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[Music] On Seeing with Six Eyes, a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. [Music] The scripture reading of the morning is from the Gospel according to Matthew,

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the fifth chapter, a part of the Sermon on the Mount. I begin the reading at the verse numbered 43. Jesus is speaking. "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'

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But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

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For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?

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You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

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Amen. Americans eat 50 million hot dogs every day. The National Hot Dog and Sausage Institute recently reported that. We eat 50 million hot dogs every day.

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Now, we do not eat them all in the same way. In Chicago, for example, they're usually served on a poppy seed bun with mustard, onion, tomato, and a dash of celery salt. In Kansas City, on the other hand, they cover them with sauerkraut and cheese,

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and they're usually on a sesame seed roll. New York's hot dog is most commonly presented covered with cheddar cheese and bacon, though the ones I've bought on the sidewalk places down in the center of New York City are almost always smothered in onions.

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And in California, they most generally cover the hot dog with cornmeal and then fry it. So we eat 50 million hot dogs a day, but we eat them in a variety of different ways. We enjoy variety and diversity. That's the reason we drive different kinds of cars and wear different kinds of jeans

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and choose different kinds of toothpaste and cereals. In very truth, variety is part of the spice of our life. And that's what has always puzzled me and led me to feel strange about the fact that within our Christian faith, we are not nearly so tolerant of diversity.

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The fact of the matter is, most of us believe in the old-time religion, and when we define old-time religion, that is religion as we have experienced it, as it suits our tastes, and quite commonly, we think everybody ought to be a carbon copy of our own believing.

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Now, why is there this intolerance within the Christian family? Why is it when some new theological thought is presented, or some idea in religious philosophy, or some new manuscript evidence, or archaeological discovery comes to the fore,

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that there are those who immediately, without even studying it, reject it? Do they believe that the Holy Spirit stopped speaking in the 16th century? Do they believe that Luther and Calvin and Knox were infallible, an idea which would have horrified those honored gentlemen?

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Do they believe that God stopped speaking when his book went to print? Why is it that there are so many who ignore the convictions of others, and insist in one way or another that other people's believing parallel their own? Jesus speaks about such ones.

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He said, "If you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same." What's being suggested is, you see, that if you only get along with those who are like you, if you only have fellowship with those who agree with you, what have you gained?

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Real love, Jesus says, is when, not liking onions, you sit right next to a man whose hot dog is covered with them. Real love is when you encounter a person who has some deeply believed theological difference with you,

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and yet you are able to sit with them as a sister or a brother in the faith. Now, I believe this problem is essentially one of perception, and the answer to it is to be found in learning to see with six eyes. Now, we all know that we have two eyes in our heads. These give us sensory data.

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But we also know that these eyes can be fooled. Some of us are colorblind. Some of us have cataracts or various other eye difficulties. We've all encountered at one time or another an optical illusion. These eyes can be fooled.

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There are also, as it were, eyes within the mind, because, you see, the data that is received by our senses is transmitted to the mind. When I look at this watch, for example, its color, its weight, the way it smells, all of these things are transmitted to my mind,

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and my mind assimilates this data, puts it together, and comes up with the conclusion, "Watch." But the data that goes to the mind, and this was pointed out as long ago as the writings of the philosopher David Hume, can often be confused. Who is to say that all of us receive our mental data in the same way?

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Take the problem of dyslexia, for example. The eyes see, but somehow, in the communication of the truth to the brain, a confusion occurs. And that brings us to the other eyes. And I would call these the eyes of the heart.

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See, the eyes of the head may or may not tell you what you're seeing, and the eyes of the mind may or may not tell you how it has come to pass. But the eyes of the heart will tell you with certainty, if they are sanctified eyes, that everything that you see and every person you encounter has come from God.

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That he is the source of everything that is. That anything that has being and existence has being and existence only because God made it. And that means that those who have differences with us cannot be treated in some petty or prejudicial or bigoted or intolerant fashion, because being the children of God,

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they are as entitled to respect as we are, whether they like onions on their hot dogs or not. I think an example of what I'm speaking of can be found in the area of homosexuality. I was very much impressed recently in reading a discussion of this written by Morton Kelsey. Morton Kelsey is a very well-known charismatic or neo-Pentecostal scholar.

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He's a fine author, theologian, and also a noted psychologist. He divides viewpoints with regard to homosexuality into three categories. Now, I'm not going to evaluate these for you. I'm simply going to repeat what he suggests. First, he says, there are those who see homosexuality as essentially a physiological problem.

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Some people are born that way. Just as some people come into the world left-handed, while most come in right-handed, so some come in homosexual, while the vast majority are heterosexual. And these people ought not to be blamed any more than a left-handed person is blamed.

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That is one viewpoint. A second viewpoint is that these people are deliberately and willfully rebellious against the society. They have chosen, out of usually some type of sexual disorder or perversion, to reject the standards and the norms which are part of our civilization and our Judeo-Christian heritage,

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and they willfully move in another direction, sinfully so. That's another viewpoint. Then there's a third viewpoint, and this is what is called "arrested development." Now, the idea here is that when all of us are born, we are principally interested in ourselves.

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A little baby is very interested in itself, its own fingers, its own toes. But we move through this narcissistic period until we come into what is called a "mirror phase," when we like things that are like us. Little babies are fascinated by other little babies,

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and little boys start playing with little boys, and little girls start playing with little girls. But in the normal process, you then move beyond that phase to a phase of interaction when you begin to make contact and experience with those who are different from yourself. Now, according to this theory, homosexuals are those who are stuck in that middle or that mirror image phase.

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They are those who can only have fellowship with people who are like themselves. They are terrified of others or they resent others. They reject others. Now, what interests me about this idea of Kelsey's is that he applies it not only to homosexuality, but to other areas of Christian context.

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He says, for example, that race prejudice is an expression of this. That fanatical ideology of any kind is an expression of this. That when you are the kind of person who cannot tolerate people other than yourself, you in fact are stuck in that mirror image phase.

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You are obsessed with it. You are off the track there. You are frightened or repulsed by anything other. You don't like people who eat their hot dogs in a different way. And you do not like people whose theology or soteriology or ecclesiology is different from your own.

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Now, to adjust to this kind of person, that Jesus says, "If you love those who love you, what reward have you?" You see, saneness makes for sterility. It is diversity that makes for creativity.

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I wish I could take you this morning to New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, and to a little hidden cemetery there. It's an Amish cemetery, and as we would walk together through that cemetery, you would see grave after grave that contains the body of a mother and a child.

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They both died at the same time, in childbirth. And we see these little Amish children running around, and they look very cute in their costumes, but if you look at them closely, you discover that they all have very, very weak eyes, that they are very pale, they do not have strong constitutions,

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and they almost invariably have very poor teeth. Why? Because of inbreeding. No new blood ever comes into the Amish community, and therefore the strain is gradually being weakened.

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My friends, two homosexuals cannot produce new life. Two intellectuals, who will not entertain any ideas other than their own, are not going to come up with any new thoughts. And two people who are pursuing things of the Spirit,

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but who will not open the horizons of their minds to consider thoughts outside their own experience, what is it going to profit them? What Jesus is saying is this, if you live only in mirror relationships, what enlargement or what growth is possible?

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If you never try a hot dog in a way which is different from the way that you presently prefer them, you are, to that degree, going to remain impoverished and ignorant. What we need, you see, is to learn how to see with six eyes. To learn that when people are different, they are still of the family of God by creation.

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That they have come into this world and have their existence because of Him. And that we need to be in relationship with them, indeed in a loving relationship with them, to learn of them, and so that they may learn of us. And that's true whether we're talking about hot dogs or Christian faith.

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Now the good news that I'd like to share with you this morning is that this table is spread not only with bread and wine, but also with hot dogs. All different kinds of hot dogs. This is Worldwide Communion Sunday, and usually that is interpreted as referring to the whole world geographically speaking. And we most typically talk about how as the sun touches each continent one after another,

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fellowships of Christians break bread together on their knees, and that's a beautiful and a sublime picture. But this morning I'm not talking about the geographical world. I'm talking about the world of belief. Now this is part of the real glory of our Presbyterian order.

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We are a broad church. In order to be a Presbyterian, you only have to believe three things. You have to believe that Jesus Christ was the only begotten Son of God, that He is very God of very God, and very man of very man.

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Second, you have to believe that He died to save you from your sin, and you must commit yourself in repentance to Him to become His disciple. And third, you must believe that He rose again from the dead, and in His rising again from the dead, your salvation is assured.

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Now beyond these three cardinal beliefs, we have a book of confessions, which is 200 pages long. But with regard to that book of confessions, we say that we will be guided by it. No one is forced to submit to everything that is said in that book of confessions. I think you'd be amazed if you contemplated the variety of opinions that are present in this room at this very moment.

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There are people here, for example, who are strictly predestinarian. That is, they believe that only certain people are saved, that only God can save them, and if God saves some and does not save others, that means He picked some and He rejected others, and they further believe that He did this before the foundation of the world,

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so that nothing that you do in life can affect the choice. There are people in our number who hold to that. And on the other hand, there are those who reject that kind of double predestinarianism, and they say that cuts the nerve of all evangelical zeal.

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What does the Scripture mean when it says, "Whosoever will, let him come"? There are people in this room who practice the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the more spectacular gifts. There are people who speak in tongues, who perform healings, who interpret. There are individuals who discern spirits.

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They seek, many of them, what they call the second baptism. There are other people in this room who don't believe in those spectacular gifts, at least insofar as the present age is concerned. They say they were present in the early Church, but they are no longer necessary in the Church today,

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and therefore, by God's providence, have been laid aside. There are some people in this room who believe that every word in the Bible, as it is today, or as it was originally written, is absolutely perfect and infallible, without a single error at any point. There are other people in this room who believe that the Bible, when it talks about faith,

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or when it talks about the living of your faith, is absolutely perfect and infallible, but they also believe that there are some historic, some scientific, some cultural errors that are in it because of the human beings who were part of the process of writing it. There are some people in this room who are dead set against abortion for any reason at any time,

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and they are ready to bring forth pictures of cans full of murdered fetuses to justify their arguments. There are other people in this room who will say that abortion is proper if it is necessary to save the life of the mother, and they will bring forward pictures of more than 250,000 American women

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who are presently in mental institutions and will spend the rest of their lives there because they didn't have abortions. There are people in this room who believe in tithing, the Old Testament rule that 10% of your net earnings should be given to God and the things of God.

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There are other people in this room who do more than tithe, but they reject tithing because they call it Old Testament legalism and they understand themselves to be living under the New Testament law of grace. There are some people in this room who are universalists. They believe that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross was sufficient to win the salvation of all people,

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that eventually everyone will be saved, that heaven will really be heaven until everyone is there. No one will get there in any other way except through Christ, but eventually all will make it through him. There are other people in this room who agree that you cannot get to heaven any other way but through Jesus Christ, but they go on to say, "We live once and then we are judged.

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There is no salvation outside of this life. You accept him during this opportunity which is yours, and if you accept him, then salvation is yours, and if you reject him, then you have lost it forever." Now, all of these opinions and attitudes are here, and I could call out the names of the people who believe them.

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I'm not making this up. But you see, none of these is a desideratum of salvation. None of these says whether it is right and proper for you to come to this table or not. For to come to this table, all you need to do is to believe that Jesus Christ is God and man,

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that he died on the cross to save you from your sin, and that you have offered yourself in repentance to him as his disciple, and that in his resurrection from the dead, your salvation is assured. And if you believe those things, you are welcome here.

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Do you remember when John came to Jesus one day and he said, "Teacher, we saw a man casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him to do so, for he was not following us." And Jesus replied, "Do not forbid him, for he that is not against us is for us." Now, John, in his zeal, came to believe that he had a monopoly on faith.

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He had a franchise on correct believing. But Jesus says to him, "John, cool it. Take your mission seriously, but not yourself. Other sheep I have which are not of this flock, and these also I must bring."

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The Church Growth Institute, the leading evangelical growth institute in America, is located at Fuller Seminary, and one of the things that they teach is that whenever a new minister comes to a church, you can expect at least 10% of the members to leave. He's too liberal, or he's too conservative, or he's too rigid, or he's too vapid.

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And I think, generally speaking, that that's the way it works out. I remember when I was serving in California, there was a lady who left that church because of me. Now, that wasn't an opinion. I knew it. She wrote me a letter and told me. One of those letters, you know, that says, "You're evil, you're a liar, you're duplicitous,

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you're a tool of the devil, you are under double judgment," and then it's signed, "In the precious name of Jesus." She also said in this letter that she was going to a church where everyone felt the same way about everything that she did. And I had three thoughts when I read that.

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First, I knew it wasn't true because I knew many of the people in that church. Secondly, I thought, "How dull that would be. There cannot be growth where everybody agrees about everything." And the third thing I thought was this.

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How tragic that this woman, who had belonged to this church for 15 years, had not developed the eyes of her heart enough, was not seeing with six eyes, so that she could understand that there would be those who would differ about this or about that,

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but that she could see them as the children of God and therefore have fellowship with them. The great love chapter of the Bible is 1 Corinthians 13. And the key word which sums that love chapter is the word "unity." Notice what it says. "Love suffers long."

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Love does not envy others. Love does not insist on its own way. Love does not keep a score of the things that other people do wrong. Love is not puffed up.

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Love does not behave itself in an unseemly way. Love is not easily provoked. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love is the mark of faith. Love is the mark of this table.

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And that's why you can get hot dogs here, covered with anything you want them to be covered with. I think those who miss this, miss the meaning of this table. You know, the second saddest thing that I discovered in working for a decade on a college campus

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was that even amongst college students, theologically naive, philosophically unsophisticated, there was still this tendency to judge and condemn everybody who didn't agree with them on every theological jot and tittle. And I want you to know that the atheists on the faculty of that college,

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and there are atheists there, were quick to pick up this argument and dissension within Christians and to use it to testify to the sickness of believing. And it can be a very sick thing.

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You start out by ridiculing somebody else's position. Then you gossip about it a bit to other people. Then you begin to wonder whether they're really Christian or not. Then you decide they're not Christian, and so you rule them out of the fellowship.

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Then, because they're no longer part of the fellowship, that means you don't have to care about them anymore. In fact, you discover they're the enemy of the faith, and if they're the enemy of the faith, then they deserve to be fought.

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And since the enemies of the faith are going to finally be punished by God, you start to punish them right here and now. Now, if you think that's stretching it, I would remind you of the witches who died in Salem

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and of the thousands who were butchered during the Inquisition and of the thousands who died through the Crusades and of our honored theological ancestor, John Calvin, who found a man named Servetus who differed with him on the doctrine of the Trinity

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and so had him burned at the stake. And these arms of mine have held the sobbing, shaking shoulders of college boys and college girls who were ruled out of fellowship with other Christians

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because they believed in immersion or did not, because they were Catholics, because they spoke in tongues or did not speak in tongues, because they believed in the ordination of women

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or didn't believe in the ordination of women, because they believed in the substitutionary atonement as over the moral influence view of the atonement. God have mercy!

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The one who stands at this table says, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Remember, that judgment, the judging spirit, is the evidence of an unhappy life.

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People who do not give grace can't give it because they are so short of it. Intolerance is not to be the hallmark of Christianity, but love. We are to have an extended family, not an extended jury. And Jesus says, "Blessed are the merciful,

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for they shall obtain mercy." So the table is spread. "And you may come if you own Jesus Christ as God and man, if you have surrendered your life to him

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and cling forgiveness by his cross, and if you are filled with the hope of salvation and heaven because he rose again from the dead." And he stands in our midst and he says,

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"This is my body, which is broken for you. This is my blood, which is shed for you." And then smiling he says, "And come and get your redhawks here, any way you like them."

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Let us pray. (Pause) Teach us, Father, to see with six eyes. To recognize that all those who know Jesus Christ as Lord,

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all those who are part of the family of God by creation and/or by redemption, are to be treated always with love. For if we love only those who love us, we will not grow.

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And not to grow is to die. We pray our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen.