Wholly Bright
Hello and welcome to Wifey Wednesdays, a podcast for women who are seeking to be the best wives they can be. I’m your host, Emily Hatfield, and this is the show where the plan is always to do things God’s way, especially our marriages.
On today’s episode, we’re going to be looking at a section of scripture from Luke 11, which is where our title of wholly bright comes from. Let’s read it together first and then we will look at some applications.
Luke 11, starting in 33: “No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be carful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.”
Now, if you’re like me, your mind immediately went to a children’s song — hide it under a bushel, no! I’m gonna let it shine.
The light within us isn’t meant to be hidden. It is meant to shine brightly for all to see. But sometimes, there is darkness creeping in. Sometimes, the way we’re looking at things isn’t exactly right. Sometimes, we’re distracted by darkness.
If we back up to get a little bit of context for what Jesus is talking about, we can see that there are some around Jesus who would claim to be one way but were really something else completely.
At the beginning of the chapter, Jesus famously says - ask and it will be given, seek and you will find. But then when you drop down to verse 15, Luke records that “some of them said, he casts out demons by Beelzebul, prince of demons, while others, to test him, kept seeking from him a sign from heaven.”
Some people were seeking…but not from a good place. They were seeking to test. They were seeking to trap. And Jesus responds with a stern rebuke: “This generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Ninevah, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here! The men of Ninevah will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here!”
Then Jesus goes into His words about the light…
So we can see that Jesus is seeking people who are fully and totally committed to Him — people who let the light of the gospel shine into their hearts and it moves them to DO something about it. The Queen of Sheba was moved by the wisdom of Solomon and she sought him out. The people of Ninevah heard Jonah and to their credit, listened and changed.
The people of Jesus’ generation, they weren’t listening. They claimed to be religious. They claimed spirituality. But their outsides and insides didn’t match. They weren’t wholly bright. They were seeming religious on the outside, but inwardly, they weren’t truly seeking the Lord at all.
This is where I think the application comes in for us.
God is seeking true worshippers. God is seeking disciples. God is seeking wholly committed followers. He wants us to be conduits of His light and to be wholly bright - on fire for the Lord in all that we say and do. He wants our insides and our outsides to match. He wants us to be on fire for Him, letting our light so shine among men that they can see our good works and glorify Him.
But if we’re not really seeking — if we’re halfhearted, if we’re Sunday only Christians, if we’re complacent - how bright are we? Are we having spurts of bright, but in reality, not really helping at all?
Let me tell you about my electricity this morning:
Having flickering lights doesn’t help you get ready. Having unreliable light doesn’t help anything.
So it is with us. Having unreliable light in the world isn’t helping the world. It isn’t helping your family. It isn’t helping anyone. Flickering light for the Lord shouldn’t be a thing. We are to be wholly bright. We are to be set ablaze by His word, and that light is to shine forth consistently and brightly.
We must be seekers of Jesus whose eyes are healthy - whose eyes are truly seeking. Not seeking a loophole, not seeking a way out of the consequences of a sin we’ve found ourselves in, not seeking to become more popular or to get more notoriety. We aren’t seeking to become Christian influencers. We’re seeking Jesus. Healthy eyes seek Jesus, and that makes us bright. It lights up our hearts and lives so that we can glorify God in all that we say and do.
Jesus concludes Luke 11 with woes to the scribes and Pharisees, and it’s a fitting end, isn’t it? Because what Jesus is saying - what He is requiring by talking about us being wholly bright - is that we will be true disciples, not just outward imitators. Not seeking Jesus for what we can get out of Him, but how we can learn of Him and become more like Him in order to help others see Him more clearly. We seek Jesus so that we can illuminate the way to Him, not shine a spotlight on ourselves.
The Pharisees, they were spotlight seekers. They liked for people to notice their “holiness”. They liked for everyone to revere them and respect them. They liked being well known and they liked their opinions and traditions being upheld.
Woe to us if that’s our focus. May we only ever seek to show people Jesus. May we pray that we get out of the way so that what is seen in us and from us is something that is wholly bright — pure and glorious because we are reflecting Jesus Himself.
We must take ourselves out of the way in order to be wholly bright, and that’s something the Pharisees just couldn’t do. But Jesus, He promises that if we will seek Him, we can find Him. There is a way to be wholly bright, and it’s by wholly surrendering yourself to Him and devoting yourself to Him and His cause instead of your own agenda.
I hope that we will all take this lesson from the Pharisees and do exactly opposite of them — I hope we will be wholly bright, not bright on the outside but inside full of dead men’s bones.
