Introduction to Luke 6
Well, good morning, church family. I invite you to turn in your Bibles to the book of Luke, chapter 6. We've had a nice stop in the book of Hebrews, chapter 10, for Good Friday and Easter. But this morning we find ourselves back in our primary study in the Gospel of Luke, and we're going to finish out chapter 6 this morning as we look through verses 37 through 49.
We've seen thus far in the chapter Jesus' authority over the Sabbath, his willingness to do good and to heal even on the Sabbath when the Pharisees thought he should do no such thing. We've seen him call his final disciples to himself, and we've seen the beginning of a lengthy sermon here in the presence of his disciples and a great crowd.
But we've seen particularly that this sermon, this message of Christ, was for his disciples. He looked at them with intent as he said these words, and by extension, it is directed to us as well, his future followers. When we consider our current society, it displays many particular attitudes towards God and towards his people. Sometimes these attitudes, these opinions are felt by what we see society do in their response to God, in their response and engagement with his people. Sometimes unbelievers use words to express how they really feel about God and his people, and it shows what they are thinking deep down inside.
In my opinion, one of the most striking pieces of evidence for the deity of Jesus Christ is his unrivaled knowledge and intimacy of the human heart and the human condition. Others have noted that it is not typically just us who read the Bible, but upon deep study and reflection, we find oftentimes that our Bible is actually reading us. That's no accident. That is because the God of the universe and Jesus Christ in particular in this passage knows our hearts, and he knows how to sweep away all of the fluff of our lives and get straight to the most important thing.
And this morning, in Luke chapter 6, Jesus is shining a broad light on the attitudes of the human heart while focusing particularly, again, on his people. Why? To focus particularly on his followers because they will be the ones who will be able to see this light and respond appropriately as they are changed by it.
So here's the main idea we're going to look at this morning. It's simply that true discipleship flows from a transformed heart. True discipleship flows from a transformed heart.
True Discipleship and Transformation
And I technically have two titles for this sermon just to keep it interesting for us today. The first is in the negative and the other is in the positive. So, the one you see on the screen behind me is in the negative. Jesus is addressing some of the negative attitudes of the human heart, and that title is simply "The Slogans of the Human Heart."
The positive contrast that Jesus is getting at for his people is "The Marks of a True Disciple." The marks of a true disciple in contrast to the slogans of the human heart.
So, on the one hand, we'll see some of the foundational attitudes that people so easily gravitate towards, which is focused primarily on themselves. And on the other, we'll see Jesus' instructions for a different path, which is only made possible through his work on our behalf.
So let's get right into the text in our first of four slogans of the human heart that many of you are probably familiar with. Number one, in verses 37 and 38, we see...
The Slogans of the Heart
Don't judge me. Don't judge me. Looking down at the text, Jesus says, "Judge not, and you will not be judged. Condemn not, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you."
It's interesting. Many scholars have noted that these might be the most famous verses in the entire Bible to non-Christians. Right? To non-Christians. Some of you probably heard this, maybe even to your face: "Don't judge me."
Unfortunately, the English language puts us at a bit of a disadvantage and typically leaves Christians often trying to play defense when trying to deal with the claim of, "Don't judge me." The words here that Jesus is using in the Greek language are tied directly to a haughty and a judgmental spirit. It's an attitude of superiority, of pride and arrogance, and looking down on someone else. They don't refer to being discerning and to acknowledging particular sin in our lives.
And we see this in verse 37, the second part, where Jesus really gives us the sense he's getting at. On the one hand, do not condemn. On the other, do forgive. He says, do forgive. And this is a foundational principle in the Bible, but we often easily move past it. So we could just simply ask ourselves this morning, what is your reputation with your various circles of influence?
Jesus in this text in many ways was flipping the understanding of society and the false religion of the Pharisees on its head. And not only is he addressing the flaws of the Pharisaical Christianity, he is also going right past all of our own religious niceties and going straight to our hearts and saying at your heart level, what are the most deepest characteristics?
So for us, do we have the same reputation with each sphere, with each circle of relationships that we have? Is it consistent throughout from family to friends to co-workers to classmates to strangers? Or might there be different reputations found throughout each sphere? Perhaps one group, such as our friends or colleagues, might know us to be gracious, while our family members might feel judgment and condemnation. Or might those we see face to face find compassion and encouragement and excitement, while those we disagree with online might feel our wrath and our disdain.
The question is, do we look down on the world even as it pursues self-serving and even self-destructive passions? Or do we grieve for a world that is dead in its sin with little hope of redemption and salvation? We like to let our own hearts off the hook, but Jesus is saying it is all or nothing.
As I said, we can certainly be forgiving while still offering discernment. We can point out sin. Of course, we can highlight what God's word says, but we must always remember this is not our word. This is not our opinion. This is God's word. And that takes pride out of the equation completely when you are arguing not on your own behalf, not on your own merit, but on behalf of another.
And God wants us to know that when we do forgive, when we live lives that are marked by grace and mercy, there will also be a return. On the one hand, we will actually, in many ways, find grace and mercy from others as we extend those things out through our relationships. But most importantly, we will find it from the one who judges justly, Jesus Christ.
And this idea here that Jesus is talking about was common in antiquity. When someone received a payment, particularly of grain, they had a container with them and they wouldn't just let someone pour out their grain haphazardly. It had to be very specific. Just like for those of us who used to use real physical dollar bills or even coins back in the day, if you went to the bank and you were taking out a withdrawal and the teller just randomly grabbed some bills and some coins and put it all together and handed it to you, you'd probably walk out and change banks immediately, right?
The same thing here. This idea is that what we will receive from God is both precise and it's abundant. When these jars were filled with grain, they were filled up and they were pressed down hard to create more space, and then they were shaken in order that all of the grain on the bottom would fill all of the space down in the bottom and then fill up the jar completely all the way.
And then get this: God says, not only will your container be filled thoroughly, he says it will overflow. It will overflow in abundance. Your gracious attitude to those who may or may not deserve it will be, in a sense, rewarded by God's grace to you, who most certainly does not deserve it. We do not deserve the grace of Christ.
But here's another refrain. Our second warning, verses 39 through 42. Don't tell me how to live my life. Don't tell me how to live my life. Picking up at verse 39.
He also told them a parable.
The Danger of Spiritual Blindness
"Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? A disciple is not above his teacher. But everyone, when he is fully trained, will be like his teacher. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take out the speck that is in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother's eye."
Another familiar passage with those who are outside of God's people. Many have concluded that this is a direct assault on the Pharisees on the failed leadership of the Jewish faith, which is quite possible. At the very least, the disciples were to be markedly different from the Pharisees who were the Jewish leaders of Israel.
But just like the first section, this second section is also about our attitude. It's about our posture. And this time, Jesus is not only calling out those who are being led, who are following, but also the leaders themselves. No doubt, many arrogant young pupils, often young men, have thought they knew better than those above them. But Jesus ties them to blind men to show that arrogance and pride are deadly attributes, no matter what status or role of authority one might have.
He's saying it's not just the disciple who can be blind, but teachers as well. And what an awful situation that would be to have a blind follower behind a blind leader. The solution, Jesus says, is the same regardless of the status. It applies to both people. Blind guides are not fit to lead, and it is our pride which ultimately blinds every one of us. It's our pride which looks past the log in our own eye to the speck of our brothers.
Therefore, in order to both follow and to lead, we have to be able to see. How can we see? He says, first, we follow the teacher, Christ, who is standing right in front of the disciples before them. And second, we humble ourselves. We take our pride out of the equation and we acknowledge the sin in our own heart. Jesus himself said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me." So the only way for anyone to see is through Christ.
If we were to go to another Christian, a brother or a sister, and attempt to address the speck in their eye while overlooking the log in our own, what have we done? Essentially, we've done the same problem as the first section. We have elevated ourselves at the lowering expense of our brother in Christ, forsaking the humble introspection that Jesus is calling his people to pursue.
And notice he's not saying, "Don't help your brother deal with the speck." That's not what Jesus is saying. He's saying, first, deal with yourself. Deal with yourself first before you help others. Essentially, Christians are to be those who exhibit both realities, continually combing our own hearts for sin while also reaching out and encouragement to our brothers and sisters in their own sanctification.
Are we known as a people of gracious spirits or critical spirits? Maybe it's pointed. Maybe you just like to call it like it is. Or maybe it's broad and you prefer to sweep your criticisms broadly over groups of Christians. If we would take our own sin as seriously as we often take the sins of others, the result would be quite radical. And yet, as we see in our third section, it might not be as radical as we think.
Number three, in verses 43 through 45, the attitude of people are mostly good.
The Source of Good Fruit
People are mostly good. And here Jesus talks about trees and fruit. In verse 43, he says, "For no good tree bears bad fruit. Nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit. For each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person, out of the good treasure of his heart, produces good. And the evil person out of the evil treasure produces evil. For out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks."
Sometimes it is the simplest realities that we move on from, we neglect, and we forget. I mean, most kids in the room can look at any tree outside on the lawn and tell you what fruit is either there or is not. It's really simple. It either bears fruit or it doesn't. The bear fruit, it's good fruit or it's bad fruit.
When we think of this idea that Jesus is trying to instruct us, we need to consider two sides to this coin. Going back to the narrative of the Pharisees, what was the good fruit of the Pharisees? Anyone? What would the good fruit of the Pharisees have been? Works. It was their works. If our works could be a fruit, what kind of fruit would they be? We'd say that they are a manufactured fruit. Something man-made.
It'd be like if every Pharisee had a 3D printer. I've never seen a 3D printer in person, but I've seen a lot of the gadgets and things that 3D printers can make, and it's pretty impressive. And honestly, the whole idea of 3D printing still blows my mind. I don't even know how it's possible, other than someone has given me something and said, "This is what it made." And I'd imagine that 3D printers can make some pretty compelling fruit, some pretty lifelike-looking fruit.
And potentially, someone could make a fruit from a 3D printer that they could hang up on a real tree so that people, as they drive by or maybe even walk by, would say, "Oh, nice, what a nice apple tree. That's really great. I've never noticed that before." But if you get up close and if you could see clearly, you'd start to have some questions. You'd wonder, "Is that really the fruit I thought it was?" And if you decided to even take a bite, well then at that point, the cat is officially out of the bag. This is a false fruit.
And Jesus' point, on the one hand, is that we cannot manufacture our own fruit. We need good fruit, but we can't do it. There are only two types of trees here: those with the good fruit and those with the bad. And Jesus is saying that a person's godly works are not the equivalent of godly fruit.
The other side of this coin is that good fruit, by definition, is not only authentic, it's not manufactured, but it also grows continually. It happens consistently over time. And what I'm trying to get at here is that sometimes when we think about people and their potential good fruit, we like to focus on a few pieces—the first fruit, the second fruit, maybe the third—instead of a consistent display of fruit growing over time.
I've seen this in many ways in the concerned voice for a loved one who isn't going to church, who has no desire to be with God's people, is not pursuing the Lord in his word, is not really walking with the Lord, but who was baptized when they were young or who expressed regret over their sin a number of years ago. But that is not bearing good fruit in the sense that Jesus is talking about.
R.C. Sproll referred to this idea that we often think in our own heads as statistical morality. Statistical morality. He says, we like to look at people we know and we add all of their morality together. If you knew a hundred people that you were in relationship with, generally you would say they are good. I see most of their good trending things. And so we would say in general, they are good. If you saw someone living a generally good life who made some good decisions for God, even if they did not continue in those decisions for years, you would remember those first glimpses of fruit and you would judge them by that standard rather than the current one.
But this, again, does not reflect the standard of the righteous judge who says there is good fruit and there is bad fruit. Can a living fruit tree produce just a few pieces of fruit and then cease producing fruit to still be a healthy tree? Absolutely not. One of the evidences of the signs of life in a tree is the resupply of its own fruit, year after year after year. And a tree that ceases to bear fruit is a tree in which death has already begun.
So we see that the good fruit, on the one hand, is not something that we can manufacture. It's not something that we can pursue of our own ability. And it's also not a flash in the pan. Jesus goes on to say, this fruit comes from the heart.
And if in Christ we have been given new hearts, this is what he's getting at. New hearts. That means good fruit can come, and it will continue to come over time.
I'm not saying that the Christian heart will produce perfection consistently, but Jesus is saying a new heart will produce good fruit over time. Think years, not days, not even weeks.
Obedience and Allegiance to God
Which brings us to our final point in 46 through 49: God loves me as I am. From judgmentalism to blindness to fruit and now our obedience, this last section is really about our attitude of surrender and allegiance to God.
Looking at verses 46 and 47: "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I tell you? Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like." Hopefully, when you think of your brothers and sisters, particularly in this church—because this is the church where we are members and we know each other—you see a connection between what we say we believe and how we live our lives. There shouldn't be too many big discrepancies there. It should be largely consistent in that we are trying, although stumbling at times, to follow the Lord with our whole heart, our whole mind, and our whole strength.
But what comes to mind when you think about Christians outside of our church? That you might not see as closely, but still you see. I'd imagine many of us would say we know Christians who don't go to church, or if they do, it's sporadic at best, who don't read their Bibles, or again, if they do, it's sporadic at best. We probably even know Christians who actually live just like the world, and you wouldn't actually know they were a Christian unless they had said something to you. It's not to say all of those things—going to church, reading your Bible, being consistent—is what makes you a Christian, but there is something there that Jesus wants us to see. He gives us the genuine expectation of God for his followers. He makes it crystal clear. This is the expectation that is upon every Christian: someone who hears God's word and does it. Someone who hears God's word and does them.
And didn't I just say that the works we do are not our fruit? Yes. So how do we reconcile this? God wants us to hear his word and do it, but our works are also not our fruit. Well, a week or two ago at Good Friday, I used an equation. And so I'll do the same thing this morning to help us try to understand what Jesus is getting at. Essentially, you have our works, and you have a bad heart, which equals bad fruit. Right? Works plus a bad heart equals bad fruit. The equation of a good heart equals both good fruit and good works. A good heart equals good fruit and good works. Both of these have works, but only one has the new heart. The new heart is what makes all of the difference, which in Christ produces the good works of our obedience.
Consider Jesus' words in the Gospel of John, chapter 14. He says in verse 23, "If anyone loves me, if anyone loves Jesus, he says, he will keep my word. And my Father will love him and will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words." Can you imagine someone who thought that they loved God with all of their heart, everything they did for him, while neglecting their own humility, their own discipline, the love of their neighbor, and ultimately failing to obey the actual words of the God they claim to love so much? What does Jesus say their response might be when Christ says, "Depart from me, I never knew you"? They would say, "Lord, Lord."
In the Greek, he's getting at a title of intimacy. It's like using the first name and saying, "Come on, I know you, Lord, Lord." But as one theologian notes, this actually gets to those who want the benefits of God, whom they call "Lord, Lord," as if they knew him well and he owed them something, all the while failing simply to acknowledge him as their Lord. Full stop. The one to whom they must fully surrender instead is the one they simply want a few benefits from.
In the parallel passage of our text in the book of Matthew, these people, like the Pharisees, what do they say? "Lord, Lord, did we not do many great things for you?" Did we not do many great things for you? Friends, Christ does not want you to do great things for him. He wants you to rest in the great thing that Christ has done for you. That is the focus of what Jesus is getting at. It's exactly what we talked about even on Good Friday as we compared the Old Testament sacrificial system to the fulfillment of that covenant in Christ.
Every religious person, whatever the title is—Christian, Hebrew, anything else, fill in the blank—will tend to do some form of good works, and the question is not what will you do, but how will you do it? In whose strength will you do these works? Are they fueled by your own strength or fueled by your new heart and the work of Christ? This one who does good works from this new heart—this is what he will be like in verse 48.
Jesus says, he is like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. When a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great.
What do we see in common here? There's a storm. There's a flood. Everyone, good and bad, experiences the storm and the flood, and no one likes it. We all despair when the flood actually hits us. But the point here is not the storm. There's a house in both situations. The storm is a given. The unique difference is the placement of the house. It's the foundation or the lack thereof.
And this foundation, we don't build it. It pre-exists us. Was before us and exists outside of us because Jesus says he is the foundation that we build on. And when we build upon his foundation, we are made strong, not because we have made a strong house, but instead because the foundation has made our house strong. There is an order to it. The foundation is first and foremost. And because of the secure foundation, our houses are made strong through every trial and every storm.
And as strong as we are made through the work of Christ, likewise he says, how great is the ruin, the destruction of those whose houses are destroyed by the flood. Jesus came to usher his kingdom into the world and to make it crystal clear. He didn't want us to be curious and wonder, what do we have to do? If we're his people, how are we supposed to live? He wanted to make it clear for us to know how to follow him because if it were left to us, we would start making up our own rules, our own ways, and then we'd start looking around and saying, "Hey, you're not living up to my expectations. I don't think you're a Christian."
And Jesus says, the kingdom will have none of that. There is one expectation for every single person, and that is to find your rest, your joy, your security in the person of Jesus Christ.
So as we conclude this morning, again, I just ask for our own reflection in our own hearts because the Lord knows them and we know them. Do we struggle with judgmentalism or a critical spirit? Are there ways in your life where you can rely more fully on the forgiveness that you have in Christ? Do any of us like the idea of God more than the idea of submitting to him and following what he has commanded? Are there any particular commands that we need to humble ourselves before and obey?
Perhaps you're wondering if these negative attitudes reflect worldly hearts, what is the contrast that Jesus is painting for us? Well, on these four points, I think first, instead of judgmentalism, Jesus shows us graciousness. He shows us graciousness. Instead of pride, he shows us humility. Instead of focusing on our own works, he gives us his full and perfect work. And instead of empty words, Jesus himself is our faithful servant. Our faithful servant in every way.
So if you're still wondering, what must I do? You need not look any further. The solution for each ailment, each warning given against... the worldly hearts is the same. Simply to look to Christ, who is able to give you a new and a good heart. And to look what you have received in Christ, because there is nothing that we cannot give to those around us, which we have not already received in abundance from Christ, who loves us and gave himself up for us.
So we praise the one who is righteous and who also makes us righteous as trees which are now able because of his work to produce good fruit. May it be so.
Let's pray. God, as we come before you this morning, we confess that it is our inclination, that we are so often tripped up by trying to evaluate our spiritual status with what we have done this week for you, with how connected we are feeling or are not feeling to you and to your spirit. And we rejoice that our status in the kingdom as heirs, as children, as sons and daughters, praise the Lord, is not dependent on any of those things but it is dependent on the work which you did and completed on our behalf and the fact that you have drawn us in, that you have welcomed us into your family.
And so we ask, would you strengthen our hearts and our spirits to obey, to follow you with gratitude, and to rejoice in the law that you have given as a means to honor our heavenly Father as a means of loving the one who first loved us in Christ. Grow our love for you. Grow our love for your law and for your word. And therefore would you grow our love for one another and grow the fruit that we bear. For his sake, we pray in his name. Amen.