The blind leading the blind; Luke 6: 39-49

As we come to this passage again this week, we have been looking at a message that Jesus preached which is sometimes called the Sermon on the Plain.  It’s very similar to the Sermon on the Mount recorded in Matthew, but I personally believe as many commentators do, that this is a different day, and a different audience, and as such it has some variation from the sermon recorded in Matthew.

But it’s important to note that Jesus is preaching.  He is going from town to town, region to region, preaching a message of repentance for entry into the Kingdom of Heaven.  Preaching is a dying art in the church today.  It’s not practiced too much anymore, because we think it is old fashioned, or obsolete.   But 1Cor 1:21 tells us that “it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom.  But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.  Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”  God has chosen the preaching of righteousness and repentance as the means by which He has revealed salvation to the world.

And to that end, God has called preachers to preach the Word.  The apostle Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:2 to “Preach the Word.  Be ready in season and out of season.  Reprove, rebuke and exhort with all patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.”

What Paul is contrasting there is the preacher that has been called by God to preach the Word, and the false teacher that will rise up in the latter days who will tell people what they want to hear, and they will turn away from the life saving truth and will turn instead to myths and human philosophy and social discourse, a little self improvement mixed with the power of positive thinking.  But the end result will be that only the truth of God’s word has the power to save and any other teaching or doctrine will only lead you to destruction.

And that is exactly the contrast that Jesus is making in this last part of His message.  Jesus is contrasting the false teaching of the prevailing religious leaders of His day to His teaching..” And so what Jesus is saying here is you have leaders in your religion of Judaism, the Pharisees, scribes, priests  and you have Me and you have to choose between us. They are spiritually dead and I give life. That is clearly the closing argument of this sermon in verse 46, "Why do you call me Lord, Lord and do not what I say? Everyone who comes to Me and hears My words and acts upon them, I will show you whom he is like."

And the point Jesus makes in that following illustration is that you need to hear and obey Me, not them. If you hear and obey Me, you're like a house that stands when the judgment comes. If you follow them, you're like a house that is ruined when the judgment comes. You have to make a choice between My words which are life, and their teaching which leads to death.  Jesus is drawing a line in the sand and He is saying...You must turn from your false religious leaders and follow Me completely.

Jesus is talking to Jews that Luke calls disciples.  Now this wasn’t the 12 apostles, but hundreds or even thousands of disciples, or students, or followers of Christ.  And they were attracted to Him for a variety of reasons.  Some came for the bread and fish.  Some came for the miracles.  Some came for healing.  Some came because it was a popular thing to do at the time.  But not all of them were willing to follow His teaching completely.  Most of them wanted to hang on to the rudiments of Judaism so they wouldn’t be ostracized by the Jewish community, but also wanted the benefits of what Jesus had to offer.

And this is still the situation in the church today.  Far too many people in the world today, even many that profess to be Christians, want to take some of the teachings of Jesus but also want to keep some of the prevailing teaching of the world.  They are people that may know some things about Jesus, may feel warm feelings toward Jesus, who like certain things about His teaching or what they may think is beneficial about Christianity. That’s why sound teaching is so important.  Left to ourselves, we will often go for the low hanging fruit so to speak.  We will pick and choose which doctrines we like and avoid those we don’t. But Jesus is still giving the same message today that He gave 2000 years ago in the Sermon on the Plain, He’s saying...that's not enough, you must come to Me fully, totally, completely to the exclusion of all other religious teachers and all false doctrine.

As you may remember the subject of the sermon is true discipleship. Jesus is defining a true disciple. You remember, first of all, in verses 20 to 26 He defined a true disciple as one who repents, who grieves over their sin and turns away from it. Somebody who mourns over his sin and realizes he's spiritually bankrupt, alienated from God and hungry for true righteousness. Jesus explained that a true disciple of Christ is overwhelmed with his own sin, not overwhelmed with his own righteousness. So the first characteristic  of a true disciple is repentance.

The second characteristic we looked at in vs. 27 to 38  is love.  Love as defined by God is a supernatural ability to love enemies, to love those that hate you, to love those who persecute you. It’s the kind of love that God demonstrates towards us, and in response that a true disciple then demonstrates to the world. Repentance produces the transformation by God of the heart, and agape love demonstrates the work of God in the heart. First the Spirit of God produces repentance, and then when conversion comes, a new love is produced in the heart by the work of the Holy Spirit who changes our desires from being self centered to being God centered, from serving ourselves to serving others.

And today we come to the third characteristic that defines a true disciple, which is submission to the lordship of Christ. The true disciple makes a break from false teachers. Disciples repent of sin. Disciples love their enemies. And disciples, we're going to find out about here, are followers of the truth of Christ. And Jesus makes this point in a negative sense by showing the danger of false spiritual teachers. False teachers are anyone that subtracts or adds to the truth of God’s word or substitutes a worldly philosophy or puts anything in the place of the saving truth of the gospel.

Now there are four dangers in following a false teacher, four things that make them dangerous. Number one, they are blind.   They are blind to the truth as 2 Cor. 4:4 says, “the god of this world (the devil) has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel.” Let's look at verse 39. "He also spoke a parable to them, a blind man cannot guide a blind man, can he? Will they not both fall into a pit?"

The spiritual illustration is very simple. Follow a leader who doesn't know the way to God's Kingdom and you're not going to end up in the Kingdom either. In fact, you follow a blind guide, someone who doesn't know the truth, doesn't know the way to God, and doesn't know the path to salvation and you will end up in hell. That's the pit. You better choose very carefully what religious teacher you follow.

It’s obvious if you flip over to Matthew 15 that Jesus is talking about the religious leaders of the Jews, the Pharisees. Verse 14, Jesus said of the Pharisees, "Let them alone, they are blind guides of the blind and if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit." There Jesus says it is the Pharisees who are the blind guides, the religious leaders.

In Matthew 23 verse 13, Jesus says, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees. Because you shut off the Kingdom of heaven from men, for you do not enter in yourselves nor do you allow those who are entering to go in." Their religious prescriptions do not accomplish salvation so neither enter into the Kingdom.  Verse 15 He says, " Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.” Verse 24 He says, "You blind guides, woe to you scribes and Pharisees," verse 25. Verse 26, "You blind Pharisees..." Repeatedly He identifies the blind guides as the Judaisers, the religious leaders.  They are offering a religious solution that falls short of salvation.  And these Pharisees are illustrative of many religious leaders today that have a form of religion but deny the real power of salvation. (2 Tim. 3)

I think it’s important to remember something.  These Jewish leaders and their followers believed in the one true God of Israel.  They believed in the scriptures.  They believed in the law and went to great lengths to try to keep the law.  They attended synagogue (church) regularly. They fasted and prayed and gave tithes and sacrifices.  They were so close, yet so far away.  Because they were counting on their self righteousness, and God said no righteousness of our own is sufficient. Titus 3:5 says, it’s “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us.”  We needed a Savior, and Jesus came to be the Savior of those that would acknowledge their sin, repent of it and turn to follow Christ completely.

The Bible says the whole world was in darkness and blind and lost and so in Luke 4:18 Jesus preached  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, And recovery of sight to the blind, To set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”  He came to give sight to the blind, to proclaim the truth of the  gospel, that salvation had come through Him.

The second danger of false teachers is they rely on human wisdom. Not only do they lack godly wisdom, truth, they rely on earthly wisdom. And the illustration is made, back to Luke 6 vs. 40, "The pupil is not above his teacher but everyone after he has been fully trained will be like his teacher."

A pupil can't rise above his teacher. All you can know is what you've been told. You can't get above him. Where your teacher stops, you stop and whatever your teacher's limits are, those are your limits. And whatever your teacher's errors are, those become your errors. Unless you go to another teacher, you can't rise above the teacher you choose. If your teacher is earthy, worldly, human, if it's just human wisdom, if it's just man or demon inspired religion, philosophy, ethics and they don't know God, in the end you won't know Him either and it will just be earthly.

But Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes unto the Father except by Me.”  Jesus said again in John 6:63, “the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”  He said, “I and the Father are one.”  He told Philip that if you have seen Me you have seen the Father.  So the word of Christ is a life giving truth because He is the giver of life.  He is the incarnate God in the flesh.

Thirdly, Jesus said there's a third danger; false teachers are hypocrites.  Vs. 41, "Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, '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, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother's eye.”

Here's the problem false teachers have. They can't fix you because they can't fix themselves. They can't solve your problem because they've got a massive one of their own. And Jesus makes an exaggerated illustration to show the foolishness of these men’s doctrine. The word "speck," actually means a chip. This is not a tiny little piece of sand like you get in your eye, this would be like a wood chip, a serious problem in your eye. And along comes this spiritual leader, "Let me bring virtue into your life, let me bring understanding into your life, let me lead you to God." And he's going to look in there and find the little things that are wrong and take them out. The problem is, he's got a beam in his eye.  He uses a word to describe the main beam in a building.

Religious teachers, they'll say...we will show you morality and virtue, we want to bring goodness into your life, and let me here take a look at what's wrong in your life and let me fix you a little bit." But they can't do that. False religion can't fix itself much less anyone else.  Religious, moral people that haven’t been born again cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven and so cannot help others either.

Turn to Matthew 23 again. In that same passage I read earlier, this issue of hypocrisy comes up again in verse 13, "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites." Verse 14, "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites." Fifteen, "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites." And it just keeps going. Verse 23, "Hypocrites" Verse 25, "Hypocrites" Verse 27, "Hypocrites." And then He defines hypocrisy, verse 25, "You clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside are full of robbery and self-indulgence. First clean the inside of the cup and the dish so that the outside of it may become clean." Verse 27, For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.” In verse 28, "Inwardly full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."  All the world’s religions focus on cleaning the outside of the cup.  Only true salvation through Jesus Christ cleanses the inside.

And lastly, fourthly, the fourth danger of following the wrong spiritual teacher is that even though they seem outwardly good, inwardly they are actually evil. And He makes this clear in the next simple parable. Verse 43; "For there is no good tree which produces bad fruit, nor on the other hand, a bad tree which produces good fruit. For each tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they pick grapes from a briar bush. The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.”

The greatest evil is to set a stumbling block in front of others who are seeking to know the Lord.  We sometimes think that we need to be tolerant of religious leaders that are playing around on the edges of Christianity and mixing the world’s philosophy and human wisdom and substituting experiences and signs and wonders for sound doctrine.  But the truth is that we need to be warning people to get out from under the teaching of these men, because their doctrine is evil.  I Timothy 4:1 calls it a doctrine of demons that will cause men to fall away from the faith.  There has to be a true change of heart from evil to good that can only be accomplished through the supernatural transformation of salvation through Jesus Christ.

And finally now we come to the end of Christ’s sermon.  He has shown the contrast between His teaching and the teaching of the false religious leaders.  And now He is going to illustrate it one more time in a very dramatic fashion, leaving them and us with a choice to make.  And that choice will result in one of two kinds of lives; one that escapes judgment or one that will be swept away in judgment. Verse 46, "Why do you call Me 'Lord, Lord' and do not do what I say? Everyone who comes to Me and hears My words and acts upon them, I'll show you whom he is like. He is like a man building a house who dug deep and laid a foundation upon the rock and when a flood rose, the torrent burst against that house and could not shake it because it had been well built. But the one who has heard and has not acted accordingly is like the man who built a house upon the ground without any foundation and the torrent burst against it and immediately it collapsed and the ruin of that house was great."

Remember I said earlier that the Jews were close to entering the Kingdom, but not close enough?  How tragic it is to be sincere, to be religious, to even call Jesus Lord, Lord, to go to church, to try to keep the golden rule, to try to live a moral life, and yet in the judgment be told, “Depart from Me you workers of iniquity, for I never knew you.”

In Matthew’s version of the sermon on the mount, Jesus adds according to Matt.7:22, "Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?'  Listen to what Jesus is saying.  They prophesied in His name.  That means they were preachers, they were giving what was purported to be divine revelation, maybe they said they heard God speak to them, they saw a vision, they had a dream, and it sounded good to their ears and led people astray from the truth.

Notice that some of these false teachers will have supernatural power to cast out demons, and in the Lord’s name perform many miracles.  Don’t be deceived by so called faith healers and people running around supposedly doing miracles whose whole ministry is characterized by signs and wonders.  Remember Jesus said in the verse we looked at earlier in 1 Cor. 1:21 that the Jews looked for a sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom and yet they were not a part of the kingdom of God.  But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, we preach Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

Jesus calls these people workers of iniquity; that is, in their self righteousness they can produce no righteousness before God.  They fail because their hearts are still in sin.  Only faith in Christ can produce a righteousness that meets God’s requirements.  And that can only happen because God transfers Christ’ righteousness to us, and our sins to Him.  2 Cor. 5:21, God made Jesus who knew no sin, to become sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

So the illustration speaks for itself.  Those that build on that foundation in Jesus Christ will be like the house that stood against the torrent and did not fall.  The foundation is a new heart made righteous through Christ. God credits me with righteousness which is the foundation then for my life.  It is being born again by the supernatural act of mercy by God.  That transformation is my foundation.  And Jesus says those that have that foundation will never be shaken.

And then He contrasts one who built his house upon sand, upon the ground without a foundation.  He may have built a house with good intentions, with sincerity, with good works, yet he did not have a foundation of being born again by the power of salvation.  He never recognized his sin, never repented of his sin, but only tried to add some religion, some good works that he hoped would balance out the scale and perhaps God would permit him to enter into the kingdom.  But Jesus says though that man may have heard the truth, he didn’t act upon it appropriately.  And so when the judgment came, the ruin of that house was great.

Jesus finished his sermon with that illustration.  He drew a line in the sand so to speak that day.  And I would also draw a line upon the sand here today.  You are either in the kingdom of heaven or you are not.  False religion may have told you that all roads lead to heaven, that there is no hell.  That if you do good things and are sincere then a good God will let you in.  But folks, I am here to tell you what Jesus himself has told you, broad is the road that leads to destruction and many are going that way, and that narrow is the gate that leads to life, and few there be that find it.  I pray that you choose life.  Jesus said, I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except by Me.  Your own righteousness is not going to cut it.  You have to have the foundation of righteousness that only Christ can provide. And only that righteous foundation will stand  unshaken in the judgment.