Sermon Transcript
Matthew 7:1-6. Judge not that you be not judged, for with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye, when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
Do not give the dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.
Our current cultural moment has been called by some the age of outrage, and for good reason, I believe. Temperatures and tensions are high.
Maybe the world has calmed down a little from, say, a year ago, but we still seem like we’re ready to erupt again at any moment. We have lots of name-calling between groups, lots of suspicion of each other. There seems to be like a clamoring for the moral high ground, and then whoever thinks they have the high ground, they demonize the other side. I personally believe the word toxic Toxic is overused today, but toxic might be a good descriptor for how we are treating each other in our culture today. Jesus’ day, 2,000 years ago, was in some ways very similar.
Various groups would bite against each other. Some of them claimed the moral high ground and then used that high ground as a way weapon to maintain their power. Many groups in Jesus’ day felt oppressed by one or more of the other groups. Leadership was hypocritical, to put it lightly. There were race-based exclusions like with the Samaritans.
Certainly there was disparity in economic opportunity. There were wild power dynamics between some groups. That was Jesus’ this day. Does any of that sound familiar? What are we supposed to do in a time like that?
How do we bring the temperature down? How do we get a little less toxic?
The answer to that question is a bit involved, isn’t it? It’s not simple to untangle the mess that we have It’s not simple. So today we’re going to study something Jesus said way back in the first century that will help us navigate our current cultural climate, praise God. But we should instinctively know, kind of before we even look at his instructions, that the way forward is going to need to be pretty highly nuanced because it’s not simple. Because on the one hand, we’d like to be able to say something like, can’t everybody just get along?
That would be nice, of course, if everybody just got along. That’d be great. But on the other hand, there are some really serious issues we need to address. And it seems like anytime anyone tries to address one of those issues, tensions erupt all over again. Fireworks start.
There’s escalation. Sometimes there’s violence. So, what do we do? Do we just pretend everything’s okay to try to keep the peace?
No, that wouldn’t really be peace. Do we want one group to rise in power enough to squash everyone else and silence all opposition? Would that actually eliminate tension? No, that’s what Rome tried to do. Rome said, we’re in charge, everyone else must bow down to us, and that actually created more tension, not Not less.
So today, even if our side wins somehow and we try to squash everyone else, we’re still going to be right here.
The temperature will still be hot. We’ll still have divisions and anger and eruptions. So how do we live in this space, especially as Christians? What is our role to play? It was into that kind of environment that Jesus gave instructions on judgment, which again are not simple, which again are highly nuanced, but which will again help.
So let’s look at this. The passage shows the prerequisite to judgment, the goal of judgment, when to stop judging, judgment, and finally, the shock of Jesus’ judgment. The prerequisite, the goal, when to stop, and the shock of Jesus’ judgment. So first, the prerequisite of judgment is humility. Jesus says before you judge, you need to have a serious understanding of your own faults.
Contrary to what we might believe at first glance, Jesus is not saying He is not saying never judge. He is saying before you judge, you need to be honest about you. If you think he is saying, like you might traditionally think, if you think he is saying never judge, look at a couple of these verses. Verse 5, we’re supposed to take the speck out of our brother’s eye. We’re supposed to.
Which means, it’s a metaphor, of course, right, our brother has a tiny fault and we’re going to address it. We’re supposed to get the speck out of his eye. We’re supposed to correct him. And there would be no way to address or even recognize someone else’s fault unless on some level we judged. Or you can look at verse 6.
Jesus basically says, have nothing to do with certain kinds of people. And he uses pretty strong language. He says, pigs and dogs. He’s like, don’t engage with them. Which means, okay, I’m stating the obvious here, but if there are certain kinds of people with whom we should not engage, then we must evaluate what kind of person they are, which is judgment.
We’ll talk more about the specifics of that evaluation later, but for now the point is some evaluation has to be made. Jesus tells us to judge. In this very passage, he tells us to judge. And that’s not even including other passages like Matthew 18 when Jesus gives instruction for church discipline. So, he’s not saying, he is not saying never judge.
Of course, we have to hold people accountable. Of course. But he is saying before we judge, we have to have a correct view of ourselves. We must be, in fact, radically humble. And if we’re not, then we are not ready to judge.
So let’s find out if you and me are radically humble. I’m going to give us a bunch of diagnostics here based off of this passage, and we’ll just see if we’re ready to judge or not. So question number 1, do we consider ourselves a bigger mess than whoever it is that we’re judging?
No silence. Do we see our own depravity as a bigger deal than the depravity that we are addressing?
Preach. Who do we think is worse, them or us? Jesus says here in verse 5, before you take the speck out of your brother’s eye, deal with the log in your own eye.
Own. They have a piece of sawdust. We have a 2×4. Jesus says we must understand before we judge. We must understand our issues are bigger than their issues.
So, is that how we look at people we judge? Their issues are minor, my issues are major?
Listen, Jesus is saying unless you can acknowledge you are not ready to judge. Before you take the speck out of your brother’s eye, deal with the log in your own. Your issues are bigger.
Question number 2: Do we look down on people we are judging or do we look up to them? It is natural for us to look up to people, it’s natural for us to admire people who have their lives more together than we do. Do. It’s a reflex. We’re like, how in the world are you handling all this stuff that’s going on in your life?
We admire them. In fact, we probably kind of judge ourselves a little for not being able to do what they’re doing. And at the same time, we naturally feel superior to people whose lives are a mess. We’re like, what’s wrong with you? You should come up here to my level.
So one implication, if we believe like we should that they have the speck and we have the log, one implication of that is we will have almost an admiration of the person we are judging. We would say something like, I have so much respect for you. You’ve got your life so together. I’m so impressed, but there is one area that needs some work.
And if we don’t approach them like that, it means, it means we think they have the log and we have the speck. We have no admiration. Instead, we will feel superior. So do you have admiration for the person you’re judging or do you feel superior to the person you’re judging? Okay, question 3: Do we make excuses for ourselves that we don’t grant others?
Others? Do we dismiss our issues? Do we give ourselves a pass? Are we like, well, I made up for that, or I didn’t really mean to, or nobody found out about it. I didn’t hurt anyone like that other guy did.
What I did, I at least did with the right intentions. Their intentions were all messed up.
You’re giving yourself a pass. You’re thinking my issues aren’t that bad. You’re thinking their issues are worse. You think they have the log and you are not ready to judge.
So question 4, is there a group or person you wish would just shut up and go away?
Is there a person or group you would want to cancel?
If so, again, that must mean, it must mean we think we are better than them because we don’t think we should be canceled, do we? We think they should be canceled. After all, they’re the ones with the issue, for crying out loud.
Just shows we’re not ready to judge, not until we think our issues are bigger.
Question 5, is there anyone that we believe is just evil?
Would we say, those people are just demonic? I mean, I know, I know, we’re not supposed to consider ourselves better than others, sure, but this has got to be an exception, right? Look at what they’re doing.
Do you say that about anyone?
If so, Jesus says we’re not ready to judge. First, face the fact you have the 2×4. They have the speck. If one of you is evil, if only one of you is evil, it’s you, not them. Face that.
Admit that. Until then, you’re not ready.
You’re like, that sounds pretty extreme. Well, just think about it this way. Just imagine how wonderful it would be if others judged you you like that. Someone’s going to come to you and correct you. And yes, you do need correction, and I do too.
How fantastic would it be if your judge looked up to you with respect while they were judging you rather than looking down their nose at you? What if your judge didn’t feel any shred of superiority over you? What if your judge wanted to give you a voice instead of taking your What if your judge saw your issues as a speck and their own issues as a log? How fantastic would that be? It would just take all the heat out of the judgment, wouldn’t it?
You probably wouldn’t even feel judged. You’d be like, wow, this person really cares about me, which is the point, which is the point. It’ll be our last diagnostic question and simultaneously your next fill-in-the-blank. Question 6: When we pass judgment, And is it more because we care about the person or is it more because we want to squash the person? Of course, to some extent, we probably want to do both.
We’re always a mixture of motives like we say a lot. We want them to grow and improve, of course, that’s genuine, but also we want to squash them because they’re so ridiculous.
The question is which is primary here?
Which rises to the surface faster? Which has more energy behind it in our heart? Do we want to squash or do we want to help? Do we want to lift or do we want to level?
If we want to squash, we’re not ready to judge because the goal of judgment is to help. That’s your next fill in the blank. The goal of judgment is to help. It’s not to condemn. That’s not our job.
We judge in order to help. And for the rest of this message and for the rest of our lives, Lord willing, when we say judgment, I want us to think help. Jesus says we judge to get specks out of eyes. That’s why we judge. We want people, we want to help people be able to see clearly.
We want to benefit them. If our goal isn’t help, or if our primary goal isn’t help, we are not ready to judge. Judging needs to be an act of compassion, so it needs to feel compassionate. And we can’t feel compassionate while we feel superior.
If we do, if we think we do, it’s not actually compassion we feel, it’s condescension.
Neither can we feel blisteringly angry and compassionate at the same time. They are mutually exclusive. So let’s just get real for a minute. I’m going to make us all uncomfortable, so get in your most comfortable uncomfortable position.
Who really makes you blisteringly angry? Somebody does.
Vaxxers? Anti-vaxxers? Maskers? Anti-maskers? Republicans?
Democrats? Christian nationalists? Social justice warriors? Rams fans, the guy at work who keeps eating your lunch, and we’re all working at home, so I guess that’s your spouse or roommate. How much compassion do you feel when you talk about that person or that group?
What percentage of your heart do you think actually wants to help them? And do you think you’re really trying to help them if you say something like, those idiots?
Do you think calling them a name indicates compassion or a desire to help? You’re like, well, they need to be called idiots because they are, and that’s how I’m helping them. They need to find out how dumb they are. Somebody’s got to say it. I’m going to help them by beating them into submission.
And I’m going to say they can’t even really call themselves a Christian if they believe what they do. I’m going to use my social media to tell the whole world this is the type of person who’s ruining life for the rest of us, and that’ll show them. That’ll get the speck out of their eye. When they feel ridiculed by everyone else, then they’ll turn around and they’ll come crawling over to my side with their tail between their legs. That’s how I’m going to help them.
And yes, Pastor, it’s really help that’s in my heart.
Is that the picture we see here?
I don’t think so.
I don’t think that’s how it works.
I mean, how do you get a literal speck out of someone else’s eye? Your friend is like, hey, I think I have an eyelash or something in here. Will you— like, can you come over and take a look for me? And you’re like, sure, I’d be glad to. Just let me grab my baseball bat real quick and I’ll start swinging.
You’re not going to need to worry about that eyelash anymore because you’re not going to have a face.
I don’t think that’s the approach Jesus is describing. Call me crazy.
You go to the optometrist.
That doctor is as delicate and precise as humanly possible. That doctor doesn’t make you feel stupid for getting something in your eye, doesn’t call you names. That doctor is just there to help.
So when you think about the person or group who needs correction, and they do, they do need correction, you’re right about that, and you’re going to engage somehow. You’re either going to talk directly to the offender, which would be best, or maybe you’re going to post on social media, not ideal, or maybe you’re just going to talk to your friends or your spouse about the offender. Offender, but somehow, some way, you are going to speak about the offender and their offense. When you do that, do you feel more like an optometrist— delicate, patient, precise— or do you feel more like a cable news pundit— angry, brash, condescending?
You have to ask yourself, is my engagement and the way in which I’m engaging actually going to help the situation or am I just adding more fuel to the fire? It’s probably what Jesus is talking about in verses 1 and 2. If you judge, the way you judge is going to come back on you. What we put into the situation, how we address wrongs, it will really make a difference in how other people involved involved respond, and we have a choice. Are we going to escalate the conflict?
Are we going to get out our baseball bats?
Or are we going to step in and try to bring healing? Are we going to be agents of de-escalation?
Listen, you probably know this, but right now we have people on every side of every issue just throwing in more gasoline. And we desperately need people who will bring down the temperature in our culture. We desperately need that instead of adding to the firestorm. And Christians should lead the way.
Okay, that’s the goal of judgment, to help.
Next, when to stop judging. Or to say it another way, remember, when to stop helping, because we’re saying judging is helping. So first, notice Jesus puts this warning, don’t throw your pearls before pigs, at the end of his instructions, because eventually there can come a moment when we should reluctantly say, okay, I’ve tried all I can to help this person and he or she just isn’t listening and I need to walk away. We can get there. We should not try to help someone for forever.
But we can’t give up until we are at the very end. Jesus lays out this whole process of judgment, right? First, get your heart right. We are a bigger mess than they. Second, engage to help.
Just get the speck out, not to condemn or smash. And then finally, Finally, if there is no progress, at the end, at the very end, walk away. The order, the sequence of that process is important because oftentimes we want to give up at the beginning. We say, oh, that person is just hopeless. Really?
Are they hopeless? Tell me some of the things you’ve done to try to help them. Well, I made a snide comment one time. What else could I really do? They know where I stand.
Come on, you didn’t give up at the end, you gave up at the beginning. And honestly, it doesn’t sound like your heart was ever really in it to help.
But if you really have done all you can possibly think of to do, you’ve checked your heart, you’ve come in compassion, you’ve worked every angle you can think of, and it’s going nowhere, it’s time to walk away. It’s not time to attack the person.
Never time to attack the person. That’s not our job. It’s time to walk away. Jesus says here, verse 8, don’t throw your pearls to swine, to pigs. He’s saying you’re wasting your efforts.
So when do we stop helping? When we’re dealing with a pig.
That’s when we stop. When we’re dealing with a pig. When there’s no process or progress. We stop helping. We walk away.
It’s extreme language, isn’t it? It’s a little surprising Jesus would use such offensive terms. And for the record, I don’t think we should. I think we should never say, you’re a pig. I’m out of here.
No. All right? That’s just going to escalate the conflict again. I’m only using that term because Jesus did. And it’ll help you remember it.
But again, Jesus waits until the end to say walk away because you don’t know whether you’re dealing with a pig until the end. We have to wait and see if there’s any progress. It’s not like the second someone disagrees with us we can jump to the conclusion, oh, they are just swine. How dare they disagree with me? Jesus says I can write them off.
I mean, even he’s okay if I bail.
No. And if that’s our reaction, we need to go back to the beginning. We’re not humble. We’re not compassionate. If, okay, if we need to walk away, and sometimes we do, it should break our hearts.
We should not walk away with bitterness or rage or how dare they, how dare they. We should walk away with sorrow. If we don’t walk away with sorrow, it’s probably an indicator we were never really compassionate or humble in the first place.
Okay, I want to give you some very practical, hopefully, wisdom for when you should walk away. So if you’re in a moment right now and you’re wondering, do I need to bail? Have I tried all I can? Should I keep trying? I would recommend, I would actually highly recommend the book Necessary Endings by Henry Cloud.
Necessary Endings. Henry Cloud is a Christian. He’s a prolific author, has a PhD in clinical psychology from Biola University. He writes from a Christian perspective. Some of his books make more explicit reference to Scripture than others, and in his book Necessary Endings, I’d say he uses biblical concepts and biblical terminology, but he doesn’t really say that it came from the Bible.
But he divides the world into 3 groups of people, much like the wisdom literature of the Bible. He says there are wise people, foolish people, and evil people. Wise people, foolish people, and evil people. He says wise people— don’t just take my Cliff Notes, really actually read the book. He says wise people are the ones who will listen to correction.
If you point out something that wise people are doing wrong, they will take it to heart, they will make adjustments, they will respond well to correction, to judgment, to help. And Dr. Cloud says, we’d like to think everyone would respond like a wise person. I mean, who wouldn’t want to improve? Well, he says, it turns out if you expect for everyone to be a wise person, you’re going to get smacked by reality when you actually start dealing with people.
Because, he says, there are also fools and there are also evil people. He says evil people are actively out for your demise. They are undermining you every chance they get, and they definitely are not going to listen to correction. That’s evil people. Foolish people, he says, also won’t take correction, but they won’t be as overt in their resistance.
Instead, foolish people will make excuses for their poor performance or behavior. They might have some really elaborate excuses. They might be the smartest people you know. The term fool doesn’t have anything to do with intelligence. Fool, at least in this context, is related to if you can make adjustments.
Because fools might really excel at some things, but when it comes to admitting fault, They will blame someone else. They will play the victim, right? If someone corrects them or tries to help them, they will say something like, I feel attacked. Another way to spot a fool is they won’t submit themselves to a change process. They don’t want to be monitored, for instance, to ensure that they are improving.
Henry Cloud says if you have someone like that, the foolish person, and you’ve done your best, you’ve attempted all the angles, but they’re still displaying the same behavior, you need to walk away. You need to. It’s a necessary ending. That’s why the book carries the title that it does. If you’re using Jesus’ words, you’re dealing with a pig.
Don’t keep trying to help them. They are not going to change. There is nothing you can do at that point. Point, so walk away. You know what’ll happen if you don’t end a relationship like that?
The fool will attack you.
That’s what Jesus says. Don’t put your pearls before swine because they will trample the pearls and turn and attack you. They will decline your help, trample the pearls, and they will come after you. If you’re using Clouds categories, it’s like the fool becomes an evil person. Your efforts to help them will be twisted such that the offender will accuse you, the helper, of being evil.
The good guy will be painted as the bad guy, and the bad guy will play the victim. It happens all the time. It happens in institutions. It happens in friend groups. It happens in churches.
We’ve seen it a lot recently in high-profile abuse cases or cover-ups. Some group emerges that wants to protect the offender for some reason and leave the good guy out to dry. It is unfortunately very predictable when you’re dealing with a pig. So if that’s where you are, you should walk away. Don’t walk away until you’ve tried everything possible to help.
And when you walk away, it should break your heart. And again, if your heart isn’t broken when you need to let go, you didn’t have the right heart in the first place. But still, there can come a moment when you really need to let go. Stop judging. Judging, which means stop helping and leave.
Okay, finally, the shock of Jesus’ judgment, or as we’ve been saying, the shock of Jesus’ help. We could word it that way. The shock of Jesus is that he throws his pearls before pigs.
He throws his pearls before pigs. It’s remarkable. Jesus tells us exactly what we should expect will happen if we continue to try to help fools or evil people.
If we throw our pearls before swines. And he says, he says they’ll trample you. They will make you out to be the bad guy and then they’ll do all they can to destroy you. So be warned. He tells us that is what will happen and then Jesus goes and does it himself.
Jesus came to us and set before us the most precious pearl in existence. Jesus brought the kingdom of God to us. Matthew 13, Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like a pearl of great value, right? And he brought it to to us. Jesus brought light to us who were living in darkness.
And what happened? John 3:19, men loved the darkness more than they loved the light because their deeds were evil. They accused Jesus of being a devil. They made Him out to be the bad guy. They abandoned Him.
They crucified Him alongside of criminals, exactly as Jesus said would happen if you throw your pearls before pigs instead of walking away.
Why would he do that? Why would he allow himself to be trampled by the mob?
It was to save the mob. It’s to save those pigs. It’s to save us.
Henry Cloud is right. There, there are no words powerful enough to change a fool to a wise person. No matter how humble you are, no matter how many times you try, no matter how compassionate, words will not, will not change them. You can’t talk someone into being fundamentally different in their core. It won’t work.
Cloud is right. But there is a way that we, you and me, can change from being a fool to being wise, from being evil to being good, from being a pig to being a son to being an heir. If we see Jesus voluntarily attacked, voluntarily trampled, voluntarily hanging on the cross as our substitute for our sin, for the logs in our eye, for the numerous 2x4s sticking out of our face, if we see that he took the exclusion, the condemnation, the rejection that we deserve for our errors, if we see him in our place getting attacked by the mob for us and for the mob. If we see him like that, we will change. We will be humbled that someone would do that for us.
We will be compassionate to others. We will be delicate. We will be patient and we will help this world not be so toxic.
Let’s pray that we see him like that and that we would be so changed in our core. Let’s pray. Jesus, thank you that you didn’t walk away from us when we are pigs, that you stayed even knowing what was going to happen, even knowing what awaited you, Lord. Thank you that you were attacked by the mob, that you could save the mob. I pray that that would so radically change us and humble us and increase our compassion that we always address others the way that you do, with patience and precision, very delicately, Lord.
Give us wisdom if we need to walk away, but give us strength to stay until the very end so that we don’t leave too early. We pray all those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
