Good Judgment #1

Kingdom People - The Sermon on the Mount  •  Sermon  •  Submitted
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Introduction & Series Review

<<PRAY>>
Series review
Beatitudes -
Calling to be salt & light
Jesus - came not to abolish the Law & the Prophets but to fulfill them
Pharisees had emptied the Law of its meaning, but Jesus filled it back up
Fulfilled the Law by His own obedience to it, and by fulfilling its promises by redeeming the world
Ch 6 - called His Kingdom People away from the hypocritical religion of the Pharisees, to seek treasure in heaven rather than praise from men.
Chapter 6 ended with a call not to be anxious, but to trust in the goodness of God & to seek His Kingdom.
Text intro
And now, we turn to Matthew 7, and right off the bat, we’re hit with one of the most misunderstood verses in the whole Sermon on the Mount. “Judge not, that you be not judged.” If you ask people unfamiliar with the Bible what that verse means, they would tell you that it means nobody should judge other people’s behavior. The verse is often used like a weapon against attempts to call people to genuine repentance and faith in Christ. Often, it’s coupled with an accusatory question: “Who are you to judge? Judge not, that you be not judged.”
But the only way to come to that misunderstanding of Matthew 7:1 is to completely ignore everything else that Jesus teaches, including the immediate context here.
Now, I don’t think that people usually misunderstand Matthew 7:1 intentionally. Most of the time, the mistake comes from the fact that people don’t read the context or seek to understand Jesus in His own words. The cure to misunderstanding Scripture is reading more of it, with a heart set on understanding it as it is. And that will lead us, naturally, to consider the context of Matthew 7:1.
There are some key pieces that help us grasp what’s happening here. The first is the word “hypocrite” in verse 5. You might remember that the word came up repeatedly in chapter 6 - Jesus wanted us to recognize and distinguish between the hypocritical religion that gives, and prays, and fasts in order to gain clout with others, and the sincere faith that seeks the Kingdom of God and His righteousness through Jesus Christ. Don’t be like the hypocrites, he said. Seek the precious treasures laid up in heaven instead of the disappointing and spiritually-worthless trinkets of hypocritical religion.
The word “hypocrite” here in verse 5 tells us that Jesus hasn’t finished diagnosing the problem.
A bit later in vv13-14, Jesus tells us to enter by the narrow gate that leads to life rather than the wide, easy, well-traveled gate that leads to destruction. He tells us to recognize the difference between true and false prophets, and avoid the false ones. He warns us in verses 21-23 that there will be a division between true and false Christians in the judgment, and the entire Sermon on the Mount ends with a parable that calls us to differentiate between the wisdom of hearing & doing Christ’s words, and the life-destructive folly of hearing & not doing Christ’s words.
One common theme in all these passages is the necessity of discernment, distinguishing between wisdom and foolishness, between right and wrong, between good and evil. In other words, judgment. Judge not, Jesus says in verse 1, and the context demands we understand exactly what kind of judgment is off-limits to us. And in order to understand that, we have to make - that’s right - a judgment.
So we’re going to look at verses 1-5 today, and seek to honor Jesus Christ, our Judge, with good judgment.
Q: What kind of judgment must we avoid?

I. Judgment that backfires (vv1-2)

<<READ vv1-2>>
EXPLAIN:
The very first thing we see here is that Jesus gives a reason not to judge in verse 1, and an elaboration in verse 2. The reason He gives for us not to judge is “that you not be judged.”
Simply put, avoid this kind of judging so you can avoid being judged. The elaboration in verse 2 helps unpack this for us. It’s called justice, and it’s downright scary apart from the grace of God in Christ.
Why? When we judge, we show that we believe judgment is appropriate - all our society’s claimed tolerance aside, when it comes down to it, we have no problem separating the sheep and goats in our own minds.
In Daniel 5, King Belshazzar, a wicked Chaldean king, holds a great feast with a thousand of his closest friends, and when he tastes the wine brought out for the occasion, something clicks in his mind & he decides to take the sacred vessels that Nebuchadnezzar had robbed from the Temple of God in Jerusalem, and use them for his guests. It was a climactic moment for the king - he intended to demonstrate his greatness over the God of Israel by demoting these sacred items to the status of Solo cups. And at that very moment, the fingers of a heavenly hand inscribed letters into the wall before him declaring that Belshazzar had been weighed in the balance and found wanting, and that very night, Belshazzar was killed.
The irony of our own judgment is that we weigh others in the scales, as though our opinion were the one that mattered. If we thought all judgment was inappropriate, we wouldn’t do it. Instead, we judge others because we think of ourselves as good judges.
But when you measure someone up, your measuring stick invites the same treatment. First of all, judgment invites judgment from others, but more importantly, Jesus wants us to remember that God will judge us, and His judgment will perfectly apply the standards we so imperfectly use on others.
The judgment we are to avoid isn’t merely differentiating between right and wrong; this is the judgment of condemnation and rejection. You might call it “playing the judge.” The Apostle Paul probably had these words of Jesus in mind when he wrote
Romans 2:1–5 ESV
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. 2 We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. 3 Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? 4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? 5 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
And here we arrive at the stinger for verses 1-2. This is judgment that backfires. It’s boomerang justice.
Earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5:6, Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy,” and in Matthew 6:14, He said “If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” This is the flip-side, as He says in Matthew 6:15 - “but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Justice without mercy is not good news for any of us.
We could summarize Matthew 7:1-2 as the opposite of the Beatitude: “Woe to the judgmental, for they shall be judged.”
There are people listening to this right now who think that this has no relevance for them, that they’re not judgmental, when they’ve divided up their entire world like sheep and goats, and have decided they have no obligation, no call, no loyalty, no concern for vast swaths of humanity.
So here’s a few questions to help us see whose problem this judgment thing really is:
Is there a political position that makes you so angry you can’t see the other person as a beautiful creation made in the image of God and desperately needing Jesus?
Be honest with yourself - what does someone have to look like for you to write them off at a glance?
How about this: How many people have you judged as unworthy of the hassle of telling them about Jesus? Or even of inviting them to church, where they would hear about Him?
But there’s more to Jesus’s teaching that will help us identify the problem within us and see the solution

II. Help that actually hurts (vv3-4)

In verse 3, Jesus asks a question: Why do you do this ridiculous thing? The word picture is cartoonish: Why do you see the speck - these are both carpentry terms, by the way, a speck of sawdust or a tiny sliver on the one hand, and a beam, like the main beam of a house, on the other. Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye, but the whole time, a beam is sticking out of yours?
Jesus doesn’t just tell us that this is what we’re like, by the way. The word “Why” is important - we can’t skip over it. Jesus wants us to answer that question.
Why do you do this?
First, consider what it takes to see the speck. You see the speck because you’re looking for faults in others. You would not see the speck if you didn’t want to.
Second, consider what it takes not to notice the beam. You can’t fail to notice the beam unless you don’t want to see the beam.
Third, think about the implication - it is impossible to remove the speck in your current condition. This is help that hurts - as Jesus says in verse 5, you can’t even see clearly.
These are metaphors for the sins we ignore in ourselves but look for in others. Why do we do this? The answer comes in Jesus’s own words in the next verse.
This time, the question is “HOW” - How can you say to that brother, “Come here, let me help you with that,” when you’ve got the log there in your eye?
The answer is that we shouldn’t say it, but we find no trouble saying it. How do we say it? Quite easily, because...
and this is going to hurt...
we don’t actually care about the fault, or the sin, nearly as much as we say we do.
And this is why verse 5 begins with that word again - “Hypocrite.”
The hypocrite says, “Let me help you remove that speck,” in order to appear helpful. As though he cares about the other person’s eye.
Hypocritical judgment claims to care about justice, claims to care about right and wrong, claims to want to right the wrongs in the world, and the wrongs in others, but that log sticking out of your eye is proof that you don’t.
So what do you care about?
Back in chapter 6, the primary goal of the hypocrite was self-aggrandizement. Praise from others. What the hypocrite needs most is the humbling experience of realizing that all his public religion does him no good before God, that all his claims to be righteous are actually frauds. The hypocrite, more than anything else, needs rescue from judgment.
He needs to notice the log.
And here’s where the word picture really becomes important. Consider the speck - the fault you can see in another. What kinds of specks can you see in someone else?
Maybe you see an anger problem bubble to the surface. You diagnose this angry person based on what you see. The angry outburst that you see is a speck.
What about pride? Do you hear someone boasting and make judgments about them? How about someone’s drug problem, or sexual immorality?
These are specks. Not because they are unimportant. Every sin is an act of rebellion against God, and the wages of sin is death.
But in someone else, all you get to see is the surface. Only God can look at another man or woman’s heart.
But remember what the Pharisees had done with God’s Law. They ended up with a system that emptied the Law of its meaning and then claimed to keep it. Their own sins were much deeper than the surface.
Think for a moment about your own life and your heart. What percentage of the actual sins you commit are on the surface, where someone else can see? And how much is the morass of evil that you successfully keep out of the public eye?
Do you harbor unspoken hurtful things towards others? Do you cover your tracks to avoid getting caught lying? Do you envy the success of someone else? Do you have a lust-filled imagination? Are you beset by some recurring temptation? What about greed? How about this: Where have you put yourself before others this week, even if they didn’t know it?
There’s your log.
If we could peer into one another’s hearts with the perception that God has, we would be so offended that we’d never talk to anybody peacefully again. We’d judge one another yet again. And that’s the sad irony. Even if we could see others’ hearts, we’d still judge them wrongly, and here’s why:
Because we’d still have that log in our own eyes, that deep, indwelling sin. The only solution is the one that comes in verse 5:

III. Judgment that heals (v5)

True self-judgment is the only thing that can help us here. It’s the first type of Good Judgment that Jesus gives in chapter 7. He says,
“You hypocrite! First take the log out of your own eye, and then you’ll see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”
Notice that sin clouds judgment. You can’t see clearly with a log in your eye. But Jesus doesn’t tell us to stop trying to help others remove the speck from their eyes. Instead, He says we’ve got to deal with the log.
So we’ve got to notice it and then take it out - and this is harder than it seems, because, as :
Jeremiah 17:9 ESV
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
Even when we stare straight at our own hearts, we can’t see the depth of sin there, and we can’t remove it on our own.
The process of removing sin and becoming more like Christ is called sanctification. And we’re not only commanded to be like Christ, we’re also promised we will be made like Him.
Ephesians 4:15 ESV
15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,
And in
Romans 8:29 ESV
29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
The calling to grow up into Christ’s likeness is every Christian’s mission. But it’s also a promise - a pre-destined guarantee.
You can see it in Jesus’s words in John 15, where Jesus sanctification is likened to bearing fruit. He says:
John 15:5 ESV
5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
Christ Himself is the source of the fruit He has called us to produce! He says to take out the log from your own eye. And He is the one who empowers you to do it.
APPLY: So let’s apply His words to ourselves with judgment that heals:
Start by hearing the words, “You hypocrite” and taking them to heart. Ask the LORD to show you where you have judged hypocritically. Where have I sat in judgment of another this week? Maybe I haven’t actively condemned someone else, but maybe I’ve simply written them off. Where have I looked for faults in another? <<pause>>
And where have I ignored faults in myself? Or denied them? <<pause>>
Now, ask the Father to conform you to the image of His Son. Ask Him to make you more like Christ. Ask Him to help you flee not only from outward sins, but from inward ones. That He would teach you to love His ways, to be transformed by the renewal of your mind, to be freed from the patterns of sin that cloud your judgment.
And here’s the difficult part: You cannot help others until you begin to see progress in yourself. That’s the key in verse 5, right?
There’s an old joke about the kid who wants to quit school. He’s sick and tired of it, and so he tells his mom he’s not going back. She says, “You’ve only got a 5th grade education. What will you do for a living?” And without skipping a beat, the kids says, “Teach 4th grade.”
A brand-new Christian can be an incredible evangelist. Someone with new freedom from a besetting sin can be an encouragement to others. But we are not immediately equipped for any and every task in the Christian life. Paul specifically says that recent converts must not be set apart as elders in the Church in 1 Timothy 3:6, because he may become arrogant and fall into the condemnation of the devil.
It is only after the log is removed that we can see clearly to help our brother remove the speck in his eye. But that is the goal.

Conclusion

And that brings us back to the idea of good judgment, and the proof that we are called to judge, in a related but different way than Jesus forbids in verse 1.
Instead of the judgment of condemnation, which pretends to be concerned about sin, verse 5 says that we do aim to help others remove the speck in their eye. The anger issue we see in them, the substance abuse or the immorality, or whatever else it is, when we can see clearly, we will be able to help them.
Clarity comes when we see them the way Jesus sees them. And the way He sees us. Not as competitors, not as strangers, not as enemies, not as non-entities, or objects, or means to an end, but as precious, made in the image of God, in need of redemption.
Early in the Sermon on the Mount series, when we were looking at the Beatitudes, we said that to be blessed is to be promised the saving presence of God. The first beatitude says “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.” You take the log out of your eye when you look at yourself and say, “I’m poor in spirit. Even today, my only hope is that another has paid my debts.”
“Blessed are those who mourn,” they mourn for sin and its effects, recognizing their need of a savior who is powerful enough to redeem them and forgive their sins.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Kingdom People hunger and thirst for righteousness because they recognize they don’t have it. They need the righteousness of God that is a gift in Christ Jesus.
The hypocrite came to his brother and said, “Let me remove that speck from your eye,” not out of love for the brother or concern for sin, but for self-aggrandizement. To “play the judge.”
The poor in spirit, hungering for righteousness, finding satisfaction in Jesus, comes to his brother for a very different reason. Not to condemn, but to bring salvation. He can see to remove the speck in his brother’s eye because he knows the only way it can be done is to bring his brother to Jesus.
Good judgment is motivated by love. As Christ has loved you, so you must love your brother.
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