August 19 - Judge Not Lest we be judged - Matthew 7:1-6

We shouldn't judge. Who are we to judge? What right do we have to make judgments? Sounds about right, doesn’t it? This sounds compassionate. It sounds fair. It even sounds biblical. It sounds like we’re keeping our nose out of other people’s business. It sounds like we’re being humble. It sounds like we’re allowing people to be themselves, to live their own lives. We shouldn’t judge. Sounds like a good command.

Except, we do judge, don’t we? How do we not? We see people screwing up their lives, and we know, we know they’re doing wrong. We hear people’s talk, the language they use, and we know it’s not Godly talk. We look around our community, we look at people with different color skin and we make judgments. We judge.

We need to face a hard fact this morning. We in this church, in this community, we are perceived as judgers. And even worse, we are perceived as condemners. Every church has it’s thing. For some, their wealth becomes a temptation to fight against. For others, they’ve gotten too close to the world and it’s tough to fight their way back.

But this is ours. When people move into our neighborhood, they hear about us. They hear that we watch them and criticize them, even condemn them. They hear that we are picky. This hurts to hear, doesn’t it? I don’t like this, and I’m sure you don’t.

But before you despair, or before you get defensive, let’s jump the end a minute. Every church has sin in it, I think we’d all admit that. And the solution to sin is Jesus’ death and resurrection. His death was enough to kill any and every sin. So don’t worry about this sin of ours. There’s a solution. There’s a way out.

Now, we don’t respond with this lie that we shouldn’t judge. Believe it or not, we are called to judge. We are required to make judgments. We think that we’re not supposed to judge, but that’s only reading verse 1 of our text. Verse 1 actually says:

Again, at first glance, what Jesus is saying is that if you don’t judge others, then you won’t be judged. That sounds great, doesn’t it? It’s very politically correct. It’s very open minded. As long as I don’t have a problem with anything your doing, then I can do whatever I want. There’s a certain amount of freedom here, and that freedom is looks pretty good.

But actually, there are things that I do, and you do too, that need judging. It’s our job to watch out for each other. It’s our job to warn each other about shortcomings. In Ezekiel 3:18 God says:

We not only have the right to notice the sin of someone else and talk to them about it, we have the responsibility to talk to them. If we don’t, we are guilty.

Just a few verse down in Matthew 7, Jesus talks about those who call themselves Christians, but don’t act like Christ. He calls them wolves in sheep’s clothing. But He gives us a tip. He says that we will know them by their fruit. They can call themselves Christians all they want, but we’ll be able to tell if they really are believers, if they’ve really given their lives to Jesus, by how they live their lives.

That takes a certain amount of judging. That takes us watching the actions of other people and calling it what it is, sin. We can judge. We must judge. But the problem comes when we’re condemning. The problem comes when we are recognizing the sin in someone else’s life, and we happen to not mention our own sin. We talk all about someone else’s sin, and we never talk about our own. Verse 2 helps us understand verse 1. Jesus says:

If we’re not willing to face our own sin, then we have no right to look at someone else’s.

See, we can dance around this verse a little. Maybe we sound like this. I don’t have a problem with lust. Judge me on that all you want, you won’t find me guilty. So then I can judge someone else. And we can replace lust with any other sin. This is not what Jesus had in mind. He’s talking about sin. To Jesus, one sin is as bad as another. He doesn’t categorize sins as bad sins and REALLY BAD sins.

This is why He says, in verse 3:

Jesus has a strange sense of humor here. Here we are, walking around with a plank in our eye. This is not just a scrap of wood. It’s a beam. If this wasn’t so deadly to other people, it would be funny, in a gross kind of way.

But what an accurate description. Because while we may be ignoring that big old plank, everyone else can see it. We’re walking around saying, "Beam? What beam? You see a beam?", everyone else knows. While we may see ourselves as pretty good people who have their lives in order, everybody else can see that we’re sinners.

But then while they’re looking at our sins, they’re missing the planks in their own eyes. So here we are, a bunch of people with planks in our eyes, walking around looking at everybody else’s stuff. It’s hard to ignore a plank in our own eye. It’s hard to ignore just a sliver in our finger. But with this beam sticking out of our face, we have to word awfully hard to pretend it’s not there. If someone even hints at the problem, we have to quickly change the subject. Someone starts talking about lumber, and we say, "Lumber? What lumber?" Someone starts talking about pride, or greed, or gossip, and we say, "Pride? Greed? Gossip? Not me! I don’t have any of those things projecting out of me."

It’s a ridiculous image, us walking around with a lumberyard of sin, pretending it’s not there. Which is why Jesus comes down hard on this, in verse 5:

No wonder the Pharisees hated Jesus so much they murdered Him. Jesus seems so harsh here. At first, it’s hard to hear His compassion. Take the plank out of your own eye. Clean up your act. Get your life together. Get the obedience done. It seems like a cold command to straighten up.

But wait a minute. When Jesus says:

how do you think we’re supposed to do that? How are we supposed to get our lives straight? How are we supposed to get rid of sin? By beating up on ourselves? By trying harder, and harder, and harder until we just give up, or get bitter and angry at ourselves and God? How do we get that plank out?

You know, don’t you? You know how to get rid of sin. We give up. We quit. We surrender. We admit that taking a plank out of our eye is not self-surgery. This is something that can only be done by Jesus, through the Holy Spirit. It takes our death. Sin is taken out of our lives by the Holy Spirit, not by our own good intentions. The Holy Spirit does something to us. We call it sanctification, but in some mysterious way, He’s removing sin from our lives. He’s removing the desire for sin. He’s even removing the ability to sin. It’s Him doing that. It’s the work of the Spirit, not the work of Gary.

This is what we forget. This is what gets us into a lot of trouble. If we don’t have grace for others, we can’t have grace for ourselves. If we don’t have grace for ourselves, we won’t have grace for others. If we think that our obedience comes from our own efforts, then we’ll expect other people to try as hard as we do. This is where our bitterness comes from.

We know how hard we try. It’s not a lot of fun to try to do the right thing. We work so hard at this. We worry about it. We scrunch our faces and try to be holy. And then we look at those other people who aren’t trying as hard as we are, and it doesn’t seem fair. How come they don’t have to work as hard as we do at being holy? We get resentful. We becoming condemning.

But if we start with grace, if we start with the right way to remove the plank, we’ll end up judging ourselves and others in the way we’re supposed to. Grace allows us to acknowledge the plank in our own eye. We can be honest with ourselves. We can recognize that we have our particular sins that snag us. Some of us struggle with pride, where we’re so self-focused, we hardly notice other’s around us. We’re always looking at ourselves, at our actions, at our looks. We get stiff necks from our navel-gazing, from looking at ourselves. And knowing the answer to that sin, we can admit it.

Some of us struggle with envy. We wonder how those people can have such a great life, and why we have it so rotten. This isn’t easy to admit, but when we know the answer to envy, we can say it. We can know it.

It doesn’t matter what sin we have, when we know the solution, it can come out. Knowing grace, we can admit the sin. Remember Romans 2:4, one of my favorite verses?

Repentance opens up the possibility for the Holy Spirit to work. Repentance allows us to talk about it with each other, rather than hide what is so plainly there.

And repentance then allows us to judge like we’re supposed to. Verse 6 brings us back around. We start out with not judging. We move to recognizing that we must judge on the same basis that we are willing to be judged, and then we hear in verse 6 that we must judge. Jesus says:

I want to be careful here. Calling people pigs and dogs is incredibly harsh. It shows the anger that God has towards sin, and yes, sinners. It shows the judgment that they face from the God they reject.

And verse 6 calls for us to make that determination, that judgment. Is this person acting and talking like Jesus is their Savior, or not? Does this person show that they at least WANT to do what Jesus says? If this is not what they want, if they don’t show a hint of repentance, then don’t give them the assurance of the gospel. If they are going through a tough time, don’t tell them that God will give them comfort. That’s a beautiful promise, but that promise is for those who have given their lives to Jesus. If they’re looking for answers, you can’t tell them that God will help them. He’s not going to direct them if they don’t want anything to do with Him.

We are called to make judgments. We are called to make judgments about each other. It’s my job, it’s the job of the elders, it’s each of our jobs to point out sin. I’m doing that right now, as I’m preaching. It’s not a fun thing to do, but we are called to judge.

But as we judge, we are also called to repent. There needs to be equal time. We need to be talking about other people’s sin as much as we talk about our own. If we’re expressing our judgment about that person who hangs out at the bar, we’d sure better also be expressing judgment about our own sins. There needs to be a one to one ratio. One judgment out, one judgment back here.

And all of it ending in grace. We don’t end with judgment, we end with mercy. We don’t end with condemnation, we end with Jesus taking the condemnation. James 2:13 shouts at us:

Mercy triumphs over judgment. We see this in the cross, where Jesus death was enough to get rid of our sins. So, if Jesus showed mercy for our sins, then we show mercy for others.

There it, in Matthew 7. This is not easy for us to hear, but that’s our plank. We judge. We condemn, without openly acknowledging our own sins. Let’s put an end to that. Let’s recognize the plank in our eye, confess it, repent it, and find the mercy that Jesus is offering to us for the sin we’ve done, the sin of cutting people down. Let’s continue to keep our eyes open for purity and holiness. Let’s continue to call sin a sin. But let’s first call OUR sin a sin.

Do you know what will happen when we do this? We will become known as a merciful community. Not a politically correct community that just overlooks sin and let’s people do whatever they want. But a community that treats sin with mercy. A church that knows wrong when we see, but knows what to do with it. Our own sins have been washed, and we know where. At the cross, where Jesus judged us guilty, but took our guilt away.