It's like I get the exalted position here.
Can't stand down there on the floor, huh?
Nah, this is alright.
Well, I didn't know that you had recollections
and roots way back to Alton, Illinois.
I don't think I've been introduced that way
for a long time.
Those were, must have been a great aunt,
and there were, how many of them in
that family?
Seven, I think.
So there were quite a few Ryries and
assorted relatives in Alton.
Alton is distinct because at Alton, the Mississippi
flows east.
Got that?
Makes a little curve there, and the sun
sets into the river.
It's very pretty that way.
Well, I'm pleased to be here on this
Labor Day weekend, and tonight and tomorrow, as
I have thought about the messages, they will
not especially be related, so don't panic if
you can't determine a series.
If I continue along the same line of
thought, then beginning Sunday night and a few
times Monday, I'm going to try to put
those three messages together under the same general
theme, and if you want to know what
it is, you will probably have to show
up Sunday night to find out.
Tonight I want you to turn, please, to
a familiar chapter in the New Testament.
I suppose if anybody knows some verse or
another from the Bible, they will know one
or two from the section we're going to
look at tonight.
They will either know the first verse of
the section, or they'll know the last verse
of the section.
Former President Truman knew the last verse of
the section.
He said when asked more than once what
it takes for a man to get to
heaven, he said he has to keep the
Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule.
Now whatever you think of his politics, I
should not dare enter into that, but his
theology was terrible, of course.
And the Golden Rule is the last verse
of this section.
Do unto others as you would have them
do to you.
If a person knows another verse from this
chapter, he is apt to know the first
verse, which is, judge not that you be
not judged.
Of course the person doesn't usually know the
setting of the verse, and he or she
will use it as a kind of defense
mechanism.
Judge not that you be not judged.
In other words, just shut up.
You're meddling now, so just keep still because
you're judging, and judge not that you be
not judged.
So by now I hope you've turned to
Matthew chapter 7, which opens with judge not
that you be not judged, and the section
I want to look at concludes with whatever
you would that men should do to you,
do the same to them, for this is
the law and the prophet, the so-called
Golden Rule.
In this section the Lord talks about two
rather different subjects.
The first one has to do with judging.
There's no need to try to soften the
word, it means judge.
And he says, judge not that you be
not judged, for with what judgment you judge
you shall be judged, and with what measure
you meet it shall be measured to you
again.
Why beholdest thou the mote that's in thy
brother's eye, and considerest not the beam that's
in thine own eye?
For how wilt thou say to thy brother,
Let me pull out the mote out of
thine eye, and behold, the beam is in
thine own eye.
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out
of thine own eye, and then shalt thou
see clearly to cast out the mote out
of thy brother's eye.
Give not that which is holy to the
dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine,
lest they trample them under their feet, and
turn again and rend you.
The Lord doesn't say don't ever judge.
He says the only kind of person who
isn't allowed to judge, the person who comes
under the prohibition of verse 1, is, verse
5, the hypocrite.
If you're a hypocrite, don't judge.
Rather, get out of the position of being
a hypocrite, then, verse 5, thou shalt see
clearly to cast the mote out of thy
brother's eye.
That's judging.
He's obviously not condemning judging, he's condemning hypocritical
judging.
And when somebody says, judge not that ye
be not judged, he's really saying to you,
thou hypocrite.
Which isn't too kind a remark, actually.
There is a proper judging, a non-hypocritical
judging.
How do you do that?
Well, first of all, you need to discern
your own spiritual condition, so that there are
no beams or logs in your own eye.
Then you can judge in a non-hypocritical
fashion.
Or, to put it positively, the first requirement
for good, proper scriptural judging is to be
clear-eyed.
Clear-eyed.
To be able to see, to judge.
Sometime, if you want a little interesting study,
look up the word eye in the New
Testament, or anywhere in the Bible, and eliminate
the references that have to do with the
physical organ, and just see what the Bible
says about the eye.
You may remember a few interesting passages.
In the preceding chapter, the Lord said, if
your eye is evil, it's full of darkness.
If it's covetous, it's full of darkness.
And how great that darkness is.
But later on in Matthew's Gospel, when he's
talking about those workers that were sent into
the field to work at different times of
the day, yet they all received the same
wage, when the ones that worked all day
complained, thinking they should receive more, the Lord
put his finger right on their problem and
said, is your eye evil because I am
good?
Matthew 20.
Paul prayed that the eyes of our understanding
might be enlightened, that we might know the
hope of our calling, and the riches of
the glory of his inheritance in the saints,
and the exceeding greatness of his power to
us who believe, according to the working of
his mighty power when he raised Christ from
the dead and seated him on his right
hand in heaven.
So, the eye has a very important place.
The Laodicea was cautioned and exhorted to apply
eye salve to their condition, which they really
weren't discerning.
To judge properly, there must first of all
be a clear-eyed person to do it.
Pull out the beam that's in thine own
eye.
Now the second thing that's involved in non
-hypocritical, proper scriptural judging is, you have to
see other people's sins.
There's no judging, there's no helping, there's no
clearing out of the sins of others unless
they're discerned as sin.
And these are the specks that's in another
person's eye.
Specks, just little sins.
We have a cliché, all sin is sin,
that is true.
But all sin isn't the same.
There are big sins and there are little
sins.
There are public sins, there are private sins.
There are gross sins, there are good sins.
There are sinful sins and there aren't so
bad sins.
Now if that's your theology, I'll remind you
of what the Lord said.
He said, He that delivered me unto you
has the greater sin.
John 19, 11.
And that's a pure, unadulterated comparative.
Greater.
So one sin was less than the other
and the other was greater than the other.
And of course the comparison here between the
speck and the beam shows that there are
some sins that are less than other sins.
They're all sinful, but they're not all the
same.
John wrote about a sin unto death and
a sin that's not unto death.
Obviously, different gradations of sin.
Now the Lord says we should be interested
in our brothers being clear-eyed.
Also, right down to the specks that get
into our lives.
As I was meditating on this, it occurred
to me, something pretty obvious, but it occurred
to me that it's probably easier to see
and to be concerned about big sins.
And probably harder to be concerned about little
sins.
It also seemed to me that the older
we get, the more comfortable we try to
be with little sins.
And less concerned with getting the specks out
of our eyes or helping others to do
the same.
Oh well, that's the way I am.
Oh well, that's the way I've been all
my life.
Oh, you can't expect me to change now.
Oh, and on and on the reasons go.
Our Lord was concerned that we help each
other get the specks out of our eyes.
So there has to be a discerning of
other people's sins as well.
And then I should think, not only must
I be clear-eyed and must I see
other people's sins and try to do something
about it, but I have to determine what
to do, the correct procedure.
And that's not always easy.
Hatred stirs up strife, the proverb says, but
love covers all sins.
And sometimes it should.
And yet the Apostle Paul said, reprove the
works of unrighteousness.
Sometimes they need to be exposed.
When to cover and when to expose, the
right timing.
Those are all difficult questions to answer and
have to do with the discerning of procedures.
Perhaps that's what verse 6 is talking about
because it seems to be referring to the
holy meat that was given to the priests,
which was not even allowed to be eaten
by the layman and certainly not by dogs
or by swine.
The correct procedure in accomplishing God's will in
this matter.
So there is a proper non-hypocritical judging.
I have, of course, some remembrances of my
own father.
One of them has to do with how
he would take things out of my brother
and my eyes when we get something in
our eyes.
I don't know that I've ever had to
do that with my kids.
Maybe I have, but I don't remember it
happening very often.
But it seemed to me it happened to
us frequently.
He would always be taking something out of
our eye that we were complaining about.
I think it's probably because I grew up
B.C. before contacts.
And contacts seem to protect the eye a
little more today.
But I can remember how he did that.
And, of course, it often always was at
the end of the day.
And he would take a handkerchief out of
his pocket and twist the corner of it
and make a little point.
And then pull down the lid or turn
under the upper lid and just touch the
point of the handkerchief to the stick and
lift it off.
Much like you would lift off a little
speck of dust or dirt from the top
of a glass of water that's floating on
the water.
You don't dunk your finger in.
That would sink it.
You just barely touch it and that lifts
it off.
And likewise, he would just roll up that
piece of handkerchief and just touch it and
lift it off.
Now that worked.
But my father did not have great eyesight.
This happened in the evening when we were
ready to go to bed.
He would maybe already have taken his glasses
off and laid them on his dresser.
And he was ready to take the speck
out of our eyes.
And I always said, Hold on.
Please go get your glasses.
I want you to see clearly before you
mess around with my eye.
Now there's a second subject, apparently unrelated.
It has to do with prayer.
This is one of the favorite passages on
prayer in the New Testament.
Ask and it shall be given you.
Seek and you shall find.
Knock and it shall be opened unto you.
For everyone that asketh, asketh receiveth.
And he that seeketh, findeth.
And to him that knocketh, it shall be
opened.
Or what man is there of you whom,
if his son ask bread, will he give
him a stone?
And the implied answer is, of course not.
That's the way the original is constructed.
Or if he ask a fish, he will
not give him a serpent, will he?
We can bring that expected answer into the
question in English even.
If he ask a fish, he will not
give him a serpent, will he?
You're supposed to answer, no.
Of course not.
If he then being evil, know how to
give good gifts unto your children.
How much more shall your Father which is
in heaven give good gifts to them who
ask him?
Now it seems to me the Lord is
saying two things about prayer, proper praying here.
The first one is most obvious, verses 7
and 8.
Pray with persistence.
Some commentators try to make distinctions between asking
and seeking and knocking and maybe there are.
I don't think the point is distinctions.
I think the point is the repetition.
That is, persist.
Keep on asking and seeking and knocking.
And the promise of verse 8 is that
God will hear.
Pray with persistence.
Then he says pray, in ease to illustration,
pray with trust.
I deliberately am using the word trust rather
than faith.
There are synonyms, I know that.
But I want to use the word trust.
Pray with trust.
For the simple reason that I think today
pray with faith has become kind of a
mechanical thing almost.
You've got to have more faith.
If you will have more faith, or a
variation of it is, if enough of us
will have more faith, then God is obliged
to answer.
Please don't misunderstand, I believe that corporate prayer
is very biblical.
Sharing requests is very biblical.
But I'm not sure that God is obliged
to anything.
He promised certain things and of course he
keeps his promises.
But when I see on television or hear
on some program this pray with faith, I
get the impression that the only thing that's
hindering God is something in me or in
us or in the constituency of that program.
If that were present then, whatever it is,
if that were present then God is obliged
to answer.
The only reason he hasn't is that we
haven't got enough people or enough people with
enough faith or the right kind of faith
or something involved.
So I don't want to create that image.
I want to discard that image.
I want to nullify that image.
So I don't want to say pray with
faith.
I want to say that the Lord is
teaching in these two illustrations we're to pray
with trust.
Now look at the illustration.
What man is there of you whom is
his son asked bread?
He won't give him a stone, will he?
Bread, stone.
Similar in shape, in look, color, but not
texture or usefulness.
And if we go to our Heavenly Father
in prayer with trust, we may, the first
illustration says, we may trust him not to
give us something that will deceive us or
to substitute a stone when you've asked for
a loaf is a deception.
Looks the same.
Deceives you into thinking that it might be
the same, but of course it's not the
thing you asked for.
It's not useful.
So we can trust God never to deceive
us.
And again I got to thinking about this.
How could an answer to prayer ever be
a deception?
Well, I'll use a student illustration if you
don't mind.
Students when they come up to the point
of graduation or a point of decision will
often pray to God for leading.
Now suppose that the student or his wife
really has an area of unwillingness in their
desires or ambitions and they want leading except
they want to be led either to Florida
or Texas or California.
I'll go anywhere in the Sun Belt, Lord.
But New England?
Oh, give us leading.
Now if God should answer that, you see
they might be deceived into thinking they were
in fellowship when they really aren't.
So I think it is possible to ask
for something and if we got the answer
it would just reinforce our thinking that everything's
fine.
We go on in our area of unwillingness
and never deal with that before the Lord.
Once I was speaking on the temptation of
Christ in a church Sunday morning and I
said something about stone turned to bread, of
course.
And I said, I don't know who's taking
me to dinner today but I certainly hope
that you're not tempted to do this.
Trying to illustrate that Christ's temptation was peculiar
to him.
It's not one that we could even be
tempted with.
You can't be tempted to turn stone to
bread.
So I said, I hope whoever's taking me
to dinner isn't tempted or doesn't think he
could be tempted to do this.
Well it so happened that the previous arrangements
were for a couple's class in that church
to have a potluck dinner.
And so we went to a home and
it was a spread like you've never seen
unless you see it Monday.
I don't know what it's going to be
like Monday but it was a spread, I'll
tell you.
And they had a table twice as long
as a communion table and twice as wide
and like four of those tables set up
and these couples had all brought their fanciest
food and they laid it out there and
when it came time to eat the hostess
said, you go first.
And so I went first and about the
fourth item down the table was a loaf
of homemade bread.
I thought, that's great.
So I picked up the knife to cut
the first piece and I put the knife
on the bread and it was a stone.
And somehow between church and dinner they had
found the stone and it looked just like
a loaf of bread.
I was deceived.
Trust God never to deceive you even in
an answer to prayer.
The second illustration is different.
Or if you ask a fish, he won't
give him a serpent, will he?
And again the similarities, the resemblances are close.
But there's an added matter here.
It's not something that's merely deceiving.
If a serpent were substituted for a fish
and it was the right kind of poisonous
serpent then this would be something that would
be damaging.
When you pray, you can trust God never
to give you anything that would damage you.
And you know if God were to answer
some of our prayers it would be very
damaging.
We think it would be very good but
in reality it would be very damaging because
we don't always know what we should pray
for or what's the best thing to have.
And while I think we should tell our
Heavenly Father exactly what we feel the bottom
line always has to be Lord, I want
what you want me to have.
And if what I'm asking for would be
deceiving or damaging then don't give it to
me.
I'd rather not have it.
Years ago when our children were little I
was traveling to Southern California in the spring
of the year and I said to them
you know I'll probably go over to Mexico
and is there anything you'd like me to
bring to you?
And this one chorus they said firecrackers.
It was in June and the 4th of
July was approaching and firecrackers are illegal in
Dallas so they said bring us some firecrackers.
Well I said that isn't legal, how can
I do that?
Well just bring us some sparklers.
That won't, well they won't hurt anything.
I thought of this and tonight we had
a birthday and somebody had a sparkler in
the dining room.
I thought of that incident long ago.
Just bring us sparklers.
That's not dangerous.
We'll light them on the back porch, it's
concrete and we'll be careful of the hot
wires and all of that.
What could be dangerous about sparklers?
So I went to San Diego and I
went across the border to Tijuana and I
thought to myself you know I love my
kids, why shouldn't I bring them sparklers?
They probably won't hurt themselves with it and
I'll be there and we'll watch everything and
that'll please them.
And every time I thought of buying sparklers
or other firecrackers I also thought of a
three inch scar I have on my legs
from a firecracker accident.
So I went home.
Daddy, what'd you bring us?
Nothing.
No firecrackers?
No.
No sparklers?
No.
And there was great weeping and wailing and
gnashing of teeth.
You don't love us!
But of course it was precisely because I
did love them that I did not grant
their request.
You notice both bread and fish.
These are basics.
These aren't luxuries.
These aren't peripheral things.
These are basic things.
God will not do anything, even the basics
of life to deceive us or to damage
us.
But the positive promise of verse 11 is
if ye then being evil and that's all
of us spoken to the disciples and all
of us if ye then being evil know
how to give good gifts to your children
this is a wonderful verse to keep theologians
honest when they define total depravity.
Now if you could watch that film and
listen to all those technical terms you can
listen to this.
Total depravity some people say means nobody can
do anything good.
This verse doesn't agree with that definition.
If ye then being evil know how to
give good gifts evil people can do good
things.
Depravity is not a question of whether a
person can do good or not it's a
question of whatever he does is that acceptable
with God?
And the answer is no.
It's the good things or the wicked things.
Evil people know how to give good gifts
to your children then here's the positive promise
how much more shall your Father in Heaven
give good things to those that ask Him?
Good from whose viewpoint?
From His.