Representing Our Father Well

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I read an interview this week that a gentleman gave about his background, his life, his career. He was a career foreign service officer. That’s what they, I thought they were just called diplomats, but they’re called FSOs.

And he was talking about the training that he had to go through in addition to college and everything else he had to do. He had to go through a several week into a few months orientation time called an A100. And this time of training, something all of our diplomats go through before they go overseas, before they’re posted somewhere, they go through this extensive period of training that teaches them how to go overseas and how to represent the United States, how to be diplomats on our behalf, and they teach them about diplomatic protocols.

It’s really important that they teach them to go over to countries and not offend people. You know, there are certain countries where, for example, you can’t give somebody a thumbs up because it means something ugly. I remember when we had the Ugandans here last year, after about a few days with them, I finally thought to ask, this is not offensive in your country, right?

That should have been something I asked up front, but they said, no, it was fine. They were not one of the countries that’s offended by it. But they teach them diplomatic protocols and how to go and be diplomatic, how not to offend people as you’re trying to represent the U.

S. They teach them about ethics. They teach them about ethical dilemmas they may face and not having conflicts of interest, but being able to wholeheartedly represent us to another country.

They talk about the internal workings of the State Department, how their job works, how they work with other people. This one’s really important. They talk about security procedures because not every place in the world is safe and you need to know how to protect yourself if you’re going somewhere overseas.

And they’ll talk about information related to their posting because every country is different. And sometimes they’ll have to go through refresher training, as I understand it, if you get moved from one country to another because, again, they’re all different. And even within the same country, you can go to different cities and they may be different.

So I guess I just thought the president appoints somebody and they go overseas and they represent us. No, there’s training that’s involved. If you’re going to go and represent the United States, there’s training involved that you have to go through in order to do it well because it’s a great responsibility to represent somebody else, even without leaving and going elsewhere.

If you’re going to hire an attorney to represent you, you hope that that person is well-trained in what it means to represent you, right? You don’t want somebody with no training. Well, I watched Law and Order a few times, so I’m good to go.

No, you want somebody with actual training. If I even send one of my kids to represent me to another one of my kids, I am very clear with them on what I want them to say. Don’t go tell your sister clean her room, because that just sounds like child one telling child two, you need to clean your room.

Go tell them, Daddy said, clean your room. or I’ll tell them exactly what to say because you’re representing me, and we need to make sure that you know exactly what to do. It’s a tremendous responsibility to represent somebody else.

And Jesus prepared his disciples to go out and represent him and to represent the Father. Now, before we kind of took a detour of a couple weeks because of Palm Sunday and Easter, we’ve been in a study of the book of Luke. And we’re going to pick that back up today in Luke chapter 6.

as we’re looking at what, we’ve been looking at what Bible scholars call the Sermon on the Plain, that covers some of the same things that Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount, some different things from what Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount, and the biggest difference is one was on a mountain and one was on a plane. That’s why they gave them the names that they did. But as Jesus is presenting this sermon, He is preparing His disciples to represent Him well and to represent the Father well.

So we keep that in mind as we read from this today. And so if you haven’t already, please turn with me to Luke chapter 6. And once you find it, if you’ll stand with me as we read together from God’s Word.

If you don’t have your Bible or can’t find Luke chapter 6, it’ll be on the screen for you this morning. We’re going to start reading at verse 36. And here’s what it says.

Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Do not judge, and you will not be judged. And do not condemn that you will not be condemned.

Pardon and you will be pardoned. Give and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, for by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you in return.

And 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?

A pupil is not above his teacher, but everyone after he has been fully trained will be like his teacher. 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. 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.

And you may be seated. So again, as we look through this sermon, I’ve told you before, because this is not our first time looking at a piece of the Sermon on the Plain. As we look at this sermon, I’ve told you, we have to keep in mind who He’s talking to.

He is talking to His disciples. And that changes things a little bit. He’s talking to, and when I say disciples, I don’t mean the twelve.

I don’t mean people who at that time had made the decision that they were absolutely going to follow Him. I mean, at this stage in His ministry, a disciple was somebody who was coming around because they were interested in his teaching. They were somebody that wanted to hear what he had to say and was interested in learning from him, but they weren’t disciples that we think of today in the sense that they’d made a commitment to him.

This was sort of in between the big crowd and the inner circle. These are the people that are still kind of on the fence. He’s talking to them about what it means to follow him.

So when we go back and look as he’s talking about being rich versus being poor, If we don’t take into consideration who he’s talking to, it sounds like he is saying poor is good and rich is bad. And it’s understandable that we would take it that way. But when we understand who he’s talking to, we realize what he’s actually telling them is not that it’s evil for them to have stuff, but that he’s telling them that it’s evil for them to not be willing to lose stuff for his sake.

We see that he’s not dividing them based on what they have, but he’s drawing a line based on what they’re willing to lose. at the same point if we understand that these are these are people who are who are weighing out what it means to follow him and if they’re willing to make that commitment then we understand when he’s talking about judging and all of these things he’s not talking about salvation either he is preparing them to understand what it means to follow him and what’s going to be expected of them if they make that that leap forward and say that they’re going to walk with jesus he was telling them how they were going to have to conduct themselves. And as they followed him and as they would do ministry, it was imperative that they do what verse 36 said and be merciful just as the father is merciful.

And so what we see in the remaining verses that we’ve read this morning is what does it take for us to represent him well? If we’re saying, you know, I’ve made that decision that I’m going to follow Jesus. I’ve trusted him as savior.

I’m following him as Lord. And I want to do it to the best of my ability, what does that look like? This does not tell us everything that we need to know.

He was addressing specific problems, but this is a pretty good place to start. If we want to know everything we need to know, we read all of Scripture, we read all the things that Jesus said, but this gives us a place to start and deal with some of the things that will come up for us and could keep us from representing Him well. And as we read through this Sermon on the plain.

It’s a lot like the Sermon on the Mount in that everything we read there is basically the opposite of what the Pharisees did. And up to this point, people were looking at what it means to follow God, what it means to walk with God, and they were looking at the Pharisees. Those were the religious people.

Those were the religious examples. And people said, if we want to be close to God, I mean, the Pharisees look like they’re doing it, so maybe we’re supposed to do the things the Pharisees do. Jesus was pointing out, as He did so many times through His ministry, that you actually want to do the opposite of the things the Pharisees did.

Everything he presents is the opposite of the way the Pharisees did their ministry. So one of the big things that we need to do if we want to represent our Father well is that we should act like people who have received God’s mercy. Have you ever met somebody who claimed to be a Christian, claimed to be a follower of Jesus Christ, but acted like they couldn’t spell mercy, let alone show it?

I’ve said it many times before that some of the most wonderful, gracious, godly people, gentle people that I’ve ever met in my life have been in church, and some of the meanest people I’ve ever met in my life have been in church, not this church, okay? Just in case you’re looking around, who is it? Is it me?

We had the apostles up here for the living Lord’s Supper the other day. Is it I, Lord? No, I’m not talking about anybody in this room.

But if you’ve not met a mean person in church, you hadn’t been around church very long. There’s something about religious people, and I’m using that word in a way that’s distinct from having a relationship with Jesus Christ. There’s something about saying, I’m going to follow religion, and I’m going to do good works, and we’re all about the rules, and we’re all that, that just sometimes makes people lose all compassion. And he tells them here that basically we need to act like people who have received God’s mercy.

If we keep in mind the mercy that we have received from God, if we think about and keep in the forefront of our minds what we deserve from a holy God and what we have received instead, it ought to make us the most merciful people that anybody should ever encounter. And when I say merciful toward others, I don’t mean like we excuse sin, we say it’s okay, but we understand who we are as sinners, and we understand who we are not by looking at ourselves according to other people’s standards and comparing ourselves to other people, because we probably look great. We can probably find somebody that makes us look really holy.

But if we compare ourselves to God’s standard of absolute sinless perfection, suddenly we look in our lives, we look in our hearts, we see the thoughts, we see the attitudes, maybe even the actions, and we realize how sinful we are in to a holy God. And we understand what we deserve from a holy God, that we deserve judgment, we deserve condemnation, we deserve separation from Him. And if you’re in Jesus Christ, you don’t receive any of those things because everything you’ve done was paid for at the cross, and what you have received was infinite mercy instead.

When we realize how much has been forgiven of us, it becomes a lot harder for us to not show mercy to other people. That’s what He’s telling us here when He tells us not to judge. That word gets overused.

As a matter of fact, the verse in Matthew 7, judge not that you be not judged, is one of the most abused and misused verses in all of Scripture. It doesn’t mean that we don’t discern right and wrong. It doesn’t mean that we don’t speak what God says about right and wrong.

He’s not telling us either that by being non-judgmental toward others, we can avoid the condemnation of our own sin. This is not an alternate plan of salvation. Oh, that if I’m just not judgmental, God will overlook my sin.

If that was all it took, was just us looking at other people and saying, oh, you’re fine, I’m not going to judge you, and suddenly we’re off the hook for our sins, then the cross was unnecessary. But Jesus paid an infinite price, as we’ve just talked about so many times through the Easter season. He paid an incredibly high price because our sin is costly.

This is talking about something else. It’s describing the way we treat other people as we represent our Lord and how people will respond to us as a result. So when he says, do not judge and you will not be judged, right there in front of them, they have the Pharisees as examples of people who tended to judge and they tended to judge harshly.

They tended to judge hastily. They tended to judge hypocritically. I love when they alliterate.

But they tended to judge in those three ways, all of which we’re told in Scripture not to do. They tended to have no mercy at all. As a matter of fact, the way this verse gets used, I think shows we have a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is He’s told us not to do, and what I think this would have meant to them in their day.

See, when we say sin is wrong, and you can fill in the blank on whatever that is, but when we look at a sin and we say that is wrong, the world says that’s judging. That is not what he’s talking about here for us to judge means I’m taking myself out of the seat of being the one who makes the decision I’m looking to him as the judge for me to say that’s for me to say on my own authority That’s wrong would be judging for me to say on my own authority apart from god’s word that that’s right Would also be judging you and I don’t get to set the standard So when we take ourselves out of the place of authority And we let the master be the one who speaks that’s not judging and that has nothing to do with what he’s talking about here.

But what the Pharisees would do was based on what they thought and what their tradition said, they kind of made up the rules of right and wrong on the fly for what suited them and what they were willing to overlook and what they wanted to get somebody for. So don’t judge means, doesn’t mean we stay silent about what God’s word says. It means we take ourselves out of the seat of being the one who decides right and wrong and let the judge be the judge.

So we take ourselves out of saying, you don’t need me to tell you that that’s wrong. God’s word tells you, you don’t need me to decide that that’s right or wrong. God’s word already decided that.

As servants of Jesus, we have to recognize we’re not the authorities to decide what’s right and what’s wrong. He’s already made those judgments. And so when he says don’t judge, he’s telling us not to try people according to our arbitrary standards.

Not to say, well, that’s wrong because I think X, Y, and Z. And if we don’t treat people that way, they’re less likely to treat us that way. It’s a very simple principle that he’s teaching us here.

If we don’t judge people in that way, if we don’t hold ourselves up to be the authority to decide things about them, they typically won’t do it back to us. And he says, do not condemn. These are similar words, but he says, do not condemn and you will not be condemned.

The Pharisees would just decide people’s guilt and call for sentence. Did you see what he did? Well, here’s what ought to happen to him.

And they would just decide somebody was guilty based on their standards, based on their traditions, nothing to do with God’s word or God’s law. They would just make the decision. And then with no thought to what God’s word actually says, they would make the decision of what they thought ought to happen to somebody.

The Pharisees really thought their opinion mattered more than it did. We don’t get to do that. He says instead, pardon and you’ll be pardoned.

Again, I don’t think this is talking about salvation because the way God has dealt with judgment and salvation is a completely separate issue. He’s talking about as we go out to represent him, the way we do it, the way we reflect him determines how people will respond to our ministry and to our message. He says, pardon and you will be pardoned.

We’re called to show grace to other people. If we are the kind of people who show grace to other people, it will be shown to us. And I skipped something in my notes, but you’ve seen it on the screen there.

One of the ways we act like people who’ve received God’s mercy is by being gracious to others. There is a time to call out sin. There’s always a time to stand without compromise on the Word of God.

But the way we do it often determines how ready people are to hear it. The Bible teaches that the gospel message is offensive. For us to trust Jesus as our Savior, we have to believe and acknowledge we were sinners, that we are sinners.

My pastor growing up when I was a kid used to say that the church and the Hell’s Angels are the only two organizations you have to admit to being bad before you can get in. He’s not wrong. We have to acknowledge there’s something wrong in me that I cannot fix that incurred the wrath of a holy God and had to be paid for, that it could only be paid for because Jesus Christ suffered, bled, and died on the cross to pay for it and rose again three days later to prove it.

The message of the gospel is offensive to our human flesh that wants to say, no, I’m fine, but we should not personally be offensive and add to that offense in the way that we deal with one another. Another way that we act like people who’ve received God’s mercy is just by being generous with others. And this doesn’t even necessarily mean financially, although that’s part of it, just in the way that we deal with other people, do we have a spirit of generosity about us?

He talks about this in verse 38. This is one of those verses that I heard as a kid and thought, what on earth does that mean? But it kind of makes sense now as they would trade grain back in their day.

You know, they would say, you know, you want a certain amount of grain, you’d pay for it a certain price. You want to make sure you’re not being cheated. And so what they would do when they’re measuring grain, they would take whatever receptacle that they would put it into that they had agreed on, and they’d pour some in there.

It says in verse 38, pour into your lap a good measure, press down, shaken together, and running over. So they would take the grain, and they would press it down so that you’re compacting as much grain as possible into that space. They would shake the receptacle so that the pieces, you know, they settle, and then they would pour more in, and they would do this over and over and top it up on top to the point where you could not fit any more grain into this receptacle without it spilling out.

And it’s saying, if that is your attitude toward the people that you deal with, is a spirit of generosity. And again, it doesn’t necessarily mean just financially. That’s important, but we can be generous with other people in other ways.

We can be generous with our time, our attention, our effort, our expertise. You have things that you be generous with other people around you about. And if that’s the way we deal with them, he’s saying they’re more likely to deal that way with us.

And so we act like people who’ve received God’s mercy. We can afford to be generous with other people because God has been exceedingly generous with us. Again, when we think about what we deserve from the Holy God for our sins, and we look and see what we’ve received instead, if we’re honest, we have to recognize that God has been far more generous with each of us than we deserve.

I know he’s been far more generous with me than I deserve. And so I can afford to show generosity to other people. Something else he calls us to do is to examine ourselves before trying to direct other people.

The Pharisees would try to show other people the way without giving any thought to what was going on in their own hearts and their own lives. And they were hypocrites. He points out in verse 39 that we cannot lead others if we’re not following if we’re not following God ourselves.

That’s why he says a blind man cannot guide a blind man, can he? No, they’ll both end up in a pit. You ever had somebody follow you somewhere in their car and you got lost?

That’s happened to me before. Did the person behind you got lost too, didn’t they? Because they were following you and you were lost. If we say, well, we’re going to represent him and we’re going to lead other people to him, but we’re not walking with him, we’re not following him ourselves, we’re not going to be able to do that.

We’re like the blind man leading the other blind man and we both fall into a ditch. We also don’t rise above the one we follow. If you look at verse 40, he says, a pupil, a student, is not above his teacher, but everyone after he’s been fully trained will be like his teacher.

So in this example, the student doesn’t rise above the teacher. Instead, the student becomes like the teacher. So we can’t not follow Jesus and expect that the people we’re leading are going to somehow become like Jesus.

If we’re leading them, they only become like Jesus as we’re becoming like Jesus. Otherwise, they need to ignore us, quit following us, and follow somebody who is following Jesus. We become like the one we follow.

And so a couple things just as we’re coming to the close of this this morning, a couple of things that we do in order to examine ourselves, we address our own shortcomings. It’s pretty self-evident from the story about the speck and the log. And I remember very distinctly being in third grade, my dad was my Sunday school teacher and taught on this story.

I don’t think it was from Luke. I think it was from one of the other gospels, but said, are we supposed to take care of the log in our own eye first or the speck in our brother’s eye? And all of us with our little childlike wanting to have the right Sunday school answer, oh, of course we help the other person first. That was completely wrong.

And I remember that story because I had to change the way I thought about it. See, we’re not talking about helping people here. We’re talking about we can’t help people and show them the way if we’re not walking in the right way ourselves.

We become hypocrites. Jesus says you’re worried. What he’s talking about here is we’re worried about a little thing that’s wrong with our brother.

Meanwhile, we’ve got big problems that we’re neglecting to deal with because we’re worried about the little thing happening over here. Sometimes we need to take a step back and address our own shortcomings and deal with our own stuff before the Lord before we come and try to address anybody else’s shortcomings. And then we need to pay attention to the fruit that we bear.

In verses 43 through 45, he talks about good and bad. And if you’ve ever planted a garden, you know that what you plant is what you get at best. Sometimes what I plant just doesn’t come up, but what you plant is the best you can hope for. You don’t plant grass seed and hope for tomatoes.

I remember when my kids were really little, I was planting cucumbers and they were hoping it was going to grow ham sandwiches. Doesn’t work that way. We just got a lot of cucumbers.

What we plant is what we’re going to grow. He says you don’t get good fruit from a bad tree. You don’t get bad fruit from a good tree.

you don’t get figs from thorns, you don’t get grapes from a briar bush, the fruit we bear shows what kind of plant it is. And if we’re bearing bad fruit in our lives, he’s telling us that’s a warning sign that something’s not right, we’re not the kind of plant we think we are, or we’re at least not planting the kind of seed we think we are. And so that’s calling us to pay attention to what’s being produced in our lives.

At this point, he had not gotten to that yet, but I think it ties in with what he eventually inspired in the book of Galatians talking about the fruit of the Spirit, the things that will show up in our lives as we’re walking with Him. Things like love, joy, peace, patience, the list goes on. What kind of fruit are we bearing?

Are we bearing fruit that shows that we’re planting spiritual things, or are we bearing fruit that shows we’re walking in disobedience? See, if we’re going to represent Him well, it’s important that periodically we stop and take stock of the kind of fruit that we’re producing. And if we’re going to represent him well, we’re looking to reflect a change of heart that only Jesus can produce.

Because he tells us in verse 45 that good things are brought out of the treasure of a good heart. Evil comes out of the treasure of an evil heart. Well, by God’s standards, all of our hearts are wicked and can only produce corrupt things.

For our behavior to change, it has to start with our hearts being changed. For our lives to reflect Christ, our hearts have to be changed to reflect Christ. If you’ve been sitting here listening to this this morning and you’re not a believer in Jesus Christ already, none of this was a message to you about, well, I need to check these boxes and do all these things and I’ll be right with God. The point of this is that none of us are right with God.

None of us can be right with God on our own. And the things that we need to show are things that only Jesus produces in us. But as Jesus has transformed our hearts.

As we trust Him as our Savior, as we begin to walk with Him, it’s going to show up in other ways. We just need to not squelch the work that He’s doing in us. But this is not a religious checklist of things to do to be right with God.

For us, the checklist of what it takes to be right with God is very simple and very short. To recognize that we’ve sinned against a holy God, to recognize that our hearts are sinful before Him, and to recognize that we don’t just need to do better. We need complete and total transformation that only He can provide.

We need the forgiveness of sins that Jesus paid for on the cross. We need the hope and new life that He gives us through the resurrection. We need the change that He works in us every day through the Holy Spirit.

And the way we have all of that is to acknowledge that we’ve sinned, to believe that Jesus Christ paid for those sins in full as our one and only hope, and then ask for that forgiveness and we’ll have it.

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