PROVERBIAL PARABLES AND PARABOLIC PROVERBS: LOG OUT BEFORE YOU LOG IN
Luke 6: 39-42
09/09/12 © Dr. Ronald W. Scates
Do you ever feel a little bit uneasy when you pull up to one of those drive-thru ATMs and all of the signage is also in braille?
This morning Luke introduces us to a parable of Jesus or is it 3 parables? If it’s 3 parables, at least 2 of them are about
eyesight. A parable from a literary standpoint is a type; it is a figure of something else. It was a common teaching tool in Jesus’ day.
A parable brings forth a spiritual truth by comparing it to something that’s common, down-to-earth, very familiar in life. And
Proverbs and parables are there in Scripture to make you and me wise so that we might thus live life more wisely and more faithfully.
Well, let’s see what Jesus has to say to us parabolically this morning by turning in our bibles to the gospel of Luke to the 6th
chapter as we take a look at verses 39 through 42.
Are these 3 parables or just 1? Let’s see what we find. Join me as we pray before we read.
Holy Spirit, open our hearts and minds now to Your Word that we might clearly understand it, that we might gratefully receive it
and that we might faithfully apply it to our lives. For Jesus’ sake! Amen.
And now, if you’re able, please stand for the reading of our New Testament lesson this morning beginning to read at verse 39
of Luke, chapter 6. This is the Word of God:
39 He, (Jesus), also told them a parable: “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? (Parable 2:) 40 A
disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher. (Parable 3:) 41 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? 42 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.
Please pray with me again. And now Father, as my words are true to Your Word may they be taken to heart but as my words
should stray from Your Word, may they be quickly forgotten. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen. Please be seated.
Life is really all about learning to follow a leader—the right leader. Now you may be saying, “No, no, no, no, no! Ron, I’m a
leader. People follow me.” And that may be true, but you and I will never be really good leaders until, first of all, we learn to follow
and to follow the right leader.
The people of Israel, back in Jesus’ day, were not following the right leaders. Jesus is warning them, in this parable, in verse 39
that they need to be sure they are following the right leaders because when you and I follow bad leaders or ill-equipped leaders,
what awaits us at the end of the day is a pit. So this is a warning to the Jews of the 1 st Century not to follow the pharisaical religious
leaders of their day. You wind up in a pit if you do that.
What about you and me here this morning? Do we ever feel like sometimes we’re just in a pit? Our life is in a pit? Could that be
perhaps because we are following the wrong leader? Jesus says when you do that, it’s like blind guides trying to lead blind people
and you always wind up in the pit.
So it’s a 1st Century warning but it’s also a 21st Century warning to people today who are rather quick to line up against or
behind a blind Atheism or a blind skepticism or a blind rationalism or a blind superstition or line up behind themselves, thinking
they are the only leader that they need. “I can navigate this life, spiritually or in every other area quite nicely by myself, thank you.”
My friends, the epitome of presumptive arrogance is thinking that you and I don’t need to follow a leader; that in matters of
faith and what we believe and how we live our lives, we can pretty much, well, we probably know more and better than God. When
you and I start thinking like that, look out pit—here we come!
And so, in verse 40 of our text, Jesus throws out another parabolic angle on flying blind and He uses the word, “disciple” to
remind you and me as to who we really are. That word, “disciple”, by definition means, “follower.” You and I cannot be Christians
unless we’re disciples and you and I cannot be disciples unless we are followers of the Great Teacher, Jesus Christ, unless you and
I bring the entirety of our lives under His supreme authority and lordship. He is the Great Teacher.
Imagine walking into a graduate level seminar on particle physics. And speaking if particle physics, I can’t resist. As a former
research scientist, I just have to tell this. A Higgs Boson particle walks into a Roman Catholic church on a Sunday morning and an
usher looks at him and says, “What are you doing here?” The particle says, “Well, without me you can’t have mass.” If you don’t get
that, Google, “Higgs Boson particle.”
Imagine walking in to a graduate level seminar on particle physics and you sit down and then a student jumps up says,
“Professor, please sit down. I’m going to take over this seminar. I think I know more about this subject than you do. Why don’t you
just step aside?” We would say, “That’s preposterous!” and yet how many times, in your lives and mine, when confronted with what
God clearly reveals what He believes to be His best for our lives, we go, “No, no, no, I don’t think so. I think I will go this way rather
than your way, Lord.” When you and I do that, there is usually a ditch at the end of the road.
Back in Jesus’ day, the Pharisees thought they knew more about God and the ways of God than did Jesus who ironically was
God in the flesh. So once again, Jesus is warning the 1st Century Jews, “Don’t follow the Pharisees.”
My friends, the truth is you and I become like who or what we follow. Follow yourself, well, that’s kind of a dead end. Follow
money and you become greedy. Follow fame and you will become infamous. Follow power and you will become a control freak.
Follow, well, fill in the blank____anything other than Christ and here’s a ditch waiting for you at the end of the road—a pit. We
become like who we follow. That means if you and I are truly following Jesus Christ over the long haul of Jesus Christ, over the long
haul of our lives, we ought to start looking like Christ and acting something like Christ. We’re never going look exactly like Christ
this side of eternity, but as we go through life and we follow Christ faithfully that ought to make changes in your lives and mine. We
ought to have a passion for the kingdom of God. We ought to have mercy in our demeanor in the way we live our lives, grace and
mercy. We ought to be sticklers for honesty and truth. There ought to be no my-way-or-the-highway in our attitude. Again, my way
always leads into a ditch. There ought to be about you and me a loving spirit, even to the point where, you know, when somebody
kicks you in the teeth, you’re actually more concerned whether or not, when somebody’s kicked you in the teeth, you’re actually
concerned about whether or not they’ve hurt their foot. Over the long haul, if you and I are truly following the right leader, Jesus
Christ, we ought to start looking and acting like Him. If someone were to write yours and my biographies at the end of our lives,
there ought to be, well, at least one chapter in there that looks like it might have been plagiarized from the life of Christ.
Well, Jesus throws another parable out in this text this morning. I think a 3rd parable there in verses 41-42. It’s an outrageously
funny parable, actually, but also it’s a warning. A warning as to how you and I might act in a way that doesn’t look like Christ; a
warning against becoming so hypercritical of others that we wind up falling into the pit of our own hypocrisy.
Now it’s one thing when the world calls you and me, as Christians, hypocrites. You know, you hear that all the time, “Christians
are a bunch of hypocrites!” What should you and I do when that accusation is thrown at us? My advice is this: Own up to it! Say,
“Man, you nailed me; I sure am! And so is everybody else on the planet, including you!”
Everybody has a standard, my friends, and no one, without exception, ever lives up, completely, to their own standard.
Everyone is a hypocrite. Remember I said, a couple of years ago, HPPC really stands for Hypocritical Presbyterians Pursuing Christ.
That’s why we have the Prayer of Confession in our bulletin every week. We admit we go out here trying to serve Christ, we say
we’re going to serve Christ and we blow it. We’re all hypocrites.
Now, when the world calls us hypocrites that’s one thing but we really ought to sit up and take notice when Jesus calls us a
hypocrite, which He does in verse 42 of our text. Whoa! What’s Jesus getting at here?
Late at night, John was driving home and he picked up a hitchhiker and as they began to travel along, John became more and
more suspicious of his passenger and so he felt for his wallet which he had placed in a safe pocket in the jacket that lay on the seat
between them. And the wallet was not there. John slammed on the brakes, told the hitchhiker to get out of the car and then said,
“Hand over the wallet now!” and the frightened hitchhiker handed over the wallet and John roared off and left that man in the middle
of nowhere. As John got home that night and began to tell his wife about what had happened, she interrupted him and said, “Before
I forget, John, do you realize you left the house today and left your wallet at home?”
The scribes and the Pharisees of Jesus’ day were quick—quick to accuse and judge people over all kinds of little tiny things
while not owning up to the much bigger faults that were in their own lives. They were going after other people’s sawdust while they
had big gigantic logs in their eyes, Jesus says.
You and I can be guilty of that as well. My friends, we need to do a little reality check here though before we go on. You and I,
as followers of Jesus Christ, we can live gracious lives, at least try to. No matter how hard we try to live a gracious life, no matter
how lovingly we act and speak, you need to realize there are areas in our culture today, cultural hot-button issues, such as abortion,
such as human sexuality issues, i.e. same-sex marriage, such as theological issues as ‘is Jesus the only way to salvation,’ that if
you and I gracious and speak and act lovingly and uphold the beauty of God’s best for our lives, as He clearly reveals it in Scripture,
we will still be vilified as narrow, hateful, judgmental—that’s just the way it is in our current culture.
That’s not what Jesus is talking about! In fact, Jesus says, in the beatitudes, Matthew 5, “Blessed…” remember that means,
“on the right road.” “On the right road are you when people persecute you because of Me.” When we faithfully follow Christ,
persecution is part and parcel of the deal. But that’s not what Jesus is talking about here. What He IS talking about is when you and I
have no concern at all about those gigantic logs that are protruding from our eyeballs, and we’re nagging somebody about the
sawdust, that should not be, my friends. That should not be!
Poll after poll after poll of people on the street reveals continually that when people are asked, “What pops in your mind when I
say the word, ‘Christian’?” The number one vote getter is ‘judgmental.’ Why is that? That should not be! You and I need to start
working overtime to overcome that—to change that!
Again, I’m not talking about faithfully following Christ and being a gracious loving person that still is going to draw fire. I’m
talking about when we are totally oblivious to those logs, those gigantic logs. We need to clean up the scrap lumber in our
backyards before we start nagging somebody else about the sawdust on their porch.
And when you and I don’t get those logs out of our eyes, you know what happens? The world sees us and they take those logs
and they put them together and re-crucify Christ on that cross.
Let’s not give them that opportunity. Let’s not give them that opportunity!
My friends, one crucifixion was enough, entirely enough, to cover the sin of the whole world, including your hypocrisy and
mine!
In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.