Warnings about Judging

Sermon on the Mount  •  Sermon  •  Submitted
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It is always fun how God drives home the lessons we have been learning, isn’t it?
On Tuesday, right after I preached on worry, I came in to the office to discover that our website and email were down, and that there was a chance we would lose our domain name, which meant we would need to change our website and everything that has our old address on it.
God definitely stretched me through that, and I had to make sure I was not worrying but seeking him first!
We are moving on in our study of the Sermon on the Mount, so go ahead and turn over to Matthew 7:1-6.
Last week’s passage on worry is one of the most comforting passages in the entire Sermon on the Mount.
I hope the warm fuzzies have carried over into this week, because this is perhaps one of the most misunderstood and misquoted passages in the Sermon on the Mount, if not in all of the New Testament.
Dive into verse 1 with me...
This verse has been cherry-picked and has become one of the most commonly used verses by opponents of Christianity today.
Even those who are not openly antagonistic and hateful to Christians still wrestle with it.
Usually, it comes up in response to a Christian taking a stand on a moral issue that the culture has said is okay.
People will often respond, saying things like, “Yeah, but didn’t Jesus say you weren’t supposed to judge?”
As we will see, he did say that. However, like any other verse in the Bible, we need to look at it in context, which is what we are going to do with the remainder of our time together this morning.
When we fill in the context, we will see that Jesus’ words cannot mean that there is never a time for us to speak out against sin, or even that we cannot confront sin in an individual’s life.
Instead, he is speaking out against a particular kind of judging that we are often prone to do.
Go back and read verses 1-6 with me...
Right off the bat, we see that Jesus can’t be telling us that there is never a time when we should notice and address sin in someone else’s life, because that’s exactly what he tells us to do in verses 5 and 6. Later in this chapter, he will tell us to watch out for false teachers, who are wolves in sheep’s clothing. He tells us in 7:16 that we will know them by their fruit, which means we will be able to tell whether they are wolves by examining the way they act and the outcome of what they teach.
Those are all judgment calls that God calls us to make, so “judging others” must not mean that there is never a time for us to call out sin or to evaluate another person’s life.
Looking at the context, then, we see that Jesus is confronting our tendency to judge others without examining ourselves and addressing the sin in our own lives first.
This is that critical, judgmental attitude towards others while we try to justify ourselves and condemn others for not living up to our standards.
This is a very real danger for us in our divided nation right now. We have a tendency to drift to the notion that if someone doesn’t agree with me, they are obviously an idiot and a terrible person.
While it is true that some views are idiotic and some people are terrible, we need to make sure that we are examining our own heart and our own beliefs and our own lives before we start trying to help others see the weaknesses in their own thinking.
We are going to try to flesh this out more as we draw out three warnings about judging others from what Jesus says here.
The first warning that Jesus gives us is...

1) Judge cautiously.

If you and I are going to judge, we need to make sure we do so cautiously.
Read back over verses 1-2.
This is what the Pharisees and the other hypocrites missed. They thought they were doing fine, and that they had checked all the boxes and were doing what they were supposed to do, but as we have seen throughout this series, they were so focused on outward righteousness that they didn’t see that their hearts were still wicked.
That tainted their motives, so they did what they did to impress others and try to impress God, which Jesus has said repeatedly didn’t work.
Since no one could keep up with them on their outward show of righteousness, they looked down on everyone they could.
They put themselves in God’s place, judgmentally condemning people who didn’t live up to the standards they set.
Are we tempted to do the same? If you follow Jesus, your life should look different than those who don’t.
The kingdom focus we cultivate changes everything about how we respond to others, the things we chase after in life, the words we use, the way we plan our lives, everything!
However, none of us is perfectly living like Jesus is our king, and so we need to be incredibly careful with how we respond to those around us whose lives look different than ours.
Why? Because of the warning of verse 2 - God is the ultimate judge, not us.
When we condemn others because their lives don’t look like ours, we need to be sure that we aren’t putting ourselves in God’s place and making judgments that only he can.
As we have said, and as we will see even more as we go through this message, we are called to confront clear sin in other people.
When we do, though, we need to be absolutely certain that these are God’s standards, not ours, and that we recognize God is the one who knows their hearts.
See, we often extend grace to ourselves because we understand our motives and our thoughts and can excuse our actions because we intended to do better.
When we fall into the kind of judgmental attitude Jesus describes, though, we often assume that we know what others are thinking, and it is always bad.
Let me give you an example: Ever sit behind someone at a stoplight and they don’t go when the light turns green? What is your first thought? “This idiot is on his phone and isn’t paying any attention to what is happening around him.”
Have you ever been that person who didn’t go? Usually, when we are the one who missed the light turning, we say, “Oh, well, I know I should have gone, but I was distracted thinking about how sick mom is,” or, “it was a long day at work, and I was preoccupied thinking about all I have to do when I get home.”
Judgmental attitudes assume the worst, and we condemn others based off our standards, not God’s.
Ultimately, God is the judge, so let him do his job! If their motives were wrong, or if they are doing the wrong thing, that is up to him.
Now, what if what we see really does go against God’s standard? What if someone is teaching things about God and life that aren’t true, or what if someone is clearly doing something that the Bible says is wrong?
Part of judging carefully is that we also...

2) Judge yourself first.

Read verses 3-4 again...
Jesus uses hyperbole here, exaggerating his point to drive it home.
He asks why we are concerned about the splinter in someone else’s eye and unconcerned about the beam in our own.
You see someone at church, and they have a splinter in their eye. That’s bad, and that’s uncomfortable, but they aren’t the only one with an issue.
Jesus says you have a beam in your eye.
The idea of “beam” is the central beam or timber that ran through the middle of a house. Think about all those Property Brother’s episodes that talked about having to get an engineered beam to support the weight of the house. That is what is sticking out of your own eye.
He puts it two different ways. In verse 3, he says we are focusing on the splinter in our brother’s eye while blissfully unaware that we have a beam sticking out of our own.
Then, in verse 4, he says we try to help remove the splinter while continuing to ignore the fact that we have our own major issues.
It would be a funny picture if it wasn’t so tragic!
We have a tendency to focus on the sin in other people’s lives and may even try to help them out of it, all the while refusing to acknowledge and address our own sin.
This is a central idea of the passage. We cannot even begin to comment on the sin we see in other’s lives until we first deal with the sin in our own.
This doesn’t mean you have to be perfect and never sin in any way, but it does mean that you need to be living an examined life that regularly and repeatedly allows God to highlight sin in your own heart that you then confess and repent of.
We talked about that back in our discussion of Matthew 6:13 and temptation.
This is especially true when you get concerned about someone you who claims to follow Christ whose life doesn’t line up with what the Bible says.
Once you are confident that you are humbly submitting to God and addressing sin in your own life, only then can you see clearly how to help someone else with sin in theirs.
When we call out sin in others while refusing to address it in ourselves, we are just like the hypocrites Jesus condemned!
We are putting ourselves in God’s place, and we are judging incorrectly, just like the Pharisees did.
Even when we are called to step in and call out sin, our judging cannot look like judgmental condemnation of the legalistic Pharisees.
That’s why our third word of warning this morning is:

3) Judge helpfully.

Look back at verse 5.
Did you notice that key distinction in the kind of judging we are doing?
Our goal is not to judge someone harshly and condemn them; our goal is to help them see the sin in their lives and to stop going down that path that will ultimately destroy them and those around them.
This is one of the main ways the Pharisees went wrong!
They judged to put others down; we judge to warn, correct, and protect both the individual sinning and those impacted by it.
The expectation is that you and I will go back to our brother and help him with the splinter!
That expectation is expressed more fully in Matthew 18:15ff as well as passages like Galatians 6:1:
Galatians 6:1 CSB
Brothers and sisters, if someone is overtaken in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual, restore such a person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourselves so that you also won’t be tempted.
Yes, you have to take a look at your brother’s life and say, “What I see in your life doesn’t seem to line up with what the Bible says we are supposed to do as Christians. Help me see what is going on.”
Then, you commit to walking with them through that process of discovering and repenting of sin, all the while watching for beams to pop back up in your own eyes!
That’s the helpful kind of judging that seeks to build up, not condemn and tear down.
We need to care enough about God and others that we are willing to do what we can to help.
It may be direct, it may be painful, and it may be uncomfortable for a long time, but some times, that has to happen!
Interestingly, verse 6 indicates that there are times when it may not be best for us to address it.
Read it with me again...
Let’s explain some of the imagery here.
Keep in mind that in Jesus’ day, dogs weren’t the cute pets they are today. Dogs were either feral, wild street dogs, or they were kept around the property to help ward off other predators. They weren’t fluff balls that you carried around in purses; they were wild and could be savage.
In the same way, pigs were dirty and ceremonially unclean. They were a symbol of people’s rejection of God and his laws, and they weren’t lovable at all.
Some have suggested that Jesus employed a unique literary device in this verse. After introducing the dogs and the pigs, he may be referring to the pigs trampling the pearls and the dogs turning on you and tearing you, since that is more likely.
The parallel statements Jesus makes helps us see the danger in confronting people with the truth.
First, the person we seek to correct may reject what we say and trample it in the mud.
They may ridicule the message we preach, the morality we uphold, and the God we serve. We must be ready for that.
Second, they may also turn on us and attack our character or, in extreme cases, may even seek to kill us.
There may be times when we realize that, although we have spoken the truth in a way that reflects the love of Christ, the people to whom we are speaking are like savage dogs and wild pigs, and they will not listen.
We see times in the Old Testament where God had prophets stop trying to correct someone, like Samuel did with King Saul.
We see it in the New Testament as well. On one occasion, when Jesus sent his disciples out to minister in various towns, he told them what to do when they found people like that:
Matthew 10:14 CSB
If anyone does not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that house or town.
For those with tender hearts, this is hard because we never give up on anyone.
Truly, we believe and preach and teach that God can reach any person anywhere at anytime with the gospel and save them.
However, there are times when God calls us to say, “Enough is enough,” and we stop trying to correct them.
For those with tougher skins, it may be too easy for you to write someone off, and you may get a sense of satisfaction from it.
You need to ask God to check your heart in that, because you shouldn’t do this with any kind of glee or pride or anything else; instead, we realize it is time to move on.
There may even be a time when God calls you to stand up, boldly and publicly declaring the truth.
He may even call you to keep doing so, in spite of the ridicule and shame.
He may even call you, in humility and the strength only he can provide, to keep standing until the enemies of God take your life.
How do I know God might call you to this?
Because that’s exactly what Jesus did.
Jesus taught the people what the kingdom of God was all about, and the religious leaders hated him for it.
They ridiculed and accused him, and eventually, in a frenzied mob, they had Jesus put to death.
While Jesus was on the cross, dying for your sins and mine, he quoted from Psalm 22. One of the verses in that psalm says this,
Psalm 22:16 CSB
For dogs have surrounded me; a gang of evildoers has closed in on me; they pierced my hands and my feet.
Jesus was willing to be condemned by those he has every right to judge. Remember, as God in the flesh, he is the one who will be the final judge.
He was willing to be trampled and torn, as though by wild dogs, and he was willing to do that for me.
He took the judgment I deserved and died in my place so that I wouldn’t stand condemned before God and instead could be saved.
Now, he extends the offer of forgiveness for those who will respond to Jesus’ death by surrendering their lives and turning from sin to turn to follow him.
When I surrendered to him, he called me not to live with a critical, judgmental spirit, but to carefully consider the sin in my own heart while I, with grace, confront and challenge the sin in the lives of those around me.
This is the God we serve, and to him we owe our allegiance and our thanks.
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