The Eyes of Our Heart Enlightened

Ephesians 1:18b

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Loved ones will you look at Ephesians 1:18. You remember the way it reads and what we’ve talked
about so far, “Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened,” and then, “that you may know what is the
hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.”
Last Sunday we talked about having the eyes of our hearts enlightened, and we talked about the heart
being, in medical terms, first of all the center of our physical vitality, and then of course, by
analogy, the heart of our own personality; the seat of our intellectual and emotional life. And
it’s meant something to me when I’ve thought of it as not just the seat of my mental and emotional
life, but what I am when I’m alone.

My heart is what I am when I’m alone. When I’m not with anybody, when I’m not responding to
somebody, or doing what somebody else would want me to do, it’s what I am when I’m just alone, or
what you are when you’re just alone. It’s the way you think, the whole attitude that you have when
you’re alone, that’s your heart and that’s what you are really, at this moment anyway in your life.
It’s what you are inside, that’s your heart. And I think the “eyes of your heart”, which is what
this verse talks about, having the eyes of your heart enlightened, it seems to me the eyes of your
heart is your spirit. Your heart is the thing your mind is thinking, the thing your feelings are
feeling, but the eyes of your heart is your spirit. And the eyes of your heart are either burdened,
and darkened, and filled with the weight of self and the world or they’re lightened and brightened
and enlivened by the Spirit and presence of Christ.

Richard Burton did Hamlet, and to those of us who love Shakespeare we feel he almost made a fool of
it, but of course every actor has tried to do it differently. And at one point there’s a soliloquy,
there are six soliloquies actually, and one of them is, “Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would
melt, thaw, and resolve itself into dew. Or that the everlasting had not fixed his canon ‘gainst
self-slaughter. O God, God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of
this world!” And he got up on a chair and said, “Of this heavy world,” and it just seemed so dumb,
but that’s what the heart is like when it’s heavy with self – it’s heavy.

So when you’re alone if you feel a heaviness upon you, if you feel a burden upon you, if you feel
the weight of the world’s burdens, if you feel the weight of your own life upon you, that’s where
the spirit is being weighted down and burdened by self, and that’s not God’s will for us. God’s
will is what this verse says, “Having the eyes of your heart enlightened.” It’s his will that the
eyes of your heart – our spirits — should be given light to see the true reality as it is and to
live in that reality. And so that’s what we’ve been talking about; having the spirit inside us
enlightened by God’s Spirit so that we can see what is real. And the truth is when we’re heavy like
that, when the heart is heavy, and we’re alone and we’re thinking heavy thoughts, the truth is that
we’re living in utter unreality at that moment.

That is a deceived unreality that has already been done away with by our Lord, and it has no reality
except in our imagination, in our old, sick and poisoned imagination — that’s the only place that
that reality lies. But in fact, it is an unreality, it is an absolute deception, and it’s God’s
will, and that’s why – I don’t know if you have thought of it but that’s why he keeps shinning the
sun on us so that if there is any way he can break through those dark curtains in the room and say,

“Wait it’s bright out here, it’s bright out here, it’s dark where you are but that’s unreal, that
has all been dispelled by my son. It’s bright out here, come on, come out into the lightness.” And
it’s always God working to bring us to that, you know. And you could almost think at times of
situations yourself when you’ve said, “Oh let me alone; let me be miserable in here. Let me be
filled with my own self and my worries, and my anxiety.” And God is lovingly saying, “Let me in.
Let me in. Open up; this is all gone. I want you to see things as they really are. I have you in
my arms.” So that’s it.

That’s why Paul says “Having the eyes of your heart enlightened so that you may know what is the
hope to which he has called you.” Its “doi doe” in the Greek and it’s the aorist tense, and it has
the meaning of “you may actually know” you may know by actual experience what is the hope to which
he has called you. The Greek actually runs, “What is his callings hope.” What is his calling that
he has given to you, what is his hope, or as they say here, “What is the hope to which he has called
you,” — that you may know it by actual experience.”

I don’t know if you remember, we’ve talked often about how the scouts went into Israel and went
into the promised land and they came back — I think Caleb was one of them — and came back and
about the giants, that there were tribes who were quite fearsome in there. But then they brought a
branch of grapes from a place called Eshcol. And we always tend to talk about the grapes of Eshcol
as the foretaste of heaven that was waiting for them in the Promised Land. Well that’s what he’s
talking about here; he’s saying that you may have the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may
have your spirits light up by the Holy Spirit, so that you may actually experience some foretaste of
what God has reserved for you in his own presence for ever. And so the grapes of Eshcol stand for a
little taste of what the Promised Land was really like. And that’s what Paul is saying; that each
of us may begin to know in this present life a little of the reality of the wonder of the life in
God’s presence –the brightness and the delight and the joy and the beauty that is there.

So that’s what the knowing is, “That you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.” Now
what is the hope to which he has called you? Well I think you’ll see it if you look at some of
these verses, for instance in 1 John 3:2, “Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet
appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him
as he is.” That’s the hope, “We know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see
him as he is.” That we’ll actually be like Jesus, that’s what it says. That’s our hope; that we
shall be like Jesus. That’s God’s promise to us, because we’ll see Jesus exactly as he is and we
will be like him. We will have the same closeness to his Father as he has. We’ll have the same
understanding of his Father. We’ll have the same trust and confidence in his Father as he has.
We’ll have the same love for his Father as he has. We’ll have the same sense of omnipotence, and
great power, and ability as Jesus himself has. We’ll have the same sense of being at home in his
universe as he has. We’ll know the spaces and the stars the same way he does. We’ll have something
of the same ministry and responsibilities as he has. We’ll be like Jesus. We won’t be, in that
way, like ourselves at all.

You can tell from the story of Dives and Lazarus that we’ll certainly still be known, you’ll be
known as Peggy, we’ll recognize you as Peggy, and we’ll recognize you as Lucy but really, at that
point we’ll be so unlike ourselves and so like our true selves in Jesus, that we’ll be more like
Jesus than we are like ourselves at this moment. And we’ll have all the abilities that Jesus
himself has, and all the closeness with his Father that Jesus has, and we’ll feel about God just the
way Jesus does. And all the attitudes that he showed in the New Testament, those are the things
that we’ll have in our own hearts. They’ll spring up from within us and we’ll speak that way to

each other and we’ll think that way. So that’s the hope; that we’ll be like Jesus.

Now how will that hope come about? Will it be the way Abraham had hoped? And I think we have to
see pretty clearly, that there are two kinds of hope. You remember, it says in Romans 4:18, where
it describes Abraham’s situation. Romans 4:18, “In hope he believed against hope, that he should
become the father of many nations; as he had been told, ‘So shall your descendants be.’” So there
were two hopes, in hope he believed against hope. Well you can guess the hope that he believed
against, the hope that he believed against was to look Sarah and how old she was, and then try to
build up a kind of hope on that, that maybe by some miracle this old body that was worn out and
tired would suddenly burst into enough life to have a child. And that was one hope, that human
hope, and that’s a hope that is no hope. If we look for a moment at this old rotting body, or our
own performance, or our own power, or our own ability there’s no hope there. That’s the hope
against which we have to hope, that’s the hope that we ignore.

What is the real hope? What is the hope that Abraham hoped in? It’s in Colossians 1:27, “To them
God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery,
which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The hope that we ourselves will become like Jesus has
only one basis. There’s only one thing you can look at that will give you a sure expectation that
we will be like Jesus, and that is what the verse says, “Christ in you” the fact that each of us
are God’s workmanship and we’re created in Christ Jesus for good works that he has prepared
beforehand that we should walk in them. The fact that we have been made in Jesus and that Jesus is
in us, that’s why we have certain hope that we will be like Jesus. And that’s the basis of our hope
and it’s the reason why we can begin to know in actual experience, some of that hope realized in
this present life; the fact that Jesus is in us.

But what I can see is that that’s everything. That’s everything, that’s our hope of everything.
That’s the possibility of life, that’s our only possibility of life; that Christ is actually in each
of us. I quoted that verse to you a few days ago that I came across where Jesus said, “In that day,”
and he was talking about the day when he would come again, “In that day you will know that I am in
my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you,” and that’s the reality. And the moment you and I
move from that reality, that moment we are cast into hopelessness, we are cast into unreality.
We’re cast into nothingness, we become garbage for any spiritual vulture to swoop down upon us and
destroy us. We become the play thing of all kinds of spirits of deception and evil the moment we,
for a second, stop realizing that Jesus is in us and that we are in him.

It’s Christ in us that is the hope of our glory and our glory is him and his likeness, and his
character–that we could actually be like him. That we could actually live and think the way he
lives and thinks. That we could live and think the way our Father lives and thinks; that we can
actually experience the same thing as this dear God that makes the beautiful blue skies and the
oceans and the rivers. That we can actually feel the same way as he does, it’s because Christ is in
us. And while we keep our hearts on that, then we begin to experience some of the realization of
that hope. And that’s what I thought that I got some light from Jesus on; just how you actually do
that.

And the first verse seems so clear is the one that we all know, the first thing you are clear about
is Romans 6:6, “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be
destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.” And you know that the translation is also
our “old man.” Then it goes on to talk about that the body of sin might be destroyed. And you know
the illustration that we’ve often shared about the body of sin how in certain situations where

someone had murdered someone else, they tied the dead body of the person that the murderer had
destroyed around the murderer, and he walked around with that until the body absolutely
disintegrated and fell off him. He walked around with that stinking corpse tied to him day and
night. And it seems to me the plainest step that is compatible with this reality is that you see
that this rotting body of flesh has been destroyed with Jesus, this rotting old man, this rotting
old self.

I think it applies as much to us when we’re trying to slim, as when we’re trying to deal with
sickness, as when we’re trying to deal with a sin or a selfish attitude, or an act of critical
spirit, or jealousy, or pride, or anxiety, or worry. It seems to me they’re all in the same boat;
they’re part of that old rotting self that was destroyed with Jesus on Calvary in time, and in him,
in eternity. And it seems that the moment we cease to reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin and
alive to God in Christ Jesus, that very moment the reality of hope disappears.

So it seems that our life and our experience of glory that God has for us depends on us
moment-by-moment reckoning that we have been crucified with Christ. And it seems to me the Holy
Spirit is faithful, he makes us aware. For a moment we may be deceived, or for a few moments, but
the Holy Spirit makes you aware, “You’re wrapped up in yourself. You’re thinking about yourself.
You’re concerned about yourself. Here you’re trying to save yourself. Here you’re trying to
preserve yourself. Here you’re trying to save yourself from trouble or pain. Here you’re concerned
about yourself.”

The Holy Spirit is faithful; he shines a shaft of sunlight into your conscience and he tells you
that, and at that moment the way into immediate hope is to reckon yourself, “That was crucified with
Christ. That creature was destroyed with Jesus, it’s no longer alive, and I don’t need to worry
about it.” At that moment the Holy Spirit lifts you out of self and above self, and above the
world. And it seems that it’s an immediate action. It’s an immediate transaction, a mental
transaction and an act of the will at that moment, based on the reality that is stated in Romans 6:6
that our old self was crucified with Christ. It seems to me that’s one vital step.
It seems that another one is Ephesians 2:10, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus
for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” I think the Holy
Spirit is just as faithful. He says, “You think of yourself as Ernest O’Neill. You think of
yourself as Lucy Blomfield. You’re not there; you’re a bit of Christ. You’re in Christ and Christ
is in you, and this is his life, it’s not your life. These aren’t your clothes; this isn’t your car
to worry about. This isn’t your bank account to try to manipulate. This all belongs to him. You
are in Christ; you are part of the body of Christ. Christ himself is in you, you were made inside
him. Everything that you have is part of him; he’s just giving you the experience of living in him,
and enjoying part of himself.” The Holy Spirit is faithful and shows us that and we have that
choice at that very moment, of immediately grasping that with joy and saying, “That’s right I am
part of Jesus, I am not my own. This is his life and these things are his.” And immediately you do
that the spirit of reality, we call it the Holy Spirit, but it’s the spirit of reality, it’s sheer
reality bursts in upon you, lifts you up, and you rise above those things as if lifted magically, by
a power that is not yourself. Why? Because that’s the reality of it; that we are created in Christ
Jesus and we’re part of Jesus and this is his life.

When you think of it, it’s so stupid to think that we could take over the life and responsibilities
of the son of God and take care of them, and that’s what we’re doing. Even though it’s just him in
this little body, here at this point in time, on this little bit of the earth’s surface, it’s still
his responsibilities. It’s still his life and here I am a little insect trying to take over his

responsibilities and run his life successfully. No wonder it seems that I’m falling far short. So
first be clear that our old rotting self was crucified with Christ and is dead. Secondly, that this
is Jesus’ life. And then the third one is Colossians 3:10, “And have put on the new nature, which
is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” And verses 16-17, “Let the word of
Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and sing psalms and hymns
and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed,
do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

And then another verse that you know so well in Philippians, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I
will say, Rejoice. Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and implication with
thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all
understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Every second rejoice.
Second-by-second rejoice. Rejoice in Jesus second-by-second.

You may say, “Ah that’s ridiculous, that’s like going back to that old uncle that you had that said,
‘Praise the Lord Ernie, praise the Lord.’” Well it is. I think it’s that desperate. You know it as
well as I do it seems it’s the only safe place; second-by-second rejoice, second-by-second see
clearly and accept joyfully that what you have been in this past life has been destroyed and is
finished with, and there is now no Lucy here to take care of. See that you are part of Jesus, and
that this is Jesus’ life to do what he wants with. And then thirdly, rejoice in him. Rejoice in
him every second, and the very first moment worry or anxiety occurs, you know you’re not rejoicing
and the Holy Spirit makes that clear to us. He makes it dead clear to us. Indeed you must feel as
stupid as I feel when you think of the things you have worried about and, sometimes half an hour
later, sometimes three minutes later, sometimes a day, or a week later, but usually not that much
later, you see that there was nothing to worry about at all. So the Holy Spirit makes it very clear
to us when there’s a moment of worry or anxiety.

Besides, I think all of us are concerned about our looks and there’s no doubt you look better if
you’re joyful! We know in our own hearts that plainly and obviously certainly joy is better for us
and our health, but it’s certainly better for us in our mental and emotional health, and it’s
certainly better for us in our spiritual health. But forget the word better — its reality. It’s
reality that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, it’s his will that we should
know that and experience a foretaste of that day-by-day here on earth, and he has shown us clearly
how to do it. But I’d just say to you again, I think it’s nothing less than second-by-second. And
preach that to me please, that it’s nothing less than second-by-second. I don’t think we can say
“each day”, I think it’s second-by-second. Second-by-second rejoice in the Lord — always. And
remember who says it, not some dumb idiot that is trying to teach us the power of positive thinking
but the Lord himself says, “Rejoice in me because all is well.” Let us pray.

Dear Lord, we thank you for your plain words and your plain truth and we thank you Lord, that you
have laid out a way of gladness for us, and we can walk it second-by-second, because that is
reality. We thank you Lord, that just as all hell done broke loose when we look upon ourselves, so
all heaven breaks loose each second we look upon you and set our minds not on things upon the earth,
but on things in heaven where you are Lord Jesus, seated at God’s right hand. We thank you Lord,
for the way of gladness and joy. Now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the
fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each one of us now and evermore. Amen.