Measure for Measure (Part 2 of 3)

You can't obey God's command to love your neighbor as yourself. If you have a condemning judgmental spirit and that kind of spirit is difficult to root out once it's infested an individual or a church today on Truth for Life weekend will discover a simple but radical directive that can completely transform our condemning hearts and minds. Alister Meg is teaching today from the book of Luke chapter 6 starting with verse 37 let's go to the practical implications of the principal because it we need to say more than that. What what is it mean in practice, to be merciful, as your Father is merciful. Well, it's worked out in the next verse 37 and it is developed by two negative commands followed by two positive commands negative command one. Do not judge to do not condemn positive command one forgive positive command to give was mean, do not judge Jesus is not in this phrase. Setting aside law courts, nor is he encouraging his followers to suspend their critical faculties what and what is he doing what is it that Jesus says we mustn't do if we are not to judge, the answer is he is condemning censorious nests I felt last week was harder than the previous week but this week is even harder than last look. Chapter 6 is proving to be a minefield for me and if you doubt that you should feel perfect liberty to ask my wife just how wonderfully loving and uncritical. I have been in the last five days I would be hard-pressed to have got myself so badly out of sync with the passage of Scripture. If I had set out to do it. The Lord says okay then why don't you go up and talk about do not judge and you will not be judged and why don't you go on and follow it up with.

Do not condemn, and then let's talk about forgiveness just to wrap it up and I say, how about we have somebody else do this this week. Lord somebody who has done all this stuff who's had a fantastic week. You know who feels total freedom in relationship to talking about it because he knows that he can find his fingers are this way I know fingers point negative get somebody else to do this week which was no.

I think you should one do this week. After all, should you got a PhD in censorious nests and it would be good for you. You even censorious, he saying to me about the fact that you knew the word and other people didn't know the word. That's how bad you are.

That's how messed up you now here's the thing that kind of spirit completely violates the law of love that we just considered, because if I am prepared to put myself in the other person shoes and if I am prepared honestly to wish for them. What I wish for myself then I will be prepared to replace meanness with generosity harshness with understanding and cruelty with kindness. Do not judge not setting aside law courts. Not asking us to suspend our critical faculties is asking us to be way out of the spirit of censorious and is indeed not simply to be aware of it but to identify had to admit it, and to route it out of our lives and our families and our congregation churches such as this, where there is a strong desire to maintain theological purity, moral rectitude significance in relationship to the parameters of what it means to be involved and to be in membership. The danger that is represented to our church to come down to the wrong side of this is a significant danger and the answer to it is not cluelessness and theological vagueness because those are the two poles and people just walking around in a Guam that are not clear what's going on in opening about is no opinion about that Nazareth was with my life over here in a spirit of harsh judgment. Elizabeth Jesus and I don't want you to live in either extreme. I want you to build exercise. Your critical faculties in a way that doesn't judge and secondly doesn't condemn doesn't condemn. Do not condemn you see the trouble with assuming that I have the right to be the judge is that it appeals to my tendency not to set people free to condemn them and then existing when the child says I'm going to be the headmaster. What happens here. She immediately starts to give out detentions then on site. I would be the headmaster and in the state take the rest of the day off. The resist I would be the boss. What happens is Darcy get in earlier or your fine five dollars for leaving your coffee cup and whatever else it is, as soon as we aspires a position of leadership and assume that we have the prerogative now judge as we sit down the Emperor's chair watching the gladiators below.

We just can't wait to give him the thumbs down not up.

Be honest.

Now I'm the judge may exercise a little condemnation on you. God, that's what Jesus is saying we are not as human beings qualified to judge and pronounce condemnation.

Why because we cannot read each other's hearts. We are unable to accurately assess each other's motives, but doesn't stop us. This, I haven't noticed that that bullfight actually stops me from being a judge and a harsh one. Indeed, if if information in and of itself could route that out of my sinful heart I would only need to know that it would be gone, but I know it and it is gone. Therefore, I need to be exceptionally waiting.

We do exceptionally witty and pronouncing condemnation. We send so easily with our tongues. In this respect. Don't wait in saying things that are injurious to the good name of others. All we've got very clever way of saying it in Christian circles and evangelical circles.

We have always cliché ridden terminology that can make a sound like a prayer request or, in our concern for glory and rectitude and blah blah blah. But basically when we cut to the chase half the time were just delighted to get it out of our tongues. Did you hear about her, you know why they did that, you know why he bought that general wife. He lives there. You know why she said that you know why this you don't know any of that lie and the spirit of that when it becomes endemic in a congregation may take years and years and years to root out. That's why our parents told us. Ask yourself before you say anything. Is it kind is it true and is it necessary because the Bible says we shouldn't see anything that is untrue, as in the 10 Commandments. We shouldn't say anything that is unnecessary, as in Proverbs 1113 and we shouldn't say anything that is unkind. That's in Proverbs 18, eight so what in the world are we going to say what we want to talk about that silent place for a while with if everybody was taken.

The 32nd. Got check and going as a kind is it true is it necessary suddenly nobody's talking not just for 30 seconds before the to three minutes to follow it because we don't know what we know to say because everything I was going to say was either unnecessary or unkind someone at the stop and think about something else to say.

I'm an American else to say. Children will just sit in some of all that we see in a single day with never a word left out were printed each night and clear black and white. It would make strange meeting. No doubt, and then just suppose I should close, we must read the whole record through then when we sign when we try a great deal less talking to do and I'm more than half think that maniac kink would be smoother in life's tangle thread.

If half that I say in a single day were to be left for Amber on and on about you. What do you know how easy it is to compound the problem in your marriage when you got the slick road out is right in front of you when when you can leave you know, I don't believe you're married to me when you made a hash of it and your wife is being gracious in response. And you know now I should just be gracious and you thought you just drive the nail further into the ground. It is all why did I say that and when I say that my descendents is that all primary on this is maybe just me.

I don't know okay wrap it up with one positive let's be clear, to be discriminating in critical is necessary to be judgmental and hypercritical is wrong. That brings us to one positive statement with the time for just one.

After all, it's only one word.

We probably can think of much to say about this word is the first word in the third sentence of verse 37 and is the word, forgive forgive.

I think for just a moment about the kind of transformation that would be brought about in our relationships if we were to take seriously this one dramatic director forgive just one word Appaloosa all it actually means release the bondage in which individuals and families and couples and churches and groups live can be traced in a vast majority of cases to unwillingness to obey this one simple director. Forgive not the same as excuse is not the same as then I is not the same as just forget about it for a while and it will just all Passover and be gone is actually an act of the will driven by the word of God, enabled by the Spirit of God to recognize that although this person is habitually this way is horrible, loyal pain in the neck he said without a spirit of censorious is a dog and the person is. This way I am still to forgive. Shakespeare says the justice be thy plea. Consider this, that in the course of justice.

None of us should see salvation.

We do pray for me are safe and that same prayer.teachers all to render the deeds of nurse Chinese proverb says the man who FOR revenge should dig two graves. The man who alts for revenge should dig to grace, for he will go in one of them. George McDonald's is a striking thing when he says it may be infinitely worse. To refuse to forgive and to murder services is overstating the case. Surely listen to how he puts it, it may be infinitely worse refuse to forgive than to murder because the last certainly murder may be an impulse in the heat of the moment, whereas the former is cold and deliberate choice of the heart and that is absolutely true. Every time that I refuse to forgive or you refuse to forgive. From the very bottom of our hearts is cold and deliberate choice and every time that you and I make that cold and deliberate choice meeting to ourselves. We live within a dungeon of our own construction.

We are trapped in the bondage of our own unforgiving hearts. This said someone is a hard law that went deep injury is done to us.

We never recover until we forget and love ones.

I don't know where this hit you, but I'm sure it had you somewhere for it certainly does me and those of us who have made a career of harboring bitterness and holding grudges should not be surprised at the chaos of our life's. No matter how well we concealed it with whatever we've enjoyed in terms of physical things are material things or whatever else it is, there is not a thing that is invented on the face of God's earth that can deal with this. There is only one place that it's dealt with. That is only one person who can deal with it and that incidentally is one of the key explanations force so much of the manifold chaos that exists in our contemporary culture because people have turned away from the idea of having offended against God have been told that guilt is some kind of trip that you put on and that it is absolutely wrong never to feel guilty under this beauteous Guild from which we need to stay away with the whole notion of guilt is pooh-poohed and so you have these millions of people moving around the country. Unforgiven and unforgiving.

Do you want to know how to stay in your marriage. Forgive, that's, that's all that's forgive all the other bells and whistles. You can add a different times. But if I refuse to forgive my wife I will never make it. And if she refuses to forgive me. She will never make it. For God knows how much offense, I cause her. How do you stay in a church when somebody takes you pretend they don't take you off now admit they take you off and forgive them how you stay as the pastor of the church.

Forgive, it's the whole business, and one more you want something to put on your baseball You want something burned into your heart.

I found the spirit of God saying to me this week in my study, all on my own just by myself talking to myself us. Regards is listen if you want to spend your life known for one thing, now or however long I give you. Perhaps you would like to be known for forgiveness.

How radical would that be how many lawsuits does that deal with how many relationships in business does not see reengineering Jesus such a kind and wonderful Shepherd. You see censorious nests is in the prodigal's brother, who when the prodigal comes back.

Having made a royal hash of things and he comes up the street.

His father, whom in the story represents God running out to them comes and says hey boy gives him a big kiss he give them a big hug and he starts to get them all jazzed up new clothes, new shoes, new jewelry big party music dancing. The whole thing and out in the fields. Is Mr. censorious scares me. What's going on in their pay. Your brother came back his friend to your man your year. The band is awesome. I can hear it on I don't wondered why my baby forget amusing and noble in their brother came back he been down there. He prosecutes just making a royal mess of things and I'm slaving away here for my father and I don't get a party of tall spirit is alive and well is the spirit of the Pharisee which she doing here. Did you know who she is coming for you know about him. In contrast, think of the hugs all around that Joseph got going with his brothers who had offended against him so badly finally show up and he says the lease as guides. I Joseph if he had seen a ghost. He could have been more freaked out Joseph think I'd be sold into slavery. That guy we threw in the pit.

The guy we've been lying to her father about for the last 20+ years yeah I'm Joseph you can just about who you are. You. You are all nice.

This is a Khmer the hugs enforcement has a second hugs from all the way down the line. Didion grounds for frying their tails Didion the right to climb the manacles of Egypt on them and put them down in a hole on the strength of all that he had done to him in the sense of the exercise of justice.

Yes, in terms of his demonstration of the mercy of God the father to the answer was absolutely no let me give you one final quote is from a lady called Hannah Arendt ERD NDT from community that I found in Pennsylvania. She said this without being forgiven released from the consequences of what we have done our capacity to act weird as it were, be confined to a single deed from which we could never recover.

We would remain the victims of its consequences whatever. Not unlike the sorcerer's apprentice who, like the magic formula to break the spell can I say to you this morning that Jesus died on the cross in order that you may not live confined to a single deed from which you cannot recover in order that you do not need to live a victim of the consequences for the F you do not need a magic formula to break the spell, you and I need a Savior whose blood cleanses us from all sin, to spirit empowers is then to start looking a little more like her father, learning not to judge choosing not to condemn learning how to forgive and prepared to take this seriously. I think it will make it dramatic impact in our lives. I don't know the details of your life's I just know there's enough in my life that can be covered by this. Maybe there is an years is going to write you stickier things listing the truth like we can ouster begged encouraging us to choose to forgive rather than judge.

It's not always easy but it is always necessary. We hope you'll keep listening ouster will be right back, closed with prayer.

If you listen to Truth for Life for a while now you know that we put a lot of thought into recommending books to you to supplement your study of the Bible.

Today we want to recommend a book titled love your church by Tony Marita.

This book explains why the local church is so important and how important it is for us as believers to be active and contributing members of a local church.

Tony Marita is an author and the pastor. He reminds us that Jesus established the early church to be the central place for worship and Christian fellowship as members of a local church, we join with others to form a community with privileges and responsibilities for building one another up in our faith. Find out how you can be the kind of local church member who makes a real difference.

The book love your church comes highly recommended by Alister.

Find out more about the book when you visit our website Truth for Life.orc. Now here's Alister closed with prayer about our father, thank you that the Bible is a book to be studied, that it's written sensibly in unordered fashion that were not simply dipping into it to find Blessed thoughts but were wrestling with it. It is wrestling us to the ground. Father is bringing us to our knees when we need to be from verse 17 on he turned the searchlight into our hearts, Lord, as individuals, families as couples is leadership groups as a church family save as Lord from the stupid naivety.

The godlessness which is often believed to be the expression of taking this seriously, but save us.

Also, Lord.

From the tendency that rises in our hearts to sit on the throne. That is yours alone to exercise a prerogative, which is only use thank you that you forgive us that those who know themselves to have been forgiven of much will be easy to detect because of the forgiving spirit that they show to others. Thank you for the steadfast love of God which never fails. Thank you for the message that never come to an end. Send is outlawed with that thought uppermost in our minds so that the principal may be applied.

Be merciful before the steadfast love, just as your father is full of steadfast love for Jesus sake we had skipped. Amen about the opinion. Thanks for listing. Join us again next week and for the final part of today's message as we continue learning about forgiving others will see that sometimes it feels impossible to do so when we been deeply hurt next week and will find out how it is possible, and why it's vital that we do so. Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life Learning is for Living