Judging God’s Servants

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Several years ago, the president of France, a man named Emmanuel Macron, made some disrespectful comments about stay-at-home moms. And it really got under my skin. Because I don’t know Emmanuel Macron personally, but I suspect that he would not last a week taking care of the Byrns Ranch. I don’t think he could last a week in my wife’s shoes.

I feel pretty confident of that at least not without a huge staff to do it and on top of that if I were a betting man I’d put money on my wife being able to do a better job running France than anybody that’s over there so that really just got under my skin and so I wrote my feelings about it in French and sent them and you know what happened? absolutely nothing voter. It doesn’t matter.

My opinion of Mr. McCrone and his, and by the way, I don’t know everything he’s doing over there, so I don’t know whether I agree with all of it or not. But my opinion of his job performance is irrelevant because I’m not one of the people that gets to make that decision.

It’s the same thing as when I see people on, you know, we have elected officials here in Oklahoma, and they are constantly bombarded on social media with all these comments about how awful they are, how dumb they are, how backwards they are, and maybe some of them are, but I see that a lot of these comments are, they’ll be from people in New York or North Carolina or Hawaii, someplace out of state, and somebody will point out, you’re not from here. Well, that doesn’t make my opinion invalid. Well, no, it doesn’t make it invalid.

It does make it irrelevant. You know, if you want to evaluate their job performance, then move here, and we have another state election coming up in 2026. You’re more than welcome to, you know, you have all the right you want to to spout your opinion, but it doesn’t mean anything.

And I ran across an article this week talking about opinion polls on the performance of the U. S. president and comparing different presidents to each other and how their approval rating has fluctuated over time in over a dozen different countries.

And I thought, somebody paid, somebody paid to do opinion polling of the U. S. president in Nigeria and Germany and the Philippines and all these other countries.

And I thought, I don’t remember Germany. How many seats does Germany have in the electoral college? Anybody?

I mean, they’re welcome to their opinion, but their opinion of our president, whichever one they’re looking at, matters just about as much as my opinion of the president of France. I’m not one of the people that gets to evaluate that president’s success, and they don’t get to weigh in on ours. That’s not how that works.

So we might have opinions, and we might have thoughts, but they’re irrelevant. They’re as irrelevant as some of our assessments are of other people in the Lord’s service, which is precisely the issue that the Apostle Paul was dealing with as we move into 1 Corinthians chapter 4. If you’re a guest here with us and you’ve never been here before, we’re going to talk a little bit about judging this morning.

And I keep clarifying as we go week by week, I’m not bringing these things up because there are a problem here that I know of. If you’re thinking, what have I walked into? What kind of problems are going on here?

Nothing major that I know of. We’re just studying verse by verse through the book of 1 Corinthians. And we happen to come to this point where he’s dealing with the Apostle Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is dealing with this concept of judging one another in the church.

So that’s what we’re going to look at this morning as we read from 1 Corinthians 4. If you turn there with me, we’re going to read together 1 Corinthians 4. If you can’t find it or don’t have your Bible, it’ll be on the screen for you.

But once you find it, if you’d stand with me as we read together from God’s Word. And we’re going to see what he says about the irrelevance of our judgments of one another, that we don’t get to be the ones that make those calls. So starting in chapter 4, verse 1, he says, Let a man regard us in this manner, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy. But to me, it is a very small thing that I may be examined by you, or by any human court. In fact, I do not even examine myself, for I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted, but the one who examines me is the Lord.

Therefore, do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men’s hearts, and then each man’s praise will come to him from God. And you may be seated. So we’re still dealing with the Corinthians and their tendency to elevate their human teachers to a level that was not correct and was not healthy.

To the point that last week we talked about how they are identifying themselves according to which teacher they follow. Their identity was wrapped up in, oh, I’m a follower of Paul. I’m a follower of Apollos.

I’m a follower of Peter. And in reality, we should look to Bible teachers, and we should evaluate, of course, everything they say, including me, by this book. And you don’t believe it just because I tell you, look in the book.

We should be listening to Bible teachers, evaluating what they say. And when it’s faithful to God’s Word, we should take it and learn from it, but we shouldn’t look to the man himself as though he’s our example or has anything to do with who we are in Christ. They had this tendency to take their favorite teachers and put them up on a pedestal and then to do the political thing and say, it’s not enough to elevate this guy, we have to sling some mud at this person over here. We’ve got to take this person and put them down so they would disparage the other teachers.

And as he’s addressing this idea and has been through the first three chapters of 1 Corinthians, he’s also laying out some principles here as we come into chapter 4 about how they ought to see themselves and each other. It’s not just their view of the teachers that was skewed by their worldliness. It was their view of themselves and each other.

And so he’s dealing with that here, how we ought to all see one another as believers. Now there’s a recurring theme here throughout these five verses that we’ve looked at about the importance of leaving judgment to God, letting God do the judging. But we need to be clear on what this means about judging because in our society we have a concept of what it means to judge that doesn’t necessarily line up with what the Bible says about judging.

And that’s why we will hear people cherry-pick verses. People who can’t name any other verse are happy to slap you around with Matthew 7. 1.

Judge not that you be not judged. Okay, you want to read the rest of the chapter, friend? Because he says, judge not that you be not judged.

And then just a few verses later, Jesus lays out some criteria by which we’re supposed to judge. Paul does the same thing here. He’s talking throughout these five verses about not judging, but then all throughout the book of 1 Corinthians, he’s dealing with people’s bad behavior, and he’s dealing with their bad beliefs, and pointing out how we determine the truth from falsehood.

Well, our society would call that judging. If you’re saying something’s right and something’s wrong, our society thinks that’s judging. if you’re saying that there are right and moral and godly behaviors and that there are other things that are wrong and ungodly and immoral and that the godly side is better than the ungodly side that if you’re saying that there are things that we ought to do and ought not to do our society says wait that’s judging so we’ve got multiple instances of this where the speaker whether it’s jesus himself or whether it’s the apostle paul writing under the inspiration of the holy spirit where they say in one breath, don’t judge, and then immediately turn around and give instructions on things that our society would call judging.

So there are a couple options for us to reconcile this. Either the Bible is wrong and full of contradictions, or we are wrong in our understanding of what judging is. And you probably won’t have to guess very hard about which side of that I come down on.

We’re wrong. If the Bible says something that doesn’t match up with our views or our behaviors, let me it a little bit. If the Bible says something and my views or behaviors do not match up, then I am the one wrong.

So what we think of as judging and what the Bible calls judging are not the same thing. Because clearly the Bible, and unless Jesus just forgot from breath to breath, he said, oh, he said, don’t judge. And then he said, don’t cast your pearls before swine.

And he said, straight is the gate and narrow is the way and few there will be that find it. And then he talks about knowing a false teacher by their fruits, all within the same chapter. So either Jesus is forgetful and forgot that he just said don’t judge, or the Apostle Paul is forgetful and forgot that he just said, you know, lead the judging to God.

Either that’s the case, or the Bible doesn’t consider it judging to point out bad behavior and bad theology. And that’s what it is. The Bible doesn’t consider it judging to point out bad behavior and bad theology.

Now, a lot of it depends on the way we do it. A lot of it depends on our approach and our motivation behind it. When God has said, this is wrong in our behavior, then we’re not making the judgment.

We’re saying what God has said. He’s the one that did the judging. When God says this is true, and we say this is true, God is the one who has made the judgment between truth and falsehood, not us.

So what we’re talking about here is not, oh, don’t ever point out that anything is wrong, whether it’s beliefs or behavior. he’s not saying don’t ever point out that anything is wrong there is a time to lovingly point out that things are wrong I I had a one of one of my children went back when we were homeschooling and we were doing bible class in a in an oral test explained that jesus was three persons in one god no it was three three gods in one person and was very passionate about this very passionate about jesus this was several years ago I had to explain no that that’s not correct as a matter of fact That’s about as opposite of what you can get. I had to correct the theology.

Did I do that because I hated my child and wanted to wreck their self-esteem? No. I had to correct it because I wanted them to have a proper biblical view of God.

When our children misbehave, do we correct them? Do we correct their behavior because we hate them? Is it because we believe there’s right and there’s good, and that way is ultimately better for them?

I’m probably spending more time on this than I need to, but I feel like it’s important in our culture, in our society, in this environment, to point out the difference between what the Bible calls judging and what the Bible calls discernment, what the Bible calls speaking the things that God has already judged. So the context here points to judging that is not dealing with those things. It’s talking about dealing with things that are much more difficult to discern.

We’re talking about, as we look in the context here, we’re talking about things like thoughts and motives. So if you would look at somebody, it’s biblical, and it’s easy to say that behavior was wrong. God’s Word says this, did the opposite, that’s wrong.

Here, he’s talking about looking at somebody else who outwardly appears to be serving God. I mean, there don’t appear to be behavior or doctrine problems in the people he’s talking about, which was kind of a rarity at Corinth, especially since he’s talking about teachers from outside. These are people that look like they’re serving God and yet the Corinthians were trying to judge their motives.

It would be like looking at them and saying, well, yet she looks like she’s good and behaves and she seems to believe all the right things, but she’s only doing it because X, Y, Z. And trying to judge the motives and thoughts of somebody’s heart. Things that we can’t possibly be privy to.

Paul has already talked about how nobody knows the mind of the person except the person. And how nobody knows the mind of God except the Spirit of God. We’re talking about dealing with things that you and I can’t see, the thoughts of a person’s mind, the motives of a person’s heart.

We’re talking about their value in God’s service. So if somebody is outwardly serving God, we’re talking about looking at them and saying, that guy’s never going to accomplish anything for the kingdom. I don’t know why God even messes with him.

He’s not worth it. We’re trying to judge another person’s servant. So here we’re looking at people who are apparently serving God and how are we supposed to view them, not the way the Corinthians were doing.

We need to see ourselves and other believers as God’s servants first and foremost. That’s why he lays it out right there in verse 1, let a man regard us in this manner. He’s talking about himself, Paul, and those who are with him. He’s also talking about these other teachers that have been held up at Corinth or put down at Corinth, depending on which group of people you’re talking about, but he’s talking about the people like Apollos and Peter and himself that are either put on a pedestal or have mud slung at them.

And he says, let a man regard us in this manner as servants of Christ. We’re sent here to work for Jesus. This was the idea of somebody who was subservient. We read over this word servant pretty quickly, but this is somebody who was subservient and was only empowered to do what the master gave them to do.

This was somebody whose authority only extended as far as what the master of the household told them that they could do. And Paul applies that terminology to himself and says, look at us just as lowly servants. And this goes along with the theme of what Paul has been saying up to this time, that look to those who are in your leadership, not as lords over you, but as servants who were sent here by God to help your spiritual walk.

regard us in this manner as servants of Christ, he says, and stewards of the mysteries of God. That word steward was somebody who was put in the household to distribute what was needed, as needed, to the people who needed it. So if you had a big operation, what we would call a homestead nowadays, and somebody needed wheat so they could grind the flour and bake the bread, you would take that out of the storehouse, you would be a steward, you would give them the wheat they needed.

If somebody needed iron to do blacksmithing, whatever, you would give them what they needed. And he says, you are, you’re to see us in that way. We are put here as the stewards of the mysteries of God, the truths of God’s word.

We’ve been handed these things not to hoard them, but to give them out to you as needed. And that is the role of a Bible teacher. That is the role of somebody in church leadership that’s been put there to teach is not to wow people with their intellect, but to help you discover and help you find and help you have access to the mysteries of God’s Word as needed.

He said, look to us as servants and as stewards. And we see throughout this that there’s this blurred line that comes in from time to time in Paul’s writing, where in one moment he seems to be talking about himself and other teachers, and then he applies the same principle to the others in the church. And if the leaders of the church are supposed to be servants of the Lord and stewards of the mysteries of his word, then the people within the church are equally to be considered servants of the Lord.

And he makes that case throughout 1 Corinthians as well, that we as believers are accountable to the Lord because we’re his servants. And so whether we’re talking about church leaders, whether we’re talking about church members, anybody in the body, it’s important that we see ourselves and we see other believers as the Lord’s servants first and foremost because if I see myself as the Lord’s servant it works against that tendency to think I’m better and more important than I really am and if I see you as the Lord’s servants it fights against the tendency to judge and critique that we all have and that’s not just true of me that’s true of you if you see yourself as the Lord’s servant it gets harder to see yourself as bigger really are. And if you see your brothers and sisters as the Lord’s servants, it makes it harder to critique their motives.

And he gives us a few things that are descriptions about, or a few things that he wants us to know about the servants that we’re supposed to see ourselves as. And he wants us to understand in verse 2, a servant’s job description is all about faithfulness. He says in verse 2, in this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy.

He said, if I am a steward, serving God, then part of that job description is I have to be trustworthy. I have to be faithful in what he’s given me to do. You wouldn’t want somebody handling your business who you could not trust. It doesn’t matter if you’re the master of a household.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re an employee, an employer today. It doesn’t matter whether you’re not an employer, but you, you hire, maybe you hire somebody to do your taxes. Do you want somebody who’s crooked with money, handling your accounts.

Somebody that is a steward for us. We want somebody that’s faithful. This applies to every aspect of our lives.

That if we’re stewards of what He’s given us, if we’re His servants and faithfulness is the job description, then that extends to my stewardship of my time. Am I being faithful in the way that I use my time? It extends to our finances.

Am I using my finances wisely? That’s a constant struggle. Am I doing wise, godly things with my money?

Do I look at it as His stewardship of our families? There’s this constant reminder that goes off in my head when my children are just about to drive me batty, that I’m a steward. They ultimately belong to God, and He has lent them to me for this time to shepherd them, and my job is to shepherd them toward him.

And that gives me just enough grace to go on for that moment, because I realize the stakes are far too high to just walk away when things get tough. And I don’t mean like abandoning them. I just mean sometimes it’s easier just not to deal with stuff, right?

But as a steward of those children, we’re called to deal with those things. This extends to every aspect of our lives. It extends to our ministries.

Has God called you to do something? Are you doing it? Are you doing it with all your heart and to the best of your ability.

If we’re going to be stewards in the Lord’s service, he’s called us to be faithful. That’s the main job description. Is it success?

Is it big budgets? Is it big attendance? Is it a big building?

No, it’s faithfulness. He also tells us in verse three, that servants aren’t great judges of other servants’ faithfulness. Faithfulness is the job description, and it’s very easy to get into critiquing other people’s faithfulness.

Well, are they living up to the job description? It’s so easy, especially if you spend time in church, around church, around other church people, and they’re right in front of you. It’s easy to start thinking, well, are they doing what they’re supposed to be doing?

But he says in verse 3, but to me it is a very small thing that I may be examined by you. He said, it’s nothing to me to be examined or be judged by you. He says, or even any human court.

Now that is not Paul saying, I’m an apostle. You little people don’t get to judge me. There’s this attitude that is widely reflected in our society that says, oh, you don’t get to judge me.

Who are you to judge me? Who are you to tell me? That’s not what he’s saying here.

Paul is not saying he’s above scrutiny. Paul is not saying he’s above being examined. As a matter of fact, later on in 1 Corinthians, he talks about examining himself, examining other people for truth, for good behavior, all of the things that we’re supposed to look for.

But what he’s saying here is it’s not really a big deal how you evaluate me. He said, I don’t even examine myself. The point that he’s making throughout this passage is that we’re not good at this.

And the reason why we’re not good at this goes back to previous parts of 1 Corinthians. I can’t see inside your mind. I feel like my wife can sometimes.

So there might be a few people who are better at it than others, but really not even she can see inside other people’s minds. I can’t know for sure what’s going on in your heart. I can guess.

But who am I to judge? Meaning, who am I to make a definitive statement about, well, here’s what’s wrong with his heart and his motives. I don’t have the first clue.

I can examine fruit. I can examine behavior. And I’m called to do that.

You’re called to do that. If I start living in an ungodly way and teaching unbiblical things, you have a responsibility to call me out on it and vice versa. But as far as knowing your motives or you knowing my motives, We can’t possibly know that.

We can’t possibly know for certain what goes on in somebody else’s heart. And for that reason is why he’s saying, talking about people who appear to be serving the Lord, he’s saying you cannot judge their faithfulness or their value in his service. He actually goes on to say at the end of verse 3 and end of verse 4 that servants aren’t even great judges of our own faithfulness.

He says, in fact, I do not even examine myself. Elsewhere, he said similar things about examining himself, but he’s talking here about his motives. He’s saying, I’m not the one that gets to decide, is what he’s saying.

I do not even examine myself, for I am conscious of nothing against myself. That points to some level of examination. He’s looked into his heart.

He’s thought about his motives, something that we need to do from time to time, something that the Bible tells us to do from time to time. And he says, I’m not aware of anything there that hinders my service. I’m not aware of anything there that draws me away from God.

Yet I am not by this acquitted, he said. What he’s saying is, yes, I’ve looked at my heart. I don’t think there’s anything wrong there, but I don’t get to make that decision.

I’m not the one that gets to decide whether all my motives are pure or not. But the one who examines me, he says, is the Lord. Because we can also be good at deluding ourselves.

There have been times I’ve convinced myself my motives were entirely right in what I was doing. and then later on realized, admitted the reality to myself that I, no, they were not. We’re able to do that.

We’re able to do that at least for a while. And so Paul says, it’s really not my opinion of my service that even matters. We want to examine ourselves.

We should check our motivations and, and to the best of our ability, serve him out of the right motivations and out of a desire to be faithful. But he said, that’s, that’s God’s call to make. And if we stand before him and he says, you did this wrong.

Why did you do this? We don’t get to come back at the Lord and say, oh, no, no, I examined myself and I was fine. God doesn’t look at that and say, oh, well, if you examined yourself, then we’re good.

No, there is a judge. There is a judge who’s going to examine the thoughts of our minds and the motives of our hearts. There is a judge who’s going to look at our faithfulness.

And here I’m talking to believers because the judgment that we undergo is not for punishment and condemnation of our sins. That was dealt with at the cross. We’re talking here about rewards for faithfulness.

And we will be called to give an account for how faithful we’ve been. And Paul’s ultimate point here is that we try so hard to be the judge, even of other believers. We try so hard to say, well, she’s doing this for the wrong reasons.

Or he’s certainly not being faithful in the Lord’s service. We might not phrase it exactly like that, but we have a tendency to want to put ourselves in that judge’s robe. And he’s saying we’re really bad at it.

And so we come to verse 5 where he says, therefore, do not go on passing judgment before the time. So there is a time when there’s going to be a judgment. Don’t go on trying to pin down everybody’s motives and everybody and all these things before God does it.

Quit trying to be the judge. Wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in darkness and disclose the motives of men’s hearts. God is going to shine a light in each of our hearts, and He’s going to expose things that nobody knew were there.

He’s going to expose things that we didn’t even know were there, or that we hoped weren’t there. And for us as believers, He’ll probably find some good things that nobody knew were there, not because we’re so good, but because of His work in us. He’ll find some things that we wish hadn’t been there.

But He says here, each man’s praise will come to him from God. Now we’ve come to believe it’s wrong to seek praise. In their culture, it was very important to seek praise.

In a lot of cultures around the world, it’s a bigger affront to be criticized than even it is here. There are cultures in the world where they will try to deflect criticism, so they don’t have to criticize anybody directly because it’s a personal attack. And their desire was to be praised, was to be told they’re doing a good job, was to be told that they were the best at what they were doing.

And he says to these people who were praising some and tearing down others and seeking praise from some as they tore down others, he said God is going to do the judging, God is going to do the evaluating, God is going to do the revealing of the motives of the hearts, and then your praise will come from him. Your reward will come from him. We can trust God to judge his servants.

I don’t have to be in the driver’s seat of judging your hearts and your thoughts and your motives. Again, we can examine fruit, and if there’s a problem, we deal with that, as He instructed us to do for one another. But when it comes to hearts and motives and things that we can’t possibly know, we don’t have to try to do that.

We can trust that He’s going to do that, and we can also trust that He’s going to reward us accordingly. So the faithfulness that you’ve exhibited, the times you’ve been faithful to Him, the times that the motives of your heart were right, and you sought His glory, and you sought His honor, and you sought to obey him because you loved him, those times that you felt like nobody noticed or recognized what you were doing, God sees, God knows, and God will reward that. And so Paul’s message is that they were messing up the church at Corinth because they were too busy running around trying to do God’s job when it came to judging things that only God knows about.

And it had led to strife, it had led to contention, and the church functions so much better if we just let God do what God does. because you and I are not equipped to fill those shoes. So for us as believers, it’s a reminder for how we’re supposed to see ourselves and others, and then how we live that out.

You see something that in our critical spirit says, their motives are wrong. Wait, wait, wait, wait, I don’t have to. That’s God’s servant.

He’s going to deal with them. And again, talking about somebody who’s outwardly serving the Lord, and just in a way that doesn’t meet our approval. That’s God’s child. As I’ve heard Christy say in the office several times, Lord, you better deal with your child, because I can’t.

That’s his child. That’s his servant. That’s his to deal with.

But for us, it’s the reminder, too, that we don’t have to have the praise and the applause of men. We’re working for one person. We have to please one person.

We have to glorify one person, and that’s our Lord, the one who looked at us in all the sin, in all the wickedness that was there, and loved us anyway. not because we were so lovable, but because he’s good and kind and loving. That’s the one we strive to please.

And if this Lord that we’re talking about this morning is somebody you don’t know, if this is a foreign concept to you, it’s very simple. There is a God who is holy and looks at our sin, looks at our disobedience, looks at our wrong choices, and they are offensive to his very nature. And yet in spite of that, he loves us, even though he didn’t have to.

And he loves us enough that even though our sin separated us from Him, and that you and I could never do enough good to undo the wrong that we’ve done and make things right, He sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to come and live a perfect sinless life, to come take responsibility for all of that sin, all of that filth in our lives. He came and took responsibility for it, and He was nailed to the cross in our place, and He shed His blood, and He died. He died in my place and in your place bearing all the punishment we deserve and paying everything that we owed.

And then three days later, he rose again. And because of all that he has done, not because of anything we could ever do, but because of what he has done, he now offers us forgiveness. He offers us a relationship with the Father and he offers us eternal life.

If we’ll simply believe.