Righteous Judgment

Introduction

I think you’ll all be relieved to know that today’s sermon is a lot less spicy than last week. Got the hard stuff out of the way to be honest, should be pretty straightforward Bible interpretation from now on. In case you didn’t know, we’re doing a series called “You Asked For It” where I preach based on questions and suggestions from a box that I put in the back of the church. So today’s question is:

What did Jesus mean when He said “Judge not by appearance only”?

So I could just answer the question, but this is actually a great opportunity to talk about a few principles of Biblical interpretation that I think will help us all be better disciples and give us the tools we need to disciple others.

When I first read this question, “what did Jesus mean when He said “judge not by appearance only”? The immediate instinct is to think that this must be a statement against judging people based on what they look like, or on your first shallow impression of them. Many verses and quotes from scripture get used this way, quoted to prove some quick point in a conversation. I think of verses like “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength” and “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you,” and “judge not, lest ye be judged.” Many of these verses if you pull back and look at the context aren’t what they first seem. Actually funny enough, this “judge not by appearance only” in context is making exactly that point. Let’s look together at John 7:10-24

John 7:10–24 CSB

After his brothers had gone up to the festival, then he also went up, not openly but secretly. The Jews were looking for him at the festival and saying, “Where is he?” And there was a lot of murmuring about him among the crowds. Some were saying, “He’s a good man.” Others were saying, “No, on the contrary, he’s deceiving the people.” Still, nobody was talking publicly about him for fear of the Jews. When the festival was already half over, Jesus went up into the temple and began to teach. Then the Jews were amazed and said, “How is this man so learned, since he hasn’t been trained?” Jesus answered them, “My teaching isn’t mine but is from the one who sent me. If anyone wants to do his will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own. The one who speaks on his own seeks his own glory; but he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is true, and there is no unrighteousness in him. Didn’t Moses give you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?” “You have a demon!” the crowd responded. “Who is trying to kill you?” “I performed one work, and you are all amazed,” Jesus answered. “This is why Moses has given you circumcision—not that it comes from Moses but from the fathers—and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses won’t be broken, are you angry at me because I made a man entirely well on the Sabbath? Stop judging according to outward appearances; rather judge according to righteous judgment.”

This is interesting, isn’t it? Jesus' statement "stop judging according to outward appearances; rather judge according to righteous judgment" appears to be in response to those who were trying to have Him killed over healing on the Sabbath. When He’s referring to “one work” that He did, He’s likely referring to John 5, when He healed a paralytic man near the pool of Siloam.

Jesus is giving an invitation to think more deeply about the Hebrew Law. Not exactly what I thought I would find when I looked for this quote from Jesus, I don’t know about you. This is why context is so important, because it can change the whole meaning of a verse.

Here we have Jesus teaching in the temple on a feast day and the people are amazed at the quality of His teaching, given that He is uneducated. So He gives them a lesson on how to evaluate the quality of a teacher and His teaching in verses 17-19, and then illustrates this in response to their anger toward Him in verses 21-23. He sums all this up with the quote we are examining in verse John 7:24

John 7:24 CSB

Stop judging according to outward appearances; rather judge according to righteous judgment.”

So if judging according to outward appearances is the opposite of righteous judgment and is in the context of interpreting Hebrew Law, than it must mean that they were not looking deeply into it and were making superficial judgments on its meaning. This accords well with the original greek, which would be translated literally as “do not judge according to faces”. Don’t just take it at face value would be the english equivalent of this saying.

So if that’s what it means to judge based on appearance, what does it mean to judge according to righteous judgment? Jesus seems to be saying that you will be able to judge whether a teaching is from God based on three factors:

Obedience to God

Glory Given to God

The Word of God

1. Obedience to God

So if you came up to me without any other context and asked me point blank, “Josh, how do we discern whether someone is preaching truth?” I would likely have told you a few things. I would have made my biggest emphasis on judging them by your own knowledge of Scripture and with prayer, encouraging the need to be meditating on the Bible daily so that you know it well enough to pick out a false teacher.

What I probably wouldn’t have proposed as a test of truth is obedience to God. Yet this is the first test of teaching that Jesus gives us in this passage. In John 7:16-17

John 7:16–17 CSB

Jesus answered them, “My teaching isn’t mine but is from the one who sent me. If anyone wants to do his will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own.

"If anyone wants to do his will" is literally "If anyone wills to do his will," or "If anyone wants to do what he (God) wants" because it’s the same Greek word for wanting and willings. In other words you have to desire to do what God desires in order to judge whether something someone is teaching is truly from God.

It’s easy to think that being a discerning Christian involves entirely mental work, studying scriptures, meditating, reading commentaries, etc, but Jesus by saying this is making discernment very practical. He’s saying that obedience to God is a test of teaching because discernment is given to those who are truly believers, and who earnestly desire to do good.

This is the same phenomena really as something like painting or fixing cars, or any kind of practical skill. You can read every article you can find on how to fix a car, you can watch a ton of youtube videos, but everything changes once you get down on the concrete under that vehicle. True experience is the only way to mastery of a skill, and discernment is a skill like these. Practicing discipline and Godliness is what putting in the hours looks like for disciples of Jesus. In order to become experts in discipleship we have to actually be following God’s law. When you’ve earnestly sought God’s will for years you develop a sense for when someone is teaching something other than the truth of God’s word. In the words of Warren Wiersbe,

“In the very process of living out the teaching of Jesus, men would discover that it coincided with their deepest commitment to God’s will, that it enabled them to fulfill their highest religious aspirations, and that they could thus infer his true intentions as their teacher.

How, then, can we know that Jesus is teaching us the truth? By obeying what He tells us to do. God’s Word proves itself true to those who will sincerely do it.”

This is what we mean when we argue that the Bible is God’s word and call it “self authenticating.” Christians often get accused of circular reasoning here, since if you’re not careful it can sound like we’re saying that we believe that the Bible is God’s Word because it says that it’s God Word, and we know that what it said is true because it’s God Word, and we know it’s God’s word because it says that it’s God’s Word, and so on. But that’s not what is meant by self authenticating. What that means is that the Bible is proved true by the quality of what is written in it, that earnest meditation shows it to be sound, and that living by the commands of scripture proves its truth because of its power to set us free and make us more like Jesus.

This is how the western world prospered even if for the most part it was Christian only in name, because we lived by Christian principles and thrived by them.

So if righteous judgement is based on obedience, than judging according to outward appearance alone is based on a life that doesn’t earnestly seek to do God’s will. But that’s not Jesus’ only test for the truth of a teaching, His second test is:

2. Glory given to God

God is the all glorious one, and infamously the Westminster Catechism answers the question, "What is the chief end of man?” with the answer “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.” In other words the true purpose of every person is to glorify God. So we shouldn’t be surprised at Jesus’ words in John 7:18

John 7:18 CSB

The one who speaks on his own seeks his own glory; but he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is true, and there is no unrighteousness in him.

In Jesus’ day a lot of so called religious leaders made hay out of being the spiritual authority in the lives of their fellow Jews. Many were hypocrites who used their so called righteousness as a means to elevate their status and gain wealth. These were the corrupt shephards that followed in the footsteps of their predecessors that the prophets condemned before them. In contrast, Jesus never saught His own glory but the glory of the Father. In the words of Paul we read of Jesus in Philippians 2:5-8

Philippians 2:5–8 CSB

Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death— even to death on a cross.

And this is what Jesus Himself was talking about in John 5:19

John 5:19 CSB

Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, the Son is not able to do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, the Son likewise does these things.

and John 12:49

John 12:49 CSB

For I have not spoken on my own, but the Father himself who sent me has given me a command to say everything I have said.

And so He demonstrates that what He teaches is truth by His humility, and His deference to giving God glory. Jesus therefore silences any possible accusation that He spoke only to increase His reputation, or His wealth, or His position in society. Because He selflessly sought the will of the father we can know that His teaching is not corrupted by pride or self seaking motives.

So then we can apply this principle to the teaching of others. Is this person speaking on their own for their own glory, or are they seeking the glory of God? This one test easily dismisses the teaching of those Creflo Dollar’s and Kenneth Copeland’s of the world who claim to speak for God but transparently seek their own riches and glory. They are false teachers and should be called out as such by those of us who wish to be obedient followers of Jesus.

So then, if righteous judgment is seeking God’s glory, than we know that judging according to outward appearance has no concern for who receives the glory at all. Yet there remains still one more test of the quality of a teaching.

3. Word of God

Jesus is amazing at saying the words that people need to hear. We read in the gospels about many times that He was gentle with the lost sheep of Israel, took pity on sinners and healed the sick. Yet we also read plenty of times in the gospels where Jesus called people out on their hypocrisy and their failure to do God’s Will or to even understand His law. Verse 19 is one of the latter examples. He was harsh with the people when He said John 7:19

John 7:19 CSB

Didn’t Moses give you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?”

None of them keep the law of Moses. Harsh. Also true, but harsh none the less. These were people who prided themselves on their strict observance of the Mosaic Law, so this was no small accusation. Yet the second part of this statement proves Jesus’ accusation to be true. They were seeking to kill Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. I don’t know how many people these days could quote you all ten of the ten commandments, but I can gaurantee you that if they can guess any of them than they can guess “Thou Shalt not Kill.” It’s kind of a core doctrine.

But this isn’t just calling them out on their lack of understanding, it’s giving another test for the truth of His teaching, careful examination of the Scriptures. Remember that their anger towards Him, at least on the surface, was about what they perceived to be His breaking of the Sabbath Law. Their zeal for keeping God’s law was admirable, but they are showing their knowledge of God’s law to be very shallow.

See a lot of the rules that they had for the Sabbath at this point didn’t really come from Moses. See the Law was a little bit vague for their tastes on what exactly constitutes what counts as work. There were a few guidelines, but a lot of grey area. So some well meaning rabbis decided to come up with lists of what counts as work in order to more carefully keep the Sabbath. This became a huge list of hundreds of very specific things that Jewish men and women could and could not do on a Saturday, and thus they took what was meant to be a commemoration of creation and a gift of rest and transformed it into a burden.

So already Jesus isn’t actually breaking the Law of Moses, but rather the traditions that men tacked on to them. But rather than dismiss the work of the Rabbis Jesus points out something even more obvious, that even the law of Moses provides examples of times when the Sabbath must be “broken.” One of those examples is circumcision.

The law of Moses dictated that every Hebrew boy needed to be circumsized on exactly the eighth day after they were born, and it gives no exception to this rule. For this reason, if a boy was born on a Friday they would have to be circumcized on a Saturday, even though it was the Sabbath. So they were constantly breaking the Sabbath in order to circumcize young boys, for the sake of those young boys being a part of the covenant people and sharing in the blessings of being God’s people.

So how could they object to Jesus’ act of mercy and love in healing a paralytic on the Sabbath? How much more valuable is healing a man’s entire body than a specific eight day window to fulfill a ceremonial law.

Thus Jesus shows the value of Judging Scripture not in isolation, but by the rest of Scripture. There’s no shortcuts to this, rather Scripture can only be understood through careful and deliberate study of every part of Scripture. It’s only by understanding God’s word to the best of our ability that we will be able to discern what is good and true, and what is God’s will.

If they had truly understood Moses than they wouldn’t just understand this one miracle of Jesus, but they would know that He is Messiah that was prophecied about by Moses and would have followed Him. Instead they spent their time obsessing over tedious details like exactly how much a bedroll had to weigh before lifting it was considered work.

Conclusion

So then, how do we become people who make righteous judgement rather than judging by appearance only? By using Jesus’ threefold test of teaching and by trying ourselves to live up to Jesus’ threefold test of teaching.

What Jesus tells us here isn’t a quick fix easy solution but a call to a lifelong discipleship journey. We need to not only study the scriptures, but to do our earnest best to obey what it teaches us. The better we get at obeying the word that we understand, the more God will open our eyes to be able to see the counterfeits and to tell who is truly speaking on behalf of God.

We must also ask ourselves when we evaluate teachers who gets the glory from what they are teaching? Examine them carefully to see if they are working towards their own sucess and wealth or if they are building God’s kingdom and bringing more glory to their name.

Finally we must know Scripture well so that we are equipped to judge what we hear based on its truths. Again, there’s no shortcut here for reading the Bible dilligently and deeply every day so that you can grow in the knowledge of God, and to do so with prayer and an open heart and mind for God to correct you and teach you.

If we use Jesus’ method in order to test Jesus’ teaching we see that righteous judgment shows the truth in what He says. Jesus lived a perfectly obedient life, He always gave glory to the Father and He knew Scripture better than the scribes. If we judge according to righteous judgment we will see the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ of grace and salvation for all to the glory of God.

One last thing I want to say is that this isn’t just a test for the teaching of others, but it’s a test we should inspire to pass for the sake of others. Remember that we aren’t just called to become disciples, but also to make disciples of others. This means teaching them what the gospel is and what it means for their lives. So if someone put us to Jesus’ threefold test, would we pass? If you’re not sure than I would encourage you to examine yourself and pray for God’s help to better represent Him as His disciple and His ambassador to this world.