Judge Not

Blessed are the poor in spirit. for theirs is the kingdom of God.

It's important, this is the first rule. The one who knows they're coming empty with nothing to give to God, except for their sin, so he can wash them. Except for their life that he created so that he can renew it. We have nothing to come and boast of. Judge not, Jesus says. Judgment of this kind, it denies who God is. He is the one who is true, who is righteous, who is gracious and merciful. The judgment of this kind also denies who we all are because we are all made in his image and we are all sinners. We're all like those we condemn. We have the same dignity and the same disgust. So who is it you want to condemn? I ask this because I know I have this problem and I, Assume we all have this problem because Jesus addresses it constantly. There's also these evil characters that we want to see justice. We long for God's justice and there's a big difference in praying for God's justice and trying to practice his judgment and justice out of bounds. When we condemn in this kind of judgment in Christ's kingdom, we decide on our own terms who is worthy of grace. We decide who is worthy to know and believe about God's grace. We decide how we apply God's law according to our own principles. To judge properly is to judge according to God to bring people to God. That's a different kind of judgment. The goal of the Christian life is to make the right judgments about from God's law for God's people. One particular verse that I'll use is just an example of how we must make judgments.

We urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.

There has to be some way in which we think about who is the idol, who is the one who's not actively pursuing God? Who is the fainthearted, the one who is downtrodden and going through real difficulty? Who are the weak, the ones who have a hard time believing they have the strength to resist sin? There's a judgment to diagnose the sin problem. Then there's a judgment to know how do I apply God's law and God's goodness and God's truth and God's grace to help them? One of the most significant ways church we make judgments is in church discipline. Right now, we're all under discipline. We're seeking to hear God's word and to be corrected by it. There is a certain way in which we're all in this constructive discipline of God where we're being changed and transformed by hearing his word together. There's also the corrective discipline, being warned, rebuked, The goal of all discipline, the goal of all judgment like this is restoration, to see healing, to see someone come back into the faith, to see someone know and have confidence in Christ. Any Christian judgment that does not have the purpose of restoration is a false declaration of Christ. Christian judgment always includes an invitation. If you're not a Christian this morning, there's all kinds of voices claiming to be Christ. I assume it's confusing, but I think it's also especially confusing for Christians to hear so many voices. The voice of Christ calls all to believe and come to him. The voice of Christ says, come to me and I will forgive you of your sins. The voice of Christ says, come to me and I will give you rest. The voice of Christ says, come and I will give you my life. I have given you my life. There's a clear invitation from the gracious good king to come and believe in him. There is no declaration, come and be good enough, clean yourself up enough. That is impossible. The one clear voice of Christ says, come to him. Believe in him who died on the cross to forgive you. Believe in him who rose again to give you new life. Believe in Jesus Christ. That's what Jesus says to everyone. Christ came 2,000 years ago, and he said it explicitly.

I did not come this time to condemn the world. I came to save.

But you do, you must know, He will come again, and everyone who does not believe in Him will be condemned. He came the first time to save, to lay down His life so that we can believe in Him. He is coming again as we just sung of, and He will judge every sin with perfect justice. The only salvation is to believe in Him today. Judge not. Now the warning, why the command,

judge not that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

So Jesus, in all these commands, he's giving us reasons. He's reasoning with us in terms of why it's good for us. When we pass judgment on others, especially when we condemn others, we're really condemning ourselves because if we think somehow they need to deserve grace, we're also saying we're supposed to do something to deserve grace. Or whenever we say this is a law that I'm going to push on you and bind your conscience to, that law is now going to be added to how God judges. The command, judge not, The simple is that you may not be judged, and the clever questioner might say, well, then I just won't judge anybody. That's not really how it works. What he's speaking of in verse two is a added judgment. You see, God gave a law to Adam. He said, do not eat of one tree. And Adam was judged for not keeping God's one law. Christ has given us his holy and royal law. We will be judged for breaking that law. We're all going to be judged, every human being, because we've all fallen short of the glory of God. We've all suppressed his truth, and rather than worshiping the one God who created us, we've worshiped everything else. God will judge every sin and every sinner according to his perfect measure. But what Jesus is pressing in in verse two is terrifying because there's an added judgment we can bring to ourselves. It's really as if we walk around and we think about different judgments of others, not according to God's law, and that's being recorded. And there's an additional way in which we're going to hear those judgments before God, and we're going to see how we ourselves did not keep the judgments we gave others. The measure, what are we measuring others by? If it's not God's law, it's unjust. Are we making a judgment on others that is outside of God's boundary? Be careful not to measure and weigh others as if you have your own authority. Rather, be a good steward of God's law as ordained by God. God's law is just. This is the first clear principle. God is good. He only speaks what is good, and everything he speaks is good. God's law is a plumb line. If you're ever building something and you need it to be straight, the plumb line is the line where you know how to build the wall or the structure so that everything is in line. God's law is perfectly good, and it's the plumb line that helps us see where our lives waver, are off course. where we turn and are crooked. It helps us see our twisted desires and our words and our actions that are unbecoming of God. We need to be careful that when we are seeking to put a measure on people, it's God's law, not our own conviction, not our own opinion. Whenever we put people in their place according to our decisions, Jesus is saying that it's out of place in the kingdom, you're lying about God, and you're lying to a child of God. So a key question regarding verse two, what kinds of judgments do you make of others? Last members meeting, I challenged us, when we have disagreements with the church, we have to be able to think through, there's gospel truths that are absolutely clear. Then there's things that we must agree upon as a church, and then there's all kinds of freedom to have opinions. It seems too easy to get really wrapped up in our specific opinions and convictions and make them gospel truths. We must be careful of what we're binding our consciences to. The reason we come together is to be under God's word together. We're not gonna make any apologies or shy away. We all must have our consciences bound to God and his word. what is clearly declared, what is clearly taught, the great God who only saves sinners who believe in Jesus Christ by his grace. We must seek to bind our conscience to what God expects of us in his word, not binding the conscience that we have regarding our opinions. When we add laws, when we make extra judgments, when we come up with a way of measuring people outside of God's law, It destroys other human beings. By definition, it's going to be a mistreatment, an abuse, you're misdirecting them. It dishonors God because you're misrepresenting him and you're deceiving yourself. You believe somehow you have an authority not given to you by God. Hypocrites like extra law. They like to swing them around to see what happens. It's kind of that silly child's game that people played in middle school. Where the way to make yourself feel better is to tear somebody down? We're supposed to grow up out of that. We don't make ourselves look or feel or appear any better before God by making others look worse based upon our ungodly opinions. Judge not, lest ye be judged. It's so similar to one of the other strong warnings, 614. It's similar to if you do not forgive, you won't be forgiven. Again, a complete misunderstanding of who God is and his righteousness, a complete misunderstanding of what forgiveness is and what grace is, it leads to and points to our righteousness problem, our righteousness problem. We have to understand how this horizontal relationship with each other has a direct relationship to our vertical relationship with God. Seek to be good stewards of all God has given us. To love God and love neighbor, it requires delighting in his law and enjoying his grace, so we do so lawfully. So we've seen the command, we've seen the warning. Now, three to five, the significant larger portion of the text, I'm just gonna call this the priority. There's a way in which Jesus is teaching us the priority in how we think about sin. And if we were to look at this, three and four is our king diagnosing our problem, and verse five is prescribing the solution. Three and four are the unhealthy ways in which we practice a false righteousness and a false judgment. Verse five is his prescription. So first, the diagnosis, there's two questions.

Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there is a log in your own eye?

And notice verse three is about your thoughts, and then verse four is moving into action. You see the speck, but you don't see the log. You're gonna say, let me get that speck out of your eye when you have a log sticking out of your eye. Let's first focus on that thought. Why do you see the speck in your brother's eye without noticing the log in your own eye? Here's the simple reality that Jesus is describing. It's just too easy to see other people's sin and not our own. I see heads nodding, but do we really agree with that? It's just too easy to see other people's sin and not our own. We too easily see their sin more often than our sin. We too easily see their sin as more sinful than our sin. And we too easily see their sin as the problem and not our sin. This means we too often will see how we think we fulfill our laws and measures and prop ourselves up and we emphasize their imperfections and their problems. One of the ways to really recognize and get into this diagnosis, we should assume the best of others and hope they will assume the best of us. We really go sideways when we always assume the best of ourselves and the worst of others. When we do not agree, do we assign motive to that problem? When we are offended, do we interpret it as if it had to be done with malice? Just think about the way you interpret different people's actions and the way you have difficulty. Do you assume the best or do you assume the worst? Do you assume there's malice? Do you assume there's intent? Look down to Matthew 7, 12.

So whatever you wish the others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets.

Give them the same grace and assumption of the best that you yourself would want to have. The main problem is we see more sin in others and make more of their sin. This keeps us from the healing we need to get the log out of our own eye. Remember that, we see the little speck in somebody else's eye, that teeny tiny speck, the smallest particle of wood, we see that over there in their eye, but we don't see the log jammed in our head, sticking out of our eye. It is meant to be a ridiculous picture, because doing this is ridiculous. There's a way in which what's emphasized is lesser to greater. We see that smallest speck, that smallest sin that we're going to really judge and deal harshly with, but we don't see the large log coming out of our own eye. Add to this, with a log in your eye, you see the speck? Anybody ever try to look through a tree? It's not just greater to lesser, it's the ridiculousness to think I could see someone else's small sin with such big sin blurring my vision. I mean, y'all, but in pollen season, I feel like every day I get something in my eye, the smallest speck of pollen, and I just am blurred and I'm blinking all day now. How could I possibly see with just that smallest speck even? At least I'm not a log in your eye. It's difficult to properly diagnose sin with sinful eyes. Sinful eyes always apply an imbalanced measure. It'll be too licentious with sin or legalistic about other sin. Sinful eyes will lead to either a harsh judgment or a permissive counsel. Notice the question, we pretend to see the speck with a big log in our eye, And then when we see it, we say, let me help you out with that. Let me get that log, let me get that speck out of your eye. That leads to the action of verse four.

Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there is the log in your own eye?

Can you imagine if you were to go into surgery, it's a planned surgery, you've met the doctor, you show up that morning, everything's ready, he comes in and he's got a fresh laceration across his eyes. And you see the instruments, are you gonna let him operate on you? Of course not, you're terrified, you can't see right. This is what the person is doing in verse four, they're pretending that even though they have such bad vision, they're going to come in and try to do surgery on your heart about a speck. They're gonna try to do a surgery in your eye regarding a speck when they can hardly see because of the sin that's tainted their own vision. What hubris this is. to confront without self-examination, to pursue and correct without a humility, to take other sins so much more seriously than our own. It's malpractice. It's malpractice representing God. It's malpractice in loving your neighbor. It's malpractice in building up Christ's church. How can we think we can rightly identify and diagnose and help someone in sin when we ourselves have a log in our eye, have practiced sin in a way that keeps us from truly rejoicing in God? Now, it's a hard warning. And we could respond to this warning by saying, I actually just don't wanna confront anybody, I'm never gonna correct anybody, I'm not gonna make a judgment because I'm so terrified of being the person described in verse three and four. That's why we need to see his prescription in verse five. Refraining from correction is not the prescription from the passage. Verse five, you hypocrite. You're not seeing your own sin, you're not applying the law as Paul has spoken to the Romans right before the offering text. You yourself are not obeying, but you're trying to be a teacher, a surgeon, you hypocrite. Notice he says,

first take the log out of your own eye. And then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.

The prescription is a clear before after. You must first repent of your sin. You must first say, God, help me see my sin. If I see sin in someone else, I want to ask, God, is there a way in which that sin bothers me because it's so similar to my sin? We oftentimes are more bothered by the sins that remind us of our own issues. Do we first see other's sin and think, I have sinned just like that brother or sister, and God's grace has saved me. The problem is when all we do is see their sin and not let that sin help us reflect upon our own and the great mercy of Christ. We are responsible to repent of our own sin first. That's the key word there. First, take the log of your own eye. First, pray for God's grace to help you repent. First, seek help from God to get the log out of your eye, then you're actually able to be helpful. It is good and right that we would help one another. We need help from one another. If you have someone who loves you enough to correct you, be thankful. If never corrected, be concerned you might be scary to correct. Remember the framework again, your righteousness must be greater than the Pharisees. They would apply their measures and they would just pretend they're keeping their own laws and condemning everybody else for not keeping what they thought were the standards. They were hypocrites. They were self-righteous in sin, which is a scary, unique kind of deception. The call is to seek God and his holiness by his grace so that we can help others pursue the same. Why all this focus on the eye? If you have a log in your eye, speck in your eye, we've seen the eye referenced a few times already in the Sermon on the Mount. Go back just above to chapter six, verse 22.

The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness?

This is teaching that what you see, what you're looking for, what you're longing to desire, it determines your heart. What you're constantly looking at and looking for will determine what you desire and long for. If your eye is focused on goodness, righteousness, truth, your heart, soul, and body will rejoice and alight in those things. If your eye is focused on civil things, your heart will follow. Our eyes, what we long to look at, what we long to see, has a significant impact on who we are. Our eyes are leading our hearts. What is it we long to see? We see the importance of the eye even more in Matthew 5.8.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

When we entertain sin without repenting, it does cause you to then hurt others with the way you might bring judgment. But we also have to realize that when we're practicing sin and we're looking for the wrong thing in the wrong way, it keeps us from seeing God in his glory. and his love and his power. We're looking for the wrong thing in the wrong way. We do not behold our heavenly father who loves us and calls us to draw near. When we keep that log in our eye, it keeps us from seeing Christ and treasuring him, the one who came down to lay down his life for us so we could abide in him. When we keep that log in our eye, it keeps us from being filled with the spirit. Rather, we quench the spirit because we're not repenting of sin. Christian, somehow those logs in our eyes should be incredibly full of discomfort. It somehow promises a new kind of comfort because we think we have comfort in how we judge others. The log in your eye, first take it out. Simple word here is repentance. Again, how Jesus opened up.

Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.

By God's grace, we can set aside sin. Christian, your eyes, what are you longing to see? What are you focused on? Do you see the goodness of God and grace in other Christians and encourage them, or do you see their faults and just repeat that back to yourself? Jesus is calling for simple and clear self-examination. Apply God's good law according to what he has said is lawful. Measure yourselves according to the same law you long to see others living up to. The Sermon on the Mount is a starting place for understanding what righteousness is. We're all to be on the same narrow way, standing on the same rock. And it's important we do this together. It's actually, I think, impossible to do that alone. Ephesians, Paul in Ephesians, he tells the whole church to build up one another by speaking Christ's truth according to Christ's love. If we're to look at that passage, he says we're all to be built up to the same measure of maturity, Jesus Christ. We're all supposed to be speaking Christ's truth according to Christ's love so that we would all grow up to be like Christ. That is the ultimate measure. Any other measure is out of bounds. Christ is our head. We're all called to grow together by speaking the same truth, hoping that we will all grow up to the same maturity. How freeing is this? To know we all have the same goal, to be like Christ, be bound to Christ, to follow him more near. Let me be really clear about this. I don't want you to be like me, except for how I'm growing to be like Christ. I find people who are like me kind of annoying. I don't want to be like you, except for the ways you're growing up to be like Christ. We are to make right judgments by seeing who Christ is, and his goodness, and his love, and his glory, and his righteousness, and grow up together to be like him. All other measures we set aside as a church. When we include and add our opinion as a measure, we endanger the health of the body that Christ bought with his blood. We undo the unity of the spirit that we're supposed to maintain. Members of Jefferson Park Baptist Church, the healthy walk in Christ, he's gonna say in just a few sentences, is narrow. It's a narrow way. We easily try to get off that way. We need each other to bring us back into that way. We need to walk in that narrow way by delighting in the goodness of what that narrow way is. And the reason the way to destruction is broad is that there's all different kinds of ways to sin against God. There's all different ways to worship a false God. There's one true way to know God and worship him, and it's in Christ and in him alone. If you wanna wrestle more specifics, I encourage you, take the covenant that's in front of you, take it home, it's laminated, put it on your fridge, it's laminated, you can put it in the shower. Read through it. And if you believe that is a good summary of the most basic principles of what a church is called to do, ask, how am I repenting of any sin that goes against these promises? How can I help others Keep these promises. Do we invite others to correct us? There is a way in which people are scared to correct others. We need to make sure we're creating a culture here at our church where we're inviting feedback. We're seeking to receive feedback. You don't have to agree with everything, but we do want to make sure we can receive feedback. We can receive correction. If no one can correct you, you do have a log in your heart and in your eye. If you correct everyone or correct often, you also have a log in your eye. The goal is to repent of our sins so that we can grow closer to God and then help others grow close too. Praise be to God that he is the righteous and true God who is holy, holy, holy. He has given us his law. so we know what is good. He's given us his son so that we can be renewed up to what is good. Believe in him, follow him, and we are all called to speak his truth according to his love to grow up to be like him. Will you pray with me? Father, we come and confess how we have been too quick to dismiss or cancel others that have offended. Lord, may we be slow to take offense, quick to extend mercy and forgiveness and love. Lord, may we be eager to pursue and hold fast to you Lord, may we delight in your law and all that it tells us that is good. May we long to see ourselves, our neighbors know you, our church members grow up to be like you, our children, to not only hear the word, but to see it modeled in our homes and our church. Thank you that you've not left us alone in our own darkness and deception, to be fooled that our opinions or a law. Lord, may we be good stewards of all you've given us. May we know how to have healthy self-examination. May we be humble enough to let others examine us. May we grow closer to you, to love you, and to make your love known. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.