Luke 6:37-42
Please turn in your copies of
the scriptures to the sixth chapter of Luke. Our reading today is
Luke chapter six, verses 37 to 42. You can find that in the
pew Bible on page 863. For the last many months now,
we’ve been making our way verse by verse, chapter by chapter
or story by story, event by event through the book of Luke. And
we’ve entered into a little stretch where Jesus is teaching his disciples,
he’s teaching us the values of the kingdom, the values that
we as God’s children, as members of his kingdom, ought to hold
and ought to put into practice in our daily lives. And so today
he speaks to us about our attitude, our thought process towards other
people. So let us hear God’s word from
Luke chapter six, beginning at verse 37. These are the words
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Judge not, and you will not be
judged. Condemn not, and you will not be condemned. Forgiven,
you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to
you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken
together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with
the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. He also told them a parable.
Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall
into a pit? A disciple is not above his teacher,
but everyone, when he is fully trained, will be like his teacher. Why do you see 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 that speck that is in your eye when
you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite. First, take the
log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to
take the speck that is out of your brother’s eye. Let us pray
together. Lord, your word is a light to
our feet. It is a lamp to our path, and we want it to be just
that. So shine the light of your spirit
into our dark world so that your word is lifted up. It is exalted. It is high. It is revered as
your truth. or may the words of my mouth,
the meditations of my heart be accepted this day, not as the
words of men, but as the very word of God. Make your faithful
reading and preaching of the word effectual unto salvation,
but also to building up your church so that we might withstand
the wiles of the devil, the ways of the world, and even the lust
of our own flesh that remain in us. We need your help, grace
and blessing. So we ask for it and we do so
now in Jesus name. Amen. Can a blind man lead a
blind man? Jesus asks. Will they not both
fall into a pit? What an image that is for a parable. It’s a ridiculous image, isn’t
it? I mean, which of you says, let’s plan a summer vacation,
honey. Let’s go see those waterfalls
we’ve been wanting to see. And let’s hire a guide. Let’s hire a blind guide. And let’s just hope for the best.
Let’s hope we get to our destination without falling off the trail,
without tumbling down a crevice in the rock, without careening
down a ravine to death. Can a blind man lead a blind
man, Jesus asks? Will they not both fall into
a pit? What is Jesus saying here? He’s
saying to the disciples of the Pharisees, your teachers, the
Pharisees, are blind guides. And if you who are spiritually
blind follow they who are spiritually blind, you for sure will fall
into a pit. They are not spiritually fit,
Jesus is teaching to lead you and to guide you and to teach
you in the way of righteousness. This is for sure a warning to
the disciples who have gathered at the plain, the flat place
when Jesus and his disciples have come down the mountain,
his apostles, they’ve come down to teach the people this. This
is a challenge. Jesus is saying you’ve been listening
to them. They are blind. They will lead
you astray. Now, here I am, the teacher of Israel. and you must
listen to me. Friends, there are false teachers
in this world. There are false teachers who
will hold this book in their hands and they will say to you,
I am proclaiming what Jesus says, yet they are proclaiming a different
gospel, a different message. They will lead you into a pit,
everlasting and endless pit. And Jesus is saying to us, he’s
saying there’s a better way. The better way is to follow Jesus.
The better way is to follow the teacher of Israel, the great
teacher. And he says of himself and his
disciples, a disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone,
when he is fully trained, will be like his teacher. And so our challenge as Christians
is to listen to the voice of the shepherd, to listen to the
voice of Jesus, to listen to the voice of the prophet who
sees, who is not blind. And he will not lead us into
a pit, but he will lead us into everlasting life. Jesus gives
another parable in our passage, and he says this, why do you
see the speck that is in your brother’s eye? But you do not
notice the log that is in your own eye. Now, to understand the
drama or the hyperbole that is in this passage, Jesus is speaking
of a little bitty speck. You know how it goes when someone
comes to you and their eye is all red and they pull it back
and say, do you see anything in my eye? And because their
eye is so red, they’ve agitated it. You say, oh yeah, I see it.
But really that’s so small, you can’t tell. Something has irritated
it, but you cannot see it. And with tears and a little effort
and time, that speck goes away. But can’t you picture it, Jesus
here saying, some of you have a log in your eye. It’s a bit ridiculous. If you
take a peek at the ceiling, you see these side beams that go
up to the center of the roof. He’s not speaking about those.
He’s speaking here about the long beam. We cannot see it in
this building, but the long beam that runs the link, all the rafters
and the joist attached to it. He’s saying others have a little
speck. even an unseen speck, but you,
you have this beam and can’t you picture the one opening his
eye saying, do you see it? Do you see it? No, I don’t see
it. and the other being so oblivious to this beam as they swing their
head around. You can just imagine in cartoon-like
fashion the beam in their own eye and the destruction it brings
as they swing their head around and smack everything with it. You see, Jesus is speaking here
in great hyperbolic language. He wants them to understand you
need to look at your own life first before you start going
and correcting and pointing fingers at others. You see, this is a
lesson. This is a lesson about our attitude
towards others, our actions towards others, our spirit towards others. Jesus is the master. He is the
teacher. And we want to sit at his feet.
And so the challenge for us today in our passage is to to understand
three things about our attitude, three things about our actions,
three things about our spirit towards others. as we live kingdom
centered, kingdom value lives. The first thing this passage
is going to teach us as true disciples of Christ is that we
need to be reasonable with others. A disciple of Christ should be
reasonable. Look, if you will, with me at
verse 37, the first portion of it, he says, judge not and you
will not be judged, condemn not and you will not be condemned
now i’m sure every single one of you has heard this passage
quoted misused uh interpreted wrongly my children play monopoly
and what’s the best card you can get a monopoly it’s the get
out of jail free card and this verse This first little part
of verse 37 is everybody’s get out of jail free card. You can
do something wrong. You can commit an act of immorality.
And someone comes to you and says, brother, sister, you’ve
done something wrong. Judge not, lest you be judged. It’s our
get out of jail free card. And dear friends, that is not
the spirit of what Jesus is saying here. He is not saying never,
ever look at an action or a person and make a judgment for Bible
says plenty of times we should look at things, we should look
at people, make a judgment. We don’t want to be unequally
yoked. So we judge our marriage partner or the potential one.
The Bible says that we should only put in office men who meet
a certain standard for elder and deacon. And so there’s judging
involved there. The Bible says God will come
and judge and that we, his saints, will judge and rule and reign
with him. There’s plenty of judging going
on in the Bible, looking at a situation, looking at an action, looking
at a person and saying, is it right? Is it wrong? Making a
judgment. There are places in scripture
that teach that. We understand that. But what is Jesus saying
here? Well, the reason I put It’s our first point, be reasonable
is this. What Jesus is saying is don’t
always be judging and condemning people. Don’t always be so negative
towards people that nobody can do anything right. Everybody
always is doing wrong. You know, there’s television
commercials where. There’s a man who says, I want
to have my house painted. And his neighbor says, oh, I
know a good house painter. And you get the commercial. Well,
can you get him to check his references for me? Can you get
a couple of references in the neighborhood and see what a good
job he’s done? All that. We’re constantly judging people,
right? We want a good paint job. We want a good mechanic for our
car. But somehow, some way in our spiritual world, we jump
to the conclusion of, oh, Judge not, lest you be judged. But Jesus is saying here, quit
being so critical. Quit being so judgmental. Quit
being so condemning to others. Be reasonable and don’t rush
to judge and condemn others. What does that mean for us? Well,
here’s a couple of things to think about. Maybe we need to
learn, as the Bible teaches, to overlook offenses. Every little
minute thing somebody else does does not need to set us off.
We can overlook offenses. It is a wise and biblical thing
to do. Some offenses are small. It’s
someone being rude. It’s someone being insensitive.
It’s life in this fallen world. And not everything deserves our
switch Can’t speak. Swift judgment and condemnation.
We can at times learn to overlook offenses. We can also learn to
give the benefit of the doubt. Somebody’s having a bad day.
Somebody didn’t sleep well. Somebody, if they had thought
through it like you would have and the situation were reversed,
they may not have spoken the way that they did. And on and
on, we could give examples. Be reasonable. Overlook offenses. Give the benefit of the doubt.
Here’s one we often fall into. We jump to conclusions. We look
at people’s actions and we say in our mind, I know why they
did what they did. I know that they did what they
did because they hate me. They don’t like me. They don’t
love me. They don’t want me to have the best in this world.
And so we quickly decide what someone’s motives are and we
jump to conclusions and then we treat that person We act on
those assumptions we have created. And Jesus is saying here, dear
brothers and sisters, judge not, condemn not, be reasonable, quit
being so critical. You know, scripture, scripture
teaches us this way of life, this way of living. It is contrary
to our nature. You know, the Bible says this,
no one is righteous, no not one. And sometimes we, because of
our attitude and our actions, are ready to confirm that for
God. And so we nitpick, we point out
things, we make a list, we check it twice. We know who’s naughty
and who’s nice. And what does Jesus say? You’re
looking at the speck, in everyone else’s eye while you have the
great beam that holds up a building in your own. Be reasonable, he’s
saying to us. The true disciple is not only
reasonable, but the true disciple is also forgiving. Look at the
second portion of verse 37. It says, judge not and you will
not be judged, condemn not and you will not be condemned, forgive. And you will be forgiven. There’s a parable in Matthew’s
gospel. And in that parable, the occasion
for it, Peter comes to Jesus and he says, hey, Jesus, how
often must I forgive my brother? And you know, he puts a little
limit. Is it seven times, Lord? And
Jesus says, no, it’s 70 times seven. And then he tells a little story.
He says there was a king who wanted to settle his accounts.
There was a man who owed him 10,000 talents. Now, it took a day laborer about
20 years to earn a talent. So if you do the math, how long
would it take a day laborer to earn 10,000 talents? It would
take 200,000 years. Okay, that’s impossible, right?
That’s a debt a man owed that he cannot pay. It sounds a bit
like our spiritual condition before God. Who is the king in
this parable? It’s God. And who owes the debt?
We do. Could we pay the debt? No way
could we ever earn enough to pay our debt. And so the story
continues. The parable continues. The king
decides he will sell the man and his wife and his children
into slavery until the debt is paid. And the man cries out and
says, oh, king, have mercy on me. The king has mercy. He received
mercy and he immediately went from there and found a man who
owed him a hundred denarii, which is about a hundred days wages,
three months of work. He grabs the man by the throat.
He shows him no mercy. He has him put in debtor’s prison.
Word gets back to the king. The king summons the man into
his presence and he says, I did this for you. And now you go
and do this to this man. Should you not have had mercy?
And in his anger, the king throws the man into prison, never to
be let out. And God says of this parable,
so also, Will my heavenly father do to you if you do not forgive? What is Jesus teaching us here? He’s teaching us this, that if
we have been forgiven by Christ, we should be forgiving of others. Easier said than done, right?
It’s hard to be offended. It’s hard to be on the receiving
end of offenses. It’s difficult to love someone
who has hated us so. But it’s what Jesus did. God sent his own son into the
world. He sent his own son into the
world that hated him to stretch out his arms on a cross and to
save them. And God is saying to us, Jesus
is teaching us here, you need to be Christ-like to others. And it may cost you, it may hurt
you, it may bring injury to you, but that’s how Jesus loved us.
So therefore, that’s how we are to love. Now, does this mean
we should never take someone to court? Does this mean we should
become pacifists? Does this mean we should never
uphold rules that were meant to keep order in this world?
Does this mean we should never enter into a lawsuit? Does this
mean that if we become an officer of the law, whether a judge,
an attorney, or a police officer, or some way that we should just
say, oh, not supposed to be judgmental. Let’s just love. It doesn’t mean
any of that at all. It’s speaking of our spiritual
condition. If we have received Jesus, should
then we not receive others and be forgiving? You know, we pray
for this every Sunday. Forgive us our debts as we forgive
our debtors. We want God to forgive us. But
we’re like the man in this parable that Jesus told to Peter and
his disciples. We have been forgiven 200,000
years of day wages. Yet three months of labor, we
cannot forgive. What is Jesus saying? You people who’ve been
forgiven much, your hearts are hard. You need to have a soft
heart towards people like Jesus does. Now another thing to think
about. We hear this a lot in today’s culture. We hear something
terrible happen. And we hear people say, I forgive
you for that. And there’s this debate if you
read Christian writings and weblogs and all those sorts of things.
Must I forgive other people? We need to remember this. We
need to be exact about this. Forgiveness and repentance is
an exchange. We need to be ready to grant
forgiveness. But someone may not come to us
and repent. And we need to be like our heavenly
father who was waiting for the prodigal son, waiting for that
son to return home and say, Father, I’ve sinned against heaven. I’ve
sinned against you and be ready to receive and embrace and clothe
and feed and celebrate that return home. And so, dear brothers and
sisters, we need to mimic the way God does repentance and forgiveness. There’s a transaction. There’s
a heartfelt sorrow for sin. There’s a heartfelt understanding
in the mind and in the heart of how much Someone has been
grieved by your offense. And not only do you acknowledge
that and repent of it, but you ask for forgiveness. And God
is saying to us, be willing to forgive even the greatest of
sins. God asked us to be reasonable.
God asked us here to be forgiving. There’s a third thing he asked
us to be giving. And you find that in verse 38,
given it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken
together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with
the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. Let me ask you this question. What do you have? What do you
possess that wasn’t given to you? Now you could be saying
in your mind, I went to work, I got a paycheck, and I went
to the store, I bought that. Okay, that’s true. But think
spiritually for a moment. Think about God, the creator,
God, the sustainer, God, the gift giver. What do you have
that’s not been given to you? If it were not for others, generosity,
if it were not for God himself, what would you have? You would
have nothing. And so somehow, some way we become
stingy. Somehow, some way we are a ungenerous
people. Somehow, someway, when we see
someone in need, we say, oh, I worked for what I got, and
there’s no way they’re getting what I earned. And so we become
a people who have been given everything, and our attitude
becomes, why should I give anyone anything? It’s all of my deserving. It’s all of my work. It’s all
of my effort. We need to remember, dear brothers
and sisters, that as Christians, we were in a lost estate. We
were dead in our sins and trespasses. We were imprisoned and enslaved
to our sin and our misery. And when God in Christ Jesus
came to us, he raised us from the dead. He gave us new life. He justified us, He declared
us legally and forever righteous in His sight. He sees us as if
we have never sinned and He sees us as if we have always obeyed. His spirit was poured out on
us richly and lavishly, nothing held back. We have been adopted
into the family of God. We have everything as rights
and privileges as His children. And even better than that, we
are heirs with Jesus. What Jesus inherits, we inherit
in the eternal kingdom of almighty God. And somehow we’re stingy.
Somehow we lack generosity. Somehow we say, oh, I see you
in need, but you could go earn it like me. Why should I give
to you? And what does Jesus say? Give
and it will be given to you. Provide for others, support others,
help the poor. There are times and places in
God’s sovereignty when we pray, give us this day our daily bread.
God gives us a little extra daily bread so that we can provide
the answer to someone else’s prayer. for daily bread. Everything we have has been given
to us. And just as God has been generous to us, not only with
our physical needs and material needs, but also with our spiritual
needs, we ought to be generous and giving with others. You know, there’s a place in
the book of Malachi, where the people have been withholding
their tithes from God. They’ve been withholding their
giving to the church. And God says, how long are you
going to keep robbing me? How long will you keep withholding
from the church your tithes and your offerings? So he’s chastising
them. And then he puts them to the
test. He says, you try me, people of God. You give and you give
and you give to the work of the Lord in this world. And you see
if I don’t open the windows of heaven and pour out my blessings
on you. Some of you have experienced
this in life. You’ve been raised up or you came to a way where
you you give to the church and you help the poor and needy and
you’ve never been without. And God has blessed you. Maybe
he’s even increased you. Now, we don’t believe all that
hokey. Prosperity theology, right? But God does teach a prosperity
and it’s right here in our passage. Give and it will be given to
you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken
together, running over, will be put in your lap for with the
measure you use, it will be measured back to you. So be stingy. And God will be stingy with you.
He might not hear your prayers. because he sees your action towards
others. And he says, give and it will
be given in the same measure. God says, try me. Try me and
see if I don’t bless you. I think of this illustration
very well in the life, in the relationship with my mother-in-law.
A lot of you think mother-in-laws are difficult. I got a good one. And I think of what Jesus is
teaching here with her. Every time we go visit, And it’s
time to pack up the car and load it and come home. She’s out there
tucking stuff in. There’s a bag of Cheetos going
in this spot where there’s no luggage. There’s a box of cookies
and some cans of soup. She’s basically brought her pantry
out into the driveway and stuffing it into every nook and cranny
of our car because she’s a giving person. And beyond that, she’s
tucking a few dollars and cents into my wife’s pocket so she
can have some mad money or play money or we can eat on the way
home. She gives and gives and gives because she wants to be
a blessing. And that’s what God is saying here is be generous,
give to people. If you know there’s someone in
the church who’s without work, buy them a gift card. Have mercy
on them as God and Christ has had mercy on you. Be merciful
and look for ways to be merciful. And you see what God promises
here. Good measure. Press down. Shaken together,
running over will be put in your lap. We’re not a farming bunch. I can see this picture well. We buy a big old bag of dog food
every month. And we have these little plastic
containers we put the dog food in. And so we get the bag and
we pour it into these three containers. And when the container gets a
little full, guess what you do? You shimmy it a little. You shake
it a little, and guess what? It settles. All the corners and
the air pockets are filled. And guess what? You can put more
in. And so we shimmy and shake it
and we pour a little more. And that’s exactly what God is
saying here is you try me, you give and give and give and you
see if I don’t fill your grain bag full. And I don’t mean just
pour a little in and move on to the next and move on to the
next. No, we’ll shimmy it. We’ll shake it. We’ll let it
settle down so that more can be pulled. And guess what? Your
bag will be full to the tip top. Jesus is saying here, you be
a reasonable, forgiving, and giving people, and you see if
I don’t bless you. And the motivation for doing
this is you have already been blessed by Almighty God. I want us to end by thinking
of a parable from the Old Testament. And the parable goes something
like this. There was a rich man and he had a barnyard full of
flocks. And there was a poor man and
he had one sweet little lamb. And he loved his sweet little
lamb. He raised it as his own child. In fact, the scripture
says it was like a daughter to him. The lamb ate at the man’s table.
It drank from their milk. It was like one of the children.
And a man came traveling into that town and asked the rich
man for a night’s lodging and some food. And the rich man would
not of his wealth of animals take one and slaughter it to
feed this traveler. But instead, he comes to the
poor man. He takes his one lamb that he loved. It’s slaughtered
and it’s fed to the traveler. This parable is told to King
David. And it’s told to King David by
Nathan the prophet, when Nathan comes to confront him for the
sin of adultery with Bathsheba, murder of Uriah the Hittite,
and on and on it went with David’s lust, David’s sin, David’s lie,
and David’s coverup. And David’s response to Nathan
in this parable was anger and wrath. This man ought to pay
back that lamb. He ought to have to pay it back
fourfold. What does Nathan say to David?
You are the man. You are that man. And Jesus is
teaching us here. Be careful of the beam in your
own eye when you’re a spec inspector for your every neighbor. Let
us pray together. Our Lord and God, we thank you
for your grace. to stop us in our tracks and
to say, you’re mad, you’re crazy. Do you not see the log in your
own eye while you are critical and judgmental and unreasonable
and unforgiving and you lack generosity? We thank you for
this opportunity for you, the God of holiness, the God of perfection
to say to us, stop, dear people, look. Examine yourself, see if
you are in the faith and then remove the speck from your neighbor’s
eye. Help us this day to realize your
grace, to stop us in our tracks, to see the madness of sin and
its blinding capability in our lives. And help us to go from
here today, examining ourselves, looking at our own sin and first
repenting of it to you and to others, and then having a ministry
of correction with others. May it be true for your glory,
for the good of this church and for the good of this world. We
ask and pray in Jesus name. Amen. We want to respond to God’s
goodness to us. His word is we sing from our
hymnal 429. Come thou fount of every blessing.