Let's open for our reading to Acts chapter nine, Acts chapter nine, and we'll read from verse thirty-six. Now while you're finding it, I would like to say this morning that I consider it a very real privilege to have in my congregation a lady whom I have admired intensely for many months. She came to my notice as she came to yours on an occasion when an American ship was struck by an Iraqi missile. In fact, I think by two. I'm speaking of Mrs. Kaiser. She was the lady who you will remember sent a Bible to the Iraqi pilot that struck the ship. She was telling me this morning that she has, in spite of the fact that in the region where her husband died, the temperature rose to thirty five hundred degrees and everything practically that could be what incinerated His Bible by some miracle was spared, and she has it in her possession and is still able to read every page. The Word of God endures forever. Mrs. Kaiser, it is a real privilege to have you here today. I want to thank Mr. MacDonald for choosing these last two hymns. In fact, as I was singing them, I thought, I better toss my notes aside and preach on these two lovely hymns. I wonder whether you noticed when you were singing the last one there, although in the chorus you sang three times, Illumin Me, you sang, Open My Eyes, Illumin Me, Open My Ears, Illumin Me, and Open My Heart, Illumin Me. I hope you sang it, even if it wasn't well known to you. There are three kinds of illumination here. Illuminating the eyes so that you can see, as I'm looking at the hymn book now, illuminating the ears so that I can hear, but not just naturally, a voice that my natural ears will never hear, the voice of God, and then open my heart, illuminate me. And that's a different kind of illumination also. because that speaks of the kind of illumination that changes the heart and changes the destiny. I don't know whether you have illuminated heart and ears as you have illuminated eyes. In our reading there was a lady whose eyes lost their illumination. Let's read from this chapter, shall we? Verse thirty-six. Now there was a Joppa, a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas. This woman was full of good works and arms deed which she did. Now I've introduced Dorcas to you before. We've talked about her before, and in any case, before I introduced her to you, Most of you knew her very well, for this is a very well-known story. It came to pass in those days that she was sick and died, whom when they had washed, they laid her in an upper chamber, and for as much as Lidder was Knight of Joppa, and the disciples had heard that Peter was there, they sent unto him two men, desiring him, that he would not delay to come to them. Then Peter arose and went with them, and when he was come, they brought him into the upper chamber, and all the widows stood by him weeping, and showing the coats and garments which Dorcas made while she was with them. But Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down and prayed, and turning him to the body said, Tabitha, Arise. And she opened her eyes. Now it's that opening of the eyes that I'm thinking of this morning. She opened her eyes. It's been announced that on Wednesday afternoon we shall be meeting at three o'clock to go to the nursing home in Stark. That's because we have a habit of doing that. We do it every Wednesday, and if you have never been with us to the service of the nursing home, I want to personally and very warmly not only invite you but urge you to come. I think you will get a blessing out of it. The last time or two, I've asked the folk in the nursing home for their special favourites, a hymn that they like very much. Now some of them would not be able to respond very well to me. Some of them have long since forgotten their favorite hymn or hymns. But there was a man who responded and he said, He would like us to sing Amazing Grace. And so we sang it. Amazing grace, how sweet a sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was blind, I once was lost, but now I'm found was blind. I knew why he wanted that him, because in that meeting we had two totally blind people, and he was one of them. I once was blind, he sang, but now I see. And important. as physical sight is. And I suppose we never can appreciate it as we should do, unless we lose it. But important as it is, spiritual sight is much, much more important. He was a man who was totally blind, and yet he could sing with a smile on his face, a glow on his face, I once was blind, but now I see. Why? Because there had come into his life an experience of the forgiveness of sins, and he had been born again. I would be very presumptuous if I assumed this morning that everybody sitting in my congregation had been so illuminated, had really... had their inner eyes, their spiritual eyes, opened. Let me put it in more modern parlance and say this. I would be presumptuous if I assumed that every man and every woman here was born again, saved by the grace of God. So I'm not going to be presumptuous. I'm just going to remind you that unless you can see spiritually, you are lost. But once you can see spiritually, even though like this man you may have no physical sight, and like the other woman who chose as her favorite hymn, I'm saved, saved, saved, they had spiritual sight. No physical sight, but spiritual sight. And that is what really matters. All I do hope that if you are spiritually blind this morning, You won't go out that way. Let me read another verse or two to you. In fact, you can turn to it in Ephesians chapter one. And it's just one sentence. It's just one sentence. Verse fifteen of Ephesians one. But the sentence doesn't end until verse twenty three. A very long sentence. I'm not going to read it all. Wherefore, says Paul, I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your understanding, being enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of his calling and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, comma. But there I'm going to stop, and I hope that you'll be curious enough to read the rest for yourself. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened. Now when we were singing the other hymn, I was thinking of that verse, The Light of the of the world is Jesus. When Lydia opened her eyes, I believe from that moment she saw in a way that she had never seen before. I'm sure that she appreciated being able to see naturally more than she'd ever appreciated it before. but I'm sure the many other things that she saw very differently after she opened her eyes having been dead. Now this woman Dorcas is a very interesting woman. I'm not going to take time to talk about her, but just to illustrate that there are many different ways of seeing. We can see so differently. I think about the story that I heard. about the boy, the young fellow, who got himself his first old car. His father used to refer to it as the heap. And his mother used to insist he park it behind the house. But he called it Dorcas, because he said it was full of good works. Now probably that was all that was good about it, but to him it was the apple of his eye. Now I wonder this morning, when Lydia opened her eyes, I suppose probably Paul was the first person that she saw. He had put the mourners out of the room, and so when she opened her eyes she saw him. But as time went by, I have an idea, having come through the experience of death, and been resurrected by the Lord Jesus from the dead that a lot of things changed as far as values were concerned for Tabitha or for Dorcas as she is called now the evidence of her life was the fact that she opened her eyes now it said of the Lord Jesus that he showed himself alive by many incontestable proofs. I wonder whether we, as believers, show ourselves alive. I wonder whether we have opened our eyes sufficiently to get straightened out our sense of values. To lose your wealth is much. You know that, did it? To lose your health is more. But to lose your soul is such a loss as nothing can restore. And if that is true, then there are priorities that we have got to put into their proper places. We've got to put the first things first, and the second things second, and the third thing, third. We've got to sort things out, and in order to do that, we've got to be able to see properly. We've got to have an ability to see. Now when we read about our understanding being enlightened, that's a very interesting expression. Because the Greek word that is here translated understanding and is only two other times translated in our English Bible that way. The Greek word occurs elsewhere but is translated differently. But here are the three places in which we find this word so translated. the Son have given us understanding that we may know him. Listen to the hymn. No darkness have we who in Jesus abide the light of the world is Jesus. The second one is in Ephesians four and it's verse eighteen and it says this. Having the understanding darkened being alienated from the life of God. Listen to this verse. Ye dwellers in darkness with sin-blinded eyes, the light of the world is Jesus. Go wash at his bidding, and light will arise. The light of the world is Jesus. And the third occasion is this one. Ephesians one and verse eighteen, we read it. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened. And the word enlightened in the Greek means given light. And listen to what it says here. No need of the sunlight. In heaven we are told the light of that world is Jesus. Now I hope. I hope that light is not shining in vain for you. I really do. I wonder what, after things got back to normal, Doka saw when she looked around. I wonder what she saw when she looked inside. I wonder what she saw when she looked up. And I wonder what she saw when she looked forward. I wonder because I don't know. But I would like you to find out How you think when you do this kind of looking. We all have three pairs of eyes, as the hem has reminded us. We look at the book and we say, as we read it, I see. Of course, you're able to read it because you have sight. But then sometimes somebody is trying to explain something to us, and being very thick in the head, we don't quite get it, and so they labor the point and they frown and they trite, and then suddenly we say, oh, I see. Now that's a mental sight, and we all have that. And then there is that kind of sight that a blind person in the Scripture said, and which we sang, Once I was blind, but now I can see. And that, of course, is spiritual sight. Now, you've got to have spiritual sight if you are going to be alive to the dangers that surround you. A blind man is sometimes totally oblivious of danger, though it may be a foot away from him. and it's exactly the same spiritually. If you are spiritually blind, the gravest of dangers may be very, very near to you. It's possible for a man not even to believe or to realize that the horrors of hell could be only five minutes or less away. To drop dead and not be saved, is to find that out to one's eternal cost. You've got to be spiritually blind if you're going to see anything to interest you, any beauty at all in the person of the Lord Jesus. And you've got to be, you've got to be, you've got to be spiritually enlightened in order to see beauty in the Lord Jesus. You've got to have this spiritual sight if you're going to see what a wonderful book the Bible is. Now that's where I should have mentioned Mrs. Kaiser and her husband's Bible. Thirty-five hundred degrees couldn't destroy the book, but had it done so, the word would still have marched on absolutely unhurt and unchanged. The Lord Jesus came to open, the Bible says, the eyes of the blind. And when he does, or how differently we see. I can remember the night I got saved. I was thirteen years of age, and yet I did not feel the sidewalk under my feet as I walked home. I was so, so completely overwhelmed. by what had happened to me and I really didn't know what had happened to me. I just knew that I had opened the door of my heart, received the Lord Jesus into my heart, accepted him and believed that he had really kept his promise and come into my heart. But it sure made a difference to the way things looked. You know how the hymn writer put it? You look on the creation itself and you'd see it differently when your eyes like like dorkuses are opened. The creation is different. How does the hymn go? Heaven above is brighter blue. Earth around is sweeter green. Something lives in every hue Christless eyes have never seen. When you open your eyes spiritually and you are at last able to see, Even the creation looks different. You appreciate the sunshine more. You appreciate the things with which God has blessed you so much more. The reason is, when your eyes are opened, you appreciate the creation because you've got to know the Creator. He's now become a friend of yours. So when you look around on creation, You see things so differently. When you look around at the world, that thing you thought you couldn't do without, that place where you thought all of your pleasure and satisfaction simply had to come from, when your eyes are opened, you suddenly realize it doesn't have a thing that's capable of satisfying you and making your life worthwhile. It offered you pleasures, it offered you popularity, it may have offered you wealth, it may have offered you, but probably cheated you, fame, but it didn't offer you, couldn't offer you anything that could fill and satisfy your heart. Now when your eyes are opened, you look on the world and it's so different. I thought that here was where I was going to find my pleasure. I thought that here was where I was going to find my satisfaction. Oh, how it disappointed me. How it let me down. Now I see my eyes are opened. Now none but Christ can satisfy. None other name for me. There's love and life and lasting joy, Lord Jesus found in thee. When the Apostle Paul was struck down on the Damascus Road, you remember? He couldn't see. and it says he could not see because of the light. Now, isn't that astounding? Isn't that amazing? You would have thought that the light would have enabled him to see better. But not this light. This light blinded him because he was a man who was persecuting the church of God and he didn't know God, although he was a very religious man and he had to have his eyes opened. And before he leaves, the Damascus road, his eyes are opened. And he turns and says, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? When your eyes are opened, my, how differently you see things. When he tried to join himself to the Christians, they backed up. They said, that's a fellow that's been killing these Christians all over the place. Now he says he wants to join our company. My, he must surely have something up his sleeve. But no, his eyes were opened, and he could see. And how different it all was. It's like that when we look at men and women. When our eyes are blinded, we just simply let them go their way and we go our way. We look at men and it doesn't worry us, perhaps, that we're not as good as some of these because we know we're not as bad as some of the others. And so what we've done in the past, we've sort of weighed ourselves up, always against the worst of ones, so that we came out on top. Remember that little ditty that I have quoted to you before? The epitaph on a grave read like this. Here lies a man who did no good, and when he could, he never would, and where he is and how he fares, nobody knows and nobody cares. You see, when your eyes are blind, you live for yourself. When they are open, you see the need of other people and you love them and you pray for them and you want to serve them because you want to serve the Lord Jesus. Live for yourself and you live vainly. And then when your eyes are closed, you look at Christians and they say, they're fanatics. These people are crazy. Did you read in the newspaper Friday, I guess, about a judge who made a judgment concerning the sixteen-year-old son of a homosexual who had died with AIDS and he committed that son to the partner of the homosexual father because he said he could give him more stability than a fundamental Bible believing Christian which is what his mother was. Blind, horribly, desperately blind and the poor boy will probably die with AIDS before he's through. The Apostle Paul in his blindness persecuted the Church of God. He took out rits against them so that he could imprison them and so on. But when his eyes were opened, he not only sought their company, he gave himself to the service of God on their behalf. You know, you see your family and your friends so differently from what you did before you were saved. When your eyes are open, you see differently. That is only true when you look around. It's so when you look on the inside, now you better go to sleep, because I'm going to meddle here a little. When you looked on the inside before, you remember the past, like the man who used to think, I love myself, I do, I love myself, or you never heard of him. Well, there's a song that goes like that, but it belongs to the dark and dim ages, and I'm glad I don't remember any more words than that. but we all loved ourselves so very much when our eyes were blinded. Once we knew everything, everything. Do you remember the time when nobody could start a conversation but you finished it? You remember that? Do you remember the time when somebody had a good idea but you silenced him and said, oh I've got a better idea than that? Do you remember the time when Somebody said, well, now, I think this, and you said, oh, but here's my opinion, and every time you were the one, you said a little something inside saying, I'm still like that. My eyes are open, but I'm still like that. I hope you're not. I hope you're not one of those people who knows everything. Do you remember when you were blind, everything revolved around you. It didn't matter what happened to anybody else, it was you that had to be ministered to. This sounds like a teenager, doesn't it? Everything revolved around you. Now you know that you know nothing. With your eyes open, you know that the world will go on very well without you. One of the most humiliating things about being a human being is this, that it doesn't matter how important you may seem to be, Doesn't matter how important you may think yourself to be, when you die, you're like a pebble dropped into the pond, a few ripples, and then the water becomes still. And everything goes on exactly as it went on before. Isn't that humiliating? And yet we're the ones who thought we knew everything. We're the ones who thought that the world revolved around us. We were the ones who clamored for our rights. I have a right to do this. I have a right to do that. I have a right to do the... You don't have any right. You know, the word of God says you're not your own, you're bought with a price, the precious blood of Christ, and you're to glorify God. You really don't have any rights. I don't know whether that shocks you, but you'll never realize that, and you'll never appreciate that, and you'll never face that, until, like Dorcas, you open your eyes, until Jesus Christ comes into your life and makes all the difference. My ideas were always the best. My opinions were always superior. I had to monopolize the conversation. I was just thinking of an experience we had in the last two days, but I won't go into any details. Before I opened my eyes, never listened to other people. Do you, what do you think about those people that when you talk to them, they're looking over your shoulder, and looking at somebody else and you know they're thinking about somebody else or something else. Tell you what to do, do what I do. I stop in the middle of the conversation. They don't even know I'd finished it, that I haven't finished it. And then I just consider that it's not worth wasting my time talking. If a person doesn't look me in the eye but looks over my shoulder, I don't want to talk to that person because he doesn't want me to talk to him another time, some other time. Oh, I hope you listen when people talk to you. When you were blind, it wasn't surprising. But now you're a Christian. Now your eyes are open. You are supposed at least to be polite. You're supposed to listen when somebody talks to you. And what is more you're supposed to suppose that it may be possibly, remotely, that they do have better ideas than you, and that what they are saying might be profitable for you to listen to. When your eyes are open, you not only see differently, when you look around, you see differently when you look on the inside. Tell you something else. You think differently when you look up. Before you were, before when you were blind, if you ever looked up, you did it with trepidation because God worried you. God used to worry me, you know, and I was saved when I was thirteen, but God used to worry me. I can remember talking to two girls after an open air service up in Stornoway, that's on the island of Lewis, way off the northwest coast of Scotland. And those two girls, they had the same Scottish name, most everybody did in that area, but although they were not related, they lived together. And both of those girls confessed to me that they were afraid to go to sleep at night, because lest they die in their sleep, because they were worried about God. They were worried about God. They didn't know where they stood as far as God was concerned. Now, if ever you looked up while you were blind, and before you opened your eyes, God worried you. And if ever you prayed then, when your back was against the wall, the heavens were like brass. You had no claim upon God, but it's so different now. You look up now and your eyes are open and you're saved by the grace of God and you look up and you look into God's face with joy because God has bidden you. Come boldly to the throne of grace. Don't be afraid. When you looked up before, all you found was darkness. But now suddenly you've opened your eyes and a brand new light is shining. It's a light that solves your problems. It's a light that lifts your burdens. It's a light that makes your life really worth living. If you ever looked up, it wasn't very often. When you were blind, you seldom attempted it because you didn't think you needed to pray. You didn't think you needed God. You thought you had enough in your life. You were self-sufficient and you were self-centered and all that mattered to you was to keep God at a distance so he didn't get at your conscience and begin to worry you and trouble you and make you lose your sleep. But you opened your eyes like Dorcas. What happened? It was so different. When you look up now, no more, no more fear. But joy, no more trepidation, no more darkness, no more occasional approach. Now, well, I hope you do this. Even when you go shopping, say, Lord, I don't have very much to spend on my shopping. I want you to send me to the right store, and I want you to enable me to make my money go wisely. I'm a steward. And you don't pray about your shopping? I know I'm going to go over time, but I better not tell you the story. You look around, it's different. You look within, it's different. You look up and it's different. Now what about looking forward? Oh, when you're blind, in your sin, outside of Christ, you look forward and you're afraid. If you're wise, you're afraid. If a man dies in his sin, he'll be judged in his sin, he'll be raised in his sin, and where God is, no place will be found for him. That's the language of the word of God, and it means to say, if there's no place in heaven for him, then there's only one other place to which he can go. The blind man, the spiritually blind man, the man who has not opened his eyes, if when he looks into the future is troubled and distressed, is at least a wise man. Because all that lies before is horror and eternal darkness if we haven't the Lord Jesus in the heart. But when your eyes are open and you look forward, you know there's nothing to fret about and there's nothing to fear. And you know you never want to forget. And so you turn over and over in your mind as you breathe in the Word of God, those joys that are only hinted at in the Word of God but are described like this, to be with Christ, which is far better. You know, strange thing happens here in the park and the colony where so many people are retired and some have been retired twenty years. There comes a day when there's a knock on their door and the Lord says, I want you to come home. And so they slip away. It has a way of happening. I've said it before and I'll say it again. It seems to take a long time in Parker the Palms because everybody's treated so nicely and they grow to be eighty and ninety. Well, that's wonderful. I hope I never live to be ninety. But if that's the Lord's will, I guess I'll get over it. But the fact is, that every funeral we have here is a time of triumph. Because to be with Christ is far better. When you look into the future now, your eyes are open. And you can see the wonder of having all of these joys laid up for you in heaven. It's very true, you know. The Bible is absolutely true. And what I've said to you this morning is what the Word of God says. And I pray so earnestly that you listen. And then if something has been said that disturbs you because you say, I don't think I'm a Christian in that sense. I don't think that I really know the Lord. I think my eyes are still blind. Don't go away this morning. Let's talk to you. Or if you're a Christian, you say, and you say, boy, that hurts. My eyes are open and I look within, but I've got an idea that I'm a little bit jaundiced in my view. I think there are some things that need to be straightened out in my life. Well, if you get to that place, I'm glad you did, because the Spirit of God maybe is just pointing out a little of something in your life, while your life is so beautiful and everybody loves you so much. Everybody admires you. You'll be just a little more lovable and a little more sweet and a little more useful because suddenly the Spirit of God touches your conscience and says, you know, you really don't listen to people when they talk to you. You better get down and talk to the Lord about that because I think it can make a big difference in your life. Do you know whom I'm talking to mostly? I'm talking to me because I talk to a lot of people when they're going out the door there. And there's one thing I really do pray, Lord, when I talk to these people, let them feel that I'm interested in them. And that's the way I better finish. It's time to quit. Let's pray, shall we? Our Heavenly Father, we want to thank thee that thou hast made it possible for our darkened eyes to be illuminated, for us to open our eyes. And to see around and up and in and out and forward so very differently with an anointed eye, with a spiritual eye, with an eye that comes as a result of knowing the Lord Jesus as Savior. So bless us as we separate, we pray.