If you don't already have your Bibles, please get them and open them up to Matthew chapter 7. We're actually returning back to the first few verses of the chapter today. Last week, if you were here, you know that we discussed the primary command of Jesus right there in the first two verses of chapter... first two words of the first verse of Matthew 7. Judge not. This is command. It's clear, it's concise, judge not. We talked about this last week that we understand this as we cannot allow ourselves to be hypocritically judgmental. We can't be condemningly critical of one another. This is undoubtedly one of the most critical principles that we have to learn and apply to our lives as it governs all of our interactions and all of our relationships with other people. It's important really for two reasons that we talked about last week. The first reason is that as Christians, we have to know that there's only one judge, right? Ultimately, Jesus Christ is the one and only judge. So we really have to ask ourselves this, just who do we think that we are that we can assign to ourselves the office of judge or the function of judging when that's really Jesus' job. It's not mine. I'm not supposed to be like that, right? In James 4.11, it says, "...Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, He who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?" It's an important question, right? Who am I to judge my neighbor, given that there's only one lawgiver and one judge, and you and I are neither of those things? Right? There's only one. Rather, we're the ones who will one day be judged, aren't we? This is what Jesus told us in that warning in the first verse, right? Judge not. Well, why not, Jesus, that you be not judged? It's exactly what he says, right? And you will be judged one day, and the Lord will use the standard that you used to judge other people. With the measure you use, it'll be measured back to you, according to verse 2. I mean, Jesus taught us that we have to be careful in light of this, to make sure that we remove the log of sinful judgmental criticism from our own eyes before we attempt to help our brother or sister with removing the speck from his or her eye. I'm supposed to be concerned about this, criticizing myself, judging myself, so that I will remove my own hypocrisy. That's really to be my primary concern. It's the main thrust of the verses that we talked about last week. And yet, we noted this last week, that Jesus does tell us that there's a time for us to concern ourselves with the blemishes that we see so clearly in other people. Right? He doesn't say, judge not ever. Don't judge hypocritically. When you judge, make sure that you take care of doing it the right way. And so today, as we promised last week, we're returning to the passage to bring some clarity to what this means. And we need to ask the Lord to remove all our selfish blindness so that we can learn to judge rightly and helpfully without being judgmentally condemning. It's really what we're going to try to get at today. So, read the entire passage with me. It begins in verse 1 and goes through verse 6. And in Matthew chapter 7, starting in verse 1, Jesus said, 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's in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that's 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 dogs what's holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. Lord, we pray for your help again this morning. Lord, I pray that you would give each of us a humility and a desire to learn from you how it is that we should judge, how we would do it rightly. When's the right time? What's the appropriate circumstance, Lord? And mostly, though, teach us about the condition of our own hearts. We are, I think all of us, susceptible to judging other people. Even if we never say it out loud, probably most of us a lot, maybe all the time. Lord, I pray that you would reveal that to us. Help us to be critical of ourselves and teach us the right way to do things, Lord, that we would judge rightly, that we would judge with a motive to be helpful and a servant. and not to lord it over people, not to act superior. Lord, I pray that You'd help us to learn from Your Word these things that are so important for us to understand and to implement into our lives. I just pray for Your mercy as I try to explain these things, Lord. Give me Your help. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, we've already noted this, that Jesus doesn't really tell us simply to never judge. He never says, don't judge in any way, shape, or form. Of course, some, when they read the Bible, have a tendency with this verse, as they do with others, to only quote the part of it that they care about. The partial quotation of this verse is the one when somebody turns around and says, Jesus said, judge not. Don't judge. This is one of those examples of quoting the verse in part and missing the point. of the verse. And then they quote this verse, judge not. What they mean to say is that you should never judge anything ever, at any time, in any way. We should never judge nobody, especially not you Christians. Judge not. If we took their way of thinking, we would think this, that we must, according to Jesus, if this were true, always be indulgent. Always be tolerant. Loving people just where they are, for just who they are, without any recognition or an attempt at understanding or addressing anything of sin. Peace and unity between all people, believers and unbelievers, that's the highest virtue. We must maintain peace at all cost. If that's what this meant, that's the way we should certainly think, right? If that's what Jesus said and that was all that He said, if it were one verse and Jesus said, judge not, and didn't continue to explain how it is that we might need to sometimes actually judge and help somebody with a speck in their eye, then we would be left with that. Right? And what's really kind of the partial understanding of the verse might actually be true if we only had part of a verse. That's not the case, is it? They say it in a way that's, don't judge, so that we don't come at odds with anybody else, even if it puts us at odds with the Lord Himself, with His righteousness, with His standard. Unfortunately, the people who most often say this are the ones who just don't want to be judged. They say that because they don't want to be judged. They think if they remind you that you're not supposed to judge, that they'll be safe from your discernment in their life. This position is actually quite impossible to maintain. Don't judge, ever. It's impossible to do. The very nature of distinguishing between, say, believers and unbelievers, distinguishing between good and evil, sin and righteousness. The very nature of making those distinctions requires us to judge on some level. In fact, in order to raise a charge against a Christian that they're being judgmental requires a judgment. Those who say and do such things are violating their own standard by trying to misuse the verse in that kind of a way. At the most basic level, you need to understand that we have to and we actually make and use judgments every day. Whether I'm trying to judge what the weather is going to be like today so I know which shirt to wear, I judge when I decide which route to take when I drive to work, right? Can I trust this person or that person to do what they say they're going to do? Should I eat one donut or two? Two. Some judgments are easier than others, aren't they? Two is the obvious answer, unless there's three donuts and it's three. But recognize this. Every decision that you make every day is based on judging the options. And it's often based on judging the people who are involved in the decision that you have to make. Jesus does not command that we stop all forms of judging in this passage. Rather, He's commanding us to stop being condemningly judgmental. He says, you hypocrites don't judge like that. Don't judge with that condemning sort of way. In the context of His own judgment, in verse 5, Jesus makes the judgment calling us hypocrites. Recognize that requires a judgment, and He commands us to stop judging the way that He's indicating. That hypocritical judge that He's condemning is explained there in verse 3. See, why do you see the speck that's in your brother's eye, Jesus said? I know that's not the whole question, but why do you see the speck that's in your brother's eye? Far too often, The reason that I see the speck in my brother's eye is because I'm looking for it. My critical judgmental spirit causes me to look carefully at somebody else so as to not divert my attention from their problem to mine. I'm looking for it. I'm looking for the blemishes. I'm looking for things to be critical about. Have you ever listened to yourself in a conversation and realized that the first thing that comes out of your mouth when you have this kind of spirit is the point of argument? It's not the point of agreement. What does that reveal to you about your heart? I have a critical spirit. I am a fault finder. You know why I'm finding faults? Because I'm looking for them. That's so often the case. And Jesus starts as a, why do you even see the speck that's in your brother's eye? That's the first issue. Being a fault finder, searching for things to criticize in other people. And seeing the speck, the hypocrite then wants to be the expert to remove the speck. There's nobody qualified like I am now that I've seen your speck to remove the speck from your eye. But what's the problem, Jesus says? What's the issue with that? Not just that you've been looking for the speck, but the hypocrite not only thinks that he's the expert fault finder, he also believes he's the expert fault remover. Let me poke and prod and dig with my criticism until the speck comes out of your eye. The issue with that according to Jesus is that the self-appointed eye doctor has a log in his or her own eye, right? Said it last week. The speck of sawdust versus the six foot long two by four. Who's having more trouble seeing? The one who claims to see in this case is the one who would have more trouble seeing. Quoted Lloyd-Jones about this last week, the only thing worse than a blind person leading another blind person is a blind eye doctor trying to do surgery on a blind person, right? This self-appointed fault finder has the issue of their own arrogance, their own self-importance that's getting in the way of making a sound assessment of their brother's issue. They can see it because they've looked real close and examined the other person carefully, but they can't perform the surgery that's needed because they have their own issues that they've not dealt with. And so Jesus says, judge yourself, remove the log from your own eye. And then, then you'll see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. Here's where we recognize that Jesus doesn't merely tell us never to judge in any way. It's not wrong necessarily to judge that a speck is a speck and that it should be removed. Nothing wrong with that, is there? identifying a fault as a fault, a sin as a sin, and concluding that it would be better if that were not there. There's nothing sinful or wrong about that, nothing hypocritical about that in and of itself, but Jesus commands us that we must not be hypocrites in how we judge. In other words, I can identify the speck if I'm actually concerned about sin and righteousness, but if I'm concerned about sin and righteousness, I will be dealing with the log in my own eye first. Right? Before I attempt to mess with the speck in yours. Romans 2 warned us, as we talked about last week, that you'll have no excuse before the judgment seat of God if you pass judgment on another while practicing your own sin. We're warned, don't continue to store up God's wrath against yourself for the judgment of that day. Repent. Repent is another way of saying remove the log from your own eye. Right? Repent. And then, once you've done that, then humbly seek God's help to remove the speck from your brother's eye. So, how can we do that? When should we do it? Today, I want to try to keep things relatively simple and address just those two questions. The first one is, when are we actually commanded to judge in the Scripture? When are we commanded to do that? And second, second is, Once we've determined that we should do that, how do we do it? How do you do it to make sure that you're not being hypocritical when you judge? These are the two basic questions where we're going to spend the rest of the time. Let's first consider the judgments. What are the judgments that the Lord expects us to make in order to be obedient to Him? I've already said that we're literally making a judgment every time we make a decision. Right? Decision making requires judgment. It's just there's no getting around it. Some judgments, some decisions have very little or maybe basically no moral consequence, right? I mean, I make some type of judgment this morning when I picked which color of socks to wear. It's not really much of an ethical dilemma, but I was still weighing my options, right? I made my decision based on a variety of factors, like which socks are clean. What shoes am I going to wear? How hot's the weather going to be? Different things that determine which socks I might pick. I may even take into consideration the people I'll spend time with later in the day. Now, when I start doing that, and I'm considering which socks should I wear in light of who I'm going to be spending time with, I may be adding a moral component to a simple decision like that. Because with my rather insignificant choice of socks, it might take on a slight moral significance if I'm thinking about the guy who always wears the cool socks, and I want to wear the cooler socks than he's wearing. I have a sock rival. And I'm judging which socks I should wear based on which socks would defeat the sock rival, which ones would make his socks look less cool than my socks. Yes, I'm being a little bit silly, but you see how the most mundane of decisions can involve an ethical judgment, a component that's based on what? What am I now deciding on? My arrogance, my pride, my desire to be noticed as the champion of sock wearers. However that works, whatever the trophy looks like. That was a different thing. I'm actually hoping that the guy I'm going to spend time with is going to lose the sock competition to me. Now, I recognize there's no verses about socks. I couldn't come up with anything specific about this in the Bible, about sock competition, but you can see how a principle like, don't judge, be humble, might come into even the most mundane of decisions that we're making and judgments that we're engaged with. I don't think Jesus had this type of judgment in our daily choices in mind. He's certainly more concerned about the judgments that do carry moral weight, the ones that concern the condition of our hearts. And the overarching command concerning these is found in John chapter 7 verse 24. John 7.24, Jesus is preaching in the middle of a feast in Jerusalem, and there were many around who were questioning who He was, where He got His authority from. And in John 7.24, Jesus said, Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment. You recognize this command? It's a straightforward command, isn't it? Judge. But when you judge, judge with right judgment. That may seem like that contradicts Matthew 7, verse 1, which says, don't judge. But Jesus doesn't merely say, don't judge. It's not a two-word verse, is it? He says, don't judge hypocritically. These are not contradictions with one another at all. The command in Matthew 7 is not to judge hypocritically, without seeing clearly what the truth is. But Jesus says, don't judge like that. Don't judge by appearances. Rather, judge with right judgment. Put these two together into a command that sounds like this. Don't judge hypocritically, rather judge with right judgment. It's not contradictory whatsoever, right? Right judgment is defined by the one who's right. The one who's righteous. You want to know what the right judgment is? You've got to know Jesus, because He's the righteousness, right? He's the righteous one. Well, how would He judge? What would He do? Well, those are the beginning questions that we need to come at. If we don't spend any time trying to figure out what Jesus is doing in this situation, so that we can make right judgments, because we think we're not supposed to judge ever, we're going to miss this whole aspect of becoming like the Lord and thinking the way that He thinks. And so we actually need to be concerned about this right judgments. So some specifics, OK? I'm going to try to be concise and address a few layers of thought, starting with things that are kind of the least personal and working to the most personal in our lives. So least personal example, take the civil government. And have you spent any time online reading comments that people make about the government, the ones about judging? The government has no place in defining marriages between one man and one woman because judge not. Who are you to say that a woman is only biological female? Judge not, right? Have you heard this one? Who do they think they are to judge if someone's in our country legally or illegally? Who are they to judge? I mean, even if If anybody is supposed to make a right judgment about our nation, about such things, don't you suppose it should be the civil magistrates, the legislators, and the judges? I mean, we literally have a branch of the government called the judicial branch. Who's employed in that? Judges. What are they doing? Not judging, because judge not. Who do they think they are? That the Constitution gives them that right. It's not just the Constitution that gives them that right. Romans 13 teaches us this. Right? That God's instituted the governing authorities and those who resist them will incur judgment. From whom? Them! Right? First them and later God. Judgment against a set of laws is required in order to determine who the wrongdoer is. Who it is that deserves whatever punishment is properly legislated and adjudicated. I mean, judgment is required to keep order. Now even if we ourselves are not the magistrates, even if we are not the government employees and the judges, we make judgments when we vote. How do you vote? I hope that you vote for the people that you think you will benefit most from with peace and prosperity. Peace and prosperity that comes from just judgments in our country's legal system. Now hopefully that's how we decide who to vote for, not some popularity contest based on their hair or what some celebrity told me. I'm supposed to make those kind of judgments, so that they can make right judgments, so that I enjoy peace and prosperity. It's not a bad goal. One that the Bible says that is their job. Now, there are similar judgments a little closer to home. Move it down from the government to the church. In Acts 20, Paul warned the elders of the church in Ephesus to watch out for the fierce wolves who would come to draw disciples away with their twisted teaching. He warned Timothy and Titus as pastors to watch out for false teachers who come teaching different doctrines. Jude similarly wrote, appealing to all the saints, that we must contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to us, avoiding all those who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, you cannot maintain the purity of the church if you never judge. Right? If we operate on the only thing that we know in the Bible, the only verse we ever quote is, judge not, what happens to the purity of the church? The purity of the doctrine? The reality of the Gospel? I mean, even to the point of Jude says, denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. You know, there are those in churches in our day who, Jesus isn't Lord. He's my friend. I don't have to submit to Him as Lord. He's my Savior." Separating the two. They deny that He's the Lord and Master. Where do they get that from? How do they get so far off in the doctrinal statements of their church and the understandings of what these things mean? Judge not. That's their only judgment. Anybody who judges is the false teacher. But that's not the way the Bible talks about it, right? Discerning false teaching and false teachers requires discernment that comes from the Lord, and we must judge. We can't be like the Pope. Pope Francis, who just died. You know, just after he was put into office back in 2013, there was some discussion that was being had about gay priests. And his famous quote is, who am I to judge? I thought you were the pope. Really? Your office is adjudicating doctrine. Judging truth. In something this basic, this simple? He's known to be the pope who doesn't judge. I mean, it's not just him, it's every professing believer that has to judge when we're confronted with questions of sin like that. Now in the church it isn't just the doctrinal issues, the false teachers that we got to judge. There's other personal moral issues that require elders and congregations to make various judgments about sin and sinners in the local church community. We'll get there in a few months, probably a year, who knows how long, in Matthew 18. Matthew 18 verses 15 through 20 lays out an entire process for what we would call church discipline. When we recognize a brother or sister in sin who continues to be unrepentant after various judgments from members and the leaders of the church, it can result in a final judgment of separation from the church. And Jesus warned in that passage that where two or three are gathered in his name for such judgment, the decision of those on earth will be binding in heaven. Of course, we're supposed to make the judgment. that two or three gathered in my name is in that context. The binding of those on earth and the binding of those in heaven is in the context of the judgment. The whole process laid out there by Jesus is a methodical series of judgments that we're commanded to make in the church. If or when we're faced with a brother or sister who refuses to repent despite the evidence of witnesses and the charges brought against them, we better be very careful to judge then with right judgment. But equally dangerous for the church, it's dangerous to make wrong judgment, but perhaps equally dangerous is to make no judgment. To refuse to judge, to refuse to address these things, to refuse to address sin in those who are part of the church for fear that somebody would call me judgmental. And quote this verse in its incomplete form and say, judge not. I hope that we are seeing how immature that is, how untenable it is, how contrary to the scripture that would really be. I mean, we're warned in the letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3. Jesus warned those churches that you cannot tolerate sin in your midst, lest he might remove his presence from you altogether. And thus we see in our day many things with church in the name somehow, with little steeples and stained glasses and stuff, where the presence of the Lord is no more. And exactly that kind of judgment from Him for the refusal to be discerning and judging the way that Jesus tells us to. Now let me bring the commands to judge even closer, even closer to home. Actually, let me put it into your home. Consider a home where there are spouses and kids. There's an authority structure there also, isn't there? Can you explain to me just how I would raise my kids without making judgments about whether what they're doing and saying is right or wrong? Especially relative to the things God's commanded of us, right? I mean, God has assigned parents the task of judging their children to determine when trouble is appropriate and how much is necessary. Proverbs 13.24 tells us that whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. Diligent to judge him and to execute the discipline. If you don't do that, you can't really claim to love your children if you never do that in any way. If every time they do something, your simple answer is, well, the Bible says judge not. I mean, in order to use proper discipline, I have to judge what each of my children needs from me in training and correction. And if I refuse to judge that, it demonstrates that I hate them, according to the Proverbs. Let me show you one more verse on this topic. Here, if you get your Bible, let me show you one more verse. Matthew 7, 5. 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. He doesn't say, don't you ever try to see or address the speck in your brother's eye. He says, just don't do it hypocritically. But you should do it. If you see sin in your brother or sister, do what you need to to get rid of the log out of your own eye, but then come back to the other person to try to help them. The speck in the brother's eye is something that, if it's sin, it's a clear violation of God's law, and then it's our obligation, really, to address it with him. At least if we love him, it's the same sort of concept about our kids. To see it, to know, and to refuse to say or do anything about it is to demonstrate that you don't really love your brother, you love yourself. Because you don't want to put yourself in the position of being accused of being judgmental. How many people are operating their lives that way in their churches with their families, with their friends, with their kids? And you see the result of it in the streets, in the cities of our day, where there is no discipline, where there is no judgment. I mean, it's wild and crazy times, isn't it? We noted this last week that the hypocritical judgment is often based in matters of conscience, not necessarily objective sin. Often the things that I'm hypocritically judging other people about, that I'm critical about, are the things that I am convicted about, but they're not necessarily sin. It's my personal conviction that the Lord's given me. It's a matter of conscience. That's often the case. But even then, it's okay to discuss that sort of thing with your brother. It's surely part of iron sharpening iron. It just has to be done without the criticism and the hypocritical attitude. I mean, there might be a time when I approach you and say, listen, my friend, I've noticed something and I want to ask you about it. I noticed this thing and I feel like there's probably some things that I should share my thoughts about it. Have you ever thought about it like this or that? I mean, there's a place to address even that kind of speck in love. Addressing in love the speck, not in love with the speck, but addressing with a spirit of love. I got to be very cautious about checking my judgmentalism, my criticism at the door, because there's no obligation for somebody to listen to my opinions. But in this case, I have to recognize I'm just giving advice that might be helpful in my thought, in my opinion. It's different. It's different when it's concerning sin that violates biblical commands. In those cases, we may need witnesses of the scripture, maybe other brothers if things aren't dealt with, but with these matters of conviction, we have to be very cautious not to judge with a selfish hypocrisy or sinful superiority. Think about these two things that Proverbs says. Proverbs 12.26 says that the righteous is a guide to his neighbor. And one of the English translations says he gives advice to a friend. In Proverbs 12.15, however, it says a wise man listens to advice. You see both halves, right? The righteous man is willing to give advice and the wise man is willing to listen to it. Both sides require judgments that will be useful in glorifying to God if each person is humble in seeking to be led by the Lord. Of course, there's other specific matters that could be addressed, but hopefully this gives you a sufficiently broad set of circumstances that really encompasses just about every aspect of your life and your interactions with other people, to where you can see that we have to judge according to the Scriptures. It's really perhaps one of the most common aspects of how we decide how to live our lives relative to all the different people around us is the judgments that we make. In fact, as we grow in the faith, Christians actually need to become very good at judging without hypocrisy. Hebrews 5.14 tells us this, that solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Discernment, Constant practice of what? Judging to distinguish good from evil. This is part of Christian maturity. We have to constantly practice using the Bible as our standard of distinguishing good from evil. This is how we're trained to judge rightly. The scriptures use the words judge and judging somewhat interchangeably, but it might be helpful here from Hebrews 5.14 there, the writer uses the word that's translated in English as discernment. Some spend a lot of time teaching this this way. That discernment is what we're supposed to do. That's the loving, humble, helping side where I'm seeing something that isn't right and using my powers to figure out, my powers of reasoning to determine what's good and evil. Discernment versus judgmentalism. Judgmentalism is the condemnation. And it's sin based on my hypocrisy that's going to destroy the work of God. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on those two words because, well, I think we're getting the point. We've seen now some of the judging that the Scripture requires us to do as Christians, but we need to talk about how to do it. How to do it is overarchingly important. If the command were simply and literally, don't judge, ever, well then there would be no instruction in the Bible about how to judge rightly. But there is. There is instruction. There's good instruction. There's thorough instruction. You know where it is? Here, look up this verse with me. Matthew 7, 5. This is the best stuff right here in this verse. Where Jesus says, you hypocrite, take the log out of your own eye. First, take the log out of your own eye, and then you'll see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. First, Jesus said. First, Take the log out of your own eye. Don't overlook that word. He's talking about first in sequence, and he's talking about first in importance. The most important thing is that you must slow down, take time to evaluate yourself first. I can't tell you how far off the rails I've gone at times when I'm not methodical about my approach to judging people in situations. First, I have to ask myself, is there any sin of any kind that I need to confess to the Lord and repent of? I mean, I should be paying attention to the type of sin that's relative to the sin I see in my brother, but it's not only that, right? Any kind of sin can blind you like a log in your eye. Even if it's not related to the circumstance, not the situation that you're involved with. Even then, you need to deal with it so that you're operating in a good relationship with the Lord and not in rebellion against Him. When I have this massive pile of unconfessed, unrepentant sin, it grieves the Holy Spirit. You know who I need more than anybody if I'm going to try to deal with the speck in my brother's eye? The Holy Spirit. I can't afford to have grieved Him. and made him leave me on my own." You need this help if you're going to judge another of the Lord's servants. Then you have to ask the Lord to clearly show you what your motive is. You cannot move forward with addressing your brother if you have selfish motives. Any kind of desire to exert your superiority or to proclaim yourself to be on the moral high ground will certainly end in disaster. This is not an acceptable place for you to be blinded by your own hypocrisy. If you know the situation that your brother's in because you have had the same issue in your life, well then you need to be prepared to tell him that. You need to be transparent about that. Because you're coming in humility, trying to help a brother with the thing that the Lord's helped you with. You knowing his sin because you have or have had the same sin in your life does not make you an expert. Right? It may give you some relevant insights and able to give some relevant advice, but it doesn't put you in the position of being the expert. The only acceptable reason for you to judge your brother is to help him get the speck out of his eye. It's the only acceptable motive. You must approach as a humble servant and not as a proud teacher. Failure to go through these steps will inevitably lead to hasty judgment. Hasty judgment is something that we have to understand and be warned about. Proverbs 29, verse 20 says, Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him. Hasty doesn't just mean that you're rushing to a judgment, but that you're rushing to a judgment without gathering all the facts first. It's hasty, it's unwise. So unwise that a fool is wiser than you, if you proceed in that way. You can't go forward without all the facts and without doing all the preparations that you need to. And the first preparation is removing the log from your own eye. I mean, then you can see clearly and gather all the pertinent facts. Look at the verse carefully. You cannot gather the facts first and then try to deal with the log in your eye. First, deal with the log in your eye and then gather some facts. You know why? Because if the log's in your eye, you're not going to see the facts correctly. That's what the picture teaches us, doesn't it? I can only see some of the facts. And the reality is, is the facts that I think I see, I probably don't see accurately because I haven't dealt with the sin in my own life that is causing some amount of spiritual blindness. And I can't have that. I can't afford to have that. You can't go examining and gathering information first. There are a lot of times that you might think you should talk to your brother or sister about a problem that you think you see, only to discover that you really didn't have all the facts. It wasn't what you thought it was when you first saw it. I mean, if there's an issue and you go ahead with your operation, your eye operation, surgery, you have to keep in mind that your goal is to help. I mean, the issue is sin. The goal of your helping is their repentance. Paul wrote this in Galatians 6, verse 1, Tempted to what? Pride, arrogance, thinking you're the expert. Hypocritical judgmentalism, critical spirit, tempted with all of those things. So how am I supposed to process gentleness, humility? Not just in the restoration, but in the entire process. Right? Lest you be tempted into the pride. The spirit of gentleness throughout this process of judgment is your only hope of avoiding the hypocrisy. Let me read again this week from Martin Lloyd-Jones. Kind of a long passage last week. I'm going to do the same today, unfortunately. But listen to his insight as he talks about this. Lloyd-Jones said this. The procedure of getting a speck out of an eye is a very difficult operation. There's no organ that's more sensitive than the eye. The moment the finger touches it, it closes up. It's so delicate. What you require above everything else in dealing with it is sympathy, patience, calmness, coolness, That's what's required because of the delicacy of the operation. Now transfer all of that into the spiritual realm. You're going to handle a soul. You're going to touch the most sensitive thing in a man. How can we get the little speck out? There's only one thing that matters at that point, and that is that you should be humble, you should be sympathetic, you should be so conscious of your own sin and your own unworthiness, that when you find it in another, far from condemning them, you feel like weeping. It should create in you a sense of sympathy and compassion that really makes you want to help. You have so enjoyed getting rid of your own thing that plagued you, that you yourself want to have your brother enjoy the same pleasure and the same joy at having the speck removed from his eye. I mean, think about it. This is a heavy thought, isn't it? When you come to judge a brother, you're dealing with his soul. Are you qualified? You sure? This is why James 3.1 warns that all those who would think about being teachers be warned, you'll be judged with a greater strictness. Because what are teachers doing? They're judging. They're judging. They're judging what somebody else needs to hear. They're judging how to say it. They're judging how to deliver it, who to say it to, when to say it. Oh, don't presume to be a teacher. Maybe it's better for many of us to judge not that we won't be judged. But for the joy of seeing a brother or sister relieved of the speck that's in their eye, we should all be willing to get the log out of our own eye first and then to try to help with the right motive. in the right attitude. It's in this context of judging with hypocrisy that we've got one last verse in Matthew 7 verse 6. Jesus adds, Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. This verse may seem like it's all alone, out of place here in the text. Many of our English translations don't include it in the paragraph with the first five verses. It's its own little paragraph. If you've got your Bible set up that way, many of them don't know what to do with verse 6 because they're not sure where it belongs, if it belongs. But I tell you, it belongs with this judging idea. It's appropriately included as Jesus' final warning about something we should all be concerned about if we're going to take the speck out of another person's eye. Some are not going to accept the help. In fact, no matter how much you pray and prepare, even if you take all the logs out of your own eyes and see clearly with right motives and true understanding, there will be some who will turn to attack you for judging them. I mean, in that day, when Jesus is speaking, the dogs were not these pets on pillows in our houses like we're accustomed to today. Dogs were scavengers. They were roaming the streets of the town. often to be feared for their ferociousness, especially if they're roaming around town in a pack. Pigs, in the Jewish mind, pigs are the symbol of uncleanness. Pigs were, in the Jewish mind, useless, vile beasts that were for the pagans, not for them. Jesus lumped them together into this warning to those of us who would take real time to make our judgment holy and to offer the pearls of wisdom by way of advice to a brother or sister who is a speck in their eye. Be discerning, Jesus says, not only about how to approach, but whether to approach at all. Next time you read one of the Gospels, take note. Take note of Jesus and how he himself interacts with different people. Take note of his approach. to different people. He approached the spiritually bankrupt, the tax collectors and the prostitutes differently than he approached the self-righteous Pharisees. He operated differently with the lepers and the demon-possessed than he did with the hypocritical teachers of the law. In all these various groups of sort of the common people, Jesus said that he saw them as sheep without a shepherd. Sheep who needed to be taught and who would listen and appreciate his helpfulness, appreciate his merciful kindness. But in the religious leaders, he saw blind guides who were only interested in their own glory. They were the hypocrites. They were the ones who trampled his holy wisdom underfoot and turned to attack him, weren't they? Jesus knows this one by experience. And we'll come across the same two groups of people in our lives. We may not be able to discern the difference between the two groups immediately, but if we take our time to first take the logs out of our own eyes and seek the Lord's help to prepare for helping to remove the speck in our brother's eye, well, then the Lord himself will, at a time when he sees it appropriate, reveal who are the pigs and the dogs so that we don't waste much more effort on offering them help that they'll only trample underfoot at best. And at worst, at worst, they may not just reject your offer of help. They may turn on you and attack you as being the one who's judgmental. Right? Even if your motive is true, honest, and you're judging rightly. Even then, they may, like a ravenous dog or an impure pig, turn on you and attack you. To your face, behind your back, trying to discredit you as what? being the worst kind of sinner in our day and age, which is the judgmental guy. Right? Nothing worse than being judgmental. This is not just true in our day, it was true then. So I tell you, once you start taking it out, taking the log out, start trying to help the other person with the speck in their eye, there's usually something that becomes obvious pretty quickly. You take their initial response to what you're even trying to start saying to them, put it up against Psalm 141 verse 5. In Psalm 141 verse 5 we read, "...Let a righteous man strike me, it is a kindness. Let him rebuke me, it is oil for my head. Let my head not refuse it." So you can see this pretty quick most of the time. Usually it's the initial reaction. Somebody will react like this. A type of acceptance, maybe even a kind of relief. A recognition of, wow, you care about me. Maybe even a measure of appreciation and thankfulness. They're the ones to keep working with. Others, the dogs and the pigs, the swine, will immediately turn on you, trampling your advice underfoot. What are you talking about? You're not even right. That's not correct. You got this all wrong. You're mean. You're stupid. Any number of things, and they'll attack you for being judgmental. I mean, judge their reaction is what Jesus is saying, isn't he? Judge their reaction. Don't keep giving what's holy to the dogs. Don't keep throwing your pearls before the swine. The Lord's making it obvious that you should kick the dust off your feet and move on. That's what he told the disciples to do in Luke 10. When they went to village to village and were preaching, when they were rejected, he told them the same thing. Knock the dust off your feet and move on. Keep yourself clean and unstained. Whatever you do, don't react in anger. Don't judge them with criticism and condemnation. Just walk away before you're drawn into your own sinful pride as a reaction to theirs. This is another example in the scripture of using discerning judgment that we could have added to our first list, right? Times when we should judge. Well, this is a time, another one. Could have put this in the first section, but it's here at the end. If you can discern that a person's like a ferocious dog or an unclean swine, don't continue to try to help them get the speck out of their eye if they don't want your help. That's what you do. I don't want your help. Okay, I'm going to stop trying to help. And I'm not going to be mad about it. It's going to break my heart. It should break your heart. That they don't want your help. That they see you as being critically judgmental of them when you're really just trying to help. It's going to be a reality of what can happen when you try to help people with things they don't want to be judged about. Jesus warns us about this possibility. But don't let that potential issue keep you from judging where you're supposed to according to the Scriptures. Don't let that keep you from trying to help in the first place. Maybe trying to help a second or third time, maybe then. But don't let that warning dissuade you from being involved in the kind of discernment and helpful advice and opinions and addressing of sin that each one of us needs from one another. Don't let that turn you away from it. We all must judge various circumstances and people. We just have to do it with right judgment. I judge, but only after you take the log out of your own eye first. Then, then you'll see clearly to judge without hypocrisy. Lord, help us. Lord, we do ask you to help us in this thing. We pray that we would not become cold or calloused, that we wouldn't become angry or bitter if we try to help even our brothers and we get rejected and turned away by our close friends, sisters, family members. Lord, pray that you would help us to judge rightly and not just the right things, but with the right attitude. that we would study you and see, Jesus, how you operated in all of these things, that we might be like you. Teach us, Lord, first and foremost, not to be sinfully, hypocritically judgmental, critical in those ways, but help us, Lord, to know how and when to judge with right judgment. Give us the right attitudes that we need to be able to do it for your glory. Help us, Lord, to discern, to judge. in all of these things. We absolutely need your help. Without you, we'll continue to be blind. Big logs in our eyes claiming that we can see. Lord, please don't leave us like that. Thank you for teaching us and helping us in these things in Jesus name. Amen.