Luke 6:39-42 Willful Blindness
Good morning! Turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter six. Today we are going to look at verses 39-42 and that’s on page 863 in the pew Bibles.
The text for today is a difficult one, at least it is for me because of the role that the Lord has called me to in His church family here. Jesus has some stern warnings here for those who presume to be teachers as well as those who would be students as well as those who claim to be just trying to help.
I don’t have much by way of introduction other than that so let’s just jump into the text.
39 [Jesus] also told them a parable: “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? 40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher. 41 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 42 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.
Let’s pray.
So let’s not dance around this too much, Jesus is really only dealing with one principle here and it’s that of spiritual blindness. That spiritual blindness here comes in three forms because we all know how Jesus loves a three point sermon.
39 …“Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit?
So before we get too far we need to understand what spiritual blindness is.
First and foremost spiritual blindness is blindness to the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the refusal to apply the truth of the gospel to life, an unwillingness to confess one’s sin and turn away from it and trust in Jesus.
In the context given here, Jesus is not only speaking to the Apostles and other followers but to the Pharisees as well. In Matthew 15:14 Jesus specifically calls the Pharisees blind guides. And He said if the blind lead the blind they will both fall into a pit.
The Pharisees notoriously rejected Jesus’ teaching in order to protect their own influence, power, and control in society. There may not be an official job title of Pharisee in the world today but the attitude of the Pharisee is alive and well.
There are plenty of teachers in the world, plenty of leaders who are spiritually blind, some out of ignorance and some willfully blind. What I mean is that there are some who have never heard the gospel of Jesus and there are others who have heard it and reject it. It seems that most people just prefer to wander in the dark without the light of the gospel of Jesus.
Jesus’ words here about the blind leading the blind is a challenge to both teachers and students, leaders and followers.
It may seem foolish to us that know Jesus that people would willfully reject Him and choose spiritual blindness. It’s also foolish to presume to be a guide if you’re blind.
There are also those who presume to be guides that claim to know Jesus but choose to be blind to His Word and its truth. They stand in pulpits week after week espousing God’s love but reject any kind of standards of behavior based on the Bible. They are willingly and willfully blind to the truth of God’s Word and presume to lead others.
Alistair Begg said, “In order to avoid being a blind teacher we must first place our lives under the divine search light.”
As a friend once said, “All we can do is try and make sure we’re not like that.” And I would add, make sure you don’t follow them either.
It’s foolish to presume to be a guide if you’re blind and it’s even more foolish to blindly follow them.
In the words of Jedi master Obi Wan Kenobi, “Who is more foolish, the fool, or the fool who follows him?”
Jesus words here are a challenge to those who would be guides and teachers about their spiritual blindness but also to those who would be students and followers. This was a warning to the Pharisees and an encouragement to the disciples.
40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.
I used to think these two statements were separate with separate meanings but they are in fact connected. The challenge from Jesus is to choose your teacher wisely.
If the master is blind and falls the student will be no better off.
Time after time people searching for wisdom choose teachers who are blind, and time after time they are disappointed when the teacher falls or is exposed. It’s like Toonces the Driving Cat. Back in the eighties on Saturday Night Live there was a series of sketches called Toonces the Driving Cat. Every time some dummy would get into the car and Toonces would drive and every single time they would drive off a cliff. Every. Single. Time.
It’s the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. We see it at work in the world as people chase after teachers that will give them spiritual enlightenment or fulfillment and time after time are disappointed. But it’s just as prevalent in the church because time after time people choose the wrong teacher. We lift up some individual to a place that they don’t belong, we read all their books and we watch all their videos, only to learn that they are in fact human and make some mistake that exposes them and knocks them off that pedestal.
So the challenge to the student is to choose your teacher wisely, don’t choose the wrong teacher, make sure you choose the right teacher, and I’m here to tell you friends, it isn’t me. It isn’t Alistair Begg, or Ray Steadman, or John Calvin, or Martin Luther, JP Lange, or JJ vanOosterzee, It’s Jesus!
Choose Jesus to be your teacher, listen to His teaching in His Word the Bible.
I’m not telling you to stop listening to other preachers and teachers, but what I am telling you is to read the Word, know the Word, so that when one of those teachers gets it wrong you’ll be able to see it.
The Word of God is such a gift to us, here we have the very words of God, read it and let Him be your teacher. He is the only guide whose vision is not impaired by sin, whose motives are not selfish, whose desire is for His glory and our good!
40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.
Isn’t that our aim, to be like Jesus?
And Jesus, like any good teacher, sometimes pushes and stretches us to learn and do things that make us uncomfortable so that we grow. These next two verses are proof of that.
41 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 42 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.
I said at the beginning that the blindness that Jesus refers to in this passage is spiritual blindness, a willful turning of a blind eye to the truth of the gospel. This example of the log and the speck falls under the same category.
First of all, let’s recognize together what a ridiculous picture this is. It is intentionally ridiculous. It looks to stupid in our minds because it really is stupid to act this way… and yet, we do it all the time.
This ridiculous picture of a carrying beam jammed in our eye verses a speck or splinter in our brother’s eye is Jesus’ invitation to introspection. It’s Jesus’ challenge to His disciples to diligently examine ourselves according to His standards.
The reason that many of us go through life with logs stuck in our faces is that we don’t use Jesus’ standards to measure ourselves by, we measure ourselves by other people, and since we can always find people worse off than us or find a problem somebody else has that makes us look and feel better, we continually prop ourselves up as better off than we really are.
Do you know what that is called? Self-righteousness.
The speck we see think we see in our brother or sister’s eye is some moral defect, but the plank in our eye is our own self-righteousness.
Self-righteousness is being willfully blind to the gospel. The truth of the gospel is that we have no righteousness of our own, all we have is moral defect, but we are clothed with Christ’s righteousness through faith in Him and His atoning work on the cross.
So in considering your own plank be honest with yourself, don’t be a hypocrite, don’t pretend to be something that you are not. Why on earth would we think that it’s ok to point out the faults of others when we are so unwilling to deal with our own?
Do you know what the number one reason people give for being unwilling to go to church? They say that the church is full of hypocrites. Who are the only ones that can change that perception? Us! And the best way that we can do that is to purge our eyes from any self-righteous planks!
The Pharisees, in their pride, were willfully blind to the gospel and their need of it, blind guides that led their students into the same pit as them, in their self-righteousness they pointed out the faults of others while ignoring their own darkness.
Let’s not be like that.
In humility let us examine ourselves before the Lord and allow the light of His Word and the truth of the gospel to expose the logs in our eyes, to expose our darkness.
5 For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. 6 So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. 9 For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10 who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. 11 Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. 1 Thessalonians 5:5-11
Amen.
