friend's house, and I noticed that they had these little, what

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I, as a kid, I was probably nine years old at the time, what I called genie lamps. These little, you know, like you've ever seen the movie

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Aladdin, you get the genie's lamp. And I was like, that's the lamp from Aladdin, and it looks just like a little genie's lamp.

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And it has a little thing and a little thing for oil, and it was meant to, if the power is out, you would light it, and it would actually illuminate the room.

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And so he had several of these, and I just wanted to play with it. And then night came and power went out, and so that little lamp that I wanted to play with, now it's actually to be used.

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And where was it? It was always at the highest places, so he had bookshelves, and it was always the highest place around the room, so that when the power went out, you can light it, and it would illuminate the room.

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And Jesus is pointing to this fact of life as well, that after lighting a lamp, no one puts it in a cellar.

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No one puts it in the lowest part of the room. Rather, we put it at the most prominent place, so that light can illuminate darkness.

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Jesus says that your eye is the lamp of your body. And so just like the old lamp that I mentioned to you that looked like a genie in a bottle, that was able to bring forth light and comfort at the right time.

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So too, divine truth brings forth light and comfort, if you have the eyes to see.

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So again, so it should be of our Christian life when we are able to be, we are called to be a light to this world, because we've been brought out of darkness, the darkness of sin and death, and into the marvelous light of Jesus.

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Therefore, we must remember as Christians that there is a light that we got to let shine.

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You're following along in the insert, you were also given a bulletin with two sides. You can follow along in the teaching as well, that the light of a lamp is meant for illumination to dispel what?

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Darkness. And so it must be of the Christian life. Jesus puts you here to dispel darkness.

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You are like that lamp that is to be put in a prominent place to shine the illumination of the gospel.

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Now Jesus also says in verse 34 that the eye, or that the human eye,

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I want you to write this in your notes as well, the human eye is the lamp of the body. In order for the eye to see things properly, it needs light.

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Put that word in there as well. In order for the physical body to see, for the physical eye to see, it needs light.

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This is why the first thing we do when we wake up in darkness is that we look for the light so that we can see where we are heading.

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The light is important as it illuminates and if you have eyes to see, it will help you see where you are going, but the same is true spiritually.

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Think again about the complexity and the value of the eye. Your eyes are so valuable that it's one of the most complex and mysterious parts of the human body.

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Sony, the company, makes a very powerful camera and one of the most powerful cameras in the market is called the

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Sony Alpha and it's among the best cameras that you can buy. It costs a whopping $6 ,500 to get this camera.

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What do you get for this camera? Well, you get a 50 .1 megapixel lens.

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Pretty powerful. Pretty impressive. It will shoot pretty impressive pictures and videos, but that pales in comparison with the 576 pixel resolution that the human eye produces.

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So think about the value of your eye. Even me, as blind as I am, I think my eyes will still produce a better picture than this

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Sony camera, but again, this pales in comparison to what the Lord God created because He's an incredible designer, an incredible creator.

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In order to fully see, the eyes need light, just like that Sony camera, if you want to take a nice picture, those lens are big and what the lens do is they bring in light.

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The bigger the lens, the more light, the better the picture. The same is true spiritually of our condition.

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Your eyes need light so that the clearer the picture is of Christ and of your walk with Him.

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This is why, again, Jesus says that the eye is the lamp of the body and especially why we need

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God's spiritual light so that we can stop wandering in spiritual darkness.

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Verse 35, Jesus says, therefore, be careful lest the light in you be darkness.

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Well, that sounds interesting. What could Jesus possibly mean by this when He also says in verse 36, if then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright as when a lamp of its rays give you light.

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What could Jesus possibly mean by this mysterious phrase that if your whole body is full of light, having no dark or rather, therefore, careful lest the light in you be darkness.

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How can light be darkness? It doesn't make sense. So what is Jesus trying to communicate?

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What is He coming at here? There's an old children's song that is sung in our nurseries and sung with our children and it goes a little bit like this, oh, be careful little eyes what you see.

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Oh, be careful little eyes what you see, for the Father up above is looking down in love.

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So be careful little eyes what you see. The point of that song and that hymn is the reminder that we must guard our eyes.

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The eyes, again, are important. We've laid that foundation. We have taught you that the eyes are wonderfully, fearfully made.

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It is so vitally important then to guard our eyes, especially in this day and age where the culture celebrates and elevates the things that God hates.

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One of the major issues amongst young people, men and women, is the battle of lust.

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You know, Job says this in Job chapter 31. He says, I've made a covenant with my eyes not to look at a maiden with lust, not to look at a young woman lustfully.

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He made a covenant with his eyes, he had to make an agreement, I'm not going to go there. Jesus says if your eye causes you to stumble, you what?

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You pluck it out. You remove these things which causes you to stumble.

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So many people and so many young people are struggling with the issue of lust and immorality and it all starts with what we entertain with our eyes.

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You see, what you receive, the light that you receive, whether good, God's light or the world's light, the illumination that comes through, the light that emanates from your cell phones or your computer screens, that light can be darkness.

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The light that comes from your computer, the light that comes from your cell phone, the light that comes from the billboards, those can actually be dark.

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So be careful, little eyes, what you see. What's at stake?

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What is at stake when we fail to guard our eyes from evil? The gospel, our testimony.

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You see, most of mankind is under the deception of Satan as we learned earlier this morning, and Satan wants nothing more than to see the gospel of light veiled.

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As Christians, we can either be part of elevating the lamp of Christ's gospel higher and higher so that mankind can see or we can choose sin, apathy, darkness, thus hurting our

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Christian witness and like ancient Israel, bring reproach on God's holy name. That's what's at stake here when we choose what we entertain with our eyes.

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If you willfully choose to walk in darkness after receiving the light of Jesus, you demonstrate one of two things.

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One, you were never born again to begin with, or two, you are a

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Christian in disobedience and must repent immediately. Be careful, little eyes, what you see.

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What we go on to read here in verses 37 onward, while Jesus was speaking, a

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Pharisee asked Him to dine with Him. So He went in and reclined at the table. And the

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Pharisees was astonished to see that He had not first washed before dinner.

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And the Lord said to Him, now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but on the inside you're full of greed and wickedness.

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You fools, did not He who made the outside make the inside also? You give alms to those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.

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Following along the notes, when attacked by the Pharisees, Jesus points out their hypocrisy.

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Jesus points out the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, why? Because being outwardly clean, but inside you're full of wickedness.

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The eyes are important because they serve the intentions of the heart. If your eye is wicked, it's because you have a wicked heart.

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And the heart is what the Pharisees could not hide from Jesus. The Lord rightly calls out their hypocrisy because outward appearances and righteousness is no cover -up for a wicked and depraved heart.

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This is why we need the gospel, because the gospel goes beyond the superficial exterior and it goes into the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

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Therefore, what we see and what we entertain with our eyes has immense value because we end up becoming, attracting that which we see and entertain with our eyes.

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It's like when I was a kid, I loved certain cartoons and I wanted to be a superhero, why?

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Because it's what I saw on TV. I wanted to emulate what I saw. In the world, what are we being entertained by?

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Worldly things. We want to be rich. We want to be famous. We want this. We want that. Why?

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Because it's what we are feeding into our minds through the entertainment that we keep with our eyes.

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So we must, as Christians, be wise with the sort of entertainment that we are entertaining.

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Are we going to continue to entertain ungodly things that will produce in us darkness and not light?

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Be careful, little eyes, what you see. You see, the Pharisees could not hide their sins, their hypocrisy from Jesus.

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Jesus reclines at them at the table and the Pharisees were astonished. Why? Because Jesus didn't wash his hands. What were they focused on?

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The outward appearances. And Jesus points the attention of the heart, that which they could not hide from Jesus.

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And Jesus goes on to say to them, you are fools. Why? Because the outside of your cup seems all clean and neat and put together, but on the inside, it's filthy.

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It's filthy. I had that happen to me one time. I was at a party as a kid and all these kids, you know, kids can be kind of dirty, no offense to you little ones, but kids can be kind of dirty.

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And one time everyone's drinking from this cup of juice and then by the time it gets to me, it was just gross.

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I'm not drinking this. It looked clean on the outside, but on the inside, it was just,

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I could not, I would not drink from that. The same way, spiritually speaking, brothers and sisters, we need to not only fixate on the outside of our cup, the outward appearances, the outward display of our religion, but also the inward display of our religion, the inward transformation of the heart.

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And that's what the Pharisees lacked. Though on the outside, they were ceremonially clean, inwardly,

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Jesus says, they were full of greed and wickedness. He says this in verse 40, you fools, did not he who made the outside make the inside also?

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And you give alms to those things that are within and behold, everything is clean for you. That is to say, they don't see the problem.

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They don't see their own spiritual stench. They don't see the problem that they've been consuming what they think is light, but it's actually darkness.

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This is why, again, we need the gospel because it exposes the hypocrisy of the outward cleanliness of our lives, but the true inward wickedness of our hearts.

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Verse 42, Jesus gives them another rebuke. He says, but woe to you

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Pharisees, for you tithe mint and rue and every herb and neglect justice and the love of God.

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These you ought to have done without neglecting the others.

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So does God want a person that's clean outwardly? Of course. Psalm 24 commends the man with clean hands, but also a clean heart.

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And so both should not be, one or the other should not be neglected to the expense of the other.

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We ought to have clean hands. We ought to have a cleanliness about ourselves as Christians, but not as a cover -up for the wickedness of our hearts.

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As Christians, we must have an eye for justice. As Christians, we must have an eye for the love of God.

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Once you write this in the notes, the Pharisees meticulously kept the letter of the law. So they were very obsessed with the superficial exterior part of their religion.

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But they failed to live out the heart of God's law. And they failed to live up to the heart of God's law by doing this, by neglecting two very important pieces, justice and love of God.

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They neglected these areas. Now the word justice has been a tough and hot word for our culture over the last many years.

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It's a word that may even make evangelicals a bit uncomfortable and uneasy because of the recent constructs of things like the social justice gospel or critical race theory that is quickly spreading among Christian churches in academia.

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Something that's of importance that I want to bring out to you is anything that adds to the gospel, so if you have social justice gospel, critical race theory gospel, anything that you have to add to gospel is an affront to the gospel.

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The good news about the gospel is that it is already about justice, far before the activists got their hands on that word.

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The gospel is about justice, just not your concept or construct of justice, but rather it's about God's justice.

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It's about God's love. And so don't be afraid of the word justice simply because it's been hijacked by a few extremists even within the

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Christian church. Also know this, just because there are those who clamor for justice doesn't mean that you're automatically calling for God's justice.

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In fact, it's usually the opposite, it's being preached for many pulpits.

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But as Christians, we must pursue biblical justice, which means loving our neighbors, even when the strangers among us are different, even when our neighbor looks different, sounds different, speaks a different dialect, has a different religion.

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We are to love our neighbors as part of God's justice and God's love.

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We're also to consider standing up for the innocent and being a helping hand to the orphan and the widow, even standing up for things that are considered the opposite of justice by the world's standards, and that's the issue of life.

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You see, if the world was truly fixated on social justice, it would start with the justice of protecting the innocent in the womb of their mothers.

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That's how we know that today's social justice concept or gospel is not truly

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God's justice or gospel because it centers around man's selfishness, and just like Jesus points out, the wickedness of the interior of man's heart.

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Many leftists have the appearance of piety and of justice when they stand up for women's rights or immigrant rights or other so -called rights, but they neglect the very rights that God has given us in Holy Scripture.

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And so we know that there are two completely different standards of justice, God's standard and man's standard. We are advocating here for God's standard of justice and His standard of love.

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True justice goes beyond the simple cry for justice. It goes beyond a simple protest for justice, but actually is motivated and rooted in love for our

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Creator and our neighbor. You see, in Jesus' day, it was the

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Pharisees who were the virtue signalers. They were the ones who outwardly had it all together.

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They were the ones who were constantly signaling their virtue by showing how clean their hands were, and how dare

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Jesus come into our context with unwashed hands? You see, Jesus was breaking the barriers and the boundaries of what was perceived to be cleaned, of what was perceived to be a virtue.

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You see, the Pharisees, again, they were the virtue signalers of that day. And it was Jesus and His disciples who were the outsiders.

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Verse 43, Jesus says this, "'Woe to you Pharisees, for you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces.'"

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He says, "'Woe to you, for you are like unmarked graves and people walk over them without knowing it.'"

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What a strong rebuke our Savior gives. You see, the Pharisees were filled with darkness and were like unmarked graves.

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I want you to write this in the notes. A grave site in ancient

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Judaism was considered a place of being unclean. You ever seen a picture of modern

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Jerusalem today? If you look at what is commonly referred to as the

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Temple Mount, you'll see from a…if you're looking at it from the Mount of Olives, and you're looking down on what's supposedly the

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Temple Mount, just side note, what's today commonly referred to as the Temple Mount is not the Temple Mount.

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If you want to learn more about that, I'd love to tell you and share that, why it's not the case. But what's commonly referred to as the

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Temple Mount, which is actually the remains of the Fort of Antonia, you have this graveyard.

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And you also have these huge, what would have been part of the eastern walls of the temple complex.

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And that wall has been sealed off, and there have been put a…marked graves there.

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And the reason why is because when the Muslims took over the Temple Mount, they sealed those doors because the understanding of the

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Christians was that when Jesus returned, He would come in and march through those doors. And then they put graves there.

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Why? Because now it made it unclean for the Jews to go in that area. Interesting.

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The grave was considered as a place of uncleanliness, of unclean. And Jesus saying this to the

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Pharisees, that you are like unmarked graves. People walk over them without knowing it.

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What Jesus is declaring is that they were themselves unclean when

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He compares them to unmarked graves. He let the Pharisees serve as an example of an eye filled with darkness so that we do not end up like unmarked graves as they did.

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Ask God today to open your eyes to the fullness of the glory and the light of Christ so that we can have eyes, true eyes, that are geared toward justice and the love of God.

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And we meet justice and we meet God's love in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

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Jesus is the one who perfectly balances both God's love and God's justice, and He perfectly models it for us as Christians to follow

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Him. When He calls us to be like that light that is a light on a lamp that is illuminating the room, it's because He Himself has set the model as the light of the world

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Himself. He says, I am the light of this world, but He also says, you are the light of this world.

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So then let your light shine so that your Father who is in heaven may be glorified.

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I leave you with this warning as we pray and as we consider issues of justice and the love of God, guard your eyes.

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Be careful, O little eyes, what you see, O be careful, little eyes, what you see, for the

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Father up above is looking down in love. So be careful, little eyes, what you see.

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Let's pray. Father, we thank You for the eyes that You have given us to see

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You with faith, to approach You not in darkness, but with the illumination of the gospel.

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Lord, help us even now to have eyes for justice and eyes for the love of God.

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Help us look in the circumstances of our lives for ways in which we have been deficient in that endeavor.

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Help us, Lord, not to become like the Pharisees who outwardly were clean, outwardly had it all together, but inwardly were filthy, filled with wickedness, malice, deceit.

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Help us, Lord, onto that end, to have eyes to see what

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You want us to see. To have ears to hear what You want us to hear, and to have hearts that are able to receive this most precious instruction and word.