Cleansing Our Eyes from the Dust of This World

In John 14:30, Jesus called Satan “the prince of this world.” Jesus said, “The prince of this world comes, and he has nothing in me.” But if we are earthly-minded, we open ourselves to be ruled or influenced by Satan, because he is the prince of this world. And if we go back to the beginning, if you look at Genesis chapter 3:19, where it talks about the consequences of sin on man, it says that “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” And it says, “By the sweat of your face, you’ll eat bread until you return to the ground, because from it you were taken.” Yes, we know that God made man by taking dust from the ground. And it says also about the animals, it says this about the animals on the sixth day of creation, that God made the beasts of the earth and everything that creeps on the ground. He said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures.” So, just like the earth brought forth living creatures, God took dust and made man. And He said, because of sin, “From dust you came, to dust you shall return.”

But the difference between animals and man is we know that God breathed into man. And because God breathed into man, there is a potential for us to respond to the Holy Spirit, to the upward call of the Holy Spirit. And we can be born again, and we can get new life. This is life in the Spirit. And we can be joined together with Christ and have fellowship with Him and live for Him. So that is the glorious opportunity that we have. And the lesson is clear: unless we are born again, unless we live this way in obedience to the Holy Spirit, we sink down to the level of the animals. And I noticed, you know, I was thinking of this, “From dust you came, to dust you shall return.” It says in Genesis 3:14, the Lord said to the serpent, at the end of that verse, it says, “Dust you shall eat all the days of your life.” So what that spoke to me is, if I’m earthly-minded, if my kingdom is that of this earth, then I become food for Satan. I become open to his influences.

In 2 Corinthians 4:4, it says, “The god of this world has blinded the eyes of the unbelieving, the god of this world has blinded the eyes of the unbelieving.” This is a verse that we’re familiar with. The god of this world, small ‘g,’ god or ruler of this world, Satan, has blinded the eyes of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Jesus Christ. Yes. So how does Satan blind us? This is how I thought of it: that he throws dust in our eyes. He throws the dust of this world in our eyes. My message is called “Cleansing Our Eyes from the Dust of This World.” Yes. From the beginning, we can see that Eve saw the fruit, and it looked good to the taste, and it was good to make her wise, and she forgot the love of God. She was blinded to the love of God. And that’s what Satan does to us. He throws the dust of this world in our eyes and blinds us. He makes the things of this world seem attractive.

See, the glory of God is primarily not that God is all-powerful, all-wise, all-just. All these things are true. He’s made this universe intricate, complicated, complex, perfectly interwoven. We are wondrously made. He knows our every thought. He knows our every word before we say it. He’s the Lord of all history. He knows everything that happens before it happens. He controls all the powers and authorities. The glory of God is that this sort of God, this sort of mighty God, is a God of love, and He loves me with an everlasting love. That is the glory of it. And it’s an expensive, unfathomable, deep love that God has. And we see this love of God in Jesus Christ. And faith is to understand and accept the offer that God is making, that I can be the object of His love. And Satan wants to blind our eyes from seeing this glory of Jesus.

I was thinking how he blinded the eyes of Judas with the love of money. No, Judas was looking after the money, and his eyes were drawn to it, thought nobody would see, and he started stealing, being unrighteous, and Satan was able to blind him. And we know the path that he went. He became proud, rebellious. He was easily offended, and he was blind to the love of Jesus, the glory of God that was right in front of him. And there was a small correction that he received. Jesus said, “Leave her alone.” He got all worked up, and he went to the authorities, and he was blind to the love of Jesus. It says about Jesus that Jesus loved him to the end. That’s the glory of God. The love of God is the glory of God. And Satan wants to blind us to the love of Jesus.

In 1 Corinthians, we heard this two Sundays ago, Paul kept on asking the Corinthians, “Do you not know? Do you not know?” You know, “Do you not know the saints will judge the world? The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom. Your bodies are members of Christ. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do you not know?” And if you ask the Corinthians, you gave them an exam, you know, they were living in one of the leading cities of that time. They would get all the answers right. Yes. They knew. And Paul says, “See, you don’t know as you ought to know.” How do we know as we ought to know? He says, “You are carnal, fleshly, and these things are spiritually appraised.” The Spirit of God has to take these things that we’ve heard and make it the way we live. In 1 Corinthians 8, he says, “You do not know as you ought to know. But if anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by Him.”

And I see there that connection between love and knowing. It’s only when our eyes are open to see the love of God through the power of the Holy Spirit that we know as we ought to know, that the way we live, what spontaneously comes from our hearts and our lives and our lips, is compelled by the love of God. And if we don’t allow the love of God to open our spiritual eyes, we are in danger of spiritual blindness. We must wash our eyes of the dust of this earth. In John chapter 9, we see the miracle of the man born blind. We can turn there, look at it. It says Jesus took mud or dust and made clay and applied this clay to his eyes. Oh, it’s unthinkable that we should take mud and put it in our eyes. But that was the healing that Jesus offered this blind man.

And to me, that gives me a picture that we must be cleansed from the dust of this earth that blinds us. And the dust of this earth is unbelief that stops me from seeing the love of God. And it’s usually the attraction, this animal attraction for some of these earthly things, that brings up this unbelief in my heart. And this is a wonderful story. The man’s physical eyes were opened, but his spiritual eyes were also open. And he says, “I don’t know many things, but this I know: I was blind, and now I see. I was born blind, and now I see. And you are trying to tell me that this man is not sent from God. He was sent from God, because I know what He did in my life.” It says he washed in the pool of Siloam, which means “sent,” and he understood; his eyes of his heart were open to recognize that this man is sent from God. This is a man of godly authority, and I am under the authority of God, and I can’t do what you are telling me to do.

And he came under the government of heaven, and the story ends in John 9:38. We can look at it. He says, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped Him. He bowed down before Jesus. He understood what was really worthwhile. He paid a price. He was cast out from the church there for Jesus’ sake, and he worshiped Him. He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped Him. And we see that, you know, at the start of the story, the disciples asked, “Why is this man blind? Why was he born blind? Was it his sin or his parents’ sin?” They were thinking about the judgment of God against sin. It’s true that God will judge all sin. All His ways are just. There will be perfect justice. But Jesus said, “Right now, I am here. And this man is blind so that the works of God might be displayed in him. I want to make him a part of My story. I want to make him a part of how I show My love to this world. I’m going to make him a hero. While I am in this world,” He said, “we must do the works of God. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world. While I am in the world, I want to show the love of God to this world.”

Brothers and sisters, Jesus said, “So send I you. Go and be a light in this dark world. Show the love of God to this world. Pay the price. Follow Me. Let the love of God compel you.” And we see that his parents missed the opportunity. It’s good for us to think about this. You know, they said their son was of age. Their parents, his parents, had brought up this child. You can imagine that they must have tried every medical treatment. Son is born blind. What to do? So much grief, anguish over the years. And now he’s forced to beg for a living. And suddenly his eyes are opened. You would imagine that they would be rejoicing and saying, “Oh, we must find out how did this happen and go follow this man who did it.” And they did not have the courage to say this man is sent from God. If anyone should have known that, the parents should have known that.

Yes. They were afraid because, you know, the Jews said that they would put them out, so they were afraid. And I was thinking of what Jesus said in John 5:44. He said, “How can you believe when you receive honor or glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God? How can you believe? You will be blind because you’ve taken the honor of men, in whose breath is in their nostrils, and you’ve sought that, and you’ve made that the big thing. You’ve put mud on your eyes; you can’t believe, you can’t see.” And He says, “The Father who sent Me,” John 5:36-37, a few verses before that, “the Father who sent Me has testified about Me. He has testified about Me. The works that I do testify about Me.” And He says, “But I know you,” verse 42, “you do not have the love of God in yourselves.”

So again, we see that connection between faith and love. These people didn’t want the love of God. The love of God was not their great desire. They had forgotten the first commandment, and they were seeking the honor of men, and they had willfully put the dust of this earth on their eyes, and Jesus said, “How can you believe?” Yes, we don’t want to miss the opportunity. Our great privilege and opportunity is to be a part of Jesus’s story, to be the object of His love in its fullness, and to value that above everything else, and the only way we can do that is by the Spirit of God to cleanse ourselves of the dust of this earth.

In John chapter 13, we know that Jesus washed the feet of the disciples. We can go there, look at it. Jesus said to Peter, “He who has bathed only needs to wash his feet and is completely clean. And you are clean, but not all.” No, in italics, it’s implied, “But not all of you.” You are clean, but not all of you. See, there are two ways you can read that phrase or understand that phrase, and Jesus actually meant it in both ways. So He was saying two things. He was talking to twelve disciples. He was saying, “You are clean, but not all of you.” Now the wrong way for me to understand it is, most of us are okay, but somebody over here is a problem. Okay, so whoever that problem is, I’m not the problem. We’ll find out who the problem is and solve the problem, and then we’ll all be clean. That is true. There was someone who was going to betray Jesus. That was true.

But that’s not the only way to understand the verse. And we see that Jesus said, “He who has bathed only needs to wash his feet but is completely clean.” So what Jesus is saying is, “Yes, you may be clean. You may be, to some extent, to a great extent, seeking the kingdom of God in response to what God has done in your life. But it’s good for us to examine every area of my life and to see, am I completely clean? Is there some area of my life where I have an attraction for the things of this world that is stopping me from receiving in its fullness the love of God through the Holy Spirit?” And that is what I want to examine, the heart of a disciple.

And we see when Jesus said, “One of you is going to betray Me,” all the disciples said, “Is it I, Lord? Is it I?” And then Judas saw everybody else saying, “Is it I?” He said, “Is it I also?” But he couldn’t say, “Lord”; he said, “Teacher.” Yes. If we come under the government of heaven, we will cleanse ourselves. We’ll ask that question, “Is it I, Lord? Am I the one who’s betraying You by an attraction, a love for the things of this world?” And, yes, that’s the attitude we want to have. Where’s the problem? I need You to cleanse me. I want to receive Your love. That’s the attitude of a disciple.

So I wanted to turn to Luke 17:27-28, where Jesus talks about what will happen when the Son of Man comes. It says this will be like the days of Noah and the days of Lot. It says, “This is how it will be in the last days. The last days will be like the days of Noah and the days of Lot.” And how does He describe what happened in the days of Noah and in the days of Lot? He spoke of three areas in these verses, 26-27. He says, “Yes, just as it happened in the days of Noah, so also it will happen in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, and until the day that the flood came and destroyed them all. It was the same as happened in the days of Lot. They were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were selling, planting, and building.”

So, as I saw this, I saw three areas: eating, drinking, marrying, getting married, planting, building. And, you know, you could think of it as food, sex, and housing. And God knows that we need these things. These are basic needs. Animals need these things, and we need these things. But the question is, are we going to put them in their proper place? The problem is that man will be occupied with these things. His heart and mind and eyes will be set on this, and he will bring judgment on himself. And this is not somebody else. We need to judge ourselves and say, “Lord, is it I? Am I the person in this place whose heart and eyes are set on the things of this earth?” And, yes, we must be on guard and look out to see if we’re being blinded.

I remember Brother Charles used the phrase, “like chickens on a dung hill,” you know? Are we just scrabbling through the things of this earth? Food, marriage, property transactions. And we see temptations and problems in these areas in the lives of believers. And everybody here, we all know it in our heads. If you ask us what are the most important things in life, no, none of us will say, “Oh, no, food, marriage is the most important thing, or my house is the most important thing.” No, nobody will say that. But how do we change? How is our heart going to change? This should bring us to a sense of need and to recognize the hope of God’s calling in Jesus Christ.

Yes. In Romans 8:6, it says, “The mind set on the flesh is death. The mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.” And in each of these areas, we are tested whether we really love the Lord. And we have to counter our animal instincts with the truth of God’s Word. In Philippians 4:18-19, we see a similar verse where Paul talks about many who walk, and he says, “Of whom I often told you.” So Paul was talking about and concerned about and occupied with these people. And I’m sure his primary burden was for those who were wholehearted, but not many were wholehearted. He said, “All seek their own, except for Timothy.” So there were few. And he had a burden for the others. And he said, “There are many who walk, as I’ve often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ.”

The question I need to ask myself is, am I in that number? It says, “Whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite or god is their belly, who glory in their shame, who set their mind on earthly things.” Yes. And the next verse says, “Our citizenship is in heaven, from whom we eagerly await the Lord Jesus Christ.” If we have a longing for the Lord Jesus Christ to be king of our lives, then we will repent of this sort of setting our mind on earthly things.

I was thinking of this phrase, “god being our belly,” in relation to food. Am I giving my stomach too much importance? So there is an author called C.S. Lewis. He writes intellectual books, but in some areas, he’s very clear. He talks about gluttony. Okay, if you look up C.S. Lewis and gluttony, and you’re able to understand what he’s saying, he has a book called The Screwtape Letters, where he talks about somebody who’s, like, he’s writing in the form of one of the demons who’s tempting somebody, and he says, you know, “One of the great triumphs of Satan is that when we talk about gluttony, gluttony is not preached about nowadays.” He says the great triumph is that we have managed to make people think only about eating too much. And gluttony means, “I eat too much.” That’s it. That’s the definition of gluttony.

And people will try not to do that, mostly for the sake of their health. But he said, “See, the big thing about gluttony is not that you eat too much. It’s that you are very particular about what you want to eat. And if you don’t give this god, belly god, what it wants, then you get upset, angry, irritated, and you’re out of love.” And, no, it’s not just about how much you eat. It’s not just about also wanting tasty food. No, say, suppose I want healthy food. If I generally look at trends today, there’s a lot of talk about healthy food. What is healthy food? When to eat, how much to eat? You count calories. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do these things, brothers and sisters.

But the question I want to ask myself is, the Word of God says, “Whether I eat or drink, I do all things for the glory of God.” And is that the standard? And am I doing all things in love? Am I going to get upset with my wife if she put sugar in my coffee by mistake? Am I going to go to some restaurant and behave badly because, you know, the food is not exactly the way I wanted it? Oh, Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of God, my Father.” And, brothers and sisters, we are being tested. And whatever we say about how much we love God in these areas, we have to examine whether we are truly disciples. And, yes, whether we will be eating and drinking and not longing for Jesus to come, not longing for Him to be the Lord of our lives.

I want to talk about marrying and getting married also. Yes. This is especially for young people, but it has implications for all of us who are married. What do we look for? What are we attracted by? What are we taken up with? There’s a verse I hope you have all considered. It’s in 1 Peter 3:3-4. I encourage you to turn there. First Peter chapter 3. What is a beautiful sister in the eyes of the Lord? It says, “Let your adornment be the hidden person of the heart, the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God.” This is what I should be looking for. Has God done a precious work in the heart of this person? That is what is my attraction, because I want the will of God. I want Him to be king of my life.

See, if God told me, you know, I’m a boy, “Marry this girl,” or if, you know, I hope all of us would say, “Yes, Lord. Thank you. Thank you for making things easy for me.” But because God is a God of love, because He loves us, He won’t do that. Because if He did that, that would be force. So He tests us, and He waits to see if we will listen for His voice and put His will first and put His priorities first. Yes. And He said, “Don’t just look at external adornment, braiding of hair, wearing gold jewelry, putting on dresses, you know, the external.”

There’s something that we know, but we might not have thought about this way before. I had reason to think of it because my wife and I just drove past somebody who was begging on the street, and he was a leper. I just saw a glimpse of him, but, like, his face was almost missing. We’ve seen people like that, and such a hideous sight. And then I thought about this: if we think about the human body, okay, we’ve learned this in biology, if you just go back to what you remember, you know, studied in schools at some point, if you think about it, the body contains living cells and dead cells. So which are the dead cells in the body? Yes, the skin, the outermost layer of the skin, and your hair, those are all dead cells. That’s why you don’t feel pain when you cut your hair, and the outer layer of your teeth. These are all dead cells, right?

So what we are looking at and what arouses this animal instinct is all dust. I remember Brother Zach saying this once: when you look at a pretty girl, remember that it’s just the arrangement of the molecules of dust that makes her attractive. And, see, you can say this sort of thing and understand it and nod your heads and smile, but we know how we feel. We know what drives us. And it’s only when the Spirit of God has done a work in my life that I say, “No, no, no. That’s not the big thing. That’s not the important thing. I want what You want. I want Your priorities. I want what’s precious in Your eyes.” Yes. We seek to be surrendered to His will, not taken up with some pretty face.

I was thinking about this story in Genesis 8:7-9. It talks about the raven and the dove being released from the ark. It said the raven was set free, and it went out and went out rejoicing, said, “Oh, all these dead bodies. What a feast for me.” I can go anywhere, do anything. I’m a bird, after all. You’ve been cooping me up in this ark for all these days. No, this is my nature, all these restrictions. Now I am free. And a dove is the picture of a Spirit-filled believer. It says it found no resting place for the soles of its feet and came back to Noah’s hand.

And, brothers and sisters, you know how it is in the world today in terms of how people dress. You see skin everywhere. Yes, not just on TV and in your phones. No, like, it’s everywhere. It’s on the streets, on the billboards, in your offices, in your colleges, in your apartment building. You go down for a walk, you’ll see this. And the church, at least, must be a resting place for believers. And it thrills my heart to see that that is mostly the case. I would encourage you, sisters, to dress modestly, not just in the church, but at least in the church. Think about why I’m doing what I’m doing.

See, this layer of skin, and people in the world, they’ll mostly add a layer of dust on top, right? They’ll put makeup, or they’ll put hair dye, or they might wear a wig, or they might wear cream or something. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do these things. But in your doing of these things, consider your motives and consider whether you are acting within the love of God. And I trust that many of you will find a resting place in the church. No, the ark may have been relatively small and may have been inconvenient, smelly, but there’s spiritual life there, and there’s spiritual death in the world.

And, yes, God’s will is that our marriages can be a glorious picture of heaven, not just, you know, like in the Old Testament where it was symbolic. There are no stories that we know about the living relationship. I mean, just glimpses that we have of the living relationship between husband and wife in the Old Testament. Some of them are good, many of them are bad. But what Jesus is calling us for is to say, “Come and look at My life. Come and look at My married life, and there’s a change. There’s the government of heaven. There is joy and peace and righteousness, because I have this commandment to love My wife as Christ loved the church. And because He loves me, I am able to love like that. Because of the power of the Holy Spirit, I’m able to love like that.”

And this is the calling that I have. And I don’t want to be sidetracked by it. See, young people, I mean, if you say, “Oh, does that mean God wants me to marry some ugly boy or girl?” See, the only reason we ask that question is because we don’t believe and don’t trust in the love of God. The kingdom of God is not just righteousness—righteousness, peace, and joy. God is a good Father. He knows our needs. He knows what is good for us. But He wants us to be renewed, transformed by the renewing of our mind and to see what is precious in His eyes and allow the Holy Spirit of God to transform us to hold on to what will last, what will last for eternity.

Yes. I want to talk about property transactions as well—buying, selling, building. Now, if you get deeply involved in these things, even if your house is next to a construction site, you’ll get covered with dust. Watch over your heart with all diligence. Nobody’s saying you shouldn’t build a house. Very often, that’s a wise thing to do. Very often, it’s wise to invest in property as well. But is my heart being drawn away from a love of the Lord? And again, we see the example of Jesus and His priorities. He said, “Foxes have holes. Birds have nests. The Son of Man has no place to lay His head.” It’s not that He didn’t have a house. He did have a house, but when somebody broke open the roof of the house, He didn’t have a problem with that.

Brothers and sisters, it’s good for us to examine ourselves and say, “Lord, there’s so much more that I can be like You, and I want to be like You, and Your Spirit is able to change me, and I don’t want to judge anyone else. May it not be. Lord, let me ask the question, am I the one?” And help me cleanse me. Yes. I want to close with reminding us all again of the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. He started out saying, “Give me my share.” You know, in all of these areas—food, marriage, building a house, or other property transactions—it’s very easy for us to say, “Give me my share, my life, my marriage, my food.”

And we don’t want to be super-spiritual about this, but it’s good for us to examine our hearts. And it says about the prodigal son that he realized that he was eating pig’s food. And he said, “Oh, my father loves me. What is wrong with me?” And he came back to his senses, and he remembered the love of his father, and he said, “I must rise up and go, and when I go back to my father’s house, yes, there’ll be rules there, but those rules are for my good, and I want to be under the government of God. I want to be under the government of the kingdom of heaven.” May God help us. Let’s bow our heads in prayer.

Brothers and sisters, loving Father, Lord, we thank You and praise You for this time. We thank You and praise You for these precious words that we hear. And, Lord, we want to turn our eyes and see Your love. Yes, Lord, You didn’t come to condemn us, but to save us. You came to lift us up and out of this miry clay and set us on a rock to stay—that eternal rock, eternal riches, the glory that is there in Your kingdom when You are King and Lord of our lives. And You’re able to not only cleanse us but uphold us, Lord, through the power of Your Holy Spirit. We’re able to do that. We want to have a longing and hunger and thirst in our hearts, Lord, for this life, the Spirit-filled life. We thank You and praise You. We commit ourselves into Your hands. Thank You for Your Word this morning. We pray in Your precious name, Jesus. Amen.

Bible Verses:

John 14:30 – Jesus calls Satan "the prince of this world" but affirms he has no power over Him.
Genesis 3:19 – God declares that man, made from dust, will return to dust due to sin.
Genesis 3:14 – God curses the serpent to eat dust all its days.
2 Corinthians 4:4 – Satan, the "god of this world," blinds unbelievers to the gospel’s light.
John 5:36-37, 42, 44 – Jesus rebukes those who seek human honor over God’s love, hindering faith.
John 9:38 – The healed blind man worships Jesus, declaring his belief.
John 13:10-11 – Jesus teaches that spiritual cleansing requires ongoing renewal ("washing feet").
Luke 17:26-28 – The days of Noah and Lot warn of worldly preoccupation before judgment.
Romans 8:6 – A fleshly mindset brings death; a Spirit-led mind brings life and peace.
Philippians 3:18-19 – Paul warns against those who serve earthly desires as enemies of Christ.
1 Peter 3:3-4 – True beauty is a gentle, godly spirit, not external adornment.
Luke 15:11-32 – The prodigal son’s return illustrates repentance and the Father’s love.