We're closing in on the end of
Luke chapter 6. We might spend one more lesson
in it maybe, but today we're concerned with verse 39. In the
last lessons, we were examining love your enemies. how that can
happen, and how the Lord did that for us. So let's read from
verse 1. Let's see. Let's read from verse
35 down. But love your enemies, and do
good, and lend, hoping for nothing again, and your reward shall
be great, and ye shall be the children of the highest, for
He is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Be ye therefore
merciful as your Father also is merciful. Judge not, and ye
shall not be judged. Condemn not, and ye shall not
be condemned. Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. Given it shall be given unto
you, good measure, and pressed down, and shaken together, and
running over. And shall men give to your bosom,
for with the same measure that you meet with all, it shall be
measured to you again. And then we come to the verse
that we're going to be looking at today, verse 39. And he spake
a parable unto them, can the blind lead the blind? Shall they
not both fall into the ditch? And we're going to look at why
It's odd that you put this parable kind of right in the middle of
this little sermon that he's given. And he said in verse 40,
the disciple is not above his master, but everyone that is
perfect shall be as his master. And why beholdest thou the mote
that's in thy brother's eye, but perceive it's not the beam
that's in thine own eye? Either how canst thou say to
thy brother, brother, let me pull the mote out that is in
thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that's
in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first
the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou seek clearly
to pull the mote that is in thy brother's eye. I lost my Zoom connection here. 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 a thorn's men do not gather
figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. A good man Out of
the 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 the abundance of the heart
his mouth speaketh. And why call you me Lord, Lord,
and don't do 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. He's like a man which buildeth
a 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. But
he that heareth and doeth not is like a man that without a
foundation built a house upon the earth, and against which
the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell, and
the ruin of that house was great." What a picture of the gospel
there. You're founded on that gospel. You're founded on the
truth of God's gospel and it's unshakable. And if it's not,
then we find the opposite is true. So as we look at this parable
of the blind leading the blind, why is it in the midst of these
verses? We've just seen all the things
that the Lord has done on our behalf, and things that sometimes,
even under the best of circumstances, we could never do. If someone
takes your coat away, give them the rest of your garments and
stuff. Well, they parted my garments,
he said. and cast lots for my vesture.
He did that for us. All those things that we explored
in the previous lessons. In the midst of this, we have
interjected this curious parable about the blind meeting the blind,
both falling into the ditch. He also references, it's not
in the middle of his sermon in Matthew Sermon on the Mount. It's in chapter 15 verse 14. He mentions it there and also
he mentions it in passing in Matthew 23 regarding blind leaders. They're just awful. And some
things to consider. So why here in the middle? Who
are the blind? And why would they trust themselves to one
equally blind? The blind leading the blind.
That just seems odd. And who are the blind leaders? And why do they seem to think
that they're capable of leading and who don't even recognize
their own condition? They promote various systems
of works and ability self-righteousness. It's just works versus grace,
the same thing that we always seem to run into. And so let's
kind of look at the context into which this parable is placed
here by the purpose of God. It's not here by accident. It's
not just because it sounded good. and it was a catchy thing to
say. And previously to the parable,
we've looked at the identification of the Lord's church by grace.
Blessed be ye poor. those who have been made to realize
their condition by nature, that they have no merit or self-worth
which makes them attractive to God. It's strictly from grace. Nothing with which they may obtain
salvation by self-means and that they've been relieved of that
price by the finished work of Christ.
He's done it all. He's completed it. Yours, He
says, yours is the kingdom. And we learned that that kingdom
is nothing less than the person and work of Christ. Blessed are
ye that hunger. You know, the church hungers
to know more about Christ who saved them. and called them out
of darkness into his marvelous light. And I remember experiencing
that same thing. I want to know more. And they
said, no, that's too high for you. No, we can't go there. I know that's what the Bible
says, but we just can't go there because it disagrees with our
ideology and all those things. Well, if it's in the Bible, it's
worth reading. No, it's not. So, blessed are you that hunger,
and blessed are you that weep now, those that have been brought
to the knowledge of their sin nature by the Holy Spirit, and
they understand, as Ezekiel said, then shall you remember your
own evil ways that were not good, and you'll loathe yourself. But
at the same time, when that happens, you'll be comforted. Because
you'll know that Christ has taken care of that. But you'll be made
to know things that you thought were okay yesterday, well they're
not now. And you have a greater sense
of the fall and sin. He says, you shall laugh. And
that word really means to rejoice, not laugh in a comedic way at
something as humorous. It's a rejoicing kind of a word. And because it's been revealed
to them that they've been cleansed from their sin, their iniquities
have been pardoned, There is therefore now no condemnation
to those that are in Christ. Hallelujah. What a wonderful
thing to find out. And we always find those things
coupled together in the Scriptures. You always find the evidence
of the fallen in for the Lord's Church. The Gospel is always
coupled right with it. But God who's rich in mercy.
We'll look at some of that here later. No condemnation. What
a feeling. I remember feeling that for the
first time. What a relief. What a feeling. Blessed are ye when men shall
hate you and separate you and reproach you and cast your name
as evil. And remember from our lesson
there that we're warned to expect that to happen when we're faithful
to the truth of the gospel. When we're faithful to sovereignty,
when we're faithful to the truth of God. And he says, don't be
offended. And we learned that that word,
what that really, that word meant was don't be entrapped into some
kind of an apostasy. by those that are opposed to
you. And that's what that word really means. It doesn't mean,
oh, I'm offended because you called me a bad name. Don't be
trapped into, well, if you don't renounce sovereignty, if you
don't renounce salvation by grace, then we're going to call you
a bad name, or we're going to arrest you, or we're going to
cast you in prison, or whatever. Don't be trapped or ensnared
into apostasy by that and we have an identification of those
who by nature are in opposition to the Lord and rely on self-sufficiency
to accomplish a relationship with with God and and I was reading
something and I kind of I was talking to Norm about last week
and I kind of it was partly right but it was partly wrong and so
I kind of rewrote it to to be right according to scripture. That religion is man in various
schemes of works or merit attempting to come to God. That's what religion
is. And grace is God coming to man. And there's all the difference
in the world. And that's basically what we
have here in this parable of the blind leading the blind.
The blind is an attempt at man trying to come to God through
various works, or merit, or performance, or whatever you might want to
call it. And grace is simply Emmanuel with us. God coming
to us. apart from any merit, apart from
any worth, apart from any worth, solely by sovereign mercy and
eternal electing love. He says, woe to you that are
rich, that depend on that. Woe to you that are rich. Woe
to you that are full. You don't hunger and thirst after
righteousness because you're full of yourself. You're full
of your own self-worth, your own self-righteousness. You have
no need of a physician. Woe to you who laugh, and in
this case it's kind of a mocking laugh. Woe to you that laugh. Woe to you that only seek the
praise of men. You have your reward. You have
your reward. By grace, the Lord says, love
your enemies. And we find out that we were
the enemies. And he loved us from before the
foundation of the world. And we looked at some examples
and spent most of our time looking at Saul of Tarsus when the Lord
apprehended him on the road to Damascus. And Ananias says, oh,
The Lord says, he's coming and I want you to take care of him.
He says, that's a bad man. We've heard much about the evil
that he wants to do here and how much evil he's done in Jerusalem. And the Lord says, he's a chosen
vessel to me to bear my name to the Gentiles. And he says,
okay. But remember that we're just
like Ananias. We don't know who the who the
Lord's chosen vessels are, the vessels of mercy that he had
aforeprepared unto glory. We don't know who those are.
So we have to be faithful in proclaiming the gospel to everyone,
in the truth of it, and be faithful there. So, love your enemies, and we
can't have any better example of that than Christ who said,
there's no greater love than a man lay down his life for his
friends. Even when we were yet sinners, Christ died for the
ungodly. So, if we can do any of that,
even in the smallest way, it's just a demonstration of the fruit
of the Spirit. And we depend on Him having fulfilled. All these things are really things
that we find that were encompassed in the law and the prophets.
And He fulfilled every single one of them where we couldn't. By grace, we would do unto others
as we would have them do unto us in demonstration of the grace
that was bestowed on us. And boy, that is a tall order.
So now we come to this parable of the blind. And on the other
side of this, the blind leading the blind, they'll both fall
into the dish. Then we come to these other examples
that these displays of spiritual fruit and displays of unspiritual
fruit. And so we, he says we, we should be aware that the disciple
is not above his master. We should be humbled by that. We're not going to be treated
any better than him. And if he experienced these things,
and if we represent him, then we probably will experience them
as well. Everyone that is perfect or mature
in Christ shall be as his master. And he didn't hold back. He brought the gospel everywhere
he went. And sometimes the result was, well,
this is a hard saying. Who can know it? And we were
leaving. It's always been my experience that there's no ambiguity
in grace. people embrace it or they depart. There's not much middle ground
there. And so to be humble and know that we should strive to
be mature in Christ, ready always to give answer to those that
ask us of the hope that lies within us. We should have that
and we should understand that and we should have humbleness
and respect for the finished work of Christ and the grace
that brought us to it. I'm just always amazed when I
look back and say, look at all the various things that happened
all through time that caused us to arrive at this one place
where the Gospel and one of the Lord's people intersect. And then he has this go and do
and experience all the things that he has us do to get to where
he wants us to be to do what he wants done. So it's just amazing. Sanctify the Lord God in your
hearts and be ready always to give an answer to every man that
asks you a reason of the hope that is within you with meekness
and in fear, not because, well, I went to seminary school and
I have four doctorates in useless stuff and psychology and emotional
play and things like that. No, in meekness. and in fear, in respect, that's
what that word means, is respect God Almighty for what He's done,
and to recognize our faults before we point out what we perceive
to be faults in others. That's what that moat in your
eye business is about. We're just so quick to, in our
natural state, say, I'm glad I'm not like that man. And we find out that we've got
the beam in our own eye and we don't stop to consider all the
issues that we have that we need to be in communication with God
about and not picking on this other person.
And to bring forth good fruit cannot come from a corrupt tree,
it goes on to tell us here. And good fruit comes not from
corrupt trees, and corrupt fruit cannot come from a good tree.
So there's a spiritual application of the truth of the gospel there.
If you pollute the gospel, if you pervert the gospel, It's
not the gospel any longer. You've changed it. And we're
not to do that. We're to stick with it in truth
and let the results leave them up to God in the Holy Spirit.
We can't make it effectual. And that's where religion always
steps across the line. It's not happening fast enough,
or it's not happening on a large enough scale or scope. We need
to, we need to ooch it along here. And it's this psychology
and emotionalism that they bring into play. If we can just get
them crying, we can get them to come down here and then I
just read this book, and at the very close of it, it says, if
you would like to know the Lord Jesus Christ, just say this prayer.
I'm sorry. I'm some sinner. I believe Jesus
is the Son of God. And you turn the page, and it
says, congratulations. Now you're saved. Just that quick. doesn't matter if anything really
happened or not. It doesn't really matter. It's
just a repeat after me. Now God is obliged because you
said the magic words. He is obliged. He's under obligation
to you to respond that way. And that is just not what we
find in the scripture. We find that there is way more
to it than that. There is the the sovereign work
of God from before the foundation of the world, having mercy on
those who have no merit, on those who don't deserve it. He's not
rewarded us according to our iniquities. So, we have that
and we have the fallacy of identifying oneself with the Lord God Almighty
and then not doing or teaching what He said. We've all run into
that. Why don't we ever have a sermon
from Ephesians? Well, I know what it says, but
I just can't go there because it opposes my view of free will. And it's got several words in
there that we're not allowed to say out loud. And in the middle, in the middle
of all this, we have this parable of the blind leading the blind.
And, you know, we find that all men are blind by nature. We're
all there. We're blind to anything spiritual,
we're blind to grace, we're blind to the finished work of Christ
on behalf of the church, those whom the Father gave him from
before the foundation of the world to redeem. That has all
taken out. The natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God, their foolishness unto him. Well,
I don't know why we just can't have people say this little prayer
and come down here and swear allegiance and promise to be
good and join the church and be baptized observed communion,
all those rituals that they enter into that are supposed to be
reminders and pictures of what the Lord did for us, not entrance ceremonies where they just don't
really mean anything. You can't know them because they're
spiritually discerned. The blind leader can't know those
things because they're spiritually discerned. He can't see them.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, unless you'll be born again,
you can't see the kingdom of God. And remember, that kingdom
of God is not just a place. It's not just a thing. It's the
person and work of Christ. You can't see that. until you're
born again. And he says, then you can't enter. Unless you're born of the Spirit,
you can't enter. You can't see it, you can't enter
it. So we know that if the instructors, the leaders, the reverends, the
priests, if they're in this condition, how can they be on the narrow
way? Let alone remain on it without
falling into the ditch. And I was talking to Norm, so
that ditch is this, in other places in the scripture it's
called that great gulf that separates the unbelievers from the believers.
And that's the condition that we're all in by nature until
God relieves us of that condition. I'm come to give sight to the
blind. So how can a person who's been
blind from birth explain the colors of a rainbow to another
person? How could they do that? I want
to tell you about something that I've never experienced and that
I don't know anything about. How can that be? But if you're
just as blind as a person that's saying these things, then you'd
say, OK, I'll sit there. In the same fashion, how can
a person who's never experienced grace, who knows nothing of total
reliance on Christ for salvation, who understands not the least
iota about who God is or what He is, how can they lead or instruct
others regarding that which they have no knowledge or experiential
participation? How could they do that? Well,
if they do it, they both fall into the ditch. I was reading
in Deuteronomy, it was talking a little bit about this, and
those that do that are guilty of causing a blemish on the church. They cause one of those spots,
those wrinkles, those blemishes. They're guilty of that. You know, by grace, God by the
Spirit does not let His sheep linger long in a situation like
that. He will remove them. or he'll
replace the blind with pastors and teachers which he supplies,
or by grace he'll visit grace on the blind leader and cause
him to see where he was blind. There's a pastor in Anchorage
that one day the Lord revealed himself
to him in grace and he had to get up. He had a really large
congregation. four or five times longer and
bigger than this, and it was full. And he had to get up in
the pulpit and says, I've been wrong, lo these many years. And
I believe now, I believe in sovereign grace and not of works. And he said, that's what I'm
going to preach from now on. So if you don't like it, now's
the time to raise your hand and say so and throw me out. And
they kept him on and we got to know him after that. That's what happened to him.
If his sheep become into a place like that, he He'll either move them out of
there or he'll intersect them with the gospel, the truth of
the gospel at some point. Jeremiah 3.15 says, I will give
you pastors according to my heart. which shall feed you with knowledge
and understanding." And if you're not in a place where you can
get that, then you're in the wrong place. If you're really
one of God's sheep, you're just not going to be able to stay
there. You just can't do it. You're hungry and you want to
be full, and you can't get that there. Amazing Grace, John Newton
wrote, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I was
blind once, not physically blind, but blind spiritually. And he
says, but now I see. And things looked all different
to him. Things were totally opposite
of how they were before. The blind man, the natural man
is blind to the three R's of true grace. Norm's always mentioning
that from the pulpit. Ruined by the fall. If you don't
have a grip on that, then If you don't understand being ruined
by the fall, if you don't understand the sin nature, then the rest
of it is going to be bad. Redemption. Ruined by fall, redemption
by Christ, and regeneration. Solely by grace, apart from any
works or merit whatsoever. Ruined by the fall, spiritually
dead. No spiritual ability whatsoever
is what that means. They call it total depravity,
but it doesn't mean you're as bad as you could be. Some people
are lost, but they're just the nicest folks you'd ever meet,
and they wouldn't steal a pack of gum or do anything bad. But
they have no spiritual ability to come to Christ of their own
free will. without God saying, my people
shall be willing in the day of my power. We believe according
to the working of His mighty power, not something that we
conjure up within ourselves. The person in the leadership
role of a pastor or teacher who has no experimental knowledge
of grace, no real trust in the effectual working of the spirit
in the gospel, they have to rely on social or topical preaching. Because they have no knowledge
of grace, they can't talk about that. They rely on behavior-related
things, or church membership, or church authority, or church
history, or tithing. And all of those things have
no bearing on salvation. They're just control items that
they kind of inflict on you to kind of keep your toe in the
mark. They just want to keep you on
their roll, so they can say, well, I've got 180 people on
my assembly, or thousands, or 5,000. They're all substitutes
replacing and supplanting the truth of the gospel and the effectual
nature of Christ alone saving his people. No trust. Well, I know that you have to
be born by the Spirit, but it just takes so long. And why can't
everybody just be saved like right now? What's to stop them
from being saved right now? That's what Finney said. There's
nothing preventing people from being saved at any moment than
just marching right down the aisle and come down here and
say this prayer. and abracadabra, they're saved. And then later on in life he
says, there seems to be a little problem with my flock. So then he kind of went back
to preaching the law to kind of get them tuned back into,
okay, well, you're not keeping the law, that's what your problem,
that's why you're backsliding, that's why you're having all
these spiritual issues. They're not trusting in Christ,
they're trusting in what they did that day, and then now they're
gonna, now he's gonna have them trust in trying to keep the law.
Well, we know how that's gonna work, that's gonna be a big failure. So another case of the blind
leading the blind. Paul said, I'm not ashamed of
the gospel. He knew that it was the power of God unto salvation
to everyone that believed, to the Jew first and to the Greek. How shall they hear, lest they
be sent? How beautiful are the feet of
them that preach the gospel. Gospel of peace, not just, well,
world peace. The peace that is between God
and someone that was a formerly enmity with Him. And Christ is
our peace. He's that one that can lay a
hand on us both through grace. Glad tidings of good things. that we just got through celebrating
that annual thing here. But I think about the blind leading
the blind and how they just lead people off onto something wrong,
and then there's never any satisfaction, if there's never any hope, and
if there's never any consolation, if there's never any long-term
good out of it. We knew lots of people that one
day, well, yesterday I felt like I was saved, but today, no. Because they were just trusting
in something they did or something they said. And instead of having
their pastor explain to them how things really are, they just
got more stuff to do. And the more stuff they did that
they failed at, the worse they felt. Instead of teaching them from
grace from any book of the Bible, as we've been going through the
Old Testament with our pastor now all these many years and
all the other places we've been, the gospel is in every page of
every book. But the blind, well, it's a good
history book. There's a lot of good social
skills in there that you need. There's a lot of good behavioral
patterns in there for you to emulate. All these things, but
they miss Christ in all of it. And so I wanted to read, we're
almost out of time, but in Ephesians chapter one, For the sake of time, we're not
going to read all of it. Let's start in verse 13. It says,
In whom ye also trusted after that ye heard the word of truth,
the gospel of your salvation, in whom also after ye believed,
ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the
earnest of our inheritance till the redemption of the purchased
possession unto the praise of His glory. Wherefore, I also,
after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and love to all
the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, mentioning you
in my prayers, The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father
of glory may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation
and the knowledge of him." That's that hungering after that you'll
be filled. If you have a true pastor, he'll
be telling you these things. He'll be filling you full of
these, the unsearchable riches of Christ. The eyes of your understanding
being enlightened that you may know what is the hope of your
of His calling and the riches of the glory of His inheritance
and saints and what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us
who believe according to the working of His mighty power which
He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead." How
marvelous is that? And that is just left out. the
unsearchable riches of Christ, but God who is rich in mercy,
you who were dead in trespasses and sins." Dead, dead, dead. What does that mean? In chapter
two he says, you who were dead in trespasses and sins. where
in time past you walked according to the course of this world,
according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit
that now worketh in the children of disobedience and among whom
we, we all had our conversation in times past and less the flesh
fulfilling the desire of the flesh and of the mind and whereby
nature, the children of wrath, even as others, but God who's
rich in mercy. For His great love wherewith
He loved us from before the foundation of the world. Those, Christ,
the names engraved on my hands. They're in the symbols on the
ephod and on the shoulder plates of the priest. They're bound
around His heart with cords that can't be broken. Even when we were dead, in sins, quickened us together
by grace are you saved." Boy, you couldn't look down and see
anything good that would say, well, that person deserves... in spite of that. For by grace
are you saved through faith in that, not of yourselves. It's
a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. So
the blind that have no experience or understanding turns to what
he does know and then tries to apply that in the place of the
gospel. And it's in fact, it's not another gospel. It's not
any kind of gospel. It's not effectual. It's not
from God, has no part with him or the church that he's loved
from eternity. The fruit, of that blind tree is only more
of the same. They just reproduce it. The colleges
down, they just turn them out. They
just turn them out, more and more and more of the same. It
can only reproduce what it is. Someone that knows grace, that's
all they can talk about, how wonderful grace is. The fruit of the blind tree is
just more blind fruit. It's corrupt. It has the feel,
the smell, the taste of religion. All those things that appeal
to our physical senses. It looks good. I get my suit
on. I come down here. Throw in my
change in the plate. Everybody sees me. Yep, he was
at church Sunday. He looks good. It appeals to that. But when
Christ gives sight to the blind, all that becomes apparent for
what it is. Paul says, well that was dung.
He was pretty plain about that. It's what we call the doo-doo
religion. He says, they hear, but they
don't do. Why do you call me Lord and do
not the things I say? How often have we heard someone
say, well I know what the Bible says, but... I have a free will. But, God
wouldn't be fair if He didn't do it my way. I just can't go
there. It does away with my formulaic
approach to salvation, the repeat the prayer and then congratulations.
How often have we heard it said, well, I know God is sovereign,
but I can accept or reject him because I have a free will and
I'm more sovereign in these. I can come under my own terms.
And if God doesn't accept me under my own terms, well, that's
his problem, not mine. We've all heard those things.
The fruit of that is, depart from me, you workers of iniquity,
for I never knew you. And the fruit of the gospel is,
come ye blessed of my father and inherit the kingdom prepared
for you from the foundation of the world. The blind, if they
lead the blind, they're just, they're both going to a bad end. So we'll stop there. We went
a little bit over time. We're just kind of closing out
our study here in Luke chapter 6, so I don't know if we'll visit
here on this anymore. Anyway, until the next time,
Lord bless you and be free.