The graphic for the last blog is perfect for the NEW parable in this blog.
The WHITE sheep in the photo is standing in some green grass. Suppose the lamb were picked up and moved to a clean, white, field of freshly fallen snow about three inches deep. (Sunglasses needed here!!) Then the lamb would not look quite so white. It might look, well, “dingy.”
This is a parable about non-believers comparing themselves with others, where they do not look so bad. But when they compare themselves with God, they do not look so clean and bright. Three comparisons with juxta positioning a human with God are found in (1) Isaiah in the temple and in (2) the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration and in (3) Peter and his boat.
(1) In Isaiah 6 when Isaiah saw God high and lifted up in the temple scene, he immediately felt unclean and wailed, “Woe is me.”
Then said I, Woe is me! For I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean kips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. (KJV)
(2) The second example is in the Mount of Transfiguration. The disciples (Peter, James, and John) saw their Galilean Lord dressed in clothes as bright as lightening or the sun, and his face was just that bright too. They fell like dead men to the ground after hearing a divine voice. Matthew 17:6
(3) The last example is the familiar scene of Jesus in Peter’s boat. When Peter first encountered a supernatural Lord, the pled in Luke 5:8, “…Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” KJV
Of course, John is continually humbled by God’s presence in the book of Revelation and the appearance of his glorified Lord, the one he used to lean against at the dinner table. It is hard to limit to just one example in this book.
If non-Christians are not comparing themselves to God and just thinking only of themselves, they might score good marks on a self-report card. But what does God say about them? How did Jesus teach his men to think about men?
Matthew learned through the clean and unclean parable. (Matthew 15:18-19) But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ’unclean.’” NIV
Mark, scholars say, got his gospel from Peter. If so, via Peter, we learn from Mark 7:21ff that Jesus taught Peter this way: “For from within, out of men’s hearts come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’” NIV
Luke did not have the privilege of traveling with Jesus, as far as we know, but he too points out that “…the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored in his heart.” (Luke 6:45) Several of his stories illustrate that there is “instant or latent evil” in the hearts of his contemporaries. For example, the hometown people of Jesus’ Nazareth were ready in an instant to murder him by tossing him over a cliff (4:28-30) In Luke 6:10-11 we see ugliness rise up in people as a group of average people would rather see a man remain cripple than be healed on their Sabbath day. Mark’s version of the story says that Jesus looked on them with anger. No wonder!!
Mark 3:5 And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other. KJV
John learned it like this: (John 2:24-25) But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man. KJV
The Old Testament summation of the human condition is a sad condition. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it.” KJV
I once had a roommate who was a lovely Christian lady with a winsome smile. She told us that in her pre-Christian state she once lost her temper and stabbed her brother’s hand with a pair of scissors in her anger. She had no idea such evil was latent within her.
A relative once applied for a cyber security position and was told that there are about a trillion scams a day. The culprits are highly educated people with sinful hearts!
So, do we need to be “born again,” transformed, renewed, regenerated? Certainly! Yes, we are THAT bad, and it took something as drastic as the terrible death of Jesus to change us. He settled it in the Garden of Gethsemane that he would drink the bitter cup, the cup containing all the sins recorded in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all rolled into one. Those sins were standing between God and his fallen creation. (See the famous “FALL” of Genesis 3.)
No wonder true believers can’t quit singing about his tremendous sacrifice. Keith and Kristin Getty, for example, speak of all he accomplished in “This the Power of the Cross.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MCKP5D9zug) If you have not experienced that power yet, why not bow your head at this moment and speak out to him and ask him to come live in your heart as he has millions of others. Become his child today.