If you want to follow along, we are going to be looking at Matthew 7:1. We will be looking at only five verses today. While you are looking that up, I was looking on the internet this past week for illustrations to open my sermon, and I came across one that I thought was very good. Not only because it fit very well with today’s passage, but also confirmed what most of us know in our heart that our brains immediately judge people. There is a study that said “Even if we cannot consciously see a person’s face, our brain is able to make a snap decision about how trustworthy they are. According to a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the brain immediately determines how trustworthy a face is before it is fully perceived, which supports the fact that we make very fast judgments about people. Researchers at Dartmouth College and New York University showed a group of participants photos of real people’s faces as well as computer-generated faces that were meant to look either trustworthy or untrustworthy. It has been shown in the past that people generally think that faces with high inner eyebrows and prominent cheek bones are more trustworthy and the opposite features are untrustworthy, which the researchers were able to confirm. In the second part of their experiment, the researchers showed a separate group of participants the same images but for only 30 milliseconds while they were in a brain scanner. They then did something called backward masking which consists of showing a participant an irrelevant image or mask immediately after quickly showing them a face. The procedure makes the brain capable of processing the face. Even though the patients were not able to process the faces, their brains did. The researchers focused on activity in a part of the brain responsible for social-emotional behavior and found that specific areas of the brain were activated based on judgment of trustworthiness or non-trustworthiness. This, the researchers conclude, is evidence that our brains make judgment of people before we even process who they are or what they look like.”
Do you buy that? I buy it totally. I think that every day we are constantly making judgments about those around us. We are making all these snap judgments. We are sizing people up. You go throughout your week, you go throughout your day and wherever you find yourself, whether school, workplace, or even church, I suspect that we are looking at each other and we are making judgments and decisions about people on a variety of factors. The common one would be the appearance of a person. Sadly, we make judgments about people based on the color of their skin. We make judgments about people based on their weight and height. We make judgments about people based on how they behave in certain situations. Where we see them and what they are doing. If you are cut off on the road by somebody, immediately you are making a judgment about that person and that they are probably a bad character. If you are sitting at a ballgame and somebody starts doing something that is annoying you, you begin to make judgments about that person that may or may not be true. We are constantly sizing people up and making judgments about people on a variety of things. I pretty much guarantee that many of you are sitting there making judgments about me, which is fine. I can handle it. I am used to it. But I am making judgments about all of you too and I get to see all of you at once. The reality is we are. We are constantly making judgments about each other.
I don’t think that is actually a bad thing. I think that is how God wired us. In some sense, I think it is a survival skill. Let’s imagine we are walking down Lincoln Avenue some evening and it is getting dark. All of a sudden a guy comes running down the street naked with a knife in his hand and he is coming right at you. At that point, you have to make a judgment. You have no choice but to decide if this guy is a little cuckoo or is it just another Bellevue resident out for a stroll that evening. You have to decide that stuff. Today, as we think about judging people or judgments, what we have to realize is Jesus is not totally anti-judging. He is not about anti-judging. But he is against the type of judging that makes people feel belittled or makes them feel condemned that sometimes is characterized by a feeling of worthlessness. That is the type of judging that he is against because it absolutely has no place in the kingdom of God. That is what we are going to talk about today. We have been going through the series called The Story: God’s story as told through the people, places, and events of the Bible. We are talking about the New Testament story of Jesus and the ministry and the various miracles of Jesus. We have been stuck on talking about a lot of the teachings of Jesus and I have a hard time leaving the teachings of Jesus because when I get into them I find that I am learning a lot and they are amazing. As we know, the teachings of Jesus are just so hard to swallow. Just very difficult. You get the impression when you read it that Jesus really thinks his followers can live differently. The things that he is teaching are actually possible to do. They are not impossibilities, but they are difficult. The passage today is actually very difficult too. That is why we struggle with so much. What I would like to do is read through these five passages and then go back and talk about why it might be difficult. Reading from Matthew 7:1. (Scripture read here.)
This is one of these passages that I thought about skipping over. I think we have all heard it. We have been there. We know it back and forth, but I think it is one of those passages that we really don’t do justice to. We don’t know what to do with it. What happens is we usually interpret it one way or the other. Some people read the passage and they are so fearful ever about judging anybody or coming across as judgmental to somebody that they will never, ever, ever correct somebody. That is one extreme. Then you have the people who are pretty comfortable in their sin, so to speak, so they use this passage as a defense. So if someone would dare correct them, they would say you are judging me. Stop judging me. It says right here in Matthew 7 don’t judge me. I have a feeling that Jesus would think a little different about this passage. He would have a different translation or a different interpretation of this passage. Before we really dig into it, we have to examine what does judge me. The verb judge would be like in a legal setting. Handing out a sentence on somebody. That was to judge somebody. To give them some sort of a sentence in a courtroom situation. Then you have to judge somebody or something in a sense of just giving an opinion about something. You go outside and it is a sunny day and you say I think it is going to be a nice day today. Somebody else could go outside and say I think today is going to be a terrible day. You are both making a judgment. You are just giving an opinion about something. That is a form of judging. The judging that I think Jesus is talking about here is the judging where you really seek to do harm to somebody. You seek to be overly critical. You seek to hammer somebody. You hammer to possibly even border on condemnation so much so that the person who feels they are being judged leaves your presence, the person feels less of a person. They feel like they have been belittled. They feel like they have been made to be as this terrible person. Jesus is saying there is no room for this type of judgment with kingdom people. It is not part of our vocabulary. It shouldn’t be part of our activity. Not only that, it really has a possibility of backfiring on you if you were to practice this type of judgment. He starts out by saying “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 see it will be measured against you.” He is saying be careful how you judge somebody because there is a good chance they are going to turn around and judge you the same way. We have all been in situations where we are all probably guilty of judging in a very critical or harsh way. When we approach a person to try and correct them in that manner what happens? One of three things. They might be somebody who is very meek and so they just shut down and take it. Or it could be somebody who is very mature. When somebody attacks them, they just let it go over their head. Then you have the person who feels like a cornered rat who says I have no choice but to attack back. I think that is what he is talking about here. Be careful because the measure you use can quickly turn around and be measured and used against you. That is why I like how actually the book The Message translates this. He says “Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults, unless of course you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging.”
As a side note, The Message, I call it a book because it is not the Bible. I think we assume a lot of things. The Message is a paraphrase of the Bible. I am comfortable using it because the guy who wrote the book, Eugene Peterson, is a biblical scholar in Hebrew and Greek. I feel comfortable using it. But I never use The Message alone. I my original study in one of the Bibles that are translated by a committee of scholars. But I think The Message is a good book to have so when you are struggling with an interpretation or understanding of a passage, if you have The Message it brings it a little bit clarity to it. I just say that as a side note. The Message is not the Bible but it is a very good paraphrase of the Bible. Eugene Peterson was a pastor for 30 years in Maryland so he is very well respected.
Getting back to this judging of others in a critical way, the likelihood is it is just going to boomerang around and come back and bite you. Not only that, I think Jesus knows that that type of judging, that harsh criticism, seeking to destroy a person, is not very good for a kingdom person. When you go into somebody with that sort of attitude of seeking to be very critical or seeking to be very harsh that borders on condemnation, the initial response by the person is usually not thank you. It is a sense of rejection and even a sense of shame or possibly exclusion. That is not a good thing. That is not what the kingdom is about. We are not about ripping people down. We are about building people up. I think we have all been on the receiving side of that sort of judgment. It could have been a boss that was not sensitive and just tears you down the minute you do something wrong. It could be a coworker or possibly a parent or possibly even a teacher. Some teachers are not good at giving out criticism. As a side note, I think I have mentioned this before; I actually was a high school dropout. I dropped out at the age of 17. I dropped out of high school and I say that not to be proud of it, but I am proud of the fact that I since got my diploma and got my bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and I am working on my doctorate. I tell you that just to basically say I have been there. I understand what it is like to be a high school dropout. Aside from that, I remember very specifically the day I was dropping out of high school. You have to take slips of paper around and get your teachers to sign off on it and let you out of class forever. I remember going to my English teacher. I don’t remember his name. I told him I was dropping out of high school and I am going to join the Navy, his comment was you are a [derogatory name]. Although the word the teacher used was disrespectful in some sense it was true. But that wasn’t helpful for me. All that did was get me mad and wanted me to leave school that much more. It did not do anything to change my mind but stuck with me for about 20 years. It did nothing helpful. What he should have done as a teacher is paint a picture of a couple realities. Chuck, this is the reality if you drop out of high school and go to the Navy and get out of the Navy. You have a GI bill, but it is going to take you a long time to start using that GI bill because you have to get out of high school first. It is going to add years to the process of trying to move your life along and get a career. He should have painted a picture and said if you decide you are going to stay in high school, I will work with you. I will come alongside you. I will help you. I will tutor you. Whatever you need. I will paint a better reality on how you will be able to go immediately to college and get a career and do all this stuff. You paint a prettier reality. It probably wouldn’t have taken me 40 years to get my doctorate if he had done that. My point is that that harsh criticism is not really helpful for anything.
Not only is it not helpful, it is quite humorous. Jesus goes on to make a joke about that whole attitude. He goes on to say “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?” What Jesus is doing here again is engaging in what is called a hyperbole, an exaggeration to make his point. Jesus is painting a very graphic picture. Close your eyes and you think of a plank coming out of a guy’s eye. If you need a little help with the imagery, I decided to borrow the logo from our local skate shop The Plank Eye Board Shop to show what I would consider a very good piece of artwork. If Jesus was here today doing this sermon, he would say that is what I was thinking of. In Jesus’ words it is really a combination of humor and grotesqueness. That is what that picture is isn’t it? You chuckled. But you look at the skull and it looks a little bit grotesque. He is saying that it is funny to think that somebody could ever criticize somebody and condemn somebody in the manner that he is describing in this passage. In some sense it is even grotesque. Jesus, the one who can reveal the heart of any individual, if he could open up the insides of somebody not to reveal the physical heart but to reveal the inner heart of the person who is passing that condemnation, he would likely see something very ugly and vile inside of there. I would say that Jesus would very much approve of this artwork because it depicts the reality of someone who would pretend to be someone so self-righteous that they could crush somebody else. In fact, he has a word for this type of person. We should be familiar with the word by now. It is hypocrite. He says “You hypocrite.” Remember the word? We used it a few weeks ago. What did it mean to the Greeks? An actor. A hypocrite was a Greek actor. It was somebody putting on a performance. At that time, we were talking about how the Pharisees would stand up and do their religious acts outside to prove that they were somebody special and everybody would see. He is using the same word here to say you hypocrite. You would dare stand up and act like you are so self-righteous when all along your inner bowels and your inner heart are gross and vile. That is what he is saying here.
Jesus doesn’t leave us without an out. He goes on to say “First take the plant out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Simple right. Just yank that plank right out of your eye and everything will be fine. The trouble is we don’t know what the plank is. There are several ways to read this verse. I have probably read it like many of you have read it. The plank is just accumulative of all our sin or it is a worse sin than this person has done so we have all these sins that add up to this big plank or whatever or we have this huge sin out there that is worse than the person we are condemning or whatever. We have to get rid of that first. That is not totally wrong, but I don’t think it is totally right. This is not something I came up with. It is what another couple scholars have come up with. The plank is actually the self-righteous attitude. The plank is the self-righteous condemning attitude and judgmental attitude. That is the plank that you want to remove. Thinking again about this passage, Jesus is not saying if I could somehow, which would be almost impossible, remove every little plank in my eye, every little sin in my life completely gone, then when I do that he is now giving you permission to go and do the very condemnation. The thing he just said don’t do. Do you see what I am saying? That doesn’t make sense. That is why some believe that the plank is the self-righteous attitude. The attitude that says I have the right to crush somebody, to destroy somebody, to belittle somebody. What you have to do is remove that attitude so you can begin to clearly see the other person as a real person and then gently come alongside that person and remove the speck from your brother’s eye. This just got me this morning. It says “your brother’s eye”. You begin to see a little bit of a shift. You sense that he is talking about somebody in a family relationship having the same father. You begin to sense that we are talking about brothers and sisters that share the same father. Jesus is starting to say it is not about judging in the sense that we are talking about at all. What we are talking about is restoration. We are talking about taking somebody who may be experiencing some bad behavior that is really unhealthy behavior and coming alongside that person and begin to bring them back to health of sort.
The best analogy I could think about was a doctor. What is the first thing you do when you get to a doctor’s office besides sit in the waiting room and wait? What do you do when you get to the doctor and they finally bring you inside past the waiting room? Weight. Don’t you hate that? If you are like me you empty your pockets. You always make sure you don’t wear your belt that day. I know even when I strip down standing on the scale, it always seems like it add 9 lbs to what I just weighed myself at home. What happens is I know by the time I sit and wait in the doctor’s office, eventually the doctor is going to come in and the first thing he is going to do is look at the chart and look at your weight and say Chuck you probably could trim a few pounds. The first thing I say is you’re judging me. You’re condemning me. No I don’t. Why don’t I do that? Didn’t he just make a judgment? He made a judgment based on a chart on the wall that says this is your height and this is your weight and you don’t fit within there so I am making an educated opinion about it. That is really another form of judgment. I am giving you an opinion, a judgment that maybe it is a good idea that you trim a few pounds Chuck. I don’t jump all over him because I know he is my doctor. He is the guy that I think cares about me because I have been going to him for ten years so I do think that he really cares about my health. So I am receptive to receive that because his goal is to restore me back to health.
Really that is what I think Jesus is saying and really what Paul is saying in his letter to Galatians. Paul writes “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently.” Paul is giving us the formula here. He says restore him gently. Restore is an interesting word because there is an underlying Greek word that can be translated in all sorts of ways. The common way we translate this underlying Greek word, I can’t even remember what the word is, but we translate it equip. When it talks about equipping the saints. We translate it restore. Also in the gospels it is translated mend. I think there is a passage that talks about when the fishermen got back they mended their nets. They made their nets ready for the work they had to do. They restored their nets. Really, when we are choosing to come alongside somebody, what we are trying to do is mend their nets to restore them to make them fit for the work in the kingdom. When we understand that, the whole correcting thing takes on a less ominous feel. The key thing here is that it is very sensitive business. Think about the idea of removing a speck of dust. How hard is that to remove a speck of dust from somebody’s eye? How delicate would that be? I don’t know if you have ever tried to remove a splinter or a piece of dirt from somebody’s eye or your own eye. You are very delicate I am sure, especially if it is your child’s eye or your spouse’s eye. You are going to be very careful with that. It is delicate business. I think Paul is implying it is limited to probably certain types of people. He tells you right here. Spiritual people. Everybody should not be in the business of correcting others. Only those who are spiritual. The question becomes what is spiritual. Does it mean you just be a Christian? No because there are a lot of unspiritual Christians. There are a lot of non-Christians that are probably more spiritual than some Christians. But he is talking about somebody I think that at least in theory is trying to attempt to walk with the spirit of God on a daily basis, which means that before they go out and begin to correct somebody else, they put themselves on the table and allow the spirit of Christ to come in and examine their heart and see if there are any unworthy ways in them. Not only that, they themselves are willing to actually put themselves next to other brothers and sisters in Christ so that they might be able to come alongside them and gently correct them. I think that is what we are talking about when we are talking about a spiritual person. I think we are talking about a brother or sister in Christ because in theory, brothers and sisters in Christ as supposed to love one another. I am not making this stuff up. We are supposed to love each other. Which means that I have your best interest in mind and you have my best interest in mind. When we know that just like we know the doctor has our best interest in mind, then we are more open to allowing that to happen. We come alongside the person and it is not to destroy. It is to say I really love you as a brother or sister and I want you to be restored. I want you to be healthy. What happens is over time the body of believers becomes stronger when you can create a culture where that happens in a healthy way.
At the same time, it is a very risky proposition. Most people don’t know how to do it. I struggle with how to do it. I have screwed up a lot of times. It is very hard. It is a very delicate procedure to correct anybody. Especially people that are incredibly sensitive. It is very difficult. If it is difficult in the church, it is really difficult in the world. We have this phrase that is common in Christianity “We are to love the sinner and hate the sin”. That is a nice phrase, but the problem is you go out in the world and start telling people you hate their sin, then you might as well be telling them that you hate them. In the world, behavior and identity are very closely related. If you go out there and say I really love you but I hate what you do, they will say what you are saying is you hate me. In the world, most of us, 99% of us, have no business trying to correct the sins of the world. For one, we are trying to give them a standard that they don’t even know exists. Talking about this kingdom stuff. We struggle with it. And we are going to teach it to somebody else that is not even a Christian and doesn’t even want to live as a kingdom person. All we are doing is setting ourselves up for complete failure. I say that with a little bit of caution. Occasionally, you get people who say I am struggling with this situation. I know you are a Christian. Can you help me? Then you have an open door. Then you have an invitation not to slam them and tell them what a bad person they are but to begin like I suggested for the English teacher to paint a pretty reality. A reality that says this is how you are living. Let me tell you how I live or how I try to live. Let me show you the benefit of this and how it has helped me out. If you do it right with delicacy and gentleness and precision, they might actually want to know more. Then they want to know more and you invite them further into the kingdom and continue to tell them more until they say no more or until they accept the kingdom of God in their life.
That is really all I have to say. I do think the more I read this stuff that Jesus is serious about it. Don’t you think or is it just me? I really do think Jesus thinks we can do this stuff. He is not just trying to give us these impossible things to do. He is thinking you can do this stuff. It’s not impossible, but it’s definitely not easy. As you begin to practice these things in your own life over and over and over again, what you find is that over time your character changes. You become the type of person whose auto-response when you feel like somebody sinned against you is not to go on the kill but to basically come alongside them and talk to them or first go to God and reveal your own sin. As you do that, your character begins to grow. As all the Christians in the church begin to do it, the church begins to grow stronger in character. Ultimately the world becomes a better place to live. Let us pray.
