SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/27/2020 4:18 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
A Single Vision”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 6:22-23
Message of the verses: “22 "The eye
is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be
full of light. 23 “But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of
darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the
darkness!”
I
have not done what I am about to do for some time now, but I want to quote from
Warren Wiersbe, and what he has to say about these verses: “Wealth not only enslaves the heart, but it
also enslaves the mind (Matt. 6:22-23).God’s Word often uses the eye to
represent the attitudes of the mind. If
the eye is properly focused on the light, the body can function properly in its
movements. But if the eye is out of
focus and seeing double, it results in unsteady movements. It is most difficult to make progress while
trying to look in two directions at the same time.
“If
our aim in life is to get material gain, it will mean darkness within. But if our outlook is to serve and glorify
God, there will be light within. If what
should be light is really darkness, then we are being controlled by darkness; and
outlook determines outcome.
Now
we will go back and look at what the meaning of the word “clear” is in the
Greek as John MacArthur explains: Haplous (‘clear’) can also mean single,
as it is translated in the King James Version.
An eye that is clear represents a heart that has a single-minded
devotion. Bishop John Charles Ryle said,
‘Singleness of purpose is one great secret of spiritual prosperity.’” Now we perhaps can understand why Dr. Wiersbe
talked about double vision. I have to
say that since I had my cataract surgery a few years ago that if I don’t wear
my glasses that I see double and that is not a good thing, so that helps me
better understand that I am to have singleness of mind in a spiritual way.
There
are some words in the Greek that are closely related to “haplous” and what it
means. In Romans 12:8 we find the word “liberality” “or he who
exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives, with liberality;
he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.” In 2 Cor. 9:11 we find the same word “liberality.” In James 1:5 it is translated “generously.” MacArthur writes “The implication in the
present verse is that if our heart, represented by the ‘eye,’ is generous (‘clear’),
our whole spiritual life will be flooded with spiritual understanding, or ‘light.’”
So
if our eye is damaged then no light is able to enter it and that will means that
the “whole body will be full of darkness.”
So then if our hearts are encumbered with those material things, which
means that is all we think about, then our spiritual hearts will become blind. There
is a verse in Proverbs which states “For as he thinks within himself, so he is”
(Pr. 23:7a). So the point is that as
believers we are not to be having material things on our mind or we will end up
not having spiritual light come into our heart.
MacArthur
writes “Poneros (‘bad’) usually means
evil, as it is translated here in the King James Version. In the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) it is
often used in translating the Hebrew expression ‘evil eye,’ a Jesus
colloquialism that means grudging, or stingy (see Deut. 15:9, ‘hostile’; Prov.
23:6, ‘selfish’). ‘A man with an evil
eye,’ for example, is one who ‘hastens after wealth’ (Prov. 28:22).
“The
eye that is bad is the heart that is selfishly indulgent. The person who is materialistic and greedy is
a spiritually blind. Because he has no
way of recognizing true light, he thinks he has light when he does not. What is thought to be light is therefore
really darkness, and because of the self-deception, ‘how great is the darkness!’
“The
principle is simple and sobering: the
way we look at and use our money is a sure barometer of our spiritual
condition.”
I
remember one of the Pastors that I have set under saying that you can tell the spirituality
of a believer by looking at his checkbook.
12/27/2020 4:57 PM
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