Matthew 6:22-24

Last week, last week we we looked at treasures on earth versus treasures in heaven.

And I attempted to impress upon you the fact that the timing and the location of heavenly treasures are here and now rather than not someday after you die in a foreign land of clouds, harps, and angels.

Okay?

Storing up treasures in heaven, having eternal treasures that don't corrupt, is very much something that is going on in the present, and those rewards are accessible to you in the present.

Your engagement with those treasures are something that is happening now, not after you die, and go to heaven.

Jesus' teaching that heaven is here and now already, but then there's aspects of it that are not yet.

So that was one part, that was core to what we were looking at last week.

We also, the treasures that we have, they're eternal rewards that the Father gives us as we practice our faith in a genuine way before Him.

So when you go and you're giving money to somebody who is poor, and you're doing that just as a genuine expression of your faith between you and God.

You're sitting maybe at the light, and you just feel the prompting of God, like, hey, give this guy something, some money, right?

You roll down your window, you give him some money.

As you do that, your father in heaven sees what you're doing in secret, sees that you're doing that act, and you have treasures in heaven.

He rewards you, it says.

And those treasures are eternal treasures.

So last week I tried to say there's some synonyms here.

The idea of eternal fruit, the fruit that lasts.

Remember in John 15 it says that Jesus chose you in him, that you would bear fruit, and that that fruit would remain.

That's a similar idea to being rewarded by the Father for these acts, these um pious acts or religious acts that are done, as well as treasures, you're accumulating these treasures from doing that.

They're in heaven, but you're participating in the kingdom of heaven here and now.

Now, I'm still wrapping my head around that.

So I would I would just encourage you because maybe you've gotten some good teaching and you already get new that and you're like, Josh, it's taking you too long to catch up.

But for me, it's like I've, for the most part, most of my Christian life, I've thought of treasures in heaven as this future thing that someday I'm gonna get access to, and I'm supposed to store them up.

And that just doesn't line up with Jesus' teaching about heaven at all.

So we have treasures that we have, the treasures we have are eternal rewards that the Father gives us as we practice our faith in a genuine way before Him.

And I think that those things are enjoyable to us.

I think that as we do these, as we're obeying God, we're participating as a citizen of the kingdom of heaven in a parallel world, a parallel society.

We're here on earth, but we're obeying God.

And there is these rewards.

He doesn't define the rewards clearly of like exactly what it is, but I think that there is this sense of being rewarded, of deep satisfaction and joy and happiness, and like, yes, God's defending me, yes, God is vindicating me, yes, God's giving me truth.

I think all of that is this idea of there's you're just an enriched person, a fruitful person, enjoying that fruitfulness as you're participating in this economy.

It's kind of like he's laying out an economy, and I used some of that language last week, the time horizons of investments.

Our hearts are to be aligned.

This was the closing thought.

Our hearts are to be aligned with these rewards or treasures as our priority pursuit.

And so this is this is kind of how it works.

It's like you decide, okay, I'm ready to be a follower of Jesus.

And hopefully you let him know and you have a conversation with him.

That's called prayer, right?

You let him know, I'm ready to be a follower of you.

I'm ready to accept what you've done on the cross.

And and I want to identify myself with you.

And then once you do that, you say, hey, church, whatever church you're a part of, you're like, I'm ready.

And that church is saying great, your next step is to be baptized because that's an outward sign of that internal thing.

So if you haven't yet been baptized, you've got to let me know.

We'll we'll set up the baptism tank out here, we'll warm up the water, and we'll baptize you, and we'll celebrate that you are a follower of Jesus.

And then you begin, you're living, you're walking, you're following Jesus, you're you're doing the things that he's talking about here, but internally, so much of what Jesus is talking about is internally your heart alignment is getting shifted around a bit.

And so instead of just taking carte blanche, the value system of the world and kind of popular society, things you see on entertainment, or maybe the culture of your family, it doesn't matter.

There's just some realignment and changes of thinking that have to occur.

And so, this whole sermon that Jesus is giving, the Sermon on the Mount, he's dealing with this internal, these internal deep changes that then flow out into an authentic practice of faith.

So we come to this next section here, verses 22 through 24.

Let's let me read this to you.

The eye of the lamp, the eye is the lamp of the body.

If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.

But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.

So, if the light within you is darkness, how deep is that darkness?

No one can serve two masters, since he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and he'll despise the other.

You cannot serve both God and money.

Let's pray.

Lord, we ask that you would now uh teach us by your spirit based off of this text.

Um we're so grateful, God, that you know our lives.

You know the hairs of our head, you know the needs, you know how we're we're wired.

You know how we relate uh to life.

And so would you take these instructions here and and um and teach us personally, and not so much the person next to us, but like we want to hear from you.

And we give you permission.

You may violate our pride or our self-confidence, you may you may need to convict us of some sin or wrong thinking in our life, and we give you permission, we want to say yes to whatever you say to us this morning.

So help us to hear your voice.

Pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So there's two sections to this text.

There's the first section, which talks about spiritual focus, and the second section, second principle is this idea of spiritual loyalty.

So, first is spiritual focus and spiritual loyalty.

Again, put yourself in this broad context of Jesus' teaching his followers to live in this new kingdom, this heavenly kingdom while still on earth.

That there's this internal transformation that's working itself out of these believers.

So let's look at this first section, this idea of spiritual focus, verses 22 and 23.

The first thing that we come across is this idea that the eye is the lamp of the body.

We're just looking at this sentence for just a second, okay?

The body, your body, the Bible teaches, your body is like a lamp in the world.

And the thing that is similar about your body and a lamp is that light can shine out of it.

What is dissimilar from your body and a lamp is that darkness can shine from your life.

Your life can emit darkness.

And so Jesus is saying that he's first establishing this idea that you as an individual have lighter darkness emanating from your body.

Jesus said something similar in Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

Earlier on in this very same sermon, in Matthew chapter 5, verses 14 and 15, he said that you are the light of the world.

Matthew 5:14

You're the light of the world.

Then he says, a city situated on a hill, it can't be hidden.

And then when it comes to a lamp, no one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather a lampstand and it gives light for all who are in the house.

So Jesus, he's already talked about your body emitting light out into the world.

But he's attaching to it another component, and he's saying that the eye is the lamp of the body.

Okay, now things start to break down.

What in the world is he talking about?

Okay, we get the idea of this light flowing out of our life, but what does it mean for our eye is the lamp of the body?

The eye refers to, if you look up this word in Greek, the eye refers to either the biological object in your face, the eyeball, but it also refers to sight, the function of the eyeball.

Sight, seeing, and focus.

Like what your eyeball does.

What are you looking at?

Your focus determines what your life is emitting.

That's what Jesus is saying.

Your focus determines what your life is emitting.

If the eye, I believe I have this on a slide here, if the eye is healthy, and I'm jumping a little bit ahead here, but we'll we're gonna get to this.

If the eye is healthy, meaning clear, focused, generous, the whole body will be full of light, wise, pure, aligned with God.

If the eye is unhealthy, meaning evil, greedy, unfocused, the body will be full of darkness, foolish, impure, misaligned with God.

It suggests that one's outlook or focus directly impacts your spiritual state.

So your body is a lamp.

That's the first crazy thing that Jesus says, right?

You can't get away from it.

You're either emitting light or darkness from your body, and it is corresponding with what you're focused on.

So what comes from your body is based on the condition of your eye.

Okay?

So he contrasts if your eye is healthy versus if your eye is bad.

The idea here again is focus.

If you're focused, the word healthy is the word sincere.

Maybe if you have the King James Version, it says if your eye is single, if your eye is focused, take out your phone for just a second.

Turn on the camera feature.

Okay?

I want you to just point it at something.

And if you have a phone made in the last five years, I have the ability.

It's like automatically just focusing on your faces, right?

Pull it out.

Point your phone at something.

Point it at something.

Okay, I'm gonna point it over at you guys over here.

Alright, hey, there you go.

Okay, then what I want you to do is I want to take I want you to take the phone and I want you to hold it against your hold it against your leg right there.

There's a very diff big difference between those two pictures, right?

One, I'm using my camera to to let it kind of do its job and it's able to kind of focus on the room.

The other is just it's against my leg.

Like the can't the the camera can't do its function.

So Jesus is saying, hey, your eye, your focus can either be sincere, singular, or your eye can be unhealthy.

Literally, it's the word evil.

You can have an evil eye.

And that is what determines what comes from your life.

A single eye in this context is one that has a clear, undivided focus on God.

It has an undivided focus on God and his righteousness.

It represents an outlook of generosity where one's intentions and actions are aligned with God's will, leading to a life full of light, understanding, wisdom, and spiritual clarity.

Okay?

So there's a lot of metaphor happening in this passage.

Jesus is, it's like you go in, you kind of dive into this text, and you start getting into the metaphor, and you're like, whoa, this is crazy.

What's going on here?

We've got the body's a lamp, and the eye is like determines the quality of what's coming off of the lamp, and it's easy to get lost in the weeds.

Let me give you three principles about focus here that Jesus is teaching from this metaphor.

The first is the principle of focus.

Your spiritual eye represents your focus or attention in life.

Where your attention goes, your life follows.

A healthy focus on God and his values leads to a life filled with spiritual light.

So Jesus is teaching his disciples saying, I want your eye to be single.

I think that's probably the best way to think about that first, the positive that Jesus is teaching.

A single eye, just focused on God.

Again, we go back to Josh kind of in his dilemma at 15 years old of like, well, if I'm focused on God, like what part of the pie do I give to school, and what part of the pie do I give to work?

And my teacher who said, no, the whole thing.

You're focused on God, and then God authors your life through you.

Like you are like Joshua, being instructed by Moses.

What did God tell Moses?

Or what did Moses tell Joshua in Joshua chapter 1?

Joshua 1 · chapter mention

What was the activity of this general who's supposed to go and take the promised land?

What's Joshua supposed to be doing?

He's supposed to take an attitude and do an action.

Do you remember that?

The first action was be strong and courageous, right?

And then he says, Yeah, go and just meditate on God's word day and night.

Wait, what about like sharpening spears, training the troops, and all that stuff?

God tells Joshua, no, I just want you to meditate on God's word day and night.

Now, Joshua did a lot as the new leader of Israel.

The framework of Joshua's life was this idea of just be a spiritual man.

Be somebody that is like meditating and just tapping into the fact that you're you're related to God, and God is going to, well, what we'll see in a few weeks is all these things will be added to you.

You know that verse?

Matthew 6, 33.

All these things will be added to you.

You're focused, the focus of your life is on these spiritual things.

So, spiritual eye, having a spiritual eye, the singular focus on God.

But then we also have this principle of spiritual health.

Your spiritual health impacts your entire being.

Just as healthy eyes lead to clear vision, a healthy spiritual life brings clarity and purpose to all aspects of your existence.

Jesus is training his disciples not to play harps and sit on clouds forever.

Instead, he's training them to live as robust citizens on earth, to die, go to heaven, and come back and reign and rule with him.

Remember, the the vision of God for humanity is a renewed heavens and earth where Jesus reigns and rules.

So what's going on here in this training is not like, you know, death happens and existence ceases and these things of Jesus don't apply anymore.

No, this is a this is who you're designed to be for eternity.

And then the third principle that's here is the principle of consequences.

The condition of your spiritual eye has significant consequences.

An unhealthy focus leads to spiritual darkness, which is pervasive and affects your whole life.

If we go back up to this verse, verse 23, he says, if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.

That word darkness there is the word that's used for like dusk.

Kind of when you can no longer distinguish, you know, colors, things just kind of become silhouettes in the late evening as the sun goes down, you've got kind of the shadowiness is another way for saying it.

Kind of operating where you're just, you ever been in a room where you're like, man, turn on the lights.

I can't see what I'm trying to do in front of me.

He says, if your eye is bad, the concept of your focus, your attention, if it's bad, then your body is just full of shadowiness.

But he says, if the light within you is darkness, how deep is that darkness?

That's like when I went to the Carlsbad Caverns with my uncle when I was nine years old, and we were like 1800 feet underground, or I don't know how long, how deep you go down.

But like the guy turns off the light, and you wave your hand in front of your face, and you can't see anything.

You can almost feel that darkness.

It's so dark.

That's the word here that Jesus is using, is it goes from your body's kind of shadowy, where things are kind of confusing and obscured, to what's emanating from your life is an oppressive darkness because of what you're focused on.

So interesting.

It's it is fascinating to me.

You'll notice just kind of let me just kind of give you a drive-by observation on this.

Jesus is um establishing some correlating logic based off of both what you look at and what you're focused on, and the nature of your being.

So it would be helpful to wake up tomorrow morning and go, something's coming from my life.

It's either gonna be light or darkness.

It also would be helpful to go, what I'm gonna spend my time focused on is going to determine the light that comes from my life, right?

And Jesus, yeah, he makes that correlation, which is to me just fascinating how he he it may seem minor, but it there's actually this I to me there's significance in like how he's explaining um the human nature and how you're designed.

I don't think I go around.

I guess maybe it's it's me, because I just don't go around thinking like what's the light coming from my life.

Like maybe if you grew up in like a new agey like hippie community, that's what you think about.

But for me, that's not kind of how I do life, right?

But Jesus is like, no, no, there's something coming, there's light coming from your body, and it's correlated to what you're thinking about, like the focus, the attention of your life.

Okay, let's look at this last principle here spiritual loyalty.

Verse 24.

He says, No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he'll be devoted to one and despise the other.

You cannot serve both God and money.

So another life principle that he throws out here.

It is not possible to serve two masters.

So put yourself in Jesus' time.

As he's teaching his disciples, when he's using the term masters, he's thinking of slaves and masters, right?

It's not like Marvin, who's got two jobs, one in the morning and one in the evening, right?

This is the idea of you have a slave master who owns you, not African American slave master, slave.

This is a societal slavery to pay off a debt.

Shouldn't be race-based, at least in the times of Rome.

Jesus is just borrowing from a societal reality.

It's not saying whether it's good or bad.

But he is saying it is impossible to have two of those masters.

And then he explains why it's impossible that you can't serve two.

It's because a human only has the capacity to love one master.

If you have two masters, you're going to hate or despise one, and you'll love and serve the other.

But it's the same idea, right?

So Andy, she's the main character.

She goes to work for this fashion magazine, and who is playfully called the devil, right?

Miranda Priestley.

And she becomes more and more involved.

Andy becomes more and more involved in her job, and she starts neglecting her personal relationships and her own internal values, and she ultimately violates her own kind of ethical standards.

The film showcases her struggle between two masters, her career ambitions under the demanding and high-powered editor Miranda Presley, and her own integrity and personal life.

Andy's journey reflects the impossibility of serving both of these masters effectively without one aspect of her life suffering significantly.

And you know, kind of the inflection point, or if you've seen the movie, you should.

It's a fun movie.

That there's this inflection point or crisis moment where Andy's lost all of her friends because she has tried so hard to follow her boss Miranda.

Jesus applies this principle to a contrast between serving God and serving money.

If our money is our master, but God is also your master, you'll end up despising God or despising money.

Neither is a good option.

Did you hear that?

Neither.

It's not good to obviously despise God, but it's also not good to despise money.

And I think that the wrong relationship that occurs with money comes from trying to serve it rather than serving God.

Jesus is teaching his followers about this idea of living in his kingdom and having realigned priorities, this new society where they live.

I would imagine that Jesus in this teaching was thinking somewhat about Solomon.

Solomon was the third king in Israel.

He surpassed all the kings in the world in his riches and his wisdom.

The whole world wanted an audience, it says.

To these women, Solomon was deeply attached in love.

And here's the results of this happening in Solomon's life.

He had seven hundred wives.

That's a lot.

Seven hundred wives who were princesses and three hundred who were concubines.

And they turned, what did they do?

They turned his heart away.

It says that when Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart away to follow other gods.

He was not, look at that word there, wholeheartedly devoted to the Lord his God, as his father David had been.

And then it says in verse 6, Solomon did what was evil in the Lord's sight, and unlike his father David, he did not remain loyal to the Lord.

Solomon is this perfect picture of a guy who just got had an evil eye.

He gave in to a temptation in his life.

He did not obey God's instructions externally, right?

He has all these wives, and it affects internally who he is, so that he no longer can be wholehearted and loyal before God.

But look at this passage out of Hebrews about Jesus.

First of all, we're called to keep our eyes on Jesus, who is the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith.

And what did Jesus do?

It's for the joy that was laid before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

In this verse here, you have Jesus being like sticking with the plan, sticking with the program that God had given him.

He endures the cross, right?

And we are called to look at Jesus as our example in life.

Unlike Solomon, Jesus never wavered in his mission or his devotion to the Father.

He remains steadfast even in the face of the cross.

In Jesus, we see the embodiment of perfect spiritual focus and unwavering loyalty.

He is not only our Savior, but he's also our example.

We strive to live lives of focused faith, undivided loyalty.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, drawing inspiration and strength from his perfect example.

There's a reason why Christians throughout the last 2,000 years have called that morning time of reading the Bible devotions.

Because it's a time in the day where you're saying, God, I want to start my day devoted to you.

Now, whatever you do in that time of, you know, your Bible reading and prayer, the idea is just, again, we're going back to the Lord saying, God, I'm devoting myself to you.

I am yours.

You bought me, and I want to live my life for you.

And so Jesus here is instructing his followers, saying, Hey, this is what it means to live as a follower of me.

This is what it means to live as a citizen in my kingdom.

It means that your eye is single.

There's a loyalty that you have to me.

You're letting all the rest of life be downstream from that primary relationship that you have with me.

Lord, we thank you for your word.

Thank you for this text that instructs us.

God, in our own life of just great distraction and kind of a broken relationship with focused and clear thinking.

And we just live with a lot of distractions around us.

But your spirit wants to make us like this.

You want to make this a real thing in our life more and more.

Let me give you this focus.

Let me give you this loyalty.

Let me give you that permission to go to work in our lives and accomplish that.

Thank you, Lord.