Sermon
Practicing The Golden Rule
October 23-24, 1999
Pastor Donald Sheley

If you're new with us today, I'm delighted that you've come. We've been studying this passage now for some time. We've come to chapter 7 verse 7.

Lord God please speak to us now from Your Word, in Jesus' name, amen. 

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. "Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? "Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! "Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. 

Now when we commenced our study in this chapter a couple of weeks ago we made this observation, as with all the other elements of the Sermon on the Mount, the perspective of this passage is given in contrast to that of the scribes and the Pharisees whose hypocritical self-righteousness was in direct opposition to the true righteousness of God. We've watched as Jesus has singled out certain areas of life and says this is the way the hypocrites do it, this is the way I want you to do it. And as the result, Jesus now in chapter 7 commences what I define as the divine summation of all the principles of right human relationships. Verses 1 through 6, He focused on this matter of a negative self- righteousness, judgmental spirit that judges others and hurts others, and now in verses 7 through 12 the focus is on the contrasting positive aspect of a spirit that is humble, that is trusting, and that is loving. But when you look at it you say, but just a minute Pastor, isn't this on the subject of prayer? He says ask, seek, and knock. Yes, but Jesus placed the subject of prayer here very interestingly because He dropped it right in the heart of the ethic of human relationships. 

You'll notice He began the chapter by saying don't judge, and we learned a couple of weeks ago that meant to make harsh statements or to develop feelings that hurt people, that really damage them, and Jesus said we don't know all the facts. We don't understand the background to most situations so we're foolish to make judgments when we don't know the facts, and once we know the facts in most cases we'll have a loving heart and an understanding heart. Then He said don't waste your time running around picking out the specks from other peoples eyes or don't run around judging other people for their sin because you've got telephone posts hanging out of your eyes. I mean you're loaded with sin and so am I, and I don't have the capacity because I'm blinded by my own self-righteousness. I really can't see truly the sins of others. And then Jesus said once you've gone through the experience of plucking out the telephone posts, you'll probably be so painful and probably so tired you won't have time to waste picking on somebody else. 

But then He got to verse 6 and that's the one that stumped us, remember? He said don't give what is holy to dogs nor cast your pearls before swine. Now Jesus seems to say don't judge, but in some cases you must judge. What did He mean when He was talking about dogs and swine? Well in Jewish culture at the time of Jesus dogs were not domesticated. They were the scavengers of the street. They were wild. And the swine was considered to be the most unclean animal of all. And Jesus used them as people who were so defiled, so absolutely antagonistic towards anything that was sacred, anything that was right there are sometimes you just don't, you make a judgment not to waste time with those people. You don't give them the pearls of the gospel. Remember He said to the disciples, now you go out preaching and if you come to a city who rejects you, you go out to the edge of the city, take off your sandals, shake off the dust, and get going. Leave them to their sin. In other words, you make a decision. 

Remember Paul as he traveled around Asia Minor and he went to one town and the Jewish people so mistreated him when he finished up he said I don't care, you can go to hell, but I'm not going to waste any more time with you because I'm going to preach to the gentiles. They appreciate the gospel. And what did Paul have to do? He had to make a decision that there were some people he wasn't going to waste time with because their hearts were too hard. They were too, too caught in their sin to even appreciate anything that was sacred. So I stumbled on that one and said, but Jesus that's going to be hard. You told us not to judge, but then You said but there are some situations where I must make a determination. I must make a judgment. And sometimes what if my decision is wrong? What if I cut that relationship or I break myself away from that opportunity? Maybe that person I'll never have another chance to win them again. 

You can say, Paul, maybe you'll never go back to that city again. Those people listened to him. It's hard to make decisions where you set people aside in your life because they have no concern for the spiritual things you have. But we come to that verse 12 and we know that it's the culmination of this whole matter of ethics in human relationships because Jesus says, Therefore. Now here it is. Here's the bottom line. Whatever you want people, wherefore, He says, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them. But that therefore ties in verses 7, 8, and 9. Ask and it shall be given you. So Jesus inserts, again I say, into the heart of Christian ethics in human relationships the absolute essential of prayer. 

Now this verse 12 is probably the most universally famous thing that Jesus ever said. With this commandment the Sermon on the Mount reaches its summit. This saying of Jesus has been called the capstone of the whole discourse. In other words, if you read the entire three chapters many theologians will say the top, the summit, of the truth that Jesus spoke in that sermon is right here. Whatever you want people to do to you; you make sure you do to them. 

Old doctor Barclay says that it's the top most peak of social ethics and it's the Everest of all ethical teaching. Now when we go through the Sermon on the Mount, and we've done this time and time again, we have found it quite easy to go back into Jewish literature and find a parallel to what Jesus said. A parallel spoken by an ancient rabbi, but it's interesting you'll never find in any Jewish literature this statement that Jesus made. This is something which had never been said before. It was a new teaching. It was a new view of life and of life's obligations. Something brand new. Whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them. 

Now it's not difficult to go back into the ancient literature of the Jewish people and you'll find statements that parallel it, but only in the negative form. Once you put this command in a negative form it doesn't have any religious significance. There were two Jewish rabbis who were very, very famous. One was named Shammai, s-h-a-m-m-a-i, and he was known as one who was strict and austere and harsh, and he was unbending when it came to the law. And then his counterpart was a rabbi by the name of Hillel, h-i-l-l-e-l, and he was known, people described him for his sweet graciousness. And the Jewish people have a story that went like this. They said there was a heathen man who came to Shammai. He said to the rabbi; Rabbi, I am now ready to become a proselyte. That is, I am ready to transfer from my religion to yours if you can teach me the law as I stand on one foot. So he stands before the old rabbi on one foot, and he says teach me the whole law. And old Shammai took his rod and hit him and made him get out of his presence. 

But the old heathen was insistent so he went to Hillel the man of graciousness and he said, Sir, I want to become a proselyte. I want to become a follower of Judaism, but the requirement is that you teach me as I stand on one foot. And so Hillel said all right, I'll do that. I accept you, and here's what he said; what is hateful to yourself, do to no other. That's the whole law and the rest is commentary go and learn. You see old Hillel put the golden rule in negative form. Just don't do what you don't want people to do to you. There was a Jewish work called the Letter of Aristeas which purports to be the account of the Jewish scholars who went down into Alexandria. And their purpose was to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into the Greek from which we now have the Septuagint Bible. 

When those Greek scholars had finished, the king of Egypt had a banquet for them and he brought them all together and he asked them a number of difficult questions, but one of the questions that he asked was this; what is the teaching of wisdom? And those Jewish scholar who had translated the entire Old Testament text answered; as you wish that no evil should befall you but to be a partaker of good things, so you should act on the same principle towards your subjects and offenders and should mildly admonish the noble and the good. Now remember, as soon as you put this command in the negative you make it very self- centered. Just don't do anybody else harm because you might be harmed. That's what they're saying. Old Confucius taught that what you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others. That's in the negative form. It turns into philosophy. 

An ancient great king wrote; do not do to others the things which make you angry when you experience them at the hands of other people. And another wrote, what you avoid suffering yourself, do not afflict on others. Now that's selfish. That's philosophy, but it isn't religion. And that's interesting. I said that this golden rule was absolutely something new. You could not find it, only in the negative form, and once it's in the negative form it's not religion. It's when you say, you do good to others, now it shifts to something that is compelled by love and not by law. So the summation of human relations says whatever you want people to do for you, you make sure you've patterned the relationship already so that's the natural reaction. Is there another place that says it? Yes. 

Go with me to Luke chapter 6. Now Jesus is going to put this in the positive form and here's what He says. Look at verse 27, Luke 6:27, "But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you. Now that takes love. That's the positive form. I must pray for those who misuse me. I must pray for my enemies and it goes on to say, "To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who asks of you. And from him who takes away your goods do not ask them back." That takes love! Right? It's almost inhuman to think Jesus said, look at, if anybody wants to take, just let them take it. You don't even go ask them for it. 

I know he's taking about the same thing because look at the next verse; "But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. Verse 31, "And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise." So I now say, Jesus says look at, I'm going to take it out of its philosophical nonreligious form and I'm going to make it positive. You may not want to do things just because you don't want to suffer the consequences. I'm telling you to do things because out of love, you do things out of love. 

Now let's come back and see the whole setting now, the summation is verse 12. It says, do unto others what you want them to do to you. Verse 1 starts do not judge. And I said that between the two is the total summation of divine principle of human relationships. Verse 1 says don't judge, but I find the most natural thing I do as a human being. I look upon a scene. I watch somebody do something. I hear something and the first thing I do is I make a judgment, and I form my opinion and sometimes spout off my mouth, and then I say, God, forgive me because my human nature is so quick to make someone else less than who I am or at least try. Well I say that's hard, if this matter of enjoying human relationships and having the finest of agreements and fellowship between one another starts with this fact that I don't judge. That's hard dear God. That's the first thing I do, and what Jesus is saying, and that's what wrecks a lot of friendships. And isn't it true that oft times someone, our husband comes home and we say something and maybe he's late and when we found out we've already bawled him out because we've told him that all the food is cold, and he says, but honey, while I was coming home the car broke down, and while I was getting it fixed this happened and that happened, and then I found somebody else who had a flat tire and honey, I helped them. And all of a sudden you're feeling smaller and smaller and you wish you had kept your mouth quiet. 

You see we injure relationships because we're so quick to judge, and then we go around picking at other people and gossiping about them, and picking on their little sins and we're covering up all of our big sins and all of the planks hanging out of our eyes. And Jesus said one of the things that really injures human relationships is our own self-righteousness, our egoism that makes us think that we're right and everybody else is wrong. Isn't that true? You know we don't like to be thought of less than we think ourselves to be. Jesus said the thing that injures relationships is this fact of going around always picking on everybody else and trying to make yourself holier than they are.

Then He got to verse 6 and He said, sometimes the relationships that we have are not right. We're spending time casting our pearls before people who do not deserve them. And then I say, but, God, I don't know how to make those kind of decisions. You know what I find is that some sins are so abhorrent to me that I find myself taking my hate for the abhorrent sin and transferring it to the sinner, and then I can go to verse 6 and say, but I can justify that they didn't deserve my love. They didn't deserve my, and I make a false judgment on a situation even though I find their sin abhorrent I say I'm going to cut them out of my life. I'm not going to cast my pearls anymore that way. That's why Jesus put right here in the heart of this whole ethical teaching He says, if human relations are going to be God honoring and Christ exalting and loving, it's going to be the byproduct of a lot of prayer.

Most of the time we don't think of it that way. We find that there's an injured relationship and we go try to work out and it ends up in a bigger argument. As human beings we're try to figure it all out. What Jesus said, when we're working at this whole matter of relating to others and there is tension, why not solve it on your knees in prayer? Ask, seek and ask God to intervene in these human injuries that come through human relations. You and I know it's the hardest thing in the world when somebody has deeply injured us and wronged us; it's the hardest thing in the world to let go of those feelings inside. That's why Jesus said we've got to resolve those issues in prayer and sometimes it's persevering prayer. Seeking, asking, knocking, and you and I have experienced over and over again where it's taken us time to work through and release in our own spirit some of the hate and some of the bitterness towards someone else and some of the injury that we have felt. It takes time for healing. Right? 

You can go to a person and say, I'm sorry, but it takes time to heal injured relationships, and only prayer. I had a couple come to me with three lovely children some months ago, and I mean this family was right on the tethers, I mean they were ready to fall off the edge. It was ready to fall apart, and we talked and we prayed together, and I discussed this whole issue. There were so many differences of opinion and feelings, and I suggested that they just spend time praying as a family together, asking God to change the whole atmosphere between them as a couple, between them as a family.

Last night they were in church sitting right over here. And after the service they came and said, Pastor, we just wanted to report to you our marriage is wonderful. Our kids are doing so well. There is love and there is happiness in our home. We're praying together. We're in church. We're working together. We're reading the Bible. They said God has healed our relationships. That's what Jesus says. Human relationships are hard at best. Two people fall in love and get married, but it doesn't take very long for the honeymoon to end because all of a sudden you wake up and you realized here's two different people, two different ideas, and all of a sudden the clashes and the tensions begin. Jesus realized that one of the hardest you and I deal with in life is human relations. So He said, listen, if you're going to have human relations that are godly and Christ centered they are going to be built on prayer, and sometimes persistent seeking and knocking and asking God. And sometimes the change takes place right inside of us in our own heart, and that resolves oft times the problems in relationship. 

Now Jesus did something very interesting. He said you never heard of a father when his son asks him for bread that he gives him a stone. Even evil fathers don't do that. And when He uses the word evil it means fathers that are not Christian, just the natural heartbeat of a dad, he's not going to be cruel to his children. He's not going to put rocks in the diner table for bread, and he's not going to feed him scorpions when he asks for fish. You know what Jesus is saying? If we expect our heavenly Father to treat us with graciousness and generosity and kindness, which He does, and we're His children, He expects us to demonstrated that same kind of relationship to everybody else. But we run around throwing stones and handing out scorpions. No wonder we have such injured relationships. We say words that are unkind. We are so quick to injure. 

Jesus said, listen, you have a heavenly Father that's always generous, always gracious, never is going to deceive you, and if you're His child you ought to treat everybody the same as He treats you. Therefore do unto others what you want God to do for you. That's His logic. You say well Pastor, how does that work out in every day living? I'll tell you how it works out. Remember I said when you put it in its positive form it now turns into an act of love. Say I've fallen. Say I've sinned, and I've started down this dark road of rebellion and I'm wandering away form God's family and away from the things that are spiritual. If I were in that shape, I would want somebody to come after me and love me back into the family. I would want to be forgiven and I'd want to be helped. If I want that of others, should I not do that for others? You see what Jesus is saying is you by your love you set the pattern, the conditions, the dimensions for your relationship. I mean you set the pattern. You act in love. Not if they respond or not. That doesn't make any difference. You set the pattern in love, but oft times as Christians somebody falls by the wayside and sins and we shoot at them with unkind words and we judge them, and you know we're the only army in the world that shoot our wounded. You say what do you mean by that Pastor? It's usually only Christians who wound other Christians. That's sad. We judge. We speak ill. So if I'm going to want to be loved when I fall, and fall I will, then I must be reaching out for others who have fallen. 

Let's take another area. All of us have deep nights of despair and feeling disappointed and just at the bottom of life, and we want somebody to encourage us. I listened the other evening to Gregory Peck as he was being interviewed and someone asked him about the deep parts of his life and he said, I had one. My 31-year-old son took his life, and he said I've never been the same man since. He said I went through months of deep depression and deep despair. You see all of us do. But because we want others to reach out and help us when we're hurting, we should set the pattern that our life is a kindness always reaching out trying to help other people that are hurting and encouraging them, and lifting them up.

 If we want to be lifted up when we're hurting, we should already have set the pattern that we've lifted up others and that's the very nature of our relationship, we're loving. That's what Jesus says. If I want people, but if I think it's right of me I ought to do it and set the pattern in love towards everyone else. Now you can see that as soon as you put that into action in the positive and we act in love, boy we'd change our world real quick. I look at this and with this I close. I look at this as the call to evangelism. You say, how does that fit? Well, I have a responsibility, an ethical responsibility, to the unbeliever. Well how does this verse tie that in together? Let me illustrate. Say it's night and I've gone home to bed and I'm asleep, and you're out walking in my neighborhood and you walk by my house and it's on fire, and yet you walk on and you don't tell me, and I die in my fire. I would have wanted you to warn me. Right? 

And yet we walk down the streets of life and there are people we meet every day who need warning because they're living in sin, and if they don't depart from their sin they'll die in their sin and go to hell. And I walk by and if I don't share the love of Christ I'm really failing in the great ethical standard as a Christian. Because if I were lost in my sin and if I were dying without God, I would want you to tell me about Jesus. And yet, isn't it interesting we take the highest standard, ethical standard of Christianity and we set it aside when it comes to the sinner. Ladies and gentlemen you may say Pastor, the people I speak to aren't interested. But I'll tell you there are thousands of people within ten minutes of this church who are crying out. They are lost and they know it and they need somebody to act the golden rule and tell them about Jesus. You see if we lived out verse 12, we don't want anybody to judge us, we won't judge. We won't be picking at other people and we'll be praying for healing in our relationships so they bring honor to God. You see why I said it's the summation of divine ethics. 

Let's bow our heads. Heavenly Father this is a heavy one today. You put the burden of human relationships right on our personal shoulders, and You said the way you live, the way you act, the way you love will determine your life. Would You help us to put this truth in action this week in all of our relationships? Help us Jesus, and everybody said, amen. God bless you. God bless you.