Speck Hunting 101

This week we get to discuss one of the most quoted Bible verses in our day. “Judge not, and you will not be judged...” Growing up, not really in church, I still had heard of John 3:16. I think our kids now probably have heard of Luke 6:37 (or Matthew 7:1).

This verse is frequently used whenever Christians make statements about certain things in our culture. If you’ve got a friend that is doing things that you know the Bible says not to do, should you mention it? Is it judging to say that something is wrong? Is it judging to say that someone is making a bad decision in their life?

Jesus also said in John 7:24

John 7:24 ESV

Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”

So there has to be some kind of judging that is acceptable. But what is it? What does that look like? And more importantly for our time this morning what is Jesus talking about? What kind of judging or condemning is he forbidding in this passage? I think you know what it looks like if you’ve been on the receiving end of it. But it’s always a bit harder to see in ourselves.

So let’s hear what Jesus has to say to us:

Luke 6:37-42

A woman was waiting at an airport one night. With several long hours before her flight. She hunted for a book in the airport shop, Bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.

She was engrossed in her book, but happened to see, That the man beside her, as bold as could be, Grabbed a cookie or two from the bag between, Which she tried to ignore, to avoid a scene.

She read, munched cookies, and watched the clock, As the gutsy “cookie thief!” diminished her stock. She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by, Thinking, “If I wasn’t so nice, I’d blacken his eye!”

With each cookie she took, he took one, too. When only one was left, she wondered what he’d do. With a smile on his face and a nervous laugh, He took the last cookie and broke it in half.

He offered her half, as he ate the other. She snatched it from him and thought, “Oh brother, This guy has some nerve, and he’s also rude, Why, he didn’t even show any gratitude!”

She had never known when she had been so galled, And sighed with relief when her flight was called. She gathered her belongings and headed for the gate, Refusing to look back at the “thieving ingrate.”

She boarded the plane and sank in her seat, Then sought her book, which was almost complete. As she reached in her baggage, she gasped with surprise. There was her bag of cookies in front of her eyes!

“If mine are here,” she moaned with despair, “Then the others were his and he tried to share!” Too late to apologize, she realized with grief, That she was the rude one, the ingrate, the thief!

I think this little poem really gets at the heart of what is going on here in this text. Put yourself in her mind as she is thinking about this bold cookie thief. She’s probably putting together an entire story about the guy and his childhood. She’s thinking about how his parents raised him so poorly, she’s looking at everything about the man and building a case against him, what an ingrate. What a horrible person this is who is stealing my cookies....but then she realizes that it was actually SHE who was stealing his cookies....and suddenly her eyesight is improved. She sees him different....but notice what she doesn’t do. She doesn’t start thinking about her own upbringing, she doesn’t fill out her story, she doesn’t assign ill-motives, it was a mistake, it was an error, it wasn’t her character that was causing her to do this....she hadn’t even considered that with this cookie thief…it was clear to her that this guy had a massive character flaw and she was gracious for not socking him in the jaw right then and there.

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These verses are actually in Matthew as well…but they are a little different. See verse 39-40. Jesus has them in the context of persecution. He’s saying a student isn’t about his teacher—if I suffer, you are going to suffer too. But it’s doing something different here in Luke. It’s tying this illustration of Mr. Plankeye with these commands in verse 37-38. Somehow this blind man following a blind leader and being fully trained like your teacher is connected with judging. So what is that connection?

I believe it’s this, just as in so many other places in this section, Jesus is outlining two options. Be narrow and judgmental or be a gracious giver. Look at the structure of verses 37-38.

Judge not. Condemn not. Don’t do these things. Both of those negative. Then you have positives…do this. Forgive. Give. And I think this is a bit of a poetic device. What you have here is Condemning corresponding with forgiving and judging corresponding with giving. It’s kind of like the put off and put on that we see in other places in the NT. Don’t lie anymore—tell the truth.

So what is he saying NOT to do? And what is he saying to do?

Don’t judge. Don’t condemn. You see this in the cookie lady. She was taking facts…this guy is jacking my cookies. She’s assuming she has all the information. This guy is stealing my cookies. That’s the judgment. And then she moves into the condemning territory… “this guy is a no good dirty thieving, cookie stealer”. Do you see that?

I like how Geoff Thomas explains this…he uses one of those somewhat uncommon nerd words:

Jesus is condemning censoriousness. I am referring to harsh judgments, evident in a man who is a fault-finder. He is negative and destructive towards other people, nit-picking, living on their failings. He is a man who gathers others to him in condemning those who are the targets of his disapproval. He often absolutises the behaviour of a particular person as the cause of the congregation’s [problems]. If only that person could be controlled, or totally changed, or removed, Ah . . . then the church might be blessed. That is his spirit. The censorious man will put the worst possible construction on his opponent’s motives; he pours cold water on his attainments; he is ungenerous towards his mistakes.

Don’t be that person. That’s what Jesus is saying. But instead be the guy who is quick to forgive an offense. Be the guy who is a lavish giver. Do you find it interesting that the antidote—or rather the opposite of judging is to be a giver?

But it really isn’t that strange if you think about it. We human can be incredibly perceptive. We make all kinds of judgments—often snap judgments—many times they are wrong. But think about this with me. If I’m of the spirit that I want to gain mastery over you, I want to be better than you, I want to defeat you, I want to judge you, censure you, condemn you…and I use those powers that God has given me—those powers of discernment…why I can find something wrong with you. I can nit-pick. I can find something to exploit…some weakness to magnify.

But what happens if I have a heart to give. What if I am of a different disposition and I’m not looking at you shifty-eyed and thinking, “how can I best this fella....or how can I protect myself from this tyrant…or how can I make sure this cat doesn’t gain mastery over me...” if I drop that posture and instead start thinking, “what strength of his can I exploit and really encourage him and make him look good? How can I bless this person? And you start looking at this guys needs, his deficiencies, even his failures…maybe even his sin against you…and you start thinking how can I build this cat up. How can I give to him in such a way that it’ll really communicate…to really bless him…to really just overwhelm him with God’s kindness?

Do you see the difference? And now notice verse 38. Here you have that lengthy explanation of “good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running together…will be put into your lap.” What in the world is this talking about?

I’m not very familiar with the way people get and receive grain…so naturally I had to look this up. But here goes:

The seller crouches on the ground with the measure between his legs. First of all he fills the measure three-quarters full and gives it a good shake with a rotatory motion to make the grains settle down. Then he fills the measure to the top and gives it another shake. Next he presses the corn together strongly with both hands. Finally he heaps it into a cone, tapping it carefully to press the grains together; from time to time he bores a hole in the cone and pours a few more grains into it, until there is literally no more room for a single grain. In this way, the purchaser is guaranteed an absolutely full measure; it cannot hold more.

What does that mean? It means that God’s generosity to you is going to blow you away. You treat other people this way and God is going to make sure you are taken care of---and it may not be this side of glory, I think that might be obvious from the context. Sometimes we bless and give and it drains us and we get absolutely nothing—look at Jesus exhausted the several times in his ministry. But it was the joy set before Him.

This is the point. There won’t be a single soul in heaven looking back upon your life and thinking, “Man, I really wish that I would have been more judgmental. I should have been so much harsher to these people. I didn’t condemn nearly enough people.” You aren’t going to regret giving. You aren’t going to regret forgiving. Even if you erred on that side (not to the detriment of another human—we aren’t talking about that) but you aren’t going to give something and then be standing before Almighty God and think, I really wish I hadn’t given away that Bo Jackson rookie card to my buddy Leonard in 3rd grade.

Why? Because the measure you use it will be measured back to you.

Imagine that you had a tape recorder—or your phone in your pocket all week long—and it was hitting record. (Some of y’all are thinking...maybe we could just say that the government gives you that days recording). And as we play back that week and we see how you judged and condemned, how you forgave and gave. What measure you used with other people. Was it harsh? Was it stern?

And listen we do tend to do this in some way. We tend to measure people by the things we ourselves value. If you don’t care much about baseball you aren’t going to give me lots of favorable marks if I make a diving stop for a ball. It’s not going to weigh much. If you value cleanliness you’re probably going to be upset that after the game I stay in my dirty clothes for a bit too long. And if you value delusion you’re going to really give me high marks here for thinking I could still make a diving stop.

But the thing isn’t so much about WHAT we are judging…though that matters…that needs to be accurate too. But it’s about the measure you use. Are you good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over in your condemnation…in your expectations…abundant in your criticisms? Or are you that way with your giving? That’s what Jesus is asking us here.

And then, again as I said earlier we have these couple of verses here that aren’t here in Matthew. So what is Luke doing? Let’s hold onto that question a little longer…Look at the illustration Jesus uses in verse 41 and 42.

Here you have a guy with a huge massive board sticking out of his eye ball and thinking…dude, you have a speck in your eye. I need to get that out of there.

What is he saying here? I’m noticing little things in your life and ignoring big things in my own. Nobody wants you to be trying to get that speck out when you have a 2x4 in your own eye. First, remove that plank—and with the price of wood sell it for a couple thousand dollars—and then you can start getting that speck out of your brothers eye.

A couple of observations for us here. First, do you notice that the key thing here is what you are seeing. You don’t NOTICE the log in your own eye. Don’t even notice. You are blind to it. You have zero clue that you have a massive log in your own eye.

What’s going on here? How does that happen. Well, I think trauma and pain and grief can sometimes put us in this spot. It can really distort the way we view the world—but we don’t even know it. It’s a massive log but we’ve lived in this mess for so long that we can’t even see it.

But pride and tradition play a role in this too. We need to be the most concerned with the things that are assumed and the things we don’t even notice. And that’s why sometimes we get really angry when people point out some of these things.

You ever have this with one of those really bad cuts or burns. You cut yourself and your thinking…okay…that’s maybe going to leave a mark. But it doesn’t really hurt too terribly bad quite yet. And then you look down and you notice it…you see it…and all of a sudden it starts hurting about a million times more. Your body starts going into shock. Oh this is a serious one…uh oh…all hands on deck. That’s why we get mad sometimes when people shine a spotlight on something that is obvious to everyone else in the room…but we suddenly start to notice it…we start to feel it…and we get upset.

But pride and tradition will put us in a spot where we assume that we have things all figured out and we can’t hear or see another side of an argument…we look at the specks and miss our log.

But I’d have you also notice that this is a believer talking to another believer. And it seems that he is actually trying to be helpful. And I think many critics…even those who can be overly critical…are like this. I think many times they may not even realize that this is happening. (remember they can’t see the log).

The problem isn’t that this guy should necessarily ignore the speck. He’s not necessarily being a meanie pants. He may be really trying to help. And those little specks in your eye ARE annoying. But the problem is that I’m not going to trust the guy with a plank in his eye ball to remove the speck in mine. It’s clear that this person doesn’t actually know how to take care of eye-issues.

You can’t see clearly. And so you aren’t going to be able to accurately assess what is going on in my life. You can see the speck—but there isn’t any way that you can know the full story, nor can you even know the pain of removal or any of that…if you haven’t walked that journey yourself.

Secondly, if you have a big log sticking out of your eye…there isn’t any way that you can actually get close enough to remove that thing. Removing a speck from someone’s eye demands a relationship. It demands a relational context to reach over and stick your finger in somebody else’s eyeball to help them remove something. And it’s impossible to be in that kind of relationship with somebody if you can’t deal with your own log…you can’t ever get close enough to anybody else.

So what is the solution? I see three things in this text. Don’t get nervous…that wasn’t the sermon introduction.

1. Take the log out. Inspect yourself first. That’s what has to happen....Sinners Say I Do

2. Believe that discernment has hope as the foundation and not suspicion. I think if we get this backwards we are going to be horribly judgmental people and think that we’ve got the gift of discernment…but really we’re just speck hunters.

In your mind is discernment synonymous with suspicion or more like a treasure hunter who tears up an island because he knows that it’s there? I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the foundation of discernment isn’t suspicion but hope.

Consider the early church. In Acts 11 we read of how the good news of Jesus made impact in the Gentile hub of Antioch. It was an unprecedented thing. A few no-name followers of Jesus took the gospel to people with no foundation of belief (no Jewish background) and it created such a stir that they had to develop a new class of people; namely, Christians. It was here that they were first called Christians because this was the first time that Jew and Gentile were together in the same church. It blew up their worldview. It used to be Jew/Gentile. Now it’s something totally different.

The church in Jerusalem was a bit unsettled by this. Their whole way of viewing the world was through that Jew/Gentile lens. If a Gentile wanted to become a follower of God, that was cool and they’d welcome it so long as they became as the Jews. But this is something altogether different. This isn’t making Gentiles into Jews. This is making Jews and Gentiles into something totally different. And so they needed to check this thing out that God was doing. Is it legit? They knew they needed to be discerning and wise about this thing.

Here is my question for you. What kind of person do you send in order to figure this thing out? What kind of “discernment ministry” do you task with trying to see if it really is God at work here? Do you pick the inflexible and no-nonsense guy who sees everything in black and white? Isn’t that what it means to have the gift of discernment? Isn’t discernment the ability to find the land-mines and untruths and slippery slopes in a fellas argument?

So why’d they send Barnabas?

Barnabas is an encourager. That’s a guy who can find a rose in a field of land-mines. Not a guy who can find a land-mine in a field of roses.

I’ll tell you why they sent Barnabas. They sent Barnabas because the foundation of Christian discernment is hope and not suspicion. Love rejoices at the truth. You know what that means? It means that when you go on a fact finding mission you’re looking for truth. And when you find it, even if just in a spark, you rejoice.

I’m talking about foundations here. Starting points. I’m convinced that we’ve gotten this wrong and because of it the gift of discernment has now become synonymous with the “gift” of being a jerk. True discernment will spot error. And it’ll call error out. But that’s not the intention of the search.

Think of it this way. Hope-fueled discernment is like a guy with a metal detector out in a field because he has heard reports of a buried treasure. He’s profoundly hopeful. Not skeptical. He wants to find the treasure. And so he keeps digging. All those places where he checked and didn’t find the treasure he is going to call them out. He’ll put flags there so people know treasure isn’t to be found here. Each “miss” is marked with sorrow but tinged with hope. So he keeps on swinging that detector in the hopes of finding treasure.

That’s quite different than the guy who has heard a report of a treasure in a field but he wants to prove all the idiots wrong. He’s skeptical that it’s there. For him, every swing and miss is further evidence that there is no treasure here. He gives up the search must faster than the guy who is hope-fueled. He’ll miss the treasure because he won’t bother digging at the faintest of pings. He knows it isn’t there anyways.

Discernment is vital. Which is why we cannot allow it to be shipwrecked by the dour and inflexible among us. Discernment isn’t the gift which keeps faith-filled and hope-fueled people in check. Discernment belong to such. Let’s not rend what God has united.

Do you see this in our text. Jesus is calling us to have hearts that are searching for opportunities to forgive and to give. You want to go speck hunting make it that…look for little seeds of hope. But you cannot do that if you have a log in your eye. You can’t engage in actual discernment. You can’t actually speak the truth in love. You can’t actually obey Jesus in John 7:24 when talks about making right judgments.

3. Be Taught By Jesus

Now we come back to verses 39-40. In Matthew it’s clear that Jesus is talking about the disciples (it comes right after their calling) and himself as the teacher (it’s in the context of their accusations of Jesus). And so I believe the same is the case here. But Jesus isn’t blind…so what is he doing? He’s doing something similar to what he is going to be doing next week when he says, “you’ll know them by their fruit”.

The Pharisees could strain a gnat and swallow a camel. They were the blind guides. And if you follow them…then you’re going to end up like them. So we ask ourselves these question…are the people that I’m following, that I’m spending my time with, are they like Jesus in this way?

What are my conversations like? When I’m with friends are they mostly about hope and encouragement and trying to find those specks of grace? Am I predominately looking for the grace of God and blessings? Are we talking about “fixing stuff” and when we do are we trying to figure out how to give or how to critique?

What about my television shows, my radio programs, my apps, my news channels, my facebook feed, etc. Are the arguments that I’m listening to fairly representing the other side? Are they modeling how to tear up an opponent or how to find those seeds of grace?

Listen, we put ourselves around those blind guides all the time—logs in eyeballs—then what’s going to happen? We fall into a pit.

But what happens if we follow Jesus? Jesus isn’t looking for thing to nit-pick in you. He is looking for things to celebrate. He is looking for ways to celebrate with you.

A guy struggling through an addiction. He’s celebrating those three clean days…pushing you on to four days next week. That gossip addict…he’s ecstatic about that time you put the phone down and said, “hey, can we talk about something else.” That’s our Jesus. He’s looking to give…and give…and give…and give…and give.

I want to follow him. I want to look more and more like him. But I do suppose if my life is filled with constant criticism of others, a negative condemning spirit, one that isn’t giving, I probably need to start asking some questions about which guide I’m really following. I might be following an angry shadow that I’ve named Jesus but he isn’t the real deal.

You’re going to be like Jesus when you’re fully trained. And being like Jesus here means that we’re going to be givers and forgivers.

And that’s great news…because I have a few logs I probably need him to remove…not to mention the specks. Thankfully the one who was cursed on the tree has swallowed up the curse for my plankeye.