The Sermon on the Mount XIV

Subtitle:  Revealing Areas that are Pitfalls for Hypocrisy

Matthew 6:22-24.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on March 17, 2024.

Our passage continues looking at how the things of this world can become a pitfall for hypocrisy.  Last week, we saw that wealth that is amassed can get ahold of our heart.  It can become the thing we love.

In this passage, Jesus moves to the eye and points out how it can be captured by things as well.

Let’s look at the passage.

The health of our eye (v. 22-23)

How do people who start out wanting to serve God become hypocrites?  How do popes, pastors, general superintendents, and the religious, become hypocrites?  One of those ways is through their love for things more than God.  It shouldn’t be lost on us that Jesus spends more time talking about how things pull our heart away from God, then he does talking about our bad relationships with people.

If wealth can take hold of our heart and become the love of our life, then it can also affect our eye.  What does that look like?

Jesus first starts out with the natural affect of having a good eye or a bad eye.  He pictures the eye as the “lamp of the body.”  The eye  channels light into our brain so that it can be turned into a mental picture of the reality around us.

Notice that the eye is not the source of that light, but only a conduit, or a sensor.  That is exactly how a lamp works.  It is designed to hold oil (the fuel) and generally has a wick, which is lit.  The burning of the oil around the wick is then able to send light throughout the room.

This is important because the man standing in front of them is the “Light of the world.”  He has come to give them the light, the truth, about God’s purpose of salvation and man’s true condition.  Jesus knows that they will need some good spiritual eyes to see him as the light and to receive his teachings, ultimately, to be saved from their sins.  When you have good spiritual eyes, you can make an informed decision and hopefully a wise choice.

Yet, just as wealth can have a grip on people’s hearts so too, it can affect people’s spiritual eyes.  We can be surrounded by the light of God and not see it because we are spiritually blind.  This is why the Scriptures warn us over and over to guard our hearts.  We could add that we need to guard our eyes.  This is the challenge that Jesus speaks to us here.

Yet, there is something more specific than just seeing the truth in Jesus.  An evil eye is always connected to a greedy, miserly, and even covetous person, in the Scriptures.  On the other hand, a good eye is generally connected to generosity and charitable giving.

It is seen as an evil, or bad, eye because you cannot see your brother’s true need.  You can only see that the money you love will be depleted if you use it to help others.  Your eye is good if you can see that the things in your life were most likely given to you so that you could help your brother.  We will come back to this, but it does beg the question.  Why does God allow some to amass wealth and not others?

Jesus uses this concept of an evil eye in Matthew 20 when he tells the parable of the workers in the vineyard.  In the story, the owner of a vineyard goes to the place where day-laborers gather in the morning and hires them to work for the day.  He will pay them a denarius, which was defined as a day’s wage.  He goes back to the hiring place several more times: at the third hour, the sixth hour, the ninth hour, and the eleventh.  For sake of the story, we will assume they were working a twelve hour day.

When evening came, they began to pay the workers starting with the men who started at the eleventh hour.  Interestingly enough, they were paid a denarius.  The story jumps to the men who worked all day long, but imagine if you had worked all day and were in line to get paid when you saw the men who worked one hour receive a whole denarius (a whole day’s wage). Most people would immediately have their hopes up that they would get even more than a denarius, perhaps even 12 of them (for scale, imagine going from thinking you would receive $240 for the day to thinking you might receive 12 times that, $2,880).  Yet, when the men came to get their pay, they only received a denarius.  They began to complain, but the owner challenges them.  Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius?  They couldn’t say no.  They were not being ripped off.  Yet, it didn’t seem fair in some way.

Jesus get’s to the heart of the manner with the statement, “Why is your eye evil because I am good?”  It was good of the landowner to pay everyone a denarius.  Yet, somehow that because a situation for those who worked all day to become greedy.  This is an important acknowledgment that we need to make.  Our hearts can be overcome by greed, but here Jesus ties it to our eyes.

These men had their hearts on things, on money.  Thus, they couldn’t see the goodness of the landowner.  They could only see that they had been jilted somehow.  This is hypocrisy in the life of a person who claims to serve God.

Thus, wealth not only gets our hearts, but it affects our ability to properly see people (even God) in our life.  Everything becomes twisted and perverted into our lust and desire for more wealth.  Yet, this can even affect your ability to see the Truth of God when He is standing right in front of you.  People would miss Messiah because their eyes were captures (as well as their hearts) with wealth.

When we are generous, it fills our hearts and minds with the light of Jesus.  However, when we are greedy and stingy it fills us with darkness (every evil thing). 

The point is not about having wealth.  It is about how it affects your heart and eyes.  Jesus is not saying, “If your bank account is above a certain amount, then you are full of darkness.”  Rather, it is similar to the statement that it is impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.  Jesus follows it up with another truth, “but all things are possible with God.”  Similarly, on our own, wealth will conquer our heart and eyes.  We will become hypocritical slaves to it.  But, with Jesus, we can make wealth our slave for His purposes.

Jesus drills home just how bad this problem is.  In the natural, a bad eye simply keeps you from seeing.  However, a greedy, covetous eye is a spiritual problem.  It doesn’t just block light (truth), but also sends darkness into the soul (the whole body).  You become “full of darkness.”  The darkness here is not just the absence of light.  It is something more substantial.  It represents a soul that is lusting with all manner of vice.

Think of it this way.  It is bad not to see when the lights are not turned on.  Israel had received some light in the Law, but the prophets had spoke of a coming Messiah who would give the full light of God.  We can’t blame them for not fully seeing the truth of God.  However, when the lights are turned on (Messiah comes) and we still can’t see, then you find out that something is wrong with your eyes.  The Pharisees and Sadducees were revealing that their eyes and hearts were generally bad all along.

So the problem of heaping up earthly wealth starts by becoming the love of your heart.  It then also affects your ability to benefit from the light of God that you have received.  How can you fix such a problem?  In the natural, there is little that can be done for a blind person, but we are speaking of spiritual matters.  The only solution to spiritual blindness is repentance.  It is casting down the idol that has your heart and going after God.  The sad truth is that we have played a large part in our own blindness because our hearts lusted after things over the top of people and especially God.

The master of your life (v. 24)

A man whose heart is captured by earthly wealth, and whose eye is gripped by greed and stinginess, is a man whose life is filled with darkness.  This leads Jesus to challenge us on who our master truly is.  Is He, who is the Master of the universe, the master of me?  This is easier said than done. 

To the religious leaders, wealth was a sign of God’s blessing upon them.  Yet, they didn’t rightly answer the question, “Why has He blessed me with wealth?”  Most likely, they felt that it was proof that they were such a righteous person and so pleasing to God.  Yet, the truth is that God tests us with wealth in order to see if we will care for our poor brother or not.

The relationship with wealth and things is that wealth enables you to get anything that you want.  This is how it becomes our master.  We will do anything to keep it and amass more of it.  In the end, it rules us and we become its slaves.

Jesus brings up the classical problem of conflicting allegiances.  You cannot be serving your desire for wealth and God at the same time.  You will be drawn one way or the other.  Even selling all of your possessions in order to follow Jesus cannot guarantee that wealth will cease to be an idol in your life.  Idolatry is loving and desiring anything above God.

When we make wealth (or anything else for that matter) an idol in our life, it becomes a worthless and impotent thing.  Nothing in this world can be God to you, but God Himself.  We actually destroy the things in our life by making them into idols. 

It is not that God doesn’t want us to have thing.  The things we have in our life are His goodness and grace.  We should be filled with thanksgiving and fully enjoy them.  But, at the end of the day, if I have to choose between the things and Jesus, I need to choose Jesus.  Otherwise, they have become an idol to me.

It is interesting that Jesus uses the word “mammon.”  Most versions translate this as money or wealth.  This is fine.  However, it seems obvious that Jesus is giving a play on words.  He has been using phrases that keep pointing back to the Exodus.  Jesus is the New Moses come to lead them in a New Exodus.  In the Lord’s prayer, he talks about our daily bread, which is reminiscent of Israel in the wilderness with the manna.  I believe he uses the word mammon because they would have been thinking about the manna in the wilderness just moments before (Daily bread is in verse 11 and this is verse 24).

Just as they didn’t need to worry about their daily bread (manna), so they don’t need to worry about having enough money (mammon).  “Man doesn’t live by bread alone.”  We tend to take this as natural bread, but in the context, it begs to be seen as the manna.  Man doesn’t live by the manna alone, but by the fact that the God of heaven decreed that you were to be given it.  We must learn to rest in God’s care for us, rather than amassing wealth so that we can stop being anxious.  Spoiler alert:  the more money you amass the more fearful you will become about losing it.  If money is your idol, you will never be more anxious than when you have a lot of it.

Life has a way of testing us and trying us.  Do we want God or do we want wealth?  If you are serving wealth, then there is going to be a conflict some day.  Do you really love God?  You will find out on the day choosing God will lose you all your wealth.

Yet, Jesus brings up something more than love.  “He will be loyal to the one and despise the other.”  Loyalty and despising have to do with how much you value something.  Would you rather have God than all the gold in the world?  It is easy to say so when no one is offering us all the gold in the world.  In countless many ways, we make choices that declare God’s true value to us.  This is a good place to start looking. 

Jesus, please show me all the ways in which I am saying that something else is more valuable to me than you.  And then, Lord help me to choose You over them.

This reminds me of Isaiah 53:3-4.  Speaking of Messiah Jesus, it says, “He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.  And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.  Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.”

It is a scary thing to live your whole life saying that you love God, but when He reveals Himself, you value Him little.  This is the big reveal of the Old Testament prophets.  Of course, the nations would be in trouble when God came down to judge.  However, Isaiah shows us that even the people of God who claim to love Him and value Him greatly, would despise Him and walk on by.  Imagine not choosing God and esteeming created things over the top of the Creator.  We should value God above the things that He can give us.  We should be thankful to the Giver for the gifts that He gives, but we should never let them have our heart, damage our spiritual eyes, and make us a hypocritical slave to things.

Pitfalls audio

Seeing the Light in a World of Darkness

This week many will be celebrating Christmas, but will they truly understand what the celebration should be all about?  Today we are going to look at Mattew 1:18-25 and see some of the events of that first Christmas.

When we look at the news events of 2014- outbreaks of Ebola, terrorism and the rise of new terrorist groups, the slaughter of young kids, Russia threatening Ukraine, even unrest on our own streets in Ferguson and beyond- we are reminded that some things haven’t changed so very much.  Israel was under the rule of a maniacal king who even killed members of his immediate family.  Rome was controlling the area under the tyranny of its military might. Scores of little children were killed that year in Bethlehem in senseless violence.  At the root of all these things, whether then or now, is a thing that God calls sin.  At Christmas we do not just celebrate Hope and love, rather we also celebrate the answer that God has given mankind for the darkness that exists in our heart and covers this planet.

Jesus Saves Us from Our Sin

There are many things that we may wish God had fixed, however, in Jesus His focus is upon the sin of mankind.  The angel told Joseph that his name would be Jesus because he would save his people from their sins.  Jesus literally means “God saves.”  This is a critical part of His nature that we need to recognize and live out ourselves.  At His heart, God is a being who saves things and people.  There are some parts of the Christmas message that may seem to have fallen short.  Joy to the world and peace on earth?  Even though the words of Jesus could bring Peace to anyone in the world, many have rejected it and in doing so rejected his peace.  The lack of world peace is proof that Jesus won’t be winning any beauty pageants soon- most contestants give lip service to wanting world peace.  But, let’s back up and make sure we understand what we are talking about with this word “sin.”

In general sin is defined in the Bible as transgressing the boundaries or laws of God.  The Garden of Eden is the foundational story here.  The trees represented the boundaries created by God.  The serpent (who is later revealed as the Devil and Satan, Revelation 12:9; 20:2) deceives and tricks Eve and Adam to rebel against God’s boundaries and laws.  As innocent as this may seem, it is the root of all our problems today.  We have been infected with an insidious mental virus that motivates us to not accept such boundaries and laws, even when they are good for us and others.  Now sin is not just the things we do, but also the things we don’t do that we should.  God created us to be like Him.  Thus when we reject that aspect of our own nature we sin by omission.  Now sin is not just a legal problem.  Some believe that if we could just get rid of “God” and this idea of boundaries and laws, then we could create Eutopia on earth.  Now think about that in the natural.  What country today, if they got rid of all laws and boundaries, would then quickly become anything but a hell-hole of seething violence and bondage?  In other words, the laws do not create sin they only stir it up.  God created this world to operate in a certain way.  He created mankind to operate in a certain way.  But sin twists and perverts the way things were meant to work for no other purpose than to rebel against God’s creation.  This causes problems that cannot be overcome by humanity.  Instead we will build ever stronger prisons for ourselves through our attempts at even becoming God ourselves.

When we talk about sin the first thought that comes to our minds is the sins of others.  Yet, the Bible says, “none are righteous, no not one.”  So sin is not just this collective thing that hangs over the head of mankind.  It is also a very personal thing that riddles our hearts.  The whole purpose of the Law of Moses was not to fix Israel.  But rather, its purpose was to trap religious and spiritual people who think that they are good enough because they compare themselves to others.  Everyone who tries to live by the Law of Moses found themselves being labled a "sinner" over and over.  Even in our own society under man made laws we see the same effect.  We break laws all the time.  Yet, we tell ourselves that it is okay because we aren't as bad as others, or the laws weren't important.  Now this is with a man-made law.  Laws are necessary for us to be able to live together in a society.  Yet, our own heart chafes at them, not just because they are unjust, but often because they keep us from doing what we want.  There are dangerous attitudes that can develop when we approach this issue.  On one hand we can try to make laws the answer because of man's sin.  On the other hand we can try to treat laws like they are the problem.  This "sin nature" problem is pointed out by laws, but cannot be fixed by it.  Like a metal detector, it can point out where the metal is, but it can't pick it up for you.  There is a part of us that wants more laws to restrain others and yet we don't want any of those laws to hold us back.  Similarly, we want God to "fix the world" but we don't want Him to mess with us in doing it.  I am a sinner too.  Jesus was sinless.  Yet, he came into the world under the specter of sin.  His mother would not be believed by society.  He would always be the "Illegitimate" child of Joseph and Mary and even that would be a question regarding who the true father was.  We chafe at being called a sinner when we truly are.  Yet, Jesus lived his whole life under this shadow.

Another part of the story of Jesus is that he breaks down the "us vs. them" mentality.  The "righteous" Jews had developed an attitude of spiritual elitism over the other nations.  But in Jesus we see that we are all sinners.  Whether secular Romans or religious Jews, the sensual woman at the well or the "spiritual" medium in Ephesus, the truth of Jesus confronted the sin of all people and yet gives the offer of being saved from it.

Thus sin is pictured as a lack of light.  This spiritual darkness covered the whole world, not just certain parts of it.  It started with rejecting God's Word about His boundaries and laws.  Then succeeding generations left such light behind in ever greater bounds; causing the shadows to quickly become pitch darkness.  In the days of Jesus, even people who wanted to please God were having trouble finding reasons to continue living for Him.  The only thing they had left was the promise of God's "Anointed One" who would be the Savior, a bright light of Truth coming into this dark world.

Jesus is God With Us

The miraculous birth of Jesus is called the virgin birth.  Although much extra-biblical stuff has been added to this, we need to set the record straight.  The Bible simply states that before Mary ever had sex (known a man) God caused one of her eggs to be fertilized.  If you have a problem with such a creative act then you really have a problem with everything to do with the Creation.  Fertilization is merely the insertion of the information needed to awaken life in the egg.  Thus the it is called a virgin birth because the woman having the baby had never had sex.  The Bible never claims that Mary was somehow "preserved as a virgin" in the birth of the Baby (i.e. as if she had never had birth).  Neither does the Bible claim that Joseph and Mary never later had children in the natural way.  It states quite the opposite.  Matthew reminds us of the prophecies of the Bible regarding the Savior.  These prophecies often pointed out what the Savior would do, but very few on what his entrance would look like.  One thing was clear from the book of Isaiah, He would be called Immanuel because he would literally be God with us.  It is easy 2,000 years later to scoff at such a thing as just another mythology amongst the many religions that spoke of Gods having demi-gods with women.  Such people see the other myths as the explanation or source of the Jesus story.  Yet, isn't it just as plausible that all of the mythologies have a source that is a real event even more ancient then they?  Isn't it just as plausible that all of these religions were trying to get back to something that mankind once had, in the Beginning?

There was a time when we walked with God back in the Paradise of the Garden of Eden.  When Noah and his family stepped off of the ark, they all knew this history.  It was there that God walked with Adam and Eve and explained his ways and designs for them.  Within the consciousness of mankind is the recognition that Eutopia or Paradise is not possible without God coming down to help us.  Thus, as the generations after Noah rejected the things taught by God, they did retain the idea of a god coming down to help mankind.  Thus, whether men look to other spirits, the occult, aliens or even transhumanism (where we make ourselves gods), we know the answer currently lies beyond our capabilities.

It is in the Garden of Eden that mankind chose the path of sin, darkness and rebellion.  This darkness not only affects our relations with one another, but it also affects our thinking.  Like a lost person we are unable to "think" our way out of the current darkness that smothers the souls of men.

One of the themes of the Bible is that God does not abandon mankind.  Starting in the Garden and throughout the ages, He had given promises to mankind (in what we call prophecies) pointing to a time when He would once again dwell with us.  A number of years ago a Christian scientist named Peter Stoner set out to use statistical probability to show the miraculous nature of all the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled.  He took 8 prophecies and determined that the probability of any one person fulfilling all 8 of them was about 10^17 that is 100 quadrillion.  To understand this number he used this illustration.  Picture the whole State of Texas being covered with silver dollars 2 feet deep with one of the dollars painted red.  Your chance of finding that coin in one try while being blindfolded is about 10^17.  This is a statistical impossibility.  Yet, there are more than 8 prophecies about the first coming of Christ.  There are actually around 300 depending on how you list them.  Most of these things were uncontrollable by Jesus and those around him.  By telling history in advance, God validated his prophecies so that when Jesus came we would know that he had come down and that he truly was, as Isaiah said, Immanuel ("God with us)."

The birth of Jesus fulfilled the prophecies about his coming.  But what if he had grown up to do nothing special or of any significance?  It is not just the things said about the child, but what he then went on to do.  Jesus is the singular man of all history that towers above the deeds of all others.  None even come close to comparing to him in his life and affect on the world.  It is the life of this child and the affect it had on the world that confirms he is the one.

So, has anything really changed since then?  Don't we see darkness all around us and sin defeating us and tearing us apart?  Yet, we are not in the same predicament.  Some very real things have changed.  First, God is now with us.  Though Jesus goes to the right hand of the Father, He sends the Holy Spirit to dwell within those who believe in him.  This same Spirit of Christ leads us and guides us in the midst of darkness.  It lights our way.  Second, the suffering of Jesus provides for us forgiveness from our sins.  Thus in the midst of a world that is under the doom of judgment we do not have to fear.  We can believe on the sacrificial death of Jesus for our sins and have confidence in the midst of darkness.  Third, His suffering and life provides for us the courage to be faithful in the midst of a world of faithlessness.  This example of what to do and how God will reward burns in our hearts.  Lastly, His love compels us to believe for the salvation of others.  God could have judged the world on the day Jesus was crucified.  Yet, he pauses judgment in order to open the door of salvation for "whosoever" would believe on Jesus.  God says to all who will allow Him to conquer sin in their life, "come join my family and you will inherit paradise with me in the Age to come."  Join Him today!

Seeing Light in Darkness audio