Gooding, David: 9 - Christ's Principles of Morality

And now shall we open our Bibles and begin to read in the gospel by Luke in chapter six. And let us begin at verse twenty. And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples and said, blessed is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be filled. Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company and reproach you and cast out your name as evil for the son of man's sake. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven. For in the same manner did their fathers unto the prophets. But woe unto you that are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full now, for you shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you, for in the same manner did their fathers to the false prophets. But I say unto you which hear, love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you. To him that smiteth thee on the one cheek, offer also the other, and from him that taketh away thy cloak, withhold not thy coat also. Give to everyone that asketh thee, and of him that taketh away thy goods, ask them not again. And as you would that men should do to you, do you also to them likewise. And if you love them that love you, what thank have ye? For even sinners love those that love them. And if you do good to them that do good to you, what thank have you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to them of whom you hope to receive, what thank have you? Even sinners lend to sinners to receive again as much. But love your enemies and do them good, and lend never despairing, and your hope and your reward shall be great, and you shall be sons of the Most High, for he is kind toward the unthankful and evil. Be you merciful even as your Father is merciful, and judge not, and you shall not be judged, and condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Release, and you shall be released. Give, and it shall be given unto you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, shall they give into your bosom. For with what measure you meet, it shall be measured to you again. And he spake also a parable unto them. When we broke off this afternoon our study in the Gospel of Luke, we had surveyed somewhat briefly the first half of the main third section in Luke's Gospel. And we had come to the conclusion that this third section of the book deals with Christ's way with sin and sinners. We also were observing, as we came to the end, that the threefold parable that lies at the end of the first half of this stage probably has reference to the difference between Christianity on the one hand, the gospel that our Lord came to bring, and older Judaism on the other. In that case, if that be true, nothing is said in that parable to, uh, cast a, a doubt on the quality of original Judaism. The garment was once new, even if now it is worn old. The wine skin given was good when it was new. It has now become old and rigid. The wine at first, the old wine was very good, so much so that some people would still prefer it to the newer wine of the gospel that Christ came to offer. In other words, Christianity is now to supersede the old system. There is not to be any attempt to take bits and pieces of Christianity and use them to patch Judaism where it had worn threadbare or, or broken. There were two different systems, but nothing is said that the old system was bad in itself. Now we must move on to the second half of this particular section. Here we shall find a difference in emphasis. There will be, uh, uh, elements that will tell us that many, some of the rabbinic interpretation of Old Testament weren't just old, they were wrong. There'll be one incident that tells us that the interpretation of the law given by some of the scribes and Pharisees was not only wrong, it was positively perverse, and our Lord had to denounce it as casting a, a scandal and aspersions on the very name of God himself. And similarly, when we come to the parable at the end, the threefold or fourfold, depending on who you count it, of the second half, there it will be parables that point out false religious attitudes, false kinds of spirituality as distinct from the right and healthy sort. So now, without further ado, let's come to the, uh, second half, and we start with its three major par- paragraphs. These three paragraphs, like the th- the three paragraphs that stood at the head of the first half of this section, are all introduced in Greek by their formal Hebraic introduction, and it came to pass. Three of them, just as there were three at the head of the first half of the section. They deal with Christ's, uh, principles. Here are the three first paragraphs of the second half then. And first of all, it's Christ and the authorities once more. The first two paragraphs, the, uh, Jewish authorities, and then in the third paragraph, the new authorities under Christ that are his apostles. We come then to the incident in the cornfield, uh, heading chapter six. He was going through the cornfields, and his disciples plucked the ears of corn and did eat, rubbing them in their hands. But certain of the Pharisees said, why do you do that which is not lawful to do on the Sabbath day? We must admire the meticulousness of their determination to keep the Sabbath law. Now, by the time Christ came, they had invented numerous, uh, prin- uh, commandments as a hedge, so to speak, as they would put it, around the law. So that just in case you should break the actual Sabbath law, the rabbis felt it wise to create a whole host of commandments and prohibitions that weren't actually in scripture, but they put them round the Sabbath law so you would never get any chance of getting anywhere near the Sabbath law to break it, so to speak. Uh, these were other all kinds of injunctions that they had put around it in their, uh, supposed wisdom. And similarly, they had given themselves much thought to define what the scripture meant when it said you shall do no work on the Sabbath day, you'll see. What was work? They had, I don't know, many hundred definitions of what was work, do you see, as distinct from what wasn't work. Was it work if you carried your handkerchief? Well, if you did it in your open hand, that could be carrying something on the Sabbath, couldn't it? But if you tied it to you, that might be counted as your jersey or something, and of course it wasn't work to wear your jersey. And all kinds of distinctions like that they had made, until, of course, the man in the street would have found it almost impossible to keep the commandments, even to memorize them and to know which was which and why was why, do you see? It led to a certain contempt of the ordinary person in the minds of the experts who knew all these meticulous rules and regulations and tried to keep them, and it developed, I'm afraid, in them a kind of pride, whereas they despised the people of the land who didn't know the law. These people that know not the law, say the Sanhedrin on one occasion, are accursed. So when our Lord, uh, allowed his apostles to pluck the ears of corn as they went through the cornfield and rub them in their hands, the Pharisees were quick to point out to them that, uh, they were breaking the Sabbath, for this was work on the Sabbath day. Uh, rubbing the hand, uh, corn in the hand was equivalent of milling, and this was work, and therefore was a breaking of the c- uh, law c- concerning the Sabbath. Now this incident is recorded in three of the Gospels, and our Lord on such occasions and other similar occasions gave many different answers in reply to their criticism. You will notice here that he gives uh two. First of all, he says in verse three: have you not read even this, what David did when he was enhungered, he and they that were with him, how he entered into the house of God and did take and eat the showbread, and gave also to them that were with him, which it is not lawful to eat, save for the priests alone. So that was number one, an incident, a piece of case law, if you like, a precedent from the Old Testament. The showbread was sacred. It was put in the presence of God for God's benefit for seven days, and then at the end of the week it was taken away, and duly sanctified priests were allowed to eat that bread, but had to eat it only in a holy place because it was symbolical of man feeding at the same table as God. No unclean, no ceremonial unclean person or hand or undevoted, uh, secular person could come anywhere near that sacred bread. And of course, it was of the divine wisdom to guard his, uh, the ceremonies in the tabernacle that betokened and symbolized man's fellowship with God, it was of the divine wisdom to put a wall around them, so to speak, and keep the holy holy. We in our modern world easily des- come to despise such things. We'd be wiser not to. You see, the opposite of holy in the Old Testament can be unclean. Those two are opposites. But also another opposite of holy is what is common, ordinary, you'll see. So Mrs. Zedekiah saucepan, you know, her that lived in the tribe of Zembilan, uh, in one of the tents around the tabernacle. Mrs. uh, Zacharias uh, saucepan wasn't dirty. She wouldn't have dirty saucepans, but on the other hand, it wasn't sacred, it wasn't holy, it wasn't devoted to the service of God in the tabernacle. It was just an ordinary saucepan. The ground inside the tabernacle was sacred. Of course it was clean, it had to be clean, that we take for granted, but it was also sacred. The ground outside the court of the tabernacle was, uh, not necessarily unclean, but it was ordinary, secular. It wasn't sacred and devoted to the service of God. Now, many of those distinctions perhaps are done away with, but I lodge it in your minds and consciences the question whether we today have distinctions in any area between what is sacred and what is common. I can think of one in the New Testament where the early believers at Corinth were celebrating the Lord's Supper. Some of them, alas, had turned what presumably was a love feast among the Christians into an ordinary meal, where they not, uh, where they ate their meal without regard to their fellow believers, where they had ha- whether they had enough or not enough. That was a grievous thing in itself. But to turn the Lord's Supper into an ordinary meal, was that good? Is the Lord's Supper just another ordinary meal. Of course, when we eat our cornflakes in the morning, we bow our head and give thanks and acknowledge them the gift of God. Is there no difference between that and giving thanks for the bread at the Lord's Supper? Paul's command to the church was, now, if you want an ordinary meal, from now on, eat that at home. Make a distinction, therefore, between the ordinary and what is sacred. But that I simply lodge in your mind, and you may have protests to come back at me when I'm gone. And, uh, you'll say, to come back to the point, it was God's command that they sanctify the Sabbath to keep it holy to the Lord. It was, of course, for them a day of rest, but the Sabbath was also to be maintained as a holy, not an ordinary day, you'll see. It was a holy day, and it was kept holy to the Lord. It was, in that sense, not only for their benefit, but it was for the Lord, in which man should cease from his day-to-day work and enjoy rest from that work, and so come to recuperation and recreation of mind and body. But it was also to be kept as man took the advantage of this day to be able to contemplate the more broadly the wonders and glories of the God who made him and for whom he lived. It was then a sacred day, and we must not blame Jews for taking its sacredness seriously and trying to avoid all defilement of the Sabbath. But in their desire to keep it sacred, they had invented many rules that were in themselves questionable and were now in danger of overlooking one great and particular rule. That symbols, sacred as they may be, are not absolute. So when David was speeding away from Saul for his very life and needed bread for himself and his, uh, uh, assistants, he came to the, uh, tabernacle as was then, and asked the priest for bread. The priest said he'd got no bread except the showbread there, and therefore, so long as the men had kept themselves from certain defilements, he said, well, all right, you may eat this bread. There stands the bit of case law on the page of scripture that apparently it was all right for David and his men to take what in fact was sacred and should have been solely for perquisite for the priests and eat it, though they were not in that sense ordained priests. And our Lord quotes it, and quotes it with approval, presumably. What was the issue at stake? Well, the showbread was there for God's benefit. It was devoted for him, but David, for all his faults and failings, was the Lord's anointed. And the Lord's anointed was in danger of his life. Would you suppose in that situation that, uh, God would say, well, my anointed is in danger of his life, but I can't help that. The ceremonial law of the showbread must hold, even if David loses his head and is annihilated by Saul. Well, God also has his scale of values, and in his scale of values, the life of his anointed was more important than the ceremonial rules about showbread. I think you would take the same point, wouldn't you? You'll see, suppose, uh, you were one day, uh, celebrating the Lord's Supper and it got to the point where you were about to drink the wine. Of course, you don't regard it as just an ordinary, uh, taking of wine, do you? This is a sacred thing. This is a symbol of the blood of our Lord and to be treated with great reverence. But suppose there were came a car crash or something, and somebody had his artery injured and the blood was spurting out, and they needed some wine to do something or other, or what? Would you not happily get up and take the wine from off the Lord's table if you had none else and, and give it for the rescue of a person's life? You'd do it, wouldn't you? Would not God approve? For human life is more important than mere symbols. But there was another and a bigger reason that now our Lord gave here, justifying what his disciples did. And he said unto them, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. Here was the new thing. It could never have been said of David, not even in his great extremity, that he was Lord of the Sabbath. But this changes things. Jesus is not just another David, not just another man. Jesus is none other than the Son of Man. The Son of Man that Daniel saw in his vision and described in Daniel chapter seven where he said he saw one like to the Son of Man come to the Ancient of Days, and universal dominion was given to him. This is that Son of Man standing here that day, eh, eh, eh, in, eh, in the cornfield. He's Lord of the Sabbath. As a little occupation to ease my tired brain now and again, uh, and to stir my jealousy, I visit what are called in Britain stately homes, you'll see. My lord and my lady, uh, not only have a stately home, but they need the money to keep it, so they entice people like me to come along and pay a hefty price to get in, and I'm gratified to know that that keeps them in the state to which they are accustomed. You'll see. But when you go around these stately homes, uh, you will certainly come across a door marked private. And there you're not supposed to go in. If you were to go in, that would be an offense, of course, serious offense against his lordship or her ladyship even, you'll see. It's marked private, the rest is open to the public, but not this door. You dare to go in and see what happens. But suppose one day, as you got to that point, a young gentleman with an Eton accent came out of the door, do you see, and uh said, hello my friend, oh come and take coffee with me. And you came to the door marked private, and he starts to go in, and you say, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I mustn't go in there, it says private. Well, that would be silly, wouldn't it? If the son of the house comes and says you may come in, well, so you may. You're not breaking any law like that. And the son of man, son of the owner of the universe, the one through whom creation was made, who ordained the Sabbath and put the notice on the Sabbath day sacred to the Lord, don't you dare trespass. If he comes and says it's all right to do this for me on the Sabbath, it's all right, isn't it? This is the new morality of the, of the true sort, the new morality, not that, uh, uh, that false thing that was invented by John Robinson, ex-bishop of Woolwich. But, uh, the real new morality that surrounds, circles around the person of Christ and who he is. You say, does that, uh, lower our standards? Well, no. Let me go outside Luke just for one of his other comments as given us in Matthew about this very incident. He said to the people, uh, that criticized him, now in the temple, the priests profane the Sabbath and are guiltless. Meaning what? Well, this. Whereas on the Sabbath in Judaism, all work should stop, all ordinary work should stop. Else it would break the Sabbath. In the temple itself, the work couldn't stop. The priests broke the Sabbath in the temple, of course they did, because that was the direct work for God. Man's work for himself could stop, but not the work of the priest for God in God's temple, that must not stop. So says our Lord, the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless. You will notice in passing that that kind of statement could only be made of one of the Ten Commandments. You couldn't apply it to any of the other, could you? You couldn't say in this, on the Sabbath day, the priests in the temple commit adultery and are guiltless, could you now? Or eh, on the Sabbath, the priests in the temple, uh, take the name of the Lord their God in vain and are guiltless. Well, of course not. But Sabbath being the kind of law it was, yes, in the temple, the priests profaned it every Sabbath because their service was direct to God himself. Now, says our Lord as he applied that part of his answer that Matthew gives us. All right then, but one greater than the temple is here, here in this cornfield. He is greater than the temple. He is the Lord, and his service must continue. If therefore those that immediately wait upon him, his apostles, are hungry and need food to support their service to him, even though it be Sabbath day, then yes, they must rub the corn and eat it because they are serving in the shadow of the greater than the temple. But if that rule can be extended to all of us, see what it implies. If, my dear sister, you are ri- right to put that little notice above the kitchen sink, one greater than the temple is here, then it means that not one day in seven is sacred to the Lord, but every day in seven. It's not a diminution of the sacredness, is it? Not just one day in seven sacred to the Lord, but every day. So our Lord answered then this first, uh, criticism of the behavior of his apostles, and therefore the criticism of himself. That was, uh, therefore on the part of the scribes, a mistake, taking things too far and not seeing the exceptions to the rule and so forth in this matter of Sabbath. But the next criticism was based on altogether a more serious thing. For here on this Sabbath was a man with his right hand withered, and the scribes and Pharisees watched him whether he would heal on the Sabbath day, that they might find how to accuse him. But he knew their thoughts. And he said to the man that had his hand withered, rise up and stand forth in the midst. And he arose and stood forth. Jesus said unto them, I ask you, it is law- is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save a life or to destroy it? And he looked around about upon them and said unto him, stretch forth thy hand, and he did so, and his hand was restored. This is now not a matter merely of ceremony, it is a matter of morality. When it comes to the Sabbath, if you have to choose, for instance, between saving a life and not saving a life, well, is it okay to not to save a life because it's Sabbath? That is to do evil. And the Sabbath law was never given of God, uh, to say that evil must be done. The evil choice must be made because it is Sabbath. Of course not. If there's a moral issue at stake, morality once more will take precedence over ceremony and rituals. Moreover, what was the basic reason of Sabbath? Sabbath was given of God, among other reasons, in his mercy, as Deuteronomy says, that a man might rest from his normal labor, and all his servants and his family rest. All the kindness of God, who knows the limitations of mortal body and brain, to train man rightly to take Sabbath, that the body and brain might, uh, recuperate, and being refreshed, the man might go back, uh, to his work when Sabbath is by. The Sabbath then was so that man's hand should be rested and made them more fit for continuing work the next week. The Sabbath was never made to keep a man's hands crippled. How would that help those crippled hands to work next week, if Sabbath demanded that the hands must remain crippled yet another day? That makes a nonsense of the Sabbath law. The Sabbath, I repeat, was invented by the Lord and given to man that his hands might be restored, tired hands rested, and find new strength for the work that God appointed them in the week to come. Sabbath was never invented to keep a man's hands crippled. To suppose God would invent any law that would insist on a man's hands remaining crippled, even for twenty four hours, comes very near to a slander upon the character of God. And here stood the one who was the Word by whom all things were made, and he bade the man arise and stand in front of him, and did now what no ordinary Sabbath could do for any man. A Sabbath could rest his hands, a Sabbath keeping would never restore those crippled fingers. But Christ could. Oh, the joy of it, isn't it? This is not what the law said so much. This is the law giver come, the great creator come. Oh, what a magnificent sight. A little reenactment of creation, when that same Lord took of the dust of the ground and made man's body and his brain. So see him now come to recreate the crippled hand and make the man fit and able for work on the morrow. This is Christ. It's not a criticism of the law, but what the law could not do and was never invented to do, that, thank God, Jesus Christ could do and did. Oh, praise God in your heart for your savior. And the third is likewise about authorities. For there was this great crowd around, and our Lord went up into the mountain to pray and continued all night in prayer to God. And when it was day, he called his disciples, and he chose from them twelve, whom also he named apostles. And then eventually, verse seventeen, he came down with them and stood on the level plain, and a great multitude of his disciples and a great number of the people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases, and they that were troubled with unclean spirits were healed. And all the multitude sought to touch him. Note, not the apostles, for power came forth from him and healed them all. Here then, as I said several times now, allow me to repeat it, the tremendously important historical event that now took place. The Lord's appointment of his twelve apostles. In the third paragraph of the first half of this section, we read, didn't we, of the healing of the paralytic, and Luke told us that on that occasion there were present teachers of the law and the scribes. These were the official interpreters of the Old Testament for the Israeli nation. These were the men that had invented so many of these extra rules, the fence around the law, as they called it, which had become such a burden upon people in our Lord's days. Our Lord accused some of them of binding burdens on people's backs and not even attempting to lift them with one little finger. In contradistinction to them, the old authorities of Judaism, our Lord comes down the mountain with his apostles. They are to be his official witnesses and interpreters, the princes, so to speak, of the church. But I'm sure that, uh, Peter, most Tuesdays and Thursdays at any rate, if not all the time, would remember vividly the context of that day when he was first acknowledged before the crowds as an apostle of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the context was what? The multitude surging around of all kinds, shapes, and sizes, even from places like the borders of Tyre and Sidon, there they stood. And as the Lord identified his apostles and stood with them, the crowds came to be healed, and power came forth from him and healed them all. That gave a color and a character, not merely to his ministry, but to theirs. This apostolic ministry was not to be a ministry of putting burdens on people's backs that they couldn't bear, like the scribes did. It was a ministry that would heal both soul and spirit, and on occasions bodies as well. That is important, isn't it? Because the function of apostles and teachers in the church has sometimes been a little bit misread, has it not? If not with the apostles, yet with other teachers in the church. Paul, in his letters, in his pastoral letters, is to be heard, for instance, talking about sound doctrine. But the word that is translated sound doesn't mean necessarily exact, theologically correct, as distinct from, uh, inexact theology. You'll see, I'm guilty of the second category very often. But no, it's talking of, um, healthy doctrine. Greek word means to be healthy. There is such a thing as healthy doctrine. There are some things that scripture describes as unhealthy doctrine. False doctrine. Peter castigated some doctrines like that in the, uh, conference they held in Jerusalem. Why, said he, to these overzealous Pharisees that believed, who would have made, uh, uh, the Gentiles get circumcised. Why do you put upon their necks a yoke that neither we nor our fathers were able to bear? Very unhealthy doctrine that would have brought people into spiritual bondage. Some people's doctrine, says Paul, will eat like a kangaroo. It is. And there have been forms of Christian, so-called Christian doctrine, that have been psychologically and mentally unhealthy. It is the task of all who teach in the church to see, is it not, that they rightly interpret the word of God, and one of the marks of the right interpretation is to remember the words of the Lord Jesus. We do need our gospel to remember the actual words of the Lord Jesus and see to it that the doctrines we teach are healthy and health-giving doctrines. So much then for these first three paragraphs, and we now must move on beyond them, uh, to the statement of Christ's principles of morality. I use the preacher's normal excuse when he comes across difficult passages to say, I haven't the time, and the time has run out, you see. It's a feeble excuse, isn't it? But here are doctrines worthy of minute and long thought, minute investigation and long thought as to how they are to be applied. Several of them are couched in apparently absolute language, but when it comes to their application, we shall ask whether they are meant to be absolute or to be applied wisely in the circumstances to which they were meant to apply. The prohibition, judge not that you be not judged, obviously, in the light of other scriptures, cannot mean that we are never to judge. For instance, in the com- comparable passage in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, the prohibition judge not that you be not judged is pleasantly accompanied by the command, uh, now give not what is so sacred to the dogs or to the swine. Don't cast your pearls before swine. Well, to decide, it's not talking about literal swine or dogs eat. So to decide dogs and some are swine, is that not a judgment? Is that not an evaluation? Why, sure. And that same paragraph tells us in Matthew that we are to discern teachers and prophets and not take them simply at their face value, but by their fruits you shall know them. We are called upon in many circumstances to exercise right judgment. In another sense, of course, if we become censorious and and lay down the law and judge without mercy, then not only, uh, will we, uh, be treated like that by the Lord himself, but we're liable to come to the wrong conclusion anyway. For, said our Lord on another occasion, if you had known what this means, I will have mercy and not judgment, you wouldn't have condemned the innocent. A readiness, a too readiness to judge and to judge harshly can lead us on times to condemn people that are not in fact guilty. But do remember, says Christ, when you judge, what measure and standards you meet, you shall be judged. If you judge without mercy, you will be shown no mercy when it comes to God's discipline of his people. But it is true that, uh, the, the time does not suffice us to examine in detail, does it, all the things that our Lord said here. So I have summarized what seems to me to be three, at least, of the major points that our Lord is making. And the first is his blessings. We notice here the blessings. They are much shorter than they are in the Sermon on the Mount. They bless poverty, hunger, sorrow, and social ostracism. They are, when you first look at them, a gloomy bunch, aren't they? Hunger, poverty, hunger, sorrow, and social ostracism. The question arises whether the poverty and the hunger are meant to refer to literal poverty and literal hunger. For now, our Lord is addressing the apostles. He looked, he lifted up his eyes on his disciples and said, do see, blessed are you that hunger now. Luke doesn't add what the Sermon on the Mount adds, hunger for righteousness and you shall be filled, but simply says hunger. That will what might make us think, wouldn't it? Is he talking about literal hunger? And if so, were the apostles all hungry and going without food? That seems a little bit unlikely, doesn't it? So how are we to understand it? Well, tomorrow you'll be able to tell me. But, uh, this, uh, point, I want to point to the last of those three, where our Lord, uh, says, blessed are you when men shall hate you and when they shall separate you from their company and reproach you and cast out your name as evil for the son of man's sake. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, and so forth and so on. Notice that in the ap- pronouncing of blessings, this one is given the most space and the most emphasis. It is social ostracism, not on just any account. It is social ostracism for the Son of Man's sake. This then surely is moral and spiritual. It is blessing on those who, for Christ's sake, get socially ostracized in one way or another. Now, some of us as believers get socially ostracized because we're very awkward people. Angular people, I think, is the polite term for it, but that means the awkward squad. And always, as we heard, a grumbling and always a criticizing, so people don't care to be near us. And sometimes we could give the world a wrong impression, couldn't we, of what Christians stand for or meant to stand for and deserve the criticisms that we get back in turn. But then there is a real thing, isn't there? The being ostracized for the sake of Christ. If you want an example of what our Lord could be talking about, you have only to go back to the first, uh, half of this very section. There was a man called Levi. Do you remember the story, perhaps this afternoon, as long ago as half past past four. Eh, uh, uh, there was this, uh, man by the name of Levi, you'll see, and he was ostracized in a very big way by the synagogue authorities and most Israelites because he was a tax collector and serving the old imperious Romans and putting his hand in people's pockets and extorting more than what he's due. He got severely social ost- uh, socially ostracized, except for his fellow tax collectors, you'll see. They didn't care much because they had all the money and all the fun. He was socially ostracized then, and you say rightly so. Then he got converted. And he gave up that tax collecting business because he got converted to Christ and followed Christ. You say, what happened? All society clapped their hands and said, congratulations, Levi, now you're the man. No, they didn't. Now he got socially ostracized for another reason altogether, because he was Christ's disciple. Not only ostracized, but went on times in danger of his life. I suspect it is in this kind of context that our Lord is thinking. Sometimes believers are called not only to social ostracism, but suffering and poverty and hunger and sorrow that seems endless for the sake of the Lord Jesus. While the world outside laughs and has all the fun as they counted, and their pockets are bulging full. I have a friend in Moscow. He got converted. His story is a long story. I cannot tell you it now. He got converted. When he told his mother about it, she owned up to being a Christian. He hadn't known that. And she had kept it secret because her father, who was a professor of chemistry in the university and a bright man, was put in the Butu- Butika prison in Moscow simply because he was a believer. And there he was shot. And that being so, his whole family would have been ostracized very severely. No one would come near them. They would get no state benefit or support. And hadn't it been her, uh, for a few relatives that secretly would help to maintain her, she and her children would have starved, you'll see. That good man, when he got converted, went to work in Baturka prison because his grandfather had been shot there for the sake of the gospel. The good Christian man, Phil Wagner, who has worked in the prison this last four years and done a tremendous work for God among the prisoners and is much thought of by the co- uh, the prison governors. He was invited to a dinner party by the prison governor, and at the party, the prison governor turned to Phil Wagner's interpreter and said, don't tell him now, but when he gets away, tell him. And tell him this, you see the men that were sitting opposite you? They are the prison's ch- uh, official executioners, and in the old days they used to shoot about seventeen people a day. And many of them would be like my friend's grandfather, who were being shot because they were Christians. Christ is talking about a world that goes laughing by, and true believers, for his sake, are ostracized, suffer, and sometimes are killed. My brothers and my sisters, that has been the norm for believers in many centuries. We are the abnormal who get our Christianity so lightly. Remember them that are bound as bound with them, says Says Scripture. scripture. Yes, this is not a prohibition on good, healthy, if need be, uproarious laughing. We're not to go around with sour faces. But oh, but oh. When so many of our fellow believers suffer for Christ's sake, shall we not do our part in coming along and taking our stand with the sorrowing church, bear approach of Christ, and try what we can to alleviate the pain of our brothers and sisters. Woe to them that are rich and are full. That doesn't mean that you are to be condemned if you've had a decent breakfast, such as we get here in Totus Springs. He's talking once more about the world, who without God and without Christ, are, as they think it, having a marvelous time, while the people of God suffer. And our Lord almost comes to pity them, because this is all the consolation they are going to get. He will say to them what Abraham said to the rich man in Hades. Son, remember that thou in thy lifetimes hadst thou good things, and Lazarus his evil things. Now he is comforted. Thou art tormented to be rich and happy without Christ, happy without Christ, infinitely. But note the balance of our Lord's teaching. We are congratulated if we're ostracized for the son of man's sake. Woe if men, all men speak well of you, for you have received all the comfort you are going to get. But if we weren't careful, that kind of attitude could turn us into unmannerly curmudgeons, as they say in Ireland, you see. Ishmales, whose hand is against every man, and every man is hand is against him, who pride ourselves because we are positively unpopular everywhere, you see, and we think it a sign of glory and grace. We need a balance put to those first two, uh, groups of exhortations, don't we? And the balance is here, our attitude to enemies, for instance, and would-be borrowers. We are, uh, not to congratulate ourselves, for instance, if we love them that love us. Well, we're not to pat ourselves on the back for that. What credit is that to you? The sinners do that, surely they do. Yes. And if you do good to them that do good to you, what credit is that to you? Sinners do the same. And now we are called to show a goodness that is far above the mere religion, even of Judaism. When to love your neighbor, as was pointed out to the other day, for many of them was taken to mean, and you have permission to hate your enemy. No, no. To the very men that would persecute and injure and so forth, and are our enemies, we must, by God's grace, seek to do good. To those that would borrow, surely not if a drug addict comes and asks you for another ten pounds so that he might spend it on heroin or something, this verse doesn't compel you to give to him. The verse must be interpreted with reason, mustn't it? But to those that would borrow, turn not away, because the underlying principle in it is that you shall behave as men and women that are children, sons of your father. Not merely sons and daughters because you have been born again and have eternal life, but because you are sons and bear the character of your father, and therefore can be reli- ra- relied upon to behave to other people as God would behave to them. That is a cardinal principle, isn't it? For God is kind, and he makes his sun to rise on the go- holy and on the unholy. He causes his rain to come on the just and the unjust. How long suffering and merciful is God? And here our Lord sets us this gigantically high standard. We are to behave even to our enemies as God would. If we come to God and ask and expect him to give, but people come to us and they have a good claim and ask us to give and we refuse, then we are not rightly representing our Father, which is in heaven, are we? This then is by Christ's basic principle of morality, and we might remember what was said on the other side of the fence, I mean the first half of this section, where Christ was criticized because he didn't make his converts fast regularly and at set times. And he replied, but gentlemen, how can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? That would be grotesquely inappropriate. The time will come when the bridegroom is taken away, then they will fast in those days. Fasting regulated then by the presence or absence, perceived or real, of the bridegroom. But that little phrase, translated rightly by the modern experts as wedding guests, hides an Hebrew idiom that the Greek at this stage took over. How can the sons of the bride chamber fast? Funny expression, that, isn't it? I point out to some of my friends who are unduly attached to the Authorized Version. What would you think if somebody came back from a modern wedding and you said, what was it like? Uh, and they replied, well, there were one hundred and fifty children of the bride chamber there. Be odd, wouldn't it? You say, what would it mean? No, it does mean wedding guests, but, you know, sometimes Hebrew idioms aren't all that bad. How can the sons, the children, if you like, of the bride chamber fast? Their fasting is to be regulated by the bridegroom, his presence or his absence, and our morality. We are to behave that we might become, in actuality, grown up sons whose behavior is regulated by the character of their father. And finally, three parables, or one parable that is in three parts. It's the parable, the first part is on eyesight, the second part on fruit trees, and the third part on building. And each of these points to us what is not just an inadequate, but a positively perverse thing. How can the blind guide the blind? Shall they not both fall into a pit? It is a pathetic sight to observe or to listen into when somebody who doesn't know the Savior, but is religious, is trying to help somebody else who doesn't know the Savior find the Lord. How shall the blind lead the blind? Of course, blindness can, is not completely removed when we come to the Lord, is it? It is the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, God giving us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of our heart being enlightened. I suspect there must be others beside me who, in the apprenticeship to old age, come to see that attitudes we thought were good in our thirties were really quite false. We didn't see it so then. We were blind to it. We do need to pray, don't we? For that ongoing work of the Spirit in our hearts, that the eyes of our heart be illumined. There's another mistake that can afflict people. That is a man with a great baulk of timber in his eye, coming along and offering his good services, and they're generally offered with great energy, to take the mote out of his brother's eye. Yeah, sometimes we fall to correcting others, don't we? And profess a kind of an expertise therein, oblivious to our blatant faults that others can see and we apparently cannot. First, cast out the beam from your own eyes, says the Savior, that you might see clearly to help a man that's got a speck in his. And then there is the lesson drawn from fruit trees. Uh, a good tree brings forth good fruit. A bad tree brings forth bad fruit. If you find good fruit on a tree, well, then it's a good tree inside, isn't it? That is the logic within the limits that the parable intends. And the analogy is there to ask us to consider our behavior. I would have to confess if you question me too closely, so don't. But, um, when I do good things, I say that's me. That's typical me. And when I do bad things, I say that's not me at all. We deceive ourselves, don't we, what? You imagine, you see, an old, uh, uh, bitter old, uh, apple, crab apple, something. And when you came up to it and tried to eat it, it was horrible. The tree said, but I'm, I- I- I'm a good tree, really. You'll see that apple that I have born, that's not me, really. Well, who on earth is it if it ain't you? We mustn't make excuses, may we? The good man out of his treasure, different metaphor, but the same principle, brings forth good things. But if a man persistently brings forth evil things, the treasure of his heart is evil. The godliest believer can sometimes find himself or herself absolutely dismayed by a streak of evil reaction that they find springing up from their deep subconscious that makes them ashamed. Haven't we all known it? But here we're talking about what is the general set of life and the general set of the heart. The good heart, normally, doesn't it, as its characteristic, bring forth good fruit. If normally we bring forth bad fruit, let's not try and hide and say it's not me really, but seek the cause in the heart that needs to be purified by Christ. And finally, the question of building. I will show you the wise builder, says Christ, is the man that hears my word and does it. A house built on that principle will abide whatever storms may come. Where we build is just as important as how we build. Both are important, but the first major thing is where we build, on what foundation we build. And the only safe foundation for building a life on, indeed for building eternity on, is both hearing the word of the Lord and then doing it. But the man who hears my word and doesn't do it, like a man who built his house upon the sand, and the storm came, and the house fell, wrecked with disaster. And as we, uh, cease and go away, one little coloring in Luke's brushstrokes might come to our mind. This third section of his gospel began with Peter in the boat. And the Lord said, Peter, let down your net. Well, excuse me, he said, not, no, no, no, no, no, not, Lord, you see, because, uh, there's, there's no fish around. It'd been bad, wouldn't it, if he had persisted in disregarding the word of the Lord. But he said, nevertheless, at thy word, I will. And hearing the word of God, uh, of the Lord and doing it, he put his nets down, and the nets were broken, but because of their immense success. So big was the success that even broke the nets. A little lesson on the success that will attend eternally on those that hear Christ's word and do it. Alas for him and her who, hearing that word, do not do it. They themselves shall be broken when the storm comes, a wreck in this life and in the life to come. Shall we pray? Blessed Lord, while we praise thee for thy holy word and the marvel of thy salvation, and gratefully we acknowledge how thou hast saved us and changed us, yet search our hearts tonight, we pray, and see if there be any wicked way in us, and lead us in the paths of righteousness for thy name's sake, that the way we react in life and the way we do and perform might be true to our character as guests at thy wedding, may be true to our Father as we show the world by our living what our Father is like. For thy name's sake, amen.