Justifying Heartlessness

Grace be with you all, and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm thankful and blessed to have been here already. Thankful for like-minded brothers. Thankful for visitors. Thankful for a place to gather. I'm thankful to have heard the reminder already about our need for humbly entreating the Lord in order to find favor with Him. And I'm thankful for the opportunity to share some more thoughts that I think fit in with what was shared already. I think certainly one of the characteristics that always carry through with people who really were, like we can definitely say this person that we read about in scripture was godly. One of the things that we'll always find in those people is humility. And maybe it'd be about as safe to say about, I'm not sure if it's, I haven't thought much about it, but you can almost probably consistently say of the people that fall away that they lack humility. Few people stand out as much to me as John the Baptist in that. And when people, when his own disciples came to him and said, hey, look at what's happening, everybody's running after this Jesus now, and he says he must increase, I must decrease. May we just all have that heart toward our brothers. When we see another being honored more than us, yeah, he must increase, I must decrease. Let's pray. Oh God in heaven, we thank you. We praise you. We love you for all that you've done for us, and just for being God and our Father and taking thought of us. We thank you for salvation in the Lord Jesus. We ask that you would help us to be faithful and to walk in your ways and to be clothed in humility. We just ask that you would watch over us today, keep us in your care, give us ears to hear, give us hearts to understand. We pray for those brothers and sisters not here today, whether they be sick or traveling or ministering somewhere else, or be with them and minister to their hearts and help them. We pray for your spirit to be here. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. If you have a desire to read along, you can open your Bibles to Luke chapter 10. I'm going to start reading in verse 25. It says, And a lawyer stood up and put him to the test saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And he said to him, What is written in the law? How does it read to you? And he answered, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. And he said to him, You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live. But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor? And Jesus replied, And said, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among the robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. And by chance, a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise, a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him, and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and came to him, and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them, and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, he took out two denarii, and gave them to the innkeeper, and said, Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, when I return, I will repay you. Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robber's hands? And he said, This one who showed mercy toward him. And Jesus said to him, Go and do the same. In this correspondence, we see, we see a common thing that people do. People, especially people that already know God's word, but don't really want to change. They would like to be validated as having a right standing with God without changing, or without doing anything. He asked, this lawyer asked him a good question. What shall I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus asked him, What is written? What do you know about it? How does it read to you? And this lawyer, he was very familiar with the law. He was a lawyer. He had probably spent a good portion of his life poring over the law, studying it. I'm guessing he was familiar with all 613 commandments in the Torah. And I think he knew, he knew in his mind what the core, what the very core of those commandments are. Which one is the chiefest one of them all? And he went and he quoted Deuteronomy 6.5, maybe a combination of Deuteronomy 6.5 and Leviticus 19.18, where he said, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. You know, that is, that is the core of the law. Jesus said at one point, On these two commands hang all the law and the prophets. He said in Matthew and Mark, lawyers had asked him like, Which one is it? And maybe this lawyer had heard Jesus say this, I'm not sure. But Jesus would quote those commands. He would say, You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And then in Matthew, I think he says, And the second is like unto it. In other words, I feel like he's saying the second is basically the same thing. And that is to love your neighbor as yourself. It's like two sides of the same coin. You really can't have the one without the other. And Paul would later confirm that when he says, He who loves his neighbor, in Romans 13, he says, He who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this you shall not murder. For this commandment, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet. And then he says, And if there be any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. You see, I'm sure there's many good reasons why the scripture is not condensed to those two verses. I'm sure there's reasons why there's expounding. I'm sure there's reasons why there's more written. But if we get this, if we wrap our minds around it, or maybe more, we should say more like, If our heart is that way, if we, from a heartfelt compassion, love our neighbor as ourself, it pretty much takes care of all this. Like, why would the command, Thou shalt not commit adultery, or look after a woman after lust? Which one of us would not have a big problem with if somebody took an eye to our wife, or ran off with her, or whatever? Like, if that's how we feel, why would a man do that to someone else's wife, or someone else's daughter? Somebody, like, if we love another man as we would love ourself, we would never do that to them. What about, like, we have commandments to not lay up wealth. If we already have this heart that we should love our neighbor as ourself, and we recognize that, I think I could say the majority, or at least a huge, there's a huge population of people, of our brothers, and I'm not necessarily just talking about, like, brothers in the faith, but, like, brothers in mankind, our fellow man that suffer from want, who are not, like, deciding, well, should I lay this up for the future? They're trying to survive. And if we love them as ourself, would we even need a command that says don't lay up treasures on earth? All of these instructions, instructions about dressing modestly, it's because we love our neighbor as ourself. We try not to provoke someone, or make them stumble. We have a commandment that says do not bear false witness. Do we like it when people bear false witness about us? Of course not. And so why would we do that if we loved our neighbor as we loved ourself? If we do all these things, and it's motivated by love for our neighbor, or it's just motivated by love, we are very near the heart of God. And if we just know it in our head, and even perhaps try to do it without love, we're like this lawyer. I love the simplicity of Jesus' answer here. After he gives, after this lawyer says this thing, this is how I read it, the lawyer would be saying this is what I read. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus' answer is just you have said correctly. Do this, and you shall live. Just a very simple answer. I love it. Like I think there's the answer, but here's what happens. In verse 29, the lawyer, it says, but wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor? You know, this lawyer could sound very sincere and humble, and he could ask the right question, what must I do? You know, I want salvation too. I need salvation. I'm in need. What must I do? And a lot of people can fake that kind of show of humility, expressing their neediness. And in fact, I feel like one of the fruits of the false gospel is that people have been made to believe that they're saved and secure because of what Jesus did, but then they sound humble by proclaiming themselves as sinners and who can never do anything to please God. It's all about what God did for us, and it's amazing what kind of ugly rottenness comes out when someone actually suggests to someone like that, well, you need to repent of this sin that you're talking about and be cleansed from it. And they quickly go on the defense, and the real ugly and rottenness within them really comes out. It's easy to make a show of a fake humility. It would appear to me that this lawyer was not satisfied that Jesus couldn't just say, well, no, you're good. Just keep doing what you're doing. It appears to me like his question to begin with wasn't even that he was hungry to know I really am lacking something. What can I do? What must I do? But rather he longed to be validated as being right with God. And the fact that Jesus said, well, do this, and you shall live, was enough that he tried to justify himself. Justifying ourselves is pharisaical. In Luke 16, 15, this is what Jesus said about the Pharisees. You are they which justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For that which is highly esteemed among men is an abomination to God. When we're wrong about something and we justify ourselves, it is a mark of a Pharisee. It is an abomination, and God hates it. When someone knows the will of God, but is not doing it, and he justifies himself not doing it, that's worse than deciding I'm just going to disobey. That's worse than deciding, man, this is just too hard. I can't take it. But men everywhere do this frequently and habitually, and I think we're not exempt from it. I wrote this list of examples of how people, how so-called Christians or even Christians, some examples of how they justify themselves. And what I just really want to drive home is when love for God and our neighbor is missing, and we have all this head full of laws, this list here, and it's not an exhaustive list at all, but this is what people end up doing. I'll just read this list that I wrote, and you'll probably notice that in the beginning it's all stuff we all agree with, and we say, yeah, that's what those people do. Yeah, that's what those people do. But if I could, I'd just like to have your attention as I get toward the end of it, because I'm trying to bring it more home to things that we all struggle with daily. You've seen it among us. I've been guilty of some of these, and think about these things. People justify themselves for following godless and disobedient church authorities because of their apostolic succession. People justify iconography and idolatry because Paul says to follow the oral traditions. People justify taking up arms in military service because in Romans 13 it says we need to be subject to governments. People justify divorcing their spouses and marrying another because in Deuteronomy God gave instructions for it, and God is the same yesterday and today and forever. People justify not helping the poor after all the Scriptures say the poor you will always have with you. People justify laying up for a retirement because the Scriptures say go to the aunt and learn from her, and she stores up her food in the summer and gathers her food in the harvest. People justify gambling and raffles and partying and say they're taking up collections for charity. People justify expensive vacations and say they're admiring God's handiwork. People justify an ungodly obsession of hunting and fishing and say they're providing food for their own and enjoying God's creation. People justify enormous business and great wealth and say we are supposed to increase our talents and be good stewards and use good management. People justify not needing to take the gospel into the world because the apostles already fulfilled that. People justify not evangelizing to the lost because we are to live a quiet and peaceable life. People justify not assembling with the local community of believers because after all where two or three are gathered together there is he with them and so if you and your wife or your child gather together you're fine. Husbands justify not loving their wives because their wife doesn't submit to him and wives justify not submitting to their husbands because their husbands don't lay down their life for them. People justify negligence of their children because they have this ministry to God and after all Jesus said he that loves his children more than me is not worthy of me. People justify being angry with a brother and they say they're filled with righteous indignation. People justify foolish joking and silly videos and say that a merry heart does good like medicine. People justify a lack of compassion and say we need to be zealous for purity. People justify gossip and tail bearing because they can do it in the form of a prayer request. People justify rude, blunt, offensive communication because they say we need to be honest about how things are. People justify not being intreatable because the brother didn't intreat him in the right spirit. People justify not receiving a brother's admonition because he talked to other brothers first. People justify harboring bitterness because the perpetrator never confessed his sins. That list could go on for a long time. Those kind of justifications show, like this lawyer, that we've poured over the scriptures and we know what it says but we lack a heart that loves his neighbor as himself. In this account, after the lawyer made this justification or tried to justify himself, Jesus did what he as the master teacher did so well. He told a story that really drove the point home. He said there was this man that was on his way from Jerusalem down to Jericho and he fell among the robbers. He got robbed and he got beat and left there stripped and left there half dead. I think there's some... And then it happened that a priest came along and he saw this man and he walked around the other side and then came a Levite and he saw this man suffering and he walks around the other side. I think there's some things in this account that some meaning in this account that his audience would have got easily that we can kind of easily miss. We're pretty far removed from that region. We sometimes forget who the priests and the Levites were. We sometimes forget who the Samaritans were and sometimes we can read this story and be like, okay, there were two guys and they didn't show compassion. There was one guy that showed compassion. We want to be compassionate. Well, sure, that's in its very, very basicest form. But I think Jesus' audience would have grasped some things that give us a little bit more, a deeper meaning of what this story is that Jesus said. This road that goes from Jerusalem to Jericho, it's an 18-mile road. Jerusalem sits kind of up on the mountains, up on a highland. Jericho is way down here in the Dead Sea Valley. It's actually below sea level, I believe, that Jericho is. And this 18-mile road is a descent through just a totally parched and barren, rugged desert land. And it's a route that was used for trading caravans. Given the isolated terrain, the people were easy targets for bandits. These groups of robbers found ample hiding spaces in all the rocks. Not only that, it was a small thing to, after they had made their rob, just to escape into the barren desert and nobody was interested in pursuing them. It was just too barren and rugged. Because of the animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans, the Samaritans often got the blame for being the robbers. If I'm not wrong, Jerusalem and Jericho are both in the Southern Kingdom. They're both a part of Judah. And the Samaritans, they always had this conflict with whether they were the ones who got accused of robbing the Jews as they went up and down this road. The road was a very narrow road. For the most places, it was not much more than a footpath. In Jesus' story, this man fell among these robbers and they stripped him and they beat him and they left him there half dead. Along came this priest and this Levite. And here's the point that I'd like for us to consider. I don't think that this priest and this Levite were these just evil men who hated God and anything that was right. And therefore, they just saw this man and despised him and kept walking. Remember, they were priests and Levites. The priests and the Levites were set apart to do the temple work. They needed to live a somewhat higher standard. They needed to keep themselves clean. If they became defiled by touching anything unclean, they were not allowed to perform their duties in the temple service. They were not even allowed to enter the temple if they were unclean. And guess what? It was unclean to touch a dead body. This man that was laying beside the road was half dead. If this priest or this Levite picked him up to help him or to carry him the rest of this 18 miles, I mean, there's a good possibility he could have died on the way and they'd have touched a dead body and they'd have been unclean. They couldn't have performed their duty. They couldn't have performed their ministry. It would have interfered with this thing they're called to do, right? So it wasn't very hard for the priest and the Levite to find a proof text in the Scriptures that they needed to justify walking around this man and continuing on their way. And then who comes along but a Samaritan? Those despised people, those ones who don't really accept the whole Old Testament. They accept the five books of Moses. They don't really accept the rest. One of those guys. He comes along. And it says, He saw him and he felt compassion. Here in this story, we see this vivid picture of the difference between a heart filled with compassion and a head filled with knowledge. One of the greatest desires for myself and all of us is that we would be men and women after God's own heart. That we would be able to feel compassion and not meaning that we would be void of the knowledge of God's laws and His statutes. Not at all. We should study the Scriptures. We should devour them. We should be so familiar with them that we know what it says, but we should not have that at the expense of a heart full of compassion. Consider the Son of God who had perfect knowledge and He was so pure and He was so righteous. There was no uncleanness in Him. There was no portion of the curse that applied to the Son of God. But He, because He felt compassion for us, He stooped down and was made flesh. He became defiled and accursed and tasted death. Why? In order to lift us up, to heal our transgressions, to anoint our wounds and hurts with the oil of gladness. He got down off of His own beast or seat so that He could put us into that seat and bring us into His kingdom. That's the heart of God. Not just to know and lecture, but to feel compassion and suffer for us. So what did this Samaritan do? It says, And when he saw Him, he felt compassion. And he came to Him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them. And he put Him on his own beast and brought Him to an inn and took care of Him. And on the next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, Take care of Him and whatever more you spend, when I return, I will repay you. And in verse 36, Jesus, in His story that Jesus gave here, He flips the question around that the lawyer had asked Him. He flips the word neighbor from a noun to a verb. The lawyer had been saying, Well, who is my neighbor? Somehow, surely, I can justify what I'm doing. And Jesus switches it around and He says, Which of these three do you think prove to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robber's hands? And He said, The one who showed mercy toward him. And Jesus said, Go and do the same. May we all go and do the same. May we be ones that show mercy. And I think this is especially important for those of us who, it is established in our faith, it is established in our beliefs that obedience to God is essential to salvation. We firmly believe that. And so it's important for us to be reminded of these. It's important for me, at least, to be reminded of these things. Sometimes, in our strictness of obedience to the letter, we can miss the heart of God. We can strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. We can be like the Pharisees who neglect the weightier matters of the law, which is justice and mercy and faithfulness. And we can justify it by our strict adherence to lesser things of the law or lesser commands. If we do not love our neighbor as ourself, with a heartfelt compassion, we'll get the Scriptures all wrong. We'll have no problem finding a proof text to justify all kinds of ridiculous things, even finding permission to walk around a half-dead neighbor in order to keep ourselves pure. When Saul came back from his slaughter of the Amalekites and he felt like he had obeyed the Word of God, he had smote the Amalekites, and if you looked at the aftermath of his slaughter, it looked like a great victory. There must have been heaps and heaps and heaps of dead bodies. But when Samuel asked him, what means this bleeding of the sheep and lowing of the cattle, he immediately tries to justify himself. And God was ready to rend the kingdom from him and give it to a man after his own heart. Let's close in prayer. O God in heaven, we pray that You would help us, that You would give us a heart of compassion like You have, that we could be humble and intreatable, and that You would help us to quit this justifying ourselves before men and just be willing to suffer and love our neighbor as ourself. We pray for a heart after You, Lord, in Jesus' name, Amen. Amen. Hallelujah. I really appreciated that. Sometimes honesty really hurts, but it also, if you're willing to accept it, it feels really good to just be put in your place and just accept it, and that's really a blessing. I thought of this question that's in 1 Corinthians 6-7 in relation to what you shared, brother. Now, therefore, there is utterly a fault among you because you go to law one with another. Why do you not rather take wrong? Why do you not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? It's such a good question. If you just take the time to think about why. Why am I not allowing myself to suffer this wrong? Why am I not allowing myself to just suffer to be defrauded? Why am I justifying myself? But if you're willing to go there and just really consider your ways and dig deep and pray about those things, you can see that God will really show you in your heart all these things that you need to make right or you need to get right with yourself. But if you just immediately justify yourself, you lose out on all that. But I think one thing I'm sure a lot of us have seen over the years is this lack of willingness to suffer the wrong, this lack of willingness to be defrauded. I'm pretty persuaded it's our human nature to justify ourselves and it's spiritual nature to allow ourselves to be defrauded. You really have to lay hold of something spiritual to be able to lay down your life and suffer that wrong. But that's where the Spirit of God comes in. If we have the Spirit of God, we can do what Jesus did and we can suffer the wrong and we can lay down our lives. But if we're quick to justify ourselves, that means that we're lacking the Spirit. We're lacking that Spirit that Jesus had. It's not the end of the world. It's okay if you just say, hey, look, something's not right. I'm lacking something big time right now. And just humble yourself and just consider your ways and dig deep and pray and ask God to help you. There's hope. You don't have to stay in that state. I've seen myself in that state before where I've been quick to justify myself. And then I've considered that and thought about that and prayed about that. It's like, oh yeah, that's what I'm doing. I see why I'm doing that. And then God's like, what are you going to do about that? It's kind of like that message that I shared. You get to the top of this mountain and it's a glorious sight, like God's truth. You study, you read the Bible, but then it's like, what are you going to do with it? It's glorious, it's beautiful, but now when you apply it to your life, it's this hard-hitting reality. And then in our own free will, we decide to either humble ourselves or justify ourselves. I just really appreciated the message. I just felt like when you were sharing that list, it was so open and honest and transparent. It was just such a blessing. I just really appreciate that about being here. People have asked me before, a number of people have asked me, Tal, why would you want to go to Wentworth? Why would you want to be there? They're like, that place is, some of those guys are really intense. And I understand. I see that. I see why they have those concerns for themselves. But for me, I'm like, I'm thinking, okay, I'll just be real transparent and honest here myself. I think, I see Wentworth as this house, this building, and some of the siding is falling off, and some of the windows are not heat efficient. There might be some work to be done on the roof. But I'm like, the foundation is solid. This house, yeah, it might need some work, but the foundation is solid. And so, that's really what matters. It's not how beautiful or how nice the house is. If the foundation is destroyed, what can the righteous do? I really appreciate that about Wentworth is just the honesty, just that level, to just acknowledge, like, hey look, we got some things that aren't right, and we need to do something about it. And I just appreciate that. I want more of that in my life too. I just want to be honest. Like, who am I going to, you know, I might be able to fool you. I might be able to make you think that I'm okay, but I can't stand before God and do that. So, who am I fooling, you know? I just, but anyways, appreciate the message. Lord bless you. Appreciate your comments, Brother Thay, on those, to the Quirk. And likewise, I say amen to your comments, Brother. Thank you, Dwayne, for hitting those, that list also, on justify. I guess it's ad infinitum, Latin phrase, Latin phrase, Micah, Latin phrase, ad infinitum, to infinity, you know, we can justify ourselves for every reason under the sun. But when we appear before him in the judgment scene, we're going to be judged by his words in obedience to those things. yeah, those justification things, Brother Dwayne, is, there's no end to them. Ad nauseum, you could say too, is no end to it. Just a quick comment, let's say on Jericho. Even though I never want to go there, to the promised land, I mean, to the Canaanite, I would probably like to, if I ever did, the road to obedience, someone said, is the road to go, but Jericho, there's a song that has absolutely no meaning. I've asked, maybe some of you brothers, sisters know it, you know, on the Jericho road, there's room, and the words, it's just a nonsense, but whatever it's talking about, as Brother Walter was sharing today, about Anziah, and after Elijah, he appointed Elijah, and I was reading it yesterday, so it's fresh in my mind, but they were on the Jericho road, when he got, trans, what do you call it? Translated into heaven, it was on the Jericho road, and, that's when he, the prophet said, hey, but do you know that your, your master is going to be taken up, I don't want to talk about it, and then he, oh my father, oh my father, it was on the Jericho road, and, anyway, that's trivia, but, and I appreciate Dwayne, but you said, yeah, how they could explain away, the unfinished, the finished work of Christ, everything we do, is filthy rags, and no, no, pursue holiness, without holiness, no one will see the Lord, work out your salvation, with fearing trembling, and so holiness is, so important, and my last point would be, that verse that you quoted, is the most, popular, what's the word, most, repeated verse, in the New Testament, love God with your whole heart, forgive me, love God with your whole heart, and so love your neighbor, as yourself, and, and, how, it is, Paul, you quoted one verse, brother Dwayne, in there, but you know, Paul even says in Philippians, think of your neighbor, as more important, than yourself, and then we have, those verses in the, you know, Paul said, I would, like to myself, to, how do you say, I'd be a curse, for my lost kids, men of Israel, he would, if he could just get, his brothers and sisters, to be saved, and Moses says, the same thing, right, blot my name out, that I could be acceptable, so we need, each other, others, that's a true life, I mean a true, what do you call it, a test we're going to be, judged, how we loved, our brothers and sisters, do we think of them, as more important, than, than ourselves, and my, all I, my concern about, is Sarah, and my grandchildren, and, like this, and, no, no, if I can put my neighbor, above myself, and that one, and that brother Duane went, was my enemies, and we, and we know, when, when Duane said, Jesus quoted that, and he said, you know, which one loved him, the one who showed compassion, he just couldn't come across, to say what, Samaritan, the S word, you know, like that, but anyway, I thank the Lord, for you brethren, and I want to, not only give my life, lay down my life, for my brothers, and sisters, and I want to, lay down my life, for, I'll give back, the life that God, has given us, through mercy, and do all things, for him, that I may be a partaker, of his glory, the Lord be magnified. This thought, has absolutely nothing, to do with your lesson, Duane and Walters, but, I think, I don't know if it's Rob, but someone asked me, during the week, Psalm, 23, the most popular Psalm, repeated, in the Old Testament, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, et cetera, and that last verse, I don't know if it was you Rob, who said, I pre, how does he say, I prepare, for you, a table, in front of my enemies, am I quoting it right, I prepare, go ahead, I prepare for you, a table in front of my enemies, and so I was reading, about, someone who, quoted that verse, for guess what, for the Christians, for communion, we're gonna shortly, take communion, to bless, a rehearsal, for the marriage, supper of the Lamb, the best meal, we'll ever have, and as we take communion, we do it, in front of our enemies, we do it, in front of the devil, his angels, the wicked world, false churches, we take communion, now, in the presence, of our enemies, let's examine ourselves, and praise the Lord. I just wanted to say, one more thing, about my comment, about the house, and the foundation, that wasn't meant, to be discouraging, that was meant, to be encouraging, I think, yeah, I think the most important thing, is the foundation, you know, you can have a, an awesome church, and an awesome worship, band, and all that stuff, but if your foundation's, not there, it's just, you're wasting your time, so, we're just so blessed, to be here. Careless words, so, let them never, learn, from the tongue, unbridled sin, make the highest, blest impossible, share the grace, of the living, the Lord, and God, and Him, myself, the Savior, children, obey, the Lord, and God, and Him, myself, the Savior, children, obey, the Lord, the Lord, and Him, myself, and Him, myself, the Savior, children, obey, the Lord, children obey, the Lord and Him, ourselves. Love one another, blessing us all. Careless words are blindly spoken, Betrayed thoughts are rashly stirred, Brightest wings of life are broken By a single pair. Love one another, Lord, serve the Savior, Children, obey His last command. Love one another, Lord, serve the Savior, Children, obey His last command.