Let me for the sake of summary, in case anybody was in deep thought about something, just recapitulate a couple things and maybe state a couple new things from where we were right before the break. As you look at this passage, we're going at it line by line, there are a number of things you observe about it. One that we observed, rather casual or informally, is that there's a lot of parallelism, poetic parallelism. Do not treasure on earth, do treasure in heaven, on earth, mouth and rust destroy in heaven, they do not destroy. There's also a lot of antithesis or choices, and that's a pattern that Matthew uses, and I think because Jesus used it. You notice we have here is two opposing forces, are you going to store your treasure in heaven or in earth, is your life characterized by light or by darkness? Are you going to serve God or man and two choices presented repeatedly? And really there's two ways of life presented here, the one way of life is storing things on earth, having an eye that's evil and serving man. The other way of life is storing things in heaven, having an eye that's full of light and serving God, that's the opposite way. The other thing you might notice about this is that at the beginning we've said the word and we have it here in the screen. We have here command, the first thing that was stated, it took me a while to get it out of you, but the first thing that we have here is a command. Don't store treasures on earth, and then a little later we get another command, do store them in heaven. And you know what, the commands disappear after that. This passage feels to you and to me, very hortatory, very imperitival, go do these things and don't do those things. In fact, maybe it feels to some of you like verse 24 is very much a command. Serve God not man, right, does it feel that way to you? But it isn't that way. And to a disciple, the disciple knows that the disciple understands that we're supposed to serve God not man. But I want to tell you, the serving of the mount is also for unbelievers to listen in on as we said last time and to evaluate whether they want to be a disciple or they're willing to pay the price of being the disciple. There are a lot of people in this world who adhere, you can't serve God and man and they would say, really, why not? Can't we do both? What's the problem with that? And if you want to teach it, which is again one of my interests in this class, if you want to teach it to Christians, they'll all read this as, now be sure you serve God. But to a non-Christian or someone who's wondering about whether they want to be a Christian or wondering about the nature of discipleship, even they're a brand new Christian, this may be shocking to them. Even I can't serve God and my career simultaneously. I mean, doesn't God bless us when we become Christians? When I get richer than ever, when I get more things than ever, when blessings fall on heaven, fall on me from heaven. So this will be shocking to some people, maybe not believe it or they may want to resist it for a while. So that's one thing about exploring this with people. The other thing about exploring this with people is the riddle that I put to you right before we took our break and maybe I'll just state the riddle one more time and maybe even state it just a little bit differently. After you look at 19 to 21, we've got our basic command and then we have this saying about the eye being the lamp of the body. What does this saying mean? Does it mean that if you find yourself storing your treasures on earth, the reason my friend is that your eyes are bad. Your only hope is to recognize your eyes are bad, you're in darkness and great darkness and throw yourself on God's mercy. Or, our verses 22 and 23 saying, the eye is kind of a lamp. If you look at a thing, if you spend all of your time looking at lands in magazine, if you like clothes or Chadwicks or if you spend all your time, oh, I got somebody. If you spend your time reading bass outfitters, got somebody else head snapped, whiplash on the left. If you spend your time shopping, shopping, shopping, shopping, shopping, why do we have a good time is by shopping, shopping, shopping and looking at what you want and making lists of all you want, then that's going to be kind of like a light or a window and somehow what you keep looking at is going to affect the whole person. That's the question. Is it A or B? Diagnosis or preventative? Is one of you put it during the break? Diagnosis or preventative? What do you think? How many of you said both are true? Does anybody think, does anybody disagree with that? It's not often the case when you look at something, a passage of the Bible and you wonder what does it mean? Does it mean this or this? The answer is both. It's not always that's rarely the case, but I think it's the case here. I do believe that Jesus uses the term I, as we said before, we use those references from Psalm 119, the I and the heart are almost interchangeable terms in the Old Testament. You set your I on the commands, you also set your heart on the commands. If you love God and His truth with your I, you'd love it with your heart, a couple places in the Old Testament. So we're talking about attitude, but it's also true that where, let me put it to you this way. Theologically speaking, most of us are inclined to do what Jesus has been doing most of the time here and that is pressing on to the heart. Our first inclination is to say this is diagnosis because that's what Jesus is doing all the time. He's saying, look at your character. The starting point is diagnose yourself. You're your center, you're poor and you should mourn. And then chapter five is full of this. Don't just be content with doing the right thing, but look at the heart. Are you hating people inside diagnosis? And this looks like diagnosis too. You're putting your stress on this world. Don't just be superficial about it. Ask the question, why? What's because there's something wrong with your eye? You're full of darkness. That sounds so much like an analysis of the soul in verse 22 and a great darkness has overcome you. But Jesus not only is, so that's part one, Jesus is talking about diagnosis. If you're, if you find yourself doing the wrong thing, don't just say I'm going to try harder and do better. I'm going to stop storing up treasures on earth and I'm going to start storing up and have a guess what? If you don't know God, if you're not a redeemed and renewed person, you can't do that. It's not in you. And the reason is very simple, if you don't know that God is your father, God loves you, it makes all the sense in the world to store up treasures on earth. If you don't believe in God, it's sheer folly to give it away. You better keep it for yourself because it's up to you baby. I have to take care of myself. The unregenerate person must, if they have any sense at all, must store up treasures on earth. And if they're wilder destruction, then we go get some spray to kill the moths. And we keep the robbers out with the security system. Very logical. It's not enough to change. You've got to get to the root of the matter where there's darkness in you. But it's also true. It's also true that what we do changes who we are. It is true. If you tell a lie once, it's easier the next time. And if you tell a lie three times, it's even easier the tenth time. And eventually you may be a liar. And it's true that if you're generous once and you give sacrificial once, and it's almost impossible for you to, and it practically kills you, to give somebody ten dollars when you know you won't get it back or fifty dollars or loan out your car. And you're just grieving and grieving until you get it back four hours later and worried like crazy. You know the second time it may be easier. And if you do it again and again and again and again, you just maybe come a generous person. It's possible. So what we do changes who we are. But there's also something else about this passage and you can't quite see it from the English translation. That is that Jesus uses very specific words that remind us of the question of or warn us about where we set our eye. And specifically the word there, if your eye is bad, see that in verse 23. That word, if your eye is bad, the word is actually evil, if your eye is evil. Now does anybody here ever heard of an evil eye? Sure have. And you know that's one of the oldest idioms in the human race. The phrase evil eye is at least three thousand years old. You want a shout out of a doubt and maybe older than three thousand years. What does evil eye mean? Okay, it means a curse. And why did people curse? What was the root behind the curses of people who give the evil eye? Okay, you want misfortune to befall but why? People did something and people got something. Historically, maybe not now so much, but historically it was from envy. You've got my, you know, you married the person I wanted to marry so I'm going to curse you. You got my good, you stole my cow and give the evil eye. Okay, it had to do. The evil eye was the greedy eye, the eye that didn't have enough, the eye that wasn't satisfied, the eye that wanted more, that was jealous, that was grudging. And in fact, if you like, you can see this. Again, I mentioned the inter-testimental period, the period between the end of the Old Testament New Testament. The book Ecclesiasticus, not Ecclesiastes, but Ecclesiasticus talks a couple times about the evil eye. If you like to look things up chapter 14, verse 10, Ecclesiastes, and 34, 13. And Jesus actually used, oh sorry, Moses uses the phrase evil eye in Deuteronomy 159. And Jesus uses it a couple of other times, Luke 1134, Matthew 20, verse 15, or a few others, but that would give you enough if you like to check things out. The other thing is that the word Jesus uses for a good eye is also an unusual word. The word is a simple eye, or could be translated a pure eye, and it can also be translated a generous eye. Now, I just want to think through this with a simple eye, or to give something, maybe you remember Romans 12-8, those who give should give generously, you know, that phrase in Romans 12-8. What it actually says is those who give should give simply, now what does it mean, same word, hoploss, Greek word, to give simply means to give without strings attached, to give simply, it's just to give. You can have it, it's yours, I'll pay you back, I'm not doing it to be paid back, you can have it, I'm just doing it because I want to do it, okay? Just take it. I owe you one, no you don't, I'm just giving it to you, okay? It's not easy to do, but it's good to do, to give simply. And that's the words used here, it's a simple eye, an eye that just gives, period. It's not out for what it's getting, and so forth. So, Jesus is using words, evil eye, generous eye, that remind us that it is important where we center eye, as we live our lives out, and not set them on Chadwick's embass boat magazines. Okay, Jesus goes on in the rest of this section, Matthew chapter 6, verses 24, I just want to go rapidly through the rest of what Jesus has to say here, and tells us if it's true that we get these matters straight, then we'll realize that we can't serve two masters, we're confronted with a choice, you can't serve both God and Maman. And then it goes on to spell out a little bit more what a right attitude toward wealth might exactly mean. Above all, what it means is that we should not only be generous, so we say on a physical level, we should also be generous with our minds, that is to say, generosity with our mind is expressed by a love of God that is free from worry. That's what 25 and following are about. If you are truly a disciple, you don't need to worry about your life, and it gives you a series of reasons for that. Your life is more important than food, and your body more important than clothing. Don't worry because God takes care of birds, and you're more important than birds, so God will take care of you. That's a reason not to worry. It comes from faith, you got to believe that God sovereign and taking care. And besides Jesus asks a question in verse 27, what can worrying accomplish? What can you do by worrying? Can you add an hour to your life by worrying? Is it help? Not at all. And then another question, have you learned the lesson of the wild flowers, see how God takes care of His creation? He closes His creation. He closes weeds and wild grasses in flowers. He makes wild things bloom with beauty. And if He makes them beautiful, won't He give you enough? He doesn't just close them. It gives them beautiful clothes. Won't He close you? You're so much more important to Him than the grasses. And then if you need another reason, He tells us, you know, if you live your life in worry, you're basically living like a pagan because pagans run saying, what shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear? pagans run after these things because as we were saying a minute ago, they don't believe God will provide it for them. They better take care of it for themselves. They better get busy. That's why pagans don't observe the Sabbath day because they know that if it doesn't get done in six days, God won't do it for them. That's what they think they know. They gotta do it themselves. They run. Are you like that? I mean, are you a practical atheist? That's the question. No, God knows that you need these things. What you need to do, summarizing remark, verse 33, is seek first God's kingdom and God's righteousness, obedient starts with theism, starts with God, and then all these things will be added to you means God will add them. When they say, we'll be added, you have to, by whom? Well, by God, not by yourself. Therefore, don't just have the right attitude toward possessions in some general sense, but you have the right attitude toward possessions because you believe in God, because you are a Christian, because you are a theist. Well, the great central portion of the Sermon of the Mount is now behind us. This is a sample of Christ's righteousness. Now when you're done and kingdom righteousness, when you're done hearing all this, when you're done, listen to the Sermon of the Mount, what are you tempted the main part? What are you tempted to do? Let me put it two different ways. How many have ever gone to a marriage seminar and been really messed up by it? This is what happens. If you go without your spouse, you say, you know, let's go, all I can, I'm sick, I've got some deadline tomorrow. Okay, I'll go and I'll take notes for us. And you come back and what you say, what do you say? See, the guy gave a talk, it was a great talk. And what he said is that you should stop nagging me and stop bossing me around. You should start being more sensitive and you should start, what are you doing? You're taking everything that that person said and you're making it into a way of manipulating or controlling or changing your spouse or making them feel guilty. It's very possible to talk about all the things your spouse should do and more of us forget about the things you should be doing that are different. Am I right? With somebody say, Amen. All right. And I hope I'm right because that's what Jesus is up to in chapter 7 verses 1 to 6. When you get done listening to all of this, you will be tempted to judge. You will be tempted to use this new instruction, not to examine your soul, examine your commitment or your dedication, but rather to judge others. See Matthew 7 doesn't really have much new material in it. What Matthew 7 has is essentially is a series of questions. How are you going to respond to what you've just heard? Option number 1 is to use it to judge other people. So Jesus says, right away, don't use it to judge. Rather what you should do is apply it to yourself. The other thing you should do is pursue God for his blessings so you can do these things. Talk about that in a minute. And then third, he lays out choices. Which way shall you go? Will you obey this and bear fruit or not? One way of getting at the question of how to understand chapter 7 is by asking the question about how we might say we feel after receiving all this instruction. Now one way we can feel, Christian on Christian, is I'm overwhelmed. This is too much. All these things are great, but I can't do them. And one question we could ask a theological question is, where's grace in this? I mean, don't we stress grace around here? Aren't we grace oriented and Christ centered? Where is grace? All I've heard for a while now is law, law and more law. There's no question. There are many commands here. And not only are there many commands, but we're also told that even the Beatitudes end with a call for action. Not just hunger and thirst for righteousness, but let your righteous deeds shine so that God has praised. And not just do the right thing, but do it all for the right reasons and so on. Where is grace in all this? It's number one. Grace is in all this from the beginning. Blessed are the poor and spirit. If after hearing chapter 5 and 6 you feel overwhelmed and you ask the question, where is grace in all this, then good you've gotten the point. The point that Jesus made first of all, blessed are the poor in spirit. Number two, where is grace in all this? Grace is found in verse 7. Ask, 7-7. Ask, and it will be given to you. Who will give it? It will be given by whom? By God. This is the Jews, Jesus speaking so is to avoid excessive use of the name of God, which was offensive to some Jews. Ask and it will be given to you. By God. Seek and you will find. Not going to the door will be open to you. By God. That's the promise that he makes. So when you see your inability to obey, then you ask God. What you should not do is use this information as I was just saying to judge. And it gives you a reason why. If you use this knowledge about the righteous life to judge others, what you've just done is prove that you know the standard. And if you know the standard and you don't keep it, then you've condemned yourself. If you hate it when people come to meetings that you're in charge of, late, that means you know that it's rude to come late. And then if you yourself come late to somebody else's meetings, you condemned yourself when you were angry at the other person, right? So don't use this to judge others. Instead, what you must do is take a good, hard look at yourself. See the plank in your own eye. Take the speck out of your own eye. Then you'll be able to see clearly for others. What he's saying is this, you'd be hard on yourself first. You'd get it going in your own life first. You practice this command yourself. Then you may have a few ideas about how others should practice it. And that's good counsel too. Now verse 5 provides a great challenge here. Don't give dogs what is sacred and do not throw your pearls to pigs. If they do, if you do, they may trample them under their feet and then turn and tear you to pieces. Do you see what the problem is in verse 6? Verse 1-5 says, don't judge. What does verse 6 say? Determine who's a pig and who's a dog and what do you have to do to do that? You have to judge. Now there are two possibilities in terms of what Jesus is up to here. Possibility number 1 is that He's saying, okay, I told you not to judge, but let me just back off for a minute. I'll make a concession to you. Ordinarily, don't judge, but sometimes you have to. It's kind of like that proverb, don't answer a fool according to his folly, unless you'd be like him. In the very next one, do answer a fool according to his folly, unless you'd be wise in his own eyes. The proverbs are saying, you figure out which one applies. The basic rule is don't judge. But then maybe Jesus is saying in verse 6, well sometimes you need to. And when you need to, there are just times when you don't want to cast your pearls before someone. That's one idea of what Jesus is saying. Ordinarily don't, but sometimes you have to. That is a plausible explanation, but I'm going to tell you that it doesn't convince me. I think what Jesus is doing in verse 6 is best described as instructive irony. That is to say, irony means when you say something with a certain tone of voice or a certain setting, and you mean actually exact opposite thing from your literal words. Now why would I say that Jesus is using instructive irony? Several reasons. The first reason is that Jesus uses instructive irony elsewhere in his teaching. He doesn't. For example, he says, I did not come, he says in the Pharisees, I did not come to call the righteous with sinners to repentance. Which at face value means, well not seeing you Pharisees, I'm not calling you to repentance because you're such holy men. Well does he really believe that? Does he really believe they don't need to repent? He's using instructive irony with them. So he uses it elsewhere. Furthermore you have to understand that the words pig and dog are extremely harsh language. To determine that someone is a swine or a dog and not worthy of even a word from you is to make an extremely harsh judgment what you're saying is. You know I have the truth but you know you're such a pig, you're such a dog that I'm not even going to bother to talk to you because you wouldn't even understand it anyway. That's harsh, harsh language. Furthermore it runs counter to the teaching that we should evangelize, make disciples of nations doesn't it? I mean, haven't we all seen that sometimes the most unlikely person, the very person you would say now if there was a pig, he's the one. If there ever was a dog, she's the one. And yet it's that very one who then becomes a Christian later on, right? Do we really have the ability to determine who's a pig and who's a dog? Do you think some people would have judged Paul the Apostle or Chuck Colson or various others in those categories and runs contrary to Jesus own practice? Didn't he hang around with people that could have been judged pigs and dogs, prostitutes, tax collectors, various other people? What Jesus is doing is showing us through this exactly how foolish it is to judge. If you call somebody, if you take, I'm going to paraphrase now, if you take this wisdom that I've given you and you regard it as some sacred thing to people who you despise. And you toss your pearls of wisdom, the people you consider to be dogs and pigs. Let me tell you, they'll pick up your attitude and they'll turn on you and they'll destroy you. Don't use what he's saying, I believe is this, what he's saying is don't use the word of God to despise another person. Look at what I know, you pig. Look at what I know, you dog, I'm so far ahead of you. Instead of having an attitude like that, you ask, you seek, you knock, you plead, beg God to show you the right way. Here's what Jesus says by way of a final appeal when he's done establishing the right way to look at it, the right way to look at his law. Now he says, next, now there is a turning point in front of you, there's a decision to be made, there are two roads, as you receive all of this, there are two roads, there is an easy road, there's a hard road, which road you're going to take. There are two ways of looking at your life, you can say that your life is going to be a tree that is good and is fruitful. You can bear fruit by loving and trusting God or you can have a life, a tree that bears nothing but bad fruit as years go by, which kind of tree are you? Now you may be listening to all of this, now I'm in verses 20 with a 23 and you may say, yes, I believe it, I believe in God, I believe in Christ, I'm a Christian, but be careful, there are two ways to confess Christ. There are some people who confess Christ and say, oh lord I cast out damage your name, I believe in you, I trust in you, but Jesus says, I never knew you, you said the words, you did the deeds, but I never knew you. Or are you one who truly does know and you say, Jesus is my lord and you know what that means, which kind of confession do you make? And there are two kinds of builder on what do you build Jesus says, Jesus asks in verse 24, are you building on sand? And you know it's like cheap land, it's like land that can be flooded, the sand that you build on will be probably sandy land in a dry riverbed. You can buy flood land and build a house there, well you know it's great, flood land is great, it's really cheap, just one problem, floods come. When the flood comes, what is your house built on? Is your house built on the rock? Notice it does not say, at least in the original language it does not say, has its foundation on a rock, it says in verse 25, the rock. What does that mean? Shouldn't you have said, build a house on a rock, why did he say D rock? Well if we wait a few chapters we'll find out. When Peter confesses Christ and hears on this rock, on the rock of confessing Christ, Christ is the rock and the confessing Peter is also the foundation of church, that's the rock on which you stand. And so the reader you or me or the hearer is confronted with a string of questions, which is your path, which is your road, which kind of person are you? Let me tell you, let me close with a story. A few years ago my family went to the beach in New Jersey. We got there about 10 o'clock at night, and we've been traveling a long time, I was the main driver, it was rainy, but somehow or other, although we hadn't been to the beach for two years, I was so excited, actually it was more like 9 o'clock. I was so excited, I just had to go to the beach. My wife and my kids all decided it was, they were too tired, it was too late, they were going to go to sleep. I went to the beach. By the time I got to the beach it was 9.30. It was about July 1st, and you know what the sky is like at the beach from July 1st? You can still see just a little trailing off of charcoal in the edge of the horizon, and of course the waves are almost black and the sky is almost black. You can barely see the edge of the waves, and you hear them roaring, and there was a lot of wind that night. And you see the waves surge, and you can't see quite clearly, just get a sense of the vastness of the ocean, of vastness of the sky. And as you see that, it's exciting, it's awesome as you feel the vastness of creation, it's also terrifying, you're so small. I walked and ran through the, through the waves, and through the wind for about a half an hour, and then I realized something hadn't seen one person. I was at the beach, 400 yards away, you could see the boardwalk. There were people there eating pizza, and they were eating french fries, and they were playing putt-putt, and they were eating snow cones, and if they were really profound maybe it was yogurt cones. And I wondered, why is it that there are hundreds of people in the boardwalk, and then a little bit later I met a few, and just so few, in the wild grandeur, the wild and wonderful experience of the beach. It's the better road, but it's the narrower road. It's frightening. Pizza's not frightening. That's why they're on the boardwalk. Video games and video arcades are not frightening, safe, but it's also superficial. What God asked of us is to choose the dangerous road, the awesome road, the overpowering road, the road that makes us feel how little we are. It's much more dangerous, but it's much better.