S.O.T.M. The Speck and the Plank [Matthew 7:1-5]

We began last week at looking at this section of the sermon and we really only got through two words… “judge not”. But we did lay down some important principles about having a judging spirit, and it is that kind of spirit our Lord condemns. That springs us into the next step in understanding this section and fleshing it out or looking at the reasons why our Lord tells us Judge not.

Stand for the reading of the word of God [Matthew 7:1-5]

We’re jumping right into the reasons today, we have in our outline, three reasons why to judge not and then application.

Judge not that you be not judged

Do not judge, in order that you yourselves may not be judged. That is a very practical and personal reason, but what exactly does it mean? There are those who believe that it means something like this.

Do not judge other people if you dislike other people judging you.

Do not judge other people if you do not wish to be judged yourself by them.

It amounts to, as you do to others, they will do to you. That the person who is always critical of others, is always a person who is likely to bring criticism upon himself. And of course that is true and perfectly right.

It is further true to say that there are no people who are more sensitive to criticism than those who are always criticizing others. The critical person dislikes it and complains when it happens to them; but they never seem to remember this when they do it with respect to others. We agree, then, that that statement is true, that the kind of person who is always criticizing is criticized in turn, and that therefore, if they wish to avoid this painful criticism, they must be less critical of others. And, on the other hand, it is true to say that the person who is less critical is appreciated by others, and is not subject to criticism in the same way as that more critical kind of person.

While this is true, to interpret this statement as meaning that and that alone is incomplete. While we must accept that in general, it seems that our Lord goes further. We say this, not only on the basis of what we have in this entire chapter, which, as we have seen, is meant to hold us face to face with the judgment of God, but also because of other statements in Scripture which are parallel to this, and which explain and therefore reinforce it.

Surely it means this: ‘Judge not, that you be not judged’—by God. There are many evangelical Christians who immediately react against such an exposition in terms of the great teaching of the Scripture with regard to justification by faith only. They point out that John 5:24 teaches that, if we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, we have passed through judgment or from judgment unto life. They add that the first verse of Romans 8 says, ‘There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.’ Surely, they say, this means that because we are Christians we are taken entirely outside the realm of judgment. There is no longer any judgment, they argue on the basis of such teaching, for the man who is a true Christian.

That kind of thinking needs some attention. We remind ourselves again that the words we are considering are addressed to believers, not to unbelievers. They are addressed to people of whom the Beatitudes are true, to those who are the children of God and born again of the Spirit. It is quite clear then that in some respect such people are still subject to judgment.

But, in addition to that, we must approach the question also in terms of the parallel teaching of Scripture elsewhere. Perhaps the best way to deal with it is to put it like this. In the Scriptures we are taught that there are three types or kinds of judgment, and it is the failure to isolate and distinguish these that causes this confusion. We should be concerned about this subject for many reasons.

One is that many of us who claim to be evangelical Christians are not only guilty of not being very concerned with these matters, but are also curiously lacking in what is called the ‘fear of God’. There is a lightness, a boisterousness, a superficiality about many of us which seems to me to be far removed from the character of truly Christian, godly people as it is to be seen in the Bible and in the Church throughout the centuries. Modern man has more of a rub elbows with God mentality than a fall down on your face before Him mentality of the bible.

In our desire to give the impression that we are happy, we are often lacking in reverence and what the Scripture means by ‘reverence and godly fear’. The whole idea of ‘the fear of the Lord’ and of godliness somehow or other has become lost amongst us. That is partly due to this failure to realize the scriptural teaching with regard to judgment. We are so anxious to assert the doctrine of justification by faith only, that very often we are guilty of minimizing the other doctrines of Scripture which are equally a part of our faith and therefore equally true. So it is important for us to understand this doctrine with regard to judgment. Three teaching on judgment from scripture…

First of all...First of all there is a judgment which is final and eternal; that is the judgment which determines a man’s status or his standing before God. This determines the great separation between the Christian and the non-Christian, the sheep and the goats, those who are going on to glory and those who are going to perdition. That is a kind of first judgment, a basic judgment which establishes the great dividing line between those who belong to God and those who do not. That is clearly taught everywhere in Scripture from beginning to end. That is the judgment which determines and settles man’s final destiny, his eternal condition, whether he is to be in heaven or in hell and the deciding factor of course is those who are found in Christ and those who are not.

But that is not the only judgment which is taught in the Scriptures; there is a second, which I would call the judgment to which we are subject as God’s children, and because we are God’s children.

In order to understand this we should read 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul expounds the doctrine concerning the Communion Service. He says, ‘Who ever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body’ (verses 27–29). Then—‘For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep (which means ‘many have died’). For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world’ (verses 30–32).

That is an important and significant statement. It indicates clearly that God judges His children in this way, that if we are guilty of sin, or of wrong living, we are likely to be punished by Him. The punishment, says Paul, may take the form of sickness or illness. There are those who are sick and ill because of their wrong living. It does not mean of necessity that God has sent sickness upon them, but it probably means that God withholds His protection from them and allows the devil to attack them with illness.

You have the same statement in the same Epistle where he talks about handing a man over to Satan in order that he may correct him in that way (chapter 5). It is a most serious and important doctrine. Indeed, Paul goes further and says that some of those Corinthians had died because of their wrong living; judgment had come upon them in that way. He is talking of the judgment of God, and therefore we can interpret it, that God allows these people to be removed because of their refusal to judge themselves and to repent and turn back to God.

His exhortation is that we should examine ourselves, we should judge ourselves and condemn that which is wrong in ourselves in order that we may escape this other judgment. So it is very wrong for the Christian to skip lightly through life saying that he believes in the Lord Jesus Christ and that therefore judgment has nothing to do with him, and all is well. Not at all; we must walk carefully and circumspectly, we must examine ourselves and search ourselves lest this kind of judgment descend upon us.

All this is confirmed in Hebrews 12, where the doctrine is put in this form: ‘Whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives.’ The argument at that point is designed to comfort and encourage those Hebrew Christians in the difficult times through which they were passing. It is this: We must be careful to look at trials in the right way. In a sense a Christian ought to be more frightened if nothing ever goes wrong with him in this world than if things do go wrong, because ‘whom the Lord loves he chastens’.

He is bringing His sons, His children, to perfection, and He therefore disciplines them in this world. He judges their sins and their blemishes in this world in order to prepare them for the glory. Those who are not saints—well, they seem to flourish. You find the same thing again in Psalm 73, where we find the Psalmist very perplexed by this fact. He says: ‘I do not understand God’s ways. Look at those ungodly, evil people. Their eyes stand out with fatness; there are no bands in their death; they always seem to be flourishing. Verily I have washed my hands in vain.’ But he came to see that this way of thinking was very wrong, for it was viewing the life of the ungodly only in this world. They may have their enjoyment in this life; but that is all they get, and judgment will suddenly descend upon them, and it will be final and eternal.

God judges His people in this world in order to spare them from that. ‘If we judge ourselves,’ says Paul, ‘we shall not be condemned with the world.’ That, then, is the second way of looking at judgment, and it is a very important way. We are all along under the eye of God, and God is watching our lives and judging our sinfulness, all for our benefit. We do the same thing with our children right? We telling them, “this punishment is for…what??? Your own good.”

There’s another kind of judgment taught in scripture, the judgment of reward. Whether that’s a proper title to call it or not I’m not 100% sure but there is a judgment for God’s people after death that is very clearly taught in scripture. You find it in Romans 14 where he says, ‘We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.’ Do not judge another man or another man’s servant about these questions of observing particular days, and eating particular meats, and so on, says the apostle, for every man will have to bear his own judgment, and is responsible to God—‘for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ’.

You have exactly the same thing in the Corinthian Epistles. There is the passage in 1 Corinthians 3 where he says: ‘Every man’s work shall be made manifest’ and ‘the day shall declare it’. Whatever a man has built upon the foundation—gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble—it will all be judged by fire. Some of it will be entirely destroyed, the wood, hay, stubble, etc., but the man himself shall be saved, ‘yet so as by fire’. But it all indicates a judgment, a judgment of our work since we have become Christian, and, particularly in this passage, of course, the preaching of the gospel and the work of ministers in the Church.

Then, in 2 Corinthians 5, the judgment is clearly not only for ministers but for all—‘For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.’ ‘Knowing therefore’, says Paul, ‘the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.’ That is not addressed to unbelievers; it is addressed to Christian believers.

Christian believers will have to appear before this judgment seat of Christ, and there we shall be judged according to what we have done in the body, whether good or bad. This is not to determine our eternal destiny; it is not a judgment which decides whether we go to heaven or to hell. No, we have passed through that, from eternal punishment to eternal glory in Jesus Christ. But it is a judgment which is going to affect what happens to us in the realm of glory. We are not given any further details about this in Scripture, but that there is a judgment of believers is very clearly and specifically taught.

The main point of pointing out these judgments is...Though we are Christians, and are justified by faith, and have an assurance of our salvation, and know we are going to heaven through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are yet subject to this judgment here in this life, and also after this life. Now, the second reason for not judging is...

For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged

We can put this in the form of a principle. The reason for not judging is that by doing so we produce judgment for ourselves, even set the standard of our own judgment. We see this in a very practical way. It’s often said that what a person dishes out is often returned to him right. And we’d say this often is the case. People who have been so careful to scrutinize and examine others, and to talk about minor blemishes in them, are often amazed when those same people judge them. They cannot understand it, but they are being judged by their own yard-stick and their own measure.

Many places in scripture point this out. Romans 2:1, 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. Or even a clearer statement of this is in James 3:1, Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. In other words, if you set yourself up as an authority, if you become a master, if you are thus acting as masters and authorities, remember you will be judged by your own authority; by the very claim you make, you yourself will be judged. In essence it says this, You are setting yourself up as an authority? Very well; that will be the very standard applied to you in your own judgment. This is a great warning for those who desire to go into ministry.

Our Lord puts it here plainly in the words we are considering. We should be very careful, therefore, how we express ourselves. If we sit as an authority in judgment upon others, we have no right to complain if we are judged by that very standard. It is quite fair, it is quite just, and we have no ground whatsoever for complaint.

The last reason our Lord gives us for not judging is...

Why consider the speck in your brothers eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?

If that’s not sarcasm I don’t know what is. Is that not a perfect picture of irony? Ultimately our Lord is teaching us the reason for not judging is we are incapable of judging rightly. We can’t do it. You can’t be concerned about the speck in their eye when a plank is sticking out of yours. You see how ridiculous that is?

He first of all points out that we are not concerned about righteousness and true judgment at all, because if we were, we should deal with it in ourselves. We like to persuade ourselves that we are really concerned about truth and righteousness, and that that is our only interest. We claim that we do not want to be unfair to people, that we do not want to criticize, but that we are really concerned about truth! Ah, says our Lord in effect, if you were really concerned about truth, you would be judging yourself. But you do not judge yourself; therefore your interest is not really in truth. It is a fair argument. If a man claims that his only interest is in righteousness and truth, and not at all in persons and personalities, then he will be as critical of himself as he is of other people.

Then we can take it further and say that He also shows that such people are not concerned about the principles as such but simply about persons. We looked at this last week a little. The spirit of hypercriticism is one which is concerned with personalities rather than with principles. That is the trouble with many of us in this respect. We are really interested in the person we are criticizing, not in the particular subject or principle; and our real desire is to condemn the person, rather than to get rid of the evil that is in the person.

That, of course, at once renders us incapable of true judgment. If there is bias, if there is personal feeling, we are no longer true examiners. Even the law recognizes this. If it can be proved that there is some connection between any member of a jury and the person on trial, that member of the jury can be disqualified. There must be no prejudice, there must be nothing personal; it must be unbiased, objective judgment. The personal element must be entirely excluded before there can be true judgment. If we apply that to our judgment of other people, I fear we shall have to agree with our Lord that we are quite incapable of judgment, because we are so interested in the person or the personality. There is so often an ulterior motive in our judgment; so often we fail to differentiate between the person and his action.

I would say that even further than that our Lord is pointing out in this statement that the plank eyed person is incapable of helping others at all. We claim to be concerned with the persons faults and blemishes…concerned about the speck when there’s a plank sticking out or our eye. It would be quite ridiculous to have a blind person trying to lead another blind person. You ever heard of a blind optometrist? He says that person is a hypocrite, first cast the plank out of your own eye, then you can see clearly to remove the speck from your brothers eye.

So let’s apply this.

If you really want to help others...

and to help to rid them of these blemishes and faults and frailties and imperfections, first of all realize that your spirit and your whole attitude towards others has been wrong. This spirit of judging and hypercriticism that is in you is really like a plank in your eye, contrasted with the little speck in the other person’s eye. ‘You know,’ says our Lord in effect, ‘there is no more terrible form of sin than this judging spirit of which you are guilty. It is like a plank in your eye. The other person may have fallen into immorality, some sin of the flesh, or may be guilty of some little error here and there. But that is nothing but a little speck in the eye when compared with this spirit that is in you, which is like a plank.

He says in other words; ‘face yourself quite honestly and squarely and admit to yourself the truth about yourself.’ How are we to do all this in practice? Read 1 Corinthians 13 every day; read this statement of our Lord’s every day. Examine your attitude towards other people; face the truth about yourself. Take the statements you make about another person; sit down and analyse them, and ask yourself what you really mean. It is a very painful and distressing process. But if we examine ourselves and our judgments and our pronouncements honestly and truly, we are on the high road to getting the plank out of our eye. Then having done that we shall be so humbled that we shall be quite free from the spirit of judgment and hypercriticism.

What a wonderful piece of logic this is! When a man has truly seen himself he never judges anybody else in the wrong way. All his time is taken up in judging himself, in washing his hands and trying to purify himself. This goes against everything the world tells us. There is only one way of getting rid of the spirit of judgment and hypercriticism, and that is to judge and be critical of yourself, and allow the Holy Spirit to convict us of our sins. It humbles us to do so but having done this we get the plank out of our own eyes, we shall be in a fit condition to help the other person, and to get out the little speck that is in someone else’s eye.

Let me just say again, this is a difficult procedure. Just think in keeping with the eye illustration. The eye is the most sensitive organ we have. The moment the finger touches the eye it closes. What is required of us to truly help others is sympathy, patience, calmness, and coolness.

You cannot be a spiritual optometrist until you yourself have clear sight. When we have truly seen ourselves, truly aware of the sinfulness in our own lives, and have addressed this condemning judging spirit that resides in us and have practiced humility, sympathy, generosity, calmness, and coolness then we will be able to speak the truth in love and help another person with a speck in their eye.

As I said last week this sermon on the mount is the most difficult and convicting, and in your face kind of teaching we have in the NT. But thank God for His grace and mercy. How good it is that we can face such a teach as this in light of Calvary’s cross and the shed blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Let us all repent and turn to Christ for deliverance from a judging spirit.