Wednesday Night, October 7, 2020, PM

Luke 6 and the Standard of Measure for Christian Judgment

Promise, what promises are we standing on?

Anybody?

I will never leave you nor forsake you is the promise of God.

Yes.

Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. That's right, I go to prepare a place for you. So I will come again and take you to be where I am. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

All right, he will not tempt you beyond what you are able to withstand. A way out, a way of escape. That's all right, Norm Nelson version, the NNV. No, no, not Thomas Nelson, it's a Norm Nelson. The righteous cries, the Lord will hear and deliver them out of all their troubles.

Confess our sins, be faithful and just. Forgive us and cleanse us.

We confess our sins, faithful to cleanse us, forgive us. A lot of promises we can stand on. And it's good to remind each other of that. We're in Luke chapter six, verses 39 and following. And we're at a point in time here in this elevated sermon by Christ.

Jesus has proclaimed blessings and cursings at the beginning of the sermon. Then he is called for a life filled with mercy rather than vengeance. And we have heard, do not judge. And yet at the same time, how do we affirm Christ.

Saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa?

How do we understand his confrontation with the religious leaders of his day or with his hometown crowd who wanted to kill him.

For what he said?

Seems to me that he got himself into some personal conflict. But at the same time, he calls for living a life of mercy rather than a life of vengeance. We have isolated the meaning of what Jesus is saying here in Luke six as one of not taking personal vengeance but responding in love toward those who are our enemies.

It doesn't have anything really to say about the responsibilities of the state or other situations. This is about how we personally respond. Acting in love toward our enemies, however, as we look at the list, he says, well, here's an enemy.

And he lists seven things that shows you, hey, that's what an enemy does. That's what an enemy looks like. And then he says, love your enemies. And he lists seven things. Like this is how you'll love your enemies.

As we went through that list, we discovered that there wasn't anything there that said we had to refuse to call an enemy an enemy. We can still call them an enemy, right? How am I to love my enemy if I don't identify them as such?

Jesus identified what an enemy was. We got to know who our enemies are, call them that and love them anyway. And we're not to describe a hatred as anything other than hate and speak the truth, but we can do so in love.

I think that's one of the most difficult duties that we have in the Christian life, to love our enemies while speaking the truth, making sound judgments without becoming censorious, hypocritical. In some ways, the quandary is, it feels like trying to get oil or spilled oil out of water.

Seems like a difficult thing to do. But I think it's a fairly relevant issue for our day where approaches to false teaching range from celebrating all voices to I'm the only one who knows the truth, right?

Neither one of those is a Christian response. And it's actually a fairly important point to consider when Jesus' own ministry and teaching his followers, he has these confrontations and he does not always have very harsh words for his opponents.

Sometimes he has stories to tell and he works his way around through a parable or something, but then sometimes he's very direct and says things that many people would call hateful today. And so trying to understand how to follow Jesus in this, I mean, he loved his enemies, but that didn't mean he wasn't saying hard things to them.

He loved them and was saying hard things to them, but not every time. I wanna follow Jesus and you wanna follow Jesus, but we wanna know, how do we handle that? Because there are people in our lives who believe wrong things and do wrong things and are experiencing all manner of consequences and if they're God's children, then they're experiencing discipline and if they're not, they're experiencing judgment of God in their life because of sin.

And if we recognize what's going on, we wanna be able to know how to talk to them. How do we approach this? Well, Jesus, I think helps us here in Luke 6 to get the spilled oil out of the water. So I'm gonna read the text for us.

I'm gonna start halfway there in verse 38, the very end of verse 38, and then read the rest of the chapter. For by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you in return. That'll be the title of the lesson tonight, your standard of measure.

And he also spoke a parable to them. A blind man cannot guide a blind man, can he? Will they not both fall into a pit? Yet a pupil is not above his teacher, but everyone after he has been fully trained will be like his teacher.

Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye, you hypocrite.

First, take out the log of your own eye and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother's eye. For there is no good tree which produces bad fruit, nor on the other hand, a bad tree which produces good fruit.

For each tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they pick grapes from a briar bush. The good man out of his good treasure, out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good.

And the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil. For his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart. Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say? Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and acts on them, I will show you whom he is like.

He is like a man building a house who dug deep and laid a foundation on the rock. And when a flood occurred, the torrent burst against that house and could not shake it because it had been well built.

But the one who has heard and has not acted accordingly is like a man who built a house on the ground without any foundation and the torrent burst against it and it immediately collapsed. And the ruin of that house was great.

So by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you in return. We need a standard of measure and one that's a good standard of measure, not one that is faulty somehow. And then Jesus gives us, I think, three sets of ideas that I think will be helpful to us.

You see, when it comes to making a judgment call about a lifestyle, about an activity, about an attitude, about some set of beliefs, we're not to respond to the face of devilry by saying, well, I guess we're all right in some ways,.

We're all wrong in some ways, live and let live.

And that is marketed as the Christian attitude, but it's actually not Christ's attitude. Jesus cared about the lives of the people that he spoke to. He cared if they did right or wrong, he cared if they believed lies or believed truth, he cared.

And he had a way of approaching it, we need to follow him. The less clear we believe that God has been, the more uncertain we must become about all he has said. On any particular issue, the more we say, well, I think it's unclear, the more uncertain we must become about all that he has said.

We have to discern truth from falsehood, we have to discern right from wrong, we have to discern holy from profane, wisdom from folly, and do so in a way that's consistent with love and mercy and humility.

That sounds a pretty tall task. Yeah, it sounds impossible, doesn't it? But much can be said concerning the rest of the Christian life too. So that's why we have to remain dependent upon God. Jesus said in another passage, which I think really fits well with this one, he said this, do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.

And we hear the passages where Jesus says, judge not and you shall not be judged. I mean, we hear those and we understand that what they are in their context, we've studied that. But here's another passage where he says, you need to judge.

And we're gonna see that here in this passage as well with his stories and his images. He says to judge with a righteous judgment. So how do we do that? Well, three questions. And the first one is, have you gotten rid of folly?

Have you gotten rid of folly? How are you gonna make a righteous judgment? How are you going to use a good standard of measurement if you've left all sorts of foolishness in the process? You're gonna have to get rid of folly first.

And Jesus tells, has three images here in verses 39 through 42. He's got a parable for them. A blind man cannot guide a blind man, can he? Will they not both fall into a pit? A pupil is not above his teacher, but everyone after he's been fully trained will be like his teacher.

And then he talks about the speck and the log. How are you gonna get the speck out of the guy's eye? And you've got a plank in your own. Now, all three of these images are related to each other in the theme of perception or lack thereof.

They all have to do with being able to perceive and understand or the lack of ability to perceive and understand. And he is telling us, look, by the standard of measurement that you use, that's what's gonna be used to you back.

Use a good standard of measurement and you shouldn't use one that emerges from ignorance, out and out blindness, from simple mindedness, or from foolishness. And Jesus, by the way, is getting some roaring laughter from his crowd at this point.

We think he's always so sober, so somber when he teaches. He's making jokes here. Everyone's laughing in the crowd right now. These are funny images. The blind man is gonna lead the blind man and they're gonna end up right where you think they are.

They're both gonna fall down into a pit, aren't they? You don't need a blind, who will be a good guide for a blind man? A blind man? No, of course not. And there's some wit even in the statement about the pupil.

You know how it is with students. They always think they know more than their teachers. He's like, the student's not above his teacher. But you know, when the teacher is done teaching the student, that student's not gonna be more than the teacher.

What are we hearing about that? Be careful who your teacher is, right? If your teacher is blind, then the blind man leading the blind ends up in the pit. You need a teacher who can see. And then he talks about the, and I think this is probably something that he may have thought of as humorous, even when he was a little boy working with his father.

He's a carpenter.

Some dude has a speck in his eye. Oh, I can't get this out of my eye. And some dude carrying around a big plank on his shoulder. Hey, let me get the speck out of your eye. And he can't see. He's got this big old beam right in his face.

And he's trying to get the splinter out of his buddy's eye.

That's funny.

That's not gonna work. So Jesus is using these images to communicate how foolish we can be sometimes in our standard of measurement. And we need to get rid of that folly. And just like in Proverbs, where Proverbs uses humor to get rid of folly out of a young man's life, that's what Jesus is doing here is the sum of all wisdom.

And each image, I think, has a helpful contribution here. If you are blind, then you are no help to the blind. If you are ignorant of the truth, then if you don't even know why you have a standard, how are you gonna be help to anybody else?

If you want to identify right from wrong for someone and help them see right from wrong, but you don't even know why right is right or wrong is wrong, then it's just a blind person leading a blind person and they're both gonna end up in a pit.

Disaster. And if you're just a student, then you have no position to pass judgment upon your teacher. But Jesus's concept of teacher here is like a rabbi, somebody who is doing whole life discipleship, whole life teaching, everything about your life.

It's not like a specialist like we have today. This person teaches you only about history or only about science or something. Teachers in Christ's day, they were people who you would follow around and learn everything there was to learn about life from this one person.

And Jesus is saying,.

Now certainly you cannot go beyond the teacher. You can't go above the teacher and you can't go beyond the teacher. So you gotta be careful about who your teacher is. And then talking about the image of the plank and the splinter.

Think about the guy with the plank in his eye. Jesus says, the guy doesn't even notice he has a plank in his eye when he's trying to grab the splinter out of somebody else's eye. If he doesn't see it, how is he ever gonna remove it?

The guy needs to have the plank pointed out to him, doesn't he? Jesus is not saying this parable, before you move the splinter out of somebody else's eye, you need to remove the plank out of your own eye.

And this means that nobody should ever say anything about anybody else's behavior. Is that what he's saying? No, he says, no, remove the plank out of your eye. And then you'll see clearly to remove this because the plank does need to be removed and the speck really does need to be removed.

And that's good. Jesus wasn't telling this parable as some sort of defense mechanism so that nobody can ever say anything about what I believe or what I do. But that's how it gets used. People use this as an example of relativism.

But relativism that masquerades as humility plunders our thinking of all righteousness and that is not what Jesus is up to. So the first thing is, if we're going to have a good standard of measurement, the first thing is, have you gotten rid of the folly?

Have you gotten rid of the foolishness? Do we know the truth? Is Christ our teacher? Are we learning from the word of God? Are we repenting of our sins? All these things need to be present first before we have a good standard of measurement.

The second thing is this, have you examined the fruit? Have you examined the fruit? Before you comment on something, you need to examine the fruit. Verses 43 through 45. For there is no good tree that produces bad fruit.

Jesus, there is no good tree which produces bad fruit. Nor on the other hand, a bad tree which produces good fruit. For each tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they pick grapes from a briar bush.

The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good. And the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil. For his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.

So here's the measurement that Jesus wants us to use. One of observation. One of observation. On assumption, one of observation. When it comes to a fruit tree, you know anything about biblical case law about how to handle trees and so on?

How long do you know if the tree is going to bear fruit? How many years do you have to wait? You wait three years, and then you'll know whether the tree's gonna bear fruit or not. The third, fourth, and fifth year, well, the fourth, fifth, and sixth year, you can't eat of the fruit.

You just let the tree grow the fruit, but you don't eat of the fruit. Seventh year is for God, and then you can start harvesting. That's a long time. That's a long time. Sometimes we wanna say something immediately, but sometimes it takes a little bit of time.

Now, what if you come upon a full-grown tree? Okay, that happened, Jesus did that, right? He came upon a full-grown tree and said, this is a bad tree. No fruit here. May no one ever eat fruit from you again.

Curses the tree, and it withers and dies. It was a full-grown tree. It was supposed to be growing fruit, and that was not much was obvious, but it wasn't, and so it was okay to go ahead and make that judgment call.

But sometimes it takes a little bit of observation. There's gonna be some degree of time you're gonna have to examine and look. Now, a good tree will bear the good fruit of spiritual life. A bad tree will produce the bad tree of spiritual death.

Now, do we believe Jesus? He says there is no good tree that produces bad fruit. Now, if you've watched someone over a year, two year, three year, seven year, 10 years, and it's bad fruit, bad fruit, bad fruit, bad fruit, bad fruit, bad fruit, bad fruit, bad fruit.

Don't call them a good tree. They need Jesus. That wouldn't, what are you doing to their soul? I know you're good.

No.

Listen, Jesus says there's no good tree that produces bad fruit, and he says, on the other hand, a bad tree, there is no bad tree that produces good fruit. And that proves true over time, over time, that is proven.

And then he makes the obvious point that if somebody's hungry for figs or grapes, and they don't go to the thorny vines or the briar bush, thorn patch or briar bush, that's not where you go to get some food.

You don't go there for the figs and go over there for the grapes. Now, you might find a grape drop there, you know. Squirrel took a little bite and threw it away. Why do squirrels do that? Take one bite out of whatever fruit you're trying to grow and just throw it away.

You might find a fig drop there, just happened to be left there. You might find something there in the briar patch, in the thorn patch, but if somebody goes again and again and again to the briar patch for lunch, you've got to wonder about their sanity.

People do that today. They go back again and again and again to the thorns and the briars to get fed. They think there's something there, but there's not. So Jesus clarifies what he means by fruit in verse 45.

Look, he says, he gives a parallel image here, parallel parable, the good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good.

Consistency.

The evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart. So good tree, bad tree, good heart, bad heart. That's the same parallel image. And then the good tree produces good fruit and the good heart brings out what?

His mouth speaks good treasure because the good fills his heart. The bad heart has bad treasure and brings out the bad things. The twisted, the perverted word, the disease, the poisoning word comes from the bad heart.

And Jesus says, you'll know them by their fruits. And this proves true over time. You have to observe it. So when he says fruit, the first thing he talks about is what comes out of the mouth. What comes out of the mouth.

If what's coming out of the mouth is always, has God really said, has God really said, has God really said? This is bad fruit, right? If, and that's just gonna be proven. Jesus had a lot of run-ins with the Pharisees and the scribes and they talked a lot about God.

They talked a lot about the teachings of the scripture. They talked a lot about the Bible here and there. But Jesus still said, you're of your father, the devil. Because you're lying and he's the father of lies and he's a murderer from the beginning and you're seeking to murder me.

And they were, they were conspiring with them. They were conspiring, trying to kill Jesus. And they were using the scriptures and using their words to be deceptive and tricky. And Jesus said, okay, bad heart, bad fruit.

Something encouraging. It doesn't sound encouraging at the first, but it is encouraging. 2 Timothy, 2 Timothy chapter three. 2 Timothy chapter three, verses nine and 13. This sometimes gets misread. And so we miss the encouragement.

We miss the help that it is. 2 Timothy three, nine and 13. Of course, you can read the whole, whole passage. Very helpful. Now, Paul says, gives some examples about some people who are bad fruit coming out of their mouths, okay.

Verse eight, just as Janus and Jamboree opposed Moses, so these men also opposed the truth. Men of depraved mind, rejected in regard to the faith. But they will not make further progress. Now that's good news.

Why will they not make further progress? For their folly will be obvious to all just as Janus' and Jamboree's father was also. So the false teacher, Cyrenthes, who denied the humanity of Christ. You know what, his father became obvious to all and he was stopped.

The Gnostics were stopped. Marcion was stopped. All these false teachers throughout the history of the church were stopped. They did not make further progress. There are, if you read the church history, the amount of false teaching, the amount of darkness, the amount of deception throughout church history could seem almost overwhelming at times.

Almost overwhelming. And yet, and yet, their folly became obvious to all and they didn't make any further progress. And Christ keeps on triumphing. Verse 13 says, evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

Now understand that, he's saying, he's not saying that the evil men and impostors that come 40 generations from now are gonna be worse than they are now. I mean, some of them might be. He's saying that an evil man and an imposter on each basis, in each case, they will start off bad and they will get worse.

Now, think of the false teachers you've heard on TBN or you've encountered in the bookstore or you've heard about on the radio or whatever, and they start off eh, and then, oh, they go, and they keep on going worse and worse, don't they?

Don't, have you seen that? That's the judgment of God. That's him turning them over to a reprobate mind. If they start going bad, then they get worse and worse and worse and worse. That's why sometimes you might come across a name 20 or 30 years ago, like, yeah, this is okay.

I'm not a man like that, maybe that, but that was okay. And if they're God's child, you know what's gonna happen. They're gonna get sanctified in their understanding and they're gonna grow in grace and they're gonna be faithful and they're only gonna get better in terms of feeding the flock and being a help to the Christian church.

But if they're not really committed to Christ, all those alarm bells will keep on ringing louder and louder and louder and they're gonna get worse and worse and worse until they're gonna be saying awful things.

So you can't just take a name and say, well, that name is good all the time, okay? We have to observe the fruits, okay? And now we can't be a snap judgment, you know? Oh, one slip up, you're done, I'm burning your books, you know, but observe over time.

And that's what Jesus says is standard of measurement. And finally, the last question is, are you established on the foundation? You have a good basis, a good foundation. That's Luke 6, 46 through 49.

Now notice he says, why do you call me Lord, Lord and do not do what I say? So he starts with the words, but what if the words seem right on target? Well, he goes on, he says, why do you call me Lord, Lord?

Why do you say the right thing and then do not do what I say? What if somebody is always saying the right things? They always say just the right kind of thing about the Bible, the right kind of thing about the church, the right kind of thing about Jesus, but then the way that they act just doesn't match up.

You know, that's not adequate for Christ's followers. He says, that's not the real deal. That's a standard of measurement. It's a standard of measurement that also is fruit, not just the words, but the deeds.

And then Jesus gives us a three-stranded cord which cannot be broken. And here it is, verse 47. Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and acts on them. You see that? Three things. One who comes to Christ, hears the words of Christ and obeys Christ.

Now that is a strong foundation. That's a strong foundation. He's like a man building a house. He dug deep and laid a foundation on the rock and the torrent could not tear it down. The flood could not wash it away.

That's the kind of foundation we need to be laying for ourselves, teaching our children and grandchildren to lay, come to Christ. Come to Christ, Savior and Sovereign. Come to Christ. Hear what he has to say.

Know his words. What has he revealed about God throughout all of scripture? Hear the words and then act on them. Because he is Lord. Say he is Lord, act like he's Lord. That's a good foundation. And that's the only standard really we should want to be measured by and to measure others.

Do we come to Christ? Do we hear his words? Do we act on them? And the fruit of deeds, the fruit of words will be placed upon the scale of what? Observation, observation. And they are placed on one side of the scales and the other side, the words of Christ.

And I'm not talking about perfection. I'm talking about Jesus saying, come unto me you who are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest. He promises forgiveness to the sinners. Repent of your sins and know my forgiveness.

He's not talking about, but we're talking, is this person coming to Christ? Do they treasure his words? Do they follow him? Do they obey him? And in this way, Jesus offers us a standard of measurement to use when we're trying to, we've got a difficult situation to parse out.

How do we know good from bad, right from wrong, true from false, wisdom from folly? How do we know that? Jesus gives us the standard of measurement. So I hope that's helpful and practical to you tonight.

Well, let's turn our attention to some prayer. I appreciate your prayers for Sophia. She is here tonight in TAG.