Don't Judge Me [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Why in this epistle, which is the grandest perhaps statement and treatise on the gospel of grace that's ever been penned, why does the champion of grace, who is going to lead us to a crescendo in Romans 8.1, where we will say what the cosmos has always wanted to hear.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I am Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series we call O Bologna, a study of Romans chapters one through three, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. Now, if you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, we sure want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries.

So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. And you can contact us at Pastor Alan dot org. That's Pastor Alan dot o r g or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on that later in the program. But now let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. We're in Romans. And today we have a long text from Romans chapter two. Therefore, Paul says, You have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges for impassing judgment on another. You condemn yourself because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man, you who judge those who practice such things and yet you do them yourself, that you'll escape the judgment of God?

Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart, you're storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. He will render to each one according to his works to those who by patience and well doing seek for glory and honor and immortality. He'll give eternal life for those who are self seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness. There'll be wrath and fury. There'll be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek.

But glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality for all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law. And all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. But when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are all to themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. Okay, beloved, are you ready for some good news? There's only one judge, and it's not you.

It is not me. And that one judge, that one who has all authority and all knowledge and all righteousness, the only one with the right to judge, that judge came in the person of Jesus Christ to die for all who should be judged. We're in this series on Romans, and today we come into chapter 2, and it's pretty clear that there's a text that's got a lot to do with judgment.

One thing Christians and non-Christians have in common is they don't want to be judged. And we're a very judgey culture, aren't we now? In fact, you know, everything you do, somebody wants you to evaluate them.

Yelp's reviews and Facebook likes and thumbs up and thumbs down. We're just always in the position of being a Monday morning quarterback just judging whether you did a good job or not and whether you could have done it better like this. Never mind that we couldn't do it ourselves. And the culture, I think, by hell's design has just decided a lot of the culture they've given up on church have decided the church is judgmental. Some of it we've earned, y'all. A little bit we've earned. Somewhere I read this was voted the most funny religious joke of all time.

I don't know. You can decide. But it's a guy who's standing on a bridge ready to jump, and another fellow comes and says, don't do it. And the jumper said, but nobody loves me. And the fellow said, yeah, well, God loves you.

Do you believe in God? And the jumper said, yes. And the other fellow said, are you a Christian or a Jew? He said, a Christian. And the other fellow said, me too. And then the fellow said, Protestant or Catholic? He said, Protestant. The other fellow said, me too.

What denomination? The jumper said, Baptist. The other fellow said, me too. Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist? He said, Northern Baptist.

So the fellow said, me too. Northern conservative Baptist or Northern liberal Baptist? The jumper said, Northern conservative Baptist.

The fellow said, me too. Northern conservative Baptist great lakes region or Northern conservative Baptist eastern region? The jumper said, Northern conservative Baptist great lakes region?

The other fellow said, me too. Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879 or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912? The jumper said Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912. The other fella said go ahead and jump, you heretic. Nobody wants to be judged. Nobody wants to be accused of being judgmental and everybody's judging each other. And we come to Romans 2 and it's something that's not in my usual arsenal to talk about, but that's the theme going on in this text, one through 16.

We need to look at it because if you look back at it again, look at all these recurrences of the phrase. Verse one, oh man, every one of you judges, passing judgment, you judge, practice the same thing. Verse two, the judgment of God rightly falls. Verse three, you who judge. Again, end of that verse, the judgment of God. Jump to verse five, hard and independent heart, you're storing up breath that judgment will be revealed. Verse 12, the law will be judged by the law. Verse 16, God judges. It's a text about judgment and I think we need to know why in this epistle, which is the grandest perhaps statement and treatise on the gospel of grace that's ever been penned, why does the champion of grace who is gonna lead us to a crescendo in Romans 8, one, where we will say what the cosmos has always wanted to hear, there is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. Why in this epistle, why does the champion of grace want to hear, why in this epistle of such saturated grace does Paul spend such length in chapter two talking about judgment? We need to understand that.

And we need also to expose falsehood and really embrace the truth. You might have noticed in some of our materials, the graphics and all for the Romans series, we just called it Romans. But we're gonna divide it into sub-series so that there'll be about four or five different sub-series and then he's gonna have a title. Maybe you noticed, but these first collection of about five messages, we called it Oh Bologna. It's based on the idea of bologna, that kind of meat and I've had my fair share of fried bologna sandwiches but it looks like meat but if you were to find out everything in it, you know there's some other things mixed in it and that's where we get the phrase Oh Bologna where something looks a whole lot like truth but then there's other things that are put in there so that it just, it's not really the truth in the end. And in chapter one, Paul is addressing those who don't know God and have in an idolatrous way created their own version of God. That text is not just about sexual immorality or homosexuality or any individual sins. The text in the latter part of Romans one is really about idolatry.

It's about exchanging truth for a lie and deciding that you can come up with your own version of the truth and to that Paul says Oh Bologna and he's exposing that. And then we come to chapter two and everything changes here because now Paul is addressing Jewish believers. He's actually writing in what an ancient literary device called diatribe. And you see this a couple of places in Romans.

You see the number of places in the New Testament and we see it in other ancient literature where the writer is speaking to an imaginary individual. That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. We're excited to tell you about Pastor Alan's latest book Seeing As Jesus Sees.

It's just been released and it's the giant secret of real transformation. Now followers of Christ tend to focus on doing. So we've been told to ask what would Jesus do? But even our noblest efforts to be more like Jesus ultimately fail for the same reason that pledging to keep the law never works.

There's no gospel power in our self-striving. But what if the secret to personal transformation and victorious living isn't found in doing as much as in seeing? Anyone who has ever had an aha moment or has suddenly discovered the truth of a situation knows that fresh vision changes everything. In his eye-opening new book, Pastor Alan Wright invites readers into a new simple spiritual practice, a little breath prayer that can be prayed throughout the day. Jesus, how do you see this? It's a prayer that the Savior loves to answer because after all Christ came to be the light of the world. Clear away confusion, win over the darkness and open your heart to wonder and joy by getting your copy of the book right away. And when you make a gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's new beautiful hardcover book. And as an additional thank you for your support, you'll also receive a free six week Seeing as Jesus Sees companion video series from Pastor Alan, along with a study guide and a daily reading plan. Let Jesus take you by the hand and show you a whole new perspective for your life as you learn how to ask Christ for his eyes.

You'll start seeing as Jesus sees and you're gonna love the view. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, pastoralan.org.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. And it's kind of a literary technique where you say, and I'm speaking to you, and in this case, an imaginary Jewish believer who might be raising questions, objections, and saying things. So you'll see this kind of, it's almost like a dialogue to an individual. So that's when it comes to chapter two, verse one, it says, but you, and it's you in the singular. It's not you in the plural here.

It's talk, it's an imaginary, like let me have a conversation with you. And so let's go back to verse one and you'll see where this shift happens all of a sudden at verse one. Therefore you, this imaginary Jewish person, you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself.

Because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man, you hypothetical person that I'm talking to who is the kind of person who considers yourself very religious and so forth, do you, who judge those who practice such things, that we talked about in Romans one, and yet do themself, well you escape the judgment of God.

So you could put it this way. In chapter one, Paul is talking to the rebellious people and now he's talking to the religious people. He's saying if you think that you're too good to be judged, O baloney. And here's why, he says, because in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself. And what he means by this is that when you are speaking a standard of conduct or belief for others, even if you were not to be measured by any other standard, you wouldn't live up to that standard.

This is what Francis Schaeffer, the erudite theologian and author of the 20th century, who once wrote about an imaginary, invisible tape recorder around your neck, a recording device that is around your neck throughout your life. And he said, what if the only thing it recorded were the things you said other people ought to do? The only thing it recorded is what you said other people ought to be like. And this includes what you said when that person pulled in front of you in traffic. This includes what you said about the parent that you thought wouldn't discipline their child right. This includes about what you think when you saw someone acting selfish. This includes what you said to your spouse the other day when you thought that, you know, anyway.

That's the only thing it recorded. And what Schaeffer said was, even if you had no 10 commandments, no Bible, no other standard, and we just said, okay, the only standard by which you'll be judged will be the standard that you've held over other people, you couldn't pass it. What he's saying is that, Paul's saying here is that, and you're judging other people and saying all the things they ought to be, when you're reading chapter one, religious person, and you're reading about all those people who have those terrible sins, and you're talking about, yeah, you tell them, Paul, and the standards that you're setting for them, he's saying you don't live up to it yourself.

He's talking to religious people now. And we've all had this happen before where there's some standard you have for someone else, and then you catch yourself just being caught up and failing by the same standard. I think I shared some years ago, it came back to mind that I was driving down Highway 74 from a few days away at the beach some years ago. I was in the left-hand lane driving along happily, and a tractor-trail truck pulled rudely in front of me in the left-hand lane. Like, why is he pulling over into the left-hand lane to slow me down, you know, for no reason? And I just threw my hand up in disgust. It was not a gesture, it was just throw my hand up in disgust.

And, like that, you know. And he saw me in the mirror, I could tell he saw me. And then I was embarrassed, because I realized there was a slow-moving vehicle in front of him on the right lane. I hadn't seen it, I thought he had no cause for pulling over, and now I realize that the man needed to pull over, he's got a job to do, he's gotta get somewhere, and he was really being slowed down, and so he got in front of me, and now I'm embarrassed. After he got past the slow-moving vehicle, he pulled back over into the right hand dutifully, and I went on by. I didn't want to go by, because I knew he'd see me, and then he'd see my license plate that reads, Grace to You. And I just, I didn't want him to even see it, but I went on by, just, you know, didn't even look at him, and I went on down the road. And I got to a traffic light, and I was in the right-hand lane, and the car in front of me after the light was going very slow. And so I wanted to get in the left-hand lane, and I looked up, and here came the tractor trailer in the left lane. And I thought, oh, I don't think I'll pull in front of him. He might just barrel down on me and crush me right now. And so I just, oh, like, this is a bad situation. And all of a sudden, I hear, and that truck driver is blowing his horn big time at me.

And I thought, this is it. I'm a goner. He's gonna swerve over here and just crush me, and we'll be done. And instead, I looked in my mirror, and I saw him waving me over into the left-hand lane. And I thought, okay, and I got over to the left-hand lane, and I went on by. He waved at me again, and I went on my way. And all of a sudden, I realized what had happened, that back down the road, when I threw my hand up, he thought I was waving him into the lane. He thought I was actually nice. He thought I was blessing him.

And now he's returning the favor. You can't live up by any standard. You can't live up by the standard you have for other people driving on the street, much less the things if there were a tape recorder around my neck. So what Paul's saying is that you, who are judging all these pagans, all the things you say they ought to be, if that were the only standard, you can't even live up to that. Paul is describing people here that are religious but are far from God.

He's saying you can be religious and be far from God. And Jesus says, remarkable story of the Father who has two sons, we usually call it the story of the prodigal son, but it really is the story of a prodigal father, because prodigal means extravagant. And that's what the story's about, the extravagant grace of a father. You probably know the story, the younger son comes and asks his father for his inheritance early.

He's saying, Dad, I'd rather you be dead. Bring scandal upon the family, shame upon the family. And in a breathtaking act of relinquishment, the father gives the son his share of the inheritance. And he goes off to a faraway land, and he lives it up in wild living. And then the money runs out.

And when the money runs out, the friends run out. And he's there with nothing except taking care of some pigs, and he wishes he could just eat the pig slop, he's so hungry. And the text says when he came to himself, I think he began to remember he was a son at one time. And he started thinking about how his father's house, maybe he could be a hired hand and go back and work off his debt.

He'd be better off there. And he's rehearsing this repentance speech and makes his way home. And he is shocked when his father runs to greet him and weeps upon his shoulder with joy and has a huge celebration because his son who was lost has been found. And then the attention turns to the older brother. And you realize the story is as much about the older brother as it is the younger brother, if not more.

And the older brother is furious about the whole situation. Alan Wright, our good news message, don't judge me from the series O Bologna. It's in-depth teaching of Romans chapters one through three. Hey, stay with us, Pastor Alan is back. Joining me in the studio sharing his parting good news thought for the day in just a moment. And we're excited to tell you about Pastor Alan's latest book, Seeing as Jesus Sees.

It's just been released and it's the giant secret of real transformation. Now followers of Christ tend to focus on doing. So we've been told to ask, what would Jesus do? But even our noblest efforts to be more like Jesus ultimately fail for the same reason that pledging to keep the law never works.

There's no gospel power in our self-striving. But what if the secret to personal transformation and victorious living isn't found in doing as much as in seeing? Anyone who has ever had an aha moment or has suddenly discovered the truth of a situation knows that fresh vision changes everything. In his eye-opening new book, Pastor Alan Wright invites readers into a new simple spiritual practice, a little breath prayer that can be prayed throughout the day. Jesus, how do you see this? It's a prayer that the savior loves to answer because after all Christ came to be the light of the world. Clear away confusion, win over the darkness and open your heart to wonder and joy by getting your copy of the book right away. And when you make a gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's new beautiful hardcover book. And as an additional thank you for your support, you'll also receive a free six week Seeing as Jesus Sees companion video series from Pastor Alan, along with a study guide and a daily reading plan. Let Jesus take you by the hand and show you a whole new perspective for your life as you learn how to ask Christ for his eyes.

You'll start seeing as Jesus sees and you're gonna love the view. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support.

When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, pastoralan.org. Thank you, you're now in the studio to share Pastor Alan's parting good news thought for the day.

And the first thing that came to my mind was going back for more dessert. Don't judge me, Pastor Alan, don't judge me. Don't be so judgy.

Right. We have so many things to say. Quit being judgmental, quit judging me. You're so judgmental, don't judge me. And I guess, you know, as I said at the beginning of this message, you know, the thing Christians and non-Christians have in common is that they're probably both far more judgmental than they realize and they have this in common.

Nobody wants to be judged. So it's really, really important as we've begun today to think about what Paul has to say about judgment because that's what this text in chapter two is really, he keeps pointing to, mentions the word over and over. Every one of you judges are passing judgment, we know the judgment. So what does he mean? And to call something as we call this series baloney, to point out the authentic versus the inauthentic, the real versus that which is phony, that's not judgmentalism, that's just truth. So what is judgment and what is Paul talking about and what kind of problems do we have because of judgment? All of that in coming days we continue to discuss as we all want to have it.

Don't judge me. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at pastorallen.org or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. If you only caught part of today's teaching, not only can you listen again online, but also get a daily email devotional that matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox free. Find out more about these and other resources at pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.