(Matthew 7:1)

One of the more famous episodes in Jesus’ life is the time his temptation when He was fasting in the wilderness.  Many of you probably know this story.  Jesus had not yet begun his public ministry, so he was not well known around the country.  John the Baptist was the famous guy at this point.  Jesus came to John while he was baptizing people in the Jordan River.  John recognized him and at first didn’t want to baptize Jesus asking, “I have need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?” [Matthew 3:14]

After John had baptized Him, Jesus went out in the desert where He was tempted by Satan.  Three different temptations are recorded for us in Matthew.  On the second one Satan employed an interesting tactic.  He took a verse of Scripture and twisted it's meaning so that the way Satan used it was not even close to the intent God had in that verse.  Satan wanted Jesus to act on that verse in a manner totally foreign to what the verse was really saying.

That is a tactic that Satan has passed on very well to the world.  So often, non-Christians will take a Bible verse or phrase, lift it completely out of the Bible context, and use it in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with the original intent or meaning. 

1^st John 4:8 is a good example of this.  The last phrase in this verse is the part that commonly gets misused.  It says, “God is love.”  I actually heard a man use this verse to justify the rampant sexual sin that was part of the “free love” movement sweeping through The United States in the 1970’s.  He said “God is love and we’re just throwing out all the old rules and loving one another.  If everyone did what we do the whole world would be a better place.”

Now for most Christians it would not be hard to refute this misuse of the Biblical phrase “God is love.”  We would point out that true love has rules.  A loving parent would not say, “I just love my little junior so-o-o much that I don’t make any rules for him at all.”  True love sets lots of rules for junior--he can’t play out in the street, he can’t drink the cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink, and so on.  Love and rules are not mutually exclusive.  In fact true love requires rules.

However, sometimes it is harder for us to refute the misuse of certain Bible verses or phrases.  Today’s sermon--by request--tackles one such verse:

Do not judge, or you too will be judged.  Matthew 7:1

This verse could be one of the most abused--and misused--verse in the Bible.  I don’t have any hard data to back this up (it is just a guess on my part), but it seems to me that people that know absolutely nothing about the Bible seem to know this phrase is in the Bible somewhere!  They throw this verse out any time they want to stop anyone from telling them what they should or should not do--what is right and wrong.

I’d even bet that if I asked for a show of hands from anyone who has heard someone misuse this verse just about every hand would go up.  But, then again, maybe not.  Because sometimes Christians have a hard time knowing if this verse is being misused or not.   So maybe you have heard it before, but didn’t really know if they were wrong or you were wrong.

Of all the verses of the Bible that frequently get abused by the world this one seems to throw Christians for a loop the most.  Somebody stops us from what we are saying by shouting out, “You can’t judge me, Christians aren’t supposed to judge.”  And we stumble and stammer because we don’t know what to say.

Are they right?  Am I wrong?  Am I being judgmental?  Am I not supposed to say anything?  Maybe I should just close my mouth and go home. 

Maybe the person making this sermon request had an experience like that.  They put down they wanted to hear a sermon on Matthew 7:1 and in the topic section they wrote: What does it mean to judge someone else?

That is a good question and this is an excellent passage of Scripture to make sure we understand.  Now one thing we know is that if the Scriptures are from God--which we firmly believe they are--then God will not contradict Himself.  He won’t say one thing in one place and say something totally opposite somewhere else.  This fact is very important for us to keep in mind because we see there are certain things that Christians are called upon to judge.

In fact, I think in this particular instance, perhaps the best way to get at what this verse means is to start out by making sure we know what it doesn’t mean.  This doesn’t mean that absolutely every form of judging is wrong.  For instance, would you say it permissible for Christians to become judges in courts of law?  Could a Christian become a circuit court judge or even a Supreme Court judge?  And the obvious answer to that is “Sure.”  That’s not a problem.  God is not prohibiting Christians from becoming involved in our legal system as judges. 

The fact is God commanded the Israelites to set up a court system for judging cases and even gave regulations regarding it.  Judges were revered men of wisdom in Israel.  Keep your place marked here in Matthew and take a quick peek with me at 1^st Corinthians chapter 6.  Follow along as I read the first 6 verses (READ 1-6)

Now there are a lot of different things going on in this passage, but one thing that is clearly obvious is that Christians can and should be involved in judging between matters of dispute.  The point I’m making here is that our verse in Matthew 7 clearly is not a blanket statement intended to outlaw any and all forms of judging for the Christian. 

In fact, even a casual reading of the New Testament brings out at least three areas in which a Christian is commanded to judge.  You are already in the book of 1^st Corinthians, turn over with me to chapter 11.  The Apostle Paul is doing some teaching on the subject of communion and after he finishes giving some specific instructions concerning communion he starts talking about people are really just playing at their Christianity.  They are coming to the church, participating in the fellowship and rituals but they are not taking seriously the need to deal with sin in their life.  But God does take it seriously and if we won’t deal with it then He will bring stuff into our lives to force us to deal with it. 

That what this passage is talking about, follow along as I read verses 27 to 32 (READ).  The number one thing the bible tells us we are to judge is ourselves.  We are supposed to take an honest look at ourselves, at our behavior and practices, and where we fall short, as we indeed will, we are to confess that to God and get our hearts right with Him.  One of the fundamental aspect of communion is that it should be a time of self examination and of judging yourself to keep yourself in tune and in step with God.

So number one we are to judge ourselves.  Number two, we are to judge truth and error in Christian teaching.  Turn back 2 chapters to 1^st Corinthians chapter 10 verse 15 (READ).  Paul is in the middle of some doctrinal teaching and he tells them, “you judge.”  In chapter 14 he is giving some doctrinal teaching about spiritual gifts and the operation and functioning of a church service.  Down in verse 29 he says, “And let two or three prophets speak, and let the others pass judgment.” 

This would be like the preaching and teaching of the church.  Are you supposed to glibly believe everything a preacher says just because he is a preacher?  No way.  The Scriptures expressly tell us to judge what we hear.  If you hear somebody preaching on the TV or radio you are not just to go, “Oh what fine preaching that is.  What a great speaker.”  And then believe everything he tells you just because he is an incredible orator and an articulate spokesman. 

Having a bountiful vocabulary and a splendid grasp of the English language does not mean you always tell the truth.  As we saw last week one of Satan’s favorite ploys is to bring up false teachers.  From almost the very beginning the Christian community has been inundated with them.  The Apostle John wrote: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”  And how do we test for truth and error?  By comparing what we hear to what the Word of God says.

The tiny book of Jude brings this truth out.  Jude wrote: Beloved, while I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.”  He wanted to write a upbeat encouraging letter about how wonderful it is to be saved.  But with the amount of false teaching this church was facing he felt compelled to write to them to contend for the faith.  To contend for the faith you have to judge between truth and error.

Whenever you see the term “the faith” it is referring to the body of Christian teaching, our doctrines.  And notice the verse says it was once for all delivered.  If some guy is preaching claiming to have heard a new thing from God and it contradicts or goes beyond what we already have we can know it is false.  Furthermore, as Christians we have the obligation to stand for the truth.

If someone says, “Well I just believe everybody will end up in heaven because God is a God of love” I am not judging them if I say to them “No.  You are wrong.  Only those who believe in Jesus Christ will enter heaven.”   That is not being judgmental.  I‘m not the one who made it up.  Jesus is the One who said, “I am the, the truth and the life, no one comes unto the Father but by Me.”    

So we are commanded to judge ourselves, to judge truth and error and, third, to judge between right and wrong, that is sin.  Jesus said in Matthew 18:15, “If your brother sins, go and reprove him in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.”   Then he follows that up with more instructions on what to do in case he refuses to listen to you.  You can’t follow these instructions of Jesus unless you judge sin. 

Ephesians 5:11 and following says, “And do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them; for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light.”  As Christians we are suppose to make a distinction between right and wrong and not be afraid to expose the wrong. 

Now I have preached on these verses before and I need to remind you that there is a right and wrong way to go about exposing sin.  We are not to run up to everybody we see doing wrong and shout, “You dirty rotten sinner, you’re going to go straight to hell where you will sizzle like a French fry.”  That’s not the right way to do it.  And we do need to learn the right way to confront sin, but that’s for another time, another sermon; the point for today is that God does expect us to judge sin.

Let’s say I am having a conversation with a homosexual who is trying to defend their lifestyle choice.  And I say, “The Bible says homosexuality is wrong.”  And they come back and say, “You can’t judge me.”  What do I do?  Basically I can say “Hey!  Don’t get mad at me.  I didn’t make the rules.  Take it up with God.”

Now, I could say a lot more about that, but we need to keep moving on.  Flip back now to Matthew 7, what exactly does Jesus mean when He says do not judge.  Well, as usual, the context is what helps us.  In this case both the immediate context and the larger context are important to correctly understanding what Jesus said.

Lets read the immediate context starting at verse 1 (READ 1-4).  The immediate context lets us know that the person doing the judging that Jesus is condemning is someone who had an obvious problem in his/her life.  But they chose to ignore that problem and instead were highlighting the problems in another’s life. 

The word log is the word used for the large supporting crossbeam in a building.  We would call it a girder.  Speck would be used of a piece of sawdust or something small like that.  Now we need to make sure we understand Jesus’ illustration.  Jesus is not saying one person has a big, major sin while the other has some small, inconsequential sin.  If you know the Bible you know there is no such thing as an inconsequential sin.

Have you ever had a speck in your eye?  It’s a big problem.  It hurts and it’s irritating.  Everything else in life comes to a screeching halt until you get it taken care of.  But sometimes specks can be hard to see.  Sometimes you have to search and search before you can find it.

That is the point Jesus is making.  The beam is an obvious problem that is visible to everybody while the speck may take a great deal of searching to find.  So the judging he is condemning is the person who walks around ignoring this obvious sin his own life while meticulously searching for some fault in another’s life.

The larger context brings this out even more.  These verses are part of the Sermon on the Mount.  A main theme of this sermon can be found in chapter 5 verse 20 (READ). 

This sermon is comparing the religion that the scribes and Pharisees taught versus what God really wants.  All throughout this message Jesus says don’t listen to what they say or watch what they do, they’re missing the point.  They are hypocrites.  This is how God wants us to worship Him.

So when we come up to this section on judging that same theme is being presented.  The Pharisees were notorious for walking around pretending that their own lives were perfect while they sought out and harshly condemned without any mercy the faults of others. 

Jesus was saying don’t do that.  Don’t walk around as a holier than thou, superior, self-righteous judge of others.  If you do that then you can expect to be judged in the same way. 

Does that mean we never confront sin or make a judgment between right and wrong?  Of course not!  As we have already seen God calls us to do that.  But there is a specific way we are to approach it.  Look at verse 5 in chapter 7 (READ). 

Removing the log in your eye doesn’t mean you are perfect.  It means you are dealing with the sin that is in your own life.  Dealing with your own sin puts you in a humble position.  And only in humility are we ready to confront sin in another.  Perhaps Galatians 6:1 puts it best, (READ).

The kind of judging of sin God wants is not harsh, unmerciful condemnation, but rather the kind that in humility is gentle and leads to restoration.