Matthew 7:1 "Do not judge so that you will not be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3 "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? 4 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? 5 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. 6 "Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces. 7
Introduction: Context of the Sermon on the Mount
For hundreds of years the people of God have been eagerly waiting for the descendent of David to arrive and set up His kingdom. And when that King finally did arrive, He preached a sermon that would become the most famous sermon ever preached – the Sermon on the Mount. The topic of the sermon is righteousness – specifically, what righteousness looks like in His kingdom. He began with some instruction about the role of the Law, then the rest of chapter 5 was all about Righteousness and Relationships – what righteousness looks like in this kingdom when it comes to personal relationships. Then in the first part of chapter 6 He moved to Righteousness and Religion – what righteousness looks like in this kingdom when it comes to religious observance (things like praying and giving and fasting). Then in the end of chapter 6 it was Righteousness and Resources - what does righteousness look like in this kingdom when it comes to money and possessions? That is where we left off last week. Now Jesus moves to Righteousness and Sinners. In this kingdom, how does a righteous person deal with sinners? And Jesus begins with the negative – telling us what not to do.
1 Do not judge
The King says, “You are not to judge each other in this Kingdom.”
Righteous Judging
What does that mean? I can tell you what our culture wants it to mean. Matthew 7:1 has become a mantra in our culture. “Judge not, lest you be judged.” “Who are you to judge?” “Don’t ever pass judgment.” Our culture hates all moral evaluation, so they would take Jesus’ words here in an absolute way. Just shut your brain off when it comes to ethics and do not make any distinctions. Do not ever say anything is wrong or evil or sin and do not use the word “ought” regarding any moral obligation. Accept everyone as they are unconditionally and do not even so much as believe something that someone else is doing is wrong. That is really the spirit of our age.
And that is not surprising. If you have a whole culture of people who want to ignore God and His will and His law and do whatever they please, the last thing they want is anyone reminding them that they are evil.
But is that what Jesus is saying? We know for sure that it is not because of verse 6. He warns us about people who are dogs and pigs. Then a little later He tells us to watch out for false prophets and that we will know them by their fruit. So obviously we have to be able to discern who the dogs and pigs and false prophets are. In fact, in other contexts Jesus commands us to judge.
John 7:24 Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment.
In chapter 18 Jesus says this:
Matthew 18:15 If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault
Not only must you judge him to be in the wrong, but you are to confront him about it.
Leviticus 19:17 Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt.
Do not hate him – rebuke him. We recently had a visitor who was shocked to hear that we were carrying out church discipline. She said, “We should just love everybody.” But according to God’s Word if you fail to rebuke your brother for sin that is an act of hatred, not love. Scripture is loaded with commands that we make judgments.
1 John 4:1 do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
Philippians 3:2 Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil
So we must make moral judgments.
Those people who say we should judge nothing are holding to a self-refuting belief. If I am judging everyone, and they point to me and tell me I am wrong to do that, what are they doing? Judging me! They make the judgment that all judgment is wrong, and in their judgment no one should make judgments because they judge all judgments to be wrongly judgmental – except for their passing judgment on judgment. It is the same, double standard, hypocritical, self-refuting error that the postmodern people always make when they try to say they there are no absolutes. I always want to ask, “Are you absolutely sure there are no absolutes?” They are sure there is nothing we can be sure of, and they rule out all rule-making, speak out against all speaking out, and pass judgment on all judging.
Jesus is calling for graciousness, not blindness. To look at something God calls sin and pretend it is not sin is blindness. And it is a mark of infantile immaturity. Ephesians 4:14 describes undiscerning people as being like…
Ephesians 4:14 … infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching
Discernment and judgmentalism are not the same thing. It is never wrong to repeat what God has said. If the powers that be say “It’s against the law to drive sixty miles per hour in a school zone,” and you are riding in the car with me as I drive sixty in a school zone and you say, “Hey, Darrell – that’s against the law” – you are not passing judgment. You are not legislating. You are just relaying information to me. If I say, “Stealing is wrong,” I am not passing judgment. God already passed judgment on stealing. All I am doing is passing along the information. So it is never sinful judging if all you are doing is accurately passing along information about what God has already said.
In fact, if you fail to accurately pass along what God has said then that is another kind of sinful judging. If God says that someone is guilty, and you hide that truth from the person, or make that person feel like he is OK – you are acting like you are a higher court overturning the verdict God has rendered in his court. So if I stand up here and preach that abortion is murder and homosexual behavior is perverse and the world says, “Who are you to judge?” my answer is “I’m nobody. Those things are not evil because of my opinions; things are only evil or righteous if God says they are evil or righteous. All I am doing is letting you know what God has said in His Word.”
Sinful Judging
So, all that to make it clear what Jesus is not saying. He is not forbidding all evaluations and distinctions and judgments. On the other hand, He is forbidding something. We do not want to just look at what He is not saying and breathe a sigh of relief and go on our merry way passing judgment on everyone all the time, because the behavior that Jesus is forbidding is something very serious. He gives us a severe threat.
A serious matter
Matthew 7:1 Do not judge, so that you will not be judged.
That should make us tremble. The prospect of being judged by God for a sin should be the most terrifying threat imaginable. Nothing is worse than having God unhappy with you. If we are ever able to read something like that verse with a ho-hum attitude without it rattling us to the core, that is an indication that our understanding of God has shriveled down to such a low level that it borders on blasphemy. Nothing concerns me more about my own spiritual life then how little emotional fear strikes my heart when I read about Judgment Day. When the Lord threatens us with judgment that is a very, very serious matter.
Jesus is speaking to believers here, and warns them about being judged. And if you have been taught that the forgiveness of sins that you enjoy as a Christian exempts you from Judgment Day altogether you need to re-read Romans 14.
Romans 14:10 You, then, why do you judge your brother? … For we will all stand before God's judgment seat. 11 It is written: "'As surely as I live,' says the Lord, 'every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.'" 12 So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God. 13 Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another.
2 Corinthians 5:9 we make it our goal to please him … 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.
Warnings of judgment should motivate us
Just as all His promises of reward should motivate us (as we saw again and again throughout chapter 6), so His promises of judgment should also motivate us. If we are judgmental toward others, there will be a very steep price to pay on Judgment Day. If you are at odds with another Christian, or you are holding a grudge or looking down on someone, you are not just going to float into eternity without that being dealt with. If it does not get taken care of before you die, He is going to set it right on Judgment Day. Everything you have said or done that has been wrong or unfair in the whole dispute will come to light. The Lord promises to vindicate those who have been mistreated or judged harshly, and part of that will involve exposing your role if you are the perpetrator. And believe me – whatever discomfort you would experience by humbling yourself now is nothing compared to what will happen on that Day. You do not want to arrive at Judgment Day and have God straightening out injustices that you created.
However, I should also say this: I do not see any foundation for restricting this principle to the final Judgment. It applies in this life as well. In this life judgment comes in the form of daily discipline and training and chastisement. The Corinthians were carrying out communion in a way that was not pleasing to God, and this was the result:
1 Corinthians 11:30 That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.
So God disciplined them by causing many of them to get sick and even die.
31 But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment.
So that discipline is referred to as a kind of judgment. Every single time we sin God has a choice to make. “Should I show patience again, or should I bring some hard consequences this time?” He will always choose whichever one is ultimately best for us. But when we are critical and judgmental toward others we create a situation in which what is best for us is for God to deal harshly with us.
So what is it, exactly, that is forbidden? If it is so serious that Jesus threatens judgment from God, every person who loves the Lord and fears the Lord should be eager to know exactly what Jesus is prohibiting here. We know we are to use doctrinal discernment, we know we are to call a spade a spade when it comes to rebuking people for sin – so what is it that we are not allowed to do? What is the bad kind of judging?
The most obvious answer is that it is when you judge hypocritically. In verses 3-5 He talks about looking at a speck in your neighbor’s eye while you have a log in your own eye. So that is one kind of bad judging, but I am going to hold off on talking about that until we get to verse 3. For now I think it would be good to remind ourselves of the various other kinds of judging that Scripture forbids. The worst hypocrites in Scripture are the Pharisees, so they are really the best example of what not to do. Jesus was continually rebuking the Pharisees for rendering wrong judgments. So let’s take a few moments to learn from Jesus’ words to the Pharisees about the various wrong kinds of judging.
1) Judging legalistically
Enforcing traditions
When I look at the hypocrites in the Gospels, the first thing I see is that they judged legalistically. When they judged people they had their own human traditions mixed together with the law of God (much like the Roman Catholic Church does today with their church tradition). And each time you see the Pharisees making wrong judgments, it was usually because someone was breaking their own traditions. In Matthew 12 they passed judgment on Jesus and the Disciples for violating their traditions and Jesus says, “If you would read the Law you would not have condemned the innocent” (Mt.12:7). Mark this: Nobody is ever required to do anything that God does not require in His Word. And when we add requirements to God’s Word and then look down on people for not meeting them, we are guilty of legalism. Whenever people develop a legalistic system they always set themselves up on the throne of that system and pass judgment on everyone else according to their own self-styled rules.
Those of us who have grown up in church have a certain list of things that we have always been told are bad, so even though none of those things are mentioned in the Bible, if we see someone doing them we look down on that person as kind of a second-class Christian. If you look down on someone because you see them smoking a cigarette or drinking a beer or with a tattoo or wearing leather and chains or with a hair style that rubs you the wrong way, that is legalism.
Enforcing judgment calls
Now I am guessing most of you were just fine with that principle until I gave those specific examples. As soon as I start giving examples we realize that this is not a simple issue, because there are problems connected with every one of those things in the example. There are a lot of ways you can sin by smoking a cigarette or drinking a beer or getting a tattoo or even by wearing leather. If you do that as an expression of rebellion, or because you want to identify with a godless culture, or it is a controlling, enslaving habit, or poor stewardship, or jeopardizes a weaker brother or a host of other things – those things become sin.
So what should you do with those kinds of things? Well, when something is not specifically prohibited in the Bible but it is fraught with spiritual danger, each one of us must apply wisdom in our particular situation and make the best possible judgment call on how to handle those things in a way that is most profitable spiritually. And the key phrase there is judgment call. Exactly how much is too much? In which contexts would it be sin? We all have to make our judgment call in those areas, and that judgment call is very important because if you violate it, then for you that is sin. If I decide that, in my case, my judgment call is that the best course is no drinking any alcohol at all, then for me it is a sin to have a drink. It is always, always sin to go against your conscience (Ro.14:5, 22, 23). So everyone should follow their conscience on judgment-call issues. But what about people who make a different judgment call than you? If the judgment call they make for their lives is less strict than yours, the temptation is to take the judgment call you have made for your life and enforce that on them. That is a very natural thing to do. You say no to some enticing thing for the sake of Christ, then your brother goes ahead and indulges in that thing – it is natural to question his devotion to Christ. Natural, but wrong. It is legalistic judging. Maybe it is sin for them but that is not for you to determine. You can give them advice, you can offer your reasons for why you think it is dangerous, you can even establish rules for your household, or if you run a business or an organization you can establish policies for that, but you cross the line into legalism when you require other people to make the same judgment call you make on a grey area.
Looking down on those who are more strict is also legalistic
And there is another kind of legalistic judging. It is legalism if you look down on the guy who is less strict in his judgment calls, but it is also legalism if you look down on the one who is more strict. Maybe you feel perfectly free to drink and smoke and break all kinds of traditional taboos and you look at someone who abstains and think, “What a legalist. He probably thinks he’s better than everyone else because of his strict rules. What a self-righteous, goody-goody.” Or maybe you just say, “What a dope. Doesn’t he realize we are free to do all those things? He must not understand grace.” That is also legalism. If you look down on the one who calls it in a less strict way or in a stricter way – either way it is sinful, legalistic judging. In Romans 14 the issue had to do with eating meat sacrificed to idols.
Romans 14:3 The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him.
Wherever you come down, it is legalistic judging to look down on someone who comes down at a different place.
4 Who are you to judge someone else's slave? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
What are we doing evaluating each other? Why do you drive home on Sunday after church and talk to your spouse about what a bad job someone is doing? Is that person your slave? Did you die on the cross to purchase them so that now you own them, and it is your job to evaluate how well they are doing? Who are you to evaluate someone else’s slave? I think this verse is fascinating because it implies that the only person you are allowed to judge is someone you own. If you do not own that person as your own personal slave then you have no business evaluating how well he is doing as a slave. When we do that we are usurping the place of God.
James 4:12 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?
2) Judging superficially
Jesus told the Pharisees:
John 7:24 Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment.
When you pass judgment on someone based on external appearances you will tend to render wrong judgments. One of the all time most beautiful acts of worship ever performed in human history took place in Luke 7 when that woman anointed Jesus’ feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. That woman had repented of her sins, had been cleansed and transformed by the power of Christ, and her heart was as white as snow. Her worship was reverent, effusive, selfless, courageous, enthusiastic, passionate, demonstrative, genuine, and it was an expression of deep gratitude and love. You will not find a more beautiful display of worship anywhere else in the Bible. And the Pharisee took one look at her and determined that Jesus must not be a prophet, otherwise he would not let such a sinful woman touch Him. He wins the award for one of the most incorrect judgments of a person ever made. How could this man get it so wrong? He got it wrong because he judged superficially. He did not take into consideration what was in her heart – only what was in her past. The world thinks what you are is defined by your past. God says what you are is defined by your heart. Judging someone by any other measure than the heart is superficial.
Prejudice and Favoritism
Prejudice and favoritism are examples of superficial judging. What could possibly be more superficial than judging someone by the pigmentation of his skin? Judging my irrelevant factors is foolish whether it be positive or negative. The negative side is prejudice; the positive side is favoritism. Giving someone special treatment in the church because he is wearing a Rolex is sinful, superficial judging. (James 2:1-4)
Another time this happens is in worship. You see someone in the worship service who isn’t standing or lifting his hands and has a stoic look on his face and think, he isn’t even worshipping – that is superficial judgment.
3) Judging self-righteously
In Luke 18 Jesus told the parable about the Pharisee and tax collector who went to the temple to pray, and the tax collector went away justified in God’s sight and not the Pharisee because the tax collector was humble and repentant and the Pharisee wasn’t. Listen to how Jesus introduced that parable:
Luke 18:9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10 "Two men went up to the temple to pray…
The Pharisee had never committed any of the really gross, ugly, scandalous sins, so he thought he was pretty good. There is a real tendency for those who have had a squeaky clean life externally – never committed adultery, never stole anything, never rebelled as a teenager, never tempted with homosexuality, never hung out with a bad crowd, never got drunk, never been high on anything – it is very easy for people like that to fall into a mentality that looks down on those who have fallen into those sins. They think they are better because they have never fallen into those “big” sins.
The problem is, those are not the “big” sins. There are some sins that are more egregious than others. But God’s list of the really, really bad ones is not the same as ours tends to be. Way up near the top of God’s list is self-righteousness (thinking you are better than others because you have not committed certain sins), or thinking that you deserve the credit for the fact that you never fell into those sins. When you look down on someone who struggles with homosexuality, or with criminal behavior that lands then in jail, or for whatever variety of sin they struggle with that you don’t struggle with – that is self-righteous judging.
4) Judging unmercifully
Looking down on the “bad kind” of sinners
In Matthew 9 there were tax collectors and sinners (the scandalous kind of sinners) who were repenting and coming to faith in Christ and being saved. That is something that a good judge would rejoice over. But instead they were criticizing Jesus for eating with people like that. And here is Jesus’ response:
Matthew 9:12 On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
Jesus gives them a homework assignment to go study about mercy. It was a simple assignment – just learn one single verse about mercy. But three chapters later He busts them for not getting that homework assignment done. In chapter 12 they criticize the Disciples for picking grain on the Sabbath (because they cared more about their rules then about human need).
Matthew 12:7 If you had known what these words mean, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the innocent.
“If you just would have done the homework assignment I gave you back in chapter 9 then you would not be standing here making yet another wrong judgment.” They routinely rendered wrong judgments because they lacked mercy.
Mercy is a crucial ingredient for proper judging. When you really love someone you evaluate them differently than when you do not like them. When you love them you put the best possible construction on things they do. You fill in the blanks in your knowledge of what happened with positive assumptions instead of negative ones. And God absolutely requires that we do that. Listen to this horrifying statement:
James 2:13 judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful.
Raise your hand if you want to face merciless judgment by God. Terrifying.
The only way to avoid that is to have a heart that cuts people slack when you evaluate them. And that includes the people who hurt you. When people insult you, or they are insensitive or rude, or they create some problem for you – you judge them mercifully. This includes your children. There are some parent-child relationships that have deteriorated to the point where the child feels like the parent is against him rather than for him. And the child is right. In some cases the parent cares about winning the argument rather than winning the child’s heart.
Think about those people who are down there at the bottom of your list right now. They are the people who irritate you, or for whatever reason you just do not like them or do not get along with them. Ask yourself, are you for them or against them? Can you honestly say you are on their side? Satan is their accuser. So are you on their side or on the devil’s side?
You know you are on Satan’s side when you become carping and caviling with persistent, petty, faultfinding. You cannot overlook anything. Where mercy is lacking your evaluation of the person becomes condemning, disapproving, disparaging, fault-finding, hypercritical, harsh, and unfair. You do not take into consideration mitigating circumstances, you do not have any appreciation for whatever hardship made the situation more difficult for the person, you have no compassion, no understanding – all you want to do is condemn.
Blindness to goodness
If you are a judgmental person, that comes from being blind to goodness in people. Judgmental people usually pride themselves on being excellent judges of character because they can always spot character flaws. But they are not good judges of character. They are blind. They have eagle eyes when it comes to spotting a weakness, but they are blind to strengths and virtues in people they do not like very much. Judgmental people are about as good at assessing character as flies are at assessing meat. Their attention is drawn to what is rotten.
5) Judging ignorantly motives (or anything else you can’t know)
We make terrible judges because we have no ability to see into the heart, and the heart is the only thing that matters. We cannot see motives, we cannot see thoughts, we cannot see affections. We are utterly ignorant about all of the most important factors. We are like judges who render a verdict without hearing any evidence in the case and have no idea what actually happened.
1 Corinthians 4:5 Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts.
We cannot judge the heart because we cannot see motives. “But what if the motives are obvious?” It does not matter. No matter what kind of super-human ability you have to read people’s motives – God forbids any judging of motives. It does not matter if you guess right or wrong – it is forbidden. So even if there is an eighty percent that the person had a wrong motive for what he did, that means there is still a possibility that they had a good motive so you assume the good motive. If a person loves to be up on stage in front of everyone, chances are he has a sinful motive of self-glory. But you do not know that. It may be that he has only good motives. If a person criticizes you harshly they probably had an unloving motive, but you do not know that for sure.
If you suspect a sinful motive, just ask: “Was this your motive?” If they say, “Yes, it was,” then you can show them from Scripture that it is a sinful motive. But if they say “No, it wasn’t,” you need to take them at their word.
6) Judging prematurely
Sometimes we have a preconceived idea of a situation so we listen to a tiny little bit of information then blurt out our reaction.
Proverbs 18:13 He who answers before listening-- that is his folly and his shame.
Premature judging is when you arrive at a conclusion without having enough facts. This is especially a problem when you hear just one side of an argument.
Proverbs 18:17 The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him.
When you hear a wife tell about what her husband is doing, it just seems like you know what is going on. You say, “Even if I take into account the typical exaggeration and overstatement and bias – still I can see this husband is just really a big jerk.” But then you talk to the husband and get such a completely different picture that is nothing like what you thought. But think of how often you hear about something and never have any opportunity to hear the other side. It is the height of folly to form an opinion without hearing both sides, and yet how often we do that.
The consequence of judging
So those are six kinds of sinful judging. The seventh is the one Jesus focuses on in this text – judging hypocritically (with a log in your own eye). And we will get to that in verses 3-5, but before we get to that, Jesus has some more to say to us about the consequences of wrong judging.
Matthew 7:2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
What does that mean? There is a debate over whether this refers to God or to other people. Who will treat you the same way you treat others? Some say this has to refer to God, because Jesus would hardly offer good or bad treatment from others as the motive for what we do. Jesus taught repeatedly that the opinions of other people should not be what drive us. So it must refer to God.
The other side would say, “How could it refer to God? Is Jesus saying that if you judge others wrongly God will judge you wrongly? If you judge others unfairly, will God judge you unfairly? How could it refer to God?”
I think both sides of the debate have an excellent point, and if you combine the two that gives you the meaning of what Jesus is saying. If you wrongly judge others, God will discipline you by allowing others to wrongly judge you. God is sovereign over whether or not you have favor in the eyes of people around you. And He very often uses the sinfulness of the people around us as a tool to discipline His children. There was a time in my life when I was under the chastisement of God and during that time I could not find favor in the eyes of anyone. Some people were spreading lies about me, and everywhere I went the people believed those lies and would not believe me. And it was so obvious that the lies were lies – I had clear proof, but no one was interested in that proof. It was like being in the twilight zone. I wondered if I was losing my mind. But then a wise pastor told me something very simple. He said, “It sounds like God just isn’t granting you favor in the eyes of men.” That is exactly what was happening. And when the Lord’s discipline was over, after a year or so of that, suddenly it was like someone flipped a switch. All of a sudden people seemed perfectly reasonable, and they listened to me and believed me, and they saw the lies for what they were – everything changed literally overnight. I give you that just as an example of how God can sometimes use wrong judgments of other people as a rod to discipline you. (That is not to say it is always punishment for some sin when people wrongly judge you. Many righteous people have been wrongly judged for all kinds of other reasons. So it is not always chastisement, but it can be chastisement.) So when Jesus says, “In the way you judge you will be judged” is He talking about God or men? I believe He is talking about God, who uses men as tools for discipline.
This is one of the natural consequences of sin. If you are the type who finds fault in people and does not cut people any slack, people will treat you that way. If you nitpick and criticize and focus on weaknesses and errors and mistakes and faults – even if the people around you are normally very kind and gracious – it will not be long before they will be hard on you – your boss, co-workers, teachers, people at church – and especially your family. You can marry someone who is the most forgiving person you have ever met, but if you are critical with them, over the years they will eventually become that way toward you. You can destroy a godly person that way.
So the Lord calls us to be gracious and generous in our judging. It is interesting to see how Jesus tends to talk about judging in the context of generosity. Here in the Sermon on the Mount this section on judging comes immediately after the section on money and generosity. And in Luke those two sections are mixed together.
Luke 6:37 Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38 Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. … 41 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?
You read that and you think, “Wait a minute – are you talking about judging here or are you talking about generosity?” He is talking about both together because one of the most important expressions of a generous heart is generosity in judgment. If you are generous with your money but not with your judgments; if you are openhanded and charitable with finances, but tightfisted and grudging with your assumptions about people – then you are not really generous. And that is ironic because this is a kind of generosity that does not even cost you anything. Being generous with money means having less money. But being generous in the way you evaluate people does not cost you anything.
Conclusion: Remember the generosity of God
Why would you judge your brother? Do you own him? Is he your slave? And even if you did own him and he did answer to you, why would you be a hard master? Has the Lord been a hard master to you? Or has your Master in heaven overlooked your foolishness, sin, rebellion, disobedience, stupidity, folly, and mistakes by the hundreds of thousands? Why would we be impatient with one another? Has the Lord been impatient with us? Or has He patiently endured our poor service and waited for us to change for years and decades at a time? Why would we be stingy in granting grace to others? Has God been stingy with us? Or has He done everything imaginable to cover over our sin even at the cost of His own precious Son?
Ephesians 4:30 do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God … 31 Get rid of all bitterness, … and anger …32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Benediction: Micah 6:7-8 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 8 He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
