Righteousness Starts at Home #1

You're thinking about this all wrong. You're thinking that your assigned commission from God in life is to identify everything wrong in everybody else. You have flipped it entirely upside down.

You're a lumberyard coming out of your eyes. It's easy to criticize others, isn't it? It's much harder to engage in honest self-examination. Hello again, I'm Bill Wright, and this is The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, Founding Pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Don has more of our series, The Art of Discernment, with part one of his message titled, Righteousness Starts at Home. We'll be focusing on the well-known passage in our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, dealing with the speck in another's eye versus the log in your own eye. It's a caution to be careful in your critique of others in light of your own sins.

So have your Bible handy, and let's join Don Green now in The Truth Pulpit. Each one of us, you and I, face a future time of accountability before God for the way that we've lived our lives. Unbelievers, those who have rejected Christ, will face a final judgment which will send them to hell. And I trust that those of you who are not in Christ will take those words to heart and realize the sobriety in which God's Word addresses your soul. But even for those of us that are in Christ, we face a future accountability before God. We will stand before the judgment seat of Christ. And how God judges us, we saw last time, will be determined in part by how we evaluated, how we judged others in our own earthly lives. We go through life, we make assessments of people, we see their faults, we respond to them, we see the way they've sinned, maybe we forgive them, maybe we don't. And what Jesus is saying here is that your attitude in your evaluations of other people, particularly in light of their sins, is going to have an effect, is going to flavor, it is going to impact the way that God judges you in the end.

That's very, very serious. It stops you short in your tracks, doesn't it? To realize that our daily reactions to our fellow men and to fellow believers within the Church of Christ, the things that we do without really thinking about them, are going to have an eternal consequence when we stand before God and give an account for our lives. How God judges you will be determined in part by how you judged others during your earthly life. Now, that is a sobering thought, beloved, that is designed to change and impact your character. It is designed to humble you, and it is designed to soften you when you see things, when people wrong you even. It is designed to soften you so that you would not have such a critical spirit that you might otherwise be inclined to have, that you might not judge others so sharply in their sins and weaknesses when you encounter them.

Now, in the passage that we're going to see today in verses three through five, Jesus is going to introduce something further in this discussion, and he is going to help you understand why your demeanor toward others should be soft and gentle, and also he's going to show you how to develop the softness of demeanor that would be fitting in light of the fact that you have a coming judgment. You know, this is the way that we should think about it. This is the way that we should think about it. And I'll speak in the first person here, but, you know, kind of illustrating the way that each one of you should think. You think, I am going to stand before God soon enough and give an account for my life, and I realize that even as a Christian I'm nothing more than a sinner saved by grace.

There's nothing great, there's nothing special, there's nothing elite about me. I am a sinner saved by grace, and I'm going to give an account of my life before a holy God who knows everything and who knows my heart inside and out. And I realize that I've fallen short of his glory, even as I'm one who's put my faith and trust in Christ for my salvation. And so I look at that and I realize that, and I kind of picture it in my mind walking down the hall, just because it's a visual that's in my mind that I see, I see the hall right in front of me that leads to the sinner doors going out, walking down the hall and approaching his throne. I don't know exactly what it's going to look like, but bowing down for my moment of accountability and being humbled by his majesty and his glory and the significance of what's happening, and bowing low and saying, Lord, I'm here to give an account. Be merciful to me, the sinner, as you do. And you approach it and you look forward to that, and then you bring it back into the present, as I often say, and you realize that in light of the sobriety of that moment, it softens my heart toward others who are heading toward that exact same point of accountability in their own lives. Before God, it's a sobering thought.

Now, here's where we go with that. Here's where Jesus, better stated, goes with that in light of this future judgment that is coming. He says it will be measured to you. You will be judged. Now in verse 3, look at it with me.

Jesus says in light of those great truths, seek first the kingdom. You will be judged. And all of those, he says in verse 3, why do you look at 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, and behold, the log is 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. Now, we've all heard this saying. Perhaps not as many of us have understood exactly what Jesus is saying. And most importantly, why is he saying it here at this particular point in time? Well, what Jesus is saying is this, and if you want to put a title on the message for your notes here, it's that righteousness starts at home. Righteousness starts at home.

And by that I mean this. Seeking the kingdom of God, seeking the righteousness of God in your life, speaking to you one on one, not speaking corporately here. Jesus here in verses 3 through 5 is using the singular form of the pronoun you. It's singular, it's direct, it's immediate. This is not a corporate discussion in some ways. This is an individual discussion.

And so I'm talking very directly and personal as if we were talking one on one today. And what you need to understand and what I need to understand is this, is that seeking the righteousness of God does not start by turning a critical eye toward the lives of others. Quite to the contrary, it starts with a sense of self-examination and concern over your own sins. It starts with self-examination and concern over your own sins.

Beloved here, this is so plain and obvious when it's stated like what I'm about to say, that I think it's utterly undeniable. In light of the fact that you are facing a personal accountability before God one day, it should be obvious to you the truth of what I'm about to say. When Christ addresses you in the Sermon on the Mount, when the Word of God convicts you, God is not calling you to repent of the sins of society. That's not true repentance. It doesn't do you any good to repent of the sins of abortion, homosexuality, and society. And to think that that is the extent of the repentance that you owe to God, God, I disassociate myself from the sins of the world around me. Well, if you haven't committed those sins, if you're not particularly drawn to those sins, that's really kind of meaningless. There's no cost in that to you at all.

There's no personal accountability in that at all. No, the Gospel, the conviction that the Spirit brings upon hearts through the Word of God is more direct and immediate to your sins. Let me put it another way. As you look around in your family, as you look around in the church, as you look around in your workplace, God is not calling you to repent of your neighbor's sins or your spouse's sins or your brother's sins.

No, no, no, no. See, see, it could be no other way in light of future accountability than this. God is calling you to repent of your sins. And we know, I know, and you know that each and every one of you have sins of your own of which you are personally responsible, of which you are the one to repent of. And that is where righteousness starts. That's where the search for righteousness starts. Not with saying, God, I am surrounded by these guilty sinners, and aren't you glad that I'm not one of them?

That's not the point at all. Righteousness starts at home. It starts in your own heart. And that is the point at which Jesus is addressing you. Rather than looking through the window at the sins of those around you, this passage is calling you to look in a mirror, look in a different kind of glass. Look in the mirror and see the reflection of your own sinfulness and start there in your confession of sin. Start there in your pursuit of righteousness.

Start there in your mourning and discomfort over the nature of guilt. God, I'm the sinner. God, I'm the one with unclean lips. I'm the one with an unclean heart.

I'm the one who has done this or that. That's where you start. And this is the requirement of righteousness that you start by addressing, contemplating, examining yourself in light of your own sins and confessing those. And that's Jesus' point here today. He draws us in with questions. Look at verse 3. He draws us in with questions. And you can see that in verse 3. He's just said, you're going to be judged. Now in verse 3, he asks a question.

Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? As I said, the prior two verses, 1 and 2, they had been in the plural. You plural.

You, all of you. Jesus' switch to the singular now makes it as though he's pointing the finger directly at you. He has isolated you. He's speaking to you alone in a room and says, let me address your soul directly in what I have to say at this portion of Scripture. And so we're going to look at two aspects of these three verses here. We're going to look at the question and we're going to look at the command. The question and the command, and this is all the way that we respond to this, beloved, the way that you respond to this text of Scripture is going to have, is somehow going to impact your eternal reward.

This is worth taking seriously and looking beyond the moment and considering deeply what kind of person are you going to be in light of what Jesus says here. And so the question is this, this is point number one, the question is this, where is your focus? Where is your focus? What do you concentrate on? What do you think about when you contemplate spiritual reality and the reality of sin and guilt and all of these things? Where is your focus? Are you focused on someone else's sins?

You wouldn't believe what that person did to me. Did you see what so-and-so did? Are you casting that critical eye outward? Or are you saying as Peter did in the passage we read, depart from me, Lord, I'm a sinful man. Notice in that passage that we read from Luke chapter 5 earlier in the service, Peter saw the great haul of fish and he was convicted because he realized he was in the presence of God incarnate. And his response to that was, Lord, I hope these other fishermen depart from you for they are sinful men.

That's not what he said. Lord, depart from me for I am a sinful man. That's the spirit, that's the idea. Look at verses three and four as we read them again. Jesus says, why do you look at 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 and behold the log is in your own eye? Notice in English, notice the question marks at the end of verse three and verse four. These are questions in the singular which are designed for you to answer them.

You're not supposed to read this passage and simply view it as another academic exercise as if you were reading a book on the Civil War that had no application to your heart. You're just gathering and acquiring more information. This is Christ asking you a question that calls for an answer. Why do you do this?

Why are you like this? In light of future accountability, in light of the fact that you're going to stand before God. And what he does here is he uses an obviously exaggerated picture, an obviously exaggerated illustration to communicate spiritual truth about the urgency of what he is saying.

When he says why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, a speck is referring to something small like a wood chip or maybe a splinter of some kind. And in this context what he's saying is this, why is it my friend that you look at a comparatively insignificant fault and sin that you have found in the life of your brother here within the church? Why do you focus and elevate and complain about, and I'm talking generally here, I'm not talking about anything specific that's going on in the life of our body here, but this plays out in the life of the community of the people of God. Why is it that you would see a fault or a sin in someone else and elevate that and make that the object of your consternation? Why would you be so upset about the sin that you see in someone else's life? Why would you complain and criticize and fault find in that, whether it's within the body, within a family?

Why would that be your focus and what you talk about and engage your energy in when there's another problem so obvious that it's incredible that you overlook it? That's the point of what Jesus is saying. You see, we're all sinners. Scripture says we all stumble in many ways, James chapter 3 verse 2. I quote that verse a lot because it's important for us to remember as we interact with one another, we all stumble in many ways.

Every one of us stumble and we all stumble in many ways, multiplied, very, very gated ways of stumbling. We need to factor that into the way that we relate to one another, don't we? That's Jesus' point. The question is whose sin dominates your personal attention? Is it his sins? Is it her sins?

Or is it your sins? That's the question that Jesus is getting to. Jesus, as it were, reaches up and he takes one of these spotlights in the ceiling and he isolates the beam of light and focuses it directly on you so that you are the one that is under the searchlight in what's being said here.

What he is teaching is this. Your first priority, beloved, the first thing, the preeminent thing in your mind as you seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, the surpassing priority, the engaging thought that ever comes back and becomes the center of gravity in the way that you think about all of spiritual life, your first priority is your own righteousness. Your first priority is your own righteousness, not to be a self-appointed corrector of the lack of righteousness in someone else's life. Do you see this and do you understand it? This is absolutely fundamental to being a Christian and it's certainly absolutely fundamental to living life within the context of a local church. Jesus says, look at it there in verse 3, why do you look at that speck, that comparatively insignificant fault in the life of your brother, but you do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

Now this word log refers to a beam of wood. It highlights your own faults and sins and it creates this really absurd picture in your mind. You're going to get close to the life of someone else and say, here, let me remove that speck from your eye is a picture of it. And Jesus says, how can you do that?

You have this big 10 foot 2 by 4 sticking out of your own eye. How are you going to get close enough to them to help them? How are you going to have any effect when your own faults, your own sins that you don't recognize, that you don't confess are standing in the way of any kind of effective ministry like that? All you're going to do with that attitude, let me seek first his righteousness in your life, is just knock a whole lot of things over and bump into a lot and cause a lot of hurt and pain simply because of the way you're swinging around a log and you don't even realize it. Jesus says, how could you even do that?

How could that even be the case? This beam, this log of which he speaks, is highlighting your own faults and sins, your own harsh attitudes, your own sins in secret, your own divisive spirit, your own anger and lust and bitterness and harshness, all of these things, your own dominating, demanding way of interacting with others, whatever the case may be. He's highlighting your own faults and sins and saying to you, how can you not see this? And he says, what you don't see and what you're not recognizing is far more important than the specks that you're seeing in your brothers.

How can a man with a beam in his eye think that he's going to remove a speck from someone else's eye? This is an absurd picture. It's ridiculous, designed to make the point.

The extremity of the picture is showing you the seriousness of the issue that you have to deal with. And even the verbs in this passage suggest a contrast that's not readily apparent in English. Look at verse 3, he says, why do you look at the speck?

And then he uses a different verb at the end of the verse. He says, and you do not notice the log that is in your own eye. You're looking but you're not noticing.

What's he saying there? The idea of look has the sense of turning your attention to your brother's eye. You're turning your attention there.

The word notice is a stronger word requiring that implies a greater sense of concentration, careful consideration, intense mental activity. The point being this, that when it comes to your own logs, to your own beams, you are to be giving proper and decisive thought to them as you go through life. It's communicating a sense of someone who is going through life aware of sin, examining himself and confessing it humbly before the Lord and dealing with his own heart as the first matter of priority. You see, you seek first his kingdom and his righteousness.

You seek that first at home, by which I mean you seek it in your own heart. So Lord, before we ever get to addressing somebody else, Lord, let's deal with me. Let's deal with my harsh and impatient spirit.

Let's deal with my words that are critical and unforgiving and ungracious. Just to kind of add a perspective to this, turn over to Ephesians 4 if you would. Ephesians chapter 4. See, there's a spirit with which a true Christian goes through life.

There is an attitude, there is a perspective that informs the way the Christian goes through life. And you can see this reflected in many places in Scripture. We'll just turn to the end of chapter 4 verse 32 where the Apostle Paul said, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. Now this is not a direct parallel to what Jesus is saying in Matthew 7. We'll see another verse in a moment that is a more direct parallel.

But you can see the whole thing here. And that verse in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 32, you can kind of reverse engineer it if you want to think about it that way. You start your thinking with this. Beloved, this is so very important. You start your thinking with this as a Christian, vertically.

You know what? God in our Lord Jesus Christ has forgiven me of all of my sins. He had the prerogative to judge me. He knew my sin, my guilt was laid before Him.

I had nothing to recommend myself for mercy in my own merit. There was nothing about me that called forth mercy or called forth His love. I was simply a guilty blob of sin before Him.

And what did He do to me? You say to yourself, you think about life this way. You think about life this way. You say, here I am in Christ.

Christ at His own initiative went to Calvary to shed His blood to wash away all my sin. The issue of focus is vital to keep in mind as you move throughout the day. When you're tempted to criticize, first ask yourself whether you need a bit of grace for your own sins.

Then and only then can you see clearly enough to offer an evaluation. Pastor Don Green will have part two of his message, Righteousness starts at home on our next broadcast. Do join us then on The Truth Pulpit. But right now here's Don with some exciting ministry news. Well, my friend, today I have an opportunity to offer you something for free that goes beyond what we've done on our radio broadcast. It's a 10-message CD album titled The Bible and Roman Catholicism.

It's a series I recently completed at Truth Community Church, taking scripture and evaluating what Catholics teach and believe about the pope, about Mary, about the mass, and about the whole nature of salvation. It's a resource that you really need to have in your hands, either for yourself or for your friends and loved ones, to know how to interact with them. And it's available for free at the place that Bill's going to point you to right now. Just visit us at thetruthpulpit.com and click on Radio Offers to learn more. I'm Bill Wright and we'll see you back here next time on The Truth Pulpit.