To Encourage You

Matthew 6:22-23 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

Have you ever seen the glory of God?  If not, it’s very possible that the reason is that you’ve been facing in the wrong direction.  In the verse above Jesus tells us that whatever our eyes are focused on has the power to affect everything about our life.  Jesus talks here about eyes that are healthy and that fill the entire body with light.  And then He talks about eyes that are not healthy, and fill the entire body with darkness. What’s the real difference between them? 

Well, the words above are sandwiched between Jesus’ teaching about the things that we treasure most in life.  He talks about people whose treasure is the physical things on earth that they can see – money and the things money can buy, in particular.  But there are other earthly things we can give our priority to that we can’t buy with money. One of them is our selves.  So often we hear people talking about “finding themselves.” They give much of their lives to pursuit of this.  They keep looking inside of themselves in personal reflection or with the help of others. They want “to know who they are.”  They are very concerned with how they look. They are pursuing things that will give them pleasure, for their focus is on themselves.  So, Jesus is telling us, if that’s our focus, i.e., the things of earth, including ourselves, then our whole body will be filled with darkness. Our outlook will be dark.  We will have many negative thoughts. We’ll never be satisfied.  Rather we’ll be restless and anxious. It’s because when we look at things other than the glory of God, we are doing nothing more than peering into the darkness.  If we’re looking at ourselves all the time, what we’re looking at is the self-centered ugliness of a heart that has never met Christ.  If our focus is on our own hearts, which the Bible tells us is “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9), then our focus is on darkness and our whole body will be full of it.  If our focus is on anything else in this world, such as money, fame, pleasure, that sort of thing, which are no more than idols, again we’re looking at nothing but darkness, and our lives will reflect that. 

However, if we look unto Christ, Who is the very glory of God, everything else will pale in comparison.  If it is His glory we want to see, and His glory is the thing we are focused on, then our whole body will be filled with light.  With this perspective we will see everything else in a new way.  Like Paul, after he had been blinded by the glory of Christ, we will say “Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:7-8). 

You see, “finding ourselves” won’t matter anymore when we’ve found Christ.  All that will matter will be the glory of God for that is what our eyes, mind, and heart will be filled with.  No more will we be so self-focused with our whole body full of darkness, for with Christ in our sights, our desire will be that “whether we eat or drink of whatever we do, we will do it all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). 

So again, have you ever seen the glory of God?  If not, maybe you need to turn around and look somewhere else than where you’ve been looking.  You see, anyone who has seen the Lord’s glory will be able to say with Paul “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). For you see, boasting, focusing on ourselves and what we have done, is nothing more than focusing on darkness resulting in a life filled with darkness.  But if our eyes are on the gift of God, i.e., His Son, Who alone is the very Light of the World, our whole body will be full of light.  Listen to the words of this familiar old hymn which was written by Philip P Bliss in 1875. It’s the story of a whole body being filled with light as a result of a look at the Savior:

1. The whole world was lost in the darkness of sin,
   The Light of the world is Jesus!
   Like sunshine at noonday, His glory shone in;
   The Light of the world is Jesus!
   • Refrain:
     Come to the light, ’tis shining for thee;
     Sweetly the light has dawned upon me;
     Once I was blind, but now I can see:
     The Light of the world is Jesus!
2. No darkness have we who in Jesus abide;
   The Light of the world is Jesus!
   We walk in the light when we follow our Guide!
   The Light of the world is Jesus!
3. Ye dwellers in darkness with sin-blinded eyes,
   The Light of the world is Jesus!
   Go, wash at His bidding, and light will arise;
   The Light of the world is Jesus!
4. No need of the sunlight in Heaven we’re told;
   The Light of the world is Jesus!
   The Lamb is the Light in the city of gold,
   The Light of the world is Jesus!