Hey, I'm Matt Brownell.
And I'm Van Owens.
And I'm Tim Adams.
Welcome to Climbing the Mountain, where we dive into the scriptures and discuss themes,
connections, and real life application.
We're kicking off a series here where we're going to examine the Sermon on the Mount and
discuss implications for this teaching for Christians today.
Welcome back.
We have been having a riveting discussion on treasures in heaven.
And last time, we spent a lot of time thinking about what are ways that we store up treasures
on earth.
And we talked a lot about that everything that we own, everything that we're going after
has some amount of energy and time and thought that is associated with it.
And they kind of can drag us down.
And that it's not really in line with what the reality is that Jesus is offering to us,
that there's something better that is waiting for us on the other side of death.
And so we're about to dive into the next verse.
And I'll read the context here for everyone.
In Matthew 6, 19, it says, Don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where
maws and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.
But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where maws and vermin do not destroy, and
where thieves do not break in and steal.
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
The eye is the lamp of the body.
If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.
But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.
If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness?
No one can serve two masters.
Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and
despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and money.
So I'll turn it over to Jim for the next question.
Appreciate it, Tim.
So we're going to do the next section, which is the eye is the lamp of the body.
And that's one of those phrases that confused me for the majority of my Christian life.
And as I've been learning more, the eye is the lamp of the body.
It's a really strange phrase.
But the phrase of having good eyes was a Hebrew idiom for seeing the world through the lens
of generosity.
I promise we would come back to generosity, and here we are.
So when Jesus is saying is the eye is the lamp of the body, if your eyes are healthy
or good, your whole body will be full of light.
And if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
And he's, it sounds like with that knowledge, he's saying, if your eyes are good and you
are generous, you will be full of light.
And if your eyes are not good, you will be full of darkness.
With that in mind, are there any stories in the Old Testament, because Jesus is referencing
a lot of the Old Testament in the Sermon on the Mount.
I'm not sure how much you guys have talked about that, but he's very frequently, if not
always referencing something.
Are there any stories from the Old Testament that you would recall that would talk about
generosity?
Yeah, I've got one, but before I get to it, I really just want to say I'm so glad you
brought that out, that Hebrew idiom, it's still used today actually, Tav Ayin.
And it shows up in Proverbs, Proverbs 22.9, when we read it in the NIV, you're not going
to read the good eye, but that is literally what it says.
And it's in the Septuagint, they render it showing mercy to a beggar.
But it's still in the Hebrew, that Tav Ayin is right there, that good eye.
And I think it's really, it totally, when I started looking at that, I was like, wow,
this unlocks the whole, the rest of this passage, like really clearly frames the rest of it
to be about our heart of giving and our whole outlook.
It reminds me also what Jesus was just saying in Matthew 542, we aren't to turn away from
people who are in need.
We value everyone as someone made in God's image.
And really the rest of this passage is about it.
And I think it's so strange to our society too.
So that's the other thing that makes me think of that our society is telling us, look out
for number one.
This is totally opposite.
No one's going to help you.
You have to claw your way to the top, and when you're saying that Jesus is saying this
is like the lamp of the body, the eyes, it also makes me think of Matthew 514, what he
was saying again about being the light of the world.
And so I think there is something about this that when we do, like when we're filled with
lightness because we have this kind of outlook, we are going to glorify our Father in heaven
by being generous to others, by not turning away from their needs.
So that said, all of that, sorry, I love tangents.
Anyway, but I really found that fascinating.
So I'm glad you brought that phrase out.
The person I was thinking about was Abram in Genesis 13 and 14.
When he in lot part ways Abram lets Lachus which land he wants, and of course Lachus
is the fertile land, which is even described as resembling the land of Egypt.
Hello, red flag, foreshadowing.
Anyway, things don't work out the way Lach planned, and he finds himself a prisoner of
war and then Abram comes into the rescue and routes the army, frees Lach and even returns
Lach's possessions.
Then he gives a 10th to Melchizedek and won't accept anything from the kingdom, a kingdom
saw them.
That seems like he is not attached to personal possessions.
So I was going to say, I also think of a story from Abram when right before the story of
Sodom and Gomorrah, which I think is a very interesting placement.
We're not talking about that today, but I'll let you kind of decide why it's an interesting
placement on your own.
There's the story of three visitors.
We don't really know where they come.
They just come.
And Abram rolls out the red carpet, he gives them everything.
He is so over the top, hospitable and generous towards them.
Yeah.
I think of a story in, of course, in First Samuel, where, and it happens at the end of
First Samuel in chapter 20, it's about chapter 30, chapter 30.
David and his men have gone off to, to, to fight and they've left all their families
and their possessions in this little town called Ziklog.
And while they're gone, the amylochites come and they raid Ziklog.
They take all the people as slaves.
They take all the treasures.
David and his men get back and they find smoking ruins and no people and no treasure.
And they're distressed, obviously, and they think about stoning David because he took
them away to fight.
It's a, it's a, the story is really intense.
But if, so eventually what happens is David and his men find the amylochites that raided
them, they defeat them, they take back all of their stuff and all of their people.
But when they were on their way out, it says a certain portion of David's men were so exhausted
and so grief stricken that they couldn't carry on.
They just, they fell out with fatigue and just utter frustration and depression.
And David said, well, you guys stay behind, we'll go ahead.
So they go and they defeat everybody.
And then when they're coming back, David is about to give them everything.
And David's men say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, those guys didn't even participate.
They didn't work for this.
They didn't do anything for this.
Let's just give them back their wives and their children, but tell them, give them back their
wives and their children and tell them to move on.
And David says, David says, I'm going to read it just because I think it's such an incredible
act of generosity.
In verse 23 of chapter 30 of first Samuel, it says, David replied, no, my brothers, you
must not do that with what the Lord has given us.
He has protected us and delivered into our hands the raiding party that came against
us.
Who will listen to what you say?
The share of the man who stayed with the supplies is to be the same as that of him who went down
to the battle.
All will share alike.
David made this a statute and an ordinance in Israel from that day to this.
And that always just stands out to me.
And I think that's one of the ways where David proved that he's a man after God's own heart.
And the thing that I'll say about the good eye, the eyes being the lamp of the body,
the two things that I think about, we'll talk more about this, I'm sure, but the two
things I think about are a lamp is something that projects outward.
And it's what, so it's what you project outward to everybody around you.
And that also, I think, speaks to what your perspective is.
And I'm sure we're going to dig deeper into that as we go, but that's what I'm thinking.
That is the plan.
So I think it's a really, those are great stories.
And I think it's important to make sure we remember that that's when Jesus's hearers
hear those, that's what, those are some of the stories that are probably going through
their head.
I don't know exactly what they're thinking of, but they're thinking of examples.
Like, this guy was generous in Torah, this is what Jesus is calling us to be.
We're supposed to have the same generosity.
I want to ask a little bit about generosity now.
And this is something I always, I think we tend to view generosity as necessarily financial.
What are some ways other than finances that we can be generous?
So, I think I'm going to get a little from looking at another word Matthew uses here
besides the, the, the I, which he clearly references.
But I think the other one that I was looking at was the one he uses for good, which is
interesting, I think, because it has a meaning of single or figuratively clear.
So, and I love this choice because I think it's getting at a bigger picture here when
you're seeing clearly, you see things as they actually are.
That person in need is just like you.
They aren't beneath you or waste of time or unworthy.
They were made in God's image.
And it reminds me of Paul's prayer that the eyes of our heart may be enlightened in order
that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance
and his holy people.
We aren't, so we're not just talking about physical eyes here, although I think that's
also really interesting connection that you see between what we see with our physical
eyes and how it influences our, the eyes of our heart, really our soul.
But I think if I could go on, I think the part about having a good eye and being generous,
the how, the how of it is, is related to having a single focus.
So much of what we read in the Bible, I think it's there to help us train the eyes of our
heart on God's glory on our savior, the author and perfect of our faith.
When we're filling up our eyes with Jesus, it's going to change us.
We'll be more grateful for the mercy we've received and more inclined to show mercy
to others.
It's like what Jesus tells us disciples when they go out in Matthew 10, freely you've
been given, freely give.
And so I think this passage we're studying about being generous is actually getting at
something larger, something we see throughout the rest of the Bible.
We become what we behold.
And if we focus our eyes on Jesus through faith, we become more like him.
Conversely, if we take a steady diet of the world, we're going to become more like the
Prince of his age.
I think that's what we're looking about in the Matthew 5, too, you know, become more
like your father in heaven, or you could be more like the father of lies.
And the way you do that by looking to God, the invisible God.
Yeah.
And that has like a riffle effect on everything.
When you just ask that question, Jim, like Abram had that or earlier, that story you
were saying, like Abram had that heart of, I don't know who these people are, but I'm
going to treat them hospitably.
I'm going to roll off the red carpet and make space and time for them and give them
of my home and my food.
And that hospitality is one of the ways I think we can be extremely generous.
And it's one of the ways where like, if we're only being generous in like a financial transactional
sense, it can be devoid from our heart.
But you know, Matt's saying like, for fixing our eyes on Jesus is going to come into every
area of our life.
And like hospitality is like one of these ways where we're inconveniencing ourselves,
making ourselves, making our homes, or making, you know, our lives a place where other people
can come in and feel safe and have the time and space to be cared for.
That's inconvenient to our own agendas.
But it's an incredible opportunity.
And we see amazing examples of that all throughout the scriptures of people doing that and are
called to be hospitable.
But I was going to just say like, oh, we need to be generous with our time, but I'm like,
that feels kind of fuzzy or like hard to be hard to apply.
But I think that one of the really practical ways we can do that is be hospitable.
I think I think three words, I think compassion, kindness, and mercy.
Those are ways to be generous that don't necessarily have to do with money.
And those are the kind of things that I try to hold up in my mind whenever I'm doing anything.
And somebody cuts me off in traffic and I'm tempted to, you know, curse them.
I think, you know, maybe that's a guy who just found out that his parent had a heart
attack.
And maybe he's, and, and, you know, the cynic in me wants to say probably not, probably
he's just a knucklehead.
But if I'm going to be compassionate, kind, merciful to that person, I have to open myself
up to the possibility.
Maybe that's it.
And maybe my letting him get into traffic lets him get there in time to help or to do
something and to think about it in that way and to approach the world and to, to, to project
something positive into the situation.
It may not ever do anything for that guy who cut me off in traffic, but it will keep the,
the lamp of my eyes bright.
It will keep it, it will keep it from going dark.
If I can just exhibit compassion, kindness, mercy.
That was one of the ways I was always thinking about being generous because it's one thing
to give my money away.
It's another thing to give my time away.
But it's, it's a whole different animal to be generous in my judgments of people and
how I view people and.
And harder to do.
And it's harder to do in, it's because it's very easy for me to look at someone in the
way they act and assume that I know why they're acting that way.
But it's very hard for me to give them the most charitable interpretation of their actions.
You know, like Van said, I'll even expand on that.
There could be someone who's just difficult to deal with in this particular facet of our
lives, whether it's work or school, if you're in school, and who's struggling, who, who
might be going through something that's incredibly challenging.
They could be taking care of a sick relative.
They could have stuff going on at home that's just intense and, and difficult.
And if we're not kind and generous and compassionate with our judgments of people, we're, we're
going to eventually, we're going to eventually hurt some of them who need what Jesus is talking
about, who Jesus is trying to reach.
He's trying to reach the hurting.
But if we're not kind and generous and to get back to our discussion from a couple pods
ago with the Pharisees, the Pharisees were not always generous in their judgments of people.
In fact, they were frequently not generous.
It was the way I sort of hear it is it's either you're one of us or you do what we do or we
don't really have time for you.
And they, they lacked that generosity of thinking the best of people and presuming the best of
people, which I think we can all agree is incredibly difficult.
Yeah.
Could I make one connection for our culture?
So we live in a world that is incredibly in America is incredibly materialistic.
And there's also a, you know, an imagined meritocracy, which I think is breaking down
in most people's minds, but there's still this kind of embedded assumption that, you
know, people, if people don't have something, then they're lazy.
Maybe not as much not in the Northeast, but I have family or friends in other places that
might have other opinions.
And that really gets at our judgments when we're thinking about being financially generous.
There are many opportunities that we might have to give, but we might hold back because
we think that someone doesn't deserve it.
Yeah.
And that we deserve it more.
And I want to talk about that more later, but I think it's these ideas about being generous
of being generous with our judgments versus generous with our money versus generous with
our time are all linked.
Yeah.
That's the main thing that I want to make clear like right now.
I appreciate you saying that, Tim, because it's not an either or proposition.
It's not, I can be generous with my money, but I can't be generous with my time or my
judgments.
You can be generous with all of them.
You can be overall generous.
So the next question I have, and we are flying through questions on this podcast.
This is good.
Jesus contrasts light and darkness.
How would a Jew hear this contrast?
What does light represent in the Old Testament?
What does darkness represent?
How would a person hearing this firsthand, what would they hear here?
I thought of a few things here, Jim, and I'm going to bring in a topic that I know you
and I love to debate.
I was just checking the clock, by the way.
Here we go.
Yeah.
No, but I think with light, I think you can't help but think of creation, right?
That's one of the first things that comes to mind.
But the other thing that comes to mind is also holiness.
And I have images of burning incense, the lamps that were in the first tabernacle and
then the temple and places holy to the Lord where we could come near to him.
And then I also think of Israel being called to be a light to the nations, Isaiah 42.
So again, this idea is reflecting God's glory into the world to draw people back to him.
And that's what we see in Matthew 5, 14, what Jesus is talking about.
And when I think about this, the writer, well, I got to say the New Testament writers were
Jews too, most of them, maybe not Luke, but John, I think, is one who uses this theme
of light from the beginning of his writing to the end.
And John 1, 5, he says, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness is not overcome
it.
He's saying the light perpetually shines and the darkness tried and failed to overcome
it, past tense darkness defeated already.
Jesus is the light of the world.
John 8 and 9, we follow him.
We won't walk in darkness.
It'll be just like the pillar of fire theophany leading Israel through the wilderness Exodus.
And you get the same picture in the end of Revelation 22.5 where he's describing how
there's going to new heaven, new earth, final temple, holy city, no unholy thing will be
there except all who Christ has redeemed, old and New Testament.
They'll all be together worshiping God, seeing his face, knowing him, belonging to him.
And listen to this, there will be no more night.
They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun for the Lord God will
give them light.
So God is this ultimate light and Jesus is described even as the radiance of the glory
of God in Hebrews.
And likewise, we're intended to shine like stars in this dark universe.
And that's the thing that is so amazing about all of this.
Where to be the light of the world and our actions should glorify our heavenly Father.
Yeah, this is a big one.
And I have a lot to say and not much time left.
So I'm thinking that maybe.
Do you guys want to go just a little bit longer on this one?
Well, so I think what we do here is let's pick this up next pod.
Because this is a long discussion and it's a discussion that merits good time.
The light and darkness discussion.
I think it merits time.
I think it merits energy and I don't want to cut us short.
So we're going to pick this up next pod.
Really appreciate you all listening.
I hope you guys feel challenged to be generous and to be generous in all the ways you can
be generous and also to be creative in the ways you are generous.
There's probably ways we haven't talked about that you can be generous.
And so let's go out and be generous.
Thank you all for listening.
We'll talk to you next pod.