Let's be turning to Luke chapter
6. Luke 6. These verses in this
chapter are sometimes read like Proverbs as taken as separate
verses or few verses and they're used to declare some truth of
the Lord that He's showing us and certainly we can do that.
We can do that. Also, when you read these verses,
you'll see that there's a harmony in them, and they all have one
message, and it is the message of Scripture, which is Christ. It's the Lord Jesus Christ, the
most profitable thing that any of us can understand about this
word is that the single message of scripture is the Lord Jesus
Christ. This scripture is written to
show us Christ, to teach us Christ, and to bring us to Christ, seeing
our need of Him, because He is the very salvation whom God has
provided for His people. And so, all this word exalts
Christ in the hearts and minds of the sinner. And it's given
to bring us to Him, to show us Him. Now, each of these verses
here exposes that all men are sinners and it shows us the sufficiency
of Christ and why God sent Him. And our Lord here, He strips
the sinner down. What He's doing is He's taking
off our self-righteous rags that we're trusting in. He's removing
these and showing us you are naked. I am naked before the
true and living God. He sees right through me. I'm
not fooling Him. and He takes these self-righteous
rags off in order to show us Christ. In order to show us the
sufficiency of Christ and that He's the one that covers our
nakedness. It's for our good. And so, we
need Christ. He is the rock, the foundation
stone that God has laid. He is that foundation upon whom
the sinner builds. not by His strength, not by His
flesh, but by the grace of God, by the Spirit of God, we build
our hope, we build our trust in Christ. And I don't
like that word, that we build it, it's the Lord building upon
Christ, by His Spirit, and He's bringing us to lay all our hope
on Him. That we're not building on this
flesh, we're building on Christ, by His grace and His power. Now,
I do want to start in verse 37 and 38. Our Lord says, Judge not, and
ye shall not be judged. Condemn not, and ye shall not
be condemned. Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. Give, and it shall be given unto
you, good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running
over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure
that ye meet, or that you give, it shall be measured to you again. And so this is speaking of reciprocity
between men. This is speaking of how we should
behave toward one another. This is showing us what that
looks like. If you look up at verse 31, you'll
remember that the Lord said, as ye would that men should do
to you, do ye also to them likewise. And he's saying, among men, you're
going to reap what you sow. This says, we reap what we sow
in the Lord. And he's saying, what you do
to others, they're going to do to you. and you can't control
what they do but if you would like them to treat you a certain
way well then you treat them how you want to be treated in
that same way. But there is a principle being
laid here for sinners For you that have been called by the
Lord's grace, that as you've been shown grace of the Lord,
that's how we are to minister to one another. In that grace,
in that understanding of how the Lord has dealt with us and
taught us and brought us by his grace, that's how we should speak
and dwell with one another in that sense. Paul said it this
way in Romans 12 3, for I say through the grace given unto
me to every man that is among you not to think of himself more
highly than he ought to think but to think soberly according
as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. And so
It's a word that humbles us. And Paul dealt with a lot of
different issues in the churches. And he dealt with a lot of churches.
And he dealt with Gentile churches. He was familiar with Jewish churches.
And he was familiar with churches that had Jews and Gentiles together.
And so he dealt with frictions and differences in people. And
he said that to give us all pause. to give us all pause because
we can be very hard toward one another and judgmental toward
another and we know that sometimes we've had a bad day and we say
things we ought not to say or do things we ought not to do
and we would hope that our brethren would be generous to us and kind
to us and forgiving and so therefore remember that with your brethren
and do the same and open your mouth in prayer to God before
you open your mouth to a brother or sister. And let it be long.
Let your prayer go a long time before you speak to them, if
you can. And seek the Lord for that. So the Lord gave us another parable,
or a parable in another place, of a servant. And he was teaching
us these things a lot. And he gave us a parable in Matthew
18, where A servant owed his Lord, this is a man owing another
man, 10,000 talents. The picture is of what we owe
our debt to God. We owe Him righteousness, perfect
righteousness, and we come short of that, of God's glory, all
the time. all the time, and this servant
owed his lord 10,000 talents, and the lord was going to put
him in jail, sell his wife and his children, and he was going
to labor the rest of his days to pay off his debt, which he
never would have been able to do. And the man asked for mercy,
and the lord gave him mercy. The Lord in the parable showed
him mercy and it says that the Lord of the servant was moved
with compassion and loosed him. He let him go free and forgave
him the debt. But the same servant went out
and found one of his fellow servants which owed him a hundred pence. Now he owed ten thousand talents,
that's a lot of pence, a lot of pennies, a lot of a lot of
coin, and he had somebody that owed him just a mere 100 pence,
and we're told that he took him by the throat, saying, pay me
that thou owest. He wanted to be paid for that
little bit after he had just been forgiven 10,000 talents. And when it was told that Lord
who forgave him, the Lord went and grabbed him and did everything
he said he was gonna do because that man was an unthankful man
and he was thrown into prison. And so he's showing if you should,
what the Lord is saying there is if you show mercy to others
according to the grace that you've been shown, It'll be good. You'll receive mercy and kindness
from others. Otherwise, it's just flesh begetting
flesh. And we can all be provoked in
the flesh. We can provoke others in the
flesh. And flesh just gives birth to flesh, is what he's saying.
So be mindful of the grace of God toward you. and dealing with
others. But here in this passage, after
these verses, our Lord exposes three great dangers that every
one of us is in danger of by nature. There's three great dangers. He shows us that there's the
danger of following false prophets and teachers. That's a danger. He shows us the danger of being
a self-righteous hypocrite, That's a danger. And it shows us the
danger of being deceived by our own sinful, vile heart. And we're all in this great danger
by nature. We're all engulfed by these very
dangers. We've already succumbed to these
things in our flesh. We're already overwhelmed and
overtaken by these things naturally in the flesh in Adam. We're all
born into this. We're deceived by false prophets. We are self-righteous and think
too highly of ourselves by nature. And we're hypocrites and we're
deceived by our own sinful hearts, all by nature. And our Lord tells
us these things for the good of His people. Because again,
He's bringing us to Christ. This is why He tells us this.
He's showing us that we cannot save ourselves, that we need
Christ, and He's telling us these things to bring us to Him. To build, to rest all our hope
on Him. Because He's going to show us
that we're guilty of these in some measure. To some measure,
we're all guilty of these things by nature. We need His salvation. So first, let's pick up in verse
39 and 40. This is the danger of following
false prophets and false teachers. And He spake a parable unto them.
Can the blind lead the blind? Shall not both fall into the
ditch? the disciple is not above his
master, but everyone that is perfect shall be as his master."
And he's saying, if you follow false teachers, if you follow
a false prophet, and you listen to them, you hear them, and you're
perfect in them and what they're saying, you're doing what they're
saying, both they and you are going to fall into the ditch. You're gonna both be cast into
the pit of hell having no salvation. They're liars and deceivers.
And you're listening to them. And you're perfect in them. You're
doing what they say and what they outline for you to do. You'll
both fall into the pit. If they're not telling you the
truth, you'll fall into the pit. The student's not above his master.
So we can't follow liars and deceivers and sit under a false
gospel and think that we're somehow going to be perfect in God's
sight. No, we're going to be just like the teachers that we're
listening to. That's what he's saying there.
You're going to be just like them. We're all blind by nature. We're not pretty good people
who just got a few things wrong and just need a little bit of
help and a little bit of encouragement and coaxing in the right way
or someone to open up this book as a how-to manual, how to get
yourself saved. how to make yourself better.
That's not what this is. This book speaks of Christ. It's
to teach you Christ. It's to show you your need of
him and his perfection, that he is the very salvation of God,
which is given for his people. That's what this book is teaching
us. And so we're born into death. We're born dead in trespasses
and sins without the spirit of God. And we're ignorant. Ignorant
of the true and living God. We're like that woman in John
chapter four, that woman at the well, that Christ was standing
at the well and she comes up to draw water and he speaks to
her and she was ignorant of the true and living God. And yet
she thought that she knew the truth. She thought that she knew
the truth and that she was worshiping God and all she was doing was
bowing down to idols. Christ showed her Christ. Christ said, if you knew who
it is that speaks to you, that asks you for a cup of water,
you'd ask him for water, that living water. You'd ask him,
and he'd give it to you. And so we're just like that woman
bowing down to idols. Our Lord told her, God is a spirit,
and those that worship God must worship him in spirit and in
truth. In other words, we need to be
born again. We don't get the spirit to ourselves. We don't
get ourselves born again. We don't do things to give us
a new life. But a false prophet will tell
you that you do. A false teacher will direct you to the flesh
and tell you what you can do to get yourself saved and what
you need to do to get the favor of God. That's what a false teacher
does. He turns you to the flesh. rather than turn you to Christ
and to cry out to Him and beg Him for mercy and wait upon Him
and trust Him to believe His word, to believe His word and
say, Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. A true teacher sent
of God turns you to Christ because that's what the Spirit does.
The Spirit speaks of Christ It glorifies Christ in the hearts
of His people. The false teacher speaks of you, in your flesh,
and what you need to do. What you need to fix, and do
right, and do better. And that's not the teaching of
Christ. That's not the Spirit of Christ,
because the Spirit of Christ always speaks of Christ. It glorifies
Him in the hearts of His people. If you would be perfect, If you
would be perfect and stand before God, holy God, and be accepted
of Him, you must be perfect. And the only way you're going
to be perfect is in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what He
does. Believe the Lord Jesus Christ,
whom the Father has sent. Believe Him, trust His righteousness,
and come to the Father in Christ alone. That He is sufficient. He is sufficient. And I want
to show you three verses from Hebrews about his perfection. Hebrews 5, 9 declares Christ
to be the perfect one. It says, and being made perfect. And that's saying Christ was
made perfect by his suffering, through his suffering. Well,
what do you mean? How can the eternal Son of God,
who is perfect, how can he be made perfect? It's talking of
Christ in his mediatorial role. that the Son of God took upon
Him flesh. And when He came, He submitted
Himself to the Father. He didn't come speaking His own
words. He didn't come doing His own works. He came and said what
He heard the Father speak. He did what the Father gave Him
to do. And He endured the temptations.
He was born of a woman, born under the law. fulfilled the
law perfectly obeying God honoring God in everything thus demonstrate
so that's what it means that he was made perfect he demonstrated
and showed that he is the Savior he is able to save to the uttermost
that's what it means when it says being made perfect he became
the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him what
does it mean to obey Christ to believe him to believe Him, that
He is the Savior whom the Father sent. That's to obey Him, to
believe Him, and to trust Him, and stay upon Him, that He leads
me into the presence of God, perfect and accepted of Him. And He's going to teach me. He's
going to rule me. He's going to rule my heart.
He's going to correct me. He's going to guide me and show
me over and over again my need of Him. And He's going to appear
for me and do wondrous works. He's going to show me that He
is all, that I can rest and depend on Him fully. Now, Hebrews 7,
19 says, for the law, the reason why we look to Christ and come
in Christ is because the law made nothing perfect, but the
bringing in of a better hope did by the which we draw nigh
unto God. And so we don't come mixing and
blending the Christ plus the law, Christ plus my works, Christ
plus what I got to do. That's not your salvation. Christ
and Christ only is your salvation. And he is the one who's working
all things in you, his people. We are his workmanship created
in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained
that we should walk in them. Trust Christ. He's our life,
our perfection, our all. We come in Him. Our hope, the
hope of the sinner is Christ is all my salvation and all my
acceptance with God. Now, why do believers trust in
Christ? Why is our hope and confidence
in Him? Hebrews 10, 14. for by one offering he hath perfected
forever them that are sanctified." He's done it. God is declaring
to you, Christ is sufficient to save to the uttermost. He's
delivered us from the law because he's fulfilled it all perfectly.
We're dead to that body of sin. We are in the body of Christ
by his grace and power, and we stand complete in him, in that
body, in the body of Christ. Christ is the way, the truth,
and the life. No man comes to the Father but
by him, not him plus Moses, him, Christ Jesus alone. So when Christ
says the disciples not above his master, but everyone that
is perfect shall be as his master, that's the master we want to
come in. That's the master we must come in is Christ. Because
looking to him, we are perfect, perfected in him, and righteous
to stand before God. And that's what the father said,
this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. You come to
the father in Christ, you will not be ashamed, you will not
be confounded, you will not be cast out, you will not be, your
nakedness will not be exposed because you're covered in the
righteousness of Christ. He's sufficient to the uttermost. And just as this world hated
Christ, you'll be hated, but just as the Father received the
Son, you'll be received, coming in Christ. Second, Christ tells
us the danger of self-righteousness and hypocrisy. Look at verses
41 and 42. And why beholdest thou the mote
that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that
is in thine own eye? Either how canst thou say to
thy brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye,
when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own
eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own
eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote
that is in thy brother's eye." Now the scriptures give us many
examples of this. The scriptures show us many examples
of how the Lord takes self-righteous men and women to task. and shows
them that what you're doing is not right. You're not serving
the Lord, you're not pleasing the Lord. In Isaiah 65, you can
turn there. In Isaiah 65, and we'll pick
up in verses two, well, we'll pick up in verse two. And this
is a picture of what our Lord was doing when he came and was
speaking to the Pharisees and confronting those Pharisees.
He was taking them to task. Showing them that they're self-righteous.
They're trusting in the flesh, and that's not what saves us.
Isaiah 65, 2. The Lord says, I have spread
out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh
in a way that was not good after their own thoughts. So man has
a way, but it's the way of death. His way is the way that leads
unto death. makes sense to him. It seems
logical. It seems like, yeah, I should be doing my best to
try and please God by my works. And it seems like it makes sense.
But God's saying, that's your way, and it's not pleasing me.
What you're trying to do in saving yourselves is not pleasing to
the Lord, and as we'll see, the religious works that they're
doing. Verse three, a people that provoketh me to anger continually
to my face, that sacrificeth in gardens and burneth incense
upon altars of brick. And when you see that brick,
it's baked brick, just like Nimrod, who was building a tower of Babel.
It's the work of man's hands. It's I'm doing this for the Lord.
I'm in the garden. I have all these flowers and
this beautiful scenery. And I'm putting together such
a beautiful picture, tranquil thing, and a peaceful time. I'm
burning incense. I'm coming in this incense on
baked bricks that I've made. And we're coming in a savor of
our own works, of our own smell, of our own scent to the Lord
and thinking that God is well pleased with this savor of my
hands, of what I've done. Which remain among the graves.
He's saying you're dwelling among the dead. You think you have
life and you're dwelling among the dead, he's saying. And lodge
in the monuments. You claim to rejoice in what
the Lord has done, the great things the Lord has done, but
you're trusting in your own works. Didn't the Pharisees, they spruced
up and gave facelifts to the tombs of the prophets. And Christ
said, by these things you testify that you are their children and
not the children of God. You're glorying in their death
and what your fathers have done. and putting them to death. And
you're trusting them, not me. Which eat swine's flesh and broth
of abominable things as in their vessels. He's saying you feed
upon polluted, vile things, and thinking that your good works
save you. And trusting those things. would
say, and here it is, on top of all that, they say, stand by
thyself, come not near to me, for I am holier than thou. They're saying, you're going
to stain me, I've got to this point here, I've fixed myself
up, and I've achieved this level here, and if you come by me,
you're going to rub your filth off on me, and I'm going to be
stained and polluted, and I don't want it. So get away. Don't come
near me. I'm too righteous. I've achieved
this level and I don't want to ruin that anymore. So get away. These are smoke in my nose, a
fire that burneth all the day. And if you sat by a campfire
or anything like that and that wind blows your way, it could
be so strong sometimes you can't even take a breath. You've got
to move back or get up and go somewhere else because you can't
breathe. You can't breathe it in. And
the Lord's saying, I won't breathe it in. I'm not going to accept
your works of the flesh. And so the self-righteous despise
lowly sinners because the self-righteous believe themselves to have pleased
God by their works. And so those that can't do it,
who can't keep up with them, They don't want to be near them.
They cast them off. And so the Lord is showing us
this describes the Pharisee, the heart of the Pharisee. This
is the way of the Pharisee who is following the law. And they
thought that they were doing good. And when you trust in the
law, you'll find that once you achieve, once you feel like you've
got to some good point, now you're watching everybody on that point.
And you're going to correct everybody on that point if you live by
the law. If you live according to the law and you live according
to what you do and think you've achieved something and start
thinking of yourselves more highly, that's where you start biting
and devouring one another. And you begin to despise your
brethren because they're not keeping up with what you're doing.
And so Pharisees are people with two by four sticking out of their
eyes. And everywhere they look, they somehow can see the specks
of their brethren. And everywhere they turn to help
another person, they're bonk, bonk, you know, whacking people
upside the head with the two by four sticking out of their
eye. And they're hurting people. And they're tearing people down
by that as they accuse others of their sins and their faults. And they're willing to fix, they
want to fix your problems, but they don't see their own problems.
They're blind to what they themselves do. Christ's people, we see the
sin in His flesh. And we do have two by fours ourselves. And too often we see our own
sins and our own two-by-fours to be able to see a speck in
our brother's eye. And the Lord humbles his people.
The Lord is going to humble his people and strip us down and
show us our need of him. While the self-righteous boasts
of what they've done, the believer sorrows for his sins and confesses
their sin to the Lord and asks for mercy and forgiveness of
the Lord. The self-righteous trust in themselves
that they are righteous, and they despise others. Christ gave
a parable about that to those that trusted in themselves and
despised others. It's in Luke chapter 18. I'm
not going to read all of it, but what happened? We see the
Pharisee went up to the temple to pray, and a publican, who's
a sinner, went up to pray. And the Pharisee was doing so
good that he thanked God and began to boast of all that he
had been doing. And he boasted of all these works
that he was now able to put out and do in his flesh. And he gloried
in what he did. And he thanked God for what he
did, what he was doing. He was rejoicing in it to God.
And then the publican, who was a sinner, a filthy sinner, a
tax collector, and one despised by the people, one who had nothing
to boast of, That sinner, that publican, confessed his sin,
saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. And that's what he
said. And that's all that we read of
what he said. God, be merciful to me, a sinner. He confessed his sin and asked
God for mercy. And the Lord tells us that the
one who went home justified that day was not the Pharisee. but the sinner who confessed
his sin and asked for mercy. You that are sinners who confess
your sin to Christ and ask for mercy, ask for his forgiveness,
you shall find mercy and forgiveness with the Lord. All who come to
Christ always found mercy, always found healing, always found forgiveness
by the Lord. And that's what he tells you
that are sinners, look to Christ. You'll find peace and rest for
your souls in him. But if you trust yourselves,
if you trust yourselves and you're confident in your own works,
then you will not find that mercy of Christ. But our Lord makes
us very honest about ourselves and he makes us so that we see
that we are sinners and that we need his grace and mercy always. We never get to a point where
we grow beyond Christ. All the blessings of God, he
tells us in Ephesians 1, 3, are in heavenly places, in Christ
Jesus. That's in the atonement, in Christ. That's where all the blessings
of God are given. And they're never given outside
of Christ. It's always in Christ. And so we come, sinners are the
ones who come to Christ. The sick are the ones who come
to the great physician. And so he's showing us that we
are sinners, and he's the Savior. He's the healer. He's the one
that forgives. He's the one that comforts. And the Lord said, everyone that
exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself
shall be exalted. And even that is a mercy because
the Lord does that even for us. Because there are times when
believers get puffed up. and think they've arrived and
the Lord will humble us in grace and mercy. He humbles us to show
us again our need of Christ and then we would learn to show that
grace that we've been shown to others, to our brethren and to
others. While hypocrites seem to have
no problem to fix things and do things and turn their lives
around, believers are brought to look to Christ and to cry
out to Him and to wait upon Him by the Spirit to wait and confess
their sin and say, Lord, save me. Lord, give me repentance.
Lord, turn my heart. Lord, subdue the lusts of my
flesh. Lord, help me. Save me Lord,
and he brings us to do that. Always looking to Christ, always
looking to him. Now third, Christ tells us the
danger of being deceived by our own heart. Look at Luke 6, 43
through 45. For a good tree bringeth not
forth corrupt fruit. Neither doth a corrupt tree bring
forth good fruit, for every tree is known by his own fruit, for
of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather
they grapes. A good man out of the good treasure
of his heart bringeth forth that which is good, and an evil man
out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which
is evil, for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh. So Christ is describing here
the difference between the old man of flesh and the new man
of his spirit. It's a heart work. The Lord does
a work in the heart of his people. And an old heart, an old man,
the old man of this flesh rather, can do works that on the outside
appear good. They look good. They look like
they're like they're good to others. And the Pharisees will
look at them and think that they are good. It looks good to men
who are without. But the Lord says these are filthy
works because I see the heart. I see the heart. I see what man
is trusting in and how he glories in his works. glories in his
heart. The other heart is a new heart
made new by God and it may look bad to men without but it looks
spotless and lovely to the Lord who made it who gave that heart
because he's trusting in Christ. Our Lord tells us in Ezekiel
a new heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put
within you. And I will put my spirit within
you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep
my judgments and do them. And so this is speaking of the
new birth. We're not going to save ourselves
or transform ourselves into new creatures by this flesh. We must be born again by the
Spirit of God which is given to you that look to Christ, that
believe Christ. That's why you look to Christ
because the Spirit of God has been given to you and given you
life so that you look to the Lord Jesus Christ. You are turned
from dead ways and wicked ways to the Lord Jesus Christ. The
hypocrite looks to the flesh. What this passage is teaching
here is that hypocrites, those that have a deceived heart, look
to the flesh to improve the flesh. And that's why the Lord said
of thorns, men do not gather figs. And you don't go to bramble
bushes looking for grapes. And what is he talking about
there? Well, this flesh is cursed. This flesh is under the curse
of the law. This flesh is of the dust of
this earth. And when Adam sinned, God cursed
the ground. And he said it's going to bring
forth for you thorns and thistles. and you're going to cultivate
it and labor in it and try to bring forth fruit and it's going
to give you thorns and thistles and so what he's saying there
is if you look to the flesh to improve yourselves by the flesh,
you're not going to get figs and grapes, you're going to get
thorns and thistles and bramble bushes. All right, God said,
cursed is the ground for thy sake, and sorrow shalt thou eat
of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall
it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field.
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return
unto the ground. For out of it wast thou taken,
for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." And so, if
you turn to your flesh to bring forth fruit unto God, he's saying
it's going to be dead fruit. It's not going to be profitable.
It's going to be the cursed fruit. And if a, and I think it's in
Matthew, if a, what false teachers do, they turn you to the flesh.
They try to get that fruit from the flesh. But you that believe
Christ, that look to him, he's the one that brings forth righteous
fruit. He gives his spirit. He gives
faith and love and kindness and gentleness to others. And he
brings you to confess your sin to the Lord and ask him for mercy
and grace. and He keeps you humble and dependent
upon Him, looking to Him. Those are fruits of the Spirit,
not the works of the flesh and binding others and controlling
others by the works of the flesh. He makes us new creatures in
Christ, new creatures by the gift of God in Christ through
His redemption. Now this brings us to what our
Lord closes his sermon with in verses 46 and 47. First, he says,
and why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I
say? Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth
them, I will show you to whom he is like. All this, what he's
showing us in stripping us down and stripping off the self-righteous
rags that were trusting him, it's to bring us to him. and
to cry out to him and he's giving us a new birth by his grace. He's showing us Christ. And the
one that sees his sin and comes to Christ for salvation, for
grace and mercy, this is what he says in verse 48 and 49. He
is like a man which built in house and dig deep and laid the
foundation on a rock. And when the flood arose, the
stream beat vehemently upon that house and could not shake it,
for it was founded upon a rock. This one built his house on a
good foundation, on the Lord Jesus Christ and his righteousness. But he that heareth and doeth
not is like a man that without a foundation built in house upon
the earth, upon the strength of your flesh. Against which
the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell, and
the ruin of that house was great. And so the Lord, by his grace,
takes his children deeper. We go deeper than the superficial
works of making the outside look clean and good and spotless to
others. The flesh can do that. The flesh
can put on a real good show and can give this old man a facelift. And we can look good to others,
but the Lord looketh upon the heart And we need a new heart,
we must be born again. And Christ is the one who gives
that new birth. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved. The Lord takes his children and
uses manifold temptations so that the rain falls, the storm
waters rise up, the wind comes and blows upon that structure.
And if it's of the flesh, it shall be destroyed in judgment. But if it's of the Lord, it's
going to stand. It's going to stand. He's going
to humble his people. He's going to teach his people. He's going
to show us the deadliness of our sin and what we are in his
flesh. And he's going to make us cry
out, Lord, help me. I'm blind Bartimaeus. Save me. Help me. Give me sight, Lord,
because I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to save
myself. I know you're the Savior. Save me. save me and that's what
he's bringing us all to do is to come to him because he is
salvation and the sinner has nothing to save themselves with,
nothing to give to God and so that sinner who is bankrupt and
poor and needy and sick, defiled, diseased, ruined, that one comes
and casts all their hope on Christ and he says that one is built
on the rock, on the foundation that the Father has given for
the salvation of his people. And that structure will not fall
in the day of judgment with the holy, all-seeing, all-knowing
eye of God. It will not be destroyed. It's
going to stand forever. in the presence of God, worshiping
him with all his people and his holy angels, blessed of God. And so Christ describes the believer
as one that's dig deep. He brings you low in yourself,
stripped and brought to nothing in ourselves to find our all
in the Lord Jesus Christ. I pray that he Do that for each
and every one of you that are here this morning hearing these
words, that you find your all in Christ and build your house
on the Lord Jesus Christ. That is, trust Him, believe Him,
believe Him, and you shall not be ashamed in Christ. Amen.