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I. THE LIGHT OF THE BODY IS THE EYE.
A. What does this have to do with treasures on earth and treasures in heaven?
1. Jesus has declared that where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
2. So the issue is the heart of man. Your perception of life.
B. Sin upsets the normal balance of man.
1. Man was created a threefold being, spirit, mind and body.
2. He was created in that order. Spirit uppermost.
3. It was through sin that his spirit died and man became inverted and he became a twofold being, body and soul his life is now ruled by the body desires and lusts.
a. One of the greatest gifts that God gave to man is his mind. Created in the image of God He gave to us the capacity to think, reason, and to choose.
b. One of the things that Satan does is to blind the mind of man so that he cannot think rationally. Paul tells us that,
2CO 4:4 The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
c. So fallen man is no longer governed by his mind and rational thinking, but is governed by his lust and desires.
d. The statement of Jesus in
John 3,
JOH 3:19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
JOH 3:20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
JOH 3:21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
e. The worldly man is controlled by his emotions rather than his intellect. That is why he is capable of doing such foolish things. As Solomon observed, "A man is brought to a crust of bread by a whorish woman."
f. God's complaint concerning Israel in
Isaiah 1 is that "they did not consider". This is so true today, led by emotion, a man does not consider the consequences of his folly.
g. This is the answer to those who are not Christians because they say that they cannot intellectually accept the gospel. It is not an intellectual rejection, but an emotional rejection. They love their evil and do not want to give up their sin.
h. They do not approach the truth with their minds, but with their prejudices that come from their heart, which is in worldly things.
i. Their elaborate attempts to justify themselves intellectually is just a attempt to camouflage the godlessness of their sinful heart. The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.
j. Man likes to think of himself as having a giant intellect this is often true of the scientists, but the scientists are just as prejudiced as anyone else, and more and more we read of them falsifying the evidence or manipulate the facts in order to promote their theory or product. This is especially true in the realm of the evolutionary theory, and in their desire to declare that sexual perversion is natural. The Kinsey report is one of the most skewed and flawed research papers ever given by a supposed scientist.
C. Sin blinds man to things that are perfectly obvious.
1. Worldly treasures for instance, it is obvious that they do not continue.
a. Some people take pride in their personal looks. But it is obvious that good looks don't continue. The old Swedish proverb, "Good looks don't last, good cooking does." How so many people struggle with this truth, and try to disguise it with facial lifts, body tucks, and liposuction. But we are all aging, some more than others. but the day is coming for each of us, when time will catch up with us and we will be taken ill with some fatal illness.
b. We used to sing a dirge when I was a child, "Did you ever think, when the hearse went by that someday you were doomed to die?" but the truth of the matter many people do not think of that, there is a feeling of immortality.
c. If our treasure is in our bank account, it is certain ` that we are not going to take it with us. It is quite possible that you will not even keep it while you are here. How many stories there are of lost fortunes.
d. If you just sit down and think about it, you must admit it is true, yet most people do not think about it, and seem to live on the opposite assumption.
e. If we face the truth, we may not be here tomorrow, we may not be here next week. I do not know for sure what the day may hold, but I know that one of these days, I will take my last breath here on earth, and when I do I am going to leave everything here on earth. I will take nothing with me.
1. The lady who wanted to be buried in her pink cadillac.
2. The ancient kings of Egypt were buried with their treasures. When their tombs have been unearthed, the treasures were still here, they did not spend them in the tombs.
D. Sin blinds you to the relative value of things.
1. Take the subject of time and eternity.
a. We are here in the time dimension. We will be in this dimension for less than a hundred years unless we are very unlucky.
b. Upon death we will enter into the eternal realm, where we will be forever and ever.
c. There is no comparison to the relative values of eternity over time. Yet people are blinded to that, and put all of their investments in the time domain. We give our time and efforts to the things of time while ignoring eternity.
2. Take darkness and light.
a. There is no real comparison. They are separate and distinct. They are mutually exclusive. You cannot mix them together.
b. Paul asked, "What fellowship, or oneness has light with darkness." Yet people are always trying to mix the two.
c. People are trying to serve God and Mammon.
3. Living for God's approval or man's approval. Jesus spent the first part of this chapter emphasizing the importance of doing things for the approval of God rather than man.
a. Look how people are so concerned about what man thinks about him, yet they give no concern to what God thinks.
b. The opinion of man controls their actions, while they totally ignore the opinion of God.
4. Many men seem to be far more interested in getting a piece of this world than a piece of heaven.
5. Sin will make you a slave to those things that were intended to serve you.
a. Paul wrote to Timothy,
1TI 6:17 Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy;
b. God has given us so many wonderful gifts, family, homes, He desires that we enjoy them.
c. Sin turns the blessings of God into a curse, for they can become our masters, and we become a slave to those things.
d. Many men are mastered by their appetites, their thirsts and sex.
E. It is the eye that perceives the light. Thus the light of the body is the eye.
1. A person who is blind does not know if the light is on or off.
2. If your eye is single your whole body will be full of light.
a. Jesus is talking about the focus of your life.
b. You cannot mix light and darkness, you cannot serve God and Mammon.
c. The psalmist prayed, "Unite my heart to fear Thy name."
d. That is the main problem of man, the divided heart, the folly of thinking that you can serve God and mammon.
e. James tells us that a double minded man is unstable in all of his ways.
3. "If your eye is evil, then your whole body will be full of darkness, and if the light that is in you is dark, how great is that darkness."
a. How deceptive this is, a man thinks that he is being very rational, he has developed his arguments for rejecting God and His Son Jesus Christ. He is quite sure that he is right in all of his logic. But the truth of the matter is, the light that is in him is dark, sin has blinded his eyes, and he cannot see the truth.
II. THE BOTTOM LINE IS, "YOU CANNOT SERVE GOD AND MAMMON."
A. You are serving God or Mammon one or the other, but you cannot serve them both.
Verse-Reference
Square — [Jhn 1:1 KJV]
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