Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. The words of Jesus penetrate us to our very core. Today we'll hear Him speak on our motivations as recorded in Matthew chapter 6. If you want to run life's race ablaze with light, stay with us.
From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, you'll be teaching us from Matthew 6 23 today. Here, Jesus spoke of our lives as being filled with darkness, unless we let in the light of God.
You know, Dave, it's absolutely true. It's possible also for a person to be blind and still have spiritual light. I remember in the church that I attended when I was a boy, there was a blind man, and he loved to give his testimony and say that the first person I shall see someday is Jesus Christ. Isn't that beautiful?
The Bible wants us to be filled with light. Let me ask you a question. Has this series of messages been a blessing to you? This is the last opportunity you will have that we are making this offer for these messages to be yours for a gift of any amount. And by the way, the title is Sharing Secrets with God. For a gift of any amount, these messages can be yours so you can listen to them again and again.
You go to RTWOffer.com, RTWOffer.com, or if you prefer, call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now let's take out time to listen to God's word and be inspired to have those secrets with God. Jesus is saying that your body is really, the light of the body is the eye. If your eye is single, if your eye is clear, as the translation says here, your whole body is going to be flooded with light, but if your eye is a bad eye, that's what it talks about.
It says then your body, your soul, all of you is going to be flooded with darkness if you can flood something with darkness. Now what is it that, what does Christ mean by a good eye? He says the eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your body will be filled with light. You know what a good eye is? Really, the Greek text means it is a generous eye. He's still talking about money.
He's still talking about investments. He's talking about people who have an eye toward generosity, who can who can rejoice with others and who can generously give of their time and their money and their faithfulness and their efforts and they do so with gladness because freely they have received, freely they give. God loves that kind of spontaneity. That's why he loves a cheerful giver.
It's someone who gives because he loves to give. Now that's a good eye. It's a good eye. The Bible says in the book of Romans, let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil.
Cleave to that which is good. A good eye is someone who has a ring of truth and honesty and openness and transparency. Now what about the bad eye? The bad eye is stinginess. It is stinginess. And if your eye is stingy, if that glass, using the analogy, is glass that has been, what shall we say, smeared.
If it is glass that is colored and therefore the light is diffused, then Jesus Christ said your whole body, the real you, is filled with darkness. Of course there are other things also other than stinginess, but since stinginess is the primary meaning, have you ever lived with someone who is really, really miserly and stingy? Have you lived with someone like that? Some of you perhaps married somebody like that and so you know right well that you've had to live with them and there's something about they begrudge the success of everyone else. They're always thinking about their own needs, whether or not they have deep needs or not, whether or not their situation is as bad as they make it out to be.
The point is they are always, always begrudging generosity. It's a darkness and their whole eye is filled with darkness and so is their souls. There are other ways also that we can be filled with darkness and that is if our eye is filled with prejudice and jealousy and anger and moral impurity and all of these things, the window of the soul is therefore cut off from the light. And Jesus said make sure that your heart is right and your eye is right.
Remember it's symbolic. I mean it's not, I mean there are blind people and they've never seen the light and yet their souls are pure and open and filled with light, but Jesus is saying that your eye, the way in which you view things determines actually the amount of light in your body. My wife and I have been to Mount Blanc which is really on the border of Switzerland and France as I recall, one of the tallest mountains in the, in all of Europe if I remember correctly and it's gorgeous, beautiful hill and you can ski there for miles and miles and miles and probably no trees as I remember on so you can probably even make it all the way down. But there's a friend of mine who says that he's been there many times and there's a house, a beautiful house, one of those nice mountain homes facing Mount Blanc with all of a whole array of windows but the shutters are always closed. Now if you like mountains and if you like beauty you wonder why do they keep these shutters closed? You know that that's the way some lives are. Here is God in all of his beauty and all of his light, in all of his brilliance who can come into our lives, who can cleanse us from sin, who can deliver us from anger and stinginess and a miserly small thinking spirit and who can take all that in and he can flood us with light but oftentimes our shutters are closed and we are determined that no one shall ever open them and there we are, there we are in our own dark dank soul. Could I urge you today just open your life to God, just open it to God, just simply say Lord I want to open my life to you, I want you to show me what you see, yes Lord you've got the files, show me so that we can deal with all of the things that promote the darkness, the dishonesty, the deceit, the lack of joy, the lack of spiritual freedom, the lack of generosity, deal with me. Now you'll notice that Jesus says if the light which is in you is darkness, in other words if your eyes just closed to the light, how great is that darkness, how great it is. Now if the first test that we've taken is the test of our affections, the second test is the test of our attitude, it's the test of our attitude and it has to do whether or not we're full of light or we're full of darkness.
Let me give you a third test that Jesus gives us and that is the test of our actions, our actions. No one can serve two masters either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. Notice that Jesus is still thinking about money, he's still thinking about it. And what he's saying is is that when it comes to serving if we're going to serve the things of this world and mammon or money and is representative of all the things of this world, if we're going to do that Jesus said just understand that you can't serve God too. The world passeth away and all of its lusts but he who does the will of God abides forever. And the scripture is very clear that says he who loves the world is an enemy of God. You just can't do it and and you and I our hearts are so deceitful and they have thought of so many different ways that we think we can pull it off.
Actually when you look at this in the Greek text it is much more, much stronger than than the English translations. What it really means is that no man can be a slave to two owners, to two owners. You know that you can't dance to two different tunes simultaneously.
That is if you're into dancing I don't think that you can do that. You can't take orders from two different military officers simultaneously and and we can't serve God on the one hand and we can't serve money on the other hand and think that we are pulling it off. If we think that we are pulling it off because we are serving both we are actually not serving God, actually not serving him. And so what Jesus is saying is this, look slaves in the Old Testament times and the New Testament times those slaves did not have many rights. The owner could do as he wished with his time of discretion and his free time but but the slaves couldn't. They had to just do whatever the master told them. They were sometimes misused to be sure but but they had the responsibility of somehow eking out an existence with that kind of a lifestyle and Jesus is saying that just as slavery in those times could be harsh and cruel and demanding the serving serving money could be the very same way and oftentimes it is and he says you cannot serve God and money simultaneously.
I'd like to help us get a handle on this by by making a couple of observations here from the text that Jesus has given us. First of all slavery is not an option. Slavery is not an option but choosing our master is choosing our master is. You'll notice that we are either slaves of God and that is a privilege by the way. Paul says I am a bond slave of Jesus Christ. I am obedient to God and that is the path of freedom.
That is the path of fulfillment. That's the path of of sensing that you're doing something that is going to survive life but then there's also another path and that is serving ourselves serving ourselves and and both are slavery. Here's a man who thinks to himself that he is not a slave but but he has outbursts of anger that he cannot possibly control things that just overwhelm him. He is consumed by jealousies that he cannot bring under control. In fact he takes those jealousies and he actually magnifies them and and he thinks that he is in charge of his life and he is just as much a slave as those who were slaves in the Roman Empire because when you serve yourself that is the worst kind of slavery, worst kind of slavery.
So slavery is not an option. The question is whose slave are you going to be? The Bible is very clear that that either we are serving our lusts and our desires and our worldly pursuits and those drive us and throttle us and leave us where we are or else we're serve God choose your master.
Secondly obviously we can only have one master and not two. Now sometimes in our individual life we may slip and we begin to serve a worldly master. We may fall into sin and serve the devil or serve ourselves but those who are committed to Jesus Christ they bounce back. They come to God in confession. They admit their need. They are broken in his presence.
They are grieved because they have grieved God. But there's no way that you can continue doing that and at the same time be serving both God and the devil. It simply cannot be done. Remember that race that I've told you about the Greeks used to have where two horses used to run together and you stood with one foot on one horse and the other foot on the other horse and then the horses galloped together in a duet and that was very good because when they began to separate you had a decision to make. You had a decision to make. The Bible says that a double-minded man is unstable in all of his ways. In all of his ways. He's unstable at work because he's dishonest because he's double-minded and he can't concentrate on God.
He has only himself to think about. He's unstable in his home. He's unstable and unpredictable at church. You can't depend upon him. If he says he's going to be at a place he's going to have a certain ministry. You can't be sure that he's going to be there because a double-minded man has instability in all these different ways and Jesus said choose you this day, quote the words of Joshua, whom you will serve because you cannot serve both.
You can't do it. And so the bottom line of what Jesus is asking us to do in our actions and we've talked about the fact that there's the test of the affections. Who do we love?
Where do we put up our treasures? And that of course is something that can be done secretly indeed secretly and there's secret giving and there's secretly taking care of people. There's also the test of our attitude. If we have a generous spirit we'll look for opportunities to give, to be involved, looking for opportunities to sacrifice.
But the third test is also the test of our actions. We'll be looking for opportunities to obey God, to obey God. God sometimes leads us to situations in which we have sermon illustrations that come to us just when we need them. Last night my wife and I were with some other pastors and their wives.
We get together every few months to eat together and to think about things and oftentimes just enjoy fellowship. But a pastor there was telling me that that his church was not giving the way they should be giving. And so he called a day of repentance. He said we were being disobedient to God and he said as a result of getting rid of that darkness, that dark spirit, the shutters closed in the windows, he said God has done a new work among us. He's done a new work among us.
And the whole point of this message has to be emphasized the fact that God looks at the heart and says to us again and again, give me thine heart. Give me all who you are and I will take care of the rest. But you have to come in honesty. You can't dispel the darkness unless you come and open your life to me, unless you're willing to face the music as it were, unless you're willing to say yes, I'll make this right and this right and I'll do whatever you ask me to do. If it means going back to people whom I have wronged, if it means making those things right, I will do all that.
Why? So that I may have only one master and serve him with single-mindedness and purity and devotion and commitment. Remember the children of Israel in Egypt, the difficulty they had, God brought them out of Egypt, brought them out of Egypt, but he could not get Egypt out of their hearts and they kept saying, we want to go back, we want to go back, we want to go back. God says today, why don't you come to me and just let me change your heart.
We sang about that a moment ago, didn't we? Change my heart, Lord, make it ever vine. Take it and all of the aspects of my life, Lord, I want to give it to you. I want to give it to you.
God give me that heart check. You know, there's some of you who may be here today who've never received Christ as Savior and even accepting him as Savior is sometimes spoken of in the Bible as having been given the light. And you remember the words of the song, and can it be one of the stanzas says long my imprisoned spirit lay in nature's night and in the dungeon, and then it says thine eye diffused a quickening ray, the dungeon opened and filled with light. That there, Charles Wesley is describing his conversion when God came into his life and changed him and took his dark soul and granted him the gift of light.
Bottom line, test your heart today, its affections, its attitudes, its actions. Give God everything that he points out to you. Join me as we pray. Just before we pray, I hope that you have seen the reasonableness, the reasonableness of what Jesus is asking because it's the best investment.
It makes the most sense and brings the most happiness. As we've emphasized, people who will look for happiness are really looking for holiness and they don't know it. Whatever God has talked to you about today, would you just give it to him? Father, today we say with Robert Robinson, come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy praise. Streams of mercy never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise. We ask today, Father, that hearts that have been out of tune with you for whatever reason may be brought today in line with your holy will. Lord, we do desire to walk with you with integrity and purity. We do desire, Lord, that all of the double-mindedness that we struggle with would be set aside. Reveal yourself to us, Lord, because that is our great need. And we ask, Lord, that through your word and through your spirit that that shall be done. In Jesus' name. Amen.
Amen. Well, my friend, this is Pastor Lutzer. You know, I grew up in a Christian home. Early in life, I received Jesus Christ as my savior. And one of the dangers is that these truths can become very familiar, too familiar. And we forget how beautiful it is and how miraculous it is that we come to saving faith in Jesus Christ. And certainly Wesley emphasized that when he talked about our lives being like a dungeon and then suddenly you have light shining.
Have you received Christ as savior? You know, this series of messages entitled Sharing Secrets with God really does, I believe, enable us to walk with God. And today is the last day that we are making these resources available to you. That is this series of messages so that you can listen to them repeatedly and share them with your friends. Here's what you do. You go to RTWOffer.com. For a gift of any amount, by the way, these messages can be yours.
Go to RTWOffer.com. Or if you prefer, you can call us at 1-888-218-9337, Sharing Secrets with God. It's time again for another chance for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question you may have about the Bible or the Christian life.
Dr. Lutzer, we have a question today from Glenn who lives in Illinois. Many years ago, I left a very successful job to open my own business. Unfortunately, due to 9-11 and other reasons, my business failed after five years.
I lost our family savings and returned to the corporate workplace. My wife has never forgiven me for being so irresponsible. I've lived with this guilt and shame for years.
Every day, I'm depressed over it. My question is, if we make a decision based on what we feel is God's will, but it brings negative consequences, does that mean the decision was out of God's will? Well, Glenn, I'm so thankful for your question, but I need to confess that it is not an easy question to answer because all of us have made decisions that we thought that these decisions were God's will, and yet they turned out very negative. Now, just having read your question and listened to it, I need to say that I'm not so sure that you were out of God's will in beginning that business. Maybe God wanted to teach you some lessons as a result of its failure that you could not have learned if you had just been a complete success.
I always say that failure oftentimes is a much better teacher than success. But now back to your wife. She needs to lay down that bitterness. I pity you if she continually reminds you of the mistake that you made. Once it's dealt with between you and her, once the confession has been made, yes, it was an unwise decision. She needs to put all of that behind her. And if she doesn't, she needs to be reminded of what God does when we sin.
Does he constantly remind us and say, well, you know, that was sure a silly decision. I quote, forgive you, but I'm going to continue to throw it up in your face. No, God doesn't do that. And the Bible says that we should forgive even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven us. Your wife needs to get on her knees and she needs to receive God's forgiveness for her attitude. Then she needs to come to you and get your forgiveness too, because both of you are believers. Both of you can move on from here and you don't need to let the past destroy your future.
Final word. I know a man, a very close friend of mine who had $800,000 that he lost as the result of a company making unwise decisions. I met with him recently. His life is full of joy. And he says that he learned things as a result of this experience that he could have never learned in any other way. He isn't angry at those who made bad decisions. He sees it all as part of God's plan and he's decided to move on.
And you and your wife need to do the same. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Over 2,000 years ago, Jesus was born in a small country in the Middle East. That birth became the turning point between B.C. and A.D. Next time on Running to Win, Erwin Lutzer begins a Christmas series on the baby who changed the world, taken from the Gospel of Luke. Our first teaching will focus on the fact that he redeems the world. Running to Win is all about helping you understand God's roadmap for your race of life. Thanks for listening today. For Dr. Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
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