Sawdust

Me

One of the dangers of learning a lot about God

Is assuming that means we have become a lot like God.

After I graduated from Moody,

I knew a lot more theology than I did before,

I felt like I was now in pretty elite company when it came to theology

So in my mind,

I had spent years studying Scripture, learning doctrine, sitting in classrooms taught by theology experts, arguing through different positions, etc.

And honestly, I was very prideful of that

I thought, well how could you know better, you didn’t go to Moody, write the papers, have the late night brain boggling discussions

So I started thinking,

“Well, how could you know better?

You didn’t go to Moody.

You didn’t study all of this.”

I thought knowing about God, made me the resident expert on faith and Christianity

And that is what made it so dangerous for me.

I wasn’t becoming judgmental because I had stopped caring about God.

I cared deeply about good theology

I wanted deeply to be a good pastor!

But what was happening

I was taking good gifts from God and weaponizing them into reasons to feel better than other people.

Just like I said to open

You can begin to confuse knowing more about God with being more like God.

I especially saw that in the way I would interact with my mom.

We would get into these theological arguments,

And I would come in ready,

because I was a kid working through these things for my own in a much deeper way than I ever had

So I had my arsenal ready

I had the verses.

I had the fancy definitions.

I had the philosophical arguments.

I had all the reasons why I thought I was right.

And why my mom was wrong

The thing is,

I probably was right about theology many times,

but that did not mean I was right in the way I was communicating to her

I was seeking to destroy a position, rather than engaging with a person

Because what had happened was that my head had filled up with Bible Trivia faster than my heart could change my life to match

I had learned enough theology to recognize what I thought was wrong in someone else.

I had not yet learned to let that same truth expose what was wrong in me

What had really happened was

I was more interested in proving I was right

Than in becoming the kind of person Jesus was teaching me to be.

We

Now, you might not have gone to Bible College, but I think most of us know this tension

Our Culture has a simple phrase for it:

“Only God can Judge Me!”

Usually when we say that, what we mean is:

“Mind your business.”

“You don’t get to tell me how to live.”

“You don’t get to tell me what I’m doing is wrong.”

And the interesting thing, is there is actually some truth in that phrase.

Ultimately, God is the Judge.

Yet, somehow we have turned that into comforting news.

If only God can ultimately judge me,

That does not mean there is no standard.

It actually means the standard belongs to Him.

So “Only God can judge me” should probably scare us a little more than it reassures us.

But there is the opposite problem as well

Sometimes we can swing so far the other direction, that we become experts at everyone else’s life.

We notice how someone talks.

How someone parents.

How someone spends money.

What they believe, worship, post online

We set up a judgement shop thinking:

How mature they should be by now, but aren’t

What they should have done and what they should be doing differently.

(And sometimes we may even be right!)

But like so much of the Sermon on the Mount,

Jesus probes deeper than simply asking,

“What are others doing?”

The harder question for you and I is:

“How are we judging others, as we silently watch their lives?”

Are we concerned for them?

Or do we secretly enjoy being right?

Are we trying to help?

Or are we trying to feel superior?

It is possible to be right about what someone else is doing wrong,

And still be completely wrong in the way we perceive them.

So today, Jesus says one of his most quoted (and probably most misunderstood) statements:

“Do not judge so that you will not be judged.”

So what does Jesus mean?

Does He mean Christians should never recognize right from wrong?

Never confront sin?

Never exercise discernment?

Or is Jesus warning us that even when we see something wrong in someone else,

Something can still be wrong in the way we see them?

God

Simply based on reading this passage,

Clearly Jesus can’t mean,

“Never make a judgment about anything.”

That wouldn’t even fit with the verses today, let alone the full teaching of Jesus

So the issue isn’t whether we ever recognize that something is wrong.

The problem is when we use truth to measure everyone else

Without first letting that same truth measure us.

Or to say it in a summarized way:

Not all judgment is judgmental.

The word translated judge here can carry several different ideas depending on the context.

It can mean to evaluate.

To distinguish.

To decide.

And sometimes, to condemn.

Which I think makes it clear Jesus is not saying,

“Never evaluate anything”, never recognize sin, or never say that something is wrong,

It is a call to use discernment without becoming judgmental

Jesus is going to prove that right here in verse 6.

He tells us not to give what is holy to dogs or throw pearls before pigs.

Whatever else we say that verse means,

We cannot obey it without making some kind of discernment about the person in front of you.

And throughout the rest of Scripture, there are plenty of places where God’s people are actually called to make judgments.

Later in this chapter He tells His followers to watch out for false prophets.

How can we recognize a false prophet

If we are never allowed to judge whether teaching is true or false?

In Matthew 18, Jesus tells us what to do when a brother or sister sins.

We cannot do that without first recognizing that something really is wrong.

So the problem is not that we see something wrong.

The problem is when we hold other people to standards we are not willing to hold ourselves to.

Look at what Jesus immediately says in verse 2:

“For by the standard you judge you will be judged, and the measure you use will be the measure you receive.”

Notice the language Jesus uses:

Standard & Measure

We are evaluating.

We are measuring.

We are looking at another person’s life and saying,

“This is where you are falling short.”

So Jesus immediately turns that measuring stick around:

What happens when the same standard is applied to you?

That is where judgment can start becoming judgmental.

Because we can become incredibly serious about holiness when we are talking about someone else’s life.

We know the verse they are breaking.

We know what they should be doing.

We know what they need to change.

But when that same truth starts getting close to us, suddenly the standard starts to shift

“Well, you have to understand my circumstances.”

“It’s more complicated than that!”

“I’m still growing, God knows my heart!”

The issue is not that those things are always false.

It is that we are often willing to give ourselves grace we are unwilling to give someone else.

We judge their actions at face value, while explaining away our own with all the nuance in the world.

We use truth to measure them, while explaining away the places where that same truth measures us.

Jesus apparently thinks this tendency is so ridiculous, that He gives us one of the most over the top word pictures in the Sermon on the Mount.

He says in verse 3:

“Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to see the beam of wood in your own?”

This is intentionally exaggerated.

Jesus is not comparing a small problem with a slightly bigger problem.

He is saying:

You are staring at a tiny speck of sawdust in someone else’s eye while somehow missing the fact that you have a whole beam sticking out of your own!

And yet the person with the beam still thinks,

“I should probably help them with that.”

That is the insanity Jesus is exposing.

That we can become so focused on seeing what is wrong in someone else,

While never stopping to see what is wrong in us

Now, before we hear all of that and think,

“Exactly! This is why Jesus says not to judge!”

Notice something important:

Jesus never says the speck is imaginary.

There really is something in the other person’s eye.

There may actually be something wrong in their life that they need help seeing.

So, Jesus is not saying,

“Who are you to say anything?

You have problems too!”

If that were the point, none of us could ever help anyone.

No, the problem is trying to deal with someone else’s sin while refusing to deal honestly with our own.

Which Jesus shows in verse 5

“You hypocrite! First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

There is one word that really matters here:

First.

Jesus is not saying, “Forget your brother’s eye.”

He is saying,

First, deal honestly with your own eye.

Not to stop seeing what is wrong in someone else, but so you can finally see them clearly.

That is where this relates back to abiding

Abiding with Jesus changes how we see others by first changing how we see ourselves.

The closer we live with Jesus, the more willing we become to let His truth confront us first.

One of the interesting things about following Jesus is that sometimes the closer we get to Him, the more sinful we can actually feel.

You see this sometimes with a brand-new believer, or someone who has really recommitted themselves to following Jesus.

They are excited.

They are taking their faith seriously.

And then a few weeks or months later they say something like,

“I thought I was doing so well following Jesus. Why do I suddenly feel like I’m seeing more wrong with me than I did before?”

But often those things are not new, they are just newly visible.

As you and I become more like Jesus, the parts of us that are not like Jesus become easier to see.

Not because we are suddenly becoming worse, but rather, Jesus is changing what we are able and willing to see in ourselves.

And that realization should change the posture we bring toward other people.

The more aware I become of what Jesus is still changing in me,

The harder it becomes to stand over somebody as if I have perfectly arrived.

It becomes a lot harder to be a self-righteous jerk toward someone else

When we are honest about how much we still need Jesus.

We stand beside them, rather than over them,

As people under the same Lord, the same truth, and the same call to become more like Jesus.

Seeing your own plank, your own shortcomings, should make you more humble, not more silent.

Self-awareness of our need for Jesus, does not eliminate correction.

It changes the way correction happens.

I remember realizing this with my buddy Zach

In College and a bit afterward, Zach and I were accountability partners trying to fight porn.

Early on our accountability was basically a weekly pity party.

“I failed man, I feel terrible about it”

“Same.”

“This is hard.”

“Hopefully we can do better this week”

Only to rinse and repeat the same convo

We were being open.

We were admitting what was going on in our own lives.

But eventually we realized that simply admitting we both struggled was not actually helping either of us become more like Jesus.

What gave that relationship power was being able to say:

“Yeah, I have a plank in my eye. But this still isn’t the life Jesus has for us.”

We could be honest about our own failures while still striving to hold each other to the life Christ was calling us toward.

Neither one of us was standing over the other pretending we had arrived.

We were standing beside each other, both under the same standard, saying,

“Let’s keep putting our eyes on Jesus to become the men He wants us to be.”

And that is completely different from judgmentalism.

The awareness of our own sin did not lower our standard.

It changed the way we challenged each other towards Jesus

So that brings us to the final verse, verse 6.

“Do not give what is holy to dogs or throw your pearls before pigs; otherwise they will trample them under their feet and turn around and tear you to pieces.”

Which is a pretty jarring thing to say right after, “Do not judge.”

Because whatever else Jesus means by dogs, pigs, holy things, and pearls, we cannot obey this verse without judgement.

You have to recognize something about the person in front of you.

You have to recognize how they are responding to what is holy.

You have to discern whether continuing to press something on them is actually wise.

For five verses Jesus warns us about our tendency to judge others by standards we excuse in ourselves,

And then in verse 6 He reminds us that discernment still matters.

So the order is an important part of this passage:

First, see yourself honestly.

Then, see the person in front of you clearly.

Jesus says not to give what is holy to dogs or throw pearls before pigs.

It’s a weird and odd picture certainly

But the picture is of something valuable being given to someone who has no interest in valuing it.

The pigs trample the pearls.

The dogs turn and attack.

So Jesus is recognizing that there are people who are not simply struggling to understand,

but are actively rejecting what is being given to them.

And in those situations, wisdom has to recognize when continuing to press the issue is no longer helping.

That is why discernment matters.

Not every person is responding the same way, and Jesus is not telling us to treat every response as if it were the same.

Sometimes someone needs correction.

Sometimes they need patience.

And sometimes someone has made it clear that they are only going to mock, trample, or attack what you are trying to give them.

At that point, continuing to press is not necessarily faithfulness.

It may simply be a failure to discern the person in front of you.

D. A. Carson points out that the ratio itself is telling.

Jesus gives five verses to the danger of judgmentalism and only one to the danger of being undiscerning.

That should probably tell us which danger Jesus thinks we are more prone to.

Apparently He knows our bigger temptation is not usually that we will be too humble to make a judgment.

It is that we will become very good at judging everyone except ourselves.

Because there are people who will not receive what you are trying to give them.

And there are moments where continuing to press, continuing to argue, continuing to force the conversation, will not actually help.

We actually see Paul do something like this in Acts 13 and 18

He brings the gospel to the Jews, and there comes a point where they are not simply struggling with it, but they are actively rejecting and opposing what he is bringing, eventually Paul and Barnabas say,

“Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we are turning to the Gentiles.”

Paul is not basing this on, “This is too hard, I’m done!”

He is recognizing that these people have heard him, opposed what he is saying, and at some point that to

Continue to push the same conversation is no longer the wisest use of the opportunities God has given him.

And even then, he does not write them off.

He keeps going into the synagogues on his missionary journeys,

and Romans makes it clear that he still deeply longs for Israel to know Jesus.

So while Paul turns his immediate efforts toward the Gentiles.

It is not because he has decided the Jews are hopeless.

Paul can redirect his ministry without redirecting his love.

It is a good reminder, that sometimes faithfulness means staying in hard soil for a long time.

Sometimes God calls people to places where the fruit may be slow,

Where the ground needs to be worked for years before much is visible.

But there are also moments where discernment also recognizes,

“I have said what I can say here. Continuing to press this conversation is not helping.”

Perhaps a helpful way to view discernment would be:

Learning when God is telling us to move on,

While still continuing to love the people we are moving on from.

This is not a ‘one and you’re done’ kind of thing.

It is learning to recognize when continuing to push is no longer fruitful.

That is part of the discernment Jesus is talking about here.

Which brings us back to the heart of this passage:

Abiding with Jesus changes how we see others by first changing how we see ourselves.

Jesus first deals with the way we see ourselves,

So that when we do look at someone else,

We are not coming from superiority,

But from a place of honesty about our own need for Jesus and wisdom about how to respond to the person in front of us.

You

So what do we actually do with this?

So maybe the place to start is with the person you feel pretty confident you understand.

That person where you think:

“I know what their problem is.”

“I know what they need to change.”

“I know what they are really like.”

And Jesus takes all of that and turns the question back on us.

What is your problem?

What do you need to change?

What are you really like?

Not the version of yourself you explain away

Not the version you present to us at church

Not the version you compare favorably to everybody else.

What is Jesus trying to show you about you and your relationship to him?

Because that is the order of this passage.

Before the speck,

The plank has to come first

Before I start figuring out what Jesus needs to do in them,

I need to ask what Jesus is trying to do in me.

And that may be the most uncomfortable part of abiding.

Staying close enough to Jesus that I stop treating His truth like a spotlight for everyone else

And let it become a mirror for me.

So maybe the first question this week is not,

“How should I deal with them?”

It is:

“Jesus, what are You showing me about myself?”

Parents, here is an application that matters immensely with your kids.

It is easy to see exactly what they need to change.

Their attitude.

Their disrespect.

Where they drag their feet.

But one of the most Christlike things you can do is to turn that question around:

“Did they pick that up from me?”

“Why did I lose my temper?”

“Was I unfair?”

“Did I demand something from them that I am not living myself?”

And by all that is Jesus honoring, do not be afraid to apologize.

Your kids already know you are not perfect.

Pretending otherwise does not strengthen your authority.

However, showing them what humility and repentance looks like will!

And only after Jesus turns the mirror back on us do we ask:

“How can I actually help this person?”

Do I need to say something?

Have I actually listened?

Have I been gracious?

Am I trying to have the same argument for the twentieth time?

Do I need to keep praying instead of trying to force a change that only Jesus can bring?

That is a very different posture from:

“How do I set them straight, prove them wrong, and make sure they know how badly they messed up?”

So these are the two questions we carry with us this week:

Jesus, what are You showing me about myself?

Jesus, what would actually help me love this person well?

Because abiding with Jesus changes how we see others by first changing how we see ourselves.

Ultimately, we are all people standing under Jesus, all needing His grace, and all being called to become more like Him.

So of course we should not seek to be judgmental jerks!

But our hearts can quickly take the grace we receive and turn it into a platform to condemn others from.

So let us keep our eyes on Jesus, remembering our deep need for His grace each and every day,

Trusting that as Jesus changes how we see ourselves, He will also help us see others more clearly,

So that we can encourage one another to follow Him more faithfully.

Benediction

May Jesus give us eyes to see ourselves honestly,

grace to see others humbly,

and wisdom to know how to love them well.

May we keep our eyes fixed on Him,

Remembering that we all stand in need of His grace.

And as we abide in Jesus, may He continue changing how we see ourselves

So that we can see and love others more like Him.

And all of God’s people said,

Amen.