Do you have an evil eye? Or a good eye? That’s the question!
Hi, welcome to today’s Little Lesson, which is a continuation of our previous Little Lesson where we were diving into Jesus’ word about the eye being the lamp of the body, and if your eye is clear, your body is full of light, if your eye is bad your whole body is full of darkness and so forth, and trying to unpackage that and understand what it means by just simply looking at the context. And if you didn’t hear our previous episode, well, just stop that, what you’re watching right now, and go back, because I don’t want to review it all, and I don’t want to punish the people that did watch it by reviewing it all, okay? So walk in love, go back, and don’t make me review. Okay.
But just a very quick review for the people that did watch, just to help them remember, the evil eye, the bad eye, is a biblical expression that’s found in other places, and it represents a greedy heart. The man with the evil eye hastens after wealth, we find in Proverbs, I believe, chapter 26. And Jesus told a parable one time, where a guy, he was very generous with his money, and he had some grumbling workers who were expecting to get paid more, he said, “Is your eye evil? Is your eye bad because I am good?”
In other words, are you greedy because I’m so kind and good and generous? So the evil eye clearly, indisputably, irrefutably, incontestably, represents the greedy heart. And no such thing as an evil, physically an eye that’s morally evil. Eyes are just made up of cells. Okay, so it represents the greedy heart, and that’s proven from other scriptures. The man with the evil eye hastens after wealth.
So Jesus says, “If your eye is bad, your whole body is full of darkness.” That is, if you’re greedy, in your heart, you’re full of darkness. Why? Because as he goes on to say, you can’t serve God and Mammon, so you’re serving Mammon, you’re in darkness because you’re not serving God. And I submit to you, anyone who is not serving God is in darkness. Because if you’re in the light, of course you’re serving the Lord.
Okay, so if the evil eye, if the bad eye, represents the greedy heart, what does the clear eye, which is the opposite of the bad eye, represent? Because if you have a clear eye, your body is full of light. Well the clear eye, the opposite of the bad eye, means you’re not greedy. You’re not focused on money, you don’t believe that life consists of possessions, you’re living for something much more important than just the accumulation of more stuff. And so, you’ve been enlightened, your body, your person, your being, you’re not in darkness, you’re full of enlightenment. You know the truth! Praise God.
So when Jesus says the eye is the lamp of the body, he’s not saying you can look into people’s eyes and tell what’s going on within them, although I realize that some people do have a strange look in their eyes and it does give a bit of a window to some people’s souls. Now I don’t like it when people are always looking in my eyes trying to figure me out, and judge me. So Jesus says the eye is the lamp of the body, he goes on to explain what he means. That if you’re full of greed in your heart, you’re not letting light into you, and you’re full of darkness. But if you’re not focused on Mammon, you’re focused on things eternal, you’re a servant of God, well then, that means you’re not full of darkness, you’re full of light.
So let’s go back now, notice the three contrasts within this passage of scripture, all talking about money, starting in Matthew 6:19, we first have contrast with the man who’s laying up his treasures on the Earth, and the one who’s laying up treasures in Heaven. Got it? Got it, okay. And Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart is,” so the one guy who’s laying up his treasures on Earth, his heart’s in the Earth, the one who’s laying up his treasures in Heaven, his heart’s in Heaven. That’s the contrast in those two people.
Then he talks about two people, one who’s got a bad eye, one who’s got a good eye. The bad eye guy obviously corresponds to the guy who’s laying up his treasure on the Earth, who that’s where his heart is. The clear eyed, the good eye, obviously represents the person who is laying up their treasure in Heaven, and who, that’s because their heart’s in Heaven. And so that’s the second contrast, and you make it correspond with the other contrast. It becomes very clear. And this guy’s full of darkness, this guy’s full of light.
And then the third contrast is found in verse number 24, “No one can serve two masters. Either you hate the one and love the other, or he’ll be devoted to one and despise the other.” So where do those two contrasts fit into the contrast that Jesus is presenting? Well obviously, the person who’s serving Mammon, is this guy, the guy who’s laying up his treasure on Earth, because that’s where his heart is. And he’s full of darkness and he has a greedy heart and a bad eye. And the one who’s serving God, not serving Mammon, not serving money, he’s the guy who’s laying up his treasure in Heaven, who’s full of light, who’s not greedy, and who’s heart is in Heaven.
So may I submit to you that Jesus is not contrasting here a spiritual Christian and a less-spiritual Christian. Oh no, no, no, no, no. These are diametrically opposite individuals, treasure on Earth, treasure in Heaven. Heart on Earth, or heart in Heaven. Full of darkness, or full of light. Greedy and focused on money, or not greedy and focused on eternity. Serving money and not serving God, or serving God and not serving money. Jesus’ contrasting, you could say it this way, a true believer with an unbeliever. Sure, sure. And so that’s why it behooves us to look at our lives and see what we’re focused on. Where are we laying up our treasure?
Now I realize that everybody has, we all have to have a certain amount of material possessions on this Earth. You gotta have clothing, at least that. Gotta have shelter, at least that. Right? Sure. But … How much more do we need? That’s what we’re all having to wrestle with as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling. But let us not deceive ourselves. And I think Jesus warned in this passage against that possibility, the tremendous possibility of deceiving ourselves because in verse number 23, he said, “If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness?” So he already contrasted the person full of darkness and the person full of light. Now he says but if you’re, the light that is in you is darkness, I think I could paraphrase that, “If the light that you think you have is in reality not really light, you’re in darkness, then you’re in this tremendous darkness. How great is the darkness?”
And I think there’s so many references, subtle and not so subtle, to describe some Pharisees, in this Sermon on the Mount, I believe Jesus was probably nudging once again in that direction, in saying these Pharisees, if you ask them, they’ll say “I love God”, but they actually love money. It’s obvious, because they’re laying up all their treasure on the Earth. They’re not givers, they’re not generous, they’re not kind, they don’t care about the poor. They’re just piling up more stuff for themselves, getting rich, like a lot of people that we all know who profess to be Christians. Okay.
Well, there’s a lot more to be said on this. I’ve written quite a bit on this, if you search on davidservant.com, and type in some keywords, like for example, “The light that is in you is darkness”, or “You cannot serve God and Mammon”, you’ll come to articles that I’ve written that go into much more detail. But this is a Little Lesson. Okay, thank you so much for joining me. God bless you.
