We're going to look now though at the sermon itself. So if you want to turn with me to Luke 11, we're continuing in Luke's Gospel. We had some PowerPoint issues, so I don't know if we'll— oh, looks like we've got it. They have been resolved. So we'll have the text up on the screen as well. We're continuing in Luke 11, starting at verse 29 and going through verse 36.
So if you will, Turn with me to Luke 11. Hear God's holy and authoritative word. When the crowds were increasing, He, Jesus, began to say, this generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except for the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. The Queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them. For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket. But on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light. But when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful, lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light. The word of the Lord. May he write its truth upon our hearts. Let's pray together. Well, Father, one of the great gifts you give to your people, to the church, is your word. And so we come each week to worship under the authority of your word, to recite your word, to read your word, and to hear the preaching of your word. We do this because you have promised that in this, in these spiritual disciplines, as your body gathers, you will feed us, you will minister to us, you will fill us, you will establish us. Lord, you will give us eyes to see more of Jesus. And so we pray that now this morning, be active as you promised to be in the preaching of your word. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, when I was growing up, my dad would always brag about his eyesight, which seems like a funny thing to brag about, but my dad thought it was awesome. He had 20/10 vision, and so he loved to sit at the table and boastfully read something off of the fridge from like 15, 20 feet away and just laugh that my mom couldn't read it as well. And so it was a big deal when I got into elementary school and they would have those eye tests. And, you know, like you go to the nurse's office and you stick your head or it's like at the DMV, right? There's a little button your forehead pushes and the yellow light comes on and you have to recite the line. And so my goal was I wanted to have 20/10 vision like my dad. And I took my first eye test and I ended up with 20/15 vision. And so I was pumped because I was better than 20/20. But my dad also let me know when I got home, well, it's not 20/10. You're not quite as exceptional as I am. But then I realized a couple weeks later that all the kids that failed the eye test got eyeglasses. And that just seemed like the coolest thing in the world to me. And maybe it was just the fact that I didn't have eyeglasses, but I just longed— and I just specifically remember one kid's name was David Corselman. And he sat next to me and he had these eyeglasses. And they were like some bad boy bifocals and everything. And I would just look at them every day. And he had like, you know, they were the— back then it was all like kind of kind of the brassy look. And I wanted a pair of eyeglasses so bad. And so one day at recess, he let me borrow them and put them on. You know, like I can hardly walk because like everything's blurry and the ground is off. So I decided there was one clear way to get a pair of eyeglasses. The next year when the eye test came around, I was going to fail this bad boy. And so I went to the nurse, nurse's office and I stuck my head And I was even creative. I kind of thought, well, if it's a B, I should say it's a P. I'm trying to fudge letters that are close to the mark. But when they look at your test results from the previous year and they see 2015 and they're seeing like 2090, they know something's up. And so they called my mom. But in my head, it was this incredible thing to have glasses. And I wanted them so badly that I set about to actually fail the eye test and fool the nurse so I could be cool in my mind like David Korselman with his awesome bifocals.
Well, Luke 11 is also about an eye test. But it's about an eye test of a much more serious kind. An eye test of eternal significance. An eye test that has massive magnitude. That's what Jesus is showing us in this passage.
Specifically, we see this morning Jesus is showing us in Luke 11 that He is the great sign that God has given. Jesus is the sign, but also that we are each responsible for how we respond to Him, to the light that He shines in the world. That's what we see in this text.
The first thing we see in Luke 11 is that Jonah's sign, this this sign of Jonah Jesus talks about is very significant, but it's also completely sufficient. Jonah's sign was sufficient.
6 · Provides narrative context from earlier in Luke 11: the crowds are growing but divided—some amazed, some hostile, some demanding more signs
There's a tension unfolding as we read Luke 11. You remember a couple of weeks ago, Jesus cast out a demon and a portion of the crowd was awestruck that He had done it. A portion of the crowd is accusing Him of being in cahoots with the devil. And then a portion of the crowd is demanding He do more signs to continue proving it. Well, now today, that tension continues to build. It says the crowds are actually increasing in size, but it seems those crowds are increasing for all the wrong reasons. It's not because people are excited and they're coming to Jesus and they're sitting in His camp and they're coming and sitting at His feet and learning and absorbing and seeking to live differently. They're not embracing the message of the Kingdom. They're coming with doubts and questions and challenges.
7 · Explains Jesus' counter-intuitive strategy: He calls the crowd an "evil generation" despite their growing numbers, because His mission is not crowd growth but redemption through the cross
And that all serves as a backdrop for Jesus turning to this growing crowd and accusing them in pretty strong language of being an evil generation. It's really strong words. Evidently, Jesus wasn't up on the most recent church growth studies. That's not usually how you make your crowds bigger by telling them They're all evil. They don't go home and tell their friends, "Hey, you've got to listen to this guy. He told us all off yesterday. It was amazing." But Jesus isn't interested in growing the crowds. And He's certainly not on a mission to tickle their ears. He's not trying to increase His constituency so He can march into Jerusalem with the biggest crowd possible. He is on a mission towards Jerusalem But that mission is a mission towards the cross, towards redemption.
8 · States the existential stakes: hearing Jesus' message puts every listener at a decision point
And so he recognizes that everyone who encounters him and who hears his message is now at a crossroads. To hear the message of Jesus puts every person who hears it at a point of decision.
9 · Jesus responds to the sign-seekers with a cryptic declaration: only the sign of Jonah will be given
And so in response to people who are still demanding signs, He stuns them by telling them, "You will get no sign from Me except for the sign of Jonah." Now, that's sort of an enigmatic phrase, right? What's the sign of Jonah? I don't remember that from Sunday school.
10 · Provides interpretive framing: the crowd wants proof to validate Jesus' claims before they commit to believing Him
Well, before we get to that, it's helpful to look at the background. They're demanding miraculous evidence to underscore Jesus' message. He's saying all this stuff about the Kingdom. He's claiming to be the Messiah. He's calling them to repentance and to follow Him. And what they're asking for is, "Okay, that's fine. Prove to us that we should buy what You're saying."
11 · Establishes Old Testament prophetic convention: prophets prefaced their messages with "Thus says the Lord" to signal they spoke for God, not themselves
Now the Jewish people are accustomed to prophets. Prophets are people who come and they proclaim God's message to the people, right? That's what prophets do in the Old Testament. But the Old Testament, what would prophets say before they gave their message? It was common, prophets would usually say, "Thus says the Lord." "Thus says Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel." And they would use that little preface to say, "This isn't me speaking. This is me speaking for God."
12 · Contrasts Jesus' speech with prophetic convention: Jesus says "I say to you" instead of "Thus says the Lord," claiming a unique personal authority that puts Him on the level of God Himself
But Jesus never uses that formula. He never uses that phrase to show that His message is a divine message. He'll often just say, "But I say to you..." It's a striking contrast. It's actually an incredible claim to personal authority. The Old Testament prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah and Ezekiel, Obadiah and the like, they would preface what they said with, "Thus says the Lord." "Thus says the great I AM." Jesus says, "I say to you."
13 · Provides Old Testament precedent: Moses was given authenticating signs (staff-to-snake, Nile-to-blood) to prove his message to Pharaoh
What's the basis for that claim to personal authority? The crowds want to vindicate it. They're demanding more proof, and there's precedent for that. When Moses is called by God, remember the burning bush, and God tells him, "Take off your shoes, you're on holy ground," and he commissions him to go to Pharaoh and demand that God release the people. He also tells him, "I'm going to give you signs to show to Pharaoh." And so, remember, He takes His staff and He throws it on the ground and it becomes a snake. And it eats the snakes of Pharaoh's sorcerers, right? Another sign He does is He turns the Nile to blood because the Egyptians worship the Nile.
14 · Provides second Old Testament precedent: Elijah confronted Baal worship with a three-year drought that directly attacked Baal's supposed power as rain giver
In a similar way, Elijah in the Old Testament, when he comes to confront the wicked king Ahab— Ahab is just this this horrible king who's led the entire nation of Israel into total idolatry. They're now worshiping Baal. And so Elijah comes with this message of judgment. And when he comes, his sign is something that cuts right to the throat, right to the jugular of Baal. Baal was known as the rain giver. So what does Elijah do as a sign that his message is true? He says, "There will be drought for 3 years. You know who the real God is? It's my God." And he's about to cut Baal the rain giver off at the knees to prove it to you.
15 · Explains why Jesus' situation differs from Moses and Elijah: those prophets confronted pagan rulers who didn't know God; Jesus is addressing God's own covenant people who should already know better
So Moses and Elijah give signs. The crowd is thinking, "Why can't Jesus give us signs?" Well, first, Jesus's ministry wasn't to an evil apostate king. And it's not to a God-opposing Pharaoh. That's not who His ministry is to. He's ministering to God's people. He's ministering to your average Jewish person in these villages. He's ministering to their local pastors, if you will, their scribes and their experts in the law. The expectation is that these people shouldn't need the same kind of proof that Pharaoh needs. Pharaoh doesn't believe in the real God, and so he needs to have apologetic proof thrown in front of him that God is real. Ahab has left obedience to the real God. He's walked into idol worship. And so Elijah comes with new evidence that God is the true God. The assumption, though, is that as Jesus comes and as He gives His message, He's giving it to God's people.
16 · Lists the signs Jesus has already performed—healings, exorcisms, nature miracles, raising the dead—and concludes that demanding more signs reveals a refusal to accept the signs already given
Even more than this, though, Jesus has already given them ample signs, hasn't He? His ministry has been full of miracles. It's been replete with healings. He's given sight to the blind. He's stilled storms. He's provided manna from a few loaves of bread, right? He's healed the sick. He's even raised the dead. And now, just prior to this, a sign very similar to Elijah, Right? Elijah usurping Baal's authority. Jesus casts out one of Satan's minions as a way of saying, I am more powerful than Satan. So the signs were already there. And yet the crowds are demanding more, which really just meant they were refusing to accept the signs.
17 · Reiterates Jesus' refusal and returns to the central puzzle: What is the sign of Jonah?
And so Jesus declared there would be no more signs. Except the mysterious sign of Jonah. Which begs the question, what is the sign of Jonah?
18 · Explains what the sign of Jonah was: a single-sentence call to repentance delivered to a pagan city by a reluctant prophet
What sign did Jonah utilize when he went to Nineveh? Did he turn their water source into blood like Moses? You going through the Rolodex of your Sunday school lessons right now? Did he turn off the spigot of their water source like Elijah? No, first Jonah fled in the other direction, right? And then God caught him. And when he finally came back, Jonah's sign was this: a one-sentence call to repentance and warning of judgment. He doesn't really want to give it because he's worried the Ninevites will actually respond. The sign of Jonah is he goes to a completely evil, godless people and gives them a one-sentence call, steps up to their corner, if you will. "Repent or the Holy God will crush you!" And then he runs out of the city. That's the sign of Jonah.
19 · Emphasizes the sufficiency of Jonah's minimal sign: even brutal Nineveh repented at a one-sentence message from a reluctant prophet
It's the only sign Nineveh got. And yet that horribly wicked city, the center of this brutal Assyrian Empire, whose atrocities and evil and what they would do to the peoples they conquered was just It was infamous. This Assyrian Empire that's on the verge of swallowing up Israel. That's why Jonah doesn't want to go. These are the enemies of God's people. That city got a one-sentence call to repent from a prophet who didn't want to be there and was holding his nose while he gave it. And they responded. And they repented. And that mere sign, as Jesus sarcastically labels it, was sufficient to turn their hearts to God in repentance and belief.
20 · States the sermon's first major indictment: if Nineveh repented at one sentence, what excuse do Jesus' hearers have who have received far more?
And if that one-sentence call was enough to convince Nineveh, Jesus says, what does that say about this generation in front of him in the crowds?
21 · Provides background on the Queen of Sheba: she traveled great distances through hardship to hear Solomon's wisdom
The Queen of Sheba, probably Ethiopia. The Queen of Sheba came from miles away to hear Solomon. Solomon's wisdom is so immense that word of it is traveling all the way down into Africa and into Ethiopia. And then upon hearing it, the Queen of Ethiopia decides, I'm going to travel through all the hardships and all the danger to sit at the feet of this other king and hear from His wisdom. It's a remarkable thing.
22 · States Jesus' comparison: the Queen of Sheba and Nineveh will condemn this generation because they responded to lesser messengers (Solomon, Jonah), while this generation rejects One infinitely greater
Nineveh repented when it heard a half-hearted sermon from Jonah. And Jesus says both the Queen of Sheba and the people of Nineveh would stand in judgment of the people who heard Jesus' message and yet couldn't be bothered to respond. Something greater than Solomon. The wisest king who ever lived. Something greater than Jonah, a prophet of the Lord, something infinitely greater is here.
23 · Pivots from exposition to application by highlighting that Jesus' audience was religiously educated—they knew Scripture deeply—yet still failed to recognize Him
And it's a sobering warning to us even today. These crowds are made up of God's people. These crowds are made up of people who have been going to the ancient Palestinian version of Sunday school, and their Sunday school is way tougher than ours is. These kids in their Sunday school are leaving it having memorized the Torah, the first 5 books of the Old Testament. These kids know God's word inside and out. These people have been steeped in the scriptures for their entire life. They know their Bibles. The crowd is mixed with the people who are supposed to be the experts in those Bibles. That's what— when it talks about lawyers, that's what the lawyers are. They're experts in the law, in God's law.
24 · States the pastoral crisis: the biblically literate crowd failed to recognize Jesus as the fulfillment of their own Scriptures, which raises the urgent question for the congregation: Do we recognize Jesus?
And yet they fail to recognize Jesus for who he was. They heard his message of the kingdom. They've heard his call to repentance. They've heard his summons to come. And follow him, but they couldn't recognize him as the one that their entire Bible was pointing towards, which I think leaves a significant question for us this morning: Do we recognize Jesus?
25 · Direct application: tests the congregation's response to Scripture with a series of diagnostic questions about whether Jesus' words produce repentance, obedience, and holiness
Do his words in the Gospel of Luke move you to repentance? When you read the words of Scripture knowing that the Bible says all of these words are the words of Jesus, does it stir obedience? Does it stir a desire for holiness? Does it stir a desire for you to know more of God? Does it stir a desire to flee from sin and to put sin to death?
26 · Presses the congregation on whether they believe Jesus' exclusive claims in a pluralistic culture—that He alone is the way to the Father
Are you convinced in the Gospels that Jesus is who he says he is, the way, the truth, and the life, that no one comes to the Father except through him. That's a strange message in a pluralistic, relativistic world, that there's only one way, that there's only one God, and there's only one path to get to him, and it's through this ancient Jewish guy, Jesus.
27 · States a critical theological claim: mere physical proximity to Jesus (then in the crowds, now in church) does not equal salvation
The warning to the crowds is a warning to us. It's not enough just to be present at church in the same way that it's not enough just to be in those crowds. Nearness to Jesus doesn't equate salvation in Jesus.
28 · Names insufficient responses to Jesus: intellectual curiosity, entertainment-seeking, selective embrace of Scripture, cost-avoidance
What do we do with Him? What do we do with His message? Are we intrigued? I have a friend who reads the Bible probably more than a lot of you, but it's an intellectual pursuit. It's a philosophical chess match. Maybe we come because we're entertained. More and more, a lot of Christians in the Western world, so-called Christians, are sifting through the Scriptures for the parts that are easier to swallow and won't put them too far out of step with the world. They're looking to embrace the parts of the message that won't cost too much. They're like Thomas Jefferson with his scissors cutting out the parts that aren't real digestible, that don't really sit well on their palate.
29 · Contrasts insufficient responses with the proper response: the spiritual hunger of the Queen of Sheba and the immediate repentance of Nineveh
Or are we like the Queen of Sheba, so hungry for wisdom that there is no distance too great, there's no trial, no cost too significant to come and to learn? Like the people of Nineveh, a one-sentence address from the true and living God and they're cut to the heart. And they repent and believe.
30 · Concludes the first major movement: the sign of Jonah—Scripture's testimony to Jesus—is sufficient
The reality is the sign of Jonah is sufficient. Each week as we gather and hear the words of Scripture read, it's sufficient. Its authority stands on its own, and it declares to us that Jesus is real that Jesus really was who he said he was, and that his death was perfectly sufficient to provide the only means of reconciling us with God.
31 · Announces the second major movement: Jesus is not only a sign but a light, and our recognition of Him depends on the spiritual condition of our eyes (hearts)
We also see in Luke 11 that Jesus isn't just a sign, but a light, and that light must change us. How we respond to Jesus, whether we recognize Him or not, is entirely dependent on the state of our hearts. Or to put it in kind of the language of Luke 11, it's entirely dependent on the state of our eyes.
32 · Returns to the sermon's opening metaphor (the eye test) and frames the lamp-and-eye parable as Jesus' explanation for why the crowd fails to recognize Him
Getting back to the eye test, right? That's why Jesus tells this story of the lamp and the eye. It's an explanation to the crowd. He's illustrating, He's painting a picture for them of what's going on in their own hearts, about how the Messiah they were waiting for could be right in front of them, and yet most of them are missing him.
33 · Provides cultural background: the ancient belief that eyes emit light rather than receive it
It's common in that day— the assumption was that they thought the way people saw was that the eye itself actually emitted light, and that's how they thought sight happened, right? So in the ancient world, they have rudimentary medical understanding of the human body. They thought your eye actually shot out light, and that's how you saw things. So if you're kids, it's like a less intense version of Cyclops. Like, it's not light that destroys stuff, but it's light that helps you see things. That's how they assumed the eye worked. Maybe they observed that twinkle in the eye and assumed, well, there's light coming out, and didn't realize it was a reflection.
34 · Explains Jesus' corrective: the eye is not a source of light but a receiver—a healthy eye lets light in; an unhealthy eye blocks it out
Whatever it is, Jesus takes a very different view. The eye, he says, is the lamp of the body. So then a healthy eye is one not that shines light out initially, but one that lets light in. And an unhealthy eye, the bad eye, is an eye that doesn't let light in. It's got the shades pulled down. It's a very philosophical statement by Jesus.
35 · Contrasts Jesus' view with Enlightenment anthropology (Rousseau): Rousseau believed people are intrinsically good and naturally radiate light; Jesus teaches the opposite
And it flies right in the way of how we imagine people are in their natural state. There's a philosopher, Rousseau, who's known for arguing his central tenet of his philosophy was that people are basically intrinsically good. Light shines out just naturally. That's not what Jesus says.
36 · Illustrates modern culture's persistent belief in human goodness by quoting Anne Frank, who maintained that belief even in the face of Nazi atrocity
Modern people, we have a really hard time thinking of any other imagining of how people actually are. Modern people have this tendency, this deep desire to cling to a view that people are basically inherently good. Left to themselves, people will do the right things. In an amazing— it's one of the most popular quotes from Anne Frank's diary. Remember Anne Frank? Young lady who's hiding from the Germans, from the Nazis in a little attic in Europe during World War II. Towards the end, with the whole world falling apart and her life being threatened, she famously professes that even amidst all of those horrors, she still clings to the notion that people are still basically good.
37 · Contrasts modern sentiment with Scripture's doctrine of sin: humans do not naturally radiate light or goodness—all light comes from God
There's an articulation there about the modern sentiment that we're, at our core, good people. But Scripture paints a different picture. There isn't natural light shining forth from every human being. We aren't naturally good, naturally predisposed to love God and love our neighbor. If we have light in us, it hasn't come from within, Scripture says. If we have light in us, it's come from God.
38 · Connects Jesus' lamp metaphor to broader biblical imagery: unbelievers are consistently described as blind, unable to see or perceive God
It's why there are so many biblical references to a person's spiritual condition And what does it say if you're not a believer? What are you? You're blind. You can't see. Your, your eye is bad. It lets in no light. Their eyes are darkened. They can't perceive who God is.
39 · Expounds 2 Corinthians 4:4-6 to explain spiritual blindness: Satan blinds unbelievers to prevent them from seeing Christ, while God shines gospel light into opened hearts
Paul expands on that idea in 2 Corinthians 4:4. He says, the god of this world— now think of this in the context of Jesus having just cast out a demon, right? The god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For God, who said in verse 6, let light shine out of darkness, has shone into our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. You see the direction that the light is going. The light is going into us, and if our eyes are good, if by grace they've been opened, it floods inside and we see Christ for who He is. But if our eyes are bad, if we're still enslaved to sin, if the god of this world has still blinded you, then no light enters.
40 · States the theological core: Jesus is the light; failure to see Him means failure to see anything rightly
The point that Paul and Jesus are making is that He, Jesus, is the light. And so if we fail to see Jesus clearly, then we fail to see everything clearly. And if we don't believe in Christ, if we don't respond to His words like the people of Nineveh responded to Jonah, then our hearts remain dark. And people have darkness in their eyes because Satan has blinded them.
41 · Applies the theology to the narrative: the crowd demands more signs not because they lack evidence, but because spiritual blindness prevents them from seeing any signs at all
So what's going on in the crowd is this profoundly spiritual exercise. They're demanding more signs, not because if they got one more sign they could see it clearly. They're demanding more signs because they haven't seen a single one of the signs before this, because their eyes don't function. They don't see Jesus.
42 · Applies the doctrine to prayer: recognizing our spiritual blindness should drive us to pray for God to open our eyes—a spiritual eye transplant
When this happens, Jesus says, when we recognize that spiritual condition and we, we come to God and recognize that we are intrinsically in need of grace, what happens is God graciously shines the light of the gospel into our hearts. And so the point here is to respond to the message of Jesus, but also to recognize we need to pray for what Paul talks about. That God would give us an eye transplant, that we would get heavenly LASIK, if you will, that our eyes would be opened and that we'd be able to see. We pray that God would replace our blind eyes with good eyes.
43 · Expounds the lamp metaphor's sanctifying effect: when Jesus shines into the heart, the whole life is illuminated—sin, weakness, and areas for growth become visible
Jesus tells us when that happens, the light of the gospel doesn't just shine into our eyes, it shines into our whole bodies because the eye, He says, is the lamp of the body. And so our bodies, which is really representative of our whole life, right? Our bodies become full of light. So Jesus shines into our hearts and we see all the corners of our life with new clarity. Jesus shines into our lives, into our bodies, and we see our weakness. He shines in and we see our sin. He shines in and we see where he's calling us to grow.
44 · States the either/or stakes: responding to Jesus with an opened eye transforms the whole life; rejecting Him (entirely or partially) leaves one in darkness—there is no neutral ground
So the whole lamp analogy is meant to be both an encouragement and a warning. If you open your eyes, if your eye is healthy, if you respond to the message, your whole body, your whole life will be transformed by the gospel. But if you don't, if you don't, if you reject Jesus in entirety or just even in part, It's not going to leave you morally neutral. It doesn't leave you morally okay. It leaves you in darkness.
45 · Warns against partial acceptance of Jesus: selective embrace of His teaching or miracles is not enough
Remember that Jesus is indicting a crowd that has been pleased with him on all sorts of occasions, right? The crowd's increasing in size. We assume there's lots of people that are kind of titillated by what's going on with Jesus. They're all about the healing. Some of the teaching sounds pretty good. But for Jesus, it's all or nothing. Either your eye is totally good or it's totally bad. Either you are letting in all the light of Jesus into your heart and it's transforming all your life, or you're attempting to filter some of Jesus in, and in the end, You'll end with a dark heart.
46 · Introduces the third movement of the lamp metaphor: when Christ illuminates us, we ourselves become lamps—meant to shine, not to be hidden
When Jesus shines in us, something else happens. It's not just that all of a sudden we can see ourselves clearly, but he says we actually become a lamp. And he gives this strange imagery of a lamp being put in a cellar under a basket. Now, it's kind of a strange thing for Luke to mention because In Palestine, most homes wouldn't have actually had a cellar. In the Greek world, they would, but in Palestine, most of them would have been one-room dwellings and they wouldn't have had a basement room. But the image is still the same.
47 · Illustrates the cultural distance between ancient lamp-lighting and modern electric convenience, helping the congregation grasp how essential and visible lamps were in Jesus' world
It's a little different for us though. When was the last time you actually used a lamp, like with a flame inside of it? Or you lit a candle? Let's put it this way. When was the last time you lit a candle and it wasn't to make something smell nice? Because I know ladies have their scented candles, right? But when was the last time you actually lit a candle because you had to see better? I would wager for most of us, the last time we lit a candle like that was maybe during the candlelight service on Christmas Eve. We live in an electrical society, right? You just, you flip a switch. That's how you get light. Most of us have lights built into our smartphones. Like, you just pull out your smartphone and you push a couple buttons and all of a sudden there's light. At concerts, nobody has lighters anymore. It's all the cell phones. No one uses candles in that way.
48 · Expounds verse 33: a lit lamp is meant to be visible to others, signaling welcome
But in this day, for Jesus' audience, that's how it works. That's where you get light. That's how your home is lit up. It's by a candle or it's by a lamp. If the candle was lit, it's meant to be a sign of welcome and hospitality. So Jesus says in verse 33, "No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. His point is, if your eye is good and it's come in and it's shining in your whole body and it's exposed weaknesses and sins and it's pointing out areas to grow and it's changing who you are, then it also changes your function. You're not supposed to try and keep all that light in and make sure none of it spills out. You're meant to be a lamp. You're meant to glow. So that those who enter may see the light.
49 · States the missional implication: Jesus illuminates us so we can shine gospel light to others
The implication is that Jesus shines into our hearts. He lights up our lives so that we can be a lamp of gospel light to others. It's the basic little children's song, right? This little light of mine, I'm going to let— you know, don't let Satan hide it under a bushel, hide it under a basket. No, right? We're going to let it shine. And every kid knows what that means. I'm going to let it shine so people can see my light. That song is based on this passage.
50 · Applies the lamp metaphor missionally: Christians are called to display the gospel's transforming effects publicly, even in hostile environments, so that others see Christ's light
The idea is that when the light of Christ changes us, we shine that light for the good of others who are still lost in darkness. Don't hide the transforming effects of the gospel. Display them. Let people see them. Or to press the analogy, Christians shouldn't withdraw from the world when they get converted. They shouldn't retreat into the cellar or hide under baskets. No, even in the most hostile environments, we are called to live in such a way that our lives are light to a lost and dying world. They're bright with gospel glory. We're called to place our lives, if you will, on a lampstand so that others, when they encounter us, when they step into our home, they see that light.
51 · The pastor steps out of exposition to name the cultural moment: society has shifted morally, creating a hostile environment for Christians
Now, we live in troubling times. It's a different world than it was even 15 years ago. The moral center of our society has shifted. Shifted. You can— the ground beneath our feet seems different and off-kilter now. And in a lot of ways, it's a tragic development. But you know what would be equally tragic? You know what would be even more tragic? If our response was retreat, or our response was hostility.
52 · Applies the lamp metaphor to cultural hostility: Jesus promises trouble but commands visibility
If in light of new pressures Christians decided to hide or to huddle and to disengage, that would be tragic. Jesus, the same Jesus who says, "In the world you will have trouble," tells us Stand on the lampstand. Let this troubling world see your light. And behold, I have overcome the world.
53 · Summarizes the missional call: Christians are to be beacons of grace in darkness so that the gospel's light can reach the blind
There's a call in this that even in the midst of darkness, we would set our lives to be beacons of God's grace, lampstands for a blind world to see. So the light of the gospel might shine in.
54 · The pastor acknowledges the gap between hearing the call in the safety of church and living it out in hostile daily contexts—workplace, family, neighborhood
Now, admittedly, it's a thousand times easier to say that in a sermon in these walls with a bunch of people who are mostly going to nod along and agree with me than it is to go out those doors and to live that out. To go out into the marketplace, to sit next to coworkers, to talk with hostile neighbors. You pick the segment, right? Family members who are really sick of you talking about this Jesus person.
55 · Pivots back to the sign of Jonah, now revealing a deeper layer: Jonah himself is the sign, not just his message, and this has encouraging implications for mission
But that's where the sign of Jonah is a surprising encouragement. You see, the sign of Jonah isn't just the message Jonah preached. I overstated it intentionally. Earlier. Jonah himself is a sign, and Jonah as a sign is full of meaning for us today.
56 · Provides background on the book of Jonah: it's a story about God's immense grace and power to save
Jonah, if you go back and read it, it's just 4 chapters long. We actually did a sermon series on it. You could listen to the messages. 4 chapters, 4 messages. But Jonah is a story about the immensity of God's grace, about the enormity of his power to save. Edmund Clowney, a biblical scholar who's passed away but was famous for, for kind of helping people to understand the storyline of Scripture. He famously said that there is a single line in the book of Jonah that encapsulates the Bible's message. That's an intriguing statement by a Bible scholar, isn't it? And if a Bible scholar was to say there is one line in one book of the Bible that captures what Scripture is about, Where would you go looking? Jonah is probably not in the top 10, right? But there is a line in Jonah when he gets spit out of the whale, out of the great fish, where he concludes, "Salvation belongs to the Lord." That is the story of Scripture. Jonah, God's prophet, can completely sympathize with our situation today.
57 · Provides historical context on Assyria's brutality to help the congregation understand why Jonah fled—God was sending him to the equivalent of Nazi Germany
Assyria, this godless, God-hating empire, is just growing and swallowing up everything in its path. And they are brutal to the people they conquer. Not like, "We'll take you to court because you didn't bake a cake" brutal. Like, When we conquer you, we'll take your royalty and your nobles and we'll stick hooks in their mouths like that and attach a chain and drag them through the city. That kind of brutal. Jonah gets a message, "Hey, Jonah, I want you to go to the Nazi Germany of your day and kind of go find the middle of Berlin and find a prominent corner. And I want you to proclaim to them to change." And so we have a little more sympathy for Jonah when he runs.
58 · Recounts Jonah's descent into the sea and three days in the fish as a place of death where he learned that salvation belongs to the Lord and that God's grace can reach anyone
He runs, but God pursues him, and God caught him, and a storm assaulted him, and he gets thrown overboard and descends into the depths of the sea to a place of certain death. And it's there that God sent a great fish to rescue him. And Jonah says that for 3 days he's in the belly of a fish. In the heart of the sea, in the place of death, learning firsthand that salvation belongs to the Lord and learning firsthand that God's grace can reach anyone anywhere.
59 · Draws the universal implication from Jonah: God's grace is for all people in all places—not limited to Israel or any particular group
And it was great enough for a faithless prophet, and that grace was great enough that even evil Nineveh would get a one-sentence call and they would repent. The Gospel according to Jonah isn't for a certain people. The Gospel according to Luke 11 isn't for a certain segment of the world. The Gospel is for all people in all places and all times. And so when the Gospel changes us, we live on a lampstand to shine that light.
60 · Introduces the typological connection: Matthew's Gospel explicitly links Jonah's three days in the fish to Christ's three days in the grave
Matthew, in his account of this parable, makes a direct connection between Jonah's descent for 3 days and Christ's descent into the grave. And just as 3 days in that fish changed Jonah's perspective, Christ's victory after 3 days in the grave should change ours.
61 · Applies the Jonah typology to the gospel: we were enemies like Nineveh, but Christ was cast overboard in our place, absorbing God's judgment so we could be saved
None of us were naturally intrinsically good. We were by nature, Paul says in Ephesians, children of wrath. We were rebels against the message of Jesus. We were people in the crowd demanding a sign. We were Assyrians. We were Ninevites by birth. But God's grace was so great, His mercy was so mighty, that Christ was cast overboard so the raging storm of God's judgment would pass over our boat. Because Christ sunk under the waves and was swallowed by the belly of death, we don't have to shrink back in fear.
62 · Applies the Jonah typology to mission: because Christ absorbed judgment and rose, we can go to hard, hostile places with resurrection confidence, declaring salvation in Jesus' name
We can go to hard places like Jonah. We don't have to flee even as the world around us grows more hostile. And with our lives shining brightly, With resurrection hope, we can confidently declare to any person in any place, no matter their disposition, no matter how dark their eyes seem, that salvation belongs to the Lord and his name is Jesus.
63 · Closing prayer asking God to give sight to the blind, to fill believers with resurrection confidence, and to empower them to shine the gospel as lamps in the world
Would you bow your heads? Lord, we want to be changed by your word. We know that you promise us your word never returns void, and so we ask now that even in the preaching of your word this morning, that you would shine the light of the gospel into darkened eyes and give them sight. Lord God, let the blind see this morning. Make that happen. And Lord God, would you fill us with faith? Lord, those of us who have seen the light of the gospel and the glory of Christ Jesus, would you fill us with faith not to shrink back in fear, not to tremble, not to pine away in anxiety as the world shifts, but to have a steady confidence That just as you raised Christ from the grave, we who have been united with him in a death like his will also be united with him in a resurrection like his. Lord God, empower us to shine, to shine our lamps, and to shine the gospel. In your name, Jesus. Amen.