Judge Not

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone, and happy Sunday. Thank you for joining us today for worship.

I have a few announcements to mention as we begin our service.

First, thank you to those who have put in so much hard work to prepare our church grounds for our community revival. The tent outside went up on Wednesday with members of our church as well as a good group from other churches here to help. The prayer garden has been spruced up, along with our playground and pavilion and the front of our church. I’ve had more than one person this week tell me what a beautiful church and grounds we have. Lots of sweat and effort involved, so thank you to all who have helped.

Thank you as well to those who came out for our volunteer meeting last night. If you couldn’t make that, there’s a sign-up sheet on a table under the tent that you can look at after today’s service, or you can just show up and ask what there is to do. None of the jobs are big ones, but they’re all important, and if you can volunteer for our community day next Saturday, please do. I think we’re going to have a really big turnout for that.

Thanks as well to those who were here for our prayer service with Valley Intercessors. Just an amazing hour and a half last night. Everyone thought revival was supposed to begin tonight, but I think it began last night with that prayer meeting. Please do pray for this revival. Pray for the people who will come, and pray for the pastors who will preach and the praise teams who will lead us in song.

The service tonight and every night will begin at 6:00. Our praise team will be leading worship tonight, followed by a time of testimony. Charles Perkins, who is pastor of the Nazarene church here in town, will be speaking. I’ll be speaking tomorrow night and sharing the sermon I gave on the Sunday before July 4, so if you missed that, there’s your chance to hear it. If you would like to give a testimony tomorrow night, please see me after the service. Pastor Roscoe Harris will preach on Tuesday, and on down the line. Please come as often as you can, I’m sure you’ll be blessed.

I’ll ask that you please continue to keep the Angus family in your prayers. We had a wonderful service for Vernie this week under a beautiful shade tree, and she is having the time of her life in heaven right now, but we’re still mourning down here, so please remember Wanda and Gene and their family.

Please keep Jimmy Grant …

We’ll be holding our next deacon election on Sunday, August 6. You’ll see a list of people in your bulletin who are still serving. Those are names you can’t vote for, but you can vote for anyone else, and please do. We need quite a few spots filled, so be in prayer for those you’d like to nominate, and also be in prayer to serve your church if you’re elected.

You’ll also see a mission opportunity in your bulletin. Jameson Shover, Petie’s grandson, is now serving as a missionary in Las Vegas. We’d like to involve the entire church family to support him with food and housing. You’ll see an address there and some instructions on how to do that. Please support Jameson all you can, and be in prayer for all the great things God will do in him.

Jesyka, do you have anything today?

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Let’s pray:

Father we come together this morning in a spirit of hopefulness, a spirit of unity, as we pray for a revival in our community that must begin in ourselves. We ask your blessing upon this service and upon each person here, and we ask that you bless the coming week and all those who will gather beneath the tent outside to worship. Grant us the love and grace to others that you so richly give us, and guide us with your protection and wisdom. For it’s in Christ’s name we pray, Amen.

Sermon

So far in our series about difficult passages of the Bible we’ve talked about what it means to be made in God’s likeness and image, and then last week we talked about what Jesus meant when he said you couldn’t be his disciple unless you loved him more than everything else in your life — including your life itself.

Today we’re going to talk about one of the most misunderstood and probably the most misused passages of scripture in the entire Bible, especially in today’s social climate, and it all begins with the words, “Judge not.”

“Judge not, lest you be judged.” It’s a verse unlike any other in the Bible in that it’s the one verse that non-Christians not only know by heart, they love to quote it. They’ll turn their noses up at just about everything else the Bible says, they’ll say the it’s just a bunch of words written by just a bunch of ordinary people, but “Judge not” is the unquestionable command of God Himself. Everything else in the Bible comes second to that.

For centuries, the verse everyone knew, whether they read their Bibles every day or stepped in church only for a funeral, was John 3:16 — “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” That’s the bedrock of the Christian faith. Even non-Christians knew that verse is the Bible summed up in a sentence.

But nowadays that’s all changed. It’s no longer John 3:16 that everyone knows and quotes, it’s Matthew 7:1, and the reason why is because “Judge not” is a reflection of where we are as a society.

John 3:16 is all about what? It’s all about what God does for us, isn’t it? It’s about God doing what we could never do, which is to put a bridge over the gap between ourselves and Him that’s made by our sin.

But what’s Matthew 7:1 all about? (And I know we haven’t read that yet but you can go ahead.) Matthew 7:1 is all about what we do for each other, isn’t it? If you take that verse on its own, God’s nowhere in it.

And so Matthew 7:1 seems the perfect bit of scripture to describe what our society’s become — we’re okay with God’s rules so long as we agree with them, so long as those rules seem to let us do whatever we want.

But we’re not okay with a God who judges what we do as wrong, and we’re really not okay with other people judging what we do as wrong. We’ve moved away from John 3:16, which says it’s God’s grace that saves us, and we’ve moved a lot closer to Matthew 7:1, which seems to say everybody has a right to do their own thing.

But is that really what this passage in Matthew says? I’m going to give you a quick answer — no. Just the opposite. But let’s read this scripture first. Turn with me to Matthew chapter 7. We’ll be reading verses 1-6:

7:1 “Judge not, that you be not judged.

2 For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.

3 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?

4 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?

5 You hypocrite, 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.

6 “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.

And this is God’s word.

These verses here are a part of the greatest sermon that will ever be preached, the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew chapters 5-7 is everything you need to know about how to live the Christian life, straight from the mouth of Christ.

So the fact that Jesus includes judging in this sermon means it’s hugely important. We have to understand it and we have to apply it correctly, and you can’t understand what Jesus is saying or apply it in the right way if you just read verse 1 and stop there.

But again, that’s what most people — including the vast majority of non-Christians — do. They stop at verse 1 and ignore verses 2-6, so they take this whole idea of not judging completely out of context.

“Judge not, that you be not judged.” They’ll quote that verse as a way of silencing anyone who tries to speak up against them.

“Judge not, that you be not judged.” They twist Jesus’s words to mean, “You don’t have the right to tell me I’m wrong. You don’t have the authority to make any moral judgment on what anyone is doing, so look the other way. Ignore it. Pretend it isn’t happening, because if you do pass judgment, then you’ll be doing something that Jesus says is wrong.”

And on face value, that seems to be the right interpretation, doesn’t it? Verse 1 seems to say that if you just let people do their own thing, if you say, “Well, as long as you’re not hurting others, you can do whatever you want,” if you don’t judge anyone, then God won’t judge you.

That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? No wonder people like to hear and say, “Judge not.” It’s like a get-out-of-jail-free card for your soul. You don’t have to take responsibility for anything.

But that’s not what Jesus is saying at all, because he doesn’t just stop at verse 1. There’s also verse 2 to think about. Verse 2 is the most important verse in this passage, because it defines what Jesus said in verse 1. Jesus says, “For with the judgement you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.”

You see that? Verse 1 doesn’t mean don’t judge, because of course you have to judge, and we’ll get to why in a minute. What we need to keep in mind all through this passage is that Jesus is using the word judge as a synonym for condemn. He’s warning us to not be hypocrites that are hard on other people but soft on themselves.

“When you judge,” he says, “make sure you judge in the correct way,” and then Jesus gives us three ways we’re supposed to do that. When we judge, we have to make sure we judge rightly, make sure we judge carefully, and make we you judge personally. Let’s look at each of those.

When Jesus says in verse 1, “Judge not, that you be not judged,” what he’s saying is that we have to judge rightly. Of course we have to judge. We have to always be on our guard. We have to always look at things with an eye toward deciding if they’re godly or evil, good or bad.

That’s why we’re a country of laws. If you break the law, you’ll be judged by the courts and by a jury of your peers. If you’re found guilty, you’ll be punished. If all of a sudden everyone agreed that we shouldn’t judge anyone for what they do, what would happen? Everything would fall apart, wouldn’t it? There’d be nothing left to hold society together, because once you start saying that nothing is wrong, it’s the same thing as saying everything is right. And of course the Bible is completely against that.

When Jesus says, “Do not judge,” he’s not saying that we shouldn’t be wise in deciding right from wrong, because that’s essential.

He says in verse 6 that we shouldn’t give dogs what is holy, and we shouldn’t throw our pearls before pigs.

A little later, down in verses 15 and 16, he says to watch out for false prophets, and we’ll be able to know they’re false prophets by their fruit.

But how can we know who the dogs and pigs and false prophets are unless we judge their fruit, their lives? How can we recognize them unless we judge what they do?

Jesus isn’t saying that we shouldn’t tell right from wrong, and he’s definitely not saying that there shouldn’t be a way for us to deal with sin. After all, there’s a whole book of the Bible called Judges. The judges in the Old Testament were raised up by God himself.

We have to understand what the Bible means when it talks about judging, because it’s not the same as what we usually mean. We think of judging someone in the same way that we see on social media all the time. Someone makes a mistake or says something wrong, and then the mob just piles on to the point where that one mistake defines that person’s life. One mistake makes that person beyond the reach of any redemption. There’s no possibility of forgiveness, no chance for healing. They’re just cast out. That’s the judging that Jesus says is wrong.

Judging rightly means identifying sin for what it is and separating that sin from the person. And we do that by holding to God’s definition of sin, and the Bible’s way of dealing with it.

In the Old Testament, the word sin comes from a Hebrew word that word means “to miss the mark.” So in the Bible, sin means a failing to meet a goal.

So what’s the goal? That goes back to what we talked about two weeks ago. Remember that every human is an image of God. Every human is a sacred being who represents God and is worthy of respect, and every human being is made to love and worship God. That’s the goal we’re always supposed to meet. So sin is failing to love God, to love others, and to love yourself by not treating them with the honor they deserve.

But the Bible also says that we’re constantly missing that mark. We’re always sinning. The way to deal with that sin is to confess our sins to God, knowing that they’re already forgiven in Christ, and then to forgive the sins of others if they’re truly repentant, and help them heal. That is how we judge rightly.

But Jesus says that’s not all. He says in verse 1 that we have to judge rightly. We have to judge with the right goal in mind, which isn’t to tear someone down, it’s to heal and restore right relationships between others and especially between others and God.

In verse 2, he says we have to judge carefully. We have to take great care in how we judge others.

To judge carefully means to pay close attention to the way we judge, because if we’re not judging in the right way, it’s going to be impossible to meet that goal of healing and restoring.

The Bible is filled with warnings about all the wrong ways we judge others. Unfortunately, all of us do these all the time to the point where we’re not even aware we’re doing it. So I’m going to give you a quick list of the bigger ways that the Bible says we judge wrongly.

First, judging by appearances is wrong.

In John 7:24, Jesus says, “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” Again, Jesus is clearly saying that we have to judge, but we have to take the time to get the facts first. We can’t just jump to conclusions about people, and we can’t make snap judgments.

Always keep Proverbs 18:13 in mind: “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.” There is always more to every story, there is always more than one side, and often our opinions get in the way of seeing things for what they really are.

Remember the story in Luke 7 when the sinful woman anoints Jesus’s feet in Simon the Pharisee’s house. Simon passed judgment on her based on her appearance and her reputation, and because of that he couldn’t see that the woman had been forgiven.

Here’s another one: Harsh, unforgiving judgment is wrong.

The Christian life is ruled by one thing, and that is love. It is understanding that God loves you — he loves you not because of what you can do but because of who you are. And that love he pours into you is so great that you just can’t hold it all. It fills you up and then just gushes out onto everyone you meet.

In Titus 3, Pauls says we we must “always be gentle toward everyone.” The ones God will show mercy to are the ones who show mercy to others. A big part of judging others is to always keep in mind that no matter who they are, they’re made in the image of God no less than you are. Too often we tear people down in order to make our own faults seem less. That doesn’t help them, and it certainly doesn’t help you.

Right along with that, self-righteous judgment is wrong.

This is a big problem in our culture. In our lifetime, our nation has never been divided more than it is right now. We can blame a lot of things for that, but underneath it all is this notion that I’m just better than you. I’m smarter than you, I know more than you, you’re just less than me. As a society, we’ve gone from disagreeing with each other by saying, “I’m right and you’re wrong” to saying, “I’m good and you’re evil.”

There is no possibility of coming together with that kind of judgment. There is absolutely no room for understanding. Over and over in the Bible, we’re told that God opposes the proud, but the humble people will be lifted up.

Seeing others as less than we are is one of the worst sins a Christian can commit, because it cheapens the image of God in them while making ourselves out to be more than we are. We’re all sinners, and we’re all saved by God’s grace alone. No one is better than anyone else.

Untrue judgment is wrong.

This one’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? The Bible clearly speaks out against bearing false witness. It’s the ninth commandment. It’s Proverbs 19:5: “A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will not escape.” Judging someone for something they’ve done or said is tricky enough to begin with, but doing that falsely is simply opening a way for you to be judged by God.

Lastly, and this is maybe the most important one — hypocritical judgment is wrong.

In Romans 2:1, Paul writes, “Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.” Pointing out the sin of others while that sin is also in ourselves just shines a light on our own faults.

John chapter 8 tells the famous story of the scribes and Pharisees bringing to Jesus woman caught in adultery. They wanted to find a way to get Jesus into trouble, so they remind him that the Law of Moses says she’s supposed to be stoned. Jesus bends down and writes with his finger on the ground. He says, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”

I would love to know for sure what Jesus wrote in that dirt. The Bible doesn’t say. But Christian tradition says that Jesus actually wrote down the sins of every man gathered there that went along with adultery. Maybe some of them had committed adultery themselves. Maybe they had lust in their hearts. Maybe they didn’t value and love their own wives as they should. That idea makes a lot of sense, especially when John says all those men turned around and left one by one, starting with the older ones, because the older ones been alive longer, and so they had more sins to account for.

This second step of being careful in how you judge — make sure you don’t judge hypocritically — fits right into the third and last point of judging, and it’s also the most important one: We have to judge personally.

Look at verses 3-5:

“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 the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, 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.”

To Christ, the worst sort of Christian is a hypocrite — someone who tells others to love God but who doesn’t really love God himself, someone who holds other people to a much higher standard than they hold himself.

He says the right way to go about things is to take that hard eye you use to study the lives of other people, all the scrutiny you give what they say and do, and turn those on yourself. Look for your own sins. Study your own faults. Work on fixing those, because that’s the only way you’ll be able to judge rightly and help others, and that’s the only way you’ll be able to judge carefully to make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.

Focusing on your own faults instead of the faults of others is the only way to not be hypocritical. It’s knowing that the sin that would drive someone to do the worst and most evil thing imaginable is also a sin that’s alive in you, and it’s only by the grace of God that you don’t fall like they do.

Jesus is saying that the best way to judge the imperfections in others is to be free of the greater imperfections in yourself. And that makes sense, doesn’t it? Because the more we know the sin in our own hearts, the better we’ll be able to deal with the sins in the hearts of others. All of those wrong ways the Bible says we judge other people — harshly, and by appearances, and self-righteously, and even judgments that are untrue — have their root in the unwillingness to see ourselves on the same terms that we see everyone else.

But there’s a trap in this, and it’s a bad one. It’s easy to judge yourself to the point where you think you’re the one beyond saving. That there’s nothing of value in you. There are some people who don’t have a problem judging others too harshly. Their problem is judging themselves too harshly. And when Jesus says, “Judge not,” in a way, he’s warning about how you judge yourself too.

Here’s what I mean by that.

Part of my job as a father is to make my kids watch movies that they wouldn’t otherwise bother with. The ones that are too old, or they’re in black and white, or there aren’t enough special effects and explosions. The other week, we all sat down and watched one of my favorite movies ever — Rocky.

Ladies, I’m going to give you some good advice. If you ever want to understand the men in your life, husbands or sons or grandsons or whoever, sit down and watch Rocky. That’s all you’ll need.

If you’ve never seen it, or if it’s been a while, Sylvester Stallone plays a small-time boxer in Philadelphia named Rocky Balboa. Rocky’s not a very good fighter, but he’s tough and he’s got heart. Everyone in the neighborhood knows him, but it’s a poor neighborhood, and Rocky doesn’t have much of anything to show for his life except for a crush on a pet-store worker whose name is Adrian.

But things change for Rocky when the heavyweight champion of the world, Apollo Creed, decides to do a publicity stunt and gives Rocky a shot at the title. It’s the chance of a lifetime. So Rocky trains. He trains hard with an old grouchy manager named Mickey, and that music is playing, and you start getting all pumped up thinking Rocky’s going to do it, he has to, and the whole movie builds to the night before the championship fight, when it’s just Rocky and Adrian in his shabby little apartment, and it’s dark, and Rocky whispers the truth he’s been carrying this whole time — he can’t win. Rocky can’t beat the champ. Apollo Creed is the greatest boxer in the world. He’s knocked out everyone he’s faced, and Rocky’s just this semi-pro fighter who barely knows what he’s doing. He’s a loser — people tell him that. He’s a chump.

But then Rocky tells Adrian this — he says that if he can just go the distance, if he can last all fifteen rounds with the champ, that’s good enough. Because no one’s ever done that. Rocky says if he can go all fifteen, if he can be standing on his feet when that last bell rings, then he’ll finally know he’s not a bum.

When Sylvester Stallone wrote that line in the script, he hit gold. He touched on the heart of every person’s struggle, because deep down we’re all afraid we’re bums. Deep down we all wonder if we’re losers. That’s why we’re always working so hard to get more, be more, and look better.

It’s a never-ending race with nothing at the end, because the worth we crave as people and the meaning to our lives that we desperately need cannot be found in this world, no matter where we look for it. Human love can’t give us that. Success can’t give us that.

Even reaching our dreams can’t give us that. The second Rocky movie starts with Apollo and Rocky in the hospital, and Apollo calls Rocky a chump. Later, Rocky asks Apollo if he really gave it his all, or if Apollo took it easy on him. You see, Rocky’s still wondering. He went fifteen rounds with the champ, but he’s still afraid he’s a bum.

But as a Christian, you’re free of all that. You don’t have to look to the world to give you worth, because nothing in the world can. You don’t have to look at the world to give your life meaning, because your life is going to live on beyond this world. How can you be a bum if you’re made in God’s image? How can you be a loser when you are so valuable that God sacrificed himself to save you?

The heart of judging others is to deal with your own faults before finding fault in someone else. Get the big sins out of your life before you start judging the smaller sins in the lives of others. But Jesus says make sure you do that every bit as lovingly, every bit as rightly, every bit as carefully, as you’re supposed to judge everyone else.

When Jesus says, “Judge not,” he means don’t judge others until you’re prepared to be judged by the same standard. And then, when you do exercise judgment toward others, do it with humility. Do it with love. Because that’s exactly what God does with you.

And if that’s the way God deals with you, shouldn’t that be the way you deal with yourself? Yes, you’re a sinner. But you’re not a bum like Rocky felt. You’re a forgiven child of God, a brother or sister of the Savior. Paul says in 1 Corinthians that the purpose of judging someone’s weakness is to help them walk in freedom. But how can you help someone walk in freedom if you’re not free? Take that beam out of your own eye, then worry about the speck in someone else’s. Jesus says, “My teachings apply to you first, and then to everyone else.”

So don’t let anyone tell you, “Judge not.” We have to. We have to constantly be judging what is right and what is wrong, what we should and shouldn’t do. But we have to do it wisely. We have to do it in the right way, according to God’s definition and God’s goal of healing and restoring. We have to do it carefully and make sure that we’re not judging out of anger or hate or especially self-righteousness, thinking that we’re better than anyone else. And the only way we can make sure of that is if we’re always judging personally, judging our own actions and our own hearts, because we’re not going to be any good to anyone else unless we first deal with the sins in our own lives.

Jesus judged plenty of times. He judged the Pharisees for the way they held themselves up and looked down on everyone else. He judge the proud, the arrogant, the cruel, and so should we. But he says, “Do it with deep love and abounding gentleness, and do it only after you judge yourself, because deep down you’re proud and arrogant and cruel too.”

Let’s pray:

Father it is such a difficult thing to judge rightly and carefully and personally. There are so many ways we can do all of those things in the wrong way, and end up breaking even more what you mean to be healed and restored. We ask for wisdom in dealing with others and with ourselves, and the understanding that comes from knowing that no matter what we’ve done and no matter how far we’ve fallen, you are there to catch us. You are there to lift us back up. Give us the love to deal with others with the same grace that you deal with us. For we ask this in Jesus’s name, Amen.