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“If you’re able, please stand.” Reading Matt. 7:1–6. “Thanks be to God.”
There are some situations where we really want people to judge, and to judge with the strictest possible standard.
Friday night the elders and our wives came back from Frisco, TX. It was a three-hour direct flight from Dallas to RDU. And we expected the pilot to judge, and to judge with the strictest possible standard.
We wanted the navigator to give very precise instruction about the exact right spot to land the plane in the very large state of North Carolina.
We didn’t want the pilot to turn to the navigator and say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, man. Stop being so judgy. There are lots of ways to land a plane. Lots of perfectly good places in North Carolina where we can land. Don’t judge me!”
And the 200 people in the back of the plane were really happy that our pilot was so precise in his judgments. Not one of us thought, “Pilots! They’re all the same. They’re all like, ‘Land here but not there. Go this speed but not that speed.’ I wish they’d stop judging all the time!”
Nope. Every one of us was glad they decided to land the plane on that very specific piece of concrete at RDU that was designed for exactly that one purpose of a plane landing at a 150 mph .
But in relationships, judging can be trickier. We’re quicker to say someone’s being “judgmental.” They’re not just judging but being “judgmental.”
How do you know the difference? That’s easy! “Whenever you judge me, that’s being judgmental. Whenever I judge you, that’s just making a wise judgment.”
This morning we want to think about Jesus’ words on judging others. He’s going to tell us there are kinds of judgments we are NOT to make, and there are judgments we ARE to make.
The author of the book of Matthew was a tax collector before God called him to be an apostle. He was a man who would have been used to being judged by his fellow Jews. They would have assumed he was a cheat and a pawn of the Roman government.
But then Christ saved him! Christ said to him, “Follow me!” (Matt 9:9), and he did. A couple decades later he wrote his gospel to help others believe in Jesus. The gospel of Mark was first. Matthew used Mark as a starting point but then added his own eyewitness material.
This sermon series is based in the Sermon on the Mount, Matt. 5–7. We’ve called it “Living in the Kingdom,” because that’s the main idea of Jesus’ sermon. What it looks like to live with Christ as your King.
Today we’ll see that living in the kingdom affects how we are to think of other people and speak to other people. Living in the kingdom requires us to judge without being judgmental.
If you’re not a Christian, Don’t judge us! Kidding. I hope you come away with the sense that Jesus is the most profound teacher who ever lived. There’s a perfection to his words that tells you, he knows you and he’s God.
Sermon: Judge without being judgmental. How?
(1) Don’t make sinful judgments (7:1–2);
(2) Don’t make blind judgments (7:3–5);
(3) Do make careful judgments (7:6).
Prayer
Read Matt. 7:1–2. Judge without being judgmental by not making sinful judgments.
The wisdom of Jesus is evident in these words. Both in what he says and in how he says it. There’s a conciseness of the language and a cleverness of the language that is stunning.
The closest parallel example we get to what Jesus is doing in these verses is in Proverbs where Solomon sometimes speaks in these ways.
Solomon’s words and insights can leave us amazed. The more we study the Proverbs, the more we acknowledge that Solomon was the wisest man on earth.
And yet, sometimes we take for granted just how marvelous Jesus is as a thinker and speaker. We forget how true it is that “something greater than Solomon is here” (Matt 12:42).
Remember Jesus’ words:
The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. (Matt 12:42)
Let’s turn to our passage. In the first two verses Jesus speaks in a really concise way. First he warns us about judging. He warns that we will be judged with the same standard we use judging others.
Our standard of measurement for others will be used as we ourselves are measured.
Jesus doesn’t tell us WHO will be judging us or measuring us. The invisible Judge is best seen as the Lord.
This doesn’t mean the way God will judge us at the final judgment when all our words and deeds will be judged. That future judgment will be according to God’s immovable and unchangeable and perfect standard.
But God as our Judge has other ways to make sure we are judged throughout our lives. God’s Word reminds us that God disciplines us as a loving Father (Prov 3:11–12; Heb 12:3–14), and part of discipline is being judged. Being evaluated. Being assessed. When there’s a negative assessment, we experience his discipline to help us grow.
That doesn’t mean our earthly judgments are always righteous. Sometimes we’re judged in our place of employment, but we’re judged unjustly. But still, God uses that to help us grow.
So, we might get a negative performance review, but it’s unfair and really because our manager simply doesn’t like us. We have to learn how to respond in a godly way. Or maybe we have to learn how to stand up for ourselves in a humble way. Either way we’re forced to grow.
But Jesus is talking about us making sinful judgments. Ways that we judge others sinfully, unfairly. Hypocritically.
We know that because in other passages, we’re clearly called to make judgments. In verse 6, we’ll see that we are to judge certain people as unworthy of “holy” things.
In Matt. 7:15, we’re to evaluate teachers and decide if they’re “false prophets.” We do that by evaluating the fruit of their lives.
But Jesus is forbidding a certain kind of judging. One word for this is “censoriousness.”
John Stott explains it:
Censoriousness is a compound sin consisting of several unpleasant ingredients. It does not mean to assess people critically, but to judge them harshly. The censorious critic is a fault-finder who is negative and destructive towards other people and enjoys actively seeking out their failings. He puts the worst possible construction on their motives, pours cold water on their schemes and is ungenerous towards their mistakes.
John Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount[1]
Or maybe we can call it, “The Lucy syndrome” from the “Peanuts” comic strip. In one of Charles Schulz’s comics from 1983 he had one with Lucy and Linus.[2]
Linus is reading in a chair, Lucy standing next to him, in a pensive pose.
Jesus tells us for this type of person, God will make sure that we’re judged in the same way. God will orchestrate circumstances so that we’re called out publicly in the same we’re calling out others publicly.
An example is the self-righteous preacher who is always angrily calling out the culture for its loose living, loose morals, self-indulgence. He’s not just clearly communicating God’s Word, which is necessary. He’s doing it in an angry, censorious way.
And then the news breaks that he’s living a double-life. He has a mistress somewhere, is given to drunken binges, and abandoned his faith a long time ago.
Mark Knopfler of the band Dire Straits did a good job of putting this to lyrics:
When you point your finger
‘Cause your plan fell through,
You got three more fingers
Pointing back at you.
Dire Straits, “Solid Rock”
Two questions to ask when we’re prone to judging a person or people.
Read Matt. 7:3–5. Judge without being judgmental by not making blind judgments
Now we see a second way that judging can get derailed. If the first way was to be overly critical and overly condescending, this second way is to judge others while being blind to our own faults.
Being blind to our own faults makes us blind to the faults of others.
Our judgments are blind judgments, not because we’re not seeing someone else’s sin. Our judgments are blind judgments, because we’re not seeing our own GREATER sins. We’re not judging accurately.
In these verses, Jesus the carpenter’s son now picks up an image perhaps from his days with his father in their carpenter’s shop.
He talks about “specks” and “logs/beams.”
“Speck” can be like a speck of sawdust, or it can be a splinter (BDAG). “Log” is a beam of lumber you might use to support a roof or as the bar over the door. It’s a big piece of wood. Not like a branch or a stick.
In other words, the image is totally absurb. You don’t get a 2x4 stuck in your eye!
But the absurdity is part of the point: Just as it’s totally absurd to get a 2x4 stuck in your eye and then try and help someone with the smallest splinter in their eye, so it’s totally absurd to be blind to your own greater sin and miss the much smaller sin in someone else’s life.
Again, “something greater than Solomon is here.” These images of Jesus are alive with meaning. After 2,000 years they still resonate. We get what he’s saying.
Notice that Jesus says “brother” in these verses. You’re speaking to “your brother” and dealing with “your brother’s eye” (Matt 7:3, 4, 5). It’s a fellow Christian we’re dealing with.
And yet, we can still be a “hypocrite” when we do that. Jesus rebukes us for being a “hypocrite” when we do what he’s talking about (Matt 7:5).
Don’t miss Jesus’ remedy. We might have expected that the remedy to having a beam in our eye was not to judge at all. We might have expected Jesus to say, “Don’t worry about your brother. Just deal with yourself!”
But Christian love doesn’t do that. We don’t just leave our brother or sister alone and hope they do okay. To love another means we’ll get involved with them.
The New Testament calls us to this kind of ministry. Here are three places:
Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. (Eph 4:15)
Exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Heb 3:13)
My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, 20 let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. (James 5:19–20)
What Jesus says to do is a two-part act. There’s a “first” step and a second step. He says to “first take the log out of your own eye” (Matt 7:5). Repent. Grow. Change.
Or, at the very least, see it clearly. See the beam in your own eye, so that your words will be spoken with that self-knowledge.
We can’t always completely remove our “beam.” But at least we’ll see that ours is a “beam” and theirs is a “speck” or “splinter.” That will affect how we speak, won’t it?
The first step is remove our beam, or at least see it clearly. But the second step is to help our brother. He’s got a “splinter” in his eye and needs it removed. Help him!
Sometimes it’s a rebuke he needs. Or a well-timed observation about his behavior.
Speaking this way is fraught with challenges.
And in a long-term, close relationship, like a marriage or with parents and children, we have to be especially careful. We know the person so well, and they know you so well.
But criticism is so helpful. It causes us to see ourselves. Sometimes it’s our response to the criticism that really helps us see ourselves.
Critics are God’s instruments. I don’t like to be criticized. You don’t like to be criticized. Nobody likes to be criticized. But, critics keep us sane—or, by our reactions, prove us temporarily or permanently insane. Whether a critic’s manner is gracious or malicious, whether the timing is good or bad, whether the intention is constructive or destructive, whether the content is accurate, half-true, or utterly false, in any case the very experience of being criticized reveals you....
Fair-minded criticism is one of life’s best pleasures, an acquired taste well worth the acquiring. Someone who will take you seriously, understand you accurately, treat you charitably, and who then will lay it on the line is a messenger from God for your welfare (whether or not you end up completely agreeing). There is nothing quite like being disagreed with intelligently, lovingly, and openly: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Prov. 27:6).
David Powlison, “Does the Shoe Fit?”[3]
Don’t make sinful judgments. Don’t make blind judgments. But do work on your beam and then speak to your brother. He needs you to do that.
Read Matt. 7:6.
Judge without being judgmental by making careful judgments.
In this third statement, Jesus tells to make a judgment in a specific way. It concerns making a value judgment about what is “holy.” And also a value judgment about what kind of people we’re dealing with.
Jesus says there are “holy” things in our lives, and there are things as valuable as “pearls.”
And there are certain people in our lives who are “dogs” and “pigs.” (Now hold on here: Don’t let your mind go racing about all the people you can finally call a “dog” and a “pig”!)
But Jesus says not to throw “holy” things to dogs or “cast your pearls to swine.” That’s the King James version of this verse. That might be more familiar to you.
“Dogs” and “pigs” were “unclean” animals. Don’t think “dog” here like the sweet, well-groomed Beagle you paid $900 for.
With Jesus’ use of “dogs,” think of the mangiest, smelliest, most sickly, greasy dog you’ve ever seen. That’s how Jesus’ hearers would have heard it. Something “unclean” and undesirable.
A pig was “unclean” (Lev 11:7–8). Until Jesus’ crucifixion, pigs were forbidden as food. They were religiously “unclean.” So, no ham. No bacon. No pork sausage. No pork chops. No pork tenderloin. No pig-pickings....You get the idea. No pig meat of any kind. To eat pig would make you “unclean” for a period of time.
Jesus is saying that some people are “dogs” and “pigs.” Don’t give your “holy” or precious things to them.
Clearly we need discernment. We can’t casually or flippantly put someone in the category of “dog” or “pig.” What does Jesus mean?
This can’t refer to evangelism, which is giving something “holy” and valuable to an enemy of God. Enemies of God aren’t necessarily “dogs” and “pigs” like the ones Jesus is talking about.
Jesus isn’t telling us to keep the gospel back from the enemies of God. We’re commanded to! (Matt 28:19–20; Col 4:5–6).
Jesus isn’t saying NOT to give holy behavior to unholy people. We’re commanded to!
1 Peter 2:
For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. 21 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. 23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. (1 Pet 2:20–23)
Giving godliness in the face of sinful mistreatment is not throwing pearls to swine.
It’s something more subtle that Jesus is teaching us. Something that takes greater discernment.
Some situations I believe Jesus has in mind.
If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. (2 Thess 3:10)
That word “willing” is really important in 2 Thessalonians 3:10. We can’t control our ability to work. But we can control our willingness to work. To receive charity, God requires willingness.
Jesus has situations like these in mind.
“Dogs” and “pigs” might also be people who not only disbelieve in Christ, but they’re open scoffers. They ridicule you and Christianity. They make fun of Jesus and holy living.
With someone like this, we’re still called to love them. Jesus said to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44).
We aren’t to respond in kind when someone is being sinful and evil.
But it can be throwing pearls to pigs sometimes when we really aren’t seeing the sins of another person. We aren’t seeing their lying, deceitful, mocking ways. We aren’t seeing how they manipulate us. How they take advantage of us. We aren’t seeing what is right in front of us.
When this happens, we can go from loving our enemies to throwing pearls to pigs. We go from wisdom to foolishness. We go from wisdom to naivete.
Christian love makes judgments about people, so that we can love them in the wisest and best and most appropriate way.
We do this for the person’s sake and for Christ’s sake and for the gospel’s sake.
We are to make judgments without being judgmental.
All of this starts in the heart. Sinful judgments begin with our thoughts about a person. Then they erupt into our words and actions.
Repentance starts with how we think about people. Or maybe how we think about a particular person. If you realize your sinful judgments are poisoning your relationship with a person, take action.
Maybe your repentance has to go further, to repent of critical speech and critical actions.
We can confess our sins to another person, because Christ the Supreme Judge has forgiven us!!
Jesus teaches us about his place as Supreme Judge and what faith in him does:
For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, 23 that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. (John 5:22–24)
Pray and Closing Song
[1] John Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, BST (InterVarsity), 176.
[2]http://peanuts.wikia.com/wiki/August_1983_comic_strips
[3] David Powlison, “Does the Shoe Fit?”, JBC 20 No 3 (Spring 2002), 2, 3.
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