Today’s passage is Luke 6:39-49. Jesus tells four short parables. If the blind lead the blind, they’ll fall into a pit. We can’t take the speck out of our brother’s eye unless we take the log out or ours. A good tree bears good fruit, not evil, and it is our heart’s good or evil that produces our fruit. If we act on Jesus’ words, we are like a builder who builds on a rock foundation and survives a disaster. If we don’t put Jesus’ words into practice, we’ll be washed away in a disaster.
Do teachers ever think their students are equal to them even after they’ve been trained?
How can Jesus’ words save people from the disasters of this world?
My wife and I are building a little house in the mountains near Yangpyeong.
Actually, the builder is building it. We’re just paying for it and trying to get the right design.
Interestingly, it’s the foundation that’s the first big challenge because the government changed the rules on that and other things.
So we’re building a house according not just to the rules of engineering but of the government too.
Our desires have to be in accord with the rules.
Jesus says the same thing about our lives.
If we do what we want, we are courting disaster because a torrent will strike and destruction will follow.
Well I know that.
Even though I had been a Christian for many years, I committed adultery before my first wife died.
That was not putting into practice the words of God.
After my first wife died, I lived with a woman and had a child with her outside of marriage. T
hat, too, was not putting God’s words into practice.
Disaster struck and I lost my job, lost my work visa in America, and lost the family and happy life I had hoped to have.
Destruction was complete when I was reduced to a jobless life living in a room in the YMCA.
My brother in law has more than a speck in his eye.
It’s lumber room of planks. I know because I recognize them in myself.
He’s been living with us for many years and I’ve had ample opportunity to see those planks closely.
His attitude and behavior angered me at first and then, as I saw the same things in myself, my anger changed to gratitude to God for showing me sins I was reluctant to acknowledge.
The most recent of those just occurred, brought out by his upcoming departure from our apartment.
Even though he’s handicapped, he doesn’t accept that reality and he thinks he can do anything and everything with his own power.
His trust in God is close to zero.
How well I know that attitude in myself! And, ironically, God showed me that today as I meditated on the house-building parable and talked to my wife.
My wife and I didn’t trust God to help her brother.
We did it all. We were the ones who were going to save him and help him.
We did it all on our own power, stressing ourselves and getting angry again and again over her brother’s selfishness, carelessness, unwillingness to do anything to help himself or us, spending his money on fashionable clothes and pridefully grooming himself, happily doing nothing when his divorce came up or other legal matters because he didn’t see anything as his problem.
He focused on studying realestate so he could become rich instead of doing QT.
Mercifully, he attends worship regularly and will not leave our church.
We didn’t trust God and didn’t diligently seek his will for my wife’s brother.
We didn’t listen to others’ advice to move him out so he could learn to care for himself, which he is quite capable of doing.
We were just like my brother in law: not accepting the true circumstance and trusting to our own power.
Application: Post the day of Hak Jay’s departure on the wall so that all of us see it every day and pray every day for God’s help.
Lord, thank you for showing me yet another of my abiding sins. Give me your spirit to build the house of my life on your words.
