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***The following is an unedited auto-generated transcript and may contain serious errors and speakers other than Dallas Willard. It is included here to assist your study. Please check the original audio for an authentic record of the event.

Speaker: John 14:8-25

. . . said to him, “Lord show us the Father that is all we need.” Jesus answered, For a long time I have been with you all yet you do not know me? Philip whoever has seen me has seen the Father, Why then do you say, show us the Father? Do you not believe Philip that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. The words that I have spoken to you, Jesus said to his disciples, do not come from me, the Father who remains in me does his own work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. If not, believe because of the things I do. I’m telling you the truth, whoever believes in me will do what I do. Yes, he will do even greater things because I am going to the Father and I will do whatever you ask for in my name, so that the Father’s glory will be shown through the Son. If you ask me for anything in my name, I’ll do it. If you love me, you will obey my commandments. I will ask the Father and he will give you another Helper who will stay with you forever. He is the Spirit who reveals the truth about God. The world cannot receive him because it cannot see him or know him, but you know him because he remains with you and is in you. When I go, you will not be left all alone. I will come back to you. In a little while, the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you will also live. When that day comes, you will know that I am in the Father and that you are in me just as I am in you. Whoever accepts my commandments and obeys them is the one who loves me. My Father will love whoever loves me. I too will love him and reveal myself to him. Judas, not Judas Iscariot, said, Lord, how can it be that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus answered him, whoever loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and my Father and I will come to him and live with him. Whoever does not love me does not obey my teaching, and the teaching you have heard is not mine but comes from the Father who sent me.

Dallas: I would like to call your attention to the evening service. I’m going to be dealing there with a very difficult matter which has caused much grief and continues to cause much unhappiness, and yet it does so because the subject is so very important, and if you can prepare by reading the second chapter of the book of Acts and come this evening prayerfully, I think there may be something there that might be of help to you, possibly also something there to make you mad. On such a subject, that’s just possible. That’s okay. We can get mad, and we can get glad, and it’s all in the unity of the Spirit of Christ, and if we don’t say something to one another occasionally, that makes us a little uneasy and mad, then we’re probably all asleep, and so that’s quite all right. I hope you can appreciate it and approach it in that spirit. And I will be speaking tonight about the coming of the Holy Spirit on the church at Pentecost, and I shall be trying to relate that to our situation today. So much for that, but I think this is a very important matter for you, and therefore I wanted to say something about it.

Now may the Word of God come forth in our midst and enter our hearts and minds that we might be transformed into the image and Spirit of Christ. Amen.

My text for today is taken from the letter of Paul to the Ephesians in the fourth chapter and the last two verses. It expresses a spirit in which we are to live in the Church of Jesus Christ, which for many practical purposes is the kingdom of heaven so far as we are concerned. If you wish, it deals with that relationship between us and those significant others with whom we live in close contact, and it tells us this. Let all bitterness and wrath, verse 31 of chapter 4 of Ephesians, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice, and be a kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you. And we might add on the first two verses of the next chapter. Be therefore followers of God as dear children, followers of God, and walk in love as Christ also hath loved us and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor. Later on in that same chapter we read in the 18th verse, and be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit. Which spirit? With the Spirit of Christ. Be filled with the Spirit. Let it take over every part of you, speaking to yourselves in songs and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things unto God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

And Jesus said, He that is greatest among you shall be servant of all.

The only question remaining is, now how do we do that? How do we come to that place? You see, when John the Baptist and Jesus came preaching, repentance for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. They made available, they made present to the world at that time, an order in which God governs, because that is exactly what the kingdom of heaven is. It is God government. It is the government of God in your life and in mine. God rules in the kingdom of heaven. And we pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That’s the rule of heaven in our lives. And what Jesus announced was its availability. And what John the Baptist announced was its availability, because as I’ve pointed out to you earlier, they both came preaching the same message, repent for the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of God is at hand. It’s available. Turn and walk into it.

Now as John the Baptist came preaching this, we find in the third chapter of Luke, the tenth verse, the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then? What shall we do? And John speaks every one to their condition. You will notice he says in general, in the eleventh verse of the third chapter of Luke, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none. And he that hath food, let him do likewise. And then came also the publicans, the tax collectors, to be baptized. And John did not baptize people unless he was convinced that they would bring forth the fruits of repentance. And these said to him, Master, what shall we do? And he gives them precise instructions. He says, Exact no more than that which is appointed to you. Don’t take advantage of your position to enrich yourself. That was the common practice among them. And in the soldiers, the fourteenth verse of the same chapter, the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, and be content with your wages. And as the people were in expectation, and all men mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ or not. John then answered and told them there was one coming, much mightier than he, whose shoe he wasn’t fit to tie. And he said, I baptize you with water, but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.

When Jesus came, Jesus preached the same message that John the Baptist preached. He preached repentance from the normal way of human life. He looked at human beings going down the broad path of destruction which he described, and he said to them, Turn out of it and turn to something else. But the question to him as it was to John was the same. What are we going to do? How do you do it? How do you repent? And the teachings of Jesus is designed to cover the particular areas of our lives and to tell us how in each of those areas we are to repent.

We are coming now to the close of the discussion of the Sermon on the Mount, and I want to just review for you briefly what we have seen. For Jesus said to us, Repent regarding what we take to be the blessed life. He said to us, Repent concerning those whom you call well off, and do not believe that it is merely the bright, the talented, the gifted, the fortunate, the happy, those who are in positions of power and wealth and influence. Don’t believe those are the only ones, for blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are they that mourn, blessed are they who are shy, blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness sake, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure of heart, and so on. Change your mind. Stop acting as if the only people who were blessed are those whom the world called blessed because the first shall be last and the last shall be first in the kingdom of God. And repentance in that area means that we stop thinking about being well off in the world’s way. And then he said to us, Don’t call people fools. Don’t tell them they’re worthless. And in the great competition of man against man in the rough and tumble of life, treat your brother in a kindly and generous fashion. Don’t haul him before the courts if there’s any way at all of avoiding it, but go out of your way. Let him have his way. Trust God and submit that part of your life in which we compete as man against man for the goods of life. Submit that to the government government of God. And that’s how we repent in that area of our lives. And he dealt with those who would divorce their wives in a harmful and terrible way and ruin their lives and those who complimented themselves on not committing acts of sexual wrongdoing when their heart was one festering sore in this area. And in that area, there we are to repent and submit ourselves to the kingdom of heaven in that area. We are to submit all of our sexual life to that area. Our family life is to be submitted there. Now you see, we don’t think of that very often, and I’m afraid too often we suppose that sex is not something you associate with God at all, but you’d better remember that he made it and that it’s a good thing and that it is to be lived with under the governance of God. And to repent is to turn that over to God and submit our opportunities and our frustrations and our disappointments and our failures in that area to God and to his governance. And then he goes on to talk about swearing, about calling the name of God down to convince someone that I’m telling them the truth or to get them to give me my way. And he talks about those who have suffered even an injustice at the court of law and the person who had him imposed upon them through the law now needs something. And he said to them, well give it to them. Don’t just stand back and let them die because they won a court suit over against you. If they still need your coat, they’re freezing to death, let them have it. You have a cloak. Give it to them. Don’t hold back. That’s characteristic, you see, of the governance of God. We saw how Jesus teaches in the realm of piety with doing righteous acts, with prayer, with fasting, how in all of those areas too we are not at all to live in the way that man uses religion to impress one another. We are simply to live our piety before God only and submit it all. And you remember how over and over he said, and the Father in heaven which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. That’s the government of God, you see. And to repent is to turn into that and to give it an opportunity to work. And last time we dealt with provisions and we heard about the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. We were told by Jesus that there is an order for us also, an order of provision which is better than we can manage for ourselves. And to repent is to turn in that area and trust that. That’s to repent.

We come today to look at a very intimate area of human life, the relationship of those two others around us where we live our lives, in our families, in our churches, at work, in our in our community. And here we find that Jesus has some very important teachings in the seventh chapter of Matthew. And if you turn with me there, I want to go over some teachings which I think have been among the more puzzling that people have found in the teachings of Jesus. But I think they’re extremely important because you see when our life goes sour it tends to go sour precisely in the area first of all in the area of our family life between parents and children, between those that we are close to, those whom we love and who love us, and it is in this area that the teachings of Matthew 7 1 through 12 fall. We’re talking here then about the general theme of helping and getting help in the kingdom of God. We’re being asked to turn these very personal and intimate relationships with our loved ones over to the kingdom of heaven and we’re being told then how to repent in this area you see. Now if you look at that outline that you have in your bulletin you will see how it covers verse by verse this passage.

Jesus begins this passage by telling us that we’re not to judge and the reason is that you be not judged.

This has caused many people a lot of trouble and those of us who are in positions of responsibility in the church very often like to use this on those who are criticizing us say now don’t judge but we need all the help we can get of course but let me just say that that’s not what it’s talking about.

The scripture is very clear that we are to judge in one sense of the word. In the Proverbs we read the words rebuke a wise man and he will love you for it. We read also that faithful are the wounds of a friend. We hear Paul telling the Thessalonians prove all things and hold fast to that which is good and the Old Testament in the fifth chapter of Isaiah pronounces a curse upon those who call good evil and evil good. Jesus himself in this very seventh chapter of Matthew tells us how to judge people by means of their fruit. We are not concerned here with judgment in that sense of discerning the way things are. Suppose you were a Christian doctor and a patient came to you and you diagnosed their case as cancer but you said I am not to judge so therefore I can’t tell this person that they have cancer that’s a bad thing. Well you would understand that you were not doing your duty as a doctor and we’re not doing our duty as friends and loved ones unless we discern and unless we judge what is right and unless we say it is so.

Jesus is not talking about that. Jesus is talking about condemning. He’s talking about condemning people. He’s talking about going at people with the attitude of a combination of anger and fear and scorn and pride and tearing them down on the basis of what we see to be wrong about them. And he’s saying if you really want to help people now don’t condemn them. And the reason he’s giving is this that if you condemn people they will simply condemn you back. And I submit to you that that law works like the rising and the setting of the Sun. If you condemn people they will simply condemn you back and the result will be that your efforts to help them will completely fail because they will never hear you. Judge not that you be not judged for with what judgment you judge you shall be judged and with what measure you meet it shall be measured unto you again. See this has confused many people because they say well suppose I have a friend who is an alcoholic and I am NOT an alcoholic. Now is this saying that when I say dear friends you have a problem with alcohol they’re going to turn around and say the same thing to me when they know that I’m not an alcoholic? It isn’t saying that. Jesus is talking about the simple fact that if you condemn you will be condemned in the same manner in the same degree. Not about the same thing necessarily. He is talking about the attitude in which we go to other people.

Now the truth of the matter is there are many of us I am afraid who believe that when someone else is wrong the only way you can help them is to condemn them. And that somehow if we don’t condemn we’re not right ourselves. We are perhaps a little weak in our convictions. We ought to be as we say righteously indignant about it all and really lay it on them.

Now there is a time for emphatic speaking. We see Jesus doing that himself. It is hard to find anyone who could lay it out in clearer and harsher terms than Jesus did in the 23rd chapter of Matthew for example and elsewhere. There is a time for emphatic speaking but Jesus when he delivered that very speech over the people in Jerusalem who were rejecting him and turning him away and getting ready to kill him had a broken heart and he wept over Jerusalem and he said how oft I would have gathered you as a hen gathered the chicks but you would not.

You see when we come to the situation where we want to use loud and strong words we want to make sure that those words are watered with tears of a broken heart and that way there’s no condemnation. To condemn is to stand over against the person to scorn. Isn’t it awful you will often see even a parent who cannot keep from scorning a child whom they’re correcting and then we wonder why is it that communications break down? Jesus has the answer. He’s telling us right here

and we all know how anger and fear and uneasiness of all kinds gets into our lives when we’re trying to deal with our children with our loved ones and when something is wrong we have to get very uptight as they say and that uptightness reflects something very simple. We have not surrendered something to God. Possibly we have not surrendered that person we’re trying to correct God. Very hard to surrender a child but an unsurrendered child is an unbearable cross. That child that God gave you, that child that God gave me is not mine. I do not own that child. That child is God’s and it is my business to give that child to God for whatever may come and I know from my own experience that whenever I am filled with anxiety so that I cannot deal with my children without in some way getting worked up and beginning made it to condemn a bit and to try to drive and manage and force it is because I am not at peace in trusting the kingdom of heaven that I do that. I know that it’s true the student with a colleague. It is true the neighbor and

Jesus here seeing the damage done by all of the condemning that goes on tells us not only how not to do it. He goes on and tells us how we can actually help people if we want to.

Read the remainder please of this portion with me. Why beholdest thou the moat that is in thy brother’s eye but consider is not the railroad tie the cross beam that is in your own eye. How wilt thou say to thy brother let me pull out the moat out of thine eye the little speck and behold an eight by ten is in your own eye.

See in other words he’s saying when we go to correct someone about something it may be very significant but it is not nearly as much a problem as the attitude of condemnation much bigger problem.

Now he says to us thou hypocrite why hypocrite again you see he’s not saying that every time you condemn someone for something you’re doing the same thing and therefore you’re hypocrite about that. That is not the point of hypocrisy. You have to be careful in reading the teachings of Jesus they must make sense and the truth is there are many people who are not guilty of the things they condemn in other people. The hypocrisy does not lie in that regard. It lies in the fact that we come at the person perhaps in an supposing that it is an act of true regard and love and helping but in truth the attitude of condemnation shows our pride. It shows that our main concern is not to help and the fact of the matter is that in much condemning that goes on the main concern of the person involved is their own self-righteousness and to appear right it is not to help the person in question. I grieve me to say that because I know how common condemning is and I confess to you I’ve done it myself and that’s why I know it so well but we have to see these things clearly you see and Jesus is saying once we get that huge 8 by 10 of self-righteousness out of our eye then we can see clearly how to cast the moat out of our brothers eye. You see Jesus is giving us this teaching because he wants to help us know how to help others effectively. It’s tremendously important that we do so. We have a profound obligation with those that we live with and they have it to us to correct one another. We have that in the church. The minister constantly needs correction. He is not a lord over the flock. He’s one of the elders and there needs to be a process of mutual support and love and correction. One of our great griefs in the church is that so many people in the ministry feel like that you cannot both support them and criticize them but you must learn to say it is because I support you that I criticize you. It is because of that and you can do so if you learn the lesson which Jesus teaches us here and you see here again he’s teaching us how to repent. He’s saying whenever you go to help people do it in this way and trust the governing of God in that relationship to bring it out right. Don’t believe you have to make it happen. See one of the things about helping, helping is really psychological and spiritual dynamite. It really puts us in all kinds of binds because you see if I come to help you there’s a great threat in that for me that I might fail. A great threat or worse that you might do something horrible and then the other people blame it on me. So you see if my self-righteousness is a main concern I’m not going to be able to handle a helping relationship at all. If it doesn’t work I’m going to be so threatened that I’ll become destructive and if it does work I’ll take credit for it. That’s the beam of self-righteousness that has to be removed from the eye of the helper.

Jesus goes on in the next verse and touches on a very deep problem also. It’s a verse which has been much misunderstood I believe because it is given the impression that Jesus is calling somebody a pig. He’s not calling anybody a pig. He says here in the sixth verse give not that which is holy unto the dogs neither cast year pearls before swine lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you. He’s talking about trying to help people by giving them something that’s very good indeed but they simply can’t use it. Suppose my little dog is hungry I say I love my little dog I’ll give you the best thing I’ve got and so I take my Bible and say here eat it. He won’t eat it but I say it’s so good this is the best thing in the world. You think a hog won’t eat you? I’ll tell you one of the scariest things I ever saw in my young life was a Razorback hog wild in the woods. They’ll eat you. Hogs will eat you if they get hungry enough and Razorbacks are always hungry that’s why they’re Razorbacks and when I was a kid we would occasionally get hungry enough to go hunting them because they lived while down in the Ozarks there on the Arkansas-Missouri border but I’ll tell you I spent a lot of my time in a tree while my older brother tried to get the hog and Jesus says here if you feed pearls to pigs one of these days you step into the pen to pour another bucket of pearls into their trough and they’re so hungry that they bite your leg off.

Now look at the verse with you. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs. Neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you. He’s talking about the attempt to help people and he’s using two extremes dogs and hogs, holy things and pearls and he’s doing that to make the point as clearly as possible that no matter how good what you have got is if the person you’re trying to help cannot digest it and use it you will simply make them angry as they continue to starve until they finally say who do you think you are and you’re expecting them to be grateful and they’re just still hungry. They still need help and very soon they’re gonna bite you and I’ll tell you there are thousands and millions of people who have been bitten just because of this.

What this tells us is that when we go to people to try to help them the first law is simple unpretentious listening. Oh would you hear it please when you go to witness to people listen, listen. Don’t believe you know what to tell them. That may be true but you’d better go with the attitude oh God help me hear this person help me hear this person and perhaps the greatest single mistake in our families is failure to listen. The first act of love is attention. The first act of love is attention. That’s true even of love between a man and a woman. See two people fall in love. They sit and stare at one another. What a beautiful eyebrow. What a lovely elbow and wrist. Their fingernails are perfect. Every you just you look at them you.

Attention is the law of love and Jesus is teaching us here that no matter how good what we have is and I point out that he does not question that it’s good pearls are wonderful. What is holy is magnificent but it will do absolutely no good if the person cannot receive it

and so when we come to help people we listen we pay attention to them we try to learn from them. We are humble before them. If you’re not humble before the person you’re trying to win to the Lord you’re probably not going to win them to the Lord. If you’re humble before God you can be humble before people. You can be humble before the smallest the most insignificant especially if you’ve learned the laws of the kingdom of heaven and Jesus is saying when we go to help people we don’t come to them to condemn them and we do not come to them assuming that we already know what they need. God may know what they need he certainly does but we’re not God and as we walk into that relationship with them we walk in without condemnation and we walk in without presumption.

Now there’s another side to helping and Jesus deals with that in verses 7 through 10 and this is the side where we are to be helped. We all need help and there are many people who are very big on helping others but themselves can’t possibly be helped and the problem is that they have too much pride or they have such a crushing sense of unworthiness that they simply can’t receive of another person. It’s very hard in this world to give a gift. You know that? It is very hard in this world to give a gift. The common rule is that if you give a gift people are immediately thrown into psychological and spiritual contortions trying to figure out what they could do in return but you see the point is that a gift is precisely something for which you do nothing in return. If it were given to get you to do something in return it wasn’t a gift it was a bride. You see the little word gift that we have in you so much is so helpful in illuminating grace because there is no gift without grace and we tie that with the word ungracious and gracious. A person who is able to accept and to give a gift graciously is a rare individual. That’s what Jesus is talking about. Moreover he’s talking about having a need met and he says something here that most people I think overlook because they apply it immediately to prayer but you see there is a continuum between prayer and normal asking between human beings and Jesus brings that out in this passage but he is first of all not talking about prayer he’s talking about our relationships to others.

Now here’s what he says, ask and it shall be given to you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be open to you. What Jesus saying is that if you need something if you want something ask for it. Don’t go through endless preludes and imaginations as to how you might manage to get it or just what you might do to make it look right. Just simply ask. Don’t worry about your pride because that’s a death trap anyway. If you want something ask for it. Just ask. Don’t try to figure out how you can earn it or finagle for it in some other way. You know what finagle is don’t you? Just ask. Say I want this.

Seek. Knock. Now that’s the rule of human relationships in the kingdom of God. See one reason why it is is because I know that in the kingdom of God I don’t have to have my way. So when I ask I can surrender that relationship to God and I can say oh God won’t you please govern in this relationship. I don’t have to make it look like something other than a gift because I am a needy person and let me tell you you are too. We are needy persons. It is very easy to profess great things about a recognition of our sinfulness and neediness but when we come to other people be totally incapable of admitting that we are needy people. That’s what Jesus is saying. Admit it at the outset. Just ask. I need something.

I would like to spend a lot of time on this but I think I will come back to it in a message in a week or two about prayer and asking and how all of this works. But you see the message here is very plain and he re-emphasizes it. Verse 9. What man is there of you whom if his son asked for bread he will give him a stone? You know of anyone who’d do that. Or if you ask a fish you give him a snake?

Count on it. Ask. I have a minister friend who some years ago had a stroke and it left him impaired so that he would be out in the community and all of a sudden he would forget how to get home. He simply would have no idea how to get home. And his only recourse and it’s interesting that we would think of it even in those terms but we all do. His only recourse was simply to go to the nearest house and knock on the door and say I’m sorry to bother you but I don’t know who I am or how to get home. Would you please help me? Would you care to guess how many times they refused help to him? You know that he never was refused. That is a law of life and that’s what Jesus is talking about and he’s saying in our personal relationships to one another lay aside all the managing and manipulation and second-guessing and earning and hoping and fearing and finagling and just ask and let that be it. Just seek and let that be it. Just knock and let that be it. You’re not in control. You’re not running the world. You’re a needy, humble person whether you recognize it or not. Assume it and believe that God has so made this world that when other human beings sense you asking them for something they are drawn automatically to give it. Why is it that some people when they see a beggar on the street we don’t have many of those around anymore we’ve got other ways of taking care of them but occasionally you’ll see someone begging or someone asking for a ride on the side of the road will try not to see that person. You know what I mean? Because they know that if they don’t see that person they don’t have to deal with the pull to give and for help.

Many people will do that. See it’s a law of life. It is a law of life in the world that God has made and he says count on it. Now because of that because of that fact then we can understand prayer and he proceeds now to tell us if ye then being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children how much more shall your father which is in heaven give us good things give good things to them that simply asking.

Now he gathers the whole sermon up in one verse and he gives us a great therefore that covers all of human relations. It says therefore all things whatsoever you would that men should do to you do ye even so to them for this is the law and the prophets. This is everything. Nothing is left out. All is covered but the therefore refers you see back to the fact that we are in the government of God. We live and we die in the kingdom of heaven under a God who loves us and who cares for us who supervises in all of these relationships and in that faith we are set free to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

Jesus when he came could not preach his death and resurrection as gospel. Those who heard that could not understand it. We today as we live on this side of the cross understand more of what the love of God is because of the vicarious suffering and death of Jesus Christ our Lord for our sins. But we must understand that that act and that life of Christ and his death and now his risen presence in the world and at the right hand of God is meaningless unless we repent in all of the ways of our life unless we turn these matters over to the governing of God.

As we come to the close of this sermon I want to ask you a very simple and a very sober question and I hope you will not confuse it with any other and that question is very simply. Have you repented? Have you really turned into the kingdom of heaven? I’d like first to bow together in prayer and before the music starts spend just a minute in thought on that question. Will you bow with me and pray with me? Pray for yourself and for others. Let’s just take a few moments to dwell on this question.