This sermon was preached on Sunday
evening, February 19th, 1984, at the Trinity Baptist Church
in Montville, New Jersey. In the second stanza of the hymn
we have just sung, we have confessed to our Lord Jesus, Thou art the
truth. Thy word alone true wisdom can
impart. Thou only canst inform the mind
and purify the heart. And in a most wonderful way,
the hymn writer is brought into that close conjunction, the objective,
settled, written Word of God, which alone can impart true wisdom,
and the necessity of the ministry of the Living Word, the Holy
Spirit, who enables us to know the mind of Christ in the written
Word, and who alone can purify the heart. Let us pray that as
we have that objective word before us, and presently shall be opening
it together, that God by the Spirit will be present to inform
our minds and to sanctify our hearts. Let us pray. Our Father, we do rejoice that
we have a complete, affixed, a final word of revelation for
us in this present age. We thank you that by this word
we can be instructed in the knowledge of yourself, all that we are
to believe concerning you, all that you require of us. And yet
we are very conscious that apart from the present powerful assistance
of the Holy Spirit, there is such a native darkness over our
minds and slowness in our hearts. that we shall hear the Word in
vain unless your Spirit comes to illuminate our minds and to
sanctify our hearts. O send the Spirit upon us, that
by the Spirit and the Word, by the Spirit working with and through
the Word, we may come to a fuller knowledge of yourself and of
your ways, and that we may be made more like your beloved Son. Speak to us, O God, we plead,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Now for those of you who have
not been with us for the past couple of Lord's Days, or I should
say a Lord's Day five weeks ago or six weeks ago, and then last
Lord's Day evening, I should mention that we are presently
engaged in a relatively brief series of studies in the general
area of the biblical teaching with respect to verbal communication,
particularly the communication we engage in when we speak to
one another in close relationships, husbands, wives, friends, fathers,
mothers, brothers, and sisters, and those more intimate interpersonal
relationships established by God. After beginning the series
with an introduction and an overview of the biblical doctrine of verbal
communication, we then began last Lord's Day evening to apply
the Golden Rule to this matter of verbal communication. Now,
by way of brief review, let me read in your hearing and then
comment again only briefly upon what has been called the Golden
Rule as found in Matthew's Gospel chapter 7 and verse 12. Our Lord Jesus Christ speaking
says, All things therefore, whatsoever ye would that men should do unto
you, even so do you also unto them. For this is the law and
the prophets. In other words, an entire summary
of all that is required in the Old Testament Scriptures with
respect to our horizontal duties, our duties one to another, is
bound up in these words, whatever you would that men should do
to you, even so do you also unto them. And as we saw last week,
that means that I am required in every situation to seek to
put myself into the situation in which I find my husband, my
wife, son, daughter, mother, father, friend, brother, sister,
whoever it is, the person to whom I am relating, and in this
particular series, the person with whom I'm communicating,
I'm to attempt to put myself in his or her situation, contemplate
all of the factors that surround that person, and ask myself this
question. If I were standing where he or
she is standing, surrounded by the circumstances with which
he or she is surrounded, beset with the internal circumstances
with which he or she is beset, how would I want someone else
to communicate to me? And having answered that question,
the Lord Jesus said, you do precisely to that person what you would
have others do to you were you in his set of circumstances. As you would that others do unto
you, even so do you also unto them. And then we began to apply
the Golden Rule to this matter of verbal communication, particularly
focusing upon the Golden Rule in its application to our tongues. For in all verbal communication,
the main ingredients are a speaking tongue and a listening ear. Last
week, we concentrated on the Golden Rule in its application
to the tongue. Now tonight we concentrate on
the golden rule in its application to the hearing ear. Now as certainly
as sin has so radically affected the human mind and soul as to
produce tragic results in the use of our tongues, so likewise
sin has brought about tragic results in the use of our ears. And as certainly as our tongues
need the purifying, sanctifying, elevating ministry of the Spirit,
so do our ears. Now I remind you as we come to
open up the subject tonight, that the golden rule in Matthew
7.12 is not a statement of how to go to heaven. The Golden Rule
assumes that those who receive it are the children of God. In
the previous context, they are described as children who ask
their Heavenly Father for good gifts. So the Golden Rule is
not answering the question, what must I do to be saved? The assumption
is that those to whom it comes are forgiven in the blood of
Christ. They are accepted in the righteousness
of Christ. They are regenerated and indwelt
by the Spirit of Christ, and they are constrained to a life
of practical holiness by the love of Christ. But now constrained
by the love of Christ, the law is love's eyes, and without it
love is blind. The law is love's eyes, and without
it, love is blind. And the whole summation of Old
Testament law is the golden rule. So if you're constrained by the
love of Christ, as one regenerated and indwelled by the Spirit of
Christ, You long to have something that will be eyes to this tremendous
motivation of love which grace has implanted within your heart.
And you long to have it not in the abstract, but in the concrete
matters of the use of your tongue in communication and in the use
of your ears. All right, with that general
introduction and setting it in its proper gospel and evangelical
context, now let's look at, as time permits, and as I can keep
my lips from getting dry having to continue to take those antihistamines
with my clogged up sinuses, we'll look at five specific applications
of the Golden Rule in relationship to the use of our ears. Now,
when the Golden Rule is applied to the use of your ears by the
power of the Spirit of God, if it is guiding the use of your
ears, this is the first thing it will produce. A willingness
to deny yourself and give to others a genuinely sympathetic
and an attentive hearing. When the Golden Rule is applied
to your ear by the power of the Spirit, it will produce in you,
first of all, a willingness to deny yourself and to give yourself
to others in a genuinely sympathetic and attentive hearing. Now think with me for a minute.
When you have a heart full of a matter that has caused you
great delight, or a matter that has crushed your spirit, or a
matter that has caused you great excitement, or you may have a
mind and heart just filled with a mass of trivia that has been
so much a part of you that you long to share it with someone
else. No earth-shaking news, no great exhilarating wonderful
thing has happened, but your heart is full, and as a social
being, and particularly as a believer, having sensed that God has broken
down those walls between you and others, and you long to communicate
those joys that others may rejoice with you. You long to share that
burden that others may weep with you and bear that burden with
you. How do you feel when, if the
time, the relationship, and the circumstances are appropriate
for communicating that joy, communicating that burden, communicating that
big pile of trivia, and that's often what a young mother has
when her husband comes through the door. But given that the
timing and the relationship and the circumstances are right,
how do you feel when you begin to communicate those things and
a person simply will not deny himself whatever he's doing that
he could legitimately deny in order to give you time enough
to listen. How do you feel? How do you feel when someone
will not deny himself or herself, not relinquish duty, but deny
themselves some legitimate liberty or self-interest simply to give
you enough time to listen to you. How do you feel? You feel
demeaned. You feel rejected. You feel like
you're junk and dirt. Don't you? You're all excited
and you say, Oh, I've got this wonderful person. Or how do you feel when they
stand there and you're all excited? I mean, this thing is oozing
out your pores and you begin to communicate to them and they've
got that glassy look that you feel they're looking at an object
that's about six inches behind the back of your head. Their
eyes are not here! They're just marking time with
their ears. You know they aren't really listening.
How do you feel? It kills nine-tenths of the joy that was bubbling
up in your own spirit that you wanted to share with them, doesn't
it? How do you feel when something that's crushing your spirit and
you seek to communicate to someone else You know they're just there
all antsy and itchy and really disinterested. How do you feel?
Come on now, get honest. How do you feel when someone
will not deny themselves enough to give you a sympathetic and
an attentive hearing in a matter that is of genuine concern to
you that you're seeking to communicate with them? How do you feel? You
like that feeling? Do you? Come on, do you like
that feeling of rejection when they won't give you the time?
Do you like that feeling of just pricking the balloon of your
own joy when they don't really attentively try to enter into
it? All right, here's the golden
rule. As you would that others do unto you in a context of being
a good listener, Even so do ye also unto them, for this is the
law and the prophets. That's what your Lord requires
of you, as you would. So do ye also unto them. That's what your Lord requires
of you. Now, you husbands, this has tremendous
implications for you. Oh yes, you're the hotshot provider. You're out there in the world
of big bucks and big shots and big issues. And your wife is
home in the world of her diapers and her dishes and all the little
details of what the little ones did and said and learned and
experienced at school. Things that you think are of
little consequence. And she's had no mature adult
with whom to communicate at a deep level all day long. And she hasn't
just met you at the door with it, she has chosen an appropriate
time. When you've had an opportunity
to relax and have your supper and read this fourth page. And
now the time has come when your wife legitimately can expect
some time of you. And she begins to convey to you
the things that are her life. May God help you men. to feel
something of the pain you inflict upon her day after day, week
after week, when you won't even attempt to deny yourself and
enter into her world and make it yours. You say, well, I never
laid a hand on my wife. In a sense, physical bruises
would be easier to take than that constant bruising of her
spirit by your self-centered unwillingness to give her your
ears. But the Bible tells us that the spirit of a man will
sustain its infirmity, but a broken spirit, who can bear? Some of you men need a baptism
of the golden rule right there in your ears. If I could materialize
the golden rule and make it into a bucket or a bowl of water,
I'd take your ears and plunge them in one at a time and pray
that with it, the mighty power of God would come and do a new
thing. What about you wives? You say,
my husband wants to talk about a job I don't know from nothing
about this, that. So what? Would it kill you to
take a little time to find out something so that you could listen
with intelligence and interest? That's his work. You may be the very one who's
setting him up for an extramarital affair, because his secretary
is sure interested in that world. She's talking with him about
it all day long. She's vitally interested in it. When he begins
to find more emotional identification with her, and you show absolutely
no interest, you, you wife, you are setting him up for a possible
fall morally. by your unwillingness to deny
yourself your own native, non-mechanical, non-business mentality, and to
cultivate an up-interest in self-denying love, that you will be able to
give a sympathetic and an attentive ear to your husband. Oh, dear
parents, how desperately do our children You say, oh, but my
kids don't want to talk about the silliest. Yes, but that's
their world. And if you're going to have them
feel confident that your ears are really baptized in love when
there are big problems, when they come into that kooky stage
where they don't know who they are and what they're here for
and all of the trauma of the preteen and teen years and into
the threshold of manhood and womanhood, If they do not already
have a direct access to your ears and know that attached to
your head, mom and dad, are sympathetic, self-denying ears, don't be surprised
if they don't come and pour out the things that are so traumatic
to them in those years. You're not willing to deny yourself
and give yourself and listen to their little prattle as though
they were giving you inside information directly out of the Pentagon
about how we propose to solve problems in Lebanon. You want to gain the confidence of
kids, whether you're your own or someone else's? Just squat
down, kneel down, and take their little prattle like it was the
most important bits of information anyone in the whole world ever
listened to. And you have their hearts. Yes,
you do. Yes, you do. But you see what
it involves? It involves self-denial. It involves
saying no to myself, or natively, just as with the speaking of
my tongue. I'm inclined simply to say what
makes me feel good and not stop long enough to put myself in
my brother's, in my sister's set of circumstances and ask
that all-important question, how would I be treated given
those circumstances? So, with the use of our ears. How are we going to fulfill the
biblical injunctions to weep with those who weep, to rejoice
with those who rejoice, to bear one another's burdens? How are
we going to fulfill the mandate, provoke not your children to
wrath? How are we going to fulfill the
mandate, be of the same mind one to another, if we are not
disclosing the deepest levels appropriate to the varying dimensions
of church fellowship and relationship? Oh, how desperately we need the
Golden Rule on our ears. And as by the Spirit it is operative
in our ears, it will first of all manifest itself in the manner
in which I've described, a willingness to deny ourselves and to give
to others a genuine, sympathetic, and genuinely sympathetic and
attentive hearing. And you know, to be a good listener
costs. It costs. Because it means you're exposing
your whole inner life to things that may crush you. And they
often do. But then in the second place,
when the Golden Rule is guiding the use of our ears, we will
manifest a willingness to restrain ourselves and to give to others
a thorough hearing before drawing conclusions and responding. It will produce a willingness
to restrain ourselves and to give others a thorough hearing
before we draw conclusions and respond. Now once again, think
with me. I'm starting with ourselves because
that's where the Golden Rule demands that we start. when you're
discussing a matter with someone, especially when there is a difference
of opinion. A husband and wife are having
a discussion, not a fight, a discussion. Christian husbands and wives
don't fight, they just have discussions that sometimes get a little heated.
So there's a discussion where there's a difference of opinion.
Now, what do you desire in that other person when you are coming
out with your opinion, which of course is the distilled essence
of all wisdom? It has in it embodied all that
is necessary to think rightly and properly on that given subject.
Now, what do you desire in the person with whom you're discussing?
Well, what you desire is that they will look at you and listen
to you and keep their mouths shut and really make an honest
effort to hear out your case thoroughly before they judge
your case or respond to it. Isn't that what you want? How
do you feel when you're trying to discuss something with someone
and the first half of a sentence is out of your mouth and while
you're sucking in breath at a comma They've already sent the case
to the jury back with a verdict and out comes this machine gun
like response. You just feel like saying, wipe
off. Can't reason with that person.
Can't talk with that person. Their minds already made. Isn't
that the most frustrating thing? Especially if it's someone you
just can't get up and walk away from. Like a husband or a wife. Like a mom or a dad, a son or
daughter, a brother or sister in the fellowship of God's people,
a work associate? How do you feel? Now, put yourself
in that terrible place. We've all been there. How do
you feel? Well, as best you know, you're
not just being willfully perverse. I mean, you didn't get up that
morning and say, I feel perverse. First person I meet, wife, husband,
son or daughter, I'm going to show my perversity. No, an issue
came up in which you really have what you feel is an accurate
assessment of that given set of circumstances. And what do
you desperately want when you enter into discussion? Well,
you want that person to give you the fair, thorough hearing
before they respond. And how do you feel when they
don't? You feel absolutely discouraged. Or, if you have as much remaining
carnality as some of us do, you may cut in on them and then you
have a shouting match. and there's no rational thought,
and so much heat there can't be any light. Isn't that what
happens? Well, how can we avoid that?
Here we bring the golden rule, as you would that others do unto
you, even so do you also unto them, for this is the law and
the prophets. This is exactly what the writer
of Proverbs is addressing when he says in Proverbs 18 and verse
13, these words that we need to pray God to etch upon our
hearts. He that gives answer before he
hears, it is folly and shame unto him. Now see, usually the
person who gives answer before he hears is so convinced he has
the word on the subject, he is so wise and so discerning that
whatever you say could not overthrow his wisdom and discernment, so
why bother to hear you out? God says it is not a manifestation
of wisdom on his part, it is a manifestation of folly and
it will be to his shame. He that answers before he hears. He who will not discipline his
spirit to listen and hear a man out thoroughly. Hear your child
out thoroughly. Yes, it seems as though what
they did was an act of high-handed rebellion. But they've got an
explanation. Hear them out. It just may be
that there are one or two factors which, when they are established,
will indeed justify their account of it. And how does that child
feel when he can't even get a fair hearing from his dad, from his
mom? He that answers before he hears a matter it is accounted
unto him shame and folly and the words of James in James 119
be wherefore let every man be swift to hear slow to speak for
the wrath of man does not work the righteousness of God the
indication is that when we're quick to speak it's often motivated
by carnal wrath Be swift to hear, slow to speak, for the wrath
of man does not work, the righteousness of God. Take the golden rule
and apply it to the ear. In the family, husbands and wives
with a legitimate difference, children and parents, parents
and children, brothers and sisters, in the life of God's people,
those with whom we work, do you see what would happen if for
one day The golden rule were applied to every year in every
situation where there was communication in the context of a legitimate
difference. What a difference it would make.
Reason would prevail instead of heated passions. and people's
spirits that are battered and pushed down for feeling that
their opinion is not worth anything. There could be, even where there
was not oneness of mind, there could be graciousness of spirit
to agree to disagree peacefully and honorably and in a godly
manner. So I was trying to put this concept
into something you could relate to in the realm of imagery For
some reason, I thought of a hair trigger on a revolver. You know what a hair trigger
is? If any of you have ever done any shooting at all with revolvers,
a hair trigger is a trigger that is so adjusted that it takes
the slightest amount of pound pressure on the trigger to cause
the hammer to release and send that bullet shooting out the
barrel. And you have to be very, very careful if you're handling
any firearms that have a hair trigger. because you just may
be sighting in the gun, beginning to squeeze, and before you know
it, it goes off. Well, you know, there are some people that have
a hair trigger that goes right from their ear to their tongue.
And the slightest bit of verbal pressure on their ear starts
their tongue shooting out words. You know what the golden rule
will do? It'll adjust the spring on your ear. It'll adjust the
tension on your ear. You'll take a lot more verbal
pressure before your tongue starts wagging. Now some of you have
a hair trigger going from your ear to your tongue. Ask God the
Holy Ghost to bring the mechanism of the Golden Rule and adjust
your trigger. He who answers before he hears
a matter, it is shame and volley to him. Be swift to hear, slow
to speak. And if we would simply take the
Golden Rule seriously, when we enter into that kind of a situation
and lift up our hearts in prayer to God and say, O God, as my
wife and I discuss this, as I discuss this with my son, my daughter,
Lord, as I try to speak to mom and dad about this, Lord, help
me in this situation as I would that others would do to me. Help
me to do to them. Lord, give me the ability truly
to hear them out thoroughly. and to understand where they're
coming from before I respond. Then there is a third way in
which the Golden Rule applied to our ears will manifest itself
and it's this. We will make an honest effort,
hear me now, we will make an honest effort to put the best
construction on the meaning and motive of what we hear. If the
Golden Rule is at work in our ears, we will make an honest
effort, I didn't say perfect, but an honest effort to put the
best construction on the meaning and motive of what we hear. Now again, put your thinking
cap on, and let's enter into this common experience together.
You're speaking to another person. Now, how do you react? when either from that person's
mouth and the way they respond to what you say are so often
and it's tragic that it's true but it is nonetheless true to
another party you find that both the meaning of your words and
the motive of your words from the time they came out of your
mouth and entered their ears were permeated with the most
evil connotation The worst possible construction that could be put
on your words, they put on it. And the worst motive for those
words, they put on it. Now, how do you feel when people
do that to you? Answer me. How do you feel? Not
verbally, but mentally. How do you feel? Someone you felt confident enough
to enter into innocent banter. As we said last week, one of
the expressions of confidence in a relationship is innocent
banter. How do you feel when you engage in a little bit of
innocent banter and it comes back to you that the person really
believed that you were putting them down and deliberately insulting
them and making a fool of them? How do you feel? Can you relive
that feeling? I tell you, I feel sick just
thinking about it. I don't want to dwell on it. The grieving that
comes because if you have a heart for people, you're not indifferent
as to how your words affect people. You don't say, well you win some,
lose some. No, if you have a heart for people, you are concerned
whether your words are healing words or destructive words. How
do you feel when they put the worst possible construction on
the meaning of your words? How do you feel? when they looked
behind your words that had no surface or hitting motive. The
motive was up front in the very words, and they were able to
dig behind it and drag out all kinds of evil, insidious motives,
and not even suspect that they might be there, but assume that
those motives were yours. How do you feel? How do you feel? Well, as you would that others
do unto you, even so do you also unto them, for this is the law.
What do you want people to do with your words? You want them
to put the best possible construction on the meaning of the words and
on the motive. You want them to apply the simple
canons of our own jurisprudence. As fouled up as that system is,
a man is innocent until proven guilty. The text that interweaves
itself with the Golden Rule and in a sense is a parallel to it,
is found in 1 Corinthians 13 with reference to one of the
manifestations and actings of love. Love is described in terms
of what it does do and in terms of what it doesn't do. One of
the things it does not do is this, 1 Corinthians 13, And verse 5, love does not behave
itself unseemly, does not seek its own, does not take account
of evil. The old authorize thinks no evil. That's the quality of love. Thinks no evil. Now I'm going to open this up
with a little more fullness than some of the others, because I
think there are some of you here who desperately need it. There are
some of you, and there are many of God's people, who are hyper-defensive,
hyper-sensitive, and hyper-insecure. And they are the ones who are
constantly putting the worst construction on the words and
the motives behind the words of others. They are like one
huge sore toe, and any word that touches them, they're sure someone
formed into a big lead ball and threw it at their toe. Constantly on the defense, constantly
hypersensitive, a raised eyebrow to them is a scolding. And so insecure that they can't
bear even a word in jest Now granted, the Bible says we who
are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak. When
we're in the presence of people whom we know, at their present
level of sanctification, haven't made much progress from hyper-defensiveness
and hyper-sensitivity and hyper-insecurity to a more balanced spiritual
state, granted, if we know that, we need to do all within our
power not to be an unnecessary occasion of stumbling. I'm fully
aware of that. And by the grace of God, I seek
to practice that in my personal and in my ministerial responsibilities. But with some people, the whole
world would be brought into miserable bondage. Everyone would have
to think through every word for three hours before they dare
utter a word in the presence of some people. And it is wrong
to expect the whole world to come into such bondage because
you won't stop groveling in this carnal kind of hypersensitivity. There comes a time when you need
to stop taking yourself so seriously. You're just not important enough
for people to sit around and think up all the mean things
you think they're saying about you. Frankly, you've got a too
exalted opinion about yourself. And often with so-called insecure
people, there is this terrible anomaly. They are some of the
most proud people in all the world. They really think that
I and the elders and other people in church have nothing to do
but sit around and think up all kinds of ways to say mean things
in a veiled way. Life's too short for that, my
dear people. Altogether, too short for that. You have too
high an opinion of yourself. Frankly, people have more important
things to do. So why don't you come out of
your little dream, Cassie? You say you believe God in Jesus
Christ has redeemed you? That God loved you enough to
send his son to die for you? You believe that God was determined
enough to get you into the orbit of His own grace? That He sent
His Spirit to illuminate your darkened mind and to renew your
perverse will? To draw you to His Son? And what
are you groveling in this self-pity for? Pity me, pity me. Everybody
hates me. Nobody loves me. I'm going out
and eat worms. What a terrible travesty. on
the Christian faith, and this being hypersensitive, always
being offended where no offense is meant, and this insecurity. Why do you need to be so insecure?
Are you held in bonds of eternal covenantal love? Are you sealed
to the day of redemption? Are you entrapped into Christ,
united to the head and to the members of His body? And you
have no grounds for this maudlin, constantly crippling insecurity. As you would that others do unto
you. Stop thinking about yourself long enough and you start thinking,
how would I feel if my well-intentioned words with nothing but the highest
motives and nothing but intention for good were constantly construed
as being destructive and negative. How would you feel, my insecure
friend? Will you stop doing that to others?
Stop it! Stop it! But you say, I can't. Will you go to Christ and cry
to Him and tell Him you can? Be determined that you must and
you will see that I can do all things through Him who strengthens
me. There are a few kind of people
that I find it most difficult to pray that God will give me
grace to be around than that kind of people. I can be around
with people who haven't yet learned some of the basic elements of
social acceptability. They can have body odor and have
clothing that's all strobe-ly and doesn't match and speak bad
grammar. And I have no trouble being at
ease with people like that. After a while, I try to teach
them how to put the right colors together and shine their shoes.
as much as lieth in you, do good to all men, so I try to do them
a little good and help them, but that's not a problem. One can be around the most cultured,
educated, refined person, but if you sense that they fit that
category of being hyper defensive, hyper sensitive, hyper insecure,
it's like you're constantly trying to sail your little ship through
a bay full of floating mines with a hundred mine triggers
sticking out and you're just afraid to twitch the oar left
or right and you get frozen. Something's going to blow up. You know people like that? You
know people like that? May God have mercy if you're
one of them. Now we love you, but God's put you here, not that
all the little boats will sit there with their anchors sunk
in the bay and not go anywhere, but that you learn how to get
defused. And God the Holy Ghost will come and break off some
of your firing pins, so that people can bounce off you and
you can laugh and they can laugh and say, ah, hit another old
dud, good. It's a dud. May the Lord make duds out of
some of them. Pull all your firing pins off. It's a wonderful thing
to live closely with duds. It really is. And to go to people
and say, brother, sister, you know, I said something yesterday
and my spirit was really breathed. That wasn't really kind and gracious. Will you forgive me? Never thought
a thing about it. Forget it. What a delight to
live with people like that. But to live with people, with
six months afterwards, you sense this, whoa, you can't figure
out what have I done? Some reason my deodorant? Hair's cold, far as I know. You
ask your wife, honey, has my breath been particularly bad
recently? Is there something wrong? And then, lo and behold,
they finally pull the plug. And they go back to some little
pittering instance, months ago, and it's been stewing and brewing
in their spirits all that time. And when they tell you what it
was, in 30 seconds you can tell them you completely misconstrued
both the meaning of my words and the motive. What a terrible
Dear people of God, isn't life too short? And the world in too
great a mess to be spinning our wheels with that kind of crippling
sin? What do we need? We need a fresh
baptism of the Golden Rule upon our ears. We need to change the
imagery. We need to have God the Holy
Ghost create an ear filter for us, made up of the Golden Rule,
so that everything that comes in comes through that filter.
As you would that others do unto you, how do I want others to
receive into their ears my well-intentioned words, perhaps awkwardly spoken,
that have no hidden motive, that have no negative connotation
or purpose? Well, as you would that others
do unto you, even so do ye also unto them, for this is the law
and the province. Well, I must hasten on to the
fourth manifestation of the golden rule upon our ears. When the
Golden Rule is applied to our ears by the enablement of the
Spirit, you will seek to cultivate unknown willingness to hear and
receive legitimate reproof, rebuke, and correction. If the Golden
Rule is working itself into your ears, you'll seek to cultivate
a known willingness to hear and receive legitimate reproof, rebuke,
and admonition. Now, once again, same pattern,
let's think together. Here you have seen a matter in
your wife, your husband, son, daughter, friend, fellow church
member, classmate, whatever that personal relationship is. and
constrained by a number of biblical passages, you believe it's your
God-given responsibility, either in the language of Matthew 18,
you've seen them sin, and you're determined to go and tell them
their fault between you and them alone, or they may have sinned
against you, Luke 17, and you're going to rebuke them with a view
that upon their repentance you will gladly confer forgiveness
upon them, or it may be you begin to see some signs of spiritual
declension and you're going in the spirit of Galatians 6.1,
you see a brother overtaken in a fault, you're going in a spirit
of meekness seeking to restore, Or in the language and spirit
of Hebrews 3.13, you're seeking to exhort another day by day
while it's called a day, lest any be hardened through the deceitfulness
of sin. How do you feel when motivated
by those biblical perspectives, having prayerfully considered
what you're going to say, you approach a brother or a sister
as tactfully, as graciously, as gently, as Christ-like as
God enables you to approach them. And the minute they sense you're
going to deal with their sin, they hustle. They start to justify
themselves. You see the red creeping up the
back of their necks and into their ears. You see the fire
coming into their eyes. And in less than three minutes,
you know it's all over. How do you feel? How do you feel? How do you feel? You feel the
pain of unrequited love, of unfulfilled love. It was the love of Christ
that constrained you to go in the spirit of these passages
that I've quoted that are fundamental biblical duties which church
members have one to another, that husbands and wives have
to each other and to their children, and that even children have in
a certain dimension to their own parents. How do you feel? when simply attempting to obey
the Bible out of biblical motives, you meet with resistance in the
ear of the one to whom you go. Well, the Golden Rule says, As
you would that others do unto you, even so do ye also unto
them. For this is the law and the promise. How do you like to be received? You love to sense that even though
as you begin to speak in a hesitating way, you're trying to be so tactful. So you're starting on the outside
and beginning to tighten the circle. And once the brother
or sister sees what you're doing, they put a hand on the shoulder
or they say to you, look, I think you've got something on your
heart you want to talk to me about concerning my life. Go
straight to the point. I want to know anything I'm doing
that's displeasing to God. Well, after you get a respirator
and take some oxygen. What a joy it is to pour out
your heart and tell that brother or sister what's on your heart. Isn't that a great delight? When
you receive like that, isn't it? I tell you, when we get received
like that as elders, those are the times we get back together
and we say, look, maybe we ought not to quit. Maybe we ought to
pray that God will give us grace to carry on a little more. You
get a string of the other and you say, I've spent my strength
for naught. It's crushing. Not so much personally
that you're rejected. It's the crushing that you know
everything the Bible says about the fool who will not listen
to correction. The Bible has a doctrine concerning
resistance to correction and rebuke. And that doctrine says
such a person is a fool. He's in the way of death. He's
in the way of destruction. You read the book of Proverbs
and it's frightening what God says about the person who will
not receive correction. So if we're applying the golden
rule to our ears, What will we seek? We'll seek to cultivate
a known willingness, that is, to earn the reputation of being
one who delights to hear and to receive legitimate reproof,
rebuke, and admonition. And when we do, then Proverbs
25, 12 is lived out before our eyes as an earring of gold and
an ornament of fine gold, so is a wise reprover upon an obedient
ear." What does that earring of gold and that ornament of
gold do? Why, it is a thing of beauty
in itself, and it enhances the beauty of the wearer. And he
said in the same way, when a wise reprover as it were, is hung
upon an obedient ear. It's a thing of beauty. Now,
my friend, have you got the kind of ear that makes it easy for
people to hang upon it the earring of reproof? Do you have the kind
of neck that bends willingly to receive the ornament of gold,
reproof, and admonition? Have you earned the reputation
of being approachable with reproof? Have you? You say, I don't know. Do you want to find out? I'm
not so sure. Well, then you really don't want
to find out. Do you want to find out? Start asking a few people
who know. Solemnly charge them to say nothing
to you in answer to that question but what they'd be prepared to
say in the day of judgment in the very presence of Christ.
You husband, solemnly charge your wife. Dear, answer me with
the honesty that God will make you answer in the day of judgment.
Am I easily reproved, admonished, and rebuked? Ask it. Gather your children
around. Ask them, do you feel comfortable
coming to dad and pointing out his faults, or are you scared
to death that I'd hand your head You wise, ask your husbands. Ask your elders, if you've been
here any length of time. As I look out over this congregation,
I can see some of you that I don't need to wrestle in prayer when
I see something that I feel may need reproof. I feel total liberty
to come to you in any set of circumstances apart from a public
situation, put my hand on your shoulder and give a wise word
of reproof. You've earned the reputation
for having an ear that loves that ear. There's some of you
I have to wrestle with God and wait for weeks and sometimes
months to try to find the right time and to pray up enough courage
because you've earned the reputation for being stiff-necked. Ask your
elders. Ask some of your close friends.
Dear ones, we're not playing games. This is serious business. If you have an ear that feels
the pressure of the Golden Rule, in the power of the Holy Spirit,
you will earn the reputation of being one who has a willingness
to hear and to receive legitimate reproof, rebuke, and admonition. And then, finally, I told you
we'd get through five, God willing, and we'll look now at this bit.
If the Golden Rule is operative upon our ears, we will seek to
have ears that are safe deposit boxes and not showcases or echo
chambers. If the Golden Rule is working
in our ears, we will seek to have ears that are safety deposit
boxes and not showcases or echo chambers. Now think with me again.
Think with me again. How do you feel when in communicating
with others, though you may not have said so explicitly and got
from the one to whom you're communicating a vow that they would never tell
another, the very nature of the concerns that you shared and
bared your heart in the context of trusting love, it would be
evident to anyone that those things were said in the context
of that intimate friendship. How do you feel when three months
later you find that that person's ear became an echo chamber from
which those deep secrets of your heart were spoken to others?
How do you feel? Do you feel betrayed? Wounded? Crushed? And you're tempted to
say, I'll never trust another human being with my secrets.
and one of the reasons so many people are driven into a shell
in which they do not communicate at a deep level with anyone is
they've been burnt too many times and they've become shell-shocked
what a tragedy I pity the man, the woman, the boy, the girl
who must keep bottled up the deepest secrets of his heart. Now there are some things that
no one should know but God and you. I'm not talking about some
kind of evangelical confessionalism where we tell it all. No, no.
Discretion dictates that some things will be known only to
God, will only be spoken to the ear of God. But the Bible does
say, confess your sins one to another. Pray one for another. and it is perfectly legitimate
that some of the deepest actings of the heart and struggles be
borne by another brother or sister, husband or wife. The problem
is that the Golden Rule so little affects the ears of some that
in the language of Proverbs 11, 13 and 20, 19 they have found
to their own grief that this is so. Proverbs 11, And verse
13, he that goes about as a tale-bearer reveals secrets, but he that
is of a faithful spirit conceals a matter. It's a mark of faithfulness
to conceal a matter that has been shared in confidence. And
Proverbs 20 and verse 19, he that goes about as a tale-bearer
reveals secrets, therefore Keep no company with him who opens
wide his lips. If there's a direct conduit from
a man's ear to his mouth, stay clear of him. That's why some
of you don't have close friends. You say, nobody loves me. Maybe
it's because you've earned the reputation of having a direct
conduit from your ear to your mouth. Well, if you've earned
it, don't complain about others. Repent and change your ways.
live down your reputation and earn some credibility of being
a faithful person who can be entrusted with secrets. Now it
should be obvious as we draw our meditation to a close that
when we talk about the ear as well as the tongue, we're really
not just talking about the ear and the tongue, are we? When
we talked about a tongue that was influenced by the Golden
Rule, we're really talking about a heart, aren't we? And that's
biblical, out of the abundance of the heart. the mouth speaks.
But you know what God does, and I was discussing this with my
wife driving over tonight, it's one of the things I love about
the Bible. The Bible deals in the concrete as well as in imagery.
And God knows we're so deceptive that if it all it talked about
was having a good heart that would ultimately produce the
right words and the right use of the ears, we'd all kill the
kid ourselves if we got good hearts. But God talks about the
ear that receives reproof. Well really, receiving reproof
is a matter of the heart, isn't it? But you see, you could kid
yourself, oh yeah, my heart's open to reproof. The only thing
I can't stand is brother so-and-so telling me my faults. Oh yes,
my heart's open to reproof. I just can't stand having one
of my elders straighten me out on the matter. Oh, my heart's
right in the matter. So what does God do? God puts
it right out there on the ear. Same thing with your tongue.
You say, oh, my heart's right. I just have a few problems with my tongue.
And God says, your tongue. in real sense is the echo of
your heart, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
And if you've sat here tonight and been devastated by what you've
heard, you say, I could never live that way. I couldn't use
my ears that way for one day. My friend, that's an indication
of what the state of your heart is. And that's why Jesus said,
except a man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
The kind of life we've been talking about tonight is to be lived
by the true sons and daughters of the kingdom, those for whom
God is their Father, and they've come to know Him as Father through
Jesus Christ. They have not only come to rest
in the finished work of Christ as their only hope of forgiveness
and acceptance with God, they have been given the Spirit of
Christ. who has come to break the dominion of sin, who resides
within them to continually purify them from the remnants and the
remains of sin. And it's only if you're in Christ
that you can begin to have ears that are influenced by the golden
rule as we've described it tonight. But for you who can say, by the
grace of God, Lord, I thank you. I know a little something of
that. But oh, my mind and conscience have felt the smartings of God's
Word. What can I do? You've got to
take time to think this issue through. Remember when Jesus
was calling the Ephesian church to repentance? He started with
these words, Revelation 2. He says, Remember. Remember from
whence you have fallen. Think! That's part of our problem. We simply don't take enough time
to think this issue through. It takes time to put myself in
the other person's circumstances, analyze his circumstances, think
them through accurately and thoroughly. And then to say, how would I
be spoken to given his circumstances? Well, having ascertained that,
that's the way I am determined that I shall speak. But you say,
Pastor, I can't do that in every situation. There are times when
much of my conversation just has to flow in its reflection.
Yes, that's true. But there are many times you
can do this. And listen carefully. The more you do this when you
can, the more you will with renewed and cultivated spiritual reflexes
within that framework, even when you don't have time to think
about it. You cultivate, by the Spirit's
grace and power, a discipline of perspective and a framework,
and you'll be amazed at what God will do. So start in the
areas where you can start, when you've got something of a critical
nature that you've got to talk about to the children. Don't
just plunder in and say, all right, I'm going to talk to you,
son, all right, Pray, think through, say, now how would I feel when
I was 13? Can I think back when I was 13?
Didn't know who I was. All gawky and braces and pimples
and I wasn't a little girl anymore and I wasn't a woman and I wanted
to be a little girl but something in me wanted to be a woman. Who
in the world am I? Crazy, mixed up teenager. Can
you think back and remember? And how did you feel when your
dad just treated you either like a little kid or expected you
to respond like a mature adult. You felt betrayed and cheated.
Don't forget that. As you would that others do to
you, think back. How did I think? How did I act?
What did I long for mom and dad? Alright, think the thing through.
Pray over the matter. Discuss it with your wife. And
then when you have that time, the golden rule is gone before
conditioning your tongue. And then when that child starts
to respond to you, and you've thought out this case, and you
thought it had it all laid out, and lo and behold, she or he
begins to say something that throws your whole case into a
cocktail, and your first response is to defend yourself. Then you
remember, wait a minute, as you would that others do unto you,
how did I feel when my dad wouldn't let me reason with him? He felt
because he was 30 years older than I, he knew everything. How
did I feel? And then you let the golden rule
bring its pressure upon your ear. You bite your lip and control
your spirit and you hear out your teenager and lo and behold,
by the time he or she's done, you see they were right and you
were wrong. And by the grace of God, you're man enough to
say, honey, son, I was wrong. Will you forgive your daddy?
I really thought I'd prayed about the matter and see, but you've
told me things tonight that I didn't realize, and those facts that
you've told me put the whole thing in a different light. And you're willing to admit it?
Isn't it a wonderful thing that homes operate that way? Now is
that some far-off pie-in-the-sky dream? No, it isn't. Thank God
there are homes in this church that operate that way. But there
aren't enough And those of you who have mostly young children,
you're setting the framework now that will either make it
possible or impossible to resolve the tensions and the growing
dynamics of interpersonal relationships in your home as your kids get
older. But you say, Pastor, that's going to take time. You bet your
boots it's going to take time. But that's what your Lord demands
of you. But it's not only going to take time, it's going to take
earnest prayer and crying to God and going again and again
to the throne of grace, that God will afresh baptize your
tongue and your ears in the spirit of the Golden Rule, and that
God will give you all of the needed grace and wisdom to apply
these principles to your communication. I've been so encouraged this
week, several have said how in specific situations The meditation
of last Lord's Day has met them and stood them in good stead.
Oh, may God grant that these considerations will have a deep
and a lasting effect upon us as the people of God. Let us
pray to that end. Our Father, we are known to you. All things are naked and open
before your eyes. We stand tonight self-condemned
before your word. For so many times we have not
used our ears in a manner that reflected sensitivity to this
portion of your word. Forgive our selfishness. Forgive
our insensitivity to others. Forgive our bullheadedness that's
made it difficult for people to get through to us with their
word. Forgive, O Lord, every sin arising from our unsanctified
ears. We pray that your Holy Spirit
will take this word and apply it with power and enable us as
a people, young and old alike, in all of the use of our ears,
as we would that others do unto us, even so to do also unto them. Hear us, O God, hear us. and
help us, for Jesus' sake. Amen.