Turn with me this morning to
Luke chapter six. Luke chapter six. Having instructed us concerning
our attitude and conduct in this world, there's an attitude and
conduct that goes along with faith in Christ. It's generated
by the grace of God and the love of God. Paul said, the love of
God constraineth us. And our Lord had been talking
to his disciples and to the Pharisees who gathered around about this
attitude and conduct and also the woes, the curse of God upon
unbelieving men. And now he applies what he said
to his hearers. Luke chapter six, beginning with
verse 39. And he spake a parable unto them. Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into
the ditch? The disciples not above his master,
but everyone that is perfect shall be as his master. 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, 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 moat that is in thy brother's eye. 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 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. He begins by telling us about
three dangers, warning us. There's three dangers out in
this world, and these are things that I've been warning you about
since as long as I've been here. Been warning men about before
I came here, and warning myself. And the first thing is this.
He warns us of the danger of following after false prophets. Can the blind lead the blind? If they're all blind and one
man says, I see! And everybody else says, okay,
we'll follow him. But he don't see. He's blind. He's blind. Can the blind lead
the blind? What is this blindness that he's
picturing in this parable? What's he talking about? Paul told Timothy that he, persecuted
the church, and this blindness is the, in this parable, he's
talking about an assumed light. He's talking about that which
is not light, but men think that it's light. They're blind, they're
not blind with these eyes, they're blind with these eyes, with the
eyes of faith. They have no understanding, it's
ignorance. It's the darkness of ignorance
and deception. And Paul told Timothy that he
was talking about himself in days gone by, and he said, I
persecuted the church. And I did so in the ignorance
of unbelief. I was ignorant, that's why I
persecuted them. I saw them as a threat to the
true and living God, which he didn't know. He was ignorant. He did those things in ignorance.
He told the Epicureans and Stoics on Mars Hill that they ignorantly
worshipped those false gods. And the blindness which our Lord
is telling us about is ignorance which Satan spawns by anti-Christ
religion. He promotes it. He puts his stamp
of approval on it. He puts it in men's hearts and
minds. And Gentiles or heathens, according
to the scripture, they walk in the vanity of their mind, having
their understanding darkened, being alienated, that is, separated. I don't live in the same country.
I'm alienated from the life of God. I don't have that life.
And what is eternal life but the knowledge of the true and
living God? But we're alienated from that life. We're not born
with that life. We don't have that understanding.
And so we walk in ignorance, being alienated from the life
of God. Because of the blindness of our
hearts. In 2 Peter 2.1, he said there
was false prophets also among the people. Even as there shall
be false teachers among you who privately, unnoticed, they come
in unnoticed, shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying
the Lord that bought them and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious
ways by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken
of. So the blind our Lord's talking about do not know that they're
blind. They're blind men, but they don't
know they're blind. They have things to say, but
they have no basis for it. They don't know that they're
blind. And neither do those who follow. They don't know either. But the end is the same. They
both gonna fall in the ditch. They both gonna be cast into
hell. He said, you encompass sea and
land to make one proselyte, one follower, just like you. You
want him to have your experience. You want him to have what you
call hope. You're going to make a proselyte. You're going to make another
one just like you. And when you've made him, he's
twofold more of the child of hell than you are. So this is the first danger,
following after false prophets. And then the second danger is
the effect of the first on their followers. Self-righteousness
and hypocrisy. Self-righteousness is anything
you do to gain favor with God. Self-righteousness. Well, I did
this. When you hear men give their
testimony, what do they talk about? I'm talking about out
here in the world. What do they talk about? They
talk about that aisle they walked, that decision they made, that
altar they nailed at, that vision they had, that experience they
had. I've heard a thousand of them. And they're all the same. It's something by which they
gained God's favor. Even prayer can be a damnable
act. Did you know that? There was
two men, our Lord said, that went into the house of God to
worship. Two of them. One was a publican. And he went up, and he bowed
his head down, and he wasn't even worthy to be in that place. He had no worthiness about him
whatsoever. Lord, have mercy on me, the sinner. That was his prayer. But there
was a Pharisee and he came in in the back and looking on that
man up there praying and listening to his prayer, he just looked
heaven right in the face and he said, God, I thank you, I
ain't like him. That's self-righteousness. And
it's hypocrisy. It's hypocrisy because you don't
really have a righteousness. You're professing to be something
that you're not. You're professing to have something
that you don't have. And it's hypocrisy. The self-righteous man is always
trying to cure other men's eye problems. Let me get that mold out of your eye. Let me help you out. Let
me fix you up. You got a problem and I can see
it. No, you can't see it. You got a beam in your eye. There's
a whole lot of difference between a moat and a beam. A beam's like
those big things out there that's holding up the front porch. That's
a beam. A moat's a little speck. They're going to try to get that
speck out of their eyes so they can see clearly. But the problem
is they're both blind. The one with the beam and the
one with the speck. They're both blind. And they don't know it. Religion doctors a dead man but
perceives him to be living. You think about what I just said.
He's doctoring a dead man. But he wouldn't doctor him if
he didn't think he was living. That woman with the issue of
blood, she spent all her living on physicians. Physicians, every
one of them said, I think we can cure you. I think we know
what's wrong with you. Now you take this for a month.
She spent every nickel she had and was nothing better until
she went to the great physician. One time was enough. When a man's plagued with self-righteousness,
he now becomes a hypocrite. He's pretending to be what no
man can be of himself. Christ is the believer's righteousness.
We don't have a righteousness. Anybody here think they're righteous
before God of themselves? Proud of what you think and proud
of what you are and proud of what you've done? That's self-righteousness,
that's what that is. We're nothing before God apart
from his grace, nothing. We're nothing outside of Christ,
but except an abomination to God. Christ is the believer's
righteousness. All our righteousnesses, Isaiah
said, are as filthy rags. That's the leper's cloth, that's
the menstrual cloth. But we do have an inheritance,
believers do, and it's incorruptible and undefiled and fadeth not
away, but it's reserved in heaven. It's reserved in heaven for you
who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation
ready to be revealed in the last day. So beware of false prophets
and beware of their converts, self-righteous men and hypocrites. And lastly, beware of a deceived
heart. The heart is deceitful, the Bible
said, above all things. The heart is deceitful above
all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? I can tell you
about it. As I see things in the scripture,
I can describe it, but I can't plumb the depth of it. And neither
were you. Not until that day shall we know
just how wicked we really are. Listen to this. They said, your
disciples eaten with unwashing hands. They're defiled. The Lord said this. He said,
out of the heart proceed evil thoughts. Where'd they come from? Out of the heart. Well, you get
mad. Get mad. Here's somebody you
truly love, but you're mad. Boy, wow. Out it comes. Out of the heart proceed evil
thoughts. Murders. Where'd that come from? Out of the heart. Adulteries. fornications, thefts, false witness,
blasphemies. These are the things that defile
a man. It's what's coming out of his heart. I don't know how we think, but
I think sometimes men think like this. They think salvation is
like a man who discovers a few things and then slowly evolves
into a Christian. That's not what salvation is.
Salvation's a new birth. It's being called out of darkness
into light. It's coming from ignorance to
wisdom. Coming from blindness and having
eyes to see. Blessed are your eyes, he said,
for they see. Luke 6, 43. Our Lord said to
them, he said, 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. God's children all bear fruit. They bear the fruit of the Spirit
of God. They bear that fruit, not because
they generate it, but because of that nature that God's put
in them, because of that salvation that God's revealed to them.
He talks about it over in the book of John. He said God planted
a tree in his garden, one tree. Every branch that he grafted
into that tree bears fruit. If a branch says I'm part of
that tree and it doesn't bear any fruit, he walks it off and
throws it in the fire because it's good for nothing. How can
you bear fruit when you're grafted into him? You're grafted into
him. God's children all bear the fruit
of the Spirit because the Spirit has grafted him into Christ. We know him and in knowing him,
he's given to us an understanding, 1 John 5.20. What kind of an
understanding? That we may know him that's true.
And that we're in Him that's true, even in His Son, Jesus
Christ. We're not left to a fallen nature
to draw from or a deceived word to nourish that little spark
that we believe that's in us. We have Jesus Christ, our Lord,
and we're complete in Him. We have everything we need. God is light, John said, and
in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship
with him who is all light, but we walk in darkness, we lie.
That's what he said, we lie. We're hypocrites. The Lord said earlier in our
text here in Luke, he said the disciple is not above his master,
but everyone that is perfect shall be as his master. That
is, those who hope in his perfections, hope in that perfect Lord, his
attitude and conduct gonna be just like him. Just like him. Everybody that hath this hope
in him purifies himself, even as he is pure. And all those who hope in his
perfections and hope in that perfect salvation and that perfect
Savior, a perfect righteousness, shall be as he is. Listen to
this over here in 1 John 4. He said, herein is our love made
perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment. We're
gonna stand before God in judgment. We're gonna come to the realization
that even now we stand before him who judges the whole world,
who has judged it. Who is judging it and who shall
judge it in that day? We're standing before Him. Because as He is, so are we in
this world. Now what that says, 1 John 4,
17. Beloved God does business in
the heart. But the heart of man, that natural
heart, is deceitful above all things. The heart loves darkness
rather than light, and it clings to experiences and professions
and decisions and deals that they made with God. When God
gives a man a new heart, He brings him to see three things. He brings
him first to discover his own sinfulness. His own sinfulness. The exceeding sinfulness of sin.
That sin, that exceeding sinfulness of sin is that sin is even in
our so-called righteousnesses, in our so-called religious worship,
in our so-called prayers. We discover that sin is what's
in us and it defiles all that we try to do and all that we
think that we are. It defiles us. We discover sin. I had two brothers. They were
both come back from the war, and both of them were alcoholics.
And they lived for the bottle. They lived for the party. And
they lived for the pleasure. And when I was young, growing
up, oh, I envied them. I listened to them tell stories
about where they'd been and what they were doing, and I envied
them. I wanted to be just like them. I couldn't wait till the
day I could go with them, do what they were doing. But when
I got older, I found out that their behavior and saw it in
the light of my own mother and father's love for them and the
damage that they did to them. And they never saw it. They never
saw the pain that they were causing them. Well, that's what happens
when a man discovers his sin. He doesn't see sin anymore in
the light of the law. He sees sin in the light of love. My sins that, that's why he's
nailed on that cross. That's why he's suffering. That's
why the son of God is absorbing all this humiliation. And can
you imagine God who made the world standing before men and
they're slapping his face and spitting and there's fiddles
running down off his chin and they beat him till you can't
even recognize him. Why? It's my sins. My sins. Not in the light of law, it's
in the light of love. And I tell you, when you see
it in the light of love, it'll constrain you. It'll have a constraining
effect on you. And having convinced us of sin,
he goes on to convince us of righteousness. If he ever convinces
you of sin, he'll have to convince you of righteousness. because
you'll see there's nothing you can do that'll ever be considered
righteous. The only way you can be righteous
is in Christ, and he'll convince us of it, of righteousness. Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness. He put us in Christ and made
him to be for us righteousness. And having convinced us of righteousness,
he goes on to convince us of judgment. Not that there is one. Conscience tells you that. Judgment's
coming. Judgment's coming. He doesn't
convince us that there will be a judgment, but of judgment satisfied. Judgment satisfied. What our
Lord did before the Father It paid it off. It paid it off. Do you believe that? He put away
our sins by the sacrifice of himself. The just for the unjust that
he might bring us to God. And I'm gonna tell you something,
you've never entered into his rest until you come to see his
judgment satisfied and that righteousness imbued into you. You can't rest. You might rest in that experience
for a little while, but the bed's too short to lie on and the covers
are too short to cover you up with. Everything required of the sinner
has been accomplished by the Savior. Everything. Everything. A good man out of the good treasure
of his heart, Luke 6.45. Bringeth forth that which is
good. Now, there's none good but God, right? So how is this
man good? He's in Christ, who God over
all blessed forever. And that good man brings forth
good things. What is the only good thing he
can talk about in this world? There's just one good, and that's
God. That's God manifest in the flesh, Christ. That's the good
thing, and he just keeps, I don't care what you ask him, he'll,
as Henry used to tell us, we'll ski-daddle to the cross. Here
it is, here it is. It's all right here. In Matthew 12, 34, our Lord turned
to these same people, and he said, oh, generation of vipers,
how can you being evil speak good things? For out of the abundance
of the heart, the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure
of his heart bringeth forth good things. And an evil man out of
the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. But I say unto you,
that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give
an account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words
thou shalt be justified and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. Now let me leave you with this.
2 Corinthians chapter four and verse five. These are verses
that I've quoted to you often. 2 Corinthians four, beginning
with verse five. We preach not ourselves. These
are the good things that comes out of the heart. We preach not
ourselves, but Christ Jesus, the Lord, and ourselves your
servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who commanded the light
to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. Now watch this. We have this
treasure in earthen vessels. What treasure? the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
And we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellence
of the power may be of God and not of us. All of the things that constitute
the sinner, you can read them in Romans chapter three, we have
salvation from in Christ. None righteous, he made us in
him to be the righteousness of God. None that understandeth,
we know that he hath come and given to us an understanding.
None that seeketh after God, all that the Father giveth me
shall come to me. None good, the good man. Who's that? The good man. Out of that treasure of his heart
bringeth forth good things. May the Lord be pleased to put
that treasure in our hearts and let us see it just that way.
It's the treasure. And I'll tell you this, where
a man's treasure is, there shall his heart be also.