Of Specks and Logs
TCF Sermon
June 6, 2010
Have you noticed that fixing blame on someone seems to be a big part of our culture?
Is there any spectacle that illustrates our culture of blame better than the congressional hearing? It doesn’t matter what the hearing is about. What we see is a bunch of pontificating, self-justifying, pretentious congresspersons or senators making sure someone else gets blamed for whatever the hearing is about.
We live in a culture of blame, and this is seen in so many ways. We need look no further than the daily headlines. It doesn’t matter what happens. Someone, not just someone, but someone else, has to be at fault.
President Obama must be to blame for the oil spill, and how it’s been handled. President Bush must have been to blame for Hurricane Katrina, and how that disaster was handled. It goes both ways, doesn’t it?
As if our current president wants to see the ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico destroyed. As if our previous president wanted to see New Orleans destroyed.
We see this culture of blame in other ways, especially in our propensity to sue for anything and everything.
A woman who attended 'Halloween Horror Nights' at Universal Studios sued for $15,000 in damages for extreme fear, emotional distress and mental anguish. A California nudist sued an event organizer when he burned his feet while doing a fire walk, after being told the activity may be dangerous.
A lawyer in San Diego filed a lawsuit against the city because, during a rock concert at a city facility, he was "forced" (that’s the word the news item used) to use the women’s restroom. He also sued the company that sold him the beer.
Outraged by a referee’s call, several Washington Redskins fans filed a lawsuit in federal court demanding it be overturned. The University of Michigan was sued for $853,000 by a disgruntled student who received an F in German.
A convict who escaped from prison sued his county and the sheriff for negligence in allowing him to escape.
Another convict sued his county and sheriff for the emotional stress he suffered while trying to escape. A 9-year-old girl sued the makers of Cracker Jacks because her box contained no prize. A drunk woman’s estate received $1 million after she entered a closed city park and drowned in three feet of water. The state appellate court reversed the decision.
What do all these things have in common? They illustrate our culture of blame. But our tendency to blame others is only one aspect of our sin nature, and part of a larger human tendency that even we believers must battle.
It’s the idea of being overly concerned about somebody else, the other guy. We see this in the areas of things such as:
1. blame for problems or circumstances (as we’ve seen in these illustrations)
2. forgiveness and judgment
3. Recognition, or lack of it
4. justifying ourselves
5. jealousy
If we’re honest with ourselves, we must admit that much of our attention, our thought-life, is concerned with somebody else, to the extent that we ignore or miss what God wants to do in us as individuals.
You may remember the riots in April 1992 after the first Rodney King trial verdict was handed down. The media blamed it on racism; they blamed it on poverty. Responding to those riots, former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett said that, instead,
"the blame for riots and killings rests with the rioters and killers. To suggest otherwise undermines the efforts of decent, law-abiding parents and their children, the majority of whom did not participate in riots. We most need to affirm belief in individual responsibility..."
While this is clearly a problem in our culture today, it’s a problem as old as human history. James 1:14 addresses this idea.
James 1:14 (NIV) but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.
This passage tells us we can’t blame others for our sin, our faults, our mistakes.
It says that sin cannot be blamed on external factors; it is always the result of a person being led astray by his or her own desires. This illustrates a real difficulty we face, which scripture addresses in several contexts, including this passage from Matthew 7, beginning with verse 1:
Matthew 7:1-5 (NIV) "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
What we will look at in just a moment is the last verse of this passage, verse 5, which says, “You hypocrite! First take the plank out of your own eye....” This verse shows God’s response to so much of this problem of blame, recognition, forgiveness, jealousy, justifying ourselves, etc.
God’s response is always to look at yourself first, to examine your own heart first.
However, before we get into that, I want to take a short detour. We really have to detour here for the sake of clarity, because this is a passage that is probably among the most abused in all of the Bible, and we could point to many examples in current events.
Especially verse 1, which says, “do not judge, or you too will be judged.” What I’m afraid has happened is that this verse has been so abused, so misapplied, that even we believers sometimes have the tendency to miss what it’s really saying altogether, and consequently lose the emphasis we see in verse five, which after all, points out what we are to do “first.”
First implies that something follows, doesn’t it? And what is to follow is to help remove the speck from your brother’s eye, and that requires a judgment – yes there is a speck in his eye.
Yet, this passage is used by the world, and even by some well-meaning believers, too, to imply, or outright state, that we are not to judge, ever, period, end of sentence. Yet, there are times that scripture makes it clear that we must make a judgment:
Jesus noted in John 7:24 that we are to “judge with righteous judgment”...
1 Cor. 5:9-13 talks about how we are to “judge those who are inside” the local church. 1 John 4:1 says we are to “test the spirits.”
Galatians 6:1 says that if anyone is caught in sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently...”
That’s something you can’t do without first making a judgment that something is sin.
1 Tim. 6:3 says that “if anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, he is conceited and understands nothing.”
That sure sounds like a judgment to me! Even the very context of this passage in Matthew indicates we are to judge when it’s appropriate: verse 5 tells us: “then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
So, when Matthew 7:1 is used to forbid any condemnation or judgment of behavior or evil or sin, it’s a clear abuse of scripture. Proper, biblical judgment is not only appropriate for believers, it’s required by scripture in specific circumstances.
Let’s not make the mistake of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Let’s not use this verse as an excuse to shirk our responsibility to judge, to discern, to distinguish the difference between right and wrong. The context is all about hypocritical judging, and judging without mercy.
However, moving forward, with that understanding as a background, we find this passage telling us not to judge, but telling us to look at our own hearts first.
There are areas in which we should judge, others where we should not...
We should not judge:
1. people’s motives – we cannot know why they do what they do, we can’t see what’s in their minds. We may not know their history or their backgrounds, which may be significantly impacting their choices and behavior.
2. service of another believer
Romans 14:4 (NIV) Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls.
3. choices about things that are morally neutral. These are the things that are, in some versions of scripture, called disputable matters.
Again, here, we look to Romans 14, this time verse 1:
Romans 14:1 (NIV) Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters.
4. outward appearances - what’s in the heart is what counts
1 Samuel 16:7 (NIV) The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."
5. harshly, critically - Again, a passage we looked at a moment ago applies:
Galatians 6:1 (NIV) Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently.
“a habitual fault-finder is a poor advertisement for the Christian faith” - William McDonald
Think about this: The Lord knows our hearts. The Holy Spirit convicts. He alone is able to see what is wrong and reveal that without hurting and wounding.
Oswald Chambers noted in My Utmost for His Highest that Jesus would say to us as disciples:
“cultivate the uncritical temper. It is not done once and for all. Beware of anything that puts you in the superior person’s place..... Stop having a measuring rod for other people. There is always one fact more in every man’s case about which we know nothing.”
In other words, we don’t see everything, we don’t know all the facts.
Chambers also notes: “Who of us would dare to stand before God and say “My God-judge me as I have judged my fellow men?” We have judged our fellow men as sinners; if God should judge us like that we would be in hell. God judges us through the marvelous atonement of Jesus Christ.”
James 4:11-12 (NIV) Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you--who are you to judge your neighbor?
James gives a command here in verse 11, and then supplies a number of reasons for stating that command. The command is, literally: "Stop judging your brother."
Evidently this was an ongoing problem in the church at the time that James wrote this book, and it is still with us today. Criticism may be the most widespread sin among Christians. It’s something we can indulge without feeling much guilt
because we’ve come up with ways to disguise it.
Our criticism can even take the form of an expression of concern or care for others. We can ask for prayer for someone and criticize the same person, all in the same breath.
Of course, it’s not always true that when we share a prayer need about someone that we’re just illustrating our critical spirit. But we’ve all seen it happen.
But James tells us in this passage, "Stop it!" And perhaps the reason we should stop it is not just because that criticism might wound the person who is criticized, though that should be reason enough to exercise great care in our criticism.
I wonder if our concern might be not so much for the person who is the object of our criticism but, rather, for us, because a critical spirit devastates us. It does something terrible to our spirit. It has the potential to make us harsh and unloving, relentless and cold. It has the capacity to destroy in us the mercy which God has revealed to us. Bitterness can be a clear result of a judgmental spirit gone unchecked.
Back to Matthew 7: The sense in which Jesus uses the word judge here is: Do not be hypercritical, judgmental, of your brother. Do not be a faultfinder.
In verse 3 Jesus said, "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"
The Greek word for look here means: “to gaze at, to keep looking at something.” Jesus is describing a person who has no time to consider the huge plank or log in his own eye, but who is always looking for the slightest mistakes of everyone else.
So Jesus is telling us, "Do do not be a faultfinder. Do not pronounce a final judgment of condemnation on your brother. That is God’s business, not yours."
It’s clear that the Word of God speaks of God’s judgment. But we are not supposed to judge without love and mercy.
In the Old Testament we see two primary measures of judgment, justice and mercy. We must ask ourselves what measure we are going to use. Some people use only justice, although they want to be judged all the time with the measure of mercy.
But here Jesus speaks against this kind of behavior. He was speaking against judging by appearance, which he himself prohibited in John 7:24, knowing that God judges not by outward appearance but on the basis of one’s heart.
John 7:24 (NIV) Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment."
Just as importantly, Jesus said we should first deal with ourselves in Matthew 7: “First take the log, the plank, the beam, out of your own eye." This principle is taught elsewhere in the NT.
Galatians 6:4 (NIV) Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else,
1 Corinthians 11:31 (NIV) But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment.
2 Corinthians 13:5 (NIV) Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you--unless, of course, you fail the test?
One thing can be said with certainty about judging others: while we are judging someone else, it becomes more difficult to do an acceptable job of judging ourselves.
That is one of the problems of a person with a judgmental or critical spirit. This person seldom looks at himself with the same careful scrutiny he uses to look at others.
Now someone might argue and say, “I do look at myself. I know I’m not perfect! But at least I’m not as bad as they are." But the trouble is that this person uses his naked eye on his own faults, or worse, an eye obstructed by a barrier to clear sight(like perhaps a log?), but he uses a microscope on others. Consequently, quite often he has glaring faults that are seen by everyone but himself - one of the most glaring being his hyper-critical spirit.
Why is it that my dirt is never as dirty as your dirt, from my perspective, and your dirt is never as dirty as my dirt, from your perspective? My sin never seems as sinful as the sin of others. And that is what Jesus is referring to here.
I have a log in my eye and find it quite easy to ignore, but that speck in your eye is really obvious. If you feel that you have no faults, that makes another one.
You know, the truth is that I really don’t have the right to ask or expect you to remove your problem, that speck in your eye, without first acknowledging and going to work on my own, that log in my eye.
That is what Jesus had in mind. In marriage, or really any love relationships, which is how I think we could classify our relationships to one another here at TCF, what sometimes happens is people develop an attitude of "I’d move if you would. If you’d just take out that speck, I’d work on my log."
Jesus said it needs to be the other way around. You deal with yourself first. Or more realistically, you allow the Holy Spirit to bring conviction and correction to you first. More than that, Jesus tells us that we’re hypocrites until we do.
Look again at what he said: "You hypocrite, first take ..."
In many ways, God has been working this message in me for more than 31 years - that’s how long I’ve been married. Marriage and other kinds of close relationships are often the crucible in which this message of looking at your own heart first is forged with fire. God revealed to me early in my marriage this fact: He is sometimes not concerned with who’s right or wrong in a given conflict or argument .
That was bothersome to me, because I was usually right. What God was concerned with was my response, my attitude, my heart. Many times in our marriage, I’m convicted to be the first to apologize in a conflict, not necessarily because I was wrong about the issue in conflict, but because my response was wrong, my attitude was wrong.
I’ve also found that once that’s done, who’s right or wrong is a lot less important to me too. Back to our passage:
The Greek word here from which we get the English word “hypocrite” is interesting in that it means, literally, “stage actor.” So, what Jesus is telling us is, "Stage actor---you who are trying to play the role of the only truly righteous judge---you need first to be judged by me...."
Understanding this passage in this way is sobering, because it’s a reminder that when we try to judge someone else, we are actually trying to play God in their lives, both in the sense of judging them, and in the sense of trying to fix their problem. We’re playing the role of the Holy Spirit.
Now, it’s true the Holy Spirit can use us, but we have to be careful we’re not playing Him, as an actor would take on a role in a movie or on stage. When seen in this context, this term “stage actor" is very convicting. Why?
Not so much because a man whose vision was impaired could hardly see to remove the speck - though that’s certainly true. It’s just as much because he was behaving as though he saw perfectly.
Again, think of the illustration here. I have a log, a plank, a big piece of wood in my eye. How well do you think I could see if that was true? Before I can help you remove the speck from your eye, I have to deal with this obstruction of my spiritual vision – this major blind spot – made blind by a large piece of wood that may dwarf the small splinter or speck in your eye.
How important is this idea that we deal with ourselves first, and not be so concerned with others? Look what kind of company scripture puts this in. It’s so important that Peter classified being a busybody, or a meddler in other people’s affairs, right along with being a murderer, thief, an evildoer, a criminal.
1 Peter 4:15 (NIV) If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler.
“Meddler” is translated “busybody” in the KJV, and there are two words translated as “busybody” in the N.T. The Greek word used in 2 Thessalonians 3:11 and 1 Tim 5:13 means:
“busy about trifles and neglectful of important matters, especially busy about other folks affairs - used of a person inquisitive about others’ affairs.
However, the Greek in 1 Peter 4:15, where being a busybody or meddler is classified with all these other heinous things, means one who takes supervision of affairs pertaining to others, and not himself.
The literal meaning here is you’re the overseer of another. One definition says: one who meddles in things alien to his calling:-- NASB Greek-Hebrew Dictionary
So, in the case of judgment, having a "me first" attitude is perfectly okay.
Ann Landers said, “Know Yourself. Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.”
There are additional areas where this specks and logs idea infects us. As we looked at in the beginning, blame is an easy one to identify. Jim Grinnell once said that blame is the world’s shadow of what Scripture calls “the accuser of the brethren,” which of course, is our enemy, the devil, as described in Rev. 12:10.
We live in a world that’s very good at blame – as we noted earlier, we live in a culture of blame - everybody’s blaming somebody else for something...it’s always the other guys fault.
Blame is as old as the Garden of Eden - Adam blamed Eve, didn’t he? When you read that, don’t you want to say, Man up Adam!
In addressing this issue, Oswald Chambers wrote this:
Another thing that distracts us is the lust of vindication. St Augustine prayed “O Lord, deliver me from this lust of always vindicating myself.” That temper of mind destroys the soul’s faith in God. “I must explain myself; I must get people to understand.” Our Lord never explained anything; He left mistakes to correct themselves. When we discern that people are not going on spiritually and allow the discernment to turn to criticism, we block our way to God. God never gives us discernment in order that we may criticize, but that we may intercede.
As we noted earlier, Oswald Chambers also wrote that we should cultivate an uncritical spirit - it’s not something we decide to do today and it’s done. We have to cultivate it, because it doesn’t come naturally. Or more appropriately, we have to allow the Holy Spirit to change us.
Titus 3:5: He saved us, not on the basis of deeds we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy...
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be judged according to His mercy. As we remember less the wrongs that have been inflicted on us, as we remember God’s love which moves us to forgive instead of keeping score, as we begin to allow God to help us see others through His eyes of love, grace, mercy and compassion, rather than through our own judgment and criticism, we can and will see the speck in our own eye, before we try to remove the log from another’s eye.
"Dear Lord, When I am wrong, make me easy to change; When I am right, make me easy to live with." — Peter Marshall
As we close, let our prayers be along these lines. This prayer was found in the clothing of a dead child at the infamous Ravensbruck concentration camp in Nazi Germany:
O Lord, remember not only the men and women of good will, but also those of ill will. But do not remember all of the suffering they have inflicted upon us:
Instead remember the fruits we have borne because of this suffering - our fellowship, our loyalty to one another, our humility, our courage, our generosity, the greatness of heart that has grown from this trouble. When our persecutors come to be judged by you, let all of these fruits that we have borne be their forgiveness.
Let’s cultivate an attitude that consistently looks at our own hearts first. Let’s pray...
