Full of Light

Our eyes need to be trained on the gospel of Christ so that our hearts and minds are filled with the light of Christ

[00:00:03] Well, on Monday, my wife had to get up early and take our kids to school and be gone for the rest of the day. It was so early on Monday morning that it was before our dog Chewy would normally be fed. And so, she asked me on Sunday night if I could feed Chewy in the morning. Now, you got to understand, this is very rare. This is very, very rare. I’m probably fifth off the bench when it comes to taking care of the dog at my house. Okay? I’m just not the guy that does that. But the three of them are going to be gone. Mom’s in Florida, so it fell to me. But it’s so rare that I asked Rachel if she would leave me a note to remind me. Did you hear that? A note, singular. I asked her if she would leave me a note to remind me to feed the dog, and I told her I would get it done. And the next morning I go to get my coffee and there on the machine is a is a very nice note reminding me to feed the dog and then let him outside. “Please feed chewy this morning, he gets one scoop of dry food and then he’ll need to go outside.” You see how “feed Chewy” is double underlined there? That’s so I don’t miss the main thesis of the note.

[00:01:17] I can only imagine that was supposed to be read, “Please feed Chewy!” That’s how it read my mind. So, I head for the food and as I passed the sink, I see that there is another note attached to the spout in red letters, “Please feed Chewy one scoop and let him out before you go. Thanks.” Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, well, maybe what if you just went to the coffee or just went to the sink and you didn’t go to the other location? Doesn’t it make sense to cover both locations? Church, these notes are three feet apart. This is not two locations. This is one location. And it’s not just laying there. These are taped to objects she thinks I’m going to look at. Okay, so then I go back to where the food is in the back room and next to the garage door at eye level there is another note. “Please don’t forget to feed Chewy, one scoop of food, then out to go potty.” Look, I know why he has to go. You don’t have to put that in the note. I get the science behind it. And the notes. The notes just kept coming. I expected to find one taped to my steering wheel. I thought I thought she was going to have one pinned to his fur. “I am Chewy, please feed me one scoop of food and then let me outside.”

[00:02:39] Now, to be fair, my track record shows that if you leave one note, there’s still a pretty good chance I’m not going to do that thing. Okay, that is not unwarranted. And yes, it was effective. I did give him one scoop of food and then I did let him outside. The mission was accomplished. At least my part of the mission. I didn’t check with the dog. So, this reminder was what she wanted in front of me. She wanted to make sure that my eyes would be on that mission. She wanted to make sure that there was no way I could possibly avoid seeing the message and filling my mind with that task. And I do need reminders. She’s right. She’s right. I need these reminders in my life. I told her on Monday, you just made the sermon because it’s this seeing and then this intake of information and the unavoidable filling that Jesus describes in our passage today. We’re going to learn today about getting the right stuff in front of our eyes consistently so that it fills our hearts and guides us to where the Lord would have us go, and to accomplish all the things that he would have us accomplish. And the truth is, if you get the wrong thing in front of you consistently, it still fills you.

[00:04:08] The wrong things will fill you too. It fills you with things that will lead you away from Jesus. Our eyes need to be trained on the gospel of Christ, so that our hearts and minds are filled with the light of Christ. So, if you have your Bible, go ahead and open up to chapter 11, Luke chapter 11. We’re going to be in verse 33 today. I will also have it on the screen. It’s just a short passage but it’s so important for understanding how God has designed us to grow. So, we’re going to work through this a sentence at a time, starting with an idea that’s going to sound very familiar to you, but then Jesus is going to move from that familiar description into a description of the relationship between our eyes and our spiritual growth. The light or the darkness that fills us. So, let’s begin with that familiar teaching. “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.” Sounds like something we’ve heard before, doesn’t it? Back in chapter eight, Jesus said, “no one after lighting a lamp, covers it with a jar or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a stand so that those who enter may see the light.”

[00:05:29] So here it’s a cellar and a basket, there it was a jar or under the bed. This is another example where teaching changes slightly when you reuse concepts and illustrations, which Jesus does throughout his ministry. And the reason for the reuse here is that the starting place for his teaching in chapter 11 is the same starting place that we found in chapter eight. The light represents the good news of Jesus Christ. It represents the gospel of salvation. The focus in chapter eight, as it is here in chapter 11 is not so much on being a light to the world of being a light of evangelism to the world. The focus here is on whether you have the light yourself. It’s a self-study whether you yourself have been illuminated by the gospel and saved from your sins by Jesus. And the point there and here is, if you have it, if you have that light in you, if you have that gospel, it will be evident. People will be able to see it. I used the phrase back in chapter eight, it’ll be inescapably evident. There’s no such thing as private Christianity. That doesn’t exist. That’s an oxymoron. There’s not a hidden Christianity. There’s not a private, hidden way you can carry out your following of Christ. There’s no cultural Christianity in which you could be immersed in it and sort of be, uh, kind of immersed in it, but not really living it out.

[00:07:04] Okay? You are either a follower of Jesus who is openly committed to him, and you’re shining light in darkness, or you’re not. Those are the only two categories. So now you can look at your own life, and you can determine whether you’ve been saved by Christ based on the evidence of your open, unashamed commitment to living for Jesus in all things. Friends, if you can’t see love and passion for Jesus pouring out of your life, shining out of your life, you can be sure that other people can’t see it either. And if they can’t see it and you can’t see it, you have good reason to question whether you’ve been saved and transformed by the grace of Christ at all. I have conversations with people who claim to be Christians, but who are bitter and angry and frustrated, and they don’t display any of the fruit that would be evidence of the Holy Spirit working in them. I was just discussing this with a pastor friend this week who’s been trying to help a man who’s so bitter about the past, and it just overflows to anger and lashing out at his family and this fellow pastor of mine said, you know, I asked him if he even knows Jesus at all. This is a guy that’s been claiming to follow Jesus being a Christian for a very, very long time in his life.

[00:08:28] But I had to ask him, do you know Jesus at all? See, if he did, this wouldn’t happen like this. This wouldn’t go on like this. Not for long. It wouldn’t continue. See, the light of the gospel would address that darkness. If the gospel was present. If the light of the gospel was present in this man’s life. It would address that darkness. It would bring a weight of guilt leading to repentance and trust in God’s grace. If the light of Christ is not doing this correcting work in you, if your passion for Jesus is not on full display in ways that others can see, then you should stop telling yourself that you’re fine because you’re not fine. What you’re missing is a full surrender. You’re missing a full surrender to Christ, trusting in his grace and commitment to living your life for his glory. And you need to be honest with where you are spiritually. Only when you’re honest with where you are spiritually can you repent of your sin and give your life over to Christ. The rest of this passage in chapter 11 describes how once you have the light of Christ; you will then grow in it. Now, back in chapter eight, Jesus went on to teach more about one’s identity, revealing the true spiritual identity.

[00:09:52] But here, starting from the same point, he goes on to teach about Christian growth. Your eye is the lamp of your body. Let the mixture of metaphors begin. There is a lot of them. There are a lot of them in this little passage. In what way is the eye, the lamp for your body? For the rest of your body? I find that everything that Jesus says in this passage can be better understood if you can picture this. Try to picture a lamp that can shine either light or darkness. A lamp that can shine darkness is the hard part to picture there. Now obviously a lamp that shines darkness is an oxymoron. Nothing can put out darkness. Darkness is simply the absence of light. But Jesus is mixing two metaphors here. He’s talking about how lamps work with light and how your eyes work with your spiritual growth. So, if you can picture a lamp that somehow emanates darkness. Jesus’ teaching is sort of unlocked here, and he’s saying that our eyes are the conduits through which we perceive and take into our bodies. They’re the gateway into our bodies, which means that they’re the passage to our minds and to our hearts. You ever walk into a dark room and then catch your pinky toe on the corner of a coffee table and despair of your life for a few minutes? You ever do that? You know, just

[00:11:27] curse this life I live, right? And what do you do at that point? What do you do? You throw on the lamp to see whether that coffee table has been moved. Because if it’s been moved, someone’s in a lot of trouble, right? But that’s what you do. You throw on the lamp in order to unveil. Because the lamp unveils, the lamp allows you to perceive what’s in front of you. Jesus is simply moving the perception action of the lamp to the eyes themselves. And that makes sense, because all of us know that our minds and our hearts are shaped by what we see. We read and we think through arguments. We watch media. Everything moves through our senses and becomes part of how we shape our views of the world around us. That’s how the eye acts as a lamp. And here’s where we need to think about that lamp putting out both light and darkness. “When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light. But when it’s bad, your body is full of darkness.” Now, I should clarify for the medical community here that this isn’t actually talking about the health of your eye, it’s talking about what you are choosing to look at. So a healthy eye takes in light that’s around it. And then it acts as a lamp to fill the mind and heart with that light.

[00:12:57] But an unhealthy eye is doing the same thing but is doing it with darkness. It’s taking what’s dark in the world and then shining that darkness into the body. Everything about that person then, is shaped by that darkness. If you’ve ever been in a discussion with a person who is trying to make the case that they are not impacted or affected by the media that they watch, here is Jesus making an argument to the contrary. All of that stuff affects you one way or the other. Everything you take in affects you one way or the other. And you know how we know this? We all know this. Even if you argue against it, you know it’s true because no one debates it if we’re talking about positive things. No one questions it if we’re talking about positive things. Why do we go to school? Why do you go to school? To take in information that changes how we understand the operation of the world, and to learn how to do something useful within that world. Why do you take advice from anybody at all? Why go to them at all? Because you assume they will give you perspective and insight that you don’t currently have that will help you navigate the obstacles of life. For Christians, why do we read the Bible? Why are we taking in the Bible? It’s because we expect to hear something from the Lord that will make us slowly more like Jesus over time.

[00:14:24] That’s why most of you are here this morning using your eyes and ears right now. We absolutely know without question that we are changed for the better when we’re taking in the right stuff. We know that. So of course it works the other way too. Of course it does. The entire point of this short passage full of metaphors can be summed up with one word. Discernment. Jesus is teaching us discernment here. When I became a Christian at the age of 20, I transferred to a Christian college that had just introduced the concept of discernment to its student body. This school had its roots in a denomination that didn’t like the idea of discernment. They liked the idea of rules. They thought rules were much better. They thought that the key to keeping students from sinning was to keep them from doing things through a whole bunch of rules that would prevent young adults from having the opportunity to take in sinful things. Discernment, you see, discernment means that you have the opportunity to make the wrong choice. And so, the school historically had said, let’s just limit the choices. Let’s make sure they don’t have those choices. And when the college started talking about discernment, it wasn’t long before the denomination dropped their affiliation with that school. Now, listen to me. There’s nothing wrong.

[00:15:54] There’s nothing wrong with setting boundaries and taking preventative measures. That’s just part of following Jesus. That’s just every Christian must do some boundary setting as a part of the discipline of walking faithfully with Jesus. It’s what Jesus meant when he used the hyperbole in the sermon on the Mount when he said, cut off your hand if it sins, and gouge out your eye if you look at anything sinful, right? Rules and measures can help to keep us walking in the spirit. But they won’t apart from protecting our hearts through discernment. See, without a discerning eye that identifies the difference between light and darkness, measures by themselves won’t cause your heart to take in the right things. Your eyes and really all of your senses act as gatekeepers for your heart. And if they allow light to come into your body, well, then you’re full of light. And the truth is the same with darkness. So, the question really is, what is it that Jesus would call light? And what would he call darkness? And here’s where a full understanding of the character of a holy God and righteous God becomes very helpful when you’re trying to discern. First John 1:5 says, “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.” So, if you want to know what is completely light, you need to know God. You have to have a focus on God. This means that the more your mind is filled with the knowledge and the character of a completely light, filled-with-light God, the Triune God, the more you can discern those things in the world that honor that God, and those things that are counter to him.

[00:17:52] You become filled with light as you take in, and you dwell on, and you conform to those things that are extensions and expressions of God’s character. The Apostle Paul put it like this. This is from Philippians 4:8. Listen to this. “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” See all of those are descriptions of the characteristics of God that we find principally, primarily in Jesus Christ himself, and that are taught in God’s Word and are echoed throughout all of God’s creation. And so, what Paul is saying there in Philippians four is, you got to let your mind ruminate on those things. And Jesus here in Luke 11 is simply saying, for them to get into your mind, you have to discern them in the world first through your eyes. And now we’re back to my dog notes. Now we’re back to those notes. If you want to know how to discern what you take in, you need God’s Word constantly reminding you at eye level, spaced oddly close together.

[00:19:17] Okay? That’s what you need. You need a high concentration of truth, of light in front of you, constantly forming what it is you see in the world. Because here’s the thing we forget. We are forgetful people. The further you get from the Word of God, the harder it becomes to discern light from darkness. It’s harder to tell because what happens is that they begin to blend together. The more and more your mind is not shaped by God’s Word and the character of God, things become blended together. And what happens is we start to say things as we walk away from God’s Word. We start to say things like, well, doesn’t the Bible say somewhere…? Fill in the blank? Doesn’t the Bible say somewhere that God is love? Doesn’t it say that somewhere? And then what? We fill in our definition of love with whatever we have. Because we don’t have a true understanding of biblical love. We start to relegate the Bible to a system of beliefs that doesn’t have impact on our practice. And if you do that long enough, you can convince yourself that the beliefs in your mind about God have you spiritually secure while you live a double life practicing the darkness of sin. And this is where Jesus’ warning comes in. Therefore, be careful lest the light in you be darkness.

[00:20:48] Can light actually be darkness? Physically, no it can’t. No it can’t. What Jesus is saying here is. Watch out! Watch out! You think you’re full of light. You think you’re growing in your relationship with the Lord? Probably because you do religious things like go to church and you tithe and you do those sorts of things like that. Next week we’re going to read a whole bunch of warnings to very religious people. Do you see that heading? If you have your Bible and you see that heading over the next passage down there at verse 37. My Bible says, woes to the Pharisees and lawyers, the Pharisees and the lawyers. They were the biblical scholars. They were the religious practitioners, setting the standard for how to act like you’re full of light. And Jesus says, watch out, because that light you think you have in you could actually be darkness. If you are living the double life of sin. I read an account this week of a pastor who met with a professing Christian in his church who from the outside looked like a fantastic follower of Jesus, right? He’s got a wife and two kids. He’s really got a good job. He’s a really good provider for his family. He came to all the church programs. He could articulate the gospel, and he could teach it well. Every department of the church was trying to get him to be in their program as a leader. But secretly, this man was given over to lust as his true God. He was constantly cheating on his wife. He watched porn for hours every day, and what he would do in his mind is he would reconcile this by balancing it with his dedication to providing for his family and getting them to church, as if somehow that’s what God requires.  That you would take all of your darkness, just balance it out with enough light and you’ll have what God requires of you, and you’ll be fine. Listen to me. If this is how you think, you will not be fine. You will not be fine because darkness and light don’t mix. Holiness will not tolerate sin. If you are leading a double life, understand there is only a single ending for it. You cannot please God and reject him in your hidden life at the same time. Any light you think that you have is darkness, if that’s what you’re doing, if that’s what you’re practicing. I have heard and read and experienced enough in the church to think that the foolishness of a double life is happening far more than any of us would expect. So how do we fix it? How do we fix this? How do we actually grow? If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.

[00:23:47] We shine the light of the gospel into all the dark parts. That’s what we do. That’s how you fix it. You want to know how to fix this double life thing? You shine the light of the gospel of Christ into every dark part of your life. That’s how we tear down double lives and ensure salvation for our souls. The light of the gospel must completely fill us. And if I trace back Jesus’ argument through this passage, I can see two steps to doing this. The first thing you have to do is you need to call out that part of your life that’s dark. You need to identify it. The part where you have allowed sin to take up residence in your life. This could be a secret sin where you take it in because no one is looking. This could be an anger problem that everyone can see but that you refuse to address. It’s probably an area of your life where you’re making some excuse as to why you don’t need to be completely faithful to Jesus because of reasons that are convincing to you, and you’ve explained away God’s word, disregarded those who are pointing you to Jesus, and you’re giving yourself permission where God’s Word has given you no permission. What do we do with this dark part? What do we do when we have identified this dark part, as Jesus puts here, of our lives? We repent.

[00:25:13] That’s what we do. It’s the only thing you can do. We repent. We bring it into the light of the gospel. We call that sin what it is. We call it rebellion and rejection of the God that we claim to follow. And then we repent. Repentance is admitting our sin and then resting in the forgiveness of Jesus, who paid it all for us on the cross and paid for that sin specifically and turn from it. Violently turn away from that sin. And here’s the promise. The apostle John wrote in first John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” So, you want a New Year’s resolution? You want a real New Year’s resolution, one you’ll actually keep, or at least you should? Here it is. Resolve, by God’s grace, to address the parts of your mind and heart that remain dark. Just go after him. There’s no one here who’s arrived, okay? There’s no one here in the room that’s arrived at Holy Bright. The way Jesus describes it here; our whole lives will be lived in the pursuit of Holy Bright. But that’s the pursuit. That’s the pursuit. Church. That’s what we’re after. The first step is admitting the gospel has not yet shined everywhere it should. And take the gospel to it.

[00:26:41] And the second step, as I see it in Jesus’ argument here, is to get control of our eyes. You know, it does no good to bail water unless we’re going to plug the holes in the boat. I felt like this sermon needed another metaphor. So, there you go. It does no good. We need to get more light in front of our eyes so that we can discern where we’re taking in sin, so that our minds and our hearts are growing in the things that please God. I’m not just talking about; you need to read your Bible more and you need to go back over your Netflix list. Okay? I’m not just talking about those things. It includes those things. It absolutely does. But it is not limited to those things. Everything needs to be addressed, every way we can possibly take everything in. What are you reading? Does it edify your soul with truth? You know, you can read a lot of Bible, and you can read a lot of terrible theology out there. Are you discerning enough to sift through and find the truth? How do you interact with your coworkers? Are you a different guy at work than you are at home? Are both of those different than the church version of you? You might find that you’re living the triple life.

[00:28:00] Listen, church, I want you to hear me on this. These are challenging things. I want you to hear me on this. There is so much grace. There is so much grace to grow in Christ while we stumble imperfectly to walk in holiness. We’re not saved because of our efforts to rid ourselves of sin. That is not what justifies us. Jesus has paid for all of it when it comes to our salvation, Jesus said, it is finished. It is done. There’s nothing more to be paid. And God knows our weakness. He knows that we fail sometimes when we fight temptation. His grace covers imperfections in our marriage. It covers our terrible parenting. It covers our struggles sometimes when we lust or when our eye causes us to covet our neighbor’s stuff, we are not saved by the inner light that we produce, but by the light of Christ that has been given to us by grace. But if you are walking in the light of Christ, if that is where you find your life, your hope, your peace, your joy, if you are walking in the light of Christ, confident in that grace, then you are called to a life of repentance and discernment. I want to close today with the words of the ancient believer, Job. A man described in Scripture as blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. Famously, God allowed Satan to test Job with a level of suffering that most of us couldn’t even fathom.

[00:29:35] He lost his family. He lost all of his possessions; he lost his health. And near the end of the book, as Job wrestles with God, he describes his own righteousness to the Lord in prayer. And while showing Job’s high character is not the point of that book, the way he describes his faithfulness to God is extremely helpful for us. Listen to him describe his own pursuit of the Lord. “I have made a covenant with my eyes. How then could I gaze at a virgin? What would be my portion from God above, and my heritage from the Almighty on high? Is not calamity for the unrighteous and disaster for the workers of iniquity? Does not he see my ways and number all my steps?” Job says I made an agreement. I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at another woman. Why would he do that? Why would he make this agreement with his eyes? It’s because he knew his portion that his blessing for life was coming from the Lord, not coming from wallowing in sin. And he wanted to be full. He wanted to be full of that light. And he knew he couldn’t get there by gazing at sin. I’m going to ask you this morning, have you made a covenant with your eyes? Have you committed yourself to be wholly bright with the light of the gospel? Let’s pray.