Able to get that up. And now I breathe aside relief. Shall we pray, Father in Heaven? Indeed, we can rejoice that the Lord Jesus, our Savior, is our lighthouse.
He said, I am the light of the world. No man come us to the Father, but by me, we thank you for the one who shed his royal blood. This is a hard thing to fully grasp, help us, Lord, as redeemed people, ransomed people, to live accordingly, to live in the light of your word and in the light of the grace in which we walk and live, given to us by our Savior. In his name we pray, amen.
We have in your Bible not only the description for you of what is right and wrong, which of course is important. We also have the presentation of the problem of what you are, not only of what you do or should do, but what you are. The latter should concern you very much. It is not part of modern thinking.
It is not part of many other religions. The religion of Islam has a checklist. If you can check off the boxes in the checklist, then you should be good, although they cannot guarantee anything. Catholicism also has quite a strong emphasis on works and checklists and avoiding the doing of wrong, which is a good thing.
And the good actions that you should engage in and hopefully the good outweighs the bad. That is also the Islamic teaching. But I want to speak to you this morning about the weighing of your being, the measurement of your soul, the assessment of what you are. Let's begin by thinking about the concept of a disciple.
We sometimes imagine that a disciple, as we read of them in the gospels, is a Christian, is a person who is at least strongly on the way to becoming a Christian. But I think that should be clarified for you. The meaning, the fundamental meaning of the word disciple is learner, learner. So that is a good thing to emulate in and of itself.
But we read in John 66 that after the Lord Jesus talked about the spirit gives life, the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you, they are spirit, they are life in 64. In 66, we read that some of the disciples went back and walked with him no more. Didn't like that teaching.
This world's systems have all kinds of followers, have all kinds of people that are attempting to learn from those systems to varying degrees of success. So we should think more broadly when we read our gospels. When we think of the disciples, when we think of how they thought about themselves as followers of Christ, as learners of the teachings of Christ. Now, on this side of redemption, walking in the grace of God, enjoying the grace of God, as ransomed people, we still have so much to learn from the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But we should also, as I say, not forget the audience that he spoke to, and that they were not on the same side of redemption that we stand on, and that we are in. They were learners. They listened to what the Lord Jesus said. And you know, I often think, as has been pointed out by people like Oswald Chambers, you know, I am abysmal failure.
My state of being is awful. And I'm going to keep walking after this, man. I'm going to continue to hear what he has to say. But so far, what I'm hearing is that I am in a very bad way.
And that would be true. James chapter 2 refers to the Lord Jesus, his teaching as the royal law. I think that the teachings of the Lord Jesus should, that's a good descriptor. They should be described as the royal law.
An elderly lady at a church that I used to go to said that it is impossible to be a Christian without being a disciple. Now that's interesting. Interesting that that experienced Christian would say that if you want to walk with the Lord, enjoy the Lord, know the Lord, you can't do that unless you are learning, unless you are learning. She said it's impossible.
And she was at least 80 years old. It's a very simple observation. And I trust that you are still in your Christian life, even though you are perhaps comfortable on this side of redemption. You are still learning.
You can still expose your soul to the teachings of the Lord Jesus and say, how far do I have to go? Well, you're bought. You haven't bought. You belong to him.
You've been bought with the price. You belong to him. It's true. You have a long way to go.
But you are in relationship to the Lord Jesus. You are not merely a disciple. You are a Christian. But you should remember to be a disciple and to continue to learn.
The beatitude, the royal law, one writer described the beatitudes as a body of teaching that finds us out wherever we are. Are you hiding somewhere? The sermon on the Mount will find you. Is there some aspect of your life that you thought was not visible to God and to others?
The sermon on the Mount will put its finger right on it. And you will say, how far do I have to go? In a sense, you have a long way to go, just as we all do, just as I do. But it's good to know that as believers, we are walking in grace and by grace, and the things that we emulate, we do not emulate or seek after in our own strength.
My mother used to say, be sure your sins will find you out, David. Numbers, Numbers 32, verse 23. I hated it when she said that. It always came true.
It was the thing. I think mothers have some kind of, well, it takes me back to very old television programs and acronyms that people no longer even use. She had some kind of ESP, extra sensory perception. You'd come in the house and she'd almost know what you'd already know.
How? I don't know how. It's a mother thing. But as we, as adults, consider the royal law, it's good for us to know what we've signed up for.
And when men were following the Lord Jesus and listening to Him, as I read to you from John 66, some of them said, you know, this is not for me. I will not. I cannot continue. And they walked in some other direction in their lives.
And I'm sorry to say, went to hell. They turned away from the Savior and in turning away from the Savior and in all that He taught and in all that He did, they turned away and in all probability. They are in hell right now because they did not continue to follow and to find out and to learn from the Lord Jesus and to benefit from His death and resurrection. They were long gone.
The attitudes deal with the heart. And that image is a nice image. One wonders whether by the Sea of Galilee, whether the audience was above so that the Lord Jesus could see many of them because if you put it the other way, which is more like this picture, then there are people that are quite a bit below you and seems to be a little bit of water back there. But I don't see the Sea of Galilee in the background.
We have the so-called Sermon on the Mount, the Lord Jesus, probably not like this in a setting by the Sea of Galilee where He could best address the people. And those three chapters, three or four chapters are profound. They are very profound. People who do evangelism hear all kinds of objections about Christianity.
But you know something, it's awfully hard to object to Jesus Christ. It's awfully hard to criticize and object to the profound nature of these moral teachings and the standards that these things set. If the human race even remotely could achieve these moral levels, our society would be totally different and for the better. So people might not like Christianity.
They may not like the Bible. But I would encourage you to point people to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself and His teaching, because that's awfully hard to criticize. It is the highest moral teaching that mankind has ever run across. But it says things that deal with the heart.
These are heart laws. These are spiritual laws. Sometimes you see people when I was at university would hand someone a track set, the four spiritual laws. Well, there are spiritual laws and the Lord Jesus is giving to us the inescapable truths of salvation and of what we are in relation to God.
And what is the definition of righteousness in light of what we are? And it's very sobering and it shakes you up. He says things like, what if the darkness that is in your heart is all that you know and you think that it is the light? If the light that you think is the light is actually darkness and that is where you are walking, how would you even know that in so many words?
Now that's a sobering thought. If I've only ever walked in darkness and I think that the darkness in which I walk is light, my condition is very, very desperate. And every man should ask themselves, what if that's true of me? What if I have no reference?
My darkness is my darkness and my reference is darkness. And that's the condition of my heart. That's a very bad place to be. What do I notice about my heart?
One of the laws of this is the words that come out of my mouth that sometimes my ear is here. I go, what? Did I say that? Oh, no.
Well, the overflow of the heart is what comes out of the mouth. The Lord Jesus said. Can you stop it? Can you change it?
You will observe in your own life that what comes out of your mouth is found in your heart. You might try to say, you know, I need to be more polite. I need to be more diplomatic. This is window dressing.
What is the state of your heart? What is the state of your heart before God? That's a very sobering thought. That's a very serious thought.
Thinking about the attitudes and shall we call it spiritual surgery. The Lord Jesus says, does your eye cause you to sin? Does your hand cause you to sin? Cut it off.
And on the one hand you say, yeah, my eye causes me to sin. It's true. It's true. Jesus says the outcome is hell.
Is he kidding? He's not kidding. Can I do anything about it? Do I have the courage and the strength to pluck this thing out?
I don't. I don't. I can accept at face value what Jesus says about hell and he knows more about hell than I do. And I can't do it.
It's sending me to hell and I can't do anything about it. My actions are evil. My thoughts are evil. What I look at is evil.
It's in my heart is darkness. This is a terrible situation. Can I change it? Can I change it?
In and of myself, I cannot. I cannot. Jesus is not lying about hell. Jesus is not lying about the consequences of our eyes and hearts and thoughts and words.
This is very serious. It's a very serious situation to be in. Let's look at something specific. Judge not, the Ebenod judge for with what judgment?
E judge, you shall be judged and with what measure you meet to shall be measured to you again. And why behold us now the moat that is then thy brothers I but consider not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how will thou say to thy brother let me pull out the moat out of thine eye and behold a beam is then thine own eye? Thou hypocrite first cast the beam out of thine own eye and then thou shalt see clearly to cast the moat out of thy brother's eye.
Here you have specs and logs. Do you have a case of the specs? Do you have a case of the planks? Do you have a case of the logs?
You can't see. You can't see. Do you need that kind of surgery? Who can do that kind of surgery?
Who can deal with this? The Lord Jesus can. The Lord Jesus can. It's interesting that we have this word measured.
You can think of actions that are wrong, things that we do and that was a sin. That was the wrong thing I did for myself that was paid for on the cross. But when it comes to, you might say Christian theology, there is more to the story than that because although sins as actions are judged, you as a soul, as a human soul, will be measured. You will be measured and that has to do with your being.
You will be weighed. That's another way of putting it. Are you ready for that? Are you ready to be measured and weighed in your being?
That should be a sobering thought. Have you been to the ontology department? Cancer is a scourge in our society and people who get cancer go to the oncology department with a letter C instead of a letter T. Have you been to the ontology department?
Ontology is the ology, the study, the consideration of being. What is your being? What is your being before God? How will you be weighed?
How will you be measured in your being? Your being needs to be redeemed. It needs to be purchased. That's what redemption is all about.
It is the purchase of what you are. And the Lord Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross has purchased you, which is very good news because it's at that level that we need salvation. It's at that level. I want to quickly consider three individuals who were weighed up, who were measured and found lacking.
In our considerations of first Samuel, we're almost right through the book but we've already covered two of the three people I'm going to talk about this morning in first Samuel. We talked about Eli and Saul. So I want to talk a bit about the house of Eli, Eli the high priest. You can read in first Samuel 2, 31.
I want to give you a sense of God measuring a man and dealing with that man and on what basis and what happened. It's fascinating when you look at what happened to Eli and to Saul and the specifics of the events are quite telling and interesting. You might say it was not a conventional sinner in the sense of doing bad things. He was a man who looked the other way.
When it came to sin, he was primarily negligent. He was negligent. That should make everybody uncomfortable. That means that I can be displeasing to God by doing nothing, by being negligent.
And that is the primary thing, the characterized Eli as high priest and for which he was judged. Even today, there is a tradition with the Jews called Coraya and that is the tearing of the clothes. And it is associated with death. You have read in your Bible that sometimes people will sprinkle ashes on their heads and they will rip their clothes at a funeral.
And it is a public expression of grief. The prophet comes to Eli and says, you are going to be judged and your sons are going to die and the arm of your father's house is going to be cut off. Judgment is coming to you. The young boy Samuel reiterates this the next day in the morning.
It took me a while to learn how the young people use the word whatever. I think I have some sense of how this word works. And what you read is the young prophet Samuel lays this out to this negligent high priest who doesn't care what his own sons is described as kicking at the sacrifice. Such disregard for redemption.
What a frightening thing to show. Disregard for redemption. Terrible. It is brought to him by the young Samuel and Eli says, whatever the Lord is going to do, whatever the Lord wants to do, let him do it.
To me it sounds like whatever. Oh dear. I absolutely hate it when the young person says to me whatever. This is not whatever.
This is very, very serious. And what happens of course is the next battle, his sons are killed and the messenger comes and he sees the messenger coming. Oh thank you very much, Patsy Kirby. And his fear grows.
He is a great big factor. And he is sitting there on that stool and the guy is coming and his fear is growing. He figures bad news, bad news, bad news. And the messenger comes and Eli says, what happened?
Blah, blah, blah, blah. And your sons are dead. And the messenger is ripping his clothes. Is Eli ripping his clothes?
He doesn't even have a chance to rip his clothes. He falls over dead. This sadness, this grief that he should have been part of. Even that he is not part of.
He doesn't even get to rip his own clothes. He falls over dead. The one ripping the clothes is the one brought the news. The one bringing the news has the grief of the situation.
Enough to rip his clothes. The man for who that is responsible for this doesn't even have a chance to repent and rip his clothes. He is killing over dead right in front of the messenger. Tells you something.
Tells you something. He died of shock without a chance to grieve. The same man that went whatever. Oh dear.
It's all. Life is very instructive. The historical account is very engaging. All of it is very engaging.
Eli might have thought, you know, my priestly house is permanent. I just have to be the high priest. This is a permanent situation. Ripped away.
Paul Saul said, my reign is permanent. I just have to be king. I just need my strength and my height and the width of my shoulders and some bravado and I guess I'm just going to be king. Great.
Great. And interestingly, he too does not grasp the nature of sacrificial things, takes things upon himself in an entirely inappropriate way. And the kingdom is ripped from him, the ripping of clothes. Is he grieving himself?
Is he the one ripping his clothes? He grabs onto the prophet Samuel and Samuel continues to walk away and the clothes ripped. And Samuel turns and says, the kingdom is ripped from you. You should be grieving.
You should be repenting. You should be ripping your own clothes and say, I have done, I repent of this. He's justifying it and justifying it and justifying it. I'm not interested.
Samuel says, not interested. The kingdom is ripped from you. You thought you were king automatically and that your status in life just continues. It's automatically don't worry about anything.
It's ripped from you. And so his kingdom left him and there was ripping. Very sad. Last night at ESL, we went through Daniel chapter one and unfortunately for my dear Chinese friends, Hananiah and Bel Shazar and Nebuchadnezzar are not the easiest names in the world to pronounce if English is not your first language but that's what fell upon them and they did very well, actually.
This idea that I have tried to present to you, of the weighing, the assessing, the measuring of the man comes very, very clearly out in Daniel chapter five. This man is very powerful. He succeeded in taking Jerusalem and everybody in it in the year 586 and that's the end of actually the southern kingdom as a kingdom. God's judgment.
Nebuchadnezzar did that. And he became proud. You think of being and you think of what you are and you think of what people are. This is one of the, maybe the, I think it's the central sin.
It is the central thing in the sin of being, pride, pride. Human beings are so proud. Humble yourselves before God and he will exalt you in due time. That is what is needed.
And in order to come to the cross, you have to humble yourself. It is not a matter of proudly appropriating the cross. Appropriating the redemption is fundamentally something that requires you to admit what you are so that God can change you by grace. This man, Nebuchadnezzar was a man who could say, you know, my kingdom is permanent and glorious.
It's just amazing. One of the seven wonders of the world was the hanging garden, the Babylon. It must have been just an incredibly impressive place there in modern day Iraq. And then, and then, Daniel 524.
Now this is the inscription that was written. Minimani techil of Ufarsen. Oh, dear. A man so full of his own pride and the glory of his own kingdom and relishing it so much.
The writing is on the wall. It's actually one of the things that has found its way into our language. The writing is on the wall. That's not good news for you if the writing is on the wall.
You're on the way out. That's where we get it. That and many other expressions in the Bible have come into Western culture and thinking from your Bible. Techil.
Waying him, this proud man. He is weighed. He is weighed on the scales of God. And like every other man, whether he's a king or he's a beggar outside of Christ, he's deficient.
You and I are deficient. We're all deficient. And not only is he going to be humiliated, his kingdom is going to come to an end. So what happened to Nebuchadnezzar?
What happened to him? What's the next thing? Where do you see him? Where do you find him?
Eating grass. So humiliated. So humiliated. Amazing.
His pride. His pride. So think of that. Think of that when you think of your heart.
Think of that when you think of what you are. Do you have a case of the specs or the planks or the logs or the beams as you go through your life, looking around, around, instead of allowing the eye of God to look at you and your heart? What are your eyes like? What are you taking in?
Are you assessing things in an ungodly way? Or are your primary concerns actually? How is God weighing you? How is God measuring you?
What is your ontology? We are so like this. I can give you a hand there. Let me just, you know, something about you is bothering me.
Can I please? Oh, dear. That is so human. And the Lord Jesus said that is what we are like.
I am turning in my mind to Joel chapter 2. There's two books in your Bible that are difficult to date. One would be Job, possibly around the time of Abraham. And the other one would be Joel, which is clearly about End Times.
And yet the timing of this particular short book is difficult for any scholar to comment on. But in it, we have that amazing statement. End your hearts, not your garments. Our hearts need to be rent if we think that ceremonial karaya is going to do something in our grief of our over our external circumstances.
Well, the more important thing is, rent your heart, not your clothes. The heart is what needs to be rent. The heart is what needs to be humbled. And the Prophet Joel says, rent not your clothes, rent your heart before God.
When we think of the Beatitudes, we can think of very famous verses like, but seek ye first, the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you. I like the part in italics. I like the second part. I like the idea that I'm going to be taken care of by God.
But can I do the first part? Is that so easy for my heart? To always put the kingdom of God first? Because that is the condition for the second part.
To have a heart that is so taken up with the kingdom of God that the second part takes care of itself. That's what Jesus taught. And we have to admit that we are often taken up with the other things, the many things that are in our lives that we worry about every day and they completely occupy us and eat us up. Jesus says, don't worry about those things.
Seek ye first, the kingdom of God. That means your heart needs to be a heart that seeks after the things of God, all by itself, of God, by God, through God, by God's power. And that we have to admit that that that is not what our hearts are like. That's what they need to be like.
And by grace and by his spirit, we can do the first part and enjoy the second part. There's three, five, and six trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lead not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways, acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths. Do you like God?
Do you like the idea of God directing your steps and directing your life and directing your path? Sounds good to me. I like the second part. Where does my heart need to be though?
It needs to be a trusting heart. I need a change of heart. I need a different heart. I have to admit that in my flesh, my heart is not trusting toward God.
I always hope that God will direct me. The first part is the hard part. The first part is the part that requires grace and reliance on God. The second part will take care of itself if the first part is genuine.
This is a rather sobering thought that I'm going to continue with and I'm going to close with, actually not continue with close with. I don't know when I look at my grandchildren when David McDonald gets a look at Murdoch and I look at little Beatrix Violet. Will the Lord become before they pass away from a natural death? I think so.
Are we looking at the last generation? Look at all these events around you. Will we look upon them as just an accident of history and that will move on? I think not.
I think not. I look at the little ones and think that the Lord will come before they ever get close to my age. And after the Lord takes away his people in the rapture and the tribulation, the terrible tribulation is going on. We see so much sin in the world.
What do we see in the book of Revelation chapter 16? Bowels of wrath. God is going to judge this. He's going to judge it.
The picture of a bowel is that God decides how full it is before it's emptied. The measure of it will be exactly correct for the judgment that is appropriate to what's going on on this planet with human beings. And they will be poured out and poured out and poured out according to God's measure, according to God's timing, and according to God's amount. And so ultimately, we know that things will be assessed and weighed and judged according to right measurements of God.
Are we confident that we walk with the Lord in the light of his word? I hope that you are. I hope that you are. I hope that you know the Lord and that you walk by grace and that you look forward to being like him because you will see him as he is, as it says in 1 John.
Shall we pray? Father, help us to be conscious of what we are before you. Help us to acknowledge that we need the every hour. If there's anyone here who does not know what it's like to know you and to walk with you to trust you, to seek the things that truly matter in eternity, if there's anyone here who knows none of these things, may that person turn over their being, turn over their lives to you at the cross.
We thank you for this time this morning. We pray that in these coming difficult days you would give us grace. We need grace. We are not sufficient for these things.
We pray that you would die in direct. In Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen.