"No one, after lighting a lamp, puts it away in a cellar nor under a basket, but on the lampstand, so that those who enter may see the light. The eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is clear, your whole body also is full of light, but when it is bad, your body also is full of darkness. Therefore watch out that the light in you is not darkness. If therefore your whole body is full of light, with no dark part in it, it will be wholly illumined, as when the lamp illumines you with its rays."
Good Morning my beloved,
We welcome you to worship today in the name of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Whether it's your first time or you are a faithful member of our family in Christ, I m aware there are many places that you could be, so we're so glad you are here. I am very thankful for those of you who have been sharing the ministry website, and social media platforms with your family and friends. God has been so kind, so gracious in blessing your efforts.
As those of you who have been with us for any length of time know, I have addressed the subjects of the corrupt church and the moral character and integrity of the pastor very often. God demands that we tell sinners the whole truth, not part of it, because exposure to the Gospel in the right measure will either make a sinner better or it will make them worse; but it will leave them the same. No one who understands the Gospel can remain the same. If you’ve heard the gospel and reject the Gospel, the author of Hebrews chapter 10 writes, in verses 26-27, "For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries." It is a call to hear the Gospel with more than passive listening, but to listen with all seriousness, and the demand to respond in faith and obedience to what is said. The call to hear the Gospel is not about receiving information, it is the command for transformation. Therefore, I believe that those who preach the Gospel need to understand what our Lord expects of us. The one passage that defines biblical ministry is found in 2 Timothy 4:2, "Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and teaching." Our Lord was a mission, He offered the Gospel of salvation to those who were lost. He told them the Truth about Heaven and Hell, and He did it with love, compassion, tenderness, and kindness. He wept over those who rejected the Truth. In a world of religious hypocrites, be like Christ. Preach the Word, even if it kills you. That's the mandate. That is our calling from the God of Heaven, not the culture. The church has to have leaders who are pure and holy and above reproach, anything less spells disaster.
Pastors were never intended to be self-willed entertainers, the pulpit was never meant to be a stage, and you were never meant to remain the same after your encounter with Christ. There is nothing is more disturbing, more threatening to the pulpit than the kinds of egregious sins that pastors commit today, sins that without question, disqualify them from ministry, only to step right back into ministry as soon as the heat cools down. Certainly we want them restored to the Lord and to the fellowship, but for one who preaches God's Word, there are very specific qualifications that must be met and maintained. While we may be forgiven by God of our sin, we cannot erase the earthly consequences of our sin by a simple prayer of repentance. He must be above reproach regarding his conduct and moral integrity, so that no one can legitimately bring a charge against him from within or outside the church. Friends, I believe we must demand pastors be held to a higher standard so that purity of the church can be regained. The tolerance of sin, especially in the pulpit is a disheartening thing to me. As I'm sure most of you know, I am compelled to preach the Gospel with authority the Word of God all the time, whether it’s popular or not. Sometimes it comes with a negative emphasis in a rebuke, and other times it comes in comfort, encouragement, and instruction. I believe it is imperative to measure every man who seeks to preach the Word of God by the Scriptural standard, set forth by God Himself, because of the danger of the seasons. Whether you realize it or not, we are living a very dangerous season. There are a lot of false evangelists teaching an outlandish deviant worship. Don't be deceived by anyone who names the name of Christ. Ask yourself, are you truly following Christ, or are you just going through the motions, deceiving yourself? The way of Christ is narrow. There is plenty of room on the road that leads to Hell, enough for the unrepentant sinner and his sins.
If you're a pastor, do not underestimate what God can do with His Word through you, that said, I strongly exhort you be on guard against overestimating what you can do. God delights in using those the world calls “unqualified,” that no one may boast in the flesh. However, when God chooses to work through the humble, the weak, and the unexpected ,religious people often reveal the pride hidden in their hearts. They often become offended, even angry, not because the Truth is unclear, but because it exposes them for who they really are, self-righteousness hypocrites. The Pharisees were furious when God used fishermen, instead of highly skilled religious scholars, to rebuke their false religion. The mark of a true mark of a humble disciple of Christ, is not resentment but repentance. The next time God chooses to exalt another, to criticize you, rejoice in the glory of God, no matter where it comes from and remember, He called you to obey, without compromise. So, I encourage you to examine yourself, and know that God only chastens those He loves, and He flogs every son whom He receives. Be faithful to speak God’s Word, because you can never fully know who is listening. I have seen the Gospel transform the adulterer into someone who is faithful, I've witnessed the transformed liar speak the truth, and the homosexual who walked away from a damning lifestyle to pursue God-ordained affections. In Isaiah 55:11 God promises His Word will never return void, and will accomplish the purpose for which He sent it and will succeed in fulfilling His intentions.
Let's pray
Heavenly Father,
Father, thank You for Word, so precious to those of us who love You. Thank You for the clarity and the consistency of Your Word, for the Holy Spirit Who illuminates Your Word and teaches us, it is food for our souls. If there's anyone here with today who needs to know Christ, that needs to make that commitment to Christ, we ask that You would do a work in their heart that only You can do. Lord, we are so grateful that Your promises never fail. We ask and pray this in Christ's name, for His sake and for Your glory. Amen.
Today's Message: Basket Case Christianity
It's our joy and privilege to study the Word of God together, therefore, I invite you to open your Bibles and turn to Luke chapter 11 and encourage you to follow along with me as I read, to get our minds set on our text. Luke 11:33-36.
"No one, after lighting a lamp, puts it away in a cellar nor under a basket, but on the lampstand, so that those who enter may see the light. The eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is clear, your whole body also is full of light, but when it is bad, your body also is full of darkness. Therefore watch out that the light in you is not darkness. If therefore your whole body is full of light, with no dark part in it, it will be wholly illumined, as when the lamp illumines you with its rays."
In John 8:12, Jesus said, "I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life." There are many references to light in Scripture, but the concept is really pretty simple, light reveals and darkness conceals. If you are a follower of Jesus, walking in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, you have a very important role to play in our society. Light is a metaphor, because light reveals darkness. And, that it is exactly that that our Lord is saying here, and it's not the first time. In John 15:21,, He said "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin." It's not really a question of light, light is everywhere, yet it's useless to those who are blind, they can't see it; so it's a question of sight. Sight is the issue He is addressing here. That is why our Lord said in Luke 10:23-24, "Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see, for I say to you, that many prophets and kings wished to see the things which you see, and did not see them, and to hear the things which you hear, and did not hear them." In 2 Corinthians 11 Paul says, Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.
All of this fits perfectly with the ongoing conversation that He's been having with the self-righteous, hypocritical religious leaders who refused to acknowledge their own sin, who rejected the Truth refusing to humble themselves and accept the fact that Jesus is God, accusing Him of performing miracles by the power of Satan. The Pharisees and scribes rejected Him, because they refused to believe Him, they wouldn't accept His message, a blistering indictment which exposed their spiritual bankruptcy and nothing would change their minds. They were convinced, their final conclusion was that He cast out demons by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons, not by the power of God. So, they demanded a sign that is distinctively from heaven, as if to say "If you want to change our minds, prove it!" As if He hadn't given them enough evidence already.
Let's look at verse 33, "No one, after lighting a lamp, puts it away in a cellar nor under a basket, but on the lampstand, so that those who enter may see the light." Here, you have Jesus standing in vivid contrast to His extremely religious accusers, who considered themselves the people of the utmost spiritual insight and they were living in profound darkness. The light was everywhere and they couldn't see it. When God turns on His light, you wouldn't believe the things that we see, things we wouldn't otherwise comprehend. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:14, "But a natural man does not accept the depths of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually examined." So, what the Lord is saying is, as Christians, by preaching the Gospel, by living a godly life, we, in a sense, turn on the light that is Christ, so that we expose sin, and therefore effect a change in the culture. However, in contrast, if we are living impure lives, if our lives are dominated by sin, if we are living in darkness, we're not going to be a very good witness for Christ. If we are going to guides others to Christ, but we must first be able to see clearly ourselves.
I am convinced there is a large percentage of people, who attend weekly church services regularly, week after week they come carrying Bible and notebook in hand, they sit and listen to the sermons, taking notes, jotting down the key points, they faithfully attend Bible study and attend small fellowship groups, they stock pile all this information, yet tragically, there's very little or no application of divine truth.
Quite frankly, it's heartbreaking to imagine, that by preaching a watered down Gospel message, we are producing an entire generation of spiritually dead people, who are merely going through the motions, masquerading as being alive in Christ, that are simply playing church. Oh sure, they may talk about spiritual things, they may name the name of Christ, they may even quote chapter and verse to one another from memory but their hearts are far from God in terms of obedience, no matter what their lips proclaim. This is nothing new, our Lord addressed the problem back in Isaiah 29:13, when He said, "Because this people draw near with their mouth And honor Me with their lips, But they remove their hearts far from Me. And their fear of Me is in the command of men learned by rote."
I believe that everyone of us who have come to know Christ, who belong to Christ understand what it is to be overcome by temptation, we understand what it is to stumble and fall. It’s a devastating feeling to have walked worthy for so long, and then, all of the sudden, before you even realize what's happening, you find yourself doing the very thing you were confident you would never do! There's a danger in feeling a little too confident. You're never more vulnerable than when you think you're not. Because, it won't be very long before some temptation will come along and prove you wrong. That's 1 Corinthians 10:12 isn't it, "Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall." Hopefully, by the end of it all, that disappointment will humble you, and lead you to restoration. God's Word is sharper than a two-edged sword, a refining fire to those living in sin. The Bible is not the problem, your sin is.
Verse 34, "The eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is clear, your whole body also is full of light, but when it is bad, your body also is full of darkness." Sight is the real problem, it's not about the light, light is everywhere, all around us, however, light cannot be seen by those who are blind. Seeing, then, depends on the condition of your eye, it's the organ by which that light enters the body through the cornea to enable vision. The amount of light that passes through is regulated by the pupil, the black opening in the center of the iris, which adjusts its size in response to light intensity—becoming smaller in bright light and larger in dim light. Light then travels through the aqueous humor, the lens, and the vitreous humor before reaching the retina at the back of the eye. The retina contains photoreceptor cells that convert the light into electrical signals, which are then transmitted via the optic nerve to the brain for interpretation into the images your mind perceives. Even though seeing, the whole world cannot see the things of God. It's not about the revelation; it's about the perception.
Interestingly, the phrase "when your eye is clear," in the Greek, clear is a word that means "holding nothing back." It's the word "haploús," which literally means unfolded. When your eyes are wide open, the scales of sin that blinds our eyes are removed from our eyes, we begin to see everything more clearly. I believe it's evident that Jesus is illustrating understanding the importance of following the wrong spiritual leader, unqualified leaders are unfit to lead God’s people since they cannot fully understand or properly interpret God’s Word. I have heard a number of pastors who often give a variety of interpretations for these axioms found in Scripture with great difficulty, even calling them ambiguous paradox's, saying it is virtually impossible to explain Scripture in a way that makes sense to us, which frankly I believe is rather amazing. I am convinced it's more about their relationship with Christ that is the problem. They cannot fully understand or properly interpret God’s Word, when their hearts and minds are blinded by sin. It doesn't matter how much a person talks about loving God, it doesn't matter how much a person talks about their commitment to studying Scripture, if there is no clear evidence. To one degree or another, Jesus preached the same message throughout His earthly ministry, it's the same message I proclaim to you today. Beware of religious imposters, false teachers who profess to know God, who claim to speak the Truth on His behalf, but clearly do not, and are leading you further and further away from Him and anchor yourselves in the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word. Jesus calls to discernment, reminding us to be vigilant, persistent in looking beneath the superficial exterior, diligent in paying close attention to potential threats or signs of danger that they're preaching a Gospel that differentiates from Scripture, diverges even slightly from the true Word of God, saying you will know them by the fruits. Unfortunately, try as we might, there is nothing we can do to change one's spiritual condition; it is a work that must be done by God, through Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Verse 35, "Therefore watch out that the light in you is not darkness." Jesus already knew what their response was going to be. The self-righteous see themselves as the most sighted of all. Many disciples of Christ, a familiar term is used throughout the New Testament to describe those who followed Jesus, is the Greek word "mathētē," emphasizing the active process of learning, the nature of the relationship of a student with a teacher. The Pharisees felt they didn't need to learn anything from Christ, they already knew it all. This was true of the religious leaders in His day, and frankly, it is still true of many Christians today. Many believers think it is enough to hear the Word without obeying, they delude themselves. They are making a gross miscalculation. The Greek term for delude is "paralogizomai," which means to misreckon, reason against in a way that seems plausible but later disappoints. The world is full of self-deceived, self-righteous religious hypocrites. This is why Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, he wants to make people think they found the light when in reality, they're lost in the darkness. They have a false sense of security. Jesus didn't say in John 3:3 you need to say a prayer, He said you must be born again, or you cannot see the kingdom of God. New birth is foundational to salvation. 2 Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come." You need a new heart, new desires and new beliefs that obviously encompasses a response of obedience to God's Word. He who believes in the Son has eternal life. Therefore, by implication, he that says he believes and does not obey, does not have eternal life, but eternal wrath.
Obedience to God's Word is the distinguishing mark of true regeneration. That's been my understanding of Scripture from the beginning. Matthew 7:21, "Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter." I'm convinced that tares or false believers, are a very, very highly prevalent in the church today, coexisting with genuine believers and closely resemble those who are new to the faith in their early stages of growth, making it inherently difficult to identify them as described in Matthew 13. By the way, the existence of tares is not necessarily a sign of the church's failure but rather the fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy that the enemy will sows tares among the wheat. Therefore, I do not believe the church should exert their time and energy on identifying and expelling tares, since only God can definitively judge a persons heart, but instead should focus their efforts on personal discipleship and self-examination.
The Good News is Jesus came to be the Savior of the world, He came to rescue, to save, to redeem, to give NEW LIFE to the wicked and the sinful, the sexually immoral, but you've got to get rid of all that old stuff. Like Paul said in Philippians 3, "I count all things to be loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ." Admit your wretched sinfulness and be born all over again. That's why Jesus went to the woman at the well in Samaria, Jesus came to save the outcasts, the wretched, the desperately and hopelessly lost, that's the message of Christianity.
John Flavel, the English Puritan Presbyterian minister and author rightly said, "O sinners! You shall one day know the price of this sin; you shall feel what it is to despise a Jesus, that is able to compel love from the hardest heart. O that you would slight him no more! O that this day your hearts might fall in love with him! I tell you, if you would set your love to sale, none bids so fair for it as Christ." I beg you, choose Christ, and receive a new heart, one that beats for Him and not for the fleeting desires of this world. No sin is worth Hell.
That brings us to verse 36, "If therefore your whole body is full of light, with no dark part in it, it will be wholly illumined, as when the lamp illumines you with its rays." Jesus' final point is so limitless, you have to realize your blindness and that there's a darkness. You must recognize your spiritually impoverished condition, and that you have no personal resources by which to solve your imminent deadly dilemma. If you think you have what you need, you don't understand your desperation, your heart is darkened. That's a very dangerous place, because you're not going to turn to Christ, and all that's left is a terrifying judgment. Don't mistake your darkness for light because you still won't see, you can't see. If you want to see the light, you have to turn away from sin and repent and ask God to forgive you and give you a heart that longs to please Him and He'll open your spiritual eyes. When you become a Christian, when you repent and your eyes are finally opened, you start to see with spiritual clarity, 20/20 vision and the Word of God is illuminated with the fullness of Light to us, so that over time, we begin to understand everything, you don't need any more signs. The Spirit of God teaches all things. The Psalmist wrote in Psalm 119:105, "Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path." Jesus urges us to examine whether our perceptions have become skewed by sin and unbelief, allowing darkness to remain. When our whole body is full of God's Light, there is no room for darkness and we begin to radiate His Truth the world around us. In other words, when the darkness disappears, our outward lives will reflect our inward transformation of our heart. In Psalm 51:1-3, David writes "Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; According to the abundance of Your compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity And cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, And my sin is ever before me." Ever wonder why we're called children of light? After coming to Christ, we are characterized by light, unlimited light. Scripture knows no such things as any sort of minimalist salvation. Christianity lite was created by Satan, it's missing all the things that make a sinner uncomfortable, like conviction, acknowledging your wretched spiritual condition before God, genuine repentance and turning away from your sin.
If you do not yet know Christ as your Lord and Savior, if you're only playing church, going through the motions but your longings and desires haven't changed, you're still in darkness. That's not my opinion, that's what Scripture says, 1 John 2:3-6, "And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, "I have come to know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, truly in him the love of God has been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked." I don't know how much longer you're going to have the opportunity to come to Christ, so that you may become sons of light. But, I do know Jesus Himself said in John 12:35,, "For a little while longer the Light is among you. Walk while you have the Light, so that darkness will not overtake you; he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes."
May it be so...
And now may the Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen
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