July 22, 2000
-
Wrong Spiritual Teachers Luke 6:39-45
The Danger of Following the Wrong Spiritual Teacher
Luke 6:39-45
What are we doing to protect our souls from spiritual terrorists? Witless people, sometimes well-intentioned, float blithely and benignly through life inhaling religious anthrax. It's everywhere in the atmosphere and it's eternally killing millions. It comes in places that are apparently safe, religious places. The Bible is a book filled with warnings about this literally by the hundreds. The Bible warns us about lies, religious lies and religious liars, deceivers, charlatans, frauds who lead people into divine judgment. It's as simple as this, there is truth from God but saves the soul from judgment, and there are lies that bring the soul into judgment. Wrong spiritual teaching, false religion is the most lethal of all terrorist weapons. People sit in a church, cathedral, a mosque, some religious environment breathing in that spiritual anthrax and feeling safe. From the standpoint of what the Bible says, there would be no way to over-emphasize the danger of following the wrong spiritual teacher. That can't be overstated so protect your mind and your soul and avoid places already known to be contaminated.
This is what Jesus is talking about in this passage, so let's read it. 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? A pupil is not above his teacher but everyone after he has been fully trained will be like his teacher. And 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 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 that produces bad fruit, or 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."
Many commentators say it's nearly impossible to figure out why Jesus connected these proverbs, these axioms, these self-evident truisms together. Jesus is discussing the danger of following the wrong spiritual teacher. You have to make a choice and you had better choose carefully who you follow because everything in time and eternity is at stake. What Jesus is saying here is you have leaders in your nation, Pharisees, scribes, priests, the spiritual establishment of Judaism and you have Me and you have to choose between us. They are spiritually deadly and I give life. That is clearly the issue in this sermon because the closing illustration in verse 46, "Why do you call me 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."
Jesus is saying 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 listen to them, you're like a house that falls when the judgment comes. You have to make a choice. The wrong choice is deadly. Jesus is drawing a line and He is saying...You must turn from your former leaders and follow Me.
That was the question Jesus was posing on the mountain that day, because He had a lot of disciples, as we remember, hundreds if not thousands of them collected around Him. "Disciple" is a word that means student, or learner, it doesn't say anything about commitment, faith, devotion or worship, it's just about learning. There was this mass of humanity following Jesus in kind of a 24/7 fashion all the time, watching Him heal people and demonstrate His power over the physical world, watching Him cast demons ot of people, demonstrate His power over the spiritual world, listening to Him speak with profundity in which they had never been familiar. And they were fascinated and attracted to Jesus. But Jesus is saying to them...All right, you have to make a choice, are you going to follow your former spiritual leaders or are you going to follow Me totally? It's not enough to just call Me Lord, you have to do what I say or you're going to crash in the judgment.
There are people today who are curious about Jesus, who are fascinated with Jesus, who know some things about Him, who are amazed by Jesus, who feel warm feelings toward Jesus, who like what He stood for and so forth. All throughout human history since Jesus came into the world He has collected around Him people in all times and all places who have some positive attitude toward Him, but not necessarily salvation. All across humanity people respect Jesus. They are to one degree or another interested in Him, amazed, if you will, at Him. And Jesus is still giving the same message today, it's saying...that's not enough, you must come to Me fully, totally, wholly to the exclusion of all other religious teachers.
That's essentially what He was teaching all through His earthly ministry and in the land of Israel at that time there was only one group of religious teachers, that was the Pharisees, the scribes, the rabbis who made up Judaism. Jesus all the way along is calling people to stop following them, and follow Him because He had the true message and they didn't.
The subject of the sermon is true discipleship. Jesus is defining a true disciple. First of all, in verses 20 to 26 He defined a true disciple as a repenter, somebody who sees his own sin and realizes he's poor and hungry and sad and alienated. A true disciple of Christ is overwhelmed with his own sin, not overwhelmed with his own righteousness. That was true of the Pharisees and scribes and those who followed them, they were thrilled with their own righteousness. But a true Kingdom disciple is in despair over his sinfulness. The first characteristic then of a true disciple is repentance.
The second one is love. And we looked at that in verses 27 to 38, an unusual supernatural ability to love enemies, to love those that hate you, to love those who persecute you, to love them with an evangelistic love, a love that has no human explanation. What it does is demonstrate the work of God in the heart. Repentance demonstrates the initial work of God in the heart, and love demonstrates the ongoing work of God in the heart.
The third charateristic of a true disciple is submission to the lordship of Christ. The true Christian makes a break from false teachers. Our Lord makes this point in a most amazing way. He does it in a negative sense by showing the danger of false spiritual teachers. There are four dangers in following a false teacher. Number one, they are blind, they are blind, that is they are without veracity, they are without truth. 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?"
Blind people were all over the land of Israel at the time of Jesus. They were used to seeing blind people, many of them ending up as beggars, as we note in the gospel account. One great story in John 9 is about a blind man that Jesus healed. And also there were a lot of pits. There were unfenced quarries. There were crevices in rugged rocky areas of Palestine. There were precipices along the sides of roads. Also there was a water shortage and there were many wells and some common point of digging wells here and there made a tremendous danger potential because people didn't always fill up the wells that were unsuccessful or that dried up and open dry wells were a problem and blind people could easily fall into them to their own death. And that's what Jesus is talking about. The word for "pit," bothunon, isn't referring to a shallow ditch, I think sometimes it's been translated that way, it's a deadly dive into a deep pit, and probably fits the dry well picture better than anything. A blind person leading another blind person through an area where there were dry wells is no help. That's not helpful, extremely dangerous.
The spiritual point is very simple. Follow a leader who doesn't know the way to God's Kingdom and you're not going to end up there. In fact, you follow a blind guide, someone who doesn't know God, and 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.
Blindness is used metaphorically both in the Old Testament and the New Testament for being void of truth, for not having any spiritual sight, or insight. Isaiah 29:10, Isaiah 44:18, Jeremiah 5:21, many other passages, Psalm 82:5 says, "The wicked don't know, nor do they understand, they walk about in darkness," that's a categorical description. Second Corinthians 4:4. "The god of this world has blinded their minds." People who don't know God are blind to truth and if you follow them, you're going to end up in the pit.
In particular, Jesus is referring to the Pharisees and the scribes, the spiritual religious leaders of Israel. They were leading people into the eternal pit. Turn back to Matthew chapter 15, let me show you this because Jesus used kind of language on a number of occasions and specifically applies it to these religious leaders. Matthew 15 verse 12, "The disciples came and they said to Him, 'Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this statement? Do You know You're in conflict with the Pharisees? You're teaching things that offend them?'" And Jesus, of course, was in direct conflict with them all the time because they didn't know the truth and He proclaimed the truth. But He answered and said, "Every plant which My heavenly Father didn't plant shall be rooted up." What He's saying is God didn't plant them. And then He says in verse 14, "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.
Matthew 23:13, the language of Jesus is as strong as it is anywhere in the New Testament. "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees." Why? "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." If you're blind and you can't find it, then those who follow you can't find it either. This is the deadliest of the spiritual terrorists. Verse 15 He says, "You travel around seeing land and make a proselyte, you want followers to follow you as the spiritual teacher, and when he becomes one of your proselytes, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves." You must make him worse. You damn him to a greater damnation. Most people, in sort of a benign attitude think that the religious people are doing good in the world. They're spiritual terrorists. They're destroying the souls of people in places that appear safe.
They're just making twice as much sons of hell. They don't know the way and they can't show the way to anybody else. 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 establishment, the religious leaders. Just being a religious leader is not some noble calling. If you don't represent the truth, you are spiritual terrorists. On the other hand, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and no man comes unto the Father but by Him. Jesus said, "I am the light of the world, whoever follows Me shall not walk in darkness." Jesus said in Luke 4:18, "I've come to give sight to the blind." Jesus is the way. Jesus is the light. Jesus has the sight. He knows God. He knows the way to God. He knows the truth of God and He can lead you there. But He's the only one. "Neither is there salvation in any other, there's no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved." So any other person advocating any other path to God is leading people to hell. So be careful who you choose as your spiritual teacher because if your spiritual teacher is blind, you're going to both end up in the pit.
The first danger is, they are blind. Second danger, they are earthly. Not only do they lack veracity, truth, they lack deity. They're not of God. And the point is made, back to Luke 6, the point is made in another very pithy statement that Jesus used a lot, verse 40, "The pupil is not above his teacher but everyone after he has been fully trained will be like 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. You can't know more than you have been taught. You stop where your teacher stops. If the teacher doesn't know God and the teacher doesn't know the truth, then you're never going to know it either. All of these millions of people in Islam, millions of people in Buddhism, Hinduism, millions of people in aberrant forms of Christianity, millions of people in cults all over the world following dutifully their leaders who don't know the truth. And at best, they just become like them. They'll be judged, along with all their pupils.
On the other hand, if you follow Jesus, you can become like Him. First John 3:2, "Some day when we see Him as He is, we will be like Him," 1 John 3. But that's because He is deity. But all these other teachers are earthy, at best, I suppose you could say, demonic or at worst, demonic. If your teacher is earthy, worldly, human, if it's just human wisdom, if it's just manmade 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. Beware of spiritual terrorists who kill your soul by blindness and earthiness.
Jesus said there's a third danger, "They are hypocrites." They lack veracity or truth. They lack deity, they're not connected to God. And they lack integrity. They are hypocrites. I know Jesus uses a little humor here. In fact, it's almost comical what He says. Verse 41 and 42, "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 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. The word "speck," karphos 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 piece of chaff or straw, 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 dokos in his eye. What's that? That is the main beam in a building. I mean, just make the cartoon in your mind, this is absurd. This guy can't even get close enough to the person he's looking at because he's got a beam coming out of his eye. How is he going to find what's in there and solve that guy's problem? He can't do that, it's absurdity.
He's trying to deal with your sin and he's got the most massive of all sins which is a carefully crafted belief in his own righteousness, his own self-righteousness which is the sin of all sins. The picture really is absurd, it's absolutely bizarre. Nobody with a main beam in a building sticking out of their eye is going to get close enough to see anything in anybody else's eye, and that's what Jesus wants to portray, absurdity. And the spiritual point is simple, you can't deal with what's wrong in somebody else's life when yours is far worse.
Nobody who thinks he's righteous can help a sinner. This is exactly what the Pharisees did. Go back to verse 24 to 26 in this sermon. Who are the rich? Who are the well-fed? Who are the laughing? Who are the people about whom all men were speaking well? Those were the Pharisees and the religious leaders and they had it all made. They were rich and they were satisfied and they were content and happy and respected. And Jesus said, "Curse you, curse you, curse you...woe, woe, woe."
False religion can't clean their dirty heart, and so they have a facade of virtue and a facade of morality and a facade of holiness. They may not be full of vice. They may exchange vice for something worse. You know what's worse than vice? Self-styled virtue...self-righteousness. You hypocrite, that's the wretched gross sin that is always blind to its own sinfulness. Self-righteousness, it's the sin that Jesus repeatedly condemned the scribes and Pharisees for, not only in the Sermon on the Mount, but all the way through His entire ministry. Self-righteousness is a sin of blindness, it puts a beam in your eye so you can't see reality, it distorts your vision of everything because there you are looking at your own wretched sinfulness and you can't see it...you won't see it.
The log is self-righteousness that prevents you from seeing your own self. It's the worst of sins because it damns you. You don't need a Savior. You see no need for grace, no need for forgiveness. So Jesus said this is the danger of these people. They can't even conquer the sin that's in them. They're wretched on the inside, they may be virtuous on the outside, and they may choose a life of superficial virtue over a life of manifest vice, but the truth is, they can't help you, they can't get the sins out of your life because they have so many in their own life and they're blind to all those by the construction of this massive log of self-righteousness.
False teachers become very adept at creating clandestine coverings, very adept at hiding their true wickedness. That's what I say, they're spiritual terrorists who are hidden in safe, religious places, but who pour out spiritual anthrax, hypocrites. The word hupokrita is an actor, it's a word for an actor playing a part. On the other hand, Jesus is not a hypocrite, He is sinless, spotless, undefiled, one to whom the Father is well pleased, without sin. And so His vision is crystal clear as indicated in Revelation chapter 1 when it pictures the Lord Jesus looking into the church with penetrating laser eyes and finding all the sin that is there so that He can deal with it. Jesus can really see what's in your eye and He can get it out. If you follow the wrong teacher, one who is blind and earthy and hypocritical, you're going in the pit, void of God, and void of dealing with your sins.
Fourthly, the fourth danger of following the wrong spiritual teacher is they are evil. He makes this clear in the next simple little proverb parable. Verse 43, "There's no good tree which produces bad fruit. Nor on the other hand a bad tree which produces good fruit." That's axiomatic, that is... If you have good fruit on the tree, you've got a good healthy tree. If you've got a bad tree, you're going to get bad fruit. If the tree is toxic, the fruit is toxic. If the tree is sweet, the fruit is sweet. This is a simple analogy. You can look at the fruit and tell the tree. He expands it in verse 44, "Every tree is known by its own fruit." If you're looking for figs, don't look for a thorn bush, they don't grow there. If you're looking for grapes, don't look for a briar bush, they don't grow on briar bushes. What you're going to get on a thorn bush is thorns. What you're going to get on a briar bush is briars. Those are the pictures of the bad trees. In other words, they produce what is their nature. They produce what is bad, what is toxic, what is harmful. And that's the final danger that Jesus lays out here.
Jesus says all that connected to the false prophets. They just produce bad fruit. If you're looking for something good, something edible, something beneficial, they don't produce it. They can't. It's not in their nature. It's not who they are. So you have a very serious problem. Jesus in Matthew 12:33, again talking to the Pharisees, says, "Make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad. The tree is known by its fruit." And then He says, "You brood of vipers, how can you be evil speak what is good? For out of the mouth speaks of that which fills the heart."
You just produce evil, that's all that can come out because your hearts are evil. So He makes an application of that in verse 45, "The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good. The evil man out of the evil treasure in his heart...implied...brings forth what is evil, for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart." Whatever is in your heart is what comes out. A good man has a changed heart. An evil man does not. The good man here then represents the righteous, represents the Kingdom child, the regenerated. The truly good man whose heart the Lord has changed or even replaced in the language of Ezekiel 36, He's given him a new heart, the language of Jeremiah 31:33, and because he's been transformed on the inside, he brings forth what is good and what comes out of his mouth is good and it represents the goodness of his heart, having been transformed by God.
The evil man has an evil heart and so what comes out of his mouth is only evil. Not only out of his mouth but in his conduct. The mouth is just sort of the first place that evil shows up. It's the easiest place to manifest your nature. It's easier to say things that are representative of your nature than to do them. Be careful who your teacher is. The world is full of teachers, spiritual terrorists hiding in apparently safe places dispensing spiritual anthrax and doing it in a way that is so deceptive and so subtle people are literally inhaling it gladly. And in the end, they wind up in the pit because their teachers are blind, they are earthly, they are hypocritical and they are evil. And what they produce is the same blindness, the same earthiness, the same hypocrisy and the same evil that is characteristic of their own lives.
So Jesus is saying...why don't you follow Me? I am the way, the truth and the life. And no man comes to the Father but by Me, He said in John 14:6. Jesus has clear sight. Jesus is God. The message is from God. Jesus is pure righteousness, no hypocrisy and His life is sinless. He produces righteousness in those who follow Him. So who are you following? Who is your spiritual teacher? It's the most serious you'll ever make ever in all your life because of the implications in eternity.
