Be Careful Little Eyes What You See

Hello, and welcome to Social Media Ministries. My name is Spencer Coffman. Thank you so much for tuning in. Today we’ve got a good message for you on your eyes.

You might know the Sunday school song “Be Careful Little Eyes What You See” often — if your children attended Sunday school or if you went as a child, you probably sang that song, “Be Careful Little Eyes What You See,” because guess what?

It is something that is important. We need to be careful what we see, what we consume in our lives. So hopefully right now you are watching this, or if you’re listening, then it’s your ears, and we’re going to get to that next week.

We’ll put a card up here for that sermon on “Be Careful Little Ears,” and so what we have here this is a two-part sermon series on being careful about the content you consume. Now that doesn’t really mean you’re, like, eating this content, like, “Oh, I’m going to eat the Bible.”

No, but you are putting it in. You’re taking it in, and you take things in through your eyes and your ears mainly.

Of course, you can take it in other ways, but the point is, it’s pretty much always you’re either going to see something and ingest it, or you are going to hear something and ingest it. Now we’re not talking about food. We are talking about things that go into your mind and into your heart, and that influences your behavior and your character and who you are as a person.

And so you need to make sure that what you bring in is good because if you consume garbage, you will be a rotten person. It’s just that simple. So hopefully, you like these sermons, you are consuming them, and you want others to consume them as well.

If so, hit that share button wherever you’re watching or listening and share it on your social media so that more people can start seeing good things that will help them become better people.

Now you may know this song, “Be Careful Little Eyes What You See,” but most people don’t understand the meaning. It’s just like something they do. They sing the song “da da,” you know, and on and on and then on to the next one and the next one, but they never stop to ponder what it really means and how they can apply it to their life.

There is a meaning behind the song. There is an importance of that meaning, and it is pretty straightforward. You’re to be careful what you see. Let’s go to some verses.

Matthew 6:22 and 23. Matthew 6:22-23: “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”

Your eyes are the lamp of your body. Meaning that not only do your eyes take in, but your eyes also give out. So if your body is filled with darkness because you’ve consumed darkness through your eyes, how great is that darkness within you? You will see it on people. It’s like a countenance upon them.

You’ll say, “Wow, you look happy today,” cause it’s in their eyes. You say, “Wow, boy, you look gloomy today,” or you see a person you’re like, “Oh look at that,” cause they got the dark eyes, sayings.

This is like the eyes are the windows to the soul. Pretty accurate. I have a history in body language psychology and deception detection, and when doing that, I can tell you that when you watch someone’s eyes, you can be more certain of whether or not they are telling the truth.

Now, of course, the face — people know that that’s a good area to watch. So they often try to mask it or hide those unconscious signs. So then the body can often be very telling as well. You have to look for signs, patterns, clusters of behavior; in addition, I did an experiment on detecting a real versus fake smiles.

It was actually published, and when doing that, the people who are better at detecting whether a smile is genuine or fake or an enjoyment smile versus a non-enjoyment smile, when people look at the eyes, they are much better, significantly better, at determining the accuracy of a real versus a fake smile. Your eyes are telling. Your eyes are the light of your body — the lamp of your body.

If you consume darkness, your eyes will start pushing out darkness, and people will see that physically, psychologically — they’ll just discern it spiritually. So that means you can’t look upon sin. You can’t look upon things that are sinful. You can’t consume sinful content. Let’s go to Psalms 101:3.

“I will not look with approval on anything that is vile. I hate what faithless people do, and I will have no part in it.” You can’t. You can’t have any vile thing before your eyes. You can’t set before your eyes anything that is sinful. You can’t look upon anything that is sin. You can’t watch sin because that’s not good either. Let’s go to Job.

Job 31:1. “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman.” Now this is Job talking. He made a covenant with his eyes not to look lustfully, like sexual lust. We have a sermon on sexual lust. You can check that out in a card or on our website.

You cannot look lustfully on anything. There are lusts of the flesh. Now that could be a lot of different things. You can lust after food. You could lust after wealth, after money. You can’t look lustfully on anything. You could see a car and be like lustful for that car — that new car there.

You can’t set sin before your eyes. Now that’s Job making a covenant with his eyes not to look lustfully at women. So he said sexual lust will not happen. We need to take it further, like Jesus would say, and we need to say none of it will happen. Now, of course, it might slip up, but you need to decide in your heart, in your mind, “I’m making a covenant.” I will put no sinful behavior before my eyes.

So when a TV commercial comes on that insinuates something or when, during a show, something’s going on, change that channel, shut it off. Don’t even watch it. You cannot consume that content because the more you watch sinful content, the more likely you are to become desensitized to it and then engage in it. You say, “That doesn’t happen.” It sure does, especially with children.

You have a child, and if they watch shows with sorcery and witchcraft, and wizardry, what’s happening? Pretty soon, those children are trying to hocus pocus on things and doing chanting in word in whatever words they heard on the TV. And you’re like, “How do you even know that?” They saw it in a TV show.

You don’t even know what they’re saying. They don’t even know what they’re saying. They’re just repeating what they saw on TV, but they could actually be conjuring up demon spirits and bringing them in.

And then you wonder why your child has behavior problems in school. “Oh, the doctor says they need medication. We gotta get them on Ritilin.” Guys, this is serious business. Be careful, little eyes, what you see.

Be careful what you allow your family to see. Fathers, as spiritual heads of the household, anytime you guys are watching TV as a family, you should have that remote. It’s just the rule. Dad gets the remote, and anytime something comes on that’s not good, bam.

Get it off, cause your family is too important to you to let them be led astray. Take control. Take authority. You have the authority. You just need to walk in it. The devil is going to try to steal, kill, and destroy. The Bible says that.

How can he do that? It’s very easy. Put a content on a screen and the devil gets in. Now with today’s world and cell phones and computers and everything, parents, you’re not always home.

It can be very difficult. You can’t have safe filters set up on everything, and you can’t control what they see all the time. That is why you should train a child in the way they should go and they will know better and be discerning. Oftentimes, if your child watches or looks at something they’re not supposed to, you will be able to tell.

You will see it in their eyes, and that is the time to rebuke and correct, not meanly. Do it lovingly, and they will know because chances are they already know they did wrong. And so if you come in there lovingly and help them correct, how powerful will that be? Let’s go to Matthew.

Matthew 5:29, “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.” Jesus is saying that if your eyes lead you to sin, that you gotta get rid of them. Now, He’s not saying blind yourself and go through life blind.

He is saying that if there is something that you are looking upon that is causing you to sin, get rid of it because it is better for you to go through life without whatever that is than for your whole body to enter into hell for all eternity because you refused to get rid of that sin in your life. You say, “You know what? I just really love watching this TV show. Every Baywatch every night.”

Sure you do. You’re a male. Baywatch has a bunch of skimpy bikini girls in it, or you’re a female, Baywatch has a bunch of ripped six-pack ab guys in it. If you are watching that content and it is causing you to have those lustful, sexual thoughts, you’ve got to get rid of it because nothing in this world — that show is not worth your eternity. Stop.

That’s what Jesus is saying. If it’s causing you to sin, gouge it out. If you are spending too much time on Facebook or TikTok or whatever, scrolling through the reels and the memes, you say, “Well, it’s not really sinful content.” Guess what? It’s a time waster. That could be sinful because your time is given to you from God, and if you are not using it wisely, you are wasting it.

The devil is stealing your time. Well then, I need to delete the social media app on my phone. Delete it. You don’t need it. It is better for you to go through life without that stuff than for your eternity to be compromised. You say, “But I really like Facebook for the ability to keep track of and message all of my old high school friends.”

How often are you talking to them? That’s your justification. How about reach out to them and get their phone number and their email, and put it in an address book, and then delete your Facebook and now you have it for whenever you do want to contact them twice a year. Okay, there are ways around it. Don’t be justifying your sinful, bad behavior of time wasting, or of looking at whatever for whatever reason.

Be careful, little eyes, what you see. Now I know this kind of revolves heavily around sexual-type content, but think about violence. What if you say, “Well, I don’t. I, I’m not even, I don’t even watch any of that, so this doesn’t apply to me.”

Sure it does. You watch action movies all the time. People shooting people, people beating each other up. I’ll tell you what, when I was a kid, an action movie — man, if someone like got shot and there was blood, the movie was like rated R.

Nowadays, in PG movies, you see people getting shot, blood spurting out — you got people getting murdered, all this kind of stuff PG. We have become desensitized to violence. We watch violence all the time on TV. MMA fights, boxing matches — all these things — cage raw, all this kind of craziness. That’s, that’s violence. What? What do you think is going to happen?

These kids are going to start doing this stuff. “Oh, no, they’re not. They know better.” Not really. Kids are sponges. They’re going to do whatever they see. Are you teaching them not to? Are you showing them the proper behavior?

Cartoons often are more violent than PG-13 movies. When I was a kid, cartoons, most cartoons nowadays are horrible. Children shouldn’t even be watching them because it’s just the content that’s in it is so bad.

What else are they seeing? Are they seeing TV shows with biblical, godly principles? You say, “Well, they watch Hallmark.” Okay. A lot of Hallmark movies nowadays are about gay couples.

Yeah, there might not be a lot of violence or sex scenes or anything, but marriage is between man and woman according to the Bible. Do you want your children seeing something contrary to the Bible? No, you don’t. We have several sermons on marriage. You can check that out.

We have a sermon on no sexual thoughts. You should watch that one. It’ll be in a card up here. You can’t have that. If you watch sex on the TV or the computer, you are either going to have more sexual thoughts or you are going to engage in more sexual practices. We have a whole playlist on sexual purity. Watch that. In addition, if you say, “All right. Fine. We don’t do any of that. We don’t have the violence.”

But there is a lot of gay and lesbianism out in the world, and your children are watching and seeing this, and they’re seeing TV shows with men raising children or of a couple of women raising children, and oh, isn’t that great? That child wouldn’t have a home if it weren’t for that couple, and they’re seeing this in a positive light, and you say that’s not biblical.

They’re getting the wrong idea of marriage. We have a sermon series on married for life. You can check that out as well. It’s biblical. We don’t need to argue about it all here. If you want to discuss anything in any of these sermons, go to the Discord server sermon discussions, and you can talk about it there, and we can go through that.

The point is, anything that is not aligned with the Bible, you do not want to be watching. You do not want your children to be watching it. You do not want your spouse to be watching it, because if you guys start seeing that, you’re going to start thinking that way.

You start — you start watching things like Black Lives Matter or feminism or things like that — oh, empowering women or whatever. I mean, you could say empowering men, but they that didn’t really have a thing.

We don’t really have white lives matter. If you start diving into segregation and highlighting like that on certain groups, isn’t that great? These people are standing up for their people. Guess what? We are all the same people. We have sermons: “No Discrimination,” “No Impartiality,” “No Favoritism” — watch all those. That’s amazing. They’re about that stuff, and it’s so important because guess what?

We are all members of one body: the body of Christ. There should be nothing else. There’s no red and yellow, black and white, because all are precious in His sight. You don’t stand united with certain people. That’s gangs. “Oh, we’re a veteran-owned business.”

I’m happy for you, but guess what? Don’t segregate yourself. “Oh, I’m a woman-owned business.” Okay, well, what if I’m a man-owned business? Oh, that’s nothing special. Oh really? Oh, okay. Okay?

So we’re segregating. “Oh, I’m a Black-owned business.” Well, what if I’m an Asian-owned business? Oh, okay. We’ll call you a minority then. And we’ll lump in Asian, Latino, Italian — all these things. What if I’m a white-owned business? Caucasian-owned business — that’d be a Norwegian-owned business. No. No, nothing special. Segregation.

You can’t consume that content. Be careful, little eyes, what you’re seeing, because if you start seeing all this stuff and you allow it to come in, pretty soon you will be desensitized to all of this, and you will start either engaging in sinful practices or accepting them or condoning them.

If you watch a lot of violence on TV, you’re going to be more likely to have violent thoughts or to engage in violence. Don’t deny these guys. You know this is true. It’s human nature. If you see something that you like or that looks like it will be fun, then you will want to try it eventually. The more you see it, the more acceptable it starts to become to you.

Let’s go to 2 Samuel 11:2: “One evening, David got up from his bed and walked around the roof of the palace. From the roof, he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful.” David saw this from his roof, then pretty soon, he was going up there probably more than once. Oh, it’s, that. That week she bathed tonight. “Let me go up there.” Pretty soon, he sends someone to go find out who she is.

Then one thing leads to another — now is not only engaging in lustful seeing something lustfully, but then his mind is starting to turn, and what’s happening now he wants it. He’s coveting, then he finds out it’s a married person.

Now, he’s conspiring to commit murder, then he murders, then he commits adultery. I mean, it’s just one thing — well, he commits adultery, then he murders. It’s one thing after another. All of it started with his eyes.

Be careful, little eyes, what you — this is so important. It’s important for you. It’s important for your spouse. It’s important for your family, for your children, for anyone around you. You must guard your eyes.

The Bible says, “Guard your hearts.” Well, what comes in through your eyes — what you see — goes into your hearts. And you know. So be careful what you are putting in, and please join us next week.

We’re going to talk about the ears, what you’re hearing, because that also really influences your heart, your character, your behavior — so come back next week for that.

Let’s pray.

Father, I ask that everyone watching and listening that they would really understand the importance of this concept, the importance of this.

That this isn’t just some crazy person up here talking, telling them to be careful what they watch and turn off the TV and all this kind of stuff, and it’s unrealistic. No, this is essential for their walk with you. They need to be careful what they see.

They need to guard their eyes, guard their hearts, guard their minds, and guard the hearts’ eyes and minds of those around them because what they see influences what they do. Help them to understand and realize that. And if they are doubting this, God give them some signs. Let them see it.

Let them start putting two and two together. They say, “Oh man, I didn’t realize this was affecting my child, but they’re watching a TV show every morning and, and this is what’s going on. We stop watching that TV show, and guess what? The behavior changed.”

Let them start seeing those things — the cause and effect behind this — so that they have the desire and the will to change. Give them the energy to do so because it can be hard if they are the ones that want to make this change and no one around them wants to.

They’re fighting. Give them your strength. Fight for them, God, and help them live for you, in Jesus’ name, amen. Come back next week. We’re going to talk about the ears.

Have a great week, and God bless.