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     39 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? 40 “A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher. 41 “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? 42 “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. 43 “For there is no good tree which produces bad fruit; nor, on the other hand, a bad tree which produces good fruit. 44 “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. 45 “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.
     46 “And why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? 47 “Everyone who comes to Me, and hears My words, and acts upon them, I will show you whom he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid a foundation upon the rock; and when a flood rose, the torrent burst against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49 “But the one who has heard, and has not acted accordingly, is like a man who built a house upon the ground without any foundation; and the torrent burst against it and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great.”

We've got several little guys that play up and down our street who always wave and says hi, and sometimes they'll stop and talk to us for a moment or two because they're bored and there's no one else to play with just then.

I've asked parents if we could pick them up on Sunday mornings and bring them to Sunday School each Sunday and the answer was a very common one.  This is a paraphrase with a bit of my interpretation, not what anyone actually said;  We were raised as christians but we're beyond that scheme now.  We've advanced far beyond silly religions in our secular worldliness.

Not those exact words, but that was the message.  We're godless secularists and we intend for our kids to also be godless secularists.  So no, they won't be going to any church to be indoctrinated with baloney.  A negative influence, not a positive one for the kids.

That's just made up case, and so common that I don't take any offense at all, really.  Virtually everybody I talk to has some version of the same story.  Everybody has a world view.  Everybody has this world figured out.  Nobody needs religion.  Any religion false or true.  It's all passe.

And there's a bit of arrogance with the folks you talk with too.  We have everything figured out.  Religions were necessary for ignorant folk who had no explanations for the world around them, but we have science and learning, and folk who believe in old ancient books are dinosaurs.  

In fact most of the problems the world faces can be traced to them and their simplistic faith based belief systems.  Science and knowledge and learning, sophisticated learning from elite institutions of learning and knowing have produced a brand of gnostic arrogance.  The arrogance of knowing.  Or at least being convinced someone higher up the secular ladder actually knows.

Everybody I talk to has a world view.  Everybody has it all figured out.  And sky God's with rules and judgements and heavens and hells are just old wives tales for people who lack teeth and drag their knuckles behind them.  Knuckle draggers with bad teeth and low IQ's believe this stuff.

The new religion is no religion.  But spirituality is in.  Everyone is spiritual.  Just not ancient book religions spiritual.  Spiritual is in, religion is out.  I hear it all the time.  I'm very spiritual, very spiritual but I don't go to church.  Don't need church for my brand of spirituality.

Side note;  The reason all the spiritual people don't need church but they're very spiritual is because they are god.  Their spirituality revolves around a god who is them.  Church is counterproductive to spirituality when all you need is you.  

But, that doesn't come from a vacuum.  Secularism and godless spirituality and the arrogance of knowing, knowledge, learning, the basis of this higher plane of secularism doesn't come from no where.  What is the source of this elevated knowing, this plane of superiority of knowledge and learning?  It has to come from some where.

Where does the knowledge base that makes ancient books and the old religions, even the false ones, obsolete come from?  When Mr. Obama in 2007 said we were no longer a christian nation, I didn't argue with him.  He is exactly right.  12 years later, more so than ever.  Most of the christians have hair the same color as mine, and will soon vanish.

Where did the secularism come from?  What was the source that could overpower everything else?  

The answer is both complicated and quite simple.  We have screens that indoctrinate us every waking hour of every day.  Beginning with televisions and advancing to the most advanced computers and I-pads and I-phones we have devices that talk to us all day long.

How interesting that the secularism I speak of advanced at a somewhat equally incremental pace with the sophistication of the talking devices.  Think perhaps there might be a parallel?

In 2007 when Mr. Obama said we are no longer a christian nation, the christians gasped and said; how dare he say that!!  It was shock and awe.  12 years later, no one is arguing.  Guess what happened in the last 12 years.

I-phones, I-pads, Internet, Computers, in my pocket, in my car, at my workstation, at my desk at home.  The devices that talk to me are ubiquitous.  I don't have to listen to the radio any more.  I can select my poison from thousands of sources tailor made for my belief system.

How is it that the poorest people in starving nations have i-phones?  Is there some underlying power here that puts the talking screens in everybody's reach all over the earth?  In 12 years the screens that tell me stuff have become ubiquitous.

Made in China with little E. T. Phone Home chips that tell somebody somewhere every move I make while they're telling me information.  And now we find out they listen to what I say.  Even when I'm not talking to it.  It can listen to what I say.

But here's the bottom line:  They talk to me all day long, but what is the source of the information they tell me?  Is the news media interested in telling me the truth?  Is Google interested in telling me the truth?  Is Yahoo interested in telling me the truth?  How about Facebook?  Or National Public Radio?  CBS?  NBC?  CNN?  Truth or ideology?

Every possible source of all the things that are talking to me on whatever screen my brain is shooting into has an ideology.  For 50 years, since Norman Lear and Archie Bunker on color TV there has been messaging of an underlying ideology being spoken, taught, shouted, whispered, visualized, experienced hour after hour after hour after hour until it's become so completely ubiquitous that in 2007 Mr. Obama announced that we are no longer a christian nation and in 2019 we all have to admit, he was spot on.

The talking machines have won.  My neighbors think I'm an outdated freak.  A dinosaur from some past age, now unique.  Harmless if kept at arms length, but they'll keep an eye on me.  The secular ideology of the talking screens has become normative.

Even for christians who should know better.  We have forgotten Paul's words to the christians at Philippi.  ppn4:8:  Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

Jesus had something to say about all of this, 20 centuries ago.  Solomon under the inspiration of God said, There's nothing new under the sun.

What has happened to us today with our talking machines is no different than what Jesus addressed on the mountain plain to His learners 20 centuries ago.  The faces have all changed but the bottom line is identical.

Do you get your information for your belief system from the one true source, or from false sources?  Everybody has an ideology.  What is the source?  It's brilliant that Jesus addresses this issue with parables and axioms.  They apply to us today just as crisply as they applied to that audience that day.

There's nothing new under the sun.  Satan is selling an ideology that will lead the masses to hell.  He was then.  He is now.  And what Jesus says is just as biting to Satan's current ideology as it was to the one most common during Jesus time.

The most common ideology during Jesus time on earth was the false religion of works propogated by the scribes and pharisee's.  Work your way to heaven by bean counting and observing rules and traditions that aren't even based in God's revealed word.

No need to cry out to God over your sin and beg His mercy and His pardon.  Do stuff.  9 beans for me.   One bean for God.  Always divorce your current wife before you take up with the next one.  Don't kill.  Don't steal.  But let your parents starve because you've dedicated your money to God.  

False religion.  Works religion.  Do stuff religion.  Sacramental obedience to please God religion.  God will accept you.  It'll be OK.  Play a thousand phony games about how many steps you can take on the Sabbath day religion.  God digs that.  Thousands of meaningless rules developed over centuries that have nothing what-so-ever to do with God.  Their "made up" rules book had displaced God's simple truths with man made nonsense.

That was the ideology they were taught by their religious leaders.  Different from our current secular ideology taught universally by talking screens that are ubiquitous on earth today.  Different, but the same.

Both are ideologies of knowing something that makes you OK, and both will lead you to hell.  Satan has one job.  Steal you from God who owns you and deliver you to hell, with one ideology or the other, it doesn't really matter to him.  His bottom line is to capture you in an ideology that leads to hell.  Whatever works for you.  Endless choices.  One destination.

Again, with that in mind, we can read through what Jesus says to His listeners on a mountain plain 20 centuries ago and it applies perfectly to our generation of secularists who have mindlessly believed what the source of information speaking to them all day long on talking screens has told them.  Nothing new under the sun.

39 And He also spoke a parable to them:

We've talked about this at length in past sessions.  Jesus spoke in parables and metaphors.  It was a judgement on unbelieving Israel.  God determined that because of their unbelief He would respond by making the words harder to understand, not easier.

That's always God's pattern with unbelief.  He plops you down in front of someone speaking very plain simple easy Dick and Jane truth and you don't believe . . . next time the truth will come in a more difficult package, not an easier one.  It's a judgement on unbelief.

But think about this;  If Jesus had spelled it out, He already had, but on this day if He had spelled out the specifics of that day, if He had clearly spoken directly to the current false religion of the scribes and pharisees who had led Israel astray;  In some sense, that limits this truth to that generation and it becomes obsolete, meaningless to our generation.

Jewish false religion of works righteousness isn't the basis for the ideology that's leading secular America to hell.  Jesus spoke in parables, not only as a judgement against that current generation, but also, these parables and axioms are as powerful for us today with the current ideology that's leading the masses to hell as they were 2000 years ago to that one.

How does that happen.  What man was brilliant enough to know that the parables and axiomatic metaphors would be just as cuttingly fresh with a generation in a totally different problem 2000 years after they were spoken.  What man is that smart?

Answer:  No man is that smart.  We believe this book you hold in your hands is the living word of God precisely because things Jesus said to a generation in an ideology totally different from our current one are just as cuttingly precise and sharp now against the prevailing false ideology as they were 2000 years ago to a totally different set of problems.

Nothing's new under the sun.  Satan was leading people to hell then, he's leading people to hell now.  And Jesus words 2000 years ago speak powerfully and directly to our current situation.

Different times.  Different problems.  Different lies.  Different false teaching.  Same person capturing people for hell.  Same word effectively offering deliverence.  2000 year span.  How can this be true.  God is sovereign over it all, and truly, these words are living and active, then, and now.  

Brace yourselves for truths that can slice you into pieces.  Then and now.  Just as potent to our time as they were to that time.  

“A blind man cannot guide a blind man, can he? Will they not both fall into a pit?  This was a common axiom.  A proverb in common use.  Obviously true.  We still use it today.  The blind leading the blind.

You've got a blind man with a white walking stick feeling his way along a boulevard in New York City, tapping along, and he comes to an intersection and says "brother, can you help me get across?"  And the fellow says, absolutely, take my arm.  Both of them are totally blind.  What happens?  Or as we say today;  What could possibly go wrong??

What does the axiom mean to us today in the situation I described.  How is this still true?  Because Jesus isn't talking about the obvious.  Everyone knows a blind guy leading a blind guy is a disaster.  What did He mean by His parable then and how does it apply to our situation now.

He's speaking to a spiritual level.  We're born dead.  Spiritually dead to God.  Removed.  Seperated.  Ask another dead guy to lead you to God.  What will happen?

I just asked Google "How do I get to heaven?"  In .63 seconds, I got 662 million responses.  662 million spiritually dead spiritually blind people who want to help me find God.

If Jesus had said:  The pharisee's are blind and dead and they can't help you find God, it would have been true, but it wouldn't have mattered to me in my situation.  I don't know any pharisee's.  Ok, I know one, for sure.  But he's the last guy I'd ask.  I have a better chance with Google.

But Jesus didn't go there.  He just says; blind people can't help blind people in their quest for truth and life and God.  The spiritually dead can't help you find spiritual life.  Pretty simple stuff.  

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

Same thing.  I've got 662,000,000 teachers on google who want to answer my question about getting to heaven.

The television and later the whole computer phenomenon have been teaching our culture for 50+ years.  Pinch yourselves.  Here we are.  Did we get closer to God?  Or did we actually move farther away.

After 50 years, I'm fully trained by all the information sources out there talking to me all day long.  We can throw the radio in the mix too, and go back a hundred years.  In Israel they had 70 elders who were propogating the error.  Just think how much more efficient Satan is at propogating error in our modern era.  Millions of voices coming at you from every direction.  It's brilliant.  KNPR <:rolleyes:>

Everybody I talk to is fully trained.  And guess what.  They're all like their teacher.  If the teacher is clueless, the students are going to be;  . . . . . what, class?  Clueless.  

The student doesn't surpass the teacher.  Computer programmers 25 years ago used to have a euphemism.  GIGO.  Garbage in, garbage out.  Guess where our current culture is at after 100 years of GI?  GO

Guess what Jesus said 2000 years ago.  Garbage in, garbage out.   “A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher.

Blind people lead other blind people into ditches.  Garbage teachers achieve garbage students.  And here's the reason why.  Also axiomatic;
41 “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? 42 “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.

Jesus says to the blind, false, teachers in Matthew 15, He's a little more direct;  "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.

Dead blind people with logs in their eyes are the teachers of this current secular generation.  The hypocracy of the intellectual dishonesty is stunning.  Dead blind people with logs in their eyes are not equipped to remove tiny slivvers from someone else's eye.

It was a brilliant and comical play on words.  Dokos is a tiny splinter.  Karphos was a beam that would hold up a ceiling.  The picture is of some guy with a log in his eye saying, here, I'll get that speck out of your eye for you.

Dead, blind, spiritual leaders are always hypocrites.  Intellectual honesty goes out the window.  Hypocrisy is the order of the day.  Some guy who is leading the charge to kill even more millions of babies than we already are is going to lecture me on my anger issues?

Some woman who wants to crush babies skulls in the birth canal after 9 months is telling me that's the moral high ground and I am wretched if I dis-agree.  I'm the murderer if I want to fight for that baby instead of crushing it's skull.  

That's how twisted the beam in the eye stuff has gotten these days.  Bizzare that Jesus knew that 20 centuries ago.

We should pause here and ask; in the context of judge not lest ye be judged that this teaching about the beams and the specks falls directly under, does Jesus tell us not to try to help people with slivers in their eyes?

Is that what judge not means?  That's what the world tells us it means.  Is that what Jesus said?  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.

Absolutely not.  Get the log out of your eye, and then, go help the fellow with the sliver.  First we take care of our own spiritual deadness, then we go help the other dead folks.  Jesus is going to tell us how to do that.

But first He's going to mix up His metaphor's one more time.  So far we've had blind leaders and teachers that can't produce anything different than they are, and hypocrites with logs in their eyes that want to help us see, and in this final parable trees like the teachers that can only produce like fruit.

43 “For there is no good tree which produces bad fruit; nor, on the other hand, a bad tree which produces good fruit. 44 “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.

This is a simple truth.  Like produces like.  There isn't a single pear on my apple tree or my apricot tree.  I've got thorn bushes galore around the place.  No surprise when I go looking for something sweet.  I don't check the thorn bushes.  I chop them out once a year and fill my wood trailer with them and they always repay me with the worst hay fever attack possible.

What's the carry over into the spiritual realm?  Exactly what we've been saying.  Garbage produces garbage.  Thorns produce thorns.  The internet and everything else from radio to TV to computers and I-pads only produce this worlds ideology.  

The other truth from this parable is that christians are supposed to be smart enough to discern the difference between false information, garbage, and truth.  And likewise we discern whether the source is true or false.  Of God, or of Satan.

There are rare exceptions and we'll talk about those.  Jesus leaves room for the occasional good fruit.  But before we talk about that, we have it well in mind that like produces like, so if there is good fruit, it didn't come from this world's onslaught of ideology.

45 “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.  

Jesus leaves an open window here for good treasure.  The other axioms hold true.  Like produces like.  Dead produces dead.  Evil produces evil.  Living words can produce life.

Suddenly there is the possibility for good.  Treasure.  Value.  Fruit.  Where does that come from!  We know it doesn't come from this world, right.

Where does the good man get the good treasure?  Jesus is going to tell us.  There is one source in all the world.

46 “And why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? 47 “Everyone who comes to Me, and hears My words, and acts upon them, I will show you whom he is like:

Hopefully it's very plain for you to see there in those verses.  Those who come to Jesus, come in the full acknowledgement of a slave to an owner.  He is Lord, you are slave.  Or not.

Vs 46 has both possibilities and we see way too often that obedience and Lordship are somehow optional in the church.  Jesus says don't bother calling me Lord if I'm not your Lord.  

The language is the language of slavery.  Ownership and obedience.  Nothing else works.  This is another truth the church has forgotten.  Evangelicals teach that you pray to receive Christ and He comes into your heart and everything after that is value added optional choice.

Like buying the car and then choosing some options to add to it.  Perhaps I'll make Him my Lord.  Perhaps if it's convenient I'll worship Him or maybe even obey Him.  On Sundays when I don't have other things to do.

Matthew's version is more scary than Luke's.  In Matthews version of this point in the sermon on the mount, listen to Jesus speaking of the whole Why do you call me Lord, Lord, thing.  Matthew 7;

 21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. 22 “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ 23 “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’

Where did we get the idea that God would purchase a people with the cost of His own Son's blood, purchase them out of this sinful world, restore fellowship through blood bought forgiveness of sin, and then the idea that He owns what He purchased is optional.  Obedience is optional.  Lordship and slave relationship is optional.  After He paid that awful price to own you, obedience to His ownership is optional??

I don't think so.  Jesus doesn't seem to think so either.  46 “And why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?

He either owns you and you are living in obedience, or He doesn't.  Don't kid yourself by calling Him Lord Lord and then later on He says, who are you.  I never knew you.  

But finally, we get to the part where good fruit does come from;  “Everyone who comes to Me, and hears My words, and acts upon them, I will show you whom he is like:

There are three parts there.  We come to Him.  He purchased us out of this world.  We come out of darkness, out of lostness, out of sin, out of this hopeless lost world, out of the authority to reign of Satan, we come to Jesus.

Second in those words of Jesus;  and hears My words
We come out of Satan's world and we hear Jesus words.  The entire word of God, the Holy Bible is included in what Jesus said there.  The entirety of revealed truth, all inspired revelation from Genesis to Revelation is included in "my words" in that verse.  It's all His.  He is the author of all inspired truth no matter who penned it.

Nothing troubles me more than christians, so-called, who have no hunger, no desire, no appetite for this book.  Illiterate christians who have no hunger for this book.  Their ears are plugged.  They can listen to sound teaching and not hear a thing.  That's an oxymoron.  

But Jesus still isn't finished with His formula for where good fruit comes from.  Come to Jesus.  Hear His Words.  One more thing.  Do them.  Obey the words.  Obey the one you so easily call Lord, Lord.

“Everyone who comes to Me, and hears My words, and acts upon them, I will show you whom he is like:

One more parable.  One more picture of physical things, ordinary things that have a spiritual equivalent.

     48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid a foundation upon the rock; and when a flood rose, the torrent burst against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49 “But the one who has heard, and has not acted accordingly, is like a man who built a house upon the ground without any foundation; and the torrent burst against it and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great.”

We live in a good place and a good time to easily imagine what Jesus is talking about.  Two houses that look identical, built in a desert flood plane.  They're both in a box canyon.

But one of them has steel drilled into bedrock and concrete poured around the steel.  A concrete foundation coupled with the bedrock below.  The house is on top of the foundation.

The other house is just a box sitting in the wash, maybe propped up on a few rocks to keep it out of the occasional rainwater.  It's just a box sitting there.  Like many of the old houses in this camp that can't qualify for a VA loan.

Then the mother of all flash floods comes roaring down that canyon like a 6 foot wall of water and  hits both of those houses.  Tons of force broadside the two houses.

One of them is swept down the canyon in pieces and we never see it again.  The other is still standing after the storm.

662 million answers to how do I get to heaven, but only one right one.
Come to Jesus as Lord and Master.  Listen to His words.  Hear His words.  Do them.  As if He owned you.  He does.

You'll build a house that is coupled to an immovable foundation. Jesus Himself and the Word of God.  And then when the storm comes and slams against you, after it passes, you'll still be standing.

I was listening to Mark Levin the other afternoon on the drive back to Tonopah.  He's hard core, angry, conservative, but at least he's intellectually honest.  I don't have to agree with everything to enjoy listening.  The fact that I get to agree occasionally has most of the other sources beat.  The show is about 70% advertising, or so it seems to me.

One ad came on and it was Mark doing the ad.  And he was saying (along with 662 million other voices) if you want to be happy, if you want to be satisfied, he recommends this one book.   Aristotle's “Nicomachean Ethics".   Aristotle had a brilliant mind.  Mark Levin has a brilliant mind.

And I thought to myself, in fact I said it out loud as I drove.  Yeah, and every time Aristotle agrees with this book, the words Jesus spoke of, he is right.  And everytime he dis-agrees, he's wrong.  So why would I bother reading his book.  All I need to read are the words of this book.

Oh, and I need to DO them.  And I need to belong to Jesus.  That's it.  In all the universes, that's it.  3 things.  Belong to Jesus.  Hear His words.  Do them. You'll possess joy no matter what flash flood hits you.