Exchanging the Gavel for Grace

Audio Transcript

This morning, if you would, let me ask you to turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 7. We’ll be in the first 12 verses today. I’ll remind you also that Matthew 5, 6, and 7 are commonly referred to as the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is teaching His disciples and the multitudes—a great multitude has gathered, we’re told, to hear this. Jesus has been going through some of the greatest words ever spoken, teaching them and teaching us what life in His Kingdom looks like. Now, that’s not the kingdom that’s going to come; that’s the kingdom that has come when He came.

For all of those who are followers of Christ, He’s been showing us, slowly and steadily, how we are to live as His followers in this world. Today we come to one of those topics that every person in here can relate to. There’s not one of us who can leave here today and go, “I don’t understand what He was talking about. I don’t relate to that at all.” You want to know what the topic is for today? It’s judging others.

I must admit right up front that I stand before you as a recovering Pharisee. I’ve been very guilty of doing this wrong over the years in many cases. This is how we grow as followers of Christ. We fall down, we get back up, we learn, we run to Him, we continue to grow, and we become more like Christ as each day goes by.

This is obviously a touchy subject. It’s a bit of a—what would you say?—a prickly subject, one that we’ve all probably handled well on some occasions and not so well on others. And if you may be thinking, “Well, you know, I don’t judge other people, but other people have judged me,” let me just say, if you’ve ever judged somebody for judging you wrongly, then you quickly realize what a deadly cycle this topic is. We’re all caught up in this; we’re all struggling at different points of this. And since this is such a—by the way, let me mention, this is a heavy subject, but by the time we get to the end of these verses, this is going to be so beautiful, the way Jesus opens this up for us. I think we’re all going to leave here filled with joy and thankfulness that He explained this the way that He did.

But it is a bit of a heavy subject, and so I thought before we begin, I would share some of my favorite memes with you about judging others. Show that first one, if you would. She says, “People are so judgmental. I can tell just by looking at them.” The next one, there’s a cat: “Yes, I am judging you as much as it looks like I am.” This has been every relationship I’ve ever had with a cat, even if it’s not my cat. I go to people’s homes, sometimes a cat will just walk and just sit in front of me and stare at me. And I’m like, “Hello, kitty. Nice kitty. You want to come play?” You don’t, “I wanna play.” And then at some point, the cat will do this and just turn and walk off. I’m like, “Excuse me?” Here’s my favorite one of all: “Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, you’ll be a mile from them and you’ll have their shoes.” Words to live by.

Well, I can assure you, you will find much better advice than that by listening to the words of Jesus. And so let’s turn there now, if you’re not already: Matthew chapter 7, verse 1. Jesus says this: “Judge not that you be not judged.” I want to stop right there for now, because these words are some of the most misunderstood and misapplied words in the whole Bible. They’ve become sort of the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card for anybody who doesn’t want to listen to instruction or input or correction. “Who are you to judge me?” they say. The Bible says, “Don’t judge,” which is ironic, because when you look at the entire text here that we’re going to look at today, that’s the exact opposite of what Jesus is actually saying.

He isn’t saying, “Don’t ever judge.” In fact, later in this chapter—next week hopefully we’ll be there—He tells us to watch out for false prophets. He says, “You will know them by their fruits.” Well, that literally requires making a judgment about someone. So here’s the key: Jesus isn’t saying, “Don’t judge.” He’s saying, “Don’t judge wrongly.” World of difference. He’s not saying, “Don’t judge.” He’s saying, “Don’t judge wrongly.” He’s—He’s cautioning us to approach judgment with two extremely important elements: humility and discernment. And these will become evident as we go through these verses: humility and discernment.

Let’s look at everything He said in its proper context here, back to Matthew 7:1: “Judge not that you be not judged. For in way you judge others, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” These are some rather heavy words. When we judge wrongly, we’re placing ourselves above the other person. We’re the judge up on the bench and they’re the defendant down in the dock. Jesus says, “Be careful. The way you judge others will become the standard by which you are judged.” Now, even if the other person is in the wrong, even if they do need correction, it’s how we approach them that makes the difference. This is what Jesus is talking about. Do we approach them gently with grace or with a sledgehammer? They need to be approached in this certain case, but it’s how we do it, not that we do it. Ask yourself, when you’ve fallen, when you’ve messed up, do you want to be judged harshly, or would you rather receive grace? Well, it’s obvious.

It’s a jarring truth when Jesus uses this picture of a measuring cup. This was kind of a marketplace term when they weighed out grain and so on. The measure we use on others is the measure that will come back to us. We will be judged by the standard that we use upon others. Boy, this causes me to pause.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He gives one of the most unforgettable and comical images in all of Scripture. It’s actually cartoonish. Verse 3: “Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye,’ when there is a plank or a beam in your own eye?” The original word there is literally a roof beam, so it’s a very large piece of wood. Just let that visual sink in. A guy’s walking around with a massive piece of lumber sticking out of his eye. He turns his head and he’s knocking over lamps and vases. People are ducking to get out of the way. It’s a comical picture that Jesus is painting here. And then it gets even weirder because this guy with the giant plank sticking out of his eye leans in close to you and he says, “Hey, you got a little speck of dust there, let me get that for you,” as you’re ducking to try get out of the way of his beam.

It’s absurd and it’s laughable, and it’s meant to be; that’s the point. Jesus is using humor to expose something that’s actually deadly serious, and that is our tendency to magnify the faults of others while minimizing our own. Did you know that we’re so good at seeing the faults of others while being completely blind to our own? It’s like a magician’s trick: “Look over here at this distraction so that you won’t notice all my faults.” We’re far more alert to sin in others than in ourselves. Why are we like this?

Let me tell you why we’re like this, folks. It’s called sin. It’s sin. This goes all the way back to Genesis chapter 3. Adam and Eve disobey God, and when God confronts them, Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent. Because everybody thinks that everybody else is more guilty than they are. It’s the same deflection technique that we use today: point out the speck in someone else’s eye and pretend we don’t see the giant plank in our own…

As I said, I’m a recovering Pharisee. This has been something in my life I’ve had to recognize and deal with, like Phil. You know, I think it comes from… So my three strongest spiritual gifts are prophecy, teaching, and discernment. And prophecy today is simply forth-telling the truth. It’s speaking God’s Word without hesitation, without embarrassment, without, you know, fluctuation on the truth. Well, that’s all great. The problem comes in when you’re unwilling to see any gray area, and a person like me can become very judgmental. “That’s wrong.” “Yeah, but Phil…” “No, no, there’s no buts. It’s wrong.” “But Phil…” So I thank the Lord. I look back at the last, you know, 22 years of pastoring and I see growth. I see tremendous growth. Y’all wouldn’t have liked me 22 years ago. But this is the same—it’s the same distraction technique that magicians use: look over here when I’ve got sin over here.

And Jesus calls this exactly what it is. Verse 5: “You hypocrite.” Now don’t miss this: the word “hypocrite” here in the original, in the ancient Greek theater, was the same word as our word “actor.” This verse could literally and correctly read, “You actor.” “You actor.” On stage back then, actors would—they would hold masks up to their face to play different characters. One actor could play multiple roles just by switching masks. “You actor. You hypocrite,” He says. He says, “When you focus on everyone else’s sin while ignoring your own, you’re pretending to be someone you’re not. You’re wearing a mask of righteousness that doesn’t match the reality of your life underneath. You hypocrite.”

Well, we could stop there in these verses and we’d have a pretty solid case to say, “See, Phil, Jesus says don’t judge. If you ever judge anyone, you’re a hypocrite, Phil.” That’s clearly what the text is saying. But when you read the next line, you’ll see that’s not at all what He said. Look at verse 5 again. He says, “First remove the plank from your own eye. Then you will see clearly to do what? To remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” In other words, there is a right time to see the speck in your brother’s eye, to make proper judgment about it, and to then step in and help.

There is a right time for that. Any of you who have been parents for more than, I don’t know, a year, two, you know that you would be a fool to see the sinful behavior rising up in your sweet little innocent angel and ignore it and go, “Who am I? Who am I to judge?” The kids would love that, right? Until they hit about 25 and their life is a total wreck and then they go, “You know, I wish Dad would have used the rod on me a little bit, maybe.” No parent, no loving parent would ever just ignore their child’s wrongdoing. If you see your child, whether it’s 2 or 15, headed off a cliff, a loving parent pauses, sees the problem, checks their own heart, says, “God, clear me of anything in my life. Give me discernment on how to address this with my child,” and then they step in and they bring correction. Jesus isn’t saying, “Ignore their speck.” He’s saying, “Deal with your plank first.”

None of these warnings give us permission to become passive. They don’t give us an excuse to turn a blind eye to sin or to ignore problems. There are moments in families, in relationships, in churches, in businesses, when the only right thing to do is to address the issue. Scripture is full of examples of this. There are people in the Bible who are called out by name and there are warnings given about those people: “Have nothing to do with them, stay away from them.” That’s a judgment, but it’s a healthy judgment.

Paul told the church in Corinth—a church that he started that was in such a mess; if I had started the church in Corinth, I wouldn’t tell anybody I had started it; it was a disaster—Paul heard about some things going on, he had to write to that church, we have it in 1st and 2nd Corinthians, those letters there, and he had to tell the church to expel that man from the church because he was living in open sin and wouldn’t repent. That’s a judgment, but it’s a necessary, loving judgment meant to protect the church and ultimately restore the person.

But how do we go about this? How do we address sin rightly when we see someone we love, we know we have to step in, but we’re just terrified of doing it? How? Is there a guide? There are many guides in Scripture. Here, I think, for me, this is the clearest and the best one of all: Galatians chapter 6, verse 1. This has been a guiding principle for our elders at this church from day one. It says, “Brothers”—this can mean brothers and sisters—”Brothers, if a man is overtaken in a fault, you who are spiritual, restore that one in a spirit of gentleness or meekness, considering yourself lest you are also tempted.”

This is powerful. What we see here is there’s an acknowledgement of sin, there’s intervention, but it’s done with humility and discernment, fully aware that the one that we are counseling might need to counsel us next week. When you come alongside someone who has fallen or causing a problem, you never look down on them. You get down in the mud with them and you look eye to eye and you say, “I’m coming to you in love to reach out to you, to help you,” knowing in the back of your mind this could be you next. Humbling thought. You see, that gives us the right spirit: spirit of gentleness, spirit of meekness, as we approach this very difficult thing to do.

It’s been rare, but we have had to do that in this church. We’ve had to put people out of the church. And, you know, people can stand back and go, “Well, I guess the elders think they’re perfect.” Oh, we don’t think we’re anybody. Our wives can tell you we’ve agonized for weeks, weeks over those decisions. We’ve shed tears. We’ve looked at every other possibility. But there comes a time, rare, hopefully, when hard judgment has to come. It has to come.

And speaking of discernment and how to handle these things, how to assess situations, Jesus says something next that sounds extremely odd. Verse 6, He says, “Do not give what is holy to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine or pigs, lest they trample them under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces.” Well, wait a minute, are we labeling people now? Doesn’t that require judgment? Yes, it does. Here, Jesus is calling for careful, intense discernment in judgment. Now we must know, you know, I’m a dog lover, but back then dogs weren’t pets. They were scavengers. They roamed around in packs and they were quite often dangerous. They were considered unclean, and so were pigs. Now remember, remember, the context here is still about approaching someone who needs correction. This is important as we look at this verse. It’s still about approaching someone who is in the wrong, someone who needs correction.

If you give something holy to a dog, he has no capacity to appreciate it. I give our dog his favorite treat and he takes it in his teeth and he runs to the other room and eats it like I’m going to steal it from him. Six years I’ve been loving this dog and he’s like—and he’s gone, and then he’ll come slinking back in for another one. They don’t have the capacity to appreciate. If you give a dog something holy, they just don’t have—they don’t have the capacity to appreciate it. You to take a bite, realize it’s not edible, he’ll trample it underfoot. A pearl has no value to a pig, and he’s probably going to get ticked off that you did that to him, and he’ll turn and attack you. Jesus is saying, “Listen, sometimes people aren’t ready or willing to receive the truth you’re offering, and forcing it won’t help. It won’t help them and it might actually end up harming you.”

There have been moments in my life as a pastor where I have tried to fix someone who wasn’t ready to be helped, and I only ended up making things worse. You know a phrase that stays with me all the time now? It’s one of the most bizarre questions Jesus ever asked in Scripture, but boy, is it loaded. He said to the man who had been lying on the mat for—was it 38 years? Jesus sees this man lying on the mat, unable to move, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” Excuse me? Isn’t it obvious? Well, no, folks, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes their identity now, that’s their card through life. That’s the only thing they’ve got. Take that away, there’s nothing left. “Do you want to be made well?”

So now this is a two-way street we’re looking at: first, talking about us approaching others in the right way, but it’s also on the receiving end. What if we are the one who’s in the wrong, and a loving person has gone through all these steps to try to approach us rightly and we—we just react, “Well, I guess you’re perfect!” You ever tried to force-feed a baby? Got a lot of new parents here, enjoy that. You’ll end up with pureed peas and carrots all over the kitchen and all over you. It just doesn’t work. I had to learn sometimes the most loving thing I can do is stop trying to force someone to receive what they’re not ready for. This doesn’t mean we give up on them. It means we recognize that only God can change a heart, and we need to step back and let Him work.

So far we’ve heard Jesus say, “Don’t be harshly judgmental.” We’ve heard Him say, “The way you judge others is the way you’ll be judged.” We’ve heard Him say, “Take care of your own sin first,” and we’ve heard Him say, “Use discernment about when and where to dispense truth.” And surely that leaves us thinking, “Where do I get this kind of wisdom to navigate situations like this?” And Jesus answers that very question almost as though He knew we would ask it.

Verses 7 and 8: “Ask and it will be to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds. And to him who knocks it will be opened.” This verse is almost plucked out of the Sermon on the Mount and used independently to get our needs met. And that’s true. It’s encouraging and it’s comforting to know that we’re told, we’re invited throughout Scripture not only to ask for our physical needs, but to ask for wisdom as well. I think James 1:5 sums this up best. It says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives generously to all without reproach and it will be given to him.”

Do you want to know where to get discernment to see your own sin clearly and to help others with theirs? We’re invited to ask for it. The original text here—I’m running out of time, I don’t have time to go too deep on this, but the original text is actually saying, “Keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking.” This isn’t a one-time vending machine purchase, it’s a life of dependence upon Him. You may have knocked it out of the park at 10 a.m. this morning with someone, but at 1 in the afternoon you find yourself going, “Oh, Lord, I need help in this situation right here.” It’s a life of running to Him, asking, seeking, knocking. And it’s also important to know that God isn’t sitting there like a stingy old grumpy man going, “Oh, you again, asking for more?” It’s the opposite. God wants to give us wisdom. He wants to provide discernment.

Look at what Jesus says next, Matthew 7:9–11: “Which of you, if his son asked for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asked for a fish, will give him a snake? If you then, though you were evil…” I’ve always loved the way He just dropped that in there in passing. “…know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in Heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him?” Every parent understands this. Jesus is asking, “If your child came to you hungry, would you trick him? Would you give him something that would harm him?” Of course not. You long to be generous and loving and kind with your children. And our Heavenly Father longs that for us a billion times more. He longs to give us the wisdom we need in every situation, and specifically on this topic to help us make right judgment. He’s not withholding this from us.

Listen, folks, the problem—when we run into problems wrongly judging other people, the problem did not come from the fact that God failed to give us wisdom. The problem comes when we don’t ask for His guidance, and we choose instead to make judgments in our flesh. We’ve all done that, have we not? Nobody. Okay. We’ve all done that, and later the Holy Spirit comes knocking and says, “What were you thinking?” And the answer is we weren’t thinking at all; we were reacting. I can’t make eye contact with the elders right now because they beat me up in the meeting yesterday, so I can’t… on this topic, by the way.

Jesus offers a better way than trying to handle these situations on our own, in our own so-called wisdom, acting out of our flesh. He offers us a much better way, and He closes with a beautiful guiding principle. Look at verse 12. He says, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” This is often called the Golden Rule, and it’s very this: treat others the way you want to be treated.

You ever had a boss who’s… what’s the technical term? A jerk? And he jumps on everybody for being a minute late and he’s just in their business and just constantly complaining and calling people out. People might be polite to him, to his face, but you know what happens when he leaves the room? Everybody tears him apart. He’s not treating others the way he wants to be treated. He wants respect, and he wonders why he doesn’t get it.

Now this Golden Rule, excuse me, is much more than just, you know, a nice saying to cross-stitch and put in a frame and hang on your wall. It’s much more than that. It’s the summary of God’s entire law. Jesus says here—He’s saying every command, every principle in the Old Testament, it all comes down to this: “Love God, love people, treat them the way you want to be treated.” And you know what? If we actually lived this way, most of our judgmental attitudes would evaporate overnight.

See, when I make problems in my family, when I make problems in this church, when you do—there’s one culprit. It’s us. It’s our flesh. Jesus has given us the blueprint here for how to deal with these things. If we choose not to follow this, then we’re gonna find ourselves in those situations where we’re driving home going, “Phil, what an idiot you are. Why didn’t you just keep your mouth shut?” You’ve had those moments too, I guess.

You see, we all want to be treated a certain way. When’s the last time you wanted somebody to assume the worst about you? To gossip about your struggles? To write you off because of your failure? The last time you wanted that? You’ve never wanted that. We don’t want that. We want people to give us the benefit of the doubt. We want them to extend grace to us when we fall. And Jesus says, “That’s exactly how you should treat them.”

The Pharisees in this day, you know, they were experts at judging others. They could spot every tiny infraction of the law in someone else’s life, but they were completely blind to their own greed and pride and deception. Completely blind to it. Jesus tried to help them with it, but they refused help.

So how do we avoid that trap? Well, it comes back to the two key elements I mentioned earlier: humility and discernment. First, it’s remembering that we’re all broken, we’re all struggling, we’re all in need of grace. Humbling. And as we go to help the one who’s fallen, we restore them gently, knowing that we might need to be restored next. That’s first, humility. And then it’s discernment. It’s asking God to remove the blind spots in our life and give us discernment to see the situation clearly. It’s praying what David prayed in Psalm 139, verses 23 and 24. He said, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me [or test me] and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

There’s a story of a monk who lived hundreds of years ago. One day he was walking through his monastery and he saw another monk doing something wrong. His first immediate instinct was to correct him, to confront him, and to point out his sin. And then he stopped and he began to weep. The other monks noticed and came over and asked him why he was crying. And he said, “He fell today. I will fall tomorrow.”

That’s the posture Jesus is calling us to. That’s the high bar. High bar. Not to ignore sin, not to embrace an “anything goes” mindset, but to start with the hardest person to judge honestly: ourselves. I can judge you. I got gold stars in judging other people. But myself, it takes a while. I’ve got to get past all that flesh. I’ve got to get in there and look in the real mirror, not the mirror on the wall that says, “What a handsome guy you are.” I see this every day. I’m reminded every day how handsome I am. Next week’s on Pride. But you know what? When I look in this mirror, mirror of God’s Word, if I take an honest, humble look in there, it goes, “Oh boy, Phil, you got some real mess there that needs to be cleaned up.”

When we start with ourselves, when we deal with our own sin first, when we use the measure for others that we would have used on us, when we ask God to remove the blind spots from ourselves first, when we ask Him for wisdom and discernment, then we’ll be able to see clearly to help our brother and our sister. This is a challenging topic for all of us, and I’m on this journey with you. It’s my prayer that we can all grow in grace together and ultimately see God glorified through the way that we live our lives. Wouldn’t that be great? Amen.