You can't obey God's command to love your neighbor as yourself. If you have a condemning judgmental spirit, and that kind of spirit is difficult to root out once it's infested an individual or a church. Today on Truth for Life weekend, we'll discover a simple but radical directive that can completely transform our condemning hearts and minds. Alistair Begg is teaching today from the book of Luke chapter 6 starting with verse 37.
Well let's go to the practical implications of the principle because we needn't say more than that. What does it mean in practice to be merciful as your Father is merciful? Well, it's worked out in the next verse, 37, and it is developed by two negative commands followed by two positive commands. Negative command one, do not judge. Two, do not condemn. Positive command one, forgive.
Positive command two, give. What does it mean, do not judge? Jesus is not, in this phrase, setting aside law courts, nor is he encouraging his followers to suspend their critical faculties.
Okay? Well then, what is he doing? What is it that Jesus says we mustn't do if we are not to judge?
The answer is, he is condemning censoriousness. I thought last week was harder than the previous week. But this week is even harder than last week. Book chapter 6 is proving to be a minefield for me. And if you doubt that, you should feel perfect liberty to ask my wife just how wonderfully loving and uncritical I have been in the last five days. I would be hard-pressed to have got myself so badly out of sync with a passage of Scripture if I had set out to do it. The Lord says, okay then, why don't you go up and talk about, do not judge, and you will not be judged? And then why don't you go on and follow it up with, do not condemn? And then, let's talk about forgiveness, just to wrap it up. And I say, how about we have somebody else do this this week, Lord?
Somebody who has done all this stuff, who has had a fantastic week, you know, who feels total freedom in relationship to talking about it, because he knows that he can point his fingers out this way, and no fingers point back at him. Get somebody else to do it this week, would you? The Lord says, no, I think you should go up and do it this week. After all, he said, you got a PhD in censoriousness, and it would be good for you. You're even censorious, he's saying to me, about the fact that you knew the Word and other people didn't know the Word. That's how bad you are. That's how messed up you are.
Now, here's the thing. That kind of spirit completely violates the law of love that we've just considered, because if I am prepared to put myself in the other person's shoes, and if I am prepared honestly to wish for them what I wish for myself, then I will be prepared to replace meanness with generosity, harshness with understanding, and cruelty with kindness. Do not judge. He's not setting aside law courts. He's not asking us to suspend our critical faculties. He's asking us to beware of the spirit of censoriousness, indeed not simply to beware of it, but to identify it, to admit it, and to root it out of our lives and our families and our congregation. And churches such as this, where there is a strong desire to maintain theological purity, moral rectitude, significance in relationship to the parameters of what it means to be involved and to be in membership, the danger that is represented to our church to come down on the wrong side of this is a significant danger.
And the answer to it is not cluelessness and theological vagueness, because those are the two poles, and the people just walking around in a duam, they don't have a clue what's going on. I've got no opinion about this, no opinion about that, and that's the way I'm supposed to live my life. Or over here in a spirit of harsh judgmentalism, and Jesus is saying, I don't want you to live in either extreme. I want you to be able to exercise your critical faculties in a way that doesn't judge and secondly doesn't condemn. Doesn't condemn. Do not condemn.
You see, the trouble with assuming that I have the right to be the judge is that it appeals to my tendency not to set people free, but to condemn them. Isn't it interesting when the child says, I'm going to be the headmaster? What happens? He or she immediately starts to give out detentions. They don't say, I'm going to be the headmaster, and then they say, take the rest of the day off. The person says, I'm going to be the boss. What happens?
They start saying, get in earlier, or you'll find $5 for leaving your coffee cup there, whatever else it is. In other words, as soon as we aspire to the position of leadership and assume that we have the prerogative now of judge, as we sit there on the emperor's chair watching the gladiators below, we just can't wait to give the thumbs down, not up. Be honest. Now I'm the judge, I may exercise a little condemnation on you.
Gone. That's what Jesus is saying. We are not, as human beings, qualified to judge and pronounce condemnation.
Why? Because we cannot read each other's hearts. We are unable to accurately assess each other's motives. But it doesn't stop us, does it? I haven't noticed that that bold fact actually stops me from being a judge, and a harsh one. Indeed, if information in and of itself could root that out of my sinful heart, I would only need to know that and it would be gone.
But I know it, and it isn't gone. Therefore I need to be exceptionally wary—we do—exceptionally wary in pronouncing condemnation. We sin so easily with our tongues in this respect, don't we? In saying things that are injurious to the good name of others. Oh, we've got a very clever way of saying it in Christian circles and evangelical circles.
We have all this cliché written terminology that can make it sound like a prayer request or, you know, a concern for glory and rectitude and blah blah blah, but basically, when we cut to the chase, half the time we're just delighted to get it out of our tongues. Did you hear about her? Do you know why they did that? Do you know why he bought that?
Do you know why he lives there? Do you know why she said that? Do you know why this… You don't know any of that, and neither do I. And the spirit of that, when it becomes endemic in a congregation, may take years and years and years to root out. That's why our parents told us, ask yourself, before you say anything, is it kind?
Is it true? And is it necessary? Because the Bible says we shouldn't say anything that is untrue—that's in the Ten Commandments —we shouldn't say anything that is unnecessary—that's in Proverbs 11.13—and we shouldn't say anything that is unkind—that's in Proverbs 18.8. So what in the world are we going to say? What are we going to talk about then? It'd be a kind of silent place for a while, wouldn't it?
If everybody was taking the thirty-second gut check and going, is it kind, is it true, is it necessary? Maybe nobody's talking, not just for thirty seconds, but for the two or three minutes that follow it, because we don't know what we're going to say, because everything I was going to say was either unnecessary or unkind, so I'm going to have to stop and think about something else to say. And then maybe I can't think of anything else to say, so maybe we'll all just sit in silence. If all that we say in a single day with never a word left out were printed each night in clear black and white, it would make strange reading, no doubt. And then just suppose, ere our eyes should close, we must read the whole record through.
Then wouldn't we sigh and wouldn't we try a great deal less talking to do? And I more than half think that many a kink would be smoother in life's tangled thread if half that I say in a single day were to be left forever unsaid. I don't know about you, but do you know how easy it is to compound the problem in your marriage? When you've got the slip road out, it's right in front of you? When you can leave, you know?
I don't mean leave your marriage. I mean, when you've made a hash of it, and your wife has been gracious in response, and you know, no, I should just be gracious, and then you go and you just drive the nail further into the ground. You just say, oh, why did I say that? And then, why did I say that, and why did I say it, and it's just, oh.
Maybe it's just me. I don't know. Okay, we'll wrap it up with one positive. Let's be clear. To be discriminating and critical is necessary. To be judgmental and hypercritical is wrong. That brings us to one positive statement.
We've got time for just one. After all, it's only one word, and we probably can't think of much to say about this word. It's the first word in the third sentence of verse 37, and it's the word, forgive. Forgive. Now, think for just a moment about the kind of transformation that would be brought about in our relationships if we were to take seriously this one dramatic directive, forgive.
Just one word, apoluo, it actually means release. And the bondage in which individuals and families and couples and churches and groups live can be traced in a vast majority of cases to an unwillingness to obey this one simple directive—forgive. It's not the same as excuse. It's not the same as deny.
It's not the same as just forget about it for a while, and it will just all pass over and be gone. It is actually an act of the will driven by the Word of God, enabled by the Spirit of God to recognize that although this person is habitually this way, is a total royal pain in the neck—he said, without a spirit of censoriousness at all—and the person is this way, that I am still to forgive him. Shakespeare says, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, that in the course of justice none of us should see salvation.
We do pray for mercy, and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy. Chinese Proverbs says, The man who ought for revenge should dig two graves. The man who ought for revenge should dig two graves, for he will go in one of them. George MacDonald says a striking thing when he says, It may be infinitely worse to refuse to forgive than to murder. This is overstating the case, surely.
Listen to how he puts it. It may be infinitely worse to refuse to forgive than to murder, because the latter, namely murder, may be an impulse in the heat of the moment, whereas the former is a cold and deliberate choice of the heart. And that is absolutely true. Every time that I refuse to forgive, or you refuse to forgive, from the very bottom of our hearts, it is a cold and deliberate choice. And every time that you and I make that cold and deliberate choice, we entomb ourselves. We live within a dungeon of our own construction. We are trapped in the bondage of our own unforgiving hearts.
This, says someone, is a hard law. That when a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive. And loved ones, I don't know where this hits you, but I'm sure it hits you somewhere, for it certainly does me. And those of us who have made a career of harboring bitterness and of holding grudges should not be surprised at the chaos of our lives. No matter how well we've concealed it with whatever we've enjoyed in terms of physical things or material things or whatever else it is, there is not a thing that is invented on the face of God's earth that can deal with this.
There is only one place that it's dealt with. There is only one person who can deal with it. And that, incidentally, is one of the key explanations for so much of the manifold chaos that exists in our contemporary culture. Because people have turned away from the idea of having offended against God, have been told that guilt is some kind of trip that you're put on, and that it is absolutely wrong ever to feel guilty. And there is spurious guilt from which we need to stay away. Well, the whole notion of guilt is poo-pooed. And so you have these millions of people moving around the country, unforgiven and unforgiving.
Do you want to know how to stay in your marriage? Forgive. That's it. That's all of it. Forgive.
All the other bells and whistles you can add at different times. And if I refuse to forgive my wife, I will never make it. And if she refuses to forgive me, she will never make it.
For God knows how much offense I cause her. How do you stay in a church when somebody takes you off? Pretend they don't take you off? No. Admit they take you off and forgive them. How do you stay as the pastor of a church? Forgive.
It's the whole business in one word. You want something to put on your baseball cap? You want something burned into your heart? I found the Spirit of God saying to me this week in my study all on my own, just by myself, talking to myself. The Spirit of God says, listen, if you want to spend your life known for one thing now, or however long I give you, perhaps you would like to be known for forgiveness. How radical would that be? How many lawsuits does that deal with?
How many relationships in business does that see re-engineered? Jesus, such a kind and wonderful shepherd. You see, censoriousness is in the prodigal's brother, who, when the prodigal comes back, having made a royal hash of things, and he comes up the street, his father, who in the story represents God running out to him, comes and says, Hey, boy! And he gives him a big kiss, he gives him a big hug, and he starts to get them all jazzed up.
New shoes, new jewelry, big party, music, dancing, the whole thing. And out in the fields is Mr. Censorius. Excuse me, what's going on in there? Hey, your brother came back!
Is Fenty your man? You ought to hear the band. It's awesome. I can hear the band. I don't like that kind of music. I'm not. Well, forget the music then, don't worry, your brother came back. He's been down there with prostitutes and just making a royal mess of things, and I'm slaving away here for my father, and I don't get a party at all. That spirit is alive and well.
It's the spirit of the Pharisee. What's she doing here? Does anybody know who she is? What's he coming for? Do you know about him? In contrast, think of the hugs all around that Joseph got going, when his brothers who had offended against him so badly finally show up, and he says to them, he says, guys, I am Joseph.
If they had seen a ghost, they could have been more freaked out. Joseph, the guy we sold into slavery, the guy we threw in the pit, the guy we've been lying to our father about for the last twenty-plus years. Yeah, I'm Joseph. You can just see them going, oh, you are, are you?
You are? Oh, nice. He says, hey, come here. He hugs the first one.
He hugs the second one, and he hugs them all the way down the line. Did he have grounds for frying their tails? Did he have the right to clamp the manacles of Egypt on them and put them down in a hole on the strength of all that they had done to him in the sense of the exercise of justice?
Yes. But in terms of his demonstration of the mercy of God the Father to him, the answer was absolutely no. Let me give you one final quote. This is from a lady called Hannah Arendt, A-R-E-N-D-T, from a community that I found in Pennsylvania. She said this, without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to a single deed from which we could never recover. We would remain the victims of its consequences forever, not unlike the sorcerer's apprentice who lacked the magic formula to break the spell. Can I say to you this morning that Jesus died on the cross in order that you may not live confined to a single deed from which you cannot recover?
In order that you do not need to live a victim of the consequences forever, and you do not need a magic formula to break the spell, you and I need a Savior whose blood cleanses us from all sin and whose Spirit empowers us, then, to start looking a little more like our Father, learning not to judge, choosing not to condemn, and learning how to forgive. If we're prepared to take this seriously, I think it will make a dramatic impact in our lives. I don't know the details of your lives. I just know there's enough in my life that can be covered by this.
Maybe there is in yours. As God guides you, let's take care of things. You're listening to Truth for Life Weekend. It's Alistair Begg encouraging us to choose to forgive rather than to judge.
It's not always easy, but it is always necessary. We hope you'll keep listening. Alistair will be right back to close with prayer. If you've listened to Truth for Life for a while now, you know that we put a lot of thought into recommending books to you to supplement your study of the Bible. Today, we want to recommend a book titled Love Your Church by Toni Morita. This book explains why the local church is so important and how important it is for us as believers to be active and contributing members of a local church.
Toni Morita is an author and a pastor. He reminds us that Jesus established the early church to be the central place for worship and Christian fellowship. As members of a local church, we join with others to form a community with privileges and responsibilities for building one another up in our faith. Find out how you can be the kind of local church member who makes a real difference.
The book Love Your Church comes highly recommended by Alistair. Find out more about the book when you visit our website, truthforlife.org. Now here's Alistair to close with prayer. Oh God our Father, thank you that the Bible is a book to be studied, that it's written sensibly in an ordered fashion, that we're not simply dipping into it to find blessed thoughts, but we're wrestling with it.
It is wrestling us to the ground. Father, it is bringing us to our knees where we need to be. From verse 17 on, he turned the searchlight into our hearts, Lord.
As individuals, as families, as couples, as leadership groups, as a church family. Save us, Lord, from the stupid naivety, the gauntlessness, which is often believed to be the expression of taking this seriously. But save us also, Lord, from the tendency that rises in our hearts to sit on the throne that is yours alone and to exercise a prerogative which is only yours. Thank you that you forgive us and that those who know themselves to have been forgiven of much will be easy to detect because of the forgiving spirit that they show to others. Thank you for the steadfast love of God which never fails. Thank you for the mercies that never come to an end. Send us out, Lord, with that thought uppermost in our minds so that the principle may be applied. Be merciful. Be full of steadfast love, just as your Father is full of steadfast love. For Jesus' sake we ask it, Amen.
I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening. Join us again next weekend for the final part of today's message. As we continue learning about forgiving others, we'll see that sometimes it feels impossible to do so when we've been deeply hurt. Next weekend we'll find out how it is possible and why it's vital that we do so. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the learning is for nothing.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-05-27 08:43:00 / 2023-05-27 08:51:55 / 9