Well, my name is Eric, one of the pastors here.
Glad to be here with you this morning, especially the first
Sunday of the year. Thank you for dedicating the
first Sunday of the year to the Lord with us here at Redemption
Church, North Ogden. And we are going to be in the
book of Matthew, Chapter 7. We're starting a new chapter
also. This is still the Sermon on the
Mount where Jesus is teaching his 12 disciples about what it
means to be a Christian, to live in the Kingdom of God.
But yes, there are many people around listening to Jesus
teaching as well during this time.
And so that's the context of of what we're talking about today.
And I've titled the message The Godly Way to correct One
Another. And the verses we'll be in is
Matthew Chapter 7, verses one through 6.
If you have a Bible, please follow along with me.
I'll, I'll also have some of those verses on the screen.
But if you need a Bible, we have free Bibles back at the welcome
table. So please grab one if you don't
have a paper copy of the Bible. Now I have 4 points today about
this text and I want to get right into them.
And the first one is this are we supposed to judge because that
that verse that we opened up with judge not that you not be
judged or in the King James Version, it was judge not lest
ye be judged. One of the most misunderstood
verses of the Bible or misused verses of the Bible.
We often think about it. And when I think about this
verse, the first thing that comes to my mind, and I hope you
don't judge me for this, but I used to listen to a lot of rap
back in the day, being a kid in the 80s and nineties 2000s.
And Tupac had a famous song called Only God can judge me.
And even as I was a Christian, I thought this is a cool song.
Like I agree with this guy, right?
Like only God can judge me. I don't care what people think.
And that was probably mostly because I was living in a lot of
sin and people were judging me and I thought, Nope, only God
can judge me, right? That my, that was my
justification. Like you don't get to tell me
what to do. Only God will judge me at the
end of the day. Well, he's partially right and
partially wrong. So let's look into that.
But but really, are we supposed to judge people as Christians?
That's the question I want to pose and I want to answer that
through this this first point. But let's look at these verses
again. 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.
Now the word judge here in its original language means
condemnation, or the type that leads to punishment, a judging
that would lead to a conviction. And the authors of the New
Testament and the Old Testament emphasize that that God is a
judge. God does judge people, and He
will judge people at the end of their lives and even at the end
of the world. There's something in the Book of
Revelation called the Great White Throne Judgment, where a
book will be opened or several books will be opened, and all of
the actions that humans ever did individually, every one of us
will be called to account. Everything we ever said,
everything we ever did, every thought we had, every motive of
our heart will be called to account before God and he will
judge those things. The good news is though, that
Christians won't be in that judgment if you believe and
trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
Jesus took the punishment that we deserved on the cross and he
died for all those sins that are going to be called to account.
And so at the end or when we die, the, the things that we
could be accused of as guilty, God looks at the Father who took
God looks at the Son who took our place and says, Nope, you
are innocent. You're not judged.
But yes, the God is a judge. Also, the Bible says that Jesus
is coming back as God's appointed one to judge the earth
and even the Holy Spirit, the whole Trinity, the Holy Spirit
judged Ananias and Sapphira when they lied to him and they
immediately died because of it. He is in Second Timothy 48, the
righteous judge, and so him being the judge must cause us to
have a little bit of fear, righteous fear and and humility
because we know that God is going to judge.
So then we ought to judge rightly if we're going to judge
at all. That's what I would say to you
first and foremost, because another way to understand the
word judge is to evaluate, to form a critical opinion of
something either either positive or negative by examination or
scrutiny. And certainly we are called in
the Bible to do that as well as Christians.
But what Jesus is getting at here, what we must understand
is, is we go into the next verse, it it talks about
brother, it uses the word brother.
It says, why do you see the speck in your brother's eye?
We'll get to that in just a little bit.
But anytime a a passage uses that word brother, it means that
Jesus is talking to Christians. And it means that in the sense
that we're not supposed to put ourselves in in the seat in the
throne of God and be the judge ultimately on people's spiritual
life or death because of some decisions they're currently
making, right? We don't get to say to a
Christian, because you're slipping, because you're
falling, because you're, you're you're sinning that all of a
sudden you've lost your salvation and now you're going
to condemnation. That's the context in which we
are supposed to read this judge not that you be not judged.
Remember the the Sermon on the Mount.
He's talking to the disciples and and he's he's talked about
those who are merciful will receive mercy, right?
Those who are Christians understand that they've escaped
the judgement and received mercy, and so therefore we ought
to do the same thing with our other brothers and sisters who
struggle with sin and fall from time to time.
So we shouldn't pass judgement to the point of condemnation on
another believer because they've sinned.
Or in Romans 1410 it says why do you pass judgement on your
brother or you why do you despise your brother?
For we all stand before the judgement seat of God.
The context of Romans 14 is talking about when some
Christians didn't like that other Christians were eating
food, sacrificed idols. And this is basically saying
that there's a there's, there are secondary matters that are
matters of the conscience, matters that aren't life and
death when it comes to salvation that Christians can agree or
disagree on and still not be in sin.
So matters of conscience, what is conscience?
We're going to do a Sunday school version of this in in
maybe a few months. We're going to talk all about
conscience. Like can a Christian take their
kids trick or treating or put up Christmas trees in their house
or drink alcohol or what level of involvement in politics is it
right for a Christian to have? Or can Christians listen to
Taylor Swift? And I would just say I wouldn't
do it if I were you. But all these things are a
matter of conscience to some. They have freedom because it
hasn't been clearly spelled out, clearly spelled out like the
gospel spelled out. Some things in Scripture aren't
clearly spelled out, whether it's sin or not sin.
And and so there is freedom in Christ in in a lot of things in
this life. And those would be called
matters of conscience. If you feel convicted in your
own conscience because of your faith that you shouldn't do this
or that, and then you go and do it anyway, then that's sin for
you. But those things are Gray areas
and those can be debated until we finally one day go face the
real judgement. But Jesus is saying here, here's
a the, the the verses in Luke that are the same thing, but
just maybe said in a different way.
Jesus says judge not and you will not be judged.
Condemn not and you will not be condemned.
Forgive and you will be forgiven.
So if you go around with a hypocritical, judgmental spirit
towards other believers all the time, the question might be, do
you understand what you've been forgiven?
What what God has overlooked in your life?
How you have the hope of not being condemned even though
you've struggled with them? Do you not understand that?
If you don't understand that, then we might call into question
whether you truly understand the gospel or not.
James, 59, says don't grumble against one another, brothers,
so that you may not be judged. Behold, the judge is standing at
the door. We might have to go back to the
basics if we're seeming like we are judgmental Christians of our
other brothers and sisters. We are we are to refrain from
and what I believe is being condemned here is hypercritical
judgement. We are to be critical and I'm
going to get to that in a moment, but hypercritical about
others, but then being gracious to ourselves.
Have you ever noticed that that's how we kind of our we
assign motives to other people and we become the prosecutor
when offended when someone sins or sins against us.
But when we sin or we, we start to call it a mistake and now
we're the defense attorney for our own selves.
Also, I believe we're critical of the things that we ourselves
do. And this is where we need
humility. If we're constantly calling out
things in other people that we ourselves actually do, we might
need to take a step back and look at have we repented of the
sins that we so hate in others? Because that's often times what
our problem is. And I'll tell you, I'm the first
one to admit to this, right? Like when we're raising our
children, you know this as parents, you lived a certain
way. Maybe you had a hard life.
You've been through a lot, trial and error.
I, I personally made a lot of choices through trial and error,
sinned a lot, made a lot of mistakes.
And so then raising my kids, sometimes I can be hyper
critical because I don't want them to have to go through what
I went through. Or if they start acting like me
like I used to, I get super critical about that.
You know, things like diet and exercise, you know, eating
enough protein and, and being kind of vain.
You know, that was something that I struggled with for a long
time in my life where I was so focused on what I looked like or
my body image. And when one of my children
exhibits the same thing, what do I do?
I get critical. Why is that?
I'm I'm beginning to believe it's because I haven't dealt
with that sin in my own life yet and I haven't repented of it
enough with God and dealt with it enough that I just get angry
when I see it in other people. Can you relate to that a little
bit? Do you get angry at other people
for sins that you yourself are disgusted with in your own self,
but instead of dealing with it inside of you?
You pointed out in other people We need to repent of our sins
before we judge others or we might be unrepentant Christians.
But turning point here, we are supposed to be discerning and
make judgments about people and choices and lifestyles.
We are supposed to evaluate, in fact, people all over the world.
It's interesting, especially in Christianity, when you start
talking about being judgmental or critical or, or or or
evaluating someone, you know how what kind of life they're
living, whether they're living holy or not.
Like all over in the world. We celebrate critical people,
don't we? Listen to the podcasts of the
people that are very critical of everyone else, critical of the
government. We love those podcasts, right?
People that are critical of the drug companies and the rich
people in the world. We love people to to call out
the faults of other people. But when it comes to religion,
all the sudden it's like, well, wait a minute, don't judge me.
Now we're back to Tupac, right? Only God can judge me.
Let's not talk about that. That's being too judgmental.
And then as a result, what ends up happening is because of that
feeling that you're not supposed to judge in church because
people have misused this word, we have what's called jellyfish
clergy. In a couple of weeks, I'm going
to preach on false prophets, which is in Chapter 7.
I really want you to come back for that message, and I'm going
to talk more about jellyfish Christianity, but just really
quick, you know what a jellyfish, they have no bones.
They have no backbone. And So what I would call a
jellyfish clergy or even a jellyfish Christian is one who
is unwilling to challenge or call out sin.
In fact, sometimes they use the word broken instead of sin.
Now I understand the word broken.
I often say the same thing, you know, but we are more than
broken as human beings. We are spiritually dead before
we come to Christ. We're not just broken, but
limping along. We are bent towards evil in sin.
And so if you read the whole Bible, you're going to find this
a lot that it's talked about a lot.
In fact, First Corinthians 511 when when we talk about judging
inside of the church, there was some sin going on in First
Corinthians. And anytime I've ever heard a
pastor preach on the book of First Corinthians, they always
kind of labeled the book church gone wild, you know, or
something along those lines. Because they were they were
sinning a lot and they were extravagant in, you know,
misinterpreting some things about how to do worship.
And just they were just a wild bunch of of people, this
Corinthian church. And there was one man whom they
weren't doing anything about who was caught in some terrible sin.
And here's what Paul says. But now I'm writing to you not
to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he
is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or as an idolater,
reviler, drunkard or swindle swindler, Not even to eat with
such a one. And then he says this.
For what have I do to with judging outsiders?
Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?
God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among
you. And this is Paul basically
saying like, you've been allowing this to go on in your
church. It's causing so much drama.
It's adding so much more sin. People are confused.
You're hurting families because you will not call this person
out. And so Paul's saying do
something about it. It is actually the church's job
to make some critical judgments about sin.
So and even outside of the church, as we look at the world,
we are supposed to discern that there are evil people out there
in the world. There is corrupt government and
leadership out there in the world.
There are dangerous and violent violent threats out there in the
world. But on the other hand, to expect
a non believer to live for Jesus also isn't logical.
That's why Paul says God judges those outside.
We make our critical opinions and evaluations, but God judges
those on the outside. We can't expect a believer.
We can't be going to believer saying you need to do this, you
know, love your wife as Christ loved the church.
Why is he going to listen to that?
Why would he care about that, right?
We've got to get to his soul 1st through the easy gospel.
I'm going to get to that later too.
But but for Christians, those who call themselves Christians,
those who call themselves a brother or sister in Christ, we
are to make judgments as to whether this person is in need
of discipleship, correction or rebuke and discipline.
And this is a good thing because if we never challenged anyone
and anything, how would they grow, right?
Growth is challenging. Growth is is is learning things
you didn't know. Growth is being able to do
things that you once weren't able to do if it wasn't for
someone. And many people in my life that
were, were willing to call out my sin when I struggled early on
as a late teenager and early in my 20s with addiction.
And I was in this cycle of, you know, getting my fix and lying
to people and hurting people because I was so self focused.
But yet I would still make my way into church every once in
awhile because I kind of grew up into the faith and and
eventually God gave me this desire to be around the church
more. And and there were people that
were willing to call me out and it wasn't it wasn't like I
didn't feel like they were judge mental.
I felt like they loved me and they cared about me enough to
have a conversation with me. It wasn't just, hey, you're
doing this and stop. You need to grow up.
No, it was it was it was loving. But if they wouldn't have done
that in my life, I don't know where I would be today.
And that's what God has designed the church for in the 1st place.
As we come together, we grow together, we hear the Word of
God together. The preacher supposed to
challenge you. But even people that are
discipling you are supposed to challenge you.
And so here's the problem though, we do need to approach
sin with humility because we are also sinners saved by grace.
As he said, with the judgement you pronounce, you will be
judged and the measure you use will be measured to you.
So how harsh are you? How gracious are you?
I mean, that is going to be the question, right?
We must be critical and judge whether or not we should say
anything at all sometimes. And we should judge our own
morality and our own shortcomings before we decide to
point out the the faults in other people.
And that's my next point. Only in humility can we properly
help. Moving on into the verses, it
says, 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's a log in your own eye, you and I
cannot help anyone without being able to clearly see first.
I mean, what amount of pride does it take to be clearly in
sin or struggling with something some major issue?
Because that's kind of the analogy here.
One guy's got a speck, but the other guy has a a log.
What kind of pride does it take for a person who's got a log in
their eye, a major sin going on in their life, and they want to
call out some little thing in somebody else's life?
Like, it's like, it's pretty hard to listen to someone,
right? I know you've probably been
there. It's like going to a Doctor
Who's blind, but he's going to do eye surgery on me.
Are you going to allow that? I'm not going to allow that.
Or it's like going to the doctor and he's got this infected
gaping wound with a knife stuck in his arm, but he's going to
take a splinter out of my finger.
I don't think I'm going to listen to that person, right?
That's going to be really hard to do.
Jesus in the in the Luke version of this says he also told them a
parable. Can a blind man lead a blind
man? Will they not both fall into a
pit? Now part of this is maybe he's
getting at the fact that if one is blind again, going back to
don't judge in this condemning type of a judgement.
If you don't have humility to see the the sin in your own
life, you might be blind, you may have not repented of your
sin. You may or may not even be a
believer if this describes you. And I think that's what Jesus
challenge here is as he's speaking to his disciples.
But all these other people, Pharisees included around him,
the hypocrites whom he's going to get to in this passage, all
sitting there listening. He's trying to say how dare a
person who is blind think that they can help another person?
See first, deal with the sin in your own heart.
Again, all throughout this Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has
called the fairest hypocrites. They were hypocrites.
They were actors, they were pretenders.
And Jesus doesn't want his followers to just put on a mask
and be a pretender. And you know, what has to happen
is some hard conversations, some conviction, some truth has to
come in. And yes, grace as well.
Grace changes us also from the inside out.
But here's what he says. He uses that word again, you
hypocrite. First take the log out of your
own eye. Then you will see clearly to
take the speck out of your brother's eye.
So what's the the the call here is to start living holy
yourself. If you want to start critiquing
everybody else in your life, you better start cleaning up your
own life. You better start having some
holiness in our and, and maybe some some days and months and
weeks and years put together of following the Lord and in glass
before you think that you can actually help another person
onto the right path. And I know that this sometimes
is controversial in some circles, but I do not believe
that a brand new believer can properly mentor or disciple
another person. You know, like the Great
Commission says, go make disciples and then it says
teaching them to obey all that I've commanded.
Well, how is a brand new believer or, or someone who
thinks they're a believer and isn't who, who isn't even
doesn't even know the word of God and isn't following the
teachings of Jesus. How is that person going to come
and tell me how to be able to see clearly how to disciple
another person in the faith? So first of all, we've got to
have this humility. Humility should lead us to to
learning because here's the problem there's two extremes and
they're both wrong in this when it comes to judging other
judging each other in the church.
It's antinomianism and legalism. OK antinomian anti NAMI means no
or against Nami means law. So no law antinomianism.
You don't believe that there are any laws or any commandments in
Scripture that you should or have to follow.
It's all grace. Jesus doesn't care how you live,
nor do you really care how to grow in more holiness.
That would be antinomianism. That is wrong.
That is a heresy that there are no more commandments to follow.
Again, the Great Commission teach them to obey all that I've
commanded. That's a New Testament.
We're not talking just about following the Old Testament law
like the Jews did in order to be right with God.
We know we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ alone and we do not
have to do anything, join a religion to get saved and to be
made right with God, to be blind.
But now we see to be woken up spiritually, that's a free gift
from God. You don't have to work for it.
But God now wants us to now go do good works.
He has said things that we should go do.
He has a moral character, a moral standard in his own nature
that is good and right and holy. And we as Christians should be
striving to glorify God in representing him in the world
and following those things, right.
So that's antinomianism is wrong.
The other side is legalism. Legalism is when you know too
much. You can't really know too much,
but you know so much that you've forgotten about the grace and
you want to look at everything as a law and apply it to
everybody around you. And they used to call the the
scribes and some of the Pharisees in the Old Testament.
Lawyers, lawyers, you know what lawyers do?
They're experts in the law. And when they want to get around
something, they find loopholes in the law.
But they hold everybody else accountable to these things, to
the letter of the law, that legalism that you have to do all
these things to be made right with God.
Those two extremes are wrong. Now here's my opinion about
this, and this is my opinion. The truth of Scripture is dead
center in the middle. There's law and gospel, and they
both go together, saved by grace through faith alone.
But now, as Ephesians 10 says, he's made me a masterpiece to go
do the works that he's laid out beforehand.
I am supposed to become more holy.
The New Testament's all about that, right?
But it seems that some people who are all about grace either
don't know the whole Bible well, or they just choose to ignore
the parts that make them feel uncomfortable.
Because some people are just a little bit uncomfortable with
the judgmental feel of things. The lawyers, the legalists, the
they know the Bible really well, but they obsess over the harsh
points and brush, brush past the love of God for sinners.
And here's what I would say about this.
The ignorant called the knowledgeable Pharisees in the
church. You guys have seen that before.
You've heard it before, maybe you've said it before.
So and so is a Pharisee. This is now us judging each
other, right? So and so is a Pharisee because
they're making me do this or they're saying this and I don't
believe that or I don't necessarily see that clearly in
a Bible verse. And so you need to, you know
what I mean? And so they call the
knowledgeable Pharisees. But then on the other hand, the
knowledgeable need to be humble so as to not be a Pharisee, OK,
we can't be holding people to all these things that they quite
haven't learned yet. So we need to take some time and
teach people. And quite frankly, people will
always be uncomfortable with certain truths, especially the
wrong way. And we're just going to have to
deal with that in our hearts. But I will say this, we don't
get to say something like it's not a sin if I don't know about
it. That's why I think the ignorant
need to Start learning what the Bible says because if you really
you love God, you should want to go into his word and try to
figure out how can I please you more?
How can I love you more when you're in a relationship with a
person and it's not all about you and self focus.
And sometimes our Christian lives are seem to be all about
what can God give me? What can God do for me?
What can God save me from? But that would be a terrible
marriage relationship, right? If you were constantly looking
at the other person and saying, what can you do for me?
Instead, we both try to learn how the other person is wired,
what they love, and we try to serve them and love them in that
way. And you know what God has said?
This is how He is wired. This is what pleases God.
His whole heart has been laid out in these scriptures and He
has told His people what He wants from them.
And if we love him, we will be endlessly going to this book to
show our love for Him, to try to figure it out.
That's why we want to learn, right?
Learning again leads us to humility, or humility on the
other way. It leads us to learning, right?
So then how do we get to take this log out of our own eye so
that we can think about all of this properly when making
judgments and critical decisions and opinions about people and
sin? And it's the word of God.
It pierces, it cuts, it discerns the motives of the thoughts, the
intentions of the heart. As Second Timothy 316 says, all
Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for
reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that
the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
This, this was given to us for correction.
And if you want to use that term that I just spoke terribly
against, we are broken and we need to be fixed, right?
And here's how we go to the owner's manual, the one who
created us, and we find out, OK, I must have put this together
wrongly and I skipped some steps.
I need to go back to the manual. And who's the most prideful
people who won't go to the manual?
Me, men on a manual or look at a map.
But we need to do that. Women too.
I'm not just calling out the men, but I can make fun of my
own gender because that's what I am.
So we need to go to the Word of God for correction.
That's what it's used for. The whole Bible is the tool and
yardstick for truth and for correcting error or sin.
But it all always must be done in love.
It cannot be done in harshness and in hate and in anger or for
selfish gain, because motives matter.
And I heard a story from a passenger and this wrecked me
this week as I was thinking about it, because this is me.
Sometimes the kids are in the living room and they're running
around and you are tired, OK, You're tired and you're on your
last nerve and they're being loud and they're being obnoxious
and you have a choice there. And one's one's right and one's
wrong. You can get after them and you
can say quiet down because I'm on my last nerve and I can't
handle this. That's the sinful action.
That's the selfish one. But one thing I could the way we
ought to do it, the motive should be always in correcting
someone should be for their good.
And so I can say, hey, kids, not because I'm tired, but because I
don't, I want you to have some discipline in your life, some
order in your life. I don't want you to act like
this out in public because it just wouldn't be right.
I'm not saying fun's wrong. You can have some fun.
But when it gets a little bit too wild and crazy, the
discipline that we show our kids is out of love for them, that
they would grow up and be, you know, productive members of
society, that they would learn to live to follow a life that
pleases God and that they wouldn't be a burden to other
people, right? And that's a good thing, right?
So judging our own motives as to why we want to correct other
people, we've got to be careful about this.
It's always got to be done for their good.
And yes, we get hurt by other people's actions sometimes, but
not all the time. Do we need to tell them to make
it right? Sometimes we do.
Sometimes we need to get rid of that bitterness or we're holding
something that we just need to have a conversation and let's,
let's have this conversation so that we don't have this conflict
between us. But if we're humble enough to
say, you know what, I make a lot of choices.
I offend a lot of people. I've sinned a lot.
I have my own mistakes, my own faults, my own shortcomings.
Then I could start looking at other people and say, you know
what, I probably don't need to bring this up this time and it
pleases God to overlook an offence.
But let's look at then God's way of correcting Christians because
it is going to come up and we are going to need to do it.
It is important and we find this in Matthew chapter 18.
It's kind of called the three-step plan for correction
and restoration. Here's what Jesus says.
If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault
between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you've
gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take
one or two others along with you, that every charge may be
established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.
If he refused to listen, tell it to the church.
And if he refused to listen even to the church, let him to be to
you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
Now what's going on here? Jesus is saying specifically
inside the church, if you have someone who sins sins against
you or you notice something that needs to be corrected.
The godly way to do this is to go to them first one-on-one.
I wish that was always our knee jerk reaction, but what do we
end up doing? We end up saying, man, I need to
process this with someone else and let me just tell you or it
comes out in a prayer request. I thought meme today since don't
gossip. They just give very long
detailed prayer requests in front of other people.
And so I understand that sometimes you do need to process
with someone safe. You know where it's like, hey, I
heard this this happened and I might need somebody to tell me
you should let that go really honestly.
Or somebody might say it. Well, wait a minute.
You know, maybe you should go to them one-on-one, but be careful
about who that person is. Go to them one-on-one and if
they repent, you're supposed to forgive. 7 * 70 forgive if
someone repents of their sin. That's the goal, restoration.
But if not, you take two or three other witnesses that have
seen the sin, not just you telling them about it, but that
see the same thing in the person.
And you go to them again in love, Like, hey, we, we, we care
about you, we see this in your life.
How can we help? We want to restore you to the
right path. But if in pride they just will
not come to a place of humility, then maybe that's when the
pastor gets involved in the church, has to make an
evaluation, a decision. This, by the way, is the passage
that's all about church discipline.
I'm sure maybe many of us have heard that.
Maybe this is the first time you've heard that.
I don't want my church disciplining me.
But let's think about it. In all the spheres of life,
there's discipline, right? Sphere of the family life,
healthy families, discipline. In the government, healthy
governments discipline, right? So why would we not do it in
God's house? Like in the same way, if we're
trying to grow up in maturity, as the Bible says, it says in
Ephesians 415, rather speaking the truth in love, we are to
grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ
speaking the truth in love. Remember that.
And verse 25. Therefore, having put away
falsehood, let each of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for
we are members of one another. That's the great membership
verse, by the way, Ephesians chapter 4.
Go look at that. This is the three-step way to do
it the godly way as Jesus is pointing out again, as he said,
take the log out of your own eye, then you'll clearly see to
take the speck. So he isn't saying you can never
correct someone, but first go with a lot of humility,
examining your motives, examine your heart and then do it the
right way for their restoration in love.
And this could be applied to your relationships, your family
life as well. Here's the last thing about this
passage, though, that we got to get to prideful and arrogant
people don't listen. Verse 6, Do not give dogs what
is holy and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they
trample them under foot and turn to attack you.
Man, that's harsh. And Jesus is saying that.
What's he saying? And this is this kind of goes
back to how this is The funny thing about the antinomian and
the legalist. The antinomian or the the, the
person that doesn't like any kind of correction or or
judgement only sees the 1st 2 words in this entire passage.
We've looked at judge not I. Everything else is scribbled
out. All I can see is judge not don't
judge me, only God can judge me. But then the legalist sees the
whole passage and all they see is the speck.
Somebody's got a speck in their eye.
And I need to deal with it. We need to handle this or, and
they definitely don't. The, the, you know, most people
pass by how stern Jesus can be sometimes.
Now what's he saying dogs in in the New Testament, Jesus
actually refers to a Gentile woman as a dog.
In Matthew 1526, he said it is not right to take the children's
bread and throw it to the dogs. Now, in that context, he's
talking about a little house pet and he's basically she was
asking for a miracle. And he had had had explained
that he has come as the prophet in a sense, to come save his
people from their sins as the savior of the prophet, priest
and king of Israel to bring them to repentance.
And so he was doing this work in and throughout Jerusalem and
Judea. And this woman wasn't Jewish.
And so in a sense, she's just represents an unbeliever.
But later, Jesus has compassion on her and gives her what she
asks. And he says he hasn't seen it.
Faith like this throughout all of Israel because of this woman
who says even dogs get scraps from the table.
And he's like, wow, he was amazed at her faith for being so
humble. Anyway, dogs and hogs are these
domesticated animals to be trained, but they cannot
understand anything beyond basic life necessities.
OK, so for us, the truth is that these represent unbelievers and
as I said before, we cannot go about harshly judging
unbelievers hoping they will understand the word of God.
We should call our government and we should call people to
repentance of their sin, Yes, and we should clearly bring
about the good news of the gospel that they can be saved
from their sin. And we should call sin sin out
there in the world. But if you have unbelieving
family members, friends, neighbors in your life and
you're constantly telling them, well, here's how you're going to
fix your marriage. Here's how you're going to fix
your life. If you just start walking
through these verses and doing what God said, you're going to
have a better, happy life. That's legalism.
They're not going to understand that, just like the the dogs and
the hogs are not going to understand you trying to tell
them that they should follow God's laws and commands when
they're not even human, when they're not even able to hear
it, They're dead spiritually. That's the analogy here.
I'm not saying that people, unbelievers aren't human.
Of course they are. I'm what what I'm saying is that
they are people that can't understand how to follow
properly the word of God. You know what they need.
And so those things are holy. To explain that, don't give dogs
what are holy or the pearls holy and pearls are kind of used
together here. The commandments of God are
holy. They are valuable.
And as believers we understand these things and we love these
things and we live by these things.
But you go and try to do that with people who aren't
regenerate or saved, they're going to reject you and they may
turn and attack you. And what this is saying and what
he says in another verse that helps me is if anyone will not
receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from
your feet. In a sense you've tried you've
you've done what you can, but don't waste your breath
constantly trying to get people to follow commands that they
have no ability to do. So they need the Spirit of God.
That's why we need to be telling them the gospel.
They're not going to understand Calvinism.
They're not going to understand covenant theology.
They're not going to understand that God spoke the world into
existence. Even they're not going to
understand anything because they don't have the ears to hear or
the eyes to see. They need to hear the simple
message that they've gone against God in sin.
But God being so loving and gracious, sent his Son to be
born. That's Christmas.
He grew up, He died on the cross.
Good Friday he rose from the dead Easter Sunday he ascended
to heaven. He sits at the right hand of God
and he compels everyone all throughout creation to repent
and believe. It's that simple.
Put your faith in Jesus. It's a free gift.
And when somebody responds to that, when God finally opens
their ears and pulls the log out of their eyes so that they can
now see, then it's safe for you and me to help disciple that
person as a Christian. But first we must understand if
a person is a believer or not. And that's what I believe that
Jesus is getting at the last of this.
And let me close with this Proverbs 97.
Whoever corrects A scoffer gets himself abuse, and he who
reproves a wicked man incurs in an injury.
Do not reprove A scoffer or he will hate you.
Reprove a wise man and he will love you.
We do need to learn how to communicate with the unbelievers
in our life. Not being so harsh, not being so
legalistic, but giving them the grace that they need to come to
faith in Jesus Christ. But the goal here for us in this
one is we're not to be the one who abuses others when we get
reproved. We're supposed to be the wise
man or woman who can hear the truth in love.
So when it happens to you, embrace it.
We should strive to be less defensive and more humble, but
on the other hand, we should be willing to have the hard
conversations in the proper setting to prove our love for a
person who is stuck in sin. This, however, must be done with
humility of as I've said, and there are many things that we
can let slide. Amen.
There are many things that we can, for the sake of unity and
realizing that we too have our faults, just give it to the
Lord. But if we are to correct, there
will be times that this needs to happen for their benefit.
Do it in a biblical way and remember the grace of God in
your life in His mercy too, and you won't be this guy with the
log in your eye trying to take the speck out of everybody's
eye, as Jesus says later in this chapter of the Golden Rule.
So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to
them, for this is the law and the prophets the main idea.
Christians are not supposed to condemn one another over
secondary issues. However, we're called to make
judgments about sin and seek to correct with the goal of
recognition. We must be humble in doing so,
remembering our own faults and being ready to forgive as we
have been forgiven. Let's pray, Father, oh Lord,
forgive us, we ask, when we are prideful, when we can't see the
sin in our lives. That's so easy, easily blinding
us. Forgive us, Lord, when we become
too judgmental, also forgiving. Forgive us when we lack courage
and a spine willing to correct out of love, but help us always
to remember to love and to remember the grace that you've
given us. We were sinners and you came and
died for us. We didn't correct anything on
our own. You died for us and made it
possible so that we could be made right.
Corrected with you, our relationship corrected with you.
So thank you so much for that. Jesus.
Help us to learn from your words today and apply them to our
lives, to our families and to our church relationships.
In Jesus name, Amen. Amen.
Would you stand and sing a response with us?