Mat 5:14-16, A Heart That Is Genuinely Open.

Class Outline:

Thursday May 23, 2024

 

Idea: The pure heart illumes Christ openly, genuinely and demands courage. 

 

LUK 8:17

“For nothing is hidden that will not become evident, nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light.”

 

Dostoevsky: I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened. 

 

C.S. Lewis [Great Divorce] They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.” 

 

Things done in secret are labeled darkness. They are sins that pursue desires that are hidden away. 

 

Nothing is hidden that will not become evident (LUK 8:17; 12:3). 

 

Light is associated with openness, MAT 10:27. 

 

It was never Jesus’ intention to witness of the light outside of the small area He did. It was His intention for the church to shine forth His gospel to the nations. 

 

The world would try to silence the light (put a basket on it), the challenge of the church’s courage would be to let them (ACT 4:18; 5:12-13; 5:27-33, 40-42). 

 

Is the world, people in your life, silencing your light? (PSA 27:14)

 

Good courage, 2CO 5:6-11; PSA 31:23-24.

 

The openness of divine light requires a pure heart that doesn’t hide darkness. 

 

Life within can be darkness, LUK 11:33-36. 

 

Satan is always convincing the world that their darkness is okay, normal, and standard. He is always pressing upon them that nothing more can be done. 

 

The pure heart is an illumed light and it is easily and enthusiastically shared. 

 

ROM 1:8-15, Paul longs to share his gift with them. 

 

The impure heart in a believer is a consistent source of inner pain. 

 

This pain is generally associated with areas of secret sin that are kept in the dark, but to which you sneak away and bow down to and worship in order to fulfill some pleasure or desire. Luke 16:10

 

The apostles gave their all to Christ - their light was genuine. 

 

When they opened themselves to those to whom they ministered, they were genuine. 

 

Paul, Php 1:21

Peter and John, ACT 4:19-20. 

Early church, ACT 4:31-34. 

 

Light is openness and therefore courage. 

 

To submit your whole life to the Lord takes courage. 

 

Courage is the ability to say and do what is right in the face of fear to do so. It is the ability to say no to the flesh that wants to do something else and fears reprisal or persecution or uncomfortability. 

 

Solzhenitsyn quote: “Live not by lies.” Solzhenitsyn essay (1974): We have so hopelessly ceded our humanity that for the modest handouts of today we are ready to surrender up all principles, our soul, all the labors of our ancestors, all the prospects of our descendants—anything to avoid disrupting our meager existence.

 

It takes courage to be honest with ourselves, honest before God and His commandments and promises. It is far easier to talk about the right things, to talk about sacrificing self to submit to the Lord and in turn serve others fully.

 

We must not live by lies, breathe the lies, and have the courage to be fully truth. Then our light to the world will be the genuine article, the Lord Himself.