Christians Judging [A]

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Transcript:

Well, we started last week talking about some of the most misused passages in Scripture, talking about the passages that the world at large and some other religious groups, and to be quite honest, even sometimes we as Baptists, like to take out of context. And the reason is, if you can take a Scripture out of its original context, you can pretty much force it to say whatever you want it to. People attack the Bible a lot of times saying, well, the Bible says whatever you want it to.

No, that’s wrong. The Bible cannot be used to say whatever we want. The Bible cannot be used to make whatever point we want.

The Bible can be misused to make whatever point we want. But we need to make that distinction lest we treat the Bible like a blank slate that we can just draw whatever picture on it we want. The Bible has clear meanings.

Well, some of the meanings are clear. Some of them take a little more digging to find. But each passage of Scripture has one meaning, has one interpretation.

It may apply to our lives in different ways. But it does matter what God intended by what He wrote. He didn’t just spit out empty words for us to fill up with whatever meaning we want.

And it matters because ideas have consequences. What we believe when we read the words that God has written, what we understand Him to mean has consequences on how we live our lives. It has consequences on eternity.

There are scriptures that are taken out of context to misrepresent who Christ is and what He did on the cross. And folks, if we don’t have that one right, there’s no hope of heaven. When we try to take I am the way, the truth and the life out of context and say, well, that’s not really what He meant.

Folks, you get that one wrong, it doesn’t matter what else we get right. Because there’s no heaven, there’s no salvation without Jesus Christ. And even when it comes to other passages of Scripture that deal with how we live our lives, how we live our faith, it does matter even if it doesn’t put us in eternal peril because we believe the wrong thing. It can still rob us of the joy that we’re supposed to have as Christians.

It can rob us of the blessing that we receive of doing the right thing. It can rob us of the blessing we receive of following God’s Word and of knowing Him. And so as we go through these passages that are, I thought, most often taken out of context, we want to look at how they’re misused.

We want to look at what people say about them and discern why that could not possibly be the case. and then look at what the Bible really does say. We did that last week in talking about Psalm 46.

10, the passage often taken out of context, be still and know that I am God, that’s been used and misused to support all kinds of contemplative ideas that we can just shut our brains off basically, don’t worry about doctrine, don’t worry about truth, and just feel our way to God. When we saw last Sunday morning, that couldn’t possibly be what God’s talking about because it contradicts so many other plain passages of Scripture. And we saw last Sunday night that what it’s really talking about is trusting God in the midst of a storm.

We studied what was going on in King Hezekiah’s life when the Assyrians threatened Jerusalem. And he prayed and God said, I’ll handle this. And when we’re told, be still and know that I am God, he’s not talking about quiet your mind and feel your way to me.

He’s talking about be still when the storms rage around you in life. Be still and trust that I will do what I said I will do. And quite honestly, I don’t know about you all, but quite honestly, I find the real meaning in context to be a lot more comforting than the idea that I can just sort of blindly feel my way to God.

Don’t you? Because I don’t know about you all, but I’m wrong an awful lot. Not necessarily in what I teach, but in my old life, I’m wrong an awful lot.

The things that I feel, my initial reactions to things, I’m wrong an awful lot. And I’d rather stand on the objective truth that God is who He says He is and will do what He promises He’ll do, rather than think it means I can just find my own way to Him. This morning we’re going to look at another passage that as soon as I say what the passage is, you’ll probably know what it is.

You’ll probably know it by heart just from the reference. But it’s Matthew chapter 7. We’re going to look at Matthew chapter 7.

And you may have already known Matthew chapter 7 verse 1 is the verse that says, Judge not that ye be not judged. And it’s probably no surprise that I would talk about that because months ago when I mentioned that I might start this series at some point in the future, I told you that was one of the. .

. At that point, I called it some of the worst passages in the Bible. Not that I think they’re bad, but in terms of worst about being misused, and I thought somebody said that’s probably not the best idea for what to call a series, the worst passages in the Bible.

But as far as the way people treat it, this is one of the most misused passages of the Bible. Let’s just read it first, and then we’ll talk about it a little bit. Matthew 7, verse 1 says, shalt thou see clearly to cast out the moat out of thy brother’s eye.

And I know we’ve talked about this passage just in passing on a Wednesday night a few months ago, but I want to get in depth of it this morning. I want to look this morning at what the world says about this passage and how we can know from other areas of God’s Word that what the world says this passage means is not what it means, could not possibly be what it means. And then tonight we’re going to, like we did last week, we’re going to dig into the context and say, now that we’ve established this is not what it means because it would be a contradiction of other places in God’s Word.

What really is God saying here and what can we take from it? And I think we talk, folks, we talk about the fact that the world has a problem with God, the world has a problem with Jesus Christ, they don’t want to hear about it. But that’s not entirely accurate, at least not in my experience.

The world, by and large, a lot of people, especially in our country, are more than happy to hear what we’ve got to say about Jesus Christ. They’re more than happy to hear what we’ve got to say about God. They’re more than happy to be talked to about that. Oh, God bless you.

They’re more than willing to have us pray for them. The fact that God is always with His people, they like to hear about that. It’s not God they have a problem with, at least they don’t think so.

It’s not Jesus they have a problem with. It’s the holiness of God. It’s the justice of God.

It’s the judgment of God they don’t want to hear about. If you don’t believe me, try talking to anybody out in public. And most of the time, even if they’re not church-going believers, people are going to say, isn’t that nice?

They might not say those exact words, but that’s going to be their reaction. Isn’t that nice? You say, God bless you to somebody.

Oh, isn’t that nice? Or we can talk about God and people who show Him no reverence at other times when they get into trouble in their lives, they say, oh, well, you know, God doesn’t give us more than we can stand, or God always watches out for us. Folks, our society is full to the brim with talk about God.

We’re full up with references about Jesus. People tend to like God and they tend to like Jesus, at least as far as they understand them. But folks, when we start to talk about who God is and who Jesus is according to the Bible, when we start to talk about the holiness of God, when we start to talk about the demands of God’s justice, that’s what the world doesn’t want to hear about.

That’s what the world has a problem with. If they see God, and I’ve talked to you many times about this, I think the first message I ever preached here was on the subject of our misinterpretations of God. the gods that people make of their own design.

And when the world sees God as just the big cosmic Santa Claus that just gives them whatever they want, or He’s a grandfather figure that might be kind of senile, doesn’t see what they do wrong, but just loves everybody and just gives them hugs and candy no matter what they do. When the world sees God in that condition, they don’t have a problem with God. But when we introduce the God of the Bible who takes sin seriously, who is offended by sin and demands that it be judged, demands that it be dealt with, demands that it be punished, demands that reconciliation be made between us and Him.

When we see the God that expects anything of anybody, suddenly the world doesn’t want to hear about it. Anybody else found that to be the case? They’re more than glad to hear about God.

They just don’t want a God who places any demands on them. And that’s how we have found ourselves at the position of this verse being taken so out of context. Because a lot of the world looks at it and says, oh, it says judge not that you be not judged.

And serving the God that they believe they serve, who is nothing but love and forgiveness, who never put a demand on anybody, who never expected anything from anybody, who’s just willing to bend over backwards and ignore our sin, the God that they serve, if He says judge not that you be not judged, that means don’t say anything about any sin. Just ignore it. Just let it go.

And why would we be surprised that the world would think that when the God they serve in their minds is willing to ignore sin and let it go, then who are we to talk about it? That’s not what it says at all. That’s not what it means at all.

We know the God we serve is a God who takes sin seriously. We know the God we serve is one who says that I am a God of justice and sin must be dealt with. If sin didn’t need to be dealt with, then what in the world was Jesus Christ doing on the cross?

There are a lot of questions that I ask myself that about. People believe this, they teach this, just like with the Judaizers. If we could be good enough for God, then what in the world was Jesus doing on the cross?

If anything we believe, if anything we teach makes the cross seem unnecessary, then what we teach is wrong. The cross happened because it was necessary, because God takes sin seriously, because sin matters, because sin can’t just be overlooked. It needs to be dealt with.

And the implication here, They seem to only see that, and folks, even a lot of Christians seem to see this in verse 1 where it says, Judge not, and that’s all they pick up on. They say, Judge not, that you be not judged. And what they mean by that is, Don’t judge.

Don’t say anything about my sin or anybody else’s. But if we’re going to throw that verse out there and just take it at face value, that it must be talking about not saying anything about sin, Judge not, that you be not judged. We can’t possibly accept their meaning of it, Because the implication there would be that if we ignore other people’s sin, God will ignore our own, and we know that’s not at all the case.

Because the Bible says that God will not at all acquit the wicked. He will not let it go because He cannot. To ask God to ignore our sin would be to ask Him to quit being who He is.

A God of holiness, a God of perfection, and a God of absolute justice. It would be to ask Him to stop being who He is. We’ve gotten this idea that talking about sin, Treating sin the way God treats it as a serious matter is the same as judging.

I thought a while back of what I see as a very important point. When I point out sin in my own life and in the world around me, folks, I’m not judging anybody because I’m not the one who came up with the idea that it’s wrong to sleep around. I’m not the one who came up with the idea that it’s wrong to go out and get drunk.

I’m not the one who came up with the idea that it God. God has already judged and has already done the judging of what is sin and what is not. And God is the one who will judge sin when He finds it in His life.

In our lives, all I’m doing is pointing out what God’s already said. And when you go into the world and warn of the seriousness of sin, when you tell your children, when you tell your grandchildren, your siblings, your friends, that’s not a good idea. You know that’s wrong.

You’re not judging them. You’re just pointing out what God has already judged. And there’s a difference there.

But the idea that this is telling us, oh, don’t say anything, just ignore everybody’s sin, ignore sin in general, and God will ignore yours. That is as wrong as it could be. Because that would make another plan of salvation.

That would make another plan of salvation. We can avoid the final judgment. We can avoid God taking our sin seriously by ignoring everybody else’s.

Folks, wouldn’t that be another plan of salvation? Just be nice, live and let live, and you’ll go to heaven. Again, then what was the cross for?

Anything that we believe or teach that makes the cross unnecessary is wrong. Again, judge not that you be not judged, for with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged. And we’re going to get into this deeper tonight in context of what he’s really talking about.

But this morning we’re going to look at why he could not possibly be saying, ignore sin, just let it go. And with what measure you meet, it shall be measured unto you again. And why seest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, and perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Or how sayest thou to thy brother, Suffer me to cast out the mote out of thine eye, and behold, the beam is in thine own eye. Verse 5 is also important to what we’re talking about this morning. Or how sayest thou to thy brother, I’m sorry, hypocrite, first cast out that beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

As we’re going to talk about in more detail tonight, if this passage was talking about the fact that we were to ignore sin, verse 5 wouldn’t be in here. Because in verse 5, he makes it clear that yes, we still should deal with the speck in our brother’s eye. We still should deal with the sin in our brother’s life.

We still should address it. We still should help them move past it. But only after dealing with ours.

Only after addressing ours. The issue here, as we’ll talk about tonight, is not dealing with sin. It’s hypocrisy in dealing with sin.

But if he didn’t intend us to deal with sin at all, if he didn’t intend us to address sin, If He didn’t tell us, if He didn’t expect us to stand against the sin and the perversion in the world around us today at all, He wouldn’t have included verse 5 that says to deal with yours and then go talk to them about theirs. He would have just said at the very least, deal with yours and left it off there. But the fact that He says, and then shalt thou clearly see to cast out the mote of thy brother’s eye.

That tells us that there is still the implication here that sin needs to be addressed. Sin needs to be dealt with. Sin needs to be taken seriously.

We cannot look at the Bible. If you want to boil down the wrong interpretation of this passage and say, what is at the heart of it? What is it that they’re saying boiled down into one succinct sentence?

It’s the idea that we are to keep our mouths shut and ignore sin, that we’re to remain silent about the presence or the consequences of sin. If this passage means, if Jesus was saying here in Matthew chapter 7, Christian believers, my disciples, you go out into the world and you stay silent about the presence of sin in it or the consequences of sin, how many passages would that contradict in the Bible? Most of them.

Certainly every other passage that deals with sin. We’re going to look at three things this morning because the implication that we’re to remain silent about sin goes clearly even against this passage in verses 1 and verse 5, verses 1 and 5. We’re going to look at three areas this morning where this contradicts what we are taught in the Bible.

And there are no contradictions in the Bible. I’ve looked at lists before that people have put together, and they’ve said, this is a contradiction, this is a contradiction. And digging through some of those, you know, if you attended Sunday school at all as a child, a lot of the supposed contradictions you can deal with.

Some of them require a little more work, but they’re still not contradictions. A lot of the supposed contradictions deal with the fact that passages may use the same words, and they’re dealing with two different subjects. They’re dealing with two different topics.

Some of them deal with the fact that different words in Greek and Hebrew are translated as the same English word. But I’ve never found a contradiction yet in the Bible. There was one I told you about when we were doing the series on prophecy, where everybody gets up in arms because Jesus said, I believe, that something was prophesied in Jeremiah, in the book of Jeremiah.

And you go to the Old Testament, you find it in a different book. Well, Jesus was wrong. No, Jesus wasn’t wrong.

If you dig into the history a little bit, they put all these prophecy books in one volume that they had at that point on one scroll, and Jeremiah was at the front of it, and it was pretty common to refer to the whole thing as the book of Jeremiah, even though they knew who the authors were. It was shorthand. I’ve not found any contradictions in the Bible.

And so the idea that this one verse sticks out and contradicts the rest of it, I don’t think is true either. We’re faced here with either the idea that God contradicted Himself at one point in history, or, and this is the option I’ll go with, people are wrong today with what they say about this passage. And it doesn’t mean that we’re to remain silent about the presence or consequence of sin.

We are to address sin. The Bible makes it clear that we are to address sin. Jesus addressed sin.

We as His followers are to address sin. I look at the Apostle Paul as he would go about preaching. He walked into the city.

He would talk to them about their idolatry. He dealt with sin in the churches. Talked to them about the wicked practices going on within the churches.

He dealt with sin everywhere He went. The prophets, Elijah, they dealt with the sin of the people around them. They dealt with the sin of the priests.

You look at the book of Malachi, it’s all about the sin of the religious leaders. We could stand some preaching from the book of Malachi in some churches today as well. Everything God’s people have done on His behalf.

Every time God has sent people out to speak on His behalf, it has been to address the sin of the world in hopes of bringing them to some form of reconciliation with God. And that reconciliation is through Jesus Christ. When we go out and talk to people about sin, it’s not to get them to clean up and act better so that they can go to heaven. We talk to them about sin with the expectation of presenting them with a Savior, but it’s hard to get people to accept a Savior when they don’t realize that they need saving.

And that’s where the message of sin comes in. We are to deal with sin. And we’re supposed to deal with our own sin, we’re supposed to deal with our brothers and sisters’ sin in the church, and we’re supposed to deal with the sin in the world around us.

It’s clear from the teaching of the Bible, it’s clear from the examples we see in the Bible, that the idea that we should just zip it doesn’t enter into play. But there’s some things we need to know about how we’re to speak against sin. He doesn’t expect us to just go out there and just mow everybody down with our self-righteous talk.

Forget about our sin, ignore our sin, and let’s just go tell everybody how awful they are. In every instance I see of God cleansing, the cleansing begins with God’s people. If you’ll recall several weeks ago, we talked about one of the stories from the book of Joshua, where Achan had stolen things from the city of Jericho when God said, don’t take anything, and he buried it below his tent.

And the people of Israel, the armies of Israel were just routed. They were absolutely defeated and humiliated by the armies of Ai, this tiny little town that they should have overrun easily. and they were to go and cleanse the land of the pagan tribes that were bothering them, that were eventually going to lead them into idolatry.

And they should have been able to do it very easily. They should have been able to go and cleanse the land of the sinful practices, and yet they were stopped short at Ai. And the reason was because Achan’s sin had to be dealt with.

And God led Joshua to Achan, and God led Joshua in how to deal with the sin. Folks, they couldn’t very well go and cleanse the land around them of the pagan practices until they purged the sin out from among them. cleansing deals with God’s people.

And so as we go to speak against sin, as we stand a salt and light in the world and we proclaim God’s message that sin is serious and sin is deadly and sin needs to be dealt with, when we speak against sin, speaking against sin requires the proper timing. Speaking against sin requires the proper timing. And that doesn’t mean there are only certain times and days when we should talk about it.

Oh, we can talk, we can get together and we can address sin on Sunday morning. I know, we’ll let the preacher do that. He can get up there, he can holler about sin.

I don’t know. Even when I feel like I’m hollering, I’m usually not. But we can let the preacher get up there and get mad and red-faced about sin and we’ll be against sin on Sundays.

That’s the proper timing. That’s not what I’m talking about at all. It goes back to what he says in verse 5.

Hypocrite, cast first out the beam from your own eye and then deal with the speck that’s in your brother’s eye. And these words in the old English or the earlier English, these words, He’s talking about the distinction between a splinter and a beam. Big piece of wood that’s in our own eye.

How is it we’re supposed to deal with the splinter that’s in our brother’s eye? How is it that we deal with a little bit of sin in our brother and let the big sin in our life go? But he tells us first to deal with the big sin in our lives.

If we are going to go out and talk to the world about the deadly seriousness of sin, about the fact that we serve a righteous, holy God and a just God who cannot be in the presence of sin and must punish the sin of the world in order for His justice to be intact. If we go and talk to them about that, that God has a higher standard and we are wallowing in moral filth, they will never take us seriously. And they will use it as an occasion to pick apart both us and the God we serve.

We’ve seen it happen, haven’t we? That people try to live a righteous life on Sundays and they’ll talk to people about, oh, well, you shouldn’t be doing this and all the while they’ve got sin going on in their lives. And I’m talking about habitual sin.

They’re wallowing in it. And the world looks at that and says, well, you’re just as bad as I am. The God you serve, all of this stuff about salvation, it can’t possibly be true.

And we’ve all seen it happen. We’ve all seen it happen. When I say that speaking against sin requires the proper timing, I mean doing it in the right order.

Speaking out against public sin comes in order after having dealt with our private sin. We as a church, we as individuals, have a responsibility to stand firm against the sins prevalent in our society today. We have a responsibility to take a principled stand against things like homosexuality, against things like abortion, against things like cohabitation outside of marriage, against things like drunkenness.

We have a responsibility to take a stand against all sorts of things that the Bible has said, don’t do them, and stand up for the principles of righteousness. But we cannot do that with any credibility if we do not have our own house in order first. And in order for us to have the right to speak to the world, we need to deal with the beam that’s in our eye before dealing with the splinter in theirs. Now, am I saying we have to be perfect?

Folks, if anybody had to be perfect before God’s message could be preached, it would never get preached. Where’s my wife? Amen?

Now, that was not directed toward you, but if somebody had to be perfect and sinless before they could preach, we could just shut down the church, couldn’t we? Yes, okay. If God’s message depended on perfect messengers, we might as well hang it up, folks.

We’re not going to be perfect. What I’m talking about is the difference between, Oh man, I sinned again and Lord, please forgive me. Help me deal with this.

I’m sorry, Lord. And oh, I sinned again. I kind of like that.

Let’s keep going. There’s a difference there. There’s a difference there.

And we deal with our sin. We get right in right standing with God and we move on. There’s a difference between tripping and falling in the mud and then asking God to clean you off and falling down in the mud and deciding you like it and staying there and wallowing.

If we are to speak against sin, if we speak against the sin of the world, if we speak against the great moral problems of our day, if we speak against the things that I mentioned, if we speak to our loved ones and say, you know, there really is a problem here. If we say, you know, you’ve sinned against God, and I wouldn’t necessarily tell you to go at it from that perspective. Say, you know, you’re a big old sinner, right?

That’d be a good way to shut down Thanksgiving. But as you’re talking to them, talking about the fact that God’s standards are perfect and there’s sin in all of our lives and talking with them, addressing the fact that there’s sin in their lives and God takes it seriously. And here’s the remedy.

Folks, if we either stand firm against the moral ills of our society, the sins that beset our culture, or we talk to individuals about the seriousness of the sin in their lives and we do not have our house in order, they will sniff out the hypocrisy immediately. We lose all credibility. And they have no reason to take seriously the claims of the gospel.

And so, yes, we do need to speak against sin, but we need to do so with the proper timing. We speak against sin once our house is in order. And that’s not an excuse for us to just button our lips because we don’t want to get our house in order.

The expectation there is that we’ll be out dealing with sin. We’ll be out confronting sin. That we’ll be out standing for God’s righteousness.

So the idea there is that we need to keep our house in order. Sin must be addressed within the body before we can address it outside. Deal with the beam in our own eye before we deal with the splinter in somebody else’s.

We also see in the Bible that dealing with sin requires the proper standard. Dealing with sin requires the proper standard. If you’ll turn with me just briefly to the book of Ephesians.

Ephesians chapter 5. There are a few verses in here. This whole passage talks about the difference between light and darkness.

But starting in verse 6, it says, Let no man deceive you with vain words. For such things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. Be not therefore companions with them.

And the King James says partakers. By the way, I accidentally left my regular preaching Bible at home, so I’m using an older one. But it says partakers in there.

In other words, don’t be companions with them in their sins. Don’t be partakers in their sins. If the world around you is sinning, don’t join in with it.

Verse 8, For ye were once darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth.

approving or proving that which is pleasing to the Lord, and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but even reprove them rather. And we see in a couple of places, this is just yet one more passage. It’s not the only one.

It’s one of many passages that talk about dealing with the sin of the world around us after having dealt with the sin in our lives. But he says in two places, he says to reprove the unfruitful works of darkness, that word reprove means to confront. And he’s told us to prove or approve what is pleasing to the Lord.

Now that doesn’t simply mean offering proof. To prove things, in Bible speak, in the older English, to prove things means to test them, to try them. I can’t remember for you what the Greek word was behind this, but I remember looking at the definition last night.

And the definition behind it sounds suspiciously similar to what goes on in a court of law. We’re trying evidence. We’re weighing evidence.

We’re testing things. That sounds a whole lot like the word judging to me. So we’re to look at the darkness and we’re to look at the light and we’re to walk as children of light and we’re to, in all these things, prove what is acceptable to the Lord.

Test and discern and try and judge and determine what is acceptable to the Lord. How can we look at the practices in our life and in other people’s lives and determine what’s right if there’s no judgment going on, no discernment going on, no discerning between wickedness and righteousness? And then he says to reprove the works of darkness, to confront the darkness.

But what I want us to focus on out of this passage is that He says, in all these things, He talks about the light, He talks about the darkness, and He says, proving what is acceptable to who? Anybody? Anybody else read the passage with me?

Proving what’s acceptable to who? To the Lord. As we’re judging, as we’re discerning, as we’re trying to figure out what’s right and wrong in the world around us, as we’re speaking against sin and rebuking, reproving the unfruitful works of darkness, The standard is always His and not ours.

And that’s another thing that was going on in the background of Matthew 7, chapter 1. Part of the Sermon on the Mount where He dealt with the Pharisees. They were used to judging by their own standards.

And we’re told not to judge. We’re basically told not to do anything like the Pharisees did. He says, judge not that ye be not judged.

And talks about the judgment that would be held against them. Talking about the standard that they judge by. Folks, we do need to address sin.

It’s clear from the passage here in Ephesians we need to address sin, but he points out that it’s always, always, always by God’s standards. Not proving what is acceptable to the church, not prov

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