SERMON ON THE MOUNT
THE SOUND EYE
DR. JIM DIXON
MATTHEW 6:22-23
NOVEMBER 4, 2001
More than 100 million people in the United States of America wear glasses or contact lenses. They do this because their eyes are not sound. Something is wrong with their sight. Some people suffer from myopia, which is near-sightedness. I have a little myopia. My myopia is mild. I can still pass the eye test for my driver’s license. I know a lot of you don’t believe this, but I can still see the clock at the rear of the sanctuary. Some people suffer from hyperopia, which is far-sightedness. Of course, as we grow older, some people suffer from presbyopia. The lens of the eye hardens and loses its flexibility. It’s because of presbyopia that many people have to wear bifocals. Some people suffer from astigmatism. My wife Barbara has astigmatism and presbyopia.
Of course, some people have more serious problems their eyes. Some people have glaucoma and cataracts. There are diseases relating to the outer parts of the eye. Some people tragically are blind. What’s true in the physical world is also true in the spiritual world, and so we come to this passage of scripture in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus is speaking spiritually and metaphorically. He speaks of the sound eye and the unsound eye, and He warns us that if our eyes are not spiritually sound, we will live in darkness.
It’s critical for us this morning to understand what Jesus means by “the sound eye.” The Greek word for sound in this passage is the word “haplous.” This word does not mean, “sound.” It’s translated sound in the RSV. In the NIV it’s translated “good,” “the good eye.” In some other translations of scripture, it is translated “clear” or “healthy” or “pure,” but the truth is, the Greek word “haplous” doesn’t mean any of these things. It doesn’t mean sound. It doesn’t mean good. It doesn’t mean clear. It doesn’t mean pure. It doesn’t mean healthy. You might be thinking, “Well, why don’t they translate the Greek word in accordance with what it really means?” The reason the translators have not translated the Greek word in accordance with its true meaning is because it seems, at least, as though the true meaning doesn’t make any sense.
This morning we are going to examine the true meaning of haplous. I should say that haplous, this critical word in this passage of scripture, has two meanings. And these comprise our two teachings this morning. First of all, the word haplous means “single.” This is the literal and primary meaning of the Greek word haplous. It means single as opposed to diplous, which means “double,” or as opposed to the concept of many. Jesus is literally saying your eye must be single. If your eye is not single, you will live in darkness. This is the meaning of haplous. To try to understand this concept of the single eye… and I might say the King James Version actually renders haplous as single. If you read the King James Bible, it says, “The lamp of the body is the eye. If the eye is single, your whole body will be filled with light.” The problem of course is people read that and they don’t know what it means.
What does it mean to say, “your eye is single”? I want to help us to understand by beginning with a true story. This story concerns a man named John Rowlands. John Rowlands was born in Great Britain in 1841. He was born in the region of Wales. Tragically, within one week of his birth, both of his parents died and he was orphaned. John Rowlands lived in an orphanage. His early years were filled with much sorrow and much suffering and much pain. At the age of 17, John Rowlands came to the United States of America. He was a cabin boy on a ship traveling across the Atlantic to New Orleans.
In New Orleans, by good fortune and divine providence, John Rowlands, this 17-year-old boy, was adopted by a man in New Orleans whose name was Henry Hope Stanley. John Rowlands was given a new name. When he was adopted by Henry Hope Stanley, he was given the name Henry Morton Stanley. So, John Rowlands became Henry Morton Stanley. During the Civil War, he fought on the side of the Confederacy. After the Civil War, he moved to New York City and became a journalist. He was a journalist for The New York Herald.
As a journalist for The New York Herald, Henry Morton Stanley traveled west to report on the Indian Wars. He reported on many other events in many parts of the world, but his most famous assignment in his life took place in 1869 at the age of 28 when The New York Herald send Henry Morton Stanley to Africa. They sent him to Africa to locate the famous missionary and explorer, Dr. David Livingstone.
When John Rowlands (or Henry Morton Stanley) arrived on the coast of Africa, he arrived with 73 books. They were in three cases, weighing 180 pounds. He thought the trip would be short. He thought he would find Dr. Livingstone in short order. As the weeks passed into months and his fatigue grew and the fatigue of his bearers grew, he began to discard the books. He had to prioritize which books were most important. On the basis of that priority status, he would save or discard books. It took Stanley two years to find Dr. David Livingstone. By the time he found Livingstone, Stanley had discarded all of his books but one. He only had one single book remaining and that book was the Bible. He had discarded every other book and he had kept his Bible. In that two-year period searching for Dr. Livingstone, Stanley had read through the Bible countless times. He said that by the time he reached the Christian missionary, he was viewing all of life from the perspective of scripture. His focus was so on the Bible, he was interpreting everything in light of the word of God. He was running everything through the grid of scripture. He had a single eye. He had a single focus.
As Christians, we don’t need to throw away all of our books but the Bible. If we believed that, we wouldn’t have the Inklings Bookstore. Certainly, we may, as Christians, choose to read non-Christian books. There is a great wealth of literature. But if we’re Christians, we have to prioritize the Bible. We have to make it our highest reading priority, and we have to adopt a biblical view of life and a biblical view of the world. We have to run everything through the grid of scripture. We must have this single focus. We must view everything from the divine perspective. We must view everything on earth from a heavenly perspective so that really, in the ultimate sense, our focus, our single eye, is focused on God. It has that singular focus. It’s focused on God.
At the Milan Cathedral, which is great and famous, there are three main doors at the entrance. There are three inscriptions over the doors. Over the right door, there is this inscription: “All that pains is but for a moment.” Over the left door, there is this other inscription: “All that pleases is but for a moment.” Over the one center door, the famous inscription: “Nothing is important save that which is eternal.”
Do you really believe that? Do you really believe nothing is important save that which is eternal? Do you look at everything that’s temporal, everything that’s transitory, and view it from an eternal perspective? Do you view everything in this world from a heavenly perspective? That’s what Jesus is talking about here with a single eye.
When I was growing up in La Cañada, California, we lived in a house on a street called San Gorgonio Road. My mom still lives there. Across the street, there was a family that had a dog. It was a bulldog. It was often loose and running about. When I was learning to drive a car, the dog would come out of the yard and chase me. Every time I’d back my car out of our driveway and start up the street, this dog from across the street would come running out and would chase my car and yip at the tires. I have many memories of just looking out the window of our house watching other cars drive down San Gorgonio Road and seeing the dog come out, chasing after the car, yipping after the tires. Of course, it’s really meaningless. I mean, even for a dog it’s really meaningless. If you were to stop your car and give it to the dog, what would the dog do with it? If you were to take the tires off the car and give them to the dog, what would the dog do with them? It’s just meaningless.
You see, for many human beings living life in this world, their pursuits are just as meaningless. They are pursuing things that if they were to attain them would bring no real fulfillment. This is the way of the world. But as Christians, we’re called to a heavenly focus. When we look at this passage of scripture contextually, we really understand it. We saw last week that Jesus spoke of “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” We saw that the word for treasure is the word “thesauros,” and we saw that it normally refers to that which has supreme importance in your life, supreme value. In this sense, you can only have one treasure, one thesauros. This is what Jesus means by the haplous eye, the single eye. You’ve got one treasure, one highest value, and it’s Christ and it’s the kingdom of Christ, it’s the kingdom of heaven. It’s His Word. That’s your one treasure. That’s the single eye.
We saw last week how there are many false treasures. We can make false treasures of our children when we make them the center of our lives. We can make false treasures of our spouses when we make our husband or our wife the center of our lives. We can make false treasures of our career if we make our career the center of our life. We can make false treasures of our health if we make health the most important thing in our life. We can make false treasures of our wealth if we make money and the pursuit of it the most important thing in our life. We need a single eye. When you look at this passage contextually, when you see that it begins with treasure and it moves to mammon (which means money), you see that Jesus is saying that the double eye or the multiple eye is distracted by material things. The double eye, the unhealthy eye, is distracted by material things and that leads to darkness. It leads to darkness. So, how about you? Where is your real focus and is your eye single? How hard that is in this culture and in this nation and in this time.
There’s a second meaning of haplous. At first glance it’s going to seem to be unrelated, but it’s not unrelated. They really go together. The second meaning of haplous is “generous.” In fact, in the Bible the primary word for generous is haplous. You might be thinking, “Well, how can that be? How can the same word mean “single” and also “generous?” But to the Greeks, if a person was really single, they adopted lives of simplicity. Single as opposed to multiple; simple as opposed to complex. They believed that if you were really singular in your focus, you adopted a lifestyle of simplicity. If you adopted a lifestyle of simplicity, you would be able to be generous to others.
That might not seem like a logical link to you, but that’s how the meaning of the word evolved, so that haplous can mean single but it also can mean generous. I want to say this morning it doesn’t really matter which interpretation we give it because if your treasure is in heaven and your eye is focused on Christ and His kingdom, you’re going to be generous.
I noticed this morning in The Denver Post, in the Parade Magazine, there was a mention, in an article on the generosity of a woman named Osceola McCarty. Osceola McCarty just died in the state of Mississippi. She was kind of famous. Osceola McCarty had been interviewed by Barbara Walters. She had been interviewed on CNN. She’d been interviewed by People Magazine. She had been interviewed by all the major networks. When she was 87 years old these interviews took place. And why?
Well she had lived a simple life as a laundress. She did laundry. Through the decades, people in Mississippi, in Hattiesburg, came to her with their laundry. One person’s weeks’ worth of laundry she considered a single load and she charged 50 cents. That was the average of what she charged over the years. She did that for decades. Every Sunday she went to church, and she gave out of her meager income to the church. Every day she prayed. She would kneel to her knees and pray every day. Every day she would read her Bible. She made friends and she loved people. She lived in a poor part of town. Her life was very simple and her focus very single.
When she was 87 years old, she quit doing laundry. She went to her bank to see how much money she’d saved over the decades. She was amazed. She had saved a quarter of a million dollars—$250,000 with interest! So, she gave $150,000 to Southern Mississippi University to establish a program for African American disadvantaged children so that they could have a scholarship for school. Then she gave gifts to her church. She was interviewed by all of these people because they were amazed that she could have done these things and that she would be so generous. But that generosity grew out of her simplicity of life.
We all need to live lives that are more simple. Perhaps not as simple as Osceola McCarty’s life, but we all need to live lives of simplicity and we need to be generous. There can be little doubt that Jesus was at least partly focusing on generosity in the use of haplous because He contrasts it with “poneros” and poneros can mean “stingy.” So, you have the generous eye and the stingy eye. Unless we learn generosity, we are not in the light and we do not create light. We are enveloped by darkness.
Some of you probably saw the movie “Pay It Forward.” The movie is about a young man, a 7th grader whose name was Trevor. The part of this boy is played by Haley Joel Osment. His Social Studies teacher gives an assignment to the class to try to change the world. The assignment is to think of an idea which can change the world and begin to implement it. The students in the class, the 7th graders, are just shrugging their shoulders and they’re thinking, “We can’t do this. It’s impossible.” But Trevor is excited by this idea. He comes up with a plan to change the world through generosity, and he decides that he’s going to be super generous to three people. He’s not going to ask them to pay it back but to “pay it forward” so it would have a domino effect and that generosity would go forth and eventually change the world.
We all know that we do not live in a perfect world. As Christians, viewing the world through the grid of scripture, having that single eye, we know the world is fallen. We know that we are all sinners in need of grace. We know there’s none righteous, no, not one. We know that the “paying it forward domino effect” hasn’t really worked. I mean it hasn’t really worked because there have been countless acts of generosity throughout history and the world hasn’t been transformed and the world isn’t perfect. But it is true that you bring little pockets of light wherever you express your love for Christ and generosity towards others.
It’s also true that that light shines on your own soul as, in your love for Christ, you are generous toward others. Christians are called to be the primary examples of generosity on earth. There is no group of people who should give like Christians. Christians should give to their churches. Christians should give to parachurch ministries and missions all over the world. Christians should give to the poor, reaching out to those who are less fortunate. Christians should give of their time. Christians should give of their talent, and Christians should give of their treasure, knowing ultimately there’s only one treasure and that treasure is Jesus and the kingdom of heaven where we find eternal life, our sense of purpose, our forgiveness, and life itself.
I had another illustration I wanted to share but just to prove that I can see, I do recognize that our time is up. I hope you understand the focus of this passage and what Jesus means. We need to view life with a single eye, focusing on Jesus—on His Word, on His kingdom. If we do that, we will move towards simplicity and become people of generosity. That will bring light into our lives and the lives of those around us. Let’s close with a word of prayer.