The real Christmas story. Look at the 6th and 7th chapters, where we're going to go today, maybe the 8th also. The religious society has given Jesus a real hard time. You know, Jesus was born into this world. He was born a Mary, a virgin. She did not cohabit with her husband sexually until after Jesus was born, then probably after 40 days of her cleansing. And then she began to have children by her husband. And we know two of Jesus' brothers were actually writers in the New Testament, the book of James and the book of Jude. He had brothers and sisters. Mary had other children. Jesus was on the cross. He gave his mother to John, the Apostle John, to watch after her as his mother. And he did. She died in Ephesus, so did John. He died in Ephesus also many years later. In the sixth chapter, we talked about the Jews grumbling. We also see Simon Peter And we see Simon the Zealot also. And then we see Judas Isikariot, the one that was prophesied to betray him. Then he begins to talk about the rules of the kingdom. The rules of the kingdom. And this is what people get really goofed up on because they think that this is what we're supposed to do in our everyday life, which would be very wonderful, except the people that we deal with are not in the kingdom. That's the problem. Their rules are different than our rules. And I've had the experience of that the last six or seven, eight years with contractors and everything. They sure don't go by the rules of the law. They see what they can break and get by with it. It says here in 6th chapter, starting with verse number 39, Jesus talks about the religious leaders are blind. They can't see. They won't see. They don't want to see. They want to be blind. Jesus, you know, one time He asked a blind man, He said, do you want to see? Do you want to see? Would you like to see? He asked people if they would like to walk. And He told them, get up and do it. Here in verse number 39, He also spoke a parable to them. A blind man cannot guide a blind man, can he? Will they not both fall into a pit? Sometimes even animals have better sense than what people do. Do you know that? There was a thing on the internet here a few years ago. There was a blind cat and a cat that could see and they were very good buddies. I think they were brother and sister or whatever, or brother and brother. And they would hook their tails together and they would go together. And the one that could see was guiding the blind one. So he could see where he was going. We had a little cat down on the farm that went blind. We called her Stripe. And I had her put to sleep because she was never an inside, indoor cat or anything. And she didn't want to be indoors. But she was the most wonderful little cat. But she got to where she would just wander out. She was going to get run over by a tractor or something. And I couldn't stand to see that. Anyway, The other cats, when they were around her, they would go around, she would follow them around, but they would take off real fast and she couldn't stay up with them because she didn't know where they'd go. Now, the blind leading the blind. A pupil is not above his teacher, but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher. And when you look at the spec, that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye. He begins to start making comparisons here. This is all part of the real Christmas story. Jesus being born in the world was just part of that story. Just part of it. Now, he's starting to tell parables, trying to make them understand better, and sometimes parables hide things, and sometimes parables reveal things. A parable to the initiated makes things plainer. A parable to the uninitiated, it makes it darker. He said the pupil is not above his teacher, but everyone, after they've been fully trained, will be like his teacher. Jesus condemned the rabbis. He condemned the Pharisees. He condemned the Sadducees. Herodians, all of these people he condemned. There was all kinds of religious societies going on at that time. You had the Pharisees, the Sadducees, you had the Athenians, the Qumranians, you had the Herodians. And every one of them had a little different. But you know that every one of them except for the Athenians or the Qumranians condemned Jesus. All of them except for them. They were looking for him down there in Essenes were, and I believe that John the Baptist converted many of them, of course, according to most historians. He said, a pupil is not above his teacher, he said, but everyone after he had been fully initiated, trained, will be like his teacher. The blind cannot lead the blind. And he said, now, in verse number 41, he uses a very, very, very short parable. And why do you look at the speck? This morning when I got up, I had, my right eye was giving me trouble. It felt like there was an eyelash in there, and I finally went in there with the magnifying glass and everything, looked in the mirror with it, and sure enough, there was a long, white hair, finer than a spider web in my right eye, in the corner of it, down in there. And my eye was a little bit red because of that. And so I proceeded to try to pull it out with tweezers and I think I did. It's not bothering me now. But that's about like a speck, see a speck. Sometime out in the yard I'll be working and I'll even saw lumber or whatever and one little tiny speck of wood or something will get in my eye or a dirt or a leaf off of a sagebrush or something. And I'll blink my eyes for a while And if it goes away, it doesn't bother me. But now, it says here that a person comes up to another person and he looks in his eye and he said, you got a speck in your eye. Go ahead and get that speck out of your eye. But Jesus said, the Pharisees were looking down upon Matthew, Levi, they were looking down upon some of his disciples, Mary Magdalene, all of these people. You talk to these people? You talk to these women? You shouldn't let them touch you. The Pharisees had become so strict in their ways, they had hundreds of more laws than what God had. They heaped great burdens upon the shoulders of those people, but they wouldn't carry one Jesus symbol, one little finger. And he said then, he said, you see this, You don't notice the log that is in your own eye. A log is a beam, a building beam. They used logs for the roofs on houses. And they would put the big beams, the building beams, in my great-great-great-grandfather's house in Pauls Valley. They built that house in 1870, I believe it was. And it's still there today. And down in the basement of it, it's got great big logs, big beams in there. This is the type of thing he's talking about. Not a speck, but a beam. He said, you're looking at your brother's got a speck in his eye, just a little speck of dirt, little speck of wood or whatever it is. And he said, and you've got a building beam coming out of your head. Of course, you know, that's not, this is what we call a hyperbole. This is an exaggeration. You can't have a building beam in your head. or you're not going to be alive, I can tell you that much. I mean, some people have had injuries and accidents where they had something go through their head. I remember a guy was building skyscrapers in New York, and one of the people he was working with, they had these nail guns, which I have, and he shot this guy with a nail gun, and this big 16-penny nail went in his brain. and had to take him to the hospital and remove that nail out of his head. He lived. Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye and do not notice the log that is in your eye? Or how can you say to your brother, brother let me take out the speck in your eye and when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? The Pharisees were more distant from God than the common man. The Pharisees had moved themselves away from all other men, but they had moved themselves away from God. The word Pharisee means to separate. They thought they were so good that they didn't want to be around any normal common man at all. They were not worthy of being in their presence. They would dirty them. They're the ones with the logs in their eyes. 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 own eye. Now let's go to something else here for just a moment. Let's go over to John the third chapter and we're going to see exactly what Jesus is talking about. He's going to be talking to a Pharisee, Nicodemus. Now I want you to apply this to Luke, this next chapter, okay? Apply that. Let me get over here. John, the third chapter. There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus. Pharisees, he separated himself, but this is a righteous man, he thinks. Named Nicodemus, ruler of the Jews. He's also in the Sanhedrin court, and he's one of the rulers. He's probably in a local synagogue also. And this man came to Jesus by night. He came to big Jesus by night because he was sent there as a ambassador from the Pharisees into Sanhedrin court. And he's not, he is guarded by the way. At nighttime, it was a dangerous time, he was guarded. He had bodyguards with him. Rabbi. He said, Rabbi, Rabbi was a master teacher, like Dr. Jesus, okay? We, the Pharisees and the scribes and the Sanhedrin, know that you have come from God as a teacher. At least his opinion was, and some of the Sanhedrin. For we know that no man can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him. First of all, the reasons why Jesus did the signs was what? Did He have compassion on people? Sure He had compassion. But is that the reason why He did the signs? No. He did the signs to prove He was Messiah. That's why He did the signs. And then it says, Jesus answered and said to him, truly, truly, amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born again, born from above, he cannot see or understand the Kingdom of God. The rules of the Kingdom back there, In Matthew 5 and Luke, those rules the world doesn't understand. But those are the rules in the Kingdom of God. Those are the rules in the church. This is how you treat your brother in church. And sometimes your brothers and sisters are hard to deal with. As simple as that. I've been in Baptist church many times. I wanted to run out and hide in the woods. Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born again when he's old? Now he begins to make a ridiculous illustration here. He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born again, can he? And then Jesus comes back at him again. Now he's going to carry all this back to the Sanhedrin. Some are going to listen and some aren't going to listen. Some want to kill him. Now we know that Joseph of Arimathea, he was a Pharisee also, he listened, he heard, and he was probably Jesus' uncle by the way. Jesus answered, truly, truly, I say to you, all of you Pharisees, you all, is what he used, you all, second person plural, I say to you all, unless one, singularly, one is born of water, that's the natural birth, and of the spirit, the new birth, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Nor can he see it, or understand it. That which is born of flesh is flesh. Sarks is sarks. That which is born of spirit is spirit. When you're born into the world or born the first time, you're born under the condemnation of sin and your judgment is you're going to die. And unless you ask the Lord to save your soul, you're going to go to hell too. That's the second death. You're going to die twice. A child of God dies once. One time. The second death has no power over him. That which is flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I say unto you, you all, all of you, second person plural, you must be born again. You all must be born again singularly though. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it goes from, where it comes from. Everyone is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus of Athens said to him, how can these things be? And Jesus said to him, you are a teacher. You're the blind leading the blind, and you don't understand these things. Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak the church, him and all his churches. We speak, present indicative act, that the church was in existence already. We speak, he and his church, that we know, we know, him and the church, and we bear witness of that which we have seen, the church, and you do not receive our witness. If I told you earthly things, you'd not believe. shall you believe, you all believe, if I tell you heavenly things. No one ascended up into heaven, but he who also descended from heaven, even the Son of Man. As Moses lifted up the spirit of the serpent in the wilderness, even so the Son of Man should be lifted up. Whosoever believes May in him have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Go back now to Luke. This is what he's talking about. for there is no good tree which produces bad fruit. Now, on the other hand, a bad tree which produces good fruit, for each tree is known by its fruit. You know, I, you remember this too, Marilyn. I lived out in Beverly Acres for about five years. That's out there near Taft, California. And I had two beautiful orange trees in my yard, or three. Three beautiful orange trees. They were big orange trees. You remember them, Marilyn? Those orange trees in my driveway out there? The fruit on them, those were wild orange trees. Wild orange trees. They used to make the wood in those wild orange trees into bows. Like bow and arrow for archery. But those oranges were bitter as gall. You could not eat them. They had these beautiful oranges on them, but you couldn't eat them. Now, down the road also, there was a place down there on Gosford Road that they had these beautiful, beautiful trees. And the good fruit limbs had died off of them. They were grafted tangerine trees. And every year they'd have the ground would just be littered with them. They tasted bitter as gall. You couldn't eat them. You couldn't eat them. It was a bad tree and it does not make good fruit. They were wild trees. The good fruit that was crafted on, I tried to graft the good limbs on those orange trees and I never did any good at all with it. The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good and what is evil. And the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil, for the mouth speaks from that which fills his heart. Go back just a while. In a few chapters ago, Jesus was talking to these people, and he was telling him, telling them that he was bringing, he said, am I doing bad deeds or am I doing good deeds? He said, is it evil to do good deeds in the kingdom of God? Is it evil to do good deeds? Or is it good to do bad deeds? Which one do you want to do? They were religious now. You know what they said? Let's see how we can murder him. Thou shall not keep on killing or murdering Thou shalt not keep on lying. Thou shalt not keep on stealing. That's what it says. It doesn't say, Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not keep on stealing. Thou shalt not keep on murdering. These people had murder in their hearts. And what Jesus, now Jesus already dealt with them back there. And now he says, a good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth that which is good. He didn't want to kill them. He didn't try to kill these people, did he? Did Jesus try to kill anybody in his ministry? He wasn't a Catholic. Catholics went out with a sword, conquering to conquer. Us, Islam, goes out and conquers to conquer. They blow themselves up, cut people's heads off every day. Out of evil, man's heart comes evil. Out of a good man's heart comes good. Verse number 46. And why do you call me Lord, Lord? And do not do what I say. Lord means master. That means postulate. Why do you call me Lord? Why do you call me master? And don't do what I tell you. These people here wanted to kill him. The same ones are following him all over the place. Instead of validating what he was doing, that he was Messiah, they're wanting to kill him. Why? Why did they want to kill him? They were religious and they had a lot of power. Just look at our government up there in America today. We've always had to choose between the lesser of two evils, we think. And sometimes you don't even know. We had a common man become president basically twice in history. Maybe three times. And Truman. Truman, when he left the White House, he said, I don't want anything. I don't want any bodyguards. I don't want anything. Just leave me alone. Go on. Don't spend another dime on me. I did what I could for the country and bye. That's it. Jimmy Carter, even though he's a horrible politician, He was an honest man. He tried to do his best, always. He had real terrible advisors. We get Trump in there. Trump goes in, he wins, overwhelmingly. And when he goes in there, the evil side tries to take him out. They try to never let him be president. And we had these people, you know who they are, Obama and Clinton. The FBI, the CIA, the FBI and the CIA killed John Kennedy. They killed him. That's a fact now. We know that. We know all the shooters who was involved. The Mafia and the CIA did their job. And the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover was right behind it. George Bush Sr. was right in the middle of it. He was ahead of the CIA. All of the drugs brought into the country by the Bush crime family. Look at that. Just saying no to drugs and bringing them in by the tons. Oh, we had a hard time, didn't we? When we had a good man coming up there, they wanted to destroy him because he's messing up their playhouse. Jesus was messing up their playhouse. This was their world they had invented. Everyone who hears my words and acts upon them, I will show you whom he is like. He's like a man building a house. Now we go to the Three Little Pigs. Remember the Three Little Pigs? The Three Little Pigs is made right out of this. A little story of the Three Little Pigs comes right here. This is where it comes from. He's like a man building a house who dug deep and laid a foundation upon rock. The house made of bricks, one straw, one sticks. And when the flood came and rose, the river burst against the house and could not shake it because it was well built. The one who has heard and has not acted accordingly is like the man who built his house upon ground without any foundation. The river bursts forth. against it, and immediately it collapsed. And the ruin of the house was very great. That man had spent a lot of time building that house, but he built it on a terrible foundation, a terrible foundation. When you're going to build a building and a house or something, build it on a foundation that's going to last, not something that's going to rot away. I lived in a house on Citrus Avenue in Beckersville for the first part of my life, about one-third of my life. I love that place. I lived in a shack there with a dirt floor and no door on it, just had a tarp flap. We didn't have a big enough piece of anything to make a door. A little old window out like that that had a screen over it and a board we stuck up in there in the wintertime to keep some cold air out of it. Had a wood stove in there. We had a wood stove in there in the summertime when it was 120 degrees and it was a whole lot hotter than that when my grandmother cooked on it. But I bought that place, that's the first house I ever bought. I paid an almost acre of ground, actually it was, an acre of ground. And my mother lived in the front house and I lived with my grandmother and grandfather in the back house. The front house was a converted chicken pen. That's where it started, a converted chicken pen. It was out in the bullpen. And it was a chicken pen out there. And my uncles came over. They moved the old shack, rolled it on pieces of pipe, and they moved that chicken pen over there out of this bullpen that was a chicken pen in the bullpen. It was a pretty nice chicken pen for a chicken pen. But it wasn't much to live in. Anyway, we rolled it over there. And we built little places onto it here and there later on. And then when I bought it, I went out there, and this is hard clay ground. You know how hard that clay ground was, Marilyn. Your uncle lived there. Your Uncle Jim. That hard clay ground. And it was clay for 60 feet, just like a brick. And I went underneath that house, and that house was just sitting on boards on the ground. There were termites, but they didn't get into it. I dug underneath that house and dug a great big basement. 24 and a half feet wide by probably 20 feet long or something, 25, 30 feet. And all that house didn't have a foundation under it. I put a foundation under it. I went around and I didn't have to. Marilyn's dad was building a foundation or a basement out there on an old river on Gosford Road. And it was sand. And it was caving in, wasn't it? Yeah, caving in. I didn't have to worry about it caving in at all. I had a kid working for me. He went down there and he put a cotter hose down there. He left it running for 24 hours and I was gone. I came home and I have a swimming pool underneath my house. I had it pumped out and let it dry out and went on with it. It didn't hurt it at all because that crate was like a brick. I dug and I dug and I dug and I put all types of beams underneath there and had a concrete wall all the way around it. Had good foundation under that work. Not gonna shake, not gonna break. Up here, when they pour concrete, they say it's gray and it's gonna crack. Two things. Marilyn, do you ever see me pour a piece of concrete that ever cracked? No. It was thick enough, foundation. Now, how does that apply to this? There are so many people out there that the religious foundation are on sand. They build straw houses. They build stick houses without a foundation. Just like the story of the three pigs. Nothing stood but that brick house on a good foundation. When you come before the Lord Jesus Christ, if you're whole existence is based upon Catholicism, Jehovah Witness, Mormonism, Islam. If you really believe what those people teach, down to the dot and I and the dot and the tittle, you have no foundation at all. You have no foundation. The foundation is the real Christmas story. Jesus Christ and him crucified. Death, burial, and resurrection. 1 Corinthians 15 chapter. Paul says, I come up to you and this is what I taught you. I taught you first of all about Jesus Christ coming into the world according to the scriptures. Dying according to the scriptures. Buried according to the scriptures. Being raised again according to the scriptures. That is the story. The real Christmas story. That's what we've been studying. The real Christmas story. Our Father, we thank You for this message from Your Word. Please forgive me where I fail You. And Father, I pray wherever this goes out, it'll bear fruit with Your people. If there's one out there listening that's on a false foundation, on a sand foundation of quicksand, even, that they'll look to You, the real Jesus, Your Savior for the world. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.