Law & Grace - Matthew 6:16-24 Hearts, eyes & what one cannot do

Good morning. Thank you for joining us here. We're continuing a study in Law and Grace, and we're doing so here in the middle portion of it by studying through the book of Matthew. And so we'll be going through the passage that Brad just read for us here. And we've titled this, Hearts, Eyes, and What One Cannot Do. So today's passage has four parts in it. And sorry to put this right before lunchtime. I don't know what was coming over me. But anyway, the first part, verses 16 through 18, are about the subject of fasting, which, like prayer, as we studied last week, is to be done with a focus upon God, upon God Himself, and not on gaining the attention of others through what we're doing.

The next verses, 19 through 21, Verses in which Jesus says, don't store up treasures in heaven. Excuse me. Is that what he said? No. Store up treasures in heaven, not on earth. Okay. Verses 22 and 23 give a spiritual insight about eyes, but oddly enough, he's not actually talking about eyes.

We'll soon look into that. And verse 24 tells us that we cannot serve both God and money. in spite of what a lot of TV and radio preachers will say. Now, as we look at this, we're going to be getting the skinny on fasting. And as we do so, I want to tell you that I fast rather slowly. Things go into slow motion for me on fasting. It doesn't work real well for me. But fasting wasn't a practice that was ever commanded in Israel. Here we have 613 laws in the laws of Moses. 365 of them are things not to do. Fasting was actually never commanded in Israel, being a place full of commands, but not that one. It was commanded by a king from time to time. You can find that in scripture. The king would demand fasting over some particular tragedy or trauma about to strike.

However, it was a custom among the Jews, a tradition if you will, since at least the time of the judges. By judges, I mean after the time of Moses and Joshua. And before the time of the Kings and this Samson would be an example of one of the judges, right?

So Jesus says whenever you fast, he doesn't give a particular time to it because the law of Moses did not prescribe it. But it was something that they did by tradition or could do. So that's why Jesus used the term whenever you fast and not a specific time when you ought to. The Jews fasted by tradition or as a part of a vow. In other words, whenever they would make a vow, sometimes a vow would include, I'm not going to eat until some particular milestone or marking point. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is a time when by tradition, not by the law of Moses, there is a 25-hour fast.

So it would be one of the many traditions of the Jews. We want to talk about what fasting is not for. Fasting is not a way to put God over a barrel or to twist his arm or force his hand. We certainly can't do anything of that kind anyway. So it's not some special way to get God's attention and make him do something. It doesn't give us some advantage or power over God. It's no leverage against him. Fasting is not a way to pursue a spiritual feeling, although there are many who do. Fasting is done among, as we'll soon see, among those who are not Christians and not Jews.

Nancy and I some years ago took a little vacation up to the Tetons and interestingly enough they had a kind of a ferry boat that went back and forth and people could go up and the boat was not huge but it was big enough you could get maybe a dozen or maybe even two dozen people on the boat. It just so happens that when Nancy and I were going across, nobody else came. So it was just ourselves and the boat driver. The boat driver, I could tell she was a younger lady, and we got in a conversation, and she had majored in religion in school.

And I said, well, have you drawn any grand conclusions out of your study of religion? And she said, yes. If you want some special states of consciousness, go for Buddhism. If you want truth, go for Christianity. That was her summary out of studying and getting a bachelor's degree in religion. People do, in fact, fast to get a spiritual feeling.

And while I suppose that's okay, it isn't something that's sanctioned or encouraged in scripture. Now, fasting is not to become a point of legalism. I'm going to fast for this long. It's not to be something that is a pass or fail. It's not to be a human accomplishment. Oh, look what I did, or rather what I didn't do, right? Since fasting is not doing something. It's not something to be done to impress others. It's not something to be done to set us up for condemnation and failure, right? That's not what fasting is for. So now we've spent a whole slide talking about what it's not for.

Fasting is not even uniquely Jewish, Christian, or even religious. It's been a part of Buddhism, as I mentioned earlier, Hinduism, Judaism, as we've looked at here, Islam has its time of fasting, and of Christianity, and then it's been done for health reasons that have nothing to do with anything religious. So there's a fairly broad practice of fasting.

And this reminds me of something that happened not too terribly long ago. Well, maybe it was. I'm getting older. Anyway, I was on an international business trip, and I sat next to a fellow who was an officer in the Saudi Arabian Air Force. I don't know, might have even been one of these guys, I don't recall.

But at any rate, when it was time to, have our food selections. They came around offering food and he says, no, I can't. It's Ramadan. I have to fast during the day. Well, that was okay until he saw that they were serving us and he could smell it and he could see it. And then he suddenly got the attention of the cabin attendant and said, I think I'll have some anyway. And I turned to him, I said in surprise, that's okay? He says, oh yes, the sun has set somewhere in the world and we are traveling above it. This is legalism for you. I can't unless I can find a way that I can, right?

The last mention of fasting in the Bible is in a church context there in Acts 13 and 14, Paul's first missionary journey. He was alongside Barnabas, and in each of those chapters, fasting is mentioned once. That's the last time fasting is mentioned, and in a church context, even as in the Old Testament and in the Gospels, there's never a command that you must fast. So it can be said that fasting is not required for Jews or Christians, but that we who live and breathe the principle of grace. Grace is the reigning principle.

Romans 5.21 and you can look at verse 17 also points that fact out. Grace is the reigning principle. We live and breathe grace.

So we may fast, we are free to do so, Not to impress people, not to set up success or failure and achievement or not, not to just get a spiritual feeling. But we're free to do so to focus on the Lord, whether for a time of prayer, whether for likewise a time of studying God's word. We're free to do that. We don't have to do it, and we ought not to set ourselves up for some sort of a legalistic failure or be like my Air Force officer cabin mate there who had to set up some sort of a rule to get around the rule. OK. There is a two-page supplement on fasting that's available in the cabin as you exit this room. You may also find them on the Holyoaks website right along with this lesson. Click there on the supplement.

Now, in the next place, Jesus talks about not storing up anything here on earth. Anything? Anything at all? So is Jesus saying that we shouldn't save up for anything, even for a real and valid future need? I hope your refrigerators are empty. Right? Is that what he wants? I hope your wallet's empty. Right? Don't save up anything. Don't store up anything.

Is that what he means? No, he's making a comparison in extremes. We'll find that Jesus does it. In fact, it was a fairly common way of stating things among the Jews and among the Rabbis. Example. Jesus says in Luke 14, 26, and he makes an extreme statement to make the point.

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Does he want you to hate your mother and father and everybody else you're related to? No. It is a point made in the extreme in order to emphasize how much you love the Lord. And stated this way, it's certainly going to get your attention, right?

So that's the kind of statement Jesus is making here. He's not saying don't store up anything. What he is saying is that compared to your storing things in heaven, what you store here on earth ought to be, by comparison, nothing. Really focus on storing things in heaven.

That's his point. He's not telling that they shouldn't save to provide for the anticipated needs of oneself and one's family. In fact, you will find many passages in both the Old Testament and the New Testament that talk about saving up for future needs, to meet future needs for yourself, for your family, etc. So his point is not that we shouldn't be saving up for anything, but rather to say what we store up spiritually is of much greater value and significance. That's his point. He's saying to place a greater value on spiritual things than the physical things.

One of the terms that comes frequently in this passage in chapter 6 a few times. They have the reward in full. Your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. Rewards are in fact a point in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus speaks of rewards in this chapter 5 and chapter 6 nine times. At times it is a reward from heaven, even from the Father. And Jesus, of course, however, is speaking directly to Israelites, speaking to them as Israelites in the land of Israel, as their Messiah and promised King.

We in the body of Christ, however, and you have this on the slide on page one, also have a set of biblical crowns and rewards that are specifically for the body of Christ. And what's interesting is, of these five crowns, they're identified at least once in the New Testament, in the New Testament epistles, and they are rewards for specific things in the body of Christ. Some of the things you look at, you wonder, boy, I didn't know that was rewardable. It's eternally rewardable.

How about just, we have here the third one, the rapture lover's crown. It is those who are looking for the Lord's coming. Do you know the Lord has a reward, a crown, for those who are looking for His coming? I get a crown for that? Yeah, forever. Forever. Isn't that amazing?

Now, the crown is not a diadem crown, a royalty crown, but rather a victor's crown used in an athletic competition. When someone would win an athletic competition, they would receive a crown at the end of this athletic competition. And by the way, they didn't have second and third and fourth and fifth places. It was just the first place. But here are these crowns. And they look something like this, some variation in how they appeared. But that was what the person who was in the athletic event was seeking for is this crown.

There are also three rewards in addition to the five crowns that are mentioned. A solid foundation reward, which means having a foundation solidly in God's Word, and a voluntary service reward, also in 1st Corinthians, and an inheritance reward. So there are five crowns and three rewards specifically spelled out for Christians. And who knows, the Lord being as gracious and merciful as He is, There may be others that we don't have listed. We may be very pleasantly surprised for eternity.

Ephesians 1.3 puts the focus on heavenly places. Blessed be the God and Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us. Now, have you ever heard somebody say, God bless you? I've had somebody say that once and I said he already has. Right? who has blessed us, past tense, with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

All your blessings are up there, not down here where you have to have insurance on it. Isn't that great? No insurance payments. The next chapter, he raised us up with him, with Christ, and seated us with him, with Christ, in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Heavenly places, heavenly blessing, heavenly reward.

Here's Philippians 3.20, for our citizenship is in heaven. from which we eagerly wait for a Savior, and that's worth a crown, the Lord Jesus Christ. And finally, Colossians 3, 2-4. Now this is something.

Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life was hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. Set your minds on things above. You've heard that it was said, someone is so heavenly minded they're no earthly good. This verse turns that on its head. In order to be any earthly good at all, you must be heavenly minded. Yeah. Set your mind on things above. Okay.

Then he starts talking about eyes. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks of eyes more than once in each chapter. Now, he doesn't speak of them in the same way, and he doesn't always, as in this one, mean literal physical eyes, but he uses the eye as an illustration in various ways. That's the case here. He uses it in these verses to talk not about these physical eyes and what we see, but rather to talk about how we view things.

What's our perspective? So, Jesus isn't just being an amateur ophthalmologist here and telling people to take good care of their eyes. Why? He's talking about the perspective that they have on things. That's what he means by the eyes. In verses 22 and 23, Jesus is talking about how one views the world, spiritually speaking, contrasting darkness and light. Now, when we talk about eyes here, there's an important distinction that we ought to make here, and we will do that. This is on page 2 of your handout.

We of course know that our physical bodies have five senses, and for various ones of those, some of us have better function in those five senses than others, right? So sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste are the five senses that we have in our physical body.

So far so good? Okay, your medical examination will be given to you as you exit the room. Now, in the same way that we have five senses in the physical realm, scripture speaks of five senses in the spiritual realm. How about that? Five senses in the spiritual realm. So we have five senses externally and five senses spiritually. You have them quoted here. This is not the only place that these are used.

In Ephesians 1.18, it talks about the eyes of your heart, what you see inside, what's your spiritual vision internally.

1 Peter 2.3, you have tasted, Peter writes, and he speaks of spiritual tasting, not the physical tasting.

Hebrews 5, 11-14 speaks of being dull of hearing. Oh, and we could talk about the eyes. Satan has blinded the minds of the unbeliever, right? So we can talk about the ability to see and we can also talk about the lack of ability to see. We can talk about those who hear and those who are lacking spiritual ability to hear. So each of those five senses is referenced in the New Testament. Here's another one, the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in 2 Corinthians 2, 14-16.

And finally, being past feeling in Ephesians 4.19. This is speaking of the unbeliever.

Physically we have this ability to feel using our nerves and the skin, but the unbeliever does not have that ability to feel, to sense in their hearts. They lack that. You see, one of the things that happened when we became believers is the capacity for us to see and hear and to sense things spiritually was turned on. See, for the unbeliever, there's some loss of capacity. sometimes no capacity, but for the believer that capacity has been turned on and is there.

We have the ability to sense and to see things in the spiritual realm. One way to look at it is as we have it on a diagram. This is a simplified approach here. Looking at the physical realm, we have a body and as a part of that the brain. On the spiritual side, there is a spirit, and as a part of that, the soul. And so we show it as a diagram with two concentric circles here, and a line dividing the physical realm and the spiritual realm. We have on the physical side, this brain and the soul, and each has a mind, emotions, and will. Next, part of our spiritual anatomy and physical anatomy, if you will.

Hebrews 4.12 even talks about the Word of God is alive and powerful. And this is amazing. It goes deep. It goes deep. How deep? The dividing line between soul and spirit. That is the power of the Word of God. It can go places spiritually that nothing else can. The Word of God is indeed penetrating and alive and powerful. It goes deep. Now, so we have the illustration here of the five senses in the physical realm, and correspondingly, as an analog if you will, in the spiritual realm.

So, this is why Ephesians 1.18, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be, or actually literally, having been enlightened, since your believers You have the capacity to see and to sense in the spiritual realm.

Ephesians 5.8 For you were formerly darkness, now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children. Now what does it mean to walk as children? What does he mean? What does spiritual walking look like? Does it look like this? I hope not. So what does that mean? What does that mean? Walk as children.

When you see child of or son of in the Bible, unless it's a literal child of or son of, you can take it this way. It means like in character and close in relationship. Like in character and close in relationship. Walk as children of light means to be like in character to God who is light and to be close in relationship to Him.

You have a relationship with him if you're a believer. So he's not saying get a relationship. It's not like get a life, right? He is saying, however, that because you have the relationship, walk that way, live that way as those who are like in character to God and close in relationship.

We make the distinction here between relationship and fellowship. And let me give the example. Now, Randy is my son. That's been the case here for more than three decades. However, so while that is our relationship, it is possible that I could do something that would offend him and his household greatly. So if Randy said, he called me up and he'd say, Dad, that's the relationship. He says, what you said or what I did was terribly offensive, you can't come over for a while. That would break the fellowship. Would it break the relationship? No. But it would break the fellowship. See, that's the thing that's being pointed out here. We have a relationship with God if we believe. But the fellowship with Him is what we're called to. And that's moment by moment. Okay. Now, the next part.

The servant of two masters. Interestingly, about two and a half centuries ago, this was written into a theater performance, and I think the term is it's a farce. It's been done as a play, where here's this guy trying to act out being a servant to two masters, which you can easily imagine being put into a sort of a farcical comedy.

But ultimately, what's Jesus' point? You cannot serve God and money. Some of the translations may even have God and Mammon. Mammon was the God of wealth. And interestingly, there is a God of wealth in just about every pagan pantheon. A God of wealth.

You have here on page 2 a slide that looks like this. Matthew 6.24. It's put into a kind of a poetic pattern. What do we mean by that?

That no one can serve two masters and you cannot serve God in wealth. Those are parallel ideas. And in the middle of that, we have a rather double statement of the same truth. For either you will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. Again, Jesus is using extremes to help make a point here. In this verse, hate and love, devoted and despised, are expressed as extremes.

Why? For emphasis. To show the impossibility of serving both fully and equally. Now think about what that would be. I used to work for a company where there were two bosses. Oh boy. And what we would have from time to time to bring up to them is, you know, you told me to do this, and you told me to do that, and you told me not ever to do this, and it would be that kind of thing. And occasionally we have to say, look, the serving two masters thing is really difficult, and sometimes put more extremely than that.

The reality is you just can't. It doesn't work. And so Jesus is saying, you can't serve two masters. If you serve the God of wealth here, and you serve the God of heaven here, you cannot resolve those two. You will have two different masters. It won't work. One is the only way it's going to work. And of course, you get his understanding, he's saying, you need to put your emphasis, your direction, your focus on the Lord. He says, money will never be an adequate God.

So, what do these things have in common? What about these passages that we just went through? Basically, four kind of themes. Fasting, which is optional for us in the body, as in prayer, which is not. Prayer is essential. is to be focused on the Lord and from the heart, not outward towards other people. And it's not just to enhance one's sense of self-worth and achievement and value. The rest of this passage is about placing the highest value on spiritual relationships. And the first of which is our relationship with the Lord himself. See, it isn't just a matter of, here's the rules, follow them. It's a question of getting it in terms of what's valuable. What's really going to last? You see, there are a lot of people who are unbelievers who haven't got it figured out.

What's going to happen when this life is over? Which is fairly short, because I'm coming to find out. This life is fairly short. What's going to happen when this life is over? What happens next? And a lot of people have not thought that through. I remember a coach that I had one time when I was in college. And after the class, we got talking about, you know, what are you going to do when life is over? What are your plans?

And he was really afraid of dying. He says, I don't want to die. And he had no good answers. God does. God's got the best answer there possibly could be. Relationship with the Lord Himself ought to be first because that's the relationship that's going to last.

You know, the you can't take it with you? Oh, I've heard jokes about putting checks in the coffin and things like that. That's obviously not taking it with you. But the relationship with the Lord, yes, that's all you're going to take with you. Only then does life here make sense. Only then.

You see, we who are in the body of Christ, the church, we have been baptized into Christ. Now, it didn't happen from getting wet. We have a place back here where if you want to be physically baptized, we can do that. We'd be glad to do that. This baptism was a baptism that God accomplished. Romans chapter 6, the book of Galatians, I believe it's chapter 3. You've been baptized into Christ. We are in Christ by God's doing.

First Corinthians 1.30. I think it's in your bulletin there is the leading quote. We who are in the body of Christ, the church, have Christ in us.

You see, so it's not simply a matter of saying, well, I've got to put God first. It goes beyond that. It's not a matter of my putting God first in my life. It's a matter of realizing who I am in Him and who He is in me. And then, once we realize that, putting God first is obvious. We are in Christ, and Christ is in us as believers here in the body of Christ.

I don't need to worry about putting him first, if I realize that, if I'll understand that. That is so phenomenal, so fantastic a truth. It is astounding and amazing. If you're a believer, you are in Christ, and Christ is in you, and that changes everything. All other relationships are automatically impacted. And if you're spiritually in Christ and Christ is in you, then there isn't some matter of making Christ Lord or choosing God first or anything of that sort. It's a realization of who he is and who you are in him.

Let's take a minute to pray here. Lord, we thank you that as we look at this passage here, you've given us some choices, you've given us some things to decide between, and yet as we look at it, it becomes quite obvious the value of our being in you. We've been baptized into you, placed into you, immersed into you. And you, Lord, are in us. It is not something that we do or some adjustment we make in our heart, but it's an understanding that we come to, and the rest is by faith. And we thank you, Lord, as you've laid out these truths, you've laid out who we are in you and who you are in us, and we thank you that these understandings that Jesus presents to them as choices become much so more clear to us as we see these things. We thank you that the eyes of our hearts have been opened and we pray that we might see with this understanding that you have given us. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.