Please turn with me, if you would, to the seventh chapter of Matthew. We'll be considering verses one through six this morning as we begin this third and final chapter in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew chapter seven, verses one through six.
And as you turn there, would you please stand with me in honor of God's Word as we read it together this morning? Christ says, Judge not that you be not judged, for with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there is the log in your own eye?
You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. This is the Word of the Lord. Let's pray together. Holy Spirit, we cannot understand the Word of God without your help. And in fact, we don't even want to understand it and walk in it apart from your grace at work in us. So I pray this morning that you would open our eyes and hearts and minds to receive from you food for our souls. May we leave this place today unable to remain the same as when we arrived. So would you please conform this church and every Christian in it to the truth that we're about to discover. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
You may be seated. You know, some areas in the Christian life are black and white. There's no need for nuance or qualification. Our confidence in the authority and sufficiency of God's Word, for example, is an area that doesn't require any ifs, ands, or buts. It's clear. It's absolute. It doesn't change. So there's no need for us to bend or tread lightly when it comes to something like the doctrine of Scripture.
It's all or nothing. Our submission to God's law is the same way. Our affirmation of the doctrine of justification by faith is the same way. These matters are not left up to our judgment or our mood on any given day. They're not relative. They're fixed. They're absolute.
They're settled. But having acknowledged that, we can also acknowledge that there are many areas in the Christian walk that are not absolute. Matters that require good judgment and discernment and thoughtfulness and tact as our faith interfaces with life in the real world, with real people, with real circumstances. There are times when the right action, the right decision, the right assessment of some situation is not so obvious. And we have to make a judgment call.
We have to use wisdom. We have to be discerning. Sometimes it's easier for us, I think, to try to convince ourselves that everything is absolute and obvious when in reality it's just not. We're prone to jump to conclusions and go to extremes rather than take the time and the energy to make careful, wise judgments. And this tendency to rush to judgment is perhaps most evident when we're dealing with other people, other sinners like us.
Whether we realize it or not, we're constantly sizing people up. We're making judgment calls about people's character and behavior and motives and beliefs and values. The problem, though, is that in judging other people, we're often prone to going to extremes.
We're prone to absolutizing what is not always obvious or certain. And that tendency, to which I think we're all prone, can get us into trouble. The purpose of this paragraph here in Matthew 7 is to correct this tendency in our dealings with other people. It addresses the sin of judgmentalism. And here's the main lesson that Jesus is conveying to us. He's telling us that our ability to view others in the right way is dependent on our ability to view ourselves in the right way.
Or to put it differently, we cannot inspect someone else's fruit accurately until we've inspected our own fruit. The way Jesus goes about this is by giving two negative commands, each one dealing with one of two extremes that we tend to go in judging others. And then sandwiched between these two commands is a crucial principle that if we take to heart, will help us avoid the extremes to which we are prone to go when judging others. So with that in mind, let's first take a look at the two extremes that Jesus addresses, and then we'll consider that central principle that we so desperately need to keep in mind if we are to be wise Christians. First, there's a command to not judge.
We find it there in verses 1 and 2. Judge not that you be not judged. Now we need to ask first, what is exactly being commanded here? Because there are those who isolate this verse from its immediate context and from the larger context of Scripture, and they use it as grounds for prohibiting things like church discipline and mutual accountability between Christians and the exercise of Christian discernment. Is Jesus forbidding us from making any judgments whatsoever? Is he saying don't form any opinions of others? Don't draw any conclusions?
Don't arrive at a verdict regarding someone else's behavior or attitudes or motives? Is this an unqualified command forbidding every form of judgment? Well, no, that's not what Jesus is commanding here. Remember, Jesus is addressing two extremes, and so verses 1 and 2 address one extreme. But as we'll see in just a moment, verse 6 addresses the opposite extreme. Jesus can't be forbidding all judgment making because if we are to obey his command in verse 6, we're going to have to make judgments. We're going to have to determine who is, in Jesus' words, a dog or a pig.
And we'll talk about what that means here in just a moment. But the point is that even within the immediate context of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls for us to make judgments regarding other people. We can also see from the larger context of Scripture that there are numerous examples of commands and principles which require us to judge the actions and attitudes and beliefs of other people. Passages like John 7, 24.
Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment. 1 Corinthians 6, 3. Do you not know that we are to judge angels?
How much more, then, matter is pertaining to this life? 1 John 4, 1. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test or judge the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. And there are many other verses like these, so whatever Jesus means by the words judge not, he's not forbidding all judging of others in a general sense. I think there's a similar thing going on in James 3, 1, when James tells us not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. The broader context of James 3 shows that he's dealing with the sins of the tongue, and it's clear that he's not forbidding people to become teachers.
Maybe it sounds like that if we just isolate the verse. He's forbidding people to become teachers out of selfish ambition. The larger context qualifies the general statement, and so it is in Matthew 7. Jesus makes a general statement about how we are not to judge others and then qualifies that statement in the verses that follow. And so we come to see that he's not condemning all judging. He's condemning wrong judging, judging with an unfair or biased standard, showing partiality, inconsistency in judgment. That's what's being condemned in this commandment to not judge. Now the first extreme that Jesus addresses is that of unnecessary or unfair judgment of others.
This prohibition is primarily against the sin of applying one standard to our own sin and a different standard to the sins of everyone else. There's a very vivid illustration of this in the life of King David. Everyone is familiar with the story of his adultery with Bathsheba and how he tried to cover up that sin by murdering her husband Uriah. The prophet Nathan then used a parable when he confronted David with the sin. And Nathan said to David, There were two men in a certain city, the one rich, the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb which he had bought, and he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him.
There came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him. Now, this obviously makes David very angry when he hears this story, and this is where we see him committing the very thing that Jesus commands us not to do in Matthew 7. David said to Nathan, As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity.
You know, David showed a whole lot more mercy to himself when he had committed adultery and murder, but how dare someone kill another man's animal? It was a double standard. It was an undue eagerness to judge someone else.
This then is what Jesus is forbidding. Well, how do we know if we're guilty of this extreme? Let me suggest several questions that we might ask of ourselves by way of self-examination. First, we should ask, Do I maintain a feeling of personal superiority over others? Do I maintain a feeling of personal superiority over others? One pastor explained it this way. He said, Self is always behind a judgmental spirit. It is always a manifestation of self-righteousness, a feeling that we are all right while others are not and to regard them with contempt. Folks, we may be smarter or more spiritually disciplined or further along in our understanding of grace than others, but that gives us no right to strut around as if we're superior to the worst of sinners.
A worm may be healthier and bigger and better looking than all the other worms, but he's still a worm. So we need to not walk around with this feeling of false superiority. The second question we can ask ourselves is this, Do I impute motives to others? Do I impute or assume motives to others? Do I presume to know why they're doing what they're doing?
Ultimately, none of us can fully know the motivations and intentions of another soul. And if we're in the habit of assuming that we can, we may be guilty of the spirit of judgmentalism. A third question, Am I hypercritical?
Am I hypercritical? Now, there's a difference between criticism and hypercriticism. There's a time and a place for criticism. Criticism can be thoughtful. It can be constructive.
It can be helpful. But hypercriticism expects to find fault and almost hopes to find fault. It would be the opposite of all the positive qualities of love that we find in 1 Corinthians 13.
In fact, let me just read a description of love there in 1 Corinthians 13. I'm going to change all the qualities that are listed and change it to their opposites. This is what it means then to be hypercritical. Hypercriticism is impatient and unkind. It envies and boasts. It's arrogant and rude, always insisting on its own way.
It gets easily irritated and resentful. It does not rejoice when someone walks in the truth, but rejoices when another is caught in wrongdoing. Hypercriticism is intolerant in all things, doubts all things, is pessimistic in all things, gives up on all things. This kind of overly critical spirit begins an inevitable downward spiral that starts with a person finding joy in condemning every trivial fault in others and leads to a perverted sense of judging even good things in an unfavorable light. The fourth question we need to ask ourselves, do I make gray areas matters of vital importance?
Do I make gray areas matters of vital importance? This was the very problem that Paul dealt with in Romans 14. Christians were divided over an issue that was really a matter of indifference and it was getting ugly.
Paul said to them, do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. When we stumble over secondary issues, things that are matters of indifference to the success of God's work among us, we're headed down a path of being unnecessarily divisive and judgmental of the people of God. And then finally, we should ask ourselves, do I judge the person rather than the offense? Do I judge the person rather than the offense? And this is really the culmination of a judgmental attitude. It's the tendency to begin shifting our focus from judging the person's behavior to judging the person. We start assuming that we have a full knowledge of a person's heart and motives solely based on the limited understanding we have of their actions. And so we begin making final and absolute judgments of people, a privilege that ought to be reserved for God alone.
So what is the result of neglecting this command? Notice briefly what Jesus says will happen when we neglect this command to not judge. Verse 2, for with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. In other words, the same standard we use to be hypercritical of others will be used to judge us.
Notice how the judgment fits the crime. When we judge others by a harsh and merciless standard, we will be judged by that same standard. You know, a common character trait of those who are harsh in their judgment of others is often that they like to be thought well of by people, and this makes the consequence of their judgmentalism all the more painful. They mercilessly judge others in order to bolster their own reputation, then they in turn have their own reputations ruined as others judge them by that same merciless standard.
The punishment fits the crime. But we need to also keep in mind when verse 2 speaks of judgmental people being judged in return, it doesn't merely refer to the harsh judgment that other people render. It also refers to the divine judgment that is incurred when we are immoderate and extreme in our dealings with others. 1 Corinthians 11 speaks of Christians being judged with sickness and death for being divisive in the church. Romans 14 describes all Christians as those who will stand and give an account before the judgment seat of God.
1 Corinthians 3 and 5 both speak of believers' rewards in heaven being determined by the level of their obedience and faithfulness in this life. And of course Hebrews 12 describes the chastening hand of God as something that's in proportion to the believers' disobedience. When we sin harshly, we are judged harshly, and that judgment has both a human component as well as a divine component. So we ought to be slow to judge, just like God, as slow and merciful as we want God and others to be towards our own infractions. Well, Christ has given us this command to not judge, but notice then in verse 6 that there's also a command to judge, a command to judge. Jesus says, Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.
You know, this statement seems out of place in this paragraph. Jesus has just given us a stern warning against wrongly judging other people, but then he turns around and tells us to be discriminating with the truth. It seems like there's an inconsistency in Christ's teaching, but the reason there's no inconsistency between verse 1 and verse 6 is because the theme of this paragraph is not don't judge. The theme is don't judge wrongly. Part of that theme includes how to judge rightly, and that's the purpose of verse 6.
We ought to call out error when necessary, but we should do it in a way and from a heart motive of helping, not venting. So what is Christ saying here in verse 6? When he speaks of that which is holy and of pearls, he's speaking of gospel truths, the truth of God, truth of Scripture, the doctrine of salvation, kingdom principles, the very things that Christ sets forth in the Sermon on the Mount. These are our treasures. These realities are holy things. They're things of great value. They're our pearls. What about dogs and pigs?
What in the world does that refer to? You know, in our culture, we like dogs and pigs. Dogs are our favorite pet, man's best friend, right? Pigs are cute, and they taste good. But in first century Palestine, dogs were not pets, and pigs were not good eating. Dogs were associated with that which was wild and outcast, is a filthy scavenger, certainly not something you'd have inside your house.
They were unholy, unclean animals, not to be eaten. So maybe a modern day parallel to dogs would be rats. We don't think of them as cute, cuddly pets.
At least I hope not. Pigs would maybe be like raccoons. We don't generally think of raccoons as the trustworthy, kind-hearted animal that's good to eat. They're pretty mean and destructive. Clearly, Jesus is using these references metaphorically. He's using these detested animals to describe a specific kind of person. One commentator said that it refers to those who are so imbued with the wicked contempt of God that they refuse to accept any remedy. This isn't a generic reference to all unbelievers.
We're told to preach the gospel to all men, right? Matthew 28 and 19. What it's referring to here is a certain type of unbeliever, a scoffer, a scorner. Jesus is telling his disciples that we are not to endlessly continue to bring the gospel message to those who clearly hate it and ridicule it and reject it. Titus 3, 10, and 11 says, As for a person who stirs up division after warning him once and then twice have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful, he is self-condemned. There comes a point in our gospel witnessing where we make a judgment call and we say, Enough, no more.
This person is self-condemned. I believe there's an illustration of this very thing in the life of Jesus. Compare the way that Jesus dealt with Pilate to the way he dealt with Herod at his trial. He speaks to Pilate. He even answers Pilate's questions and tries to persuade him. But when he stands before King Herod, a king of Jewish descent who ought to have known better, Scripture says he made no answer.
He didn't cast his pearls before that swine. So how do we practice this right kind of judgment? I think in some ways this passage is Christ's become all things to all people statement. He's telling us to recognize there are different types of people and different types of questions and we can't approach the task of evangelism as if one size fits all. We've got to become experts at understanding which aspect of the truth is appropriate in particular cases. Some folks are ready for strong meat.
Others need milk. And we've got to be discerning in how we handle this holy treasure that we call the Gospel. I remember a while back having the opportunity to witness to a lady who was clearly under conviction.
I mean, God's Spirit had been getting her ready and all I needed to do was put the gospel pearls in front of her and she embraced Christ. On the other hand, there was a time when I was going through the evangelism explosion training and was going door-to-door evangelizing and I knocked on a door only to be met by a half-drunk agnostic who just laughed at me for trying to convert him. The way a Christian witnesses, for example, to an unbelieving hostile adult is going to be radically different from the way a Sunday school teacher witnesses to the covenant children in her Sunday school class.
Different people require different approaches. And Christ is commanding us in v. 6 to be discerning, to make right judgments. We can't just say, well, this is who I am, this is my personality, so I'm going to always interact with people about spiritual things this way. Folks, it's quite possible to preach the truth in an unworthy manner and become unloving in what should be our most loving task. One of my preaching heroes once gave this sage advice.
He said, you and I must never be the cause of antagonism. We must always preach the truth in love and if we cause offense, it should always be the offense of the cross, not anything offensive in the preacher. And why is this so important? It's so important because the Gospel is so important. The Gospel is a holy thing. The Gospel is a thing of great value. Think of that one thing that is most important to you in this life. I think for me, my wife and children would have to be at the top of that list. You know, I'm not going to entrust my kids to just anybody.
They're too important to me for that. Jesus is telling us that the Gospel is so special, so valuable, so holy that we dare not just throw it out there like it's pig slop to a culture that hates God and laughs at His Word. It ought to bother us when people take the Gospel lightly and we ought to preserve and protect its sacredness by being good discerners of people and being shrewd in how we handle this treasure. This is a command to judge, but to judge rightly.
So these are the two extremes to which we tend to go. On the one hand, we can be too judgmental and make ourselves everybody's critic. On the other hand, we can fail to exercise enough good judgment. We end up dishonoring the Gospel and sometimes even driving people further away from the truth. That's why verses three through five are so important.
In these verses, Jesus gives us, thirdly, a crucial principle, a crucial principle that keeps us from going to these extremes. This principle keeps us grounded and balanced. It keeps our motives in check. It keeps our intentions pure. It's the principle of self-examination, and this is the real crux of the issue.
Look with me at verses three through five again. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there is the log in your own eye?
You hypocrite. First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. We cannot rightly discern the spiritual flaws in other people as long as we're tolerating spiritual flaws in ourselves. That would be like a blind eye doctor trying to perform intricate eye surgery on someone. It's unhelpful.
It's even dangerous. We can't see what we need to see when we start judging others while there's unfettered sin in our own hearts. But the moment we deal with our own sin, we gain a clarity and a humility that guards us from prejudging on the one hand and guards us from failing to rightly discern on the other. It's so easy to say we're concerned about truth and righteousness, but if we're truly concerned about these things, we would use our knowledge to get ourselves right first. The fact that we're still in sin proves that we're unfit to judge others and that we really have no concern for truth at all. Our concern is simply to condemn. We're so good, aren't we, at exaggerating the offenses of others while understating our own offenses. Maybe we're like two little brothers that get in a fight and one of them says to his mother, I just bumped into him and he hit me.
What he doesn't say is that that bump was an all-out shove to the ground. We minimize our own offenses and maximize the offenses of others. Brothers and sisters, what Jesus is saying is that when we truly see ourselves as we really are, we'll get over this tendency to judge others in the wrong way. Only when we've humbled ourselves by removing this log of judgmentalism that's in our eye, are we in a position to truly help someone else. I think this illustration of something in the eye is the perfect illustration.
Of course it is. Jesus used this illustration. The eye is so sensitive that to work on it requires the utmost delicacy and care. And it's the same way, isn't it, with correcting the faults of others. We'll only succeed if we proceed with humility and patience and understanding and compassion. Have you ever noticed how the people in your life that are in a position to most effectively give you constructive criticism are people who are the most honest about their own faults?
I'm not talking about the faults modestly. We sometimes show by saying something like, you know, I don't have it all together, but, and then we proceed to land blast the person. I'm talking about real, sincere, habitual humility that tempers someone's every action and attitude and word. Their very personality and character qualifies them to say anything to you by way of encouragement or criticism.
And you know that their words, even the hard words they have to say, always have your best interest in mind. Folks, that ability only comes from a person who has developed a deep and genuine humility through honest, regular self-examination. The only way we can avoid the extremes that Christ condemns in these verses is if we engage in the discipline of shining the light of God's truth on every shadow in our soul and seeing ourselves as God sees us. Seeing the rebellion in our own hearts and recognizing that we are nothing apart from grace will have a profound effect on how quickly and how harshly we judge others.
By the same token, recognizing where you'd be apart from God's grace will embolden you out of love and out of a desire to see others helped, to be uncompromising with the truth of God's word. We cannot see others clearly. We cannot be balanced in our judgment of others until we see ourselves clearly. The question we're left then with is this.
How do we get the log out of our own eye? Well, it's gonna require us to take frequent looks in the spiritual mirror to see what's inside of us. We're gonna have to get used to the practice of examining ourselves with honesty and humility. This is not fun work, but it's necessary work.
It's difficult, self-mortifying work, but its reward will be tremendous. This is the kind of thing Jesus was talking about when he said, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. There was a time when a certain segment of the church had a more balanced understanding of what self-examination is all about than perhaps we do in our current historical moment. There's a group of Christians who trembled before God and yet were able to stand before kings and authorities of this world with boldness and confidence because they had a right view of themselves. They didn't have an inflated sense of self-esteem. In fact, they spoke of the importance of biblically examining themselves and of the necessity of acknowledging the true corruption of their own hearts.
And it didn't destroy them psychologically. What it did was drive them in desperation closer to Christ. I'm speaking of the Puritans. The Puritans and other Christians like them down through church history knew how to examine themselves well.
They understood how to get that log out of their own eyes so that they could more effectively deal with the splinters in the eyes of others. And so I think a good starting place for us maybe in learning the spiritual discipline of self-examination, a good starting place for us in overcoming the sin of judgmentalism if you struggle with that would be the Puritans. The English Puritan John Owen has written two marvelous little books. One is called Temptation. The other is called The Mortification of Sin. Books like these can be prayerfully read and applied and will take us much further down the road of sanctification than so much of the Christian literature being published today. Now, you certainly don't have to use these tools.
I think they're helpful. But you do need to begin learning how to identify and remove the logs of sin that distort your spiritual vision and your effectiveness in pointing others to Christ. So I want to close with a Puritan prayer from the Valley of Vision just by way of helping us get started down this path of biblical self-examination. And I want you to imagine with me a body of believers at Grace Church who are characterized by deep abiding humility and honesty with themselves first. And imagine with me the impact that this sort of humility would have on our effectiveness at building each other up and bringing a lost world to Christ.
Here's the prayer. Searcher of the hearts, it is a good day to me when you give me a glimpse of myself. Sin is my greatest evil, but you are my greatest good. I have reason to loathe myself and not seek self-honor, for no one desires to commend his own dunghill. My country, family, and church fare worse because of my sins, for sinners incur judgment by thinking sins are small or that God is not angry with sin.
So show me how to know a thing is evil, which I think is right and good. Give me grace to recall my needs, my lack of knowing your will in Scripture, my lack of wisdom to guide others, my lack of daily repentance, my lack of prayer. Remind me of the words that I speak without love, of my failure to find joy in you, of my tolerance of hypocrisy.
Of all hypocrites, grant that I may not be an evangelical hypocrite who sins more safely because grace abounds, who tells his lusts that Christ's blood cleanses them, who reasons that God cannot cast him into hell, for he is saved, who loves evangelical preaching, churches, and Christians, but lives an unholy life. Give me a broken heart that yet carries home the water of grace. Folks, we need to learn to pray, search me, oh God, know my heart.
Try my thoughts and see if there'd be any wicked way in me. Learn to pray that and mean it because if you don't, you will forever be going to some extreme that is harmful to the body of Christ and dishonoring to the gospel. Let's pray. Father, you've promised that you resist the proud, but you give grace to the humble, so please make us humble, first in the way that we view ourselves and then in how we relate to those around us in order that Christ and his gospel might shine through us. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
