Sermons

So, if you would join me, open your Bibles to Luke chapter 11. Luke 11 will be our focus this morning, and we'll be looking together at verses 33-36. Anytime we open God's word we get to hear from God Himself, so I'm eager to show you what God has for us this morning. Luke 11, starting in verse 33:

Jesus says, "No one, after lighting a lamp, puts it away in a cellar or under a basket, but on the stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. 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." This is the very word of God to us this morning. Let's pray and ask for His help.

[Prayer] Father, would You shine the light of Your word on our hearts this morning? Grant us eyes to see and ears to hear so that we would not only observe Your truth, God, but so that we would obey it. Reveal Yourself to us this morning by the power of Your Spirit, we ask in the name of Your Son, Jesus. Amen. [End]

It was midnight on September 26, 1983, when a man named Stanislav Petrov sat down in his office to cover the night shift, and just 15 minutes later, Petrov's worst nightmare came true. He tells the story. like this: "The siren howled, but I just sat there for a few seconds, staring at the big red screen with the word 'launch' on it. The level of reliability of that alert was highest. There could be no doubt America had launched a missile. A minute later, the siren went off again. The second missile was launched, then the third and the fourth and the fifth. All I had to do was reach for the phone to raise the direct line to our top commanders, but I couldn't move."

You see, Petrov was a duty officer in the Soviet Union at the time, and his job was to man this warning system that alerted his country to foreign missile strikes. And that night, he got five alerts of nuclear missile strikes coming from the United States that would reach his country in just a matter of minutes. And Petrov knew that if he had picked up that phone and alerted his commanders, they would retaliate immediately. They would launch their own nuclear missiles and plunge the world into nuclear warfare.

Thiry years later, after this incident, Petrov admitted that his decision was a 50/50, but he had a hunch that those warnings were false alarms. And on that hunch, Petrov just left the phone where it was and he simply waited to either hear the sound of explosions in the distance or silence. And they were, indeed, false alarms. Some historians call Petrov the man who may have saved the world that day because a nuclear war of that scale would have wiped out entire populations. If he had believed that false alarm, there's actually a good chance that you and I don't exist today.

Countless lives were threatened that day, and what made all the difference was knowing the truth from a lie. You see, knowing truth and acting in light of it is so often the difference between life and death. That was the case for Petrov in 1983 in Soviet, Russia, and that is the case for you this morning as you sit here in this room. Whoever you are, what you believe to be true will be the difference between life and death. Spiritually speaking, that is the reality that Jesus wants to press into your heart this morning, that what you believe to be true is the fork in the road for your soul between life and death.

I know we just met, but I know that every single soul in this room needs to discern truth according to the word of Christ. And for some of you, that means rejecting the lie that sin would ever be worth it. For others, it means holding onto the truth that God is a good and a gracious God despite the trial you find yourself in, or as you wonder with anxiety over the future. Maybe for some of you this morning, that means believing for the very first time that Jesus is exactly who He says He is, that He is the Son of God who saves sinners, and that you are a sinner in need of a Savior. You see, knowing Jesus for who He is will be the difference between life and death. So whoever you are this morning, wherever you come from, Jesus wants you to test what you believe to be true against the absolute truth of His word. And we're going to see Jesus Himself make that point in just four parts in our text this morning.

Let's start together in verse 33. We'll call it "the picture." Verse 33 we'll call "the picture," and that's because Jesus gives us a picture, an illustration of a lamp. Let's read verse 33 together again.

Jesus says, "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." And Jesus' illustration here is really not a difficult one to understand. In fact, Jesus has used this exact illustration before, you'll remember, in the Sermon on the Mount when He talks about Christians, us shining as lights into the world. And the idea is simple. It's that covering light is counterproductive to what light is. Covering light defeats the purpose of light. Light is meant to shine, "so that" – verse 33 – "people may see it." It's meant to be seen. It's meant to be received. No one in their right mind would ever make light just to cover it. And so in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, "Therefore, as Christians, let your light shine before men so that they may see and glorify God."

In our verse, the concept of light is the same. It's meant to be seen. It's meant to be received. But in this context, Jesus is actually making a completely different point. It's not about how you shine light into the world, it's about how He shines light into the world. And that's crystal clear from the context. If you just even flip through the last few pages of Luke, you'll see that Jesus has been making Himself known for chapters now.

Luke 11:14, for example, Jesus casts out a demon. Look at Luke 9:10. He feeds five thousand people. Luke 8:22, Jesus calms a storm and He treats it like a pet dog. I could go on with healings and miracles. There's even a resurrection in Luke from Jesus' power, and His point is clear: you cannot miss Him. Jesus is saying, "I'm not hiding. I came to earth to be seen. I am like a light out on a lampstand so that the whole world can see Me.

You see, verses 33-36 in Luke 11, they're really like a conclusion of a mini sermon Jesus has been giving since back in verse 29. Last week, you'll remember my good friend Isaias who you know is my good friend because of how smoothly I can say his name: Isaias. I've had a lot of practice. But you'll remember last week that he showed you the beginning of this mini sermon from Jesus.

Verse 29, Jesus condemns what He calls an evil generation. And He calls them this evil generation because they essentially accuse Jesus of coming to the earth and then hiding himself under a basket. They said, "Jesus, I know You can control oceans. I've seen You cast out demons. I've seen You raise someone from the dead. But I need to see more, Jesus. You have to convince me."

You see, they were treating Jesus like some kind of circus animal and they wanted to see more tricks. But Jesus said to them, "Ninevah had more than you. The queen of the South had more than you because you have a greater Jonah and a greater Solomon standing right in front of you, and they all believed, but you haven't. So you tell Me, am I the problem or are you?"

Jesus has already made it crystal clear that the problem is not a lack of proof, it's a lack of faith. It's not a lack of knowledge. Everything they needed to know was right in front of them. Jesus' point is that you cannot plead ignorance in the court of heaven. And you understand this idea if you've ever been pulled over for speeding – which is completely hypothetical for me. If you've ever been pulled over for speeding, you might have heard a cop say something like, "Do you know how fast you were going?" And there's no good answer to that, right, because if you say yes, you admit you broke the law, and if you say no, pleading ignorance is bad too because the speedometer is two feet away from your face. You're still responsible for knowing how fast you're going. How could you not know? All the information is right in front of you, and so ignorance is no excuse. Well, all the evidence, all the information of who Jesus is has been testified to and preached and proclaimed and died for for two thousand years. It's all right in front of you, and you have more light than anyone.

I remember in my first few weeks of seminary – quite a few years ago now – one of the leaders at the seminary was showing me around the building, and he brought me into this room with a few really, really old Bibles. And I didn't know how old they were at the time, but he handed me one to sort of thumb through, and as I was turning the pages of this old Bible, he told me that it was a Tyndale Bible from 1551. William Tyndale, if you didn't know, was a Bible translator who was eventually executed by the Catholic Church for his Protestant beliefs, and in many ways, all of us in this room have him to thank for the fact that we can read our Bibles in English today. And as I flipped through that Tyndale Bible, the man showing me around the room said this. He said, "A lot of people died so that you could hold that Bible."

Church, when was the last time your life was at risk for seeing the light of Jesus in your Bible? You see, the light we have today, the access we have to truth is unprecedented. And if you're a believer here this morning you have so much to be thankful for. But if you're here today and you don't believe in Jesus Christ, the problem is not a lack of light. The light of Jesus has been displayed on a lampstand for all to see. Thousands of years of history point to Him as the Son of God. So, MacArthur's right when he says, "It's not a problem of light, it is a problem of sight."

That brings us to verse 34. Verse 34 explains why our sight, why our spiritual vision is the problem. Verse 33, we saw the picture. Now in verse 34, we'll see "the problem, the problem."

Jesus continues, verse 34, "Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness." In this verse, Jesus shifts from talking about Himself to talking about you. Now He's not talking about how He shines light into the world, He's talking about how you receive light. One commentator says it this way: "The purpose of the truth brought through Jesus is to give light, but the danger can lurk in the receiving apparatus." It's not that there isn't light but that the looker is in such sad shape that he can't see the light.

You see, there's no question that the light of Jesus is there. The question now is, "Are you blind?" Jesus says, "Your eye" – verse 34 – "is the lamp of your body." He uses another lamp illustration here, but He changes it to make a different point. Now He imagines that your eye is like a lamp and your body is like a room. And His point is that just like this room would be in darkness if, for some reason, we had a power outage; so would your body be in darkness if you went blind. That's how your eyes are like lamps for your body. When they work, you live in light; and when they don't work, you live in darkness.

And if you think that's pretty simple, you're right. But Jesus is not just giving a simple anatomy lesson here. The physical truth is simple, but the spiritual truth here is profound, and it's because Jesus says something absolutely fascinating in the second half of verse 34. Look there with me.

He says, "When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light; but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness." That word "healthy," – some of your translations might say "clear" – that word has the idea of integrity. It's kind of like how you and I might say that a couple has a healthy marriage. It's not so much a physiological term as much as it is a moral term.

And it's the same with that word "bad" in verse 34. That word "bad" is actually the same word, if you look at verse 29, the same word translated "evil," when Jesus condemns an evil generation. And so again, Jesus uses a moral word, a word with moral meaning to it, to diagnose the condition of our spiritual sight. And Jesus' point is this: "The problem of sight is a moral problem." Please do not miss this. The problem of seeing Jesus is a moral problem.

We already saw in verse 33 the provision of light is not the issue; there's plenty of light. Instead, the problem is our sight. And what's so profound about this verse is that Jesus tells us exactly why our sight is a problem. You see, if you went to the doctor and you had a painful back, and you went to the doctor's office, and the doctor gave you an exam and he just looked at you and said, "Yep, you've got a painful back." That wouldn't be much help to you, right? That's not a great doctor because you'd sit there and you'd say, "Okay, great, I know that. But why? Like, what's causing it and what's the solution?"

Well Jesus, like a skilled doctor, He sees the difference between a symptom and a cause. And here Jesus diagnoses our spiritual blindness as a symptom, a product of a deeper moral issue that has infected all of humanity. The problem is not just vision versus blindness, the problem is good versus evil. The problem is righteousness versus sinfulness. And the bad news before the good news is that there is none righteous, not even one.

No, we enter this world with the lamp of our eyes broken. We enter this world spiritually blind because, as Ephesians 2 says, "We were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind." And so unless God heals our evil spiritual eyes and makes them healthy, we will always see sin and self-glory and the fleeting pleasures of this world as more precious than Jesus. Even if we saw Jesus with our own two eyes calm a storm or cast out a demon or raise a girl from the dead, we would just chalk it up to a fluke or a coincidence.

Now, what a tragic lie that would be to believe. Make no mistake about it: light is not the issue, sight is, and your sight issue is a heart issue. Let me say it this way to be clear. If you do not believe in Jesus, it is because you do not want to believe in Jesus. Turn to John 3 with me. John 3:19. Listen carefully to what Jesus says in this verse.

John 3:19, Jesus is exposing the fact that if you don't believe in Him it's because you don't want to believe in Him. John 3:19, Jesus says, "This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his wicked works should be exposed."

Church, there is not a person on this planet who has not done a wicked thing, and Jesus says the reason for that is quite simple. It's because sinners love sin. Everyone at one point loved sin, and ten times out of ten that love for sin will blind you to the truth of the gospel unless God's grace opens your eyes. And if you've been a Christian for long enough you'll have seen this take place over and over again in the unbelievers around you.

I have a friend, a good friend who grew up in a church, solid church, one that is not so different than this one. He knew the gospel inside and out. He had four or five Bibles, one of them was maybe goatskin. He came to church every single week, he sang all the songs. He came to midweek Bible studies, he came to small group. He knew all there was to know. And one day a few years ago we were having dinner in my apartment, and he told me, "I just can't do it anymore." And I said, "What do you mean? You can't do what anymore?" and he said, "I just can't be a Christian anymore." And that just set us off on this long, long conversation about what he believed.

We talked about the grace of God that can forgive him for any sin he's committed. We talked about the theological and the historical reliability of Scripture. We talked about all the evidence of history that proves Jesus is exactly who He says He is. And you know what he said to me? He said, "I know." He said, "I believe it. I believe that all the stuff in the Bible happened, I believe it's real, I believe it's true." And I said, "I'm sorry, I don't understand. Why would you ever walk away from Christ?" And it finally came out that he had been hiding a secret, sinful lifestyle for years, and finally he just said to me, "I can't be a Christian anymore because I want to live how I want to live." And as sad as that day was, I at least respect him for finally admitting the heart of the matter. It wasn't that he needed proof, it wasn't that he didn't understand, he simply loved the darkness rather than the light.

And that's the problem that Jesus is exposing back in Luke 11 – you can turn back there now if you haven't already. Jesus has been making this point all chapter, "There is no middle ground. You either love the light or you hate it." Chapter 11, verse 23, Jesus says, "Whoever is not with me is against me." Unbelief is not neutral, unbelief is evil. And let me just say that if that makes you uncomfortable, that is a sign of light shining into the darkness.

You know when you wake up in the morning, that first light you turn on, it hurts a little bit, doesn't it? Well, if the light of Jesus' words this morning is making you uncomfortable it may be because He's flashing lights on in your dark soul that has been in darkness for a long time. And so I know that this is sharp, I know it's offensive, and I know it's uncomfortable. But can I just challenge you with this question this morning: "Even if you were an eyewitness to everything the Bible said about Jesus, would your sin get in the way of you following Him?" because it did for these crowds in Luke 11. It did for countless eyewitnesses of Jesus' miracles. It did for Judas, who walked shoulder to shoulder with Jesus for years. So let God's word challenge you this morning that your problem of sight is a moral one that begins in your heart.

And the reason I tell you this is because God has the power to heal your evil sight and make it healthy again. He has the power to take your body of darkness and transform it into a body of light. That's the whole reason Jesus came. He came to seek and to save the lost. The prophet Isaiah prophesied that a people who walked in darkness would see a great light. And John 1:4 says, "Jesus was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

Jesus can overcome your darkness. There's nothing more Jesus needs to prove to you for you to trust your life with Him and follow Him. He's already lived a perfect life. He's already died in the place of sinners paying the penalty for their sin. He's already rose again for the justification of anyone who would believe. Do not let the fleeting pleasures of this world blind you to the treasure and the worth of Jesus Christ.

In fact, that's the heart of Jesus in the very next verse, verse 35. We saw the picture and the problem. Now in verse 35, we see "the precaution, the precaution." Jesus says, verse 35, "Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness."

Given everything we've just talked about, Jesus' warning here in verse 35 is logical, right, and we see that in the word "therefore." Jesus says, "Because humanity has a moral problem, therefore be careful." Some translations might say, "Watch out." It's a command to pay attention. And Jesus uses this command because He sees some kind of danger that we are in and it's the danger that we mistake darkness for light.

Jesus warns us that sometimes we think we have light, we think we have truth, but it's actually darkness. It's like when you've been in a dim room for a long time, and someone comes along and says, "Why are you sitting in the dark?" and you say, "Huh? I hadn't even noticed, I've been here so long; felt bright to me." Jesus says that's a spiritual danger, too. He says we need to be careful because we are so saturated in lies that we are prone to believing those lies as truth.

I get to serve college students back in Los Angeles. And so when I first read this passage, I thought about how needed these words are for young people today. There's a thousand insane worldviews taught on college campuses today, worldviews that undermine the dignity of mankind, worldviews that undermine God as Creator.

I actually saw a bumper sticker this past week making fun of that kind of thing. It was a giant black Chevy Silverado on my street. It was the most Texas thing I'd ever seen, until this weekend. And the bumper sticker read, "I identify as a Prius. I identify as a Prius." That's silly, but you get the point, right? We live in a world confused about truth. We live in a world confused about reality.

And what's so ironic is that on college campuses, which are supposed to be the leading edge of discovery and the leading edge of knowledge, people show themselves to actually have an ignorance that dates back to Luke 11 and earlier. They say things like, "We finally made a discovery that disproves Jesus' miracles," and their discovery is something like, "The laws of physics don't permit a man to walk on water." And I just think like, "That's literally the point of Him walking on water. That's what makes a miracle a miracle."

And you see, all they're doing is choosing a new reason to reject Jesus. Instead of chalking it up to Beelzebub like they did in verse 15, they chalk it up to some new discovery and they call this light. They call this truth and they call it enlightenment, but it's actually ignorance. C. S. Lewis says, "Old error in new dress is ever error nonetheless."

That's the world we live in, certainly the California I live in, and it can be frustrating. But the more I thought about this verse, the more I was convicted that this isn't just a culture problem, this isn't just a college campus problem, this is a "you and a me" problem, because Jesus says, verse 35, "Be careful lest the light in you be darkness."

Can I just remind you this morning that we can get tricked too, because the nature of any temptation to sin is deception. It's the lie that something is good when it's evil. Second Corinthians 11:14 says, "Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light." And so before we get mad at the culture for calling darkness light, let's examine our own hearts.

Church, are there areas in your life where you've been tricked into thinking darkness is light? Have you fallen for the trick that sin would be satisfied? Have you convinced yourself that that one sin over there isn't so bad? How do you treat your family? How do you treat your spouse when no one is watching? How do you do your work when your boss isn't around?

I could go on. But Jesus' point is clear: "You individually are prone to misjudging darkness for light, so be careful," Jesus says, because knowing the difference, knowing the truth from the lie is the difference between life and death. And you might ask yourself, "Well, if that's such a danger, then how can we know the difference? How can we discern between truth and error?"

Turn quickly with me over to 2 Peter, 2 Peter towards the end of your Bible, 2 Peter 1. Look carefully with me at verse 3. Second Peter 1:3, Peter writes this. He says, "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness," – and listen to this – "through the knowledge of Him who called us." If you want to know the truth from the lie, know Him who called you. Know Jesus Christ.

They say when federal agents train to detect counterfeit money, they study the real thing so that the counterfeit becomes obvious to them. So get to know Jesus, and get to know Him intimately and personally, and lives will become obvious to you. Saturate your life in His word. Fellowship with His people. Spend time with Him in prayer. Build your whole life. Build your calendar around knowing Jesus, because knowing Jesus is what will anchor your soul in every trial and in every temptation.

When you are tempted to doubt the goodness of God in a painful trial, you'll detect that temptation as a lie because Scripture says God is a good shepherd. When you are tempted to cheat or to gossip or to lie or to lust, knowing Jesus will expose all of those temptations as counterfeit promises of joy because of His surpassing worth. Knowing Jesus Himself will expose lies and shield your soul from being deceived.

That's why Jesus Himself gives us this warning, this precaution back in Luke 11:35. Jesus is Immanuel, He's God with us. He came to be known. He's meant to be known. And there is no greater good for you than to know Him. And we see more of why that's the case in our next verse, Luke 11:36, you can turn back there.

Verse 36, our last verse this morning we'll call "the promise, the promise," and it shows us why there is no greater good for you than to know Jesus. Verse 36, Jesus says, "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."

Jesus' sermon up until this point has been pretty heavy. It's been pretty sharp. It's been challenging. It's been very confrontational. But here, Jesus provides us with this beautiful promise of encouragement. First half of this verse is the condition of the promise. We know that in verse 36, the one whose whole body is full of light, that's the same one from verse 34 whose eye is healthy as opposed to the evil eye. This is someone who personally and truly knows Jesus. This is someone whose evil has been exposed to the light in repentance. In a word, Jesus is talking about someone with faith.

So up until now, if Jesus has been confronting unbelievers, if He's been condemning this evil generation for their hard-hearted and stubborn pride, it's as if here in verse 36 He turns and He makes eye contact with you, the church, and He says, "One day every sliver of darkness in you will be gone for good. If you see Me for who I am," – Jesus says – "if you trust Me to forgive you and to die in your place, and if you've opened your life up to My lordship and My grace, then one day your body" – verse 36 – "will be holy, completely, totally bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light."

The picture is that one day you yourself will be so full of light that it will overflow and you'll radiate like a lamp. Matthew 13:43, Jesus says, "The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father." First John 3:2, "We know that when He (Jesus) appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is."

The beautiful, encouraging promise from Jesus in verse 36 is that "if you have faith in Him, then the light of the gospel will absolutely, undoubtedly have its full and its complete effect in you." Aren't there just some days where you need to hear that promise from Jesus. Have you ever been discouraged when you discover a dark corner of your heart? Is there anyone here who is weary, who is tired of waging war with your sin, waging war with your flesh and your failures? This life is a fight every single day. Is there anyone here who cannot wait for that fight to be over?

Well, listen to the words of Jesus, because He promises that one day it will be over. One day you will be wholly bright; not a sliver, not a fragment of darkness will be left. And I know for some of you believers this morning that is hard to imagine, because I know for some of you, you are sick and tired of how sinful you can be, of how many times you've failed, of how many times you've fallen short. I know for some of you in this room, you have messed up in big ways and you feel like your faith is hanging on by a thread, and it might feel almost impossible to think that you would ever be completely holy. But if you follow Jesus, one day He promises that you will be. He promises that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Church, one day you will be wholly bright like Jesus Himself, and you will live in perfect peace. You will live in perfect joy. And in that joy, you will worship your Savior because all of it will have been by His grace alone. We even sang it this morning, didn't we: "And when before the throne, I stand in Him complete. Jesus died my soul to save, my lips shall still repeat."

So church, press on, and be careful. Test all things in the light of Jesus Christ so that you may know the truth from the lie, and go with the sure hope that one day you will stand before the throne of God complete in Him. Let's pray.

[Prayer] Father, thank You for Your word which is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Thank You for the word made flesh, Your Son Jesus, who has made a way for us to know You. Thank You, Lord, for His cross. Thank You for His resurrection. And thank You for giving us eyes to see this good news that we might be saved.

Father, I pray that if there are any here who do not know You, I pray, I ask You that You would work in their hearts even this morning to see the light of the gospel. And for those who do know You, Father, would You help us to test every thought, every attitude, our whole lives against the truth of Your word so that we might walk in Your light and honor You. We ask these things in the name of Your Son Jesus Christ. Amen. [End]