Welcome to 721 Live, the video arm of 721 Ministries. I'm Sam Hunter, and I'm glad that you're with us today. We are back in the Sermon on the Mount. I love the Sermon on the Mount. I could read it and read it and read it and just never get tired of Jesus' words. All that red ink in the Sermon on the Mount. and we're in chapter six and last week Jesus gave us a very stark binary choice of either treasures on earth or treasures in heaven you should go back and watch that video as well as the ones prior to that and you can do that by going to our website and remember just hit subscribe on that little button and you'll get these automatically when we produce them but last week Jesus said you're either going to have treasures on earth or you're going to have treasures in heaven and he sets it up as if it's a binary choice and not a whole lot of gray in between Well, today we're going to move on and we're going to look at what he says in Matthew 6, 22 about generous eyes or stingy eyes. And this is one of my favorite passages in all of Jesus' words, all of his teachings. And I really want you to lock into this because I think if we can really get an understanding of this and learn to live this way, it will change everything about our lives and therefore the people around us. That's what we're going to do today. I'm glad you're with us. I want to start this way, talking about the eyes and our heart, and the eyes of our heart. So we'll look at one of my favorite prayers from Ephesians 1, where the Holy Spirit, through Paul, prays this. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened. The eyes of your heart. We see more with the eyes of our heart than we do with the eyes in our head, that's for sure. The eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in His holy people, and His incomparably great power for us who believe. I pray that the eyes of your heart will be enlightened. I remember listening to a preacher say, if all you can see is what you see, then you're not seeing all there is to see. If all you can see is what you see, then you're not seeing all there is to see, because we really see with the eyes of our heart, and the Holy Spirit through Paul is saying, that's what I want for you. And so today we'll tie in treasures, our eyes, our heart, and our masters, and we'll look at all these three together. Matthew 6, 21 through 24, Jesus says, treasures on earth or treasures in heaven. And these are warnings that he gives us that we must pay attention to. Generous eyes or stingy, suspicious eyes. God or mammon as our master. He sets all three of these up. That's what we're going to cover today. Number one, our treasure and our heart's treasures on earth or in heaven. Our eyes and our heart are fixed on our treasures. Number two, our eye and our heart are either going to be generous or they're going to be stingy and suspicious. And our master is going to be where our heart is, in God or mammon as our master. Treasure, heart. Let's look at that for a moment. For where your eyes are fixed, treasure, there your treasure is. There your heart will be also. Here's what I mean by this. Jesus says, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. But we know that things that are a treasure to us, our eyes are fixed on them. We're watching the things that are a treasure to us. And remember, there's not, Most things that are treasures to us are not bad things, but they may be too much of a treasure. We may treasure them too much, and therefore they're holding us back. Because Jesus said, if you try to hold on to this life, you're going to lose the life to the full, the life that is truly life. But if you'll loosen up, if you let your grip loosen up on it, even let go of it, then you'll find the life that is truly life. So where our treasure is, our eyes are going to be fixed on that. And here we go with the passage that I really want to dive into today. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are, and most of your Bibles will say your eyes are good, but that's not a good translation. It really means if your eyes are generous. Now in the Greek, it means if your eyes are single focused, and you'll see the contrast in a moment. But good should really be translated generous. Your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, and perhaps your translation says healthy or unhealthy, but it really should be stingy or suspicious. The Greek word is diplos. It means double vision. It means squinting your eyes and looking at people with suspicion. Your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness? My friends, let's pause on this for a moment. The eyes of your heart. Are they generous? Towards others? Are they generous? Do you see your Heavenly Father with generous eyes? Do you believe He has generous eyes? Because what I want to do today, in just a few moments, is break this down into how we view our Heavenly Father. therefore how we view people around us and therefore how we view life in general with generous eyes or stingy eyes Jesus says if your eyes are generous if you view people in a light most favorable if you're looking for the good in people if you're looking for the good in situations then your body is going to be full of light but if you're stingy and suspicious and you suspect people that they have hidden motives that they're disingenuous, that they're trying to get one up on you, that you cannot trust them, that they're devious, that there's something going on, that their tone is suspicious, their motives are suspicious, then your whole body's gonna be full of darkness. And not just full of darkness, but then Jesus says, my gosh, how great is that darkness? Do you view people, let's stop and pause. Do you view people, what grade would you give yourself on that? Viewing people in a light most favorable. Viewing them, cutting them slack when you see something, when they do something you don't like. Do you view them in a light most favorable or a light least favorable? And I'll give you a quick example of that. Years ago, I was doing a series, teaching a series at a church, and the pastor at the time was a little He was a little conservative and I would start each one of these combined Sunday school lessons with a joke and he sent me an email and he said my people tell me that you're starting each lesson with a joke and I don't think we need to be doing that and of course I think he's lightened up since then but I shot off an email right back to him. I mean, as soon as I read it and I said, I open up with a joke to get people involved, wake them up, get them interested. And then he shot back, if my people need to be woken up and interested, they don't need to be there. All right, so that's the conversation. But what sort of convicted me was that I had shot back an answer to him way too quickly, as if I wasn't the least bit interested in what he had to say. So I followed up with another email and I said, I want to ask for your forgiveness. I didn't mean to pop back so quickly as if I wasn't going to consider your side of it. I apologize for that. I will certainly take your thoughts and your comments into consideration and respect your thoughts and your comments. But I hope I didn't mean to offend you or act like I wasn't paying attention, giving you the respect that your thoughts deserve. The email I got back from him was, no need to worry about that Sam, I viewed your comments in a light most favorable to you. His eyes were generous towards me. He viewed my comments in a light most favorable. Do you tend to do that? Do you tend to view anyone's comments, anyone's actions in a light most favorable to them? And we're going to come back to that and spend a little time on it. But you either have your whole body full of light or your whole body full of darkness. And again, we're back to this binary choice that Jesus gives us. And the next one is about our masters. And we're still in Matthew 6, now verse 24. No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one, and hate really means put in second place, and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise, and despise is best understood as consider worthless and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. And the word there is mannan. And mannan really means what your eyes are fixed on, what captures your heart. Now, here we have three binary choices. Treasures on earth, treasures in heaven. Your eyes are full of light or your eyes are full of darkness. Your eyes are generous or they're stingy and suspicious. you have a master that is your heavenly father or your treasures are your master now i know if you're like me you want to say that's that's not that black and white i can manage both i can have treasures on earth and treasures in heaven and i can manage that and and i can view some people in a light most favorable and others with stingy eyes and i can i you know i can have my heart in my eyes I don't have to have them fixed on Manon, the stuff around me. I can fix them on my Heavenly Father, on Jesus, and Jesus says, no, you're playing with fire there. He warns us that we better not think we can do that because He has seen, and I have seen, too many instances, even in my own life, where I think I can manage it, but I cannot manage it. So here we have three binary choices, and what are we gonna do with those? And how does this relate back to generous eyes versus stingy eyes? Generous eyes, view in a light most favorable. And I'm gonna say, and I'm gonna go to 1 Corinthians 13 next. Love has generous eyes. You know, 1 Corinthians 13, we hear it at weddings. It has become so familiar that sometimes it's unfamiliar. But it really does tease out for us what generous eyes look like. Love has generous eyes towards those that we love. So, Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. Let's stop there for a moment. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil or rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. How would you grade yourself on these? One of my lowest grades would be keeps no record of wrongs, because I've got the evidence file that I carry around with me on things that I don't like about somebody or things they've done in the past, not easily angered, patient, kind. Love has generous eyes. When I think about my two granddaughters, they can do no wrong in my eyes. I have the most generous eyes towards them. When I think about my daughter's husband, Finch, my son-in-law, he can do no wrong in my eyes. Matter of fact, Britton told me once that Finch had said something to her in a heated moment, and she said, I'm gonna tell you what he said, Dad, but you think it's okay if I tell you? You think you can be all right with Finch? I said, there's nothing that Finch could say that would upset me. When she told me the remarks going back and forth, I said, that's just marriage. That's just popping off in the heat of the moment. Finch, I view him in a light most favorable all the time. So do you do that? Is your body full of light? Or do you know someone who views everyone in a suspicious manner or a negative manner, and you can just see the darkness inside of them? It's painful to see it. Jesus says, we gotta open up our eyes and be generous towards, and we're gonna see that it starts with our Heavenly Father, and then it moves to others, and then it moves to life. So let's go to this, generous eyes or stingy, suspicious eyes? Lavish or lack? Now, Last week, when we were talking about Jesus giving us examples in the parable of the four souls about things that will choke out the fruitful life in us, the third thing he said was the desire for other things. And I pointed out that in the Garden of Eden, in Genesis 2-9, we read that God planted all these unbelievably beautiful and luscious trees with fruit that was delicious to eat, just all around the Garden of Eden. Unbelievable paradise. in the middle of the garden is where he planted the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now if you just think about Adam and Eve's daily existence in the garden, they had to navigate through this unbelievable paradise full of lavish, lavish wonder and beauty and delicious fruit to get to the one thing they didn't have satan got them focused on the lack and not the lavish and he's been doing it to us ever since all of our lives we are the we are just full of lavish love from our heavenly father full of lavish love from our heavenly father and remember we've been talking Back and forth about love and how we look at the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. It's a fountain that first fills up with our Heavenly Father's love for us, which is, by the way, the most perfect love. The best love, you will never find anything anywhere close to it, except for perhaps your golden retriever. But there's nothing like your Heavenly Father's love, so we fill up with His love and it overflows into others. How about your Heavenly Father? What do you think about Him when you think about God? A.W. Tozer has an interesting statement. He says, the most important thing about you is what comes to your mind when you think of God. The most important thing about you is what comes to your mind when you think of God. If it's not the most important thing, it is a very important thing. So let's just go along with his statement and ask the question, why? Why is that an accurate statement? Because if you think of your Heavenly Father with an idea of lack versus lavish, you won't pursue a relationship with Him. You won't open up and bring Him into the details of your life. The most important thing about you is what comes to your mind when you think of God. Do you think of your Heavenly Father as what I hear all the time? The Older Testament God of wrath and the New Testament God of love and grace and compassion. Well, first of all, let me make sure you understand. I could show you a multitude of passages in the Older Testament where we see that God is a God of love and compassion and forgiveness. And then I could take you to the New Testament where sweet Jesus talks about judgment and hell and people will go there. So there's no There's no difference between the God of the Older Testament and the God of the New Testament. There's love and, of course, there's justice. But do you think of your Heavenly Father, what comes to your mind? Is it a God of rules? And a God of no fun? And a God who wants to restrict you? He wants to prohibit you, not protect you? Or do you think of Him as a God of lavish? John. who called himself the disciple that Jesus loved, who clearly lived his life full of love from his Heavenly Father, from Jesus. He said this, how great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God and that is what we are. How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God. Do you feel that way? Do you feel that your Heavenly Father has lavished love on you? I mean, do you feel like He's your Heavenly Father and that you are His child? Even a grown-up man or a grown-up woman, that you're His child and He loves you and He is lavishing gifts on you, the gifts of love and the gifts of grace and forgiveness, and quite frankly, wonderful gifts in this life, and certainly for eternity. How great is the love the Father has lavished on us. Not how great is the love that the Father has doled out a little bit at a time to us. No, He's a God of lavish, not of lack. And this matters. The way we think about our Heavenly Father matters. So let's take a moment and talk about how we view generous eyes or stingy eyes towards our Heavenly Father and His eyes towards us. Is it lavish or lack? And how would that affect the way we look at others, lavish or lack, stingy eyes or generous eyes, and then how we view the world around us, and how we view life in general. Let's do that as we finish up this talk. Towards the Father. Do you look at him with a sense of lavish, that you have generous eyes towards him and he has generous eyes towards you, or stingy, suspicious eyes? If you see your Heavenly Father, If you see your Heavenly Father with generous eyes, with lavish eyes, if you perceive Him as that kind of Heavenly Father, then when Jesus says in Matthew 6, 33, but seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well, you'll believe that. You'll actually believe it, and you'll live it out. Now, we know that very few of us actually believe that. You know as John Ortberg said we may believe in Jesus We just don't believe what Jesus believed because Jesus believed this and if we saw our Heavenly Father with without lavish eyes with generous eyes full of light Then we would believe him when he says this and it would reorient our entire focus in life Psalm 37 for delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of our heart We would trust that that if we focus on him We find our delight in our Heavenly Father the love he has for us and we live in that love in that light Our hearts are towards him and not towards these earthly treasures man and things that that capture our hearts And then we get to Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. That's the best translation. The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. What a wonderful way that would be to live. And quite frankly, it is how we want to live because it's true. It's truth. And if we live this way, then when we hear Jeremiah 29, I know the plans I have for you. Plans to prosper you, not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future. that we know that's true when we read on romans eight twenty eight uh... he's gonna bring good out of everything that happens in our lives we know that's true we know he's gonna take care of us one of the things that i that struck me years ago when i'm reading the scriptures if i see something in the scriptures that i consider bad news and that's because my heart is suspicious and my heart is stinging Jesus says it's all good news. I've come to bring you good news, the good news of the kingdom. So if I view it as bad news, that just shows me that my heart is still full of darkness, and I'm looking at my Heavenly Father with stingy, suspicious eyes, which will not bring me a light-filled life. It will not bring me life to the full. If I have stingy eyes and suspicious eyes towards my Heavenly Father, then I'm going to be like the man in the parable of the talents. You remember God gave, or the Master gave, one man five talents, one man two talents, and one man one talent. And the man who got the five talents, he multiplied them. The man that got the two talents, he multiplied them. The man that got the one talent did nothing with his life, with the talents that the Master had given him. And because he viewed the Master, our Heavenly Father, with stingy and suspicious eyes. Here's what he had to say. Master, he said, I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid, I was afraid, and I went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you. Here we have the example right in front of us If your eyes are stingy and suspicious towards your heavenly father Then your body's full of darkness and you will respond to him just as this man did That's not life to the full. That is not life. That is truly life. That is not the life that jesus died on the cross for us to have a life full of trust and light And our hearts towards him And knowing he will take care of us in the deep if we have this type of approach that he's not we don't we don't trust him to be in the details of our lives. We don't trust him to take care of us. We think he is that assistant principal prowling around the halls at school making sure that nobody's having any fun, giving demerits out. We'll think of him as a god of rules. We'll think of him as a god who wants to be sure that you are strictly following his rules and if not he's a god of wrath and that is no way to live. And when you read Jesus' words you get the absolute Strong sense that he's saying you don't know my heavenly father. I want you to know him He is a heavenly father of love. How many times did Jesus say how much more will your heavenly father in a parable? he would cite a human for some human in the way a human would act the unjust judge and the widow and Then he says how much more your heavenly father grant you what you want grant you what you need take care of you If you view God with suspicious eyes and stingy eyes, then your body is going to be full of darkness and you will not come close to living in the light. Now John, again, in his first letter, 1 John, he captures both of these together just perfectly. starting with 1 John 4, verse 16, not six, I made a mistake with that. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in them. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. The one who fears is not made complete in love. God is love. There is no fear in love because perfect love, God's perfect love for us, drives out all fear. There's no room for fear. There's no room for worry. There's no room for anxiety. There's no room for suspicious eyes, stingy eyes. There's no room for the darkness because when we understand His perfect love for us, and my friend, please, Take that in and absorb it. It's true. I'm not cheerleading you. I'm not giving you. I'm not trying to sell you on something. I'm telling you the truth. This is your Heavenly Father. This is life with Him. He is love. There is no reason to fear Him. There is no reason to think in terms of punishment. When it comes to your Heavenly Father, yes. By the way, the word punishment means to forcefully correct. So we think of punishment as, I'm gonna cause some pain on you because you've angered me. That's not your Heavenly Father. If you're headed off in the wrong direction and he has to forcefully correct you away from that very bad direction, then he will do it because he loves you just like you would your own children. Now, we've spent our time talking about how we view our Heavenly Father, and how He views us. He views us with absolute generous eyes. Do we view Him that way? Because the way we view Him is going to, just like here we are with the fountain again, it's gonna fill us up and overflow into the way we view others. So let's take a look at that. Towards others, do we have lavish, generous eyes or do we have stingy, suspicious eyes? If your wife or your husband pops off at you, which this happens in every marriage, do you view them in a light most favorable or do you view them with stingy and suspicious eyes? My friend Irv says, you know, in view of this type of teaching, He says, if Sam popped off at me, if Sam said something to me that was just uncalled for, that was mean or attacking, he said, I wouldn't power up against Sam. My first thought would be, something's wrong with Sam. This is not like him. Something must be going wrong in his life for him to pop off at me like that. Would it be that we could look at everyone that way? Why did my wife pop off at me? Well, I'm sure there's an explanation. Instead of me blowing up my back and counterattacking, popping back, what if I viewed her in a light most favorable? What if you viewed your husband in a light most favorable? What if he growled about something and he said, you know, I bet he's had a hard day? Or you as a husband come home and your wife growls at you about something and you say, I bet she's had a hard day. We view them in a light most favorable We we see them in the in the best light. That's what first corinthians 13 is all about love is patient love is kind It wants the best it always seeks to protect it always seeks to have generous eyes towards others I used to have someone that worked with me that had stingy eyes towards people He would report back to me that the architect had said something ugly to him, or that the towel man had said something ugly, or somebody was always reporting back to me that people were speaking to him negatively. And I started to realize that's what, that's how he perceives people. And I actually witnessed it enough times to realize they are not. Now that happens in construction, which I used to be in construction, but I noticed, I witnessed it myself, that no, he views people in a light least favorable. And so he walked around in darkness all the time. A miserable person. Light up. View people in a light most favorable. Cut them some slack. Make excuses for them. Your heart will be full of light when you do that. So we've absorbed with generous eyes towards our Heavenly Father. It fills us as we look towards others. And then that affects the way we live our lives. So now we come to the last, towards life. Do you have a generous, lavish eyes towards life or stingy, suspicious eyes towards life? You've heard the comment, life sucks and then you die. Life sucks, and then you die. That's a terrible way to live. I've heard Christians say that. This life is terrible. I can't wait to get to heaven. Well, I certainly can't wait to get to heaven, but this life is not terrible. If I live with the lavish love of my Heavenly Father and then generalize towards others, I am going to see my life as a wonderful life, and life is wonderful. As a matter of fact, I do. sincerely say that I am the luckiest man on the planet now you can you can substitute blessed for lucky and that's true and it's probably maybe a better word but I feel lucky I am the luckiest man on the planet I hope you are the luckiest man or the luckiest woman because I view life with generous eyes because I have a generous heavenly father and I try to see others Not doing as well with others. I'm working on that, but I view life in a light most favorable I'm the luckiest man on the planet I hope you can say that if you look around at the lavish blessings from your heavenly father versus life sucks, and then you die You don't want to live that way life's too short we were put here to enjoy this like to it, you know in the parable of talents and The man that got the five and increased by five, the man that got the two that increased by two, the master of God said, come, enjoy your master's happiness. I'm not selling prosperity gospel here. I'm saying this is the way to live a life full of light because we have our eyes fixed on our heavenly father, not on the slack. We have it on the lavish, not on the lack. So we'll finish with Hebrews 12. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author, pioneer, and perfecter of our faith. Are your eyes fixed on Jesus? Are your eyes fixed on Jesus or are your eyes fixed on your earthly treasures? Do your eyes fixed on a lavish, loving, grace-filled Jesus, or are your eyes fixed on the lack in your life? Or, let's maybe even say, the perceived lack. Where are your eyes fixed? Are your eyes bouncing around at the world and all the things that are going wrong in the world and things that you don't like? And mine do that too, but can I pull them back and focus on Jesus and focus on the lavish love of my Heavenly Father? That is the message for today. Are your eyes generous or are your eyes stingy? And next week, as we move on through the Sermon on the Mount, I think it's a very obvious conclusion that if I have generous eyes towards God, towards others, towards life, then why would I worry? That's where we're going next when Jesus says, do not worry. And all of this just flows so naturally. If my treasures are in heaven, if my eyes are generous and I see my Heavenly Father with generous light-filled lives and Therefore he's my master and not the things that I own and not the things that I treasure then why would I worry? Stay tuned for that next week Because there is more and you know there's more so you come follow Jesus and find it