The lesson this morning will
be taken from Luke chapter 11. Luke chapter 11 and verses 33
through 36. The subject of these verses is the
light in you. Let's read these verses together
and then we'll Let's begin our lesson. Luke 11, verse 33. No man, when he hath lighted
a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel,
but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light. The whole purpose of the candle
is light. The light of the body is the
eye. Therefore, when thine eye is
single, thy whole body also is full of light, but when thine
eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness. Take heed,
therefore, that the light which is in you, which is in thee,
be not darkness. If thy whole body, therefore,
be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full
of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give
thee light. Now this is the third in this
chapter of three parables. And they were given to both his
disciples and to those unbelieving Pharisees who called him a servant
of the devil. Hard to believe that somebody
would look the Son of Man in the face and called him a devil. And this parable, as the one
previous to it, sets before us the true disciple of Christ and
the religious hypocrite. So the lesson here is about life. At the very outset of the Word
of God, Moses writes by divine inspiration, telling us that
Everything that is was without form and void and darkness was
upon it. There was no comprehension of
anything. No comprehension of God, no comprehension
of anything created, no comprehension of a purpose or a reason behind
anything. It was nothing. It was all void. Now God had purpose to do something. But before he did anything, he
said this, let there be light. And there was light. There was
light, not a physical light. That didn't take place until
the fourth day. On the fourth day, he created
the sun and the moon and the stars. But the light in Genesis
1-3 is the light of revelation. It's why there is a creation
and what creation is here for, what it's all about. It's the
light of God's redemptive glory in Christ. And He's going to
build that into everything. He's going to build that into
creation. He's going to build that into the creatures that
He creates. This light of the revelation
of God's redemptive purpose in Christ, it's going to shine in
everything. In everything. In 2 Corinthians 4-6, Paul said
this about the gospel he preached. And when that revelation come
to a believer, he said, for God who commanded the light to shine
out of darkness, way back yonder in Genesis 1-3, has shined in
our hearts that same revelation. He shined in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. That was the purpose in creation
and that's the purpose in redemption. Except in redemption we see the
full glory of God. He gives us the light of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And as that light in
the beginning began to manifest the redemptive purpose of God
and the glory of his person, even so the light of the gospel
brings his glory into view in our hearts. And his meaning is
clear. He's talking to these Pharisees
and he's talking to his disciples. I am the light of the world.
These that I've chosen and sent out to preach, they're the light
of the world. as the light of the world. And
he said, I'm the object of faith and the source of every good
work and the motive behind it. That light, we're told in Colossians
115, is Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn
of every created thing. In him were all things created
that are in heaven, that are on earth, visible and invisible.
Whether you're talking about thrones or dominions or principalities
or powers, all things were created by Him, now listen, and for Him. And He's before all things and
by Him all things have a continuance, all things consist. And there's
nothing in creation that does not in some form or fashion picture
and testify the person and work of Christ. I'm convinced of that.
You know, I drove up through the Delta. I got the same thing
when I went to Lake Charles the other day except it was love
bugs. The front of my truck looked like a love bug pizza. It was
just covered with black bugs. But I was traveling to Danville
from here one year and I drove up through the Delta and it was
that time of year for grasshoppers. And I'm telling you, I had to
stop at the first gas station I come to and get me a scrubber
and a bottle of Windex and some towels to get the bugs off my
window. I couldn't see anything. And
you just, you see those grasshoppers, they're so common, they're everywhere,
they're like a plague. He said, I am he that sitteth
upon the circle of the earth. That's what Christ said. And
all the inhabitants thereof are grasshoppers. grasshoppers. Even the grasshopper has something
to do with the glory of God. And you can go on and on with
the different things, the lice and all these things that he
used in his curse upon Egypt. There's nothing in creation but
does not in some form or fashion picture and testify of Christ,
but especially light and darkness. I don't know anything he uses
more often when he's talking to sinners and talking to his
disciples than light and darkness. And Christ is the very light
of God. Everything apart from Christ
is darkness. Paul said, for the invisible
things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen,
being understood by what? The things which are seen. And why did he say such a thing?
That you might be without excuse. Creation testifies of a sovereign
God. There's too much order in it
to be accidental. It's ordered. Order, just look
at the order of it. It's amazing. And how dependent
is the earth upon the sun? The sun, our natural sun, is
a picture of Christ. It's figurative of Christ. And
how dependent is the earth upon the sun? No sun, no orbit. No
sun, no gravity. No heat, no plant life, no life
at all. Even so, it is in Christ. Outside of Christ, nothing. Nothing. And in this parable,
our Lord refers to Himself and His people as a lighted candle. What's the purpose of a candle?
As far as I know, it just has one purpose. It creates light. It shines. You light it and it
shines. If you want darkness, you don't
light the candle. It's just leaving it alone. In
Revelation 1, He tells us that He walks through the candlesticks. He walks through the candlesticks.
At the end of the chapter, he tells you what the candlesticks
are. That's his churches. That's his churches. What are
they for? They're the pillar and ground
of the truth. They're lighted candles. Where else are you going
to learn it? You ain't going to learn the
truth out on the river. You might learn how to fish, but you ain't
going to learn anything about God. You're not going to learn
that up in the mountains, as beautiful as they are. You're
going to learn it in his church. That's where the light is. He's described as shining as
the sun in its strength. And he calls his pastor stars
and he carries them in his hand. Now I wanted to take some time
and show you what these things are so you can see a little better
what he's saying in these parables. And I have three things that
I hope to have time to talk about this morning, how this light
enters into men, and the entrance of an evil light, and how that
happens, and then the effects of both. So let's begin here. How does the light enter into
a man? Well, it enters through the eye. You know, David talked about
how wonderful, when he considered himself and other men how wonderful
this creation of man is. Well, God created this man and
gave him things that are so figurative of him that they're just undeniable. When he talks, he said, blessed
are your ears, for they hear. Blessed are your eyes, they see. It enters through the eye and
that light is not a natural light that he's talking about like
the sun and the stars. Those things are just symbols
of the light. God's light is spiritual light
and it requires spiritual eyes. The light of the body is the
eyes. Well, what do eyes do? They see. But they also reflect what they
see within. And the mind processes what it
sees and it acts accordingly. Now think about what I do see.
I see this floor. My mind tells me it's solid.
It'll hold me up so I can walk. I look around and I see stars. I see signs of thunderstorms
or whatever I see. My mind processes it. Well, spiritual
eyes see the things of God. Except you be born again, you
cannot see. He's talking about perceiving,
understanding. You cannot perceive the kingdom
of God, except you be born again. But if you be born again, you
have spiritual eyes. Now you can see what nobody else
can see. I'd like to know how many times
I've talked about the gospel to men and they looked at me
and said, where did you get that? I see it, don't you see it? Perception. The light of the
body is the eyes and they reflect what they see within. Nothing comes in through the
eyes, it's not processed by the mind and understood by the heart.
I'm told that people at sea, and especially people that's
wandered in great deserts, and they've been there for a long
time, that they'll look and see what they call a mirage. And
what a mirage is, according to the dictionary, it's a twisting,
a distortion of light. and they'll look and they'll
be out in the middle of the desert and they'll see a big lake or
they'll see water and they'll rush to it and when they get
there there's nothing but sand. Because of some twisted diffraction
of light something appears to be there that's not. And the
eye in our text is a source of the understanding of things.
Our Lord gave to His disciples the parable of the sower. The
sower went out to sow. He gave to them after that the
parable of a treasure hid in a field. And then a merchant
man seeking godly pearls. And then as a great net cast
into the sea. He gave them all these parables.
And they were just looking at it. And when He finished, He
turned to them and He said, Have you understood these things? Did your mind process what those
spiritual eyes or ears heard? Have you understood these things?
And I'd say that to you this morning. I've been preaching
to you all here now for 15 years. Do you understand what I'm saying? If you have spiritual ears, you
do. The eye can only process what
it sees. Are you with me so far? Now over
in 1 Corinthians 2 verse 7, Paul writes, But we speak the wisdom
of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained
before the world under our glory, which none of the princes of
this world knew, for had they known it, they would not have
crucified the Lord of glory. Now watch this. But as it's written,
eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the
heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that
love him. But God hath revealed them unto
us by his Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all
things, yea, the deep things of God. How does the light of God enter
into man? By spiritual light shining upon
his soul through God-given spiritual eyes. Secondly, let's try and
understand how this evil light gets in. He said, if thy eye
be evil. Well, if the eye has to do with
understanding, and I have no understanding, And then somebody
comes along and deceives me, tells me a lie. I don't know
if it's a lie or not. But he's a pretty good guy. I've known him a long time. I
don't think he'd lie to me. Well, maybe not on purpose. He'd
deceive too. If the blind lead the blind,
they'd both fall in the ditch. But you didn't know he was blind.
And you didn't know you were blind. And you follow him like
you can see in a clear day and you won't wander over there and
fall in a ditch. If I now be evil, thy whole body
is full of darkness. Matthew adds this. If the light that be in thee
be darkness, how great is that darkness? If my understanding
had not been given to me as a gift of God. And I'm still trying
to reason all these things out with natural reason. I'm still
trying to follow along and make my decisions based on natural
reasoning. Oh my soul, how great is that
darkness. How can that be? Well, it can
be because the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit
of God because they're foolishness to him. He sees them with these
eyes. He hears them with these ears.
But he processes them with a natural mind, a carnal mind that's enmity
against God, and he rejects everything, especially the very basic things
of salvation. He rejects them. Actually, they
infuriate him. Now we're not born with spiritual
eyes. I'm told that natural men walk according to the course
of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air,
the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.
They walk, Ephesians 4, 17, in the vanity of their mind, having
their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life
of God. What is eternal life? It's to
know God. But they're alienated from the
life of God through the ignorance that's in them because of the
blindness of their heart. What is this evil light? Well,
it's a twisting, a distortion of the truth. It's a twisting
of the light to make it appear to be one thing when it's another. Listen to these verses. Some
shall depart from the faith. They come, they sit, they hear,
they seem to rejoice, they're baptized, they do all these things,
they have confessed Christ, they seem to follow Him, that's what
they talk about, they get jealous for a period. But then one day
some depart from the faith giving heed to seducing spirits and
doctrines of devils. Speaking lies and hypocrisy,
having their conscience seared with a hot iron, they get gospel
hardened. You preach all you want to, it
just goes right in one ear and right out the other. They give heed to fables, desiring
to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor whereof
they affirm. Evil light comes in and takes
up its place in the heart. And then that guy, believing
that he has the very light of God, he gets up and he begins
to forbid to marry. That's what Paul said. Forbidding
to marry. Abstaining from meat. You can't
eat that, especially on Friday. Don't eat that on a good Friday.
I don't know if you know this or
not, but there ain't nothing good about Friday. Nothing. It's
just Friday. And meat's meat. You remember,
in Peter's dream, there was all kinds of meat. And every bit
of it, under the law, he was forbidden to eat. And he said,
no, no, I'm not going to eat that. The Lord told him to eat
it. He said, no, I ain't going to eat that. He said, don't you
call unclean what I've cleansed. But they forbid to eat meats,
keeping of holy days, Sabbaths, and the list just goes on and
on and on. They believe in free will, legalism,
ceremonialism, spiritualism, sensualism. Evil light comes
from satanic ministers of righteousness, self-righteousness. And they
have a zeal of God. They build denominations and
cathedrals and schools and hospitals and on and on it goes. They come
from sea and land to make one proselyte like unto themselves. They have a zeal of God, but
it's not according to knowledge. That's what we're talking about.
It's not according to knowledge, for they being ignorant of the
righteousness of God and going about to establish their own
righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness
of God. For Christ is the end of the
law for righteousness. Do you ever want to believe that?
Evil light enters through the natural eye. And then lastly,
let's look at the effects of both. First, the evil eye. When thine eye is evil, thy body
also is full of darkness. The whole thing is Ignorance. I'll never forget when the Lord
first revealed the truth to me. I just sat down and it just took
the wind out of my sails. And I sat down and I'm looking
back over years and years and years. I mean, from the time
I was old enough to understand anything. My dad was sitting
me on a feed sack over at the missions and we were listening
to him preach over there. And we'd go to church three or
four times a week. And I'm looking back at all of
that, and all the eye walking, and all the praying, and all
the singing, and everything that I ever did was just dumb. Isn't that the conclusion Paul
came to? He said, you think you got something
to trust in? My soul. He had it all. He was a Jew. I'm a Hebrew of the Hebrews.
I'm in the tribe of Benjamin. I circumcised. I did everything. If touching the ball, I'm blameless. Now, when I saw Christ, when
that light filled my heart and my mind, all these things become
dung, and I took them out and threw them on the dung heap.
But I tell you, when you do, you'll take the wind out of your
sail. That's when my dad first started. The Lord gave him knowledge of
the truth. He came to Christ. He was older
than I am now. He was about 78. Very unusual. God saves a religious man who
spends his life in religion. But he did. And he sat down and
he just looked at me one day. He was just sitting in his chair
with a blank stare. And I said, what's going on,
Dad? It's so hard for me to believe
that all of that stuff back there was for nothing. Take the wind out of your sails.
We were having a car wash for the church one time and we was
expecting four or five cars, you know, to come in. We were
going to clean them all up, wax them and everything, raise some
money for the church. We didn't know any better. But
that ain't what happened. We had car after car after car
after car and after about ten and a half hours of washing cars,
we all come in the house and we were sitting around talking
about these things. And my wife was sitting over
there, she had long hair and it was just wet and hanging down
in her face. We were talking about salvation
by grace and she looked at me and she said, you mean we did
all this for nothing? Yeah, yeah. Takes the wind out
of your sails, doesn't it? That's that evil light. That's
what men can't see. Without spiritual eyes, you tell
them their best prayer is an abomination to God? Read Isaiah chapter 1. He said,
you'll raise your hands the way you see them do it on TV. All
they do is turn the TV on Sunday morning. They're out there raising
their hands. They're swaying with the music. God said, when
you raise your hands, it's an abomination to me. Abomination. All our righteousnesses, Isaiah
said, are filthy rags. That's the evil life. I tell you this sometimes, you
can't tell what you don't know anymore than you can come back
from somewhere you haven't been. But it's also true, you can't
discern what you hear without ears of faith. You can't do it. You can't do it. And our Lord
said, this is the condemnation. You won't see the condemnation,
the judgment of this world. Light has come into the world. And men love darkness rather
than light because their deeds are evil. What deeds? He ain't talking about drunkenness.
I'm not going to erase it out of the category, but I'm just
saying that's not what he's trying to say there. He's talking to
religious folks. Your deeds are evil. Your motives
are wrong. Your object's wrong. Everything's
wrong. It's upside down. Romans 3.21 talks about deeds that we think are good
deeds. Church going, church membership,
tithing, law, obedience, self-sacrifice, all which are good if done for
the right reason and done with the proper motive. But when done
to make yourself acceptable to God, or to win God's favor, or
get you a ticket into glory, whatever it is you're trying
to do, it's an abomination before God. And self-righteous men hear the
gospel and they despise it. They run from the light and they
get back into the darkness where they can comfortably practice.
what they think they know. Oh, but if I, I be single. What's
he talking about there? In 2 Corinthians 11, 3, he said,
I fear lest by any means as a serpent beguile thee through his subtlety,
so your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in
Christ. Now he's not talking about simplicity
like we would understand it in our boiled down understanding
of the human language. We've distorted it so bad. What
he's talking about here is singleness. Singleness. The word simplicity means singleness. Everything God has for sinners
is in Christ. In Him dwelleth all the fullness
of the Godhead bodily. And we're complete in Him. Everything
God has ordained for us to know is revealed in Him. No man knoweth
the Father save the Son, and He to whom the Son will reveal
Him. He says, Of God are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is
made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
That according as it's written, He that glorieth, let him glory
in the Lord. If thou not be single, not moved
away from Christ, not moved away from the singleness of God's
revelation, thy whole body shall be full of light. Standing upon the chief cornerstone. I told our folks this a lot.
You stand behind that cornerstone. And you can look all the way
back into eternity past. Clear back to the giving of the
covenant. Clear back to when God chose
you and predestinated you under the adoption of sons. You can
see all the way back. And then you can turn and you
can see all the way into eternity future. That's spiritualizing. And how do you see it? Standing
with Christ. You can see it all. If our gospel be hid, Paul said,
it's hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world
hath blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light
of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine unto them. The problem in this world is
not a lack of light. It's the absence of eyes. The absence of eyes. And the
answer of our Lord to all that it concerns, both disciples and
hypocrites. You want to know about salvation?
The light just keeps on shining. That's the answer. The light.
The light. The light just keeps on shining.
It's unaffected by the darkness. It's undeterred by the darkness. It's unchanged by the darkness.
Oh, may the Lord help this poor sinner to shine with the light
of Christ so I can go be with him and stand in that heavenly
light. Thank you.