Take your Bibles with me and turn to Luke 11. Luke 11. Today we are going to be talking about spiritual vision. About what we see and do not see.

Recently, I read about a study that was done by two researchers (Chabris and Simons) at Harvard University. Here is what they did. They had people watch a video of a group of people passing a basketball. They instructed the people that they needed to watch the man in the white shirt and count how many times this man passed the basketball.

Simple, right? But here is the catch. In the middle of the video, this guy in a gorilla suit walks right into the middle of the frame and starts beating his chest. Then walks out of the video. It wasn't hidden. It was right in the middle of the video.

Raise your hands if you think you would notice if a man in a giant gorilla suit just walked across the stage this morning and pounded his chest and then walked off?

This is a really weird study, right? Here is what they learned: Roughly 50% of the people who were watching this video completely missed the gorilla. They didn't see him at all, even though he was right in the middle of the frame for a good ten seconds. They were so focused on counting basketball passes that the gorilla was completely invisible to them.

And one of the takeways from this study is this: we tend to see what we are looking for and we tend to be blind to what we aren't looking for.

Our text today is all about what we choose or refuse to see. It's all about the importance of spiritual vision.

Remember, in Luke 11, Jesus has been preaching and doing miracles. A group of people see Jesus heal a man who has been demon possessed and who cannot speak - it's a marvelous miracle that the Pharisees could not have done.

But instead of immediately believing on Christ, what some of them did was say "Oh, Jesus just did that because He is working with Beelzebub" and other people looked and said "Interesting, but I'm still on the fence. I'm looking for a sign."

So last week we talked about those who claimed Jesus was working with Satan, and in our text today Jesus is going to deal with those who are looking for a sign.

Let's read Luke 11, starting in verse 27 and going through verse 36.

[!bible] (27) And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked. (28) But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it. (29) And when the people were gathered thick together, he began to say, This is an evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet. (30) For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation. (31) The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with the men of this generation, and condemn them: for she came from the utmost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here. (32) The men of Nineve shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here. (33) No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light. (34) The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness. (35) Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness. (36) If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light.
— Luke 11:27-36 (KJV)

Jesus did not mince words about these people who were on the fence and who were looking for a sign. He called them "an evil generation."

The key to this whole passage is the idea of seeing. People are looking to see a sign. Jesus talks about seeing the light and wraps this text up by talking about what we do with our eyes.

And so what made these people an "evil generation?" They wouldn't see. It was like they were counting basketball passes, and they couldn't see the gorilla that walked right in front of them, only in their case, it wasn't a gorilla - it was the Messiah and it wasn't that they couldn't see Him, it is that they didn't want to see Him.

We sometimes have this idea that if we had more miracles, that more people would believe. We think, man, if we could see the kind of stuff that was happening in the gospels, or the kind of stuff that was happening in Acts, then surely people would give up their resistance to Christ and believe.

But this passage destroys that idea. Even if all the signs and wonders in the whole world were to happen, there would still be people who refuse to see it, because "there is no man who is so blind as the man who will not see."

Today, I want to give you three points from this passage about what we choose or refuse to see:

• Christ is everything we are looking for.
• Despite that, most people refuse to see Him.
• We must choose to see Him and maintain good spiritual vision.

Let's pray and ask God's wisdom, ask Him to open our eyes, so we can see what He has for us in His word today.

Pray

The first point I want you to see in this text today is...

1. Christ is everything we are looking for.

Remember, the people who saw Jesus do this miracle were "looking for a sign." They were on the fence. They had just seen Jesus do something impossible, something only God could do, and they said "yeah, but we are waiting to really see something before we commit."

And so Jesus called them out. He called them "an evil generation." What they were doing was wickedness. It wasn't that there was nothing to see, it was that they were refusing to see what was in front of them.

There is a fascinating passage in 1 Corinthians 1 I often think about. In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul is talking about why some do not accept the gospel and he says this:

(22) For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: (23) But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; -- 1 Corinthians 1:22-23

There are two things people say they are looking for who will not accept Christ: a sign and wisdom and Jesus point in Luke 11 here is that He is both the sign and the wisdom.

He says in verse 29:

This is an evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet

What was the sign of the prophet Jonah? You remember the story. Jonah was called to go to Ninevah and preach there, but he didn't want to go. So he got on a ship to Tarshish - the farthest away from Ninevah he could possibly go. God caused a great storm, he was swallowed by a whale and after three days and three nights, he was spit out on the shore heading to Ninevah.

In a parallel passage, Jesus said it like this:

(40) For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. --Mathew 12:40

So what is the sign of Jonah that Jesus would give this wicked generation? It is the sign of His death, burial and resurrection. It is the sign of the gospel.

The gospel is enough. People do not need signs and wonders. If they look at the resurrection of Christ and that doesn't cause them to believe - then no signs and wonders are going to do the trick.

The jews were looking for a sign - and so Jesus gave them a sign - His death, burial and resurrection. That was enough of a sign.

But people aren't just looking for a sign. Paul also said "and the greeks seek after wisdom." Another thing people are looking for is wisdom.

Jesus dealt with that too. In verse 31 He talked about "the queen of the south" who came to hear Solomon. We actually just covered that story a few weeks ago on Wednesday night. The queen of Sheba. She came to hear Solomon's wisdom - a journey of many months - because she heard stories about how wise he was.

After she met Solomon, she said "not the half has been told." She found him more wise than she even imagined.

And Jesus says here "And one greater than Solomon is here."

Solomon's wisdom was a derived wisdom. Solomon said it himself "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowlege." (Prov 1:7) Solomon's wisdom had to come from the Lord.

But Jesus is the Lord. Jesus is wisdom personified. The people on the fence that were looking for wisdom had Wisdom right in front of them. And yet they still refused to believe.

In verse 33 Jesus talked about the light on the candlestick. Here, Jesus point wasn't that we needed to be a light on a candlestick, but that He had been a light on a candlestick.

Jesus had clearly been doing countless miracles and clearly teaching wisdom like no man ever heard all over Israel and doing it for years. The light had been shining. But the problem was that people didn't want to see the light.

Jesus is all that we are looking for. He is the light. He is the sign.

And that brings me to the second thing I want you to see this morning from this text...

2. Despite that, most people refuse to see Him.

What made this generation Jesus was speaking to "an evil generation?" It wasn't that they did awful things. It wasn't that they were wicked and profligate and godless. Certainly, we can look at generations of people based solely on their conduct and think they were more wicked: the Nazis, the communists.

So why did Jesus call out this group as a "wicked generation." They were wicked because they had the light, and they refused to see.

Think about this: the Ninivites were wicked people. Cruel people. Jonah was as weak a prophet as we see in the whole Bible. But when those wicked people saw just a little bit of light in Jonah, they repented and believed.

The queen of Sheba wasn't a Christian. She wasn't from God's people. But when she met Solomon, as flawed as he was - she accepted His wisdom and believed.

And Jesus point is that these people have seen amazing light - blazing light. They have seen the greatest sign and they have heard the greatest wisdom - and yet they still refused to believe. On top of that, these were jewish people who had been raised in the truth - they knew the Bible - and when the Man the Bible is about stood right in front of them, they refused to believe.

And so they were a wicked generation, not because they were doing wicked things - but because they were given more light than any group of people ever got, they had Jesus in front of them, and they still refused to see.

There is a terrifying warning for us here: God holds us accountable for the light we are given.

The person who stands before God in judgment, who has heard the gospel time and again, who has sat in Sunday school classes, who has had the Bible taught to them - and who still refuses Christ - that person will be held to a much higher standard of judgment than the person who has never heard of Christ.

We are accountable for the light we are given and I have to warn you, if you are here today and you have rejected Christ, that is a great evil in God's sight. God sent His only begotten son to die for you and you have refused His gift, God gave you Christian witness, the witness of the church to bare testimony of that fact - you have the witness of all of church history pointing you to Jesus - and if you sin against that light by refusing to see - God will hold you accountable for that.

So we have seen that Jesus is everything we are looking for. We have seen that despite that, some will refuse to see Jesus.

One more thing to see in this passage...

3. We must choose to see Him and to maintain good spiritual vision.

The last thing Jesus talks about in this passage is the importance of our spiritual eyes.

Look at verses 34-36 again:

[!bible] (34) The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness. (35) Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness. (36) If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light.
— Luke 11:34-36 (KJV)

Now, this is admittedly a bit confusing. But I think the key idea here is clear, our eyes determine what we see.

If you are blind, it doesn't matter how bright it is - you still see nothing. You could be standing right next to the glory of the sun and would see no light.

That's what these Jews were dealing with - they had spiritual blindness. Jesus was an invisible gorilla to them. The problem wasn't Jesus - it was their spiritual vision.

And so Jesus' point here for us is if our spiritual vision, if what we choose to see, is so important - than we better be careful to maintain good spiritual vision.

Jesus makes three important points about spiritual vision here:

First, we control the light. Our spiritual eyes get to decide how much light they let in. We can be like the jews in this story, who refuse to see the light in front of them. Or we can be like the apostles, who wanted all the light they could get.

But we are in control of it. Listen, Christian, your problem isn't a lack of light. You have blazing light in the word of God. You have blazing light as you look to Christ. Your problem is you are not letting the light in. You are choosing to go through life with spiritual solar eclipse glasses, blocking out the light.

• You have the Bible, yet you do not read it.
• You have Christ to worship, yet you do not enter into worship with your whole heart.
• You have the church, but you participate as little as you can.

You let in as little light as you can get by with, then complain that you cannot see. The problem isn't the light - the problem is your spiritual eyes.

The second thing Jesus teaches us about our spiritual eyes here is that our ability to see the light must be maintained.

Jesus said "take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness." Unfortunately, it is entirely possible to start out in light and end up in darkness.

We can think of several cases of this in the Bible. Think of Lot, who got to walk with Abraham. Who got to worship beside him. The last we hear of Lot he's drunk in a cave comitting incest. Think about Samson. Samson's name actually means "bright." He started out so strong and then ended up blind, being made fun of by a bunch of pagan idolaters. Think about Saul. Such a strong start. But he ended in madness and witchcraft.

Each of these men show us what dulls our light. What 1 John 2 calls "the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life."

Lot's light started to go dim when he focused on what he could get in Sodom. Samson's light went dim when he focused on what he could do with Delilah. Saul's light went dim when he focused on what he could be in his pride.

So what puts our light out? It is a focus on possessions, pleasure and position that makes our light dim.

Many years ago, I was an elementary school teacher and there was this one girl in my class who wore glasses. But despite that, she couldn't see. When I looked at her glasses one day, I noticed they were completely covered with dirt.

Glasses that are covered with dirt don't do much for you. They can actually make your vision worse.

If we aren't careful the dirt of this world will fog our vision, and Christ will be harder and harder to see.

There is one more thing I think we can see in this passage about our spiritual vision and that is that we shouldn't settle for partial light, but let the light blaze inside of us.

That's what Jesus was saying in verse 36:

[!bible] (36) If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light.
— Luke 11:36 (KJV)

We have to be full of light.

At work, my office has a dimmer switch. Most of the time, my coworkers have the dimmer switch turned all the way down so the light is barely shining in there. Makes me feel like I work in a cave.

Spiritually, Jesus is telling us we need to turn the dimmer all the way up.

Do you remember what it was like when you first got saved? Do you remember reading the Bible and loving it. You couldn't get enough of it. Every sentence was just full of wonder.

I remember as a teenager after I gave my life to Christ, I would bring my Bible with me everywhere and just sit and read it and wonder. It was so alive to me. The light was blazing.

What happens to us isn't that the light gets any less bright, what happens is we turn the dimmer down and Jesus is saying to us here that we need to live in the blaze. We need to live with the light turned all the way up.

Based on your manuscript so far, here's how I'd suggest finishing it to bring everything together with a strong conclusion:

Maybe you are here today and you are looking for a sign. Jesus is the sign. You need to repent of your unbelief and believe Him today.

Maybe your eyes are fogged and you need to clean the glasses. You need to confess your sin, turn away from the possessions, pleasure and position that are blocking your view, and turn back to Christ.

Maybe you've been living with your spiritual dimmer switch turned way down, getting by with just enough light to stumble through life. Jesus is calling you to turn it all the way up. Stop settling for spiritual mediocrity. Let the light blaze in you again.

The invisible gorilla experiment shows us something profound about human nature: we see what we're looking for, and we miss what we're not expecting. But here's the difference - the people in that study were looking for basketball passes. What are you looking for?

If you're looking for more evidence before you'll believe in Christ, you're missing the point. The evidence is blazing right in front of you. If you're looking for an excuse to keep living with dim spiritual vision, you'll find one. But if you're looking for the light, if you're looking for Christ, you'll find Him too.

The choice is yours. You can keep counting basketball passes while the Messiah walks right in front of you. Or you can open your eyes, see the light, and let it blaze within you.

Let's pray.