Sermon for CATM - May 7, 2006 - Right Back At Cha
"Don’t condemn others, and God won’t condemn you. 2God will be as hard on you as you are on others! He will treat you exactly as you treat them. You can see the speck in your friend’s eye, but you don’t notice the log in your own eye. How can you say, "My friend, let me take the speck out of your eye," when you don’t see the log in your own eye? You’re othing but show-offs! First, take the log out of your own eye. Then you can see how to take the speck out of your friend’s eye". Matthew 7:1-5
I heard a story about a five-year-old boy named Andrew. While visiting a neighbor with his parents, Andrew pulled out his kindergarten class picture and immediately began describing each classmate. “This is
Robert; he hits everyone. This is Stephen. He never listens to the teacher. This is Mark. He chases us and is very noisy." Pointing to his own picture,
Andrew commented, "And this is me. I’m just sitting here minding my own business."
Funny thing about humans, about the way we look at other people. I don’t know if it’s based in our history or our genetics as a species or something else. We’re rather quick to sum other people up. We see others doing wrong while we see ourselves as virtuous.
With precious little real information, and with an absurd confidence in our ‘character radar’ we make judgements about others. Judgments which are often
made too early to be reliable. They’re called, or course, pre-judgments or prejudices.
Sometimes it’s based on the way a person looks. I was speaking with a dear brother and sister earlier this week about racism, how it is all around us in the world, and all too often present in the church.
We kind of expect sin to be rampant in the world around us, but when Christians make judgments on people due to their race...when it matters to us what colour or ethnic background someone has, when a
couple of mixed race face judgment or just "the look’ they get from others that silently voices disapproval... this is particularly saddening, particularly galling, particularly terrible because racism dishonours God by rejecting what He has
made.
Steve Martin said, "Never judge a man unless you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. Then you’ll be a mile away and you’ll have his shoes."
Survey: How many in here this afternoonhave been judged based on rumors and lies?
How many in here this afternoon have been judged because of your past? How many in here this afternoon have been criticized for doing something different or
even being different?
Have you ever felt the sting of beingunfairly judged by another person when they did not even know you?
Everyone of us has a story...and part of our story includes being judged or condemned unfairly by others...something we really have very little control over.
The challenge with being on the receiving end of judgment or condemnation is to not let people’s unfair judgments shut us down.
The pathway to this is forgiveness...forgiving those who make such condemnations...because that is the only
way to be free of the anger and negative self-image that such condemnation can create.
In our passage today, though, Jesus doesn’t really address this part of the equation. He’s interested in you and me and he wants us to realize how unhealthy
it is to live a critical lifestyle, how God distains such an attitude to life.
He talks in some very strong terms aboutjudging or condemning others. But He doesn’t leave us there alone. He gives the way out of having a critical, judgmental heart.
First of all, Jesus clearly commands us notto judge. I want to mention just in passing that this passage is one of the most abused passages in all of scripture.
When we see someone making a practice of self-destructive behaviour and we gently bring that to their attention, that is not what Jesus is talking about here.
When we see someone who has had too much to drink getting their car keys and getting ready to take off for a drive, and we call them on it, we’re not judging
them.
They may say to us, “Judge me not!”, but, of course, they’re using scripture to avoid reality.
The NIV says, “Do not judge”. The Contemporary English Version which we use as often as we can for its inclusive language of ease of understanding, says:
“Do not condemn”. The amplified version, which does its best to capture all the shades of meaning of a text, says: “DO NOT judge and criticize and condemn
others”.
So if really want to apply this passageaccurately in your life, you don’t stop making intelligent choices using a reasonable amount of discernment. You simply examine yourself to see if in your attitude you are condemning others.
Or are you seeking to help them by using your brain?Warning someone is not judging them. Condemning them as bad or as rejected by God for their behaviour is
what is being discussed here. And what does Jesus say?
First, He commands us not to condemn others. In John chapter 8, a passage that gives us amazing insight into the character of God, a bunch of men are swarming
around a young woman caught in adultery. They bring her to Jesus to get him to pass judgment on her... they’re testing him.
Will He honour and apply Old Testament law to a woman who, strictly speaking, the law itself condemned for her actions?
Jesus, while not disputing the law itself directly, redirects the question with his words. “If any of you have never sinned, then go ahead and throw the first stone at her!"
We sometimes make judgments as though we had the right to make judgments when we’re not, truly, equipped to make judgments. And that’s the problem.
Each of the men in John 8 had sin in their lives that they were not dealing with while at the same time wanting desperately to deal most severely with the sin of another person.
When we judge another to the point of condemnation, we, perhaps oddly, expose ourselves to falling. That’s why Paul writes in Galatians 6:1: “Brothers, if
someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted”.
There’s another real downside to condemning others. Eugene Peterson puts this passage this way: Matthew 7:1"Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures,
criticize their faults--unless, of course, you
want the same treatment. 2That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging.”
It seems that God will use some creativity when we stand before Him face to face on the judgment day. Part of the equation, it appears, will be our own standards of judging others. If we’re quick to condemn
others, or if we do so without mercy...perhaps we should not expect much different from God.
If we prejudge others as matter of practice, perhaps we should not expect something different from God. Likewise if we do not condemn others, if we apply mercy and grace and give others the benefit of the
doubt, we should rest a bit easier as we imagine standing before God, as we all will, one day, to give an account of our lives and our faith in Jesus Christ.
If anyone ever suggests to you that God is without humour, the next part should show different [Take 2 X 4; place it on right temple; look around; look at (Kerry); ask: “Is that...I think you’ve got...Kerry, I hate to say it but you’ve got a...is that a speck
in your eye...”]
“3You can see the speck in your friend’s eye, but you don’t notice the log in your own eye. 4How can you say, "My friend, let me take the speck out of your eye," when you don’t see the log in your own
eye? 5You’re nothing but show-offs! First, take the log out of your own eye. Then you can see how to take the speck out of your friend’s eye.
Jesus is doing the same thing here that He did in our John 8 passage. He’s pointing out some things that at the best of time, we just don’t want to hear. Often, we are more than ill-equipped to point out to someone else their faults. We can be deluded without knowing it. We can think we can help someone else with what they’re struggling with when we’re immersed in and not really dealing with our own sin or our own issues.
A close relative of mine used to own and run a health food store, and was constantly offering advice to her customers and friends and family about how to live and
eat healthier. That was great. The only problem was she smoked a pack of cigarettes a day.
This made any advise about health-related issues sort of a joke. Eventually she stopped smoking. It gradually became easier to take her advice about health issues.
It can be easy to notice things about others that are without consequence, while at the same time we’re wearing our sin on our sleeves. It’s impacting our lives in a way we’re ignorant of. Jesus is saying to us, “If you must be critical, don’t waste your time
condemning others. Look at your own heart”.
It reminds me of a passage in Donald Miller’s book, Blue Like Jazz, where he describes being at a protest rally protesting something he can’t remember, all the
while thinking to himself that he should have a big sign on a stick that reads, “I am the problem!” I love that.
If I search my own heart and come clean with God about all the flaws I have, I’m not going to have the time or the energy or the inclination to wrongly judge you, to condemn you. And then we can get on
with the business of loving each other, which, by the way, is what Jesus recommends above everything.
Something strikes me as odd, though, about all this. Jesus speaks so strongly against us judging or condemning others. In this passage today, in the passage from John 8 that I referred to and other places in the gospels Jesus makes it so clear that we
have no right to condemn one another...that we must steer far clear of such behaviour.
And yet He allowed himself to be wrongly judged. In a prophetic passage written about Jesus 700 years before His birth, Isaiah looks ahead to Jesus as the victim of wrongful judgment: “He was painfully
abused, but he did not complain. He was silent like a lamb being led to the butcher, as quiet as a sheep having its wool cut off.
He was condemned to death without a fair trial. Who could have imagined what would happen to him? His life was taken away because of the sinful things my
people had done”. Isaiah 53:7-8
Christ, who was the only one without sin in John 8, and is the only worthy Judge of the living and the dead, was judged in our place.
Romans says “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Rm 5:8). Jesus died a sinner’s death.
2nd Corinthians puts it even clearer: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”.
We should ponder that passage. Why did Jesus allow himself to be judged, to be condemned, to take upon himself our judgment to the extent where He let
himself - remember he was guiltless of any sin - He let himself become sin for us.
It is so that you and I and all who believe may become the righteousness of God. That what was broken in my relationship and your relationship with God might be fixed, healed. And that you and I might
become His hands to the needy and His heart to the unloved.
The only one truly able to judge tells you and I not to, so that we might be free to love instead.
Let’s pray. Jesus, thank you for your grace in our lives. The grace that caused us to believe in you when others reject you. The grace that reached into our broken state, our sinful state, and chose not to judge us but to be judged in our place. God...help
us to be authentic in our faith. Help us to make no room for wrong judgment in our lives. And help each of us to appreciate afresh what you endured for us. May the cross be ever before us. And may the living Christ in His resurrected glory forever call to us to be like Him. In his name we pray. Amen.
