Body Parts Mix

The the the eye is there's a picture of a person sort of looking into the world of an eye and it really is an amazing thing. I don't know whether you've ever really thought about your eyes, but it's they're worth it's worth having to think about and giving thanks to god for them. Because they are extraordinary things and beautifully designed. So Proverbs, which is in the Bible, says this, proverbs 20 verse 12, ears that hear an eyes that see the lord has made them both. The Lord has both made your ears and he has made your eyes.

Proverbs 29 30, the poor and the presser have this in common. They don't have much in common, but they have this in common. The lord gives sight to the eyes of both. Psalm 94 verse 9, does he who fashioned the ear, not here? It's talking about god, He fashioned the air, he can obviously hear.

Does he who formed the eye not see? He can obviously see, but he formed the eye. So the eye is an amazing god given gift, and the gift of sight is such a blessing. And that's why we we wonder at those that have poor sight or no sight you know, it's amazing how they get through life and they are quite, you know, they're quite a wonder to us in many ways, but the gift of sight is such a blessing. Other than the brain, the human eye has more concentrated complexity than any other organ in the body.

It has tens of millions of electrical connections it can handle more than a million messages instant simultaneously. It's a extraordinary thing. Under perfect conditions, The human eye can see a candle light 15 miles away. Is that amazing? And the retina is less than a square inch.

It contains 37000000 light sensitive receptors. It sends what it receives to the brain at 300 miles an hour. It's it's only there and there with You know, it's amazing, isn't it? Through our tears and our blinks, our eyes are lubricated. They're oxygenated and they're sterilized and you blink something like 4, 4200000 times a year.

Should we just raise that figure a bit, sort of blink a bit? It's an amazing, amazing thing. Babies, by the way, because there's so many babies, you'll probably be interested in this and it's trying to get your mother, the mother's attention. Babies, babies only see in black and white to start with and then color comes. It's quite a quite an interesting thing.

The human eye, can see 500 shades of gray. Now that worries me because that means that there could be even more books out. But 500 shades of grey, the eye muscle is the most active muscle in the human body, fingerprints, They have 40 unique characteristics. The iris has 256 unique characteristics. That's why people are now you know, doing passports and things with eyes and that sort of stuff.

It is an amazing thing. And not only that, we can communicate through our eyes, can't we? When I'm speaking here and I see no eyes in your head, I think, oh, great. It communicates something to me, doesn't it? It says you're asleep and you're not listening or you're bored or whatever.

Lovers delight to look in each other's eyes and send messages. You know, with their eyes, it's always hard preaching in front of my wife because there's sort of little twitches and things going on. And I'm not very good at reading them, but I'm trying to think what's she saying? The we can smile with our eyes. We can frown with our eyes.

We can grin with our eyes. We can show fury and blazing anger. With our eyes. We can be very fickle with our eyes. Never trust a winking person, by the way.

If you wink, stop it. Because Proverbs tells you not to, the wink, you know, the wink. That's a suspicious person. I've never trusted a winking person. So there's a lot you can do with your eyes.

Prove said again, listen to this, young ones, young ones, listen to this. This is horrible. Alright? Are you ready? All parents, you'll love this 1.

You can have this in in the in your kid's bedroom. This is a proverb. This is proverb. The eye that mocks a father, that scorns an aged mother will be pecked out by Ravens, the Ravens of the valley, and will be eaten by vultures My goodness. Parents, you've got some power today.

You mock me. There's some Ravens over there and I'm sure I saw a vulture in the sky. In other words, what it's saying is you gotta be very, very careful with your eyes. Watch your eyes be careful. You can flirt with your eyes.

You can commit adultery with your eyes. Your eyes can portray a proud heart and not a humble heart. The proverb says a lot about haughty, proud eyes. And that god hates haughty, proud eyes. The eyes are amazing, but how do you use them?

The eyes are god given, but how do you how do you use them? Now, I'm going to show you an experiment And I want you to look at this video. I don't want you to say anything. I don't want you to shout out or nudge other people. I want you to look at this experiment.

We're gonna do an experiment and I'll turn the lights off and give it a bit of time. You are he'll tell you what you got to do you are to look out for the white the the people dressed in white throwing the ball and I want everyone to count How many times the ball is thrown to the people in white count? How many times the ball is thrown to the people in white? And we'll see what happens. Remember, we're thinking about the eye and we're thinking about what we see.

So, let me just turn the lights off and then we'll have a go at this video. Right. Hands hands up who spotted the gorilla first time. So less than half. Less than half.

Hands up, who spotted the gorilla, but knew the knew the of the illusion. Yes. Okay. So It's, you knew of the illusion and therefore you you saw it. I showed it to my wife in bed and she didn't see it.

And said, what are you talking about? And, and I was really pleased. So I thought, well, if she's full, then then most of us are fooled. But hands up who knew about the curtain, who saw the curtain. You saw the curtain.

Yeah. Most of us didn't you saw the color of the curtain change? No. You didn't. Okay.

Fine. We'll come back to that illustration in a minute, but we're going to sing our next song, which is, come behold. Are you looking at good things because your heart desires good things, or are you looking at bad things? Now, what is interesting, the next slide, please? Sorry, Jerusalem.

There we go. Is we're thinking about good eyes and bad eyes. It's it's apparently a phenomenon if you don't like looking at eyes. It's a sort of mental issue. He's to sort your wife out, Rory.

We're looking at good eyes and bad eyes, and I I want us to think about that. What what are you looking at? Now we've just heard of sort of modern psychologists saying all that stuff. Jesus said it years but years ago. 2000 years ago.

Listen to Jesus. Here's from the sermon on the Mount, his very famous sermon on the Mount. He says for where your treasure is, There, your heart will be also. Notice how he links heart and eye, by the way. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye, 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 1 can serve 2 masters.

Either you will hate the 1 and love the other, or you'll be devoted to the 1 and despise the other. You cannot serve got a money. So the eyes he's saying here are really important to the entire direction of your body Do you notice that? Where your treasure is, their your heart is, and there you'll look. And as you look, That is a window to your very soul.

Are those windows clean, or are those windows dirty. Are you looking at something clean because you desire the light of life, the light of god or are you looking at the world in this case he's talking about money or the things of this world? Are they filling up your desire? And that's what you look at. And because you look at 1, you miss the other.

That's the point of the monkey business illustration. So what do you spend your time thinking about? What are you planning? Where do your efforts go? That's what you will see, and you'll miss other stuff.

It's the eye that looks straight ahead and moves the whole body to where the eye is gased and where the eye is fixed. If those eyes are fixed on the light of the world, the lord Jesus Christ, then your body will be filled with god. The word that Jesus uses here, and I've underlined it unhealthy, actually is evil. The word is evil. It's good eyes and evil eyes, actually, good and bad eyes.

And an evil eye, Jesus is saying, is fixed on self gain, fixed on materialism, fixed on lust and greed and jealousy, I mean Shakespeare called jealousy, that green monster because it turns you into a monster So the eye Jesus is saying here is so important because it fixes the heart's desire and it fixes the whole body is the body moving to light and truth and goodness and beauty and purity or are the windows of your eyes filthy and you cannot see the light. And therefore, you're in darkness. That's his argument. Have a look at the the next picture. So, you know, Do you need your eyes cleaning?

You know, it's very easy to get even us as Christians to get used to strangely the light. That suddenly we start thinking, well, I've been out in the light for so long. I think I'll go into the darkness. And suddenly, you know, it gets dirty. Look at the next 1.

We can't see. We can't see truth. As our eyes are fixed on desires that are just worldly, ungodly, impure, we find actually we can't see the light And our whole body is full of darkness. So let's just have a think of it. Bad eyes, Drew.

Should you look away? Bad eyes. It starts right from the beginning. You'll know the story in Genesis chapter 3 of Adam and Eve. But just listen to what happens.

I probably won't read it all, but just listen to what happens. You will not certainly die says Satan. So the devil is out to persuade Adam and how is he going to persuade them? Just look what he does. He does it with the eyes.

You will not certainly die, the snake said to the woman. For god knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened. Open to what though. Open to darkness. And you will be like god knowing good and evil.

The woman, when the woman saw, see the word saw, saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom. She took some and ate it. It didn't make her wise. She didn't become like god other than she knew that now you shouldn't do evil, but her eyes roped. Do you see the first temptation is all about sight and the eyes and where you're looking.

Look at this verse here. Next verse. Here's a a little letter in, written by Peter, 1 of the followers of the lord Jesus Christ, and he wrote 2 letters, 1 Peter and 2 Peter and he's talking about people but here here's what I want. This is the frightening thing about this verse. He's talking about people that have come into the church With eyes full of adultery, they never stop sinning.

They seduce the unstable. They are experts in greed. An accused brood. Now that's frightening, isn't it? Because here are people whose eyes, although they're in the church, and they're purporting to teach, actually.

Their eyes are actually full of adultery. And because their eyes are full of adultery, that's the way they go. And then they go from 1 sin to another to another. They never stop sinning, and then they'll seduce the unstable. So there's a whole sort of vortex and cume that these people take you into.

Now you compare that to Ephesians. And Paul writes, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people. It's a wonderful, beautiful, hope that even when this world is difficult and hard. There is a hope and my eyes on that. So have you got good eyes?

Or bad eyes, or are they getting dirty with bad desires, and therefore it's affecting the whole of your life. The whole of your body is affected. Look, what Satan does, in the next slide. This is from a book by Paul in, the New Testament to Corinthians. It says the god of this age has blinded the eyes of the unbeliever so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of god?

It's extraordinary, isn't it? That someone can't see how beautiful the lord Jesus Christ is? It's extraordinary when we explain who he is and what he's done and how compassionate and loving and and how god so loves the world in sending the lord Jesus Christ. And how wonderful it is to follow him and how he answers the questions and big questions of life and someone just sort of dismisses it. It's amazing that anyone would ever turn away from that.

But when your eyes are getting dirty, when your eyes have got dirt in them, and you're looking to other things, then however much people say in your ear look at Christ. You can't see him. You just can't see it. You can't see it. And so the next stage is Roman's chapter 1, there is no fear of god in their eyes because they can't see god.

They could just see their desire. Extraordinary thing, isn't it? Let's just have a quick look at the good eyes. Here's a couple of proverbs. Do not be wise in your own eyes.

That's foolish. Whoops. Fear the lord and shun evil. Fear the lord and Sean evil brings light into your life. Now fear the lord is to have faith in him is to see that he is your lover and love him.

Proverbs 12 verse 15, the way of fool seems right in their own eyes to them, but the wise listen to advice. So the wise are opening their ears and looking into the scriptures and the word of god. It's a beautiful thing. So what we do with our eyes is really important. Of is our soul hardening up in darkness because there's immorality, wrong things, wrong focus, causing darkness into the very soul, or are we ever fresh 20 20 vision, looking at Christ, cleaning up the rubbish, and keep repenting and turning to him.

The beautiful thing is, if you know the Bible and you know the gospel you'll know how many times Jesus does this the next slide. He opens blind eyes, This is a view it's so beautiful. Beautiful. Eyes that were dark, souls that were dark, souls trapped in sin, and the lord Jesus, the light of the world comes to open eyes. Open eyes, in this occasion, he spat and put mud on the eyes and open the eyes and the blind man could see.

Hey, if you're going down the direction and you're finding that actually your lust and your desires are taking you further than you would ever imagine, you know, you're down a road where you never thought you would be 10 years ago. Then pray to the lord Jesus to open your eyes that light would come in and refresh your soul and you would follow him. Good eyes, bad eyes. Now we're going to, have our prayer time, and I stupidly didn't ask who was, doing it. So, and it's Abri.

Oh, the the the man who's got eyes for only 1 person. He had to come up and pray so he could look at her while he's praying. You watch him. He'll be praying with 1 eye on come on every, come and pray for us. Eyes straight ahead.

That's what we want. Eyes straight ahead so that we want run run the race. Back to that popular psychologist, Jordan Peterson, he says in his book, our eyes are always pointing at things we're interested in. In approaching or investigating or looking for or having. We must see but to see, we must aim.

So we are always aiming. We cannot navigate without something to aim at. And while we're in this world, we must always navigate. We are always and simultaneously at point a, which is less desirable than it could be, moving towards point b, which, we deem better in accordance with our explicit and implicit values. In other words, we gotta look straight ahead, and he's right.

He's absolutely right. We cannot navigate without having something to aim at. And that's what All the runners do. If you see them on the blocks, people like, what's your name? Thank you.

You've seen Bolt. He, he look at him. He looks fairly mean there because he's got his eyes pointed at 1 in 1 direct and that's where he wants to go. If you see Taras, our own Taras running, he looks like that with his eyes fixed on on it. So back to the gorilla, we we only see what we aim at.

We only run towards what we aim at. And the rest of the world, and that's most of it, is is basically hidden to us. So again, it's back to those desires. So have a look at this proverb. See, the proverb said it way before Jordan Peterson said it.

Let your eyes look straight ahead fix your gaze directly before you. A discerning person keeps wisdom in view but a fool's eyes wander to the end of the earth. Always fidgeting. Always looking for a new experience but the wise, the 1 who looks straight ahead, looks look at these other verses in the New Testament part of the Bible. Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling fix your thoughts or used to be fix your eyes fix your eyes on Jesus.

Whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest. He's the 1 that teaches us the word of god. He's the 1 that's like a priest opened up the for us to come into god's presence. Fixed your eyes on him. Keep your eyes fixed on him.

And that's what that song was just about, wasn't it? Help us to do that. And so humbly before god, we should be constantly wiping our eyes, making sure there's no dirt in front of them and there's no lust that is turning our heads and turning us away from the lord Jesus Christ. Because if you're a Christ rejector, you'll become a moral suicide person That's what'll happen. Morrily, your slide.

So don't reject Christ. Keep looking at him. Colossians chapter 3 verses 1 and 2. Since then you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above. Where Christ is seated at the right hand of god.

Set your mind on things above, not on earthly That's where you set your mind and that's 1 of the reasons why we're doing media fast bible feast because so often we can get taken up with stuff. And, you know, we're not trying to be weirdly religious or legalistic here, but it's an opportunity for a week just to say I'm gonna hold back and where my eyes normally go, the patterns that normally take my possession, you know, take my eyesight. Just gonna give them up gonna fast from them for a little bit. So that I can fix my eyes again and make sure I fix them on the lord Jesus Christ. Don't shuffle around with eyes to the ground.

Don't looking around for new experiences as it were. Fix him on the lovely lord Jesus Christ be absorbed. With him and what he's done. Remind yourselves. Remind each other, have hearts and minds on the wonderful things of the lord Jesus Christ.

Set your hearts there. There's a lovely verse I forgot to put it up from Philippians, where it says Keep your eyes on those who live as we do. Paul is talking about who've set the pattern and example of godly lives. You know, following their footsteps. Jesus says this.

This is how radical he he is. If your eye causes you to stumble, if the thing that is good, god given, even, as we saw right at the beginning is causing you to stumble because it you're looking at something and your whole body is going He says, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better to enter life with 1 eye than to have 2 eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell. My goodness has strong language, isn't it? Now he's not talking about doing that physically in case there's someone who's a literalist, Otherwise, we'd all be sitting here without any eyes.

But he is saying if there's something that takes up your time if there's something that takes your gaze. If if you can't handle a computer or the internet, without golfing at porn, then throw it away. Oh, yes, but I'm a modern person. I need a computer. Well, how did you want life or death.

Radically cut it out of your life. He's saying, this is so important. Because as you stare, where you look at becomes the light or darkness of the body, the window of the soul, and it moves the whole body. In that direction. So let's stare at Jesus.

Let's encourage each other to keep looking at him and run the race. We're gonna sing again. Every day I will bless you, I think the song is, who with our eyes, but as a church, we're supposed to have vision and use our eyes, and this is the next little section. The vision of Cornerstone. It's gotta be the vision of god.

It's gotta be to take the gospel into all the world. And to preach it and tell all nations. That's really our vision as a church. And I want to show you some of the things that The elders have been praying about meditating over and want to present to us this week to be praying about. Because we want to ask the lord.

But 1 of the things that we want to be doing is is getting teams, going to Belarus, and Steve Kanard is going to tell us another 1 where a team can go. We're gonna do little slots in these, in thing ministries in the church, and Steve is gonna do our first, very first 1. Thank you. Brilliant. So that's 1 thing we want to do.

We're gonna tell you about Belarus. Hopefully, next week and the camp that we want to take people on on there. But let's go to some other of our visions. We we need a vision as a church. We we're not meant to be looking backwards.

It's a very odd thing to be looking backwards. That isn't Victor, by the way. Where is Victor? Where's Victor? Oh, he's Victor.

Come in. Show us the back of your head, mate. We're not meant to be looking backwards. We're not meant to be thinking of glory days and what it was like in the past and how exciting. I mean, we can learn from that, but we're meant to be looking, forwards.

And so, let's move to the next 1. Therefore, we really need to to look to the lord, the builder of the church. The Psalm, Psalm 127 says unless the lord builds the house, the builder, builders' labor in vain. Unless the lord watches over the city, the guards stand watching vain. And so we are to pray And so this week, we want to pray for all the ministries, and we want to pray and ask the lord, the builder of the church to do just that.

There's just a few things I want to share with you as a church, because, we we believe in, an envision and moving forward. The first thing some of you will know about. You can go to the next slide is, membership. We're talking about membership been talking about this for a long time and trying to work it out and we finally come to the conclusion that we want to go ahead with that. And some of you will know about that.

And we'll be talking about that in the big home groups, that meet all together at the hub, after after media fast. So there's not individual home groups. We're gonna all meet together at the hub on a Wednesday and a Thursday. You can choose which 1 to go to. And we'll be looking at that material of membership.

But basically, it's not a fearful thing and it's not an ugly thing. It's all about love the church. That's really what it's about. Love the church. The second thing that the elders wants us to to think about and been praying about is workers into the harvest.

We really, really believe, that we should be praying that the harvest is plentiful says Jesus, and we need to be praying of workers into the harvest and full time workers into the harvest. How do we do that? We haven't got the money for this? But we've got some good young men and, and women that we want to, encourage into the harvest field. And we're praying and thinking about that.

I'm not gonna list those, but we're a very blessed church. We have we have a lot of preachers in the church and we want don't wanna keep it to ourselves. We want to we want to extend. So we're talking about perhaps getting some trainee trainees that will be with us for a couple of years, a couple of years in order to send out. So we need to be praying for that and praying for resources to do that.

How we're gonna be able to do that and afford that. I have no idea, but nevertheless we should ask the lord of the harvest. The third thing is It's just been a great joy to see the ministry beside, which is, a ministry that's reaching women in Kingston that are trapped in the sex trade. It's extraordinary the numbers. I mean, honestly extraordinary.

So we've done some research and I I I I I I won't say the numbers because they're in my head, but if I if I them wrongly. You won't believe me. There are hundreds in in Kingstonborough that are trapped in sex trade. It's extraordinary. And so we wanted to start up this ministry and we've got team, working on that.

It is very, very, very exciting. Beside. It's a lovely name as well. I think it's a terrific name because it's coming beside these girls to to help them. To see the lord Jesus and hopefully help them get out of it that situation.

We're also starting up grace advocacy and there's teams now learning how to do this. This is a beautiful ministry for the vulnerable and, those that, can't work out, for instance, credit union, and how to get through all of the red tape in in getting money to help them. And, Paul Whitfield was telling me about 1 lady. I can't tell you the details, obviously. You know, how how horrible the whole system is against her.

So she can't suddenly gets charged, you know, 80 quid where she shouldn't have had any charge. And then she's scared and worried, and she's a very vulnerable girl. And, you know, it's a beaut this is a fantastic work. We wanna love the church, we wanna love the world, we wanna love the vulnerable, and I want us to begin to pray. Thank you.

How do you use your eyes? Let's sing this last great song together, be thou my vision.