This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

This is day two together of our look through the second half of Matthew chapter
six. We're looking this week at what Jesus had to teach us about how to manage
our finances, our possessions, our things. Today as we look at verse 22 and 23,
we're going to look at a second decision that you and I can make.

Yesterday we talked about the investment decision, where do I put my treasure?
Today in these verses we look at how do I see my possessions? Where do I fix my
eyes?

This is the interest decision. You know that old phrase, what gets your
attention gets you. It's nowhere more true than with your possessions.

What gets your attention gets you. Listen to what Jesus had to say in verses 22
and 23. The eye is the lamp of the body.

If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes
are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you
is darkness, how great is that darkness?

The first question is, what are these verses about? I know they're about light
and darkness and how you see things. But if you read through Matthew chapter
six, this section, you see he's just talked about money.

We looked at it yesterday. In verse 24, he's still going to be talking about
money for several verses. But then here's verse 22 and 23.

And for our research team, this was the number one question on this chapter.
What is Jesus talking about here? Well, it helps to understand, it helps greatly
to understand that these phrases he uses, eyes are good, eyes are bad, the good
eye and the bad eye, these are Hebrew idioms, these are Hebrew phrases actually
for being generous and for being miserly.

Let me help with this. Let me read you these verses from the complete Jewish
Bible translation, which not only shares the idioms, but also says the meaning
of them as it goes through the New Testament. So in the complete Jewish Bible
translation, verses 22 and 23, the eye is the lamp of the body.

So if you have a good eye, that is, if you're generous, your whole body will be
full of light. But if you have an evil eye, if you are stingy, your whole body
will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is
that darkness?

So the good eye is the generous eye. The bad eye is the grudging eye. Now when
we say you give somebody the evil eye, we're talking about anger as we look at a
person, judgmentalism as we look at a person.

But in this day, the idea of the evil eye was somebody who was grudging with
everything that they had. And Jesus is teaching us here that as the heart
follows the treasure, so the body, the actions you're going to take, follows the
eye. Good eye, evil eye.

Remember this, Jesus is essentially teaching, misers are miserable, the generous
are joyful. And Jesus says, you need to see it this way, the eye is the lamp to
your entire body, your entire way of thinking and way of acting. The way that
you look at things determines the way that you see things.

Now that may seem obvious, but we often forget it. The way that you look at
things determines the way that you see things. So he says, a grudging heart is
like turning off the lights.

And you stumble around in a dark, dark place. And you stumble around in a
darkness that's caused by your own selfishness. I've seen this so many times,
some of you have too.

Many miserly people end up pushing away their best friends because their
grudging heart causes them to start to distrust anyone that's close to them.
They start to see anyone and everyone as someone who wants to take something
from me. They want to get my money from me.

And these same people, they push away their greatest friends and they tend to
sometimes get close to their greatest enemies. Because those enemies tend to
appeal to their desire to get rich quick. I've seen this so many times.

It's such a sad thing when money becomes the reason for all my relationships.
And all of a sudden I have no friends, I have only people who want to get rich
off of me. A grudging heart, it's like turning off the lights in your life.

But a generous heart, it's like opening up the shades, opening up the windows,
letting the sun shine in. Your entire life begins to sparkle with a clarity of
direction. As God talks about this, as Jesus talks to us about this here, he's
teaching us about finances because he cares about our hearts.

God wants you to give, not primarily because it's a blessing to others. It is a
blessing to others, but that's a side benefit that God could actually accomplish
in a thousand other ways. He could rain money down from heaven if he wanted to.

He could use a thousand ways. He did it with manna. He fed people with the bread
that came down from heaven.

He's got a lot of ways to get stuff into people's hands. But he wants you to be
generous. He wants me to be generous because he knows what it does for my heart.

William Barclay said about this passage, "There is nothing like generosity for
giving you a clear and undistorted view of life and people and nothing like a
grudging spirit. For distorting your view of life and people. " Now, let me just
say very carefully, if right now as I'm teaching this, one of the thoughts that
you can't get rid of in the back of your mind is the only reason he's teaching
this is because he wants us to give more to the church.

And maybe, let me just suggest that between you and the Lord, I'm not in the
middle of this one, maybe there's a grudging heart. Maybe it's causing you to
see even what I'm teaching right now to be all about something other than it is,
because I care about what Jesus cares about with this one. I know that God's
going to supply the needs of his church, whether I give or you give or not.

So that's not the issue. The issue is your heart, your life. Is the light coming
in or is the light being kept out?

And we have no idea the damage that a grudging, miserly, non-giving heart does
in our lives. The world of the miser gets smaller and smaller and smaller until
it becomes just them. But the world of the generous, it gets larger and larger
and larger, because everyone that they give to, it enlarges their heart, but it
also connects them relationally to other people.

So the way you look at things determines the way that you see things. But then
the way that you see things determines the way that you do things. Your actions
are a direct result of the way that you look at life.

You're going to inevitably head towards what you set your sights on, inevitably.
So you do this in life. You stop telling yourself, "I'm just looking.

" And you recognize that you're deciding your future. You want some new car,
some new thing, some new house. You know you can't afford it.

I'm just looking. But you keep looking, and you keep looking, and you keep
looking. And then you start wanting, and you start wanting.

And even though you can't afford it, you start trying to figure out, "How could
I afford that? God's taking 10% of my money. God obviously doesn't want me to
have that new house.

Look at what He's doing. And this person over here, they're keeping the lights
on too long. " And look, all of a sudden, every decision in your life, every
action in your life starts to be based on what you've been looking at and what
it's drawn you into.

This is a tough trap. I know right now that I'm talking to you, you're right in
the middle of it. And right now, as I'm talking, you feel a little bit like
unsure, a little shaky, because what I'm saying unsettles your heart.

Because you know that you've been chasing after something materially so strong,
whether you get it or not isn't the issue. You've been chasing after it so
strong, it's caused you to have a grudging heart. And even as I share with you
what Jesus taught about this, you hear the truth in what Jesus is saying, that
grudging heart has started to cut the light out of your life, the love out of
your life, the hope out of your life.

Misers are miserable. The generous are joyful. The Bible teaches that again and
again.

You see that in human experience again and again and again. God has given to you
to be a blessing to others, but also God wants you to give so that He can be a
blessing to you in your life. Let's take a minute to pray together, talk to Him
about this.

Father, we need you in this one. We have to buy things for our family. There are
things that we need.

And then Lord, for some of us, you've given us enough money to buy some of the
things that we want. But Lord, we don't want those things to control our life.
We don't want to chase after some thing so much that it keeps love out of our
lives or joy out of our lives.

So Lord, teach us to practice this antidote to materialism. Teach us to give.
And Lord, if it's difficult to give for us, I pray that you remind us of how
much you've given, how much you've given, and that in your gift for us, you'd
open our hearts.

Lord, you want to shine light into our lives so that you can shine light forth
from our lives. So give us a giving spirit. You're a giving God.

Let us be more and more like you, we pray. We pray it in Jesus' name, amen.