before you go today. It's great. All right, we're back in Matthew chapter 7. Actually, I should say that it's the first in Matthew chapter 7. We've been in Matthew chapter 6, 5 and 6 in the Sermon on the Mount. Please turn to Matthew 7 in your Bibles. I seldom ever have time to watch an entire professional sports game from start to finish, that is. I do like to catch a game summary if I can, just a few minutes of highlight reels, you know, get the basic idea. Well, months ago, we began studying the Sermon on the Mount, and this is surely not the sermon in its entirety. Mark, or Matthew, Matthew here, I believe is at least giving us a summary version, the highlights, if you will. as Jesus preaches this message on a hill overlooking Galilee. In our last study, we heard Jesus telling his disciples how to live a kingdom-driven life, drawing our attention to really the heart condition that we have. We need a simple trust, this singular devotion to God. And now Jesus will instruct us again on how we are to relate to those around us. So he's gonna draw our attention again to how we're relating to other people. And he's going to be discussing how we judge, how we judge others. Why don't we stand out of respect for the reading of God's word and let's read our text together before we study it. Matthew chapter seven, verses one through six. There Jesus says, Do not judge so that you will not be judged for in the way you judge you will be judged and by your standard of measure it will be measured to you. Why do you look at 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? And behold, the log is 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 what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces. That's the reading of God's word. You may be seated. Let's begin with prayer. Father, we come to you again asking that you would work in our hearts and minds. Would you give us the ability to focus at this time? I pray for those that are drowsy, those that are tired, they've had a long week. I pray that you would give them strength to be able to stay awake and hear what it is your spirit wants to tell them. Pray for all of us to be willing to receive what it is you tell us. Lord, I pray that your spirit would make clear in applying your truth to us in specific ways so that we would have no question or confusion about what it is we're to do. We desire to be sanctified, to be growing according to what you've said in your word. And so we thank you for, once again, this amazing sermon by your son. And we pray that, once again, it would just come alive to us. We pray if there be anybody in our midst who is not prepared to stand before you at your judgment seat, we pray, Lord, today they would come into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Some decades ago you might have said that the most popular, the most well-known at least, verse in the Bible was John 3.16. And even if somebody couldn't quote it, at least just about everybody in America would at least thought it sounded somewhat familiar. But as D.A. Carson points out, sometime in popular culture, Matthew 7.1 has replaced John 3.16 as the most well-known, most quoted verse in the Bible. And here's the part of the verse that everyone knows. I think it's probably the King James Version that you get from a lot of people. Judge not. Well, it's also very easy to remember and to use when you need it. This is perhaps because a great many people are sick and tired of anyone telling them what is wrong with their life. Don't tell me what I can and can't do. Don't tell me what's wrong with me. Nobody wants to hear that. They don't want to hear what the Bible says about marriage and or sexual immorality. They don't want to hear what the Bible says about Jesus being the only way of salvation, them being on the wrong path in life. Don't judge. Judge not. If you faithfully follow Christ in our culture, it's likely our culture will judge you as anti-gay, judgmental, hypocritical, according to a survey that was the top three characteristics of Christians, top three descriptors among young people in our country. Anti-gay, judgmental, and hypocritical. Because when Jesus says, do not judge, people tend to think he's saying never say or believe anything negative about anybody. Now usually they don't think very critically about that, but People do love to quote Jesus here anytime they disapprove of your judgment toward them. Don't judge, they will say, as if Jesus must approve of my lifestyle, or at least you must not say anything negative about my lifestyle choices because Jesus, didn't he say, judge not. Well, I hope I'm not bursting your bubble, but that's not what Jesus means here. To clarify, first of all, Jesus is not prohibiting us from using discretion or from thinking critically to judge between what is right and what is wrong. Just look down in the following context. Later in Matthew 7, 15, he warns, beware of the false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing and yet inwardly they are ravenous wolves. Jesus is saying, you need judgment. You need critical thinking. You need to discern between what is true and false. And if you were just in our Time of Bible Institute downstairs, you know we were discussing how to judge some ways God has given us to judge between true and false views of reality. so we could hardly live without making judgments. Obviously, Jesus wants us to use critical discernment in judging between true and false, good and evil, good and evil. Secondly, Jesus is not here prohibiting us from ever speaking the unpleasant truth, the inconvenient truth people don't wanna hear. What about Matthew 23, where Jesus calls the Pharisees hypocrites, blind guides of the blinds. whitewashed sepulchers, tombs full of dead men's bones. He says you brood of vipers. Jesus said they were headed for the damnation of hell, Matthew 23 33. Jesus isn't here in Matthew 7, 1 saying that there is never a time or a place to expose or rebuke or correct some fault in someone else's life. In fact, if you love people, you will do that. The Bible is filled with instances in which that is modeled and mandated. Clearly, Jesus was not prohibiting any and all kind of judgment, but rather the kind of judgment that is unchristian. And we're going to look at what that means. What is unchristian judgment? Well, we're going to have to look at that. I'm wondering, though, how, or I want you to realize, maybe somebody's wondering, how does this passage on judgment, this discussion Jesus is taking, suddenly fit into the greater context of this sermon? I mean, Jesus has just been talking about how to trust God, how to be devoted to Him. I think what it's helpful for us to do as we go through the entire Sermon on the Mount is remember that it's all hanging together on this common thread of Jesus giving His disciples a common or a Christian counterculture. There's a way of the world and then there's the way of the word. There's the way that this culture will take us if we just go down the stream with it and there's the way of Christ that often cuts counter to culture. And here what we're seeing, Jesus will show us a way of judging righteously that really cuts against the grain of our world, of this world. How's your judgment then? Christian, how is your judgment? Jesus wants you to judge righteously. And so as Christ followers, the bottom line here in these six verses is that we must be Christ-like in our judgment. As Christ followers, we must be Christ-like in our judgment. And Jesus will give us three rules for Christ-like judgment, the kind of judgment we need to make. First, before you judge, before even opening your mouth to issue some form of criticism or correction, Jesus would have you put yourself in their shoes. This is rule number one, put yourself in their shoes. When Jesus says, Matthew 7, 1, do not judge. It's important not to miss where he's headed with this. In verse 12, he will say, in everything, therefore, we might include in your judgment too. In everything, in your judgment. Treat people the same way you want them to treat you. So when Jesus says, verse one, do not judge, what kind of judgment is Christ forbidding that we pass on others? Well, the kind of judgment that we don't want others passing on us. We've already mentioned Christ didn't clearly forbid all judgment, And so here are several kinds of judgment that we don't want to receive from others and then therefore this is not the kind of judgment that we ought to pass on others, that we ought to make on others. First, hypocritical judgment. Hypocritical judgment is when we hold a double standard. We have one standard for ourselves and then we have another for the person that we're judging. You know, we give ourselves the low bar and they get the high bar. It's a double standard. That's hypocritical. This is the kind of judgment Jesus clearly is directly condemning In this context, we see it in verses three and four. He will go on to say, why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but you do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, here, let me take that speck out of your eye, and behold, the log is in your own eye. You hypocrite, Jesus says. Hypocritical judgment. If you get out much, Christian, you will hear non-Christians ranting that Christians are hypocritical. Anybody else heard that? Ever been called a hypocrite for sharing what the Bible says or something like that? Okay, clearly people think that way. They say those things about Christians. To be perfectly clear, yes, every Christian, everyone in this room is a hypocrite. I'm not insulting you, I'm just saying every Christian is a hypocrite on some level. Every human being is a hypocrite on some level. The Bible teaches we are all sinners that fail to live up to our own standard. To be human, as a sinful being, to be a sinful being is to be hypocritical in some sense, on some level. But at least there's nothing, we could say this, at least there's nothing Christian about hypocrisy. Did you know that? There's nothing Christian about hypocrisy. How's that? Because the very essence of Christianity demands being honest about our own sin. Ironically, the most glaring hypocrisy in our day actually comes from the self-righteous challengers of our faith. It's those who condemn hate and then spew hatred at Christianity. It's those who demand inclusivity while excluding Christians, and so on. That's hypocritical judgment. It's a double standard, and to his disciples, Jesus says, do not judge in this way. Now, I'm about to say something very, very important, and I don't want you to miss it, so please hear me when I say this. When we speak out against sin, we do need to let people know we're not the one judging. We are not the judge. God is the judge and the judge has spoken. The judge has spoken in his word and woe to us if we do not inform others of what he said. Now, if you don't believe God's spoken in his word, then of course you're not going to tell others what it said. But if you believe that the Bible is the word of God Almighty, the judge of all the earth, then you had better Unless you would be a hypocrite, tell others what God has said. Because God is a judge, and God has spoken. Who cares what we think? But God has spoken, and when you share what He said, you make sure people know this isn't my judgment. This is His. Tell them what the Lord has said. That's always what the prophets did. Thus says the Lord. Don't give them a dream or a vision or a fuzzy feeling in your heart, but tell them what the scriptures actually say. Now, the greatest hypocritical judgment that we are capable of as human beings is this. It is that we presume we can judge God. We put ourselves in the place of judging God and even, yes, declaring him guilty. There's no greater hypocrisy than for a sinner to condemn God because he is holy and we are not. And every time a man condemns God, he not only condemns himself, or he does condemn himself in the very act. The apologist Cornelius Fantil once wrote about how while on a train he saw a young girl sitting on the lap of her father. And while she was sitting on her father's lap, she's slapping him in the face. And he remarked that if he had not held her on his lap, she would not have been able to slap him. And as Van Til observed, that's the only way we can possibly pass any judgment on God in the first place. It's because he allows us to sit on his lap, as it were, and slap his face. We're not in any position to judge. The only reason you can raise a fist to heaven or utter a word against God is because God himself gave you that ability. But let me tell you, one day you're gonna stand before the judge and the most hypocritical thing you can do right now is act like you're in the place to judge him when he's holy and you're not. That'd be a scary thing to do, to be judging God. Just a couple weeks ago from chapter six, we heard Jesus condemn unmerciful judgment. So certainly the judgment Jesus is prohibiting here is hypocritical judgment, but also unmerciful judgment. That is judgment that is harsh or unforgiving. In Matthew chapter 6, verses 14 and 15, Jesus has recently said, if you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. So when he says, do not judge, Jesus is saying, don't judge others unmercifully, just as you wouldn't want to be unmercifully judged. Put yourself in their place. Put yourself in their shoes. Does this mean that we must let people walk all over us and just take advantage of us, not ever paying what they owe us? No, it means that you should not judge others in an unmerciful way because you don't want to receive that kind of judgment yourself. That's what Jesus is going on to say, Matthew 7. 12. This is not the way you want others to treat you. Later in Matthew 18, Jesus will tell about a servant who's forgiven a, I mean it's an insurmountable sum of money, a thousand talents. It's like basically saying a billion billion. It's just an incredible amount of money. And Jesus tells a story about this guy who's forgiven this amazing debt, but then he turns around and finds someone who owes him, yes, a fair sum of money. It's a fair sum of money, but he takes this guy by the throat, and because he can't pay the debt back, he casts him into prison. And Jesus will go on to say, his point is, if you really believe God has forgiven your sin debt that you have committed against him, You will, yes, you will forgive others the debts that they owe you. Now, then again, maybe that's the reason you won't forgive. Maybe this morning you won't forgive somebody because you are still in need of God's forgiveness. Perhaps that's the case. But the kind of judgment Jesus is forbidding here is hypocritical, unmerciful, and superficial. judging according to the appearance. Jesus says in John 7, 24, do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment. So there you have it again, Jesus commanding us to judge, just not to judge in the wrong way, in this case, not to judge superficially. When the prophet Samuel saw Eliab, David's oldest brother, he thought, surely this is the Lord's anointed. And yet the Lord said to Samuel, do not look on his appearance, at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For God sees, not as man sees, for man sees the outward appearance. God looks on the heart. We're not to judge superficially. A Yale University study from Daniel Hamermesh finds employers pay a beauty premium to attractive employees. The beautiful, said beautiful workers, earn an average of roughly 5% more while unattractive employees can miss out on up to almost 9% according to this study. Wow. And similar studies have shown things like that blondes tend to get paid more than women with other hair colors, or people tend to get paid more for being taller. The fact is that Americans too often judge according to appearance. Whatever they say, whatever their mission statement is, right? It happens. It's a reality in our world. And this sort of superficial judgment turns into a system of partiality and favoritism. Related to superficial judgment is partial judgment. Scripture forbids judging with partiality. Judging due to one's own personal preferences and not due to what is right or good or fair or according to God's word. In James chapter 2, you know that God forbids us from showing feveritism, especially in the church, because it happens. Yes, still today you can hear stories of people who are treated differently in a church. based on their skin color or the way they dress, their appearance. And that should not be once named among us, brothers and sisters. This would be so important for early Jewish Christians who had a tendency to look down on their Gentile counterparts, their Gentile brothers and sisters. And God says, that favoritism is not gospel. It cuts against the very gospel of Jesus Christ that teaches we are all saved by the same grace of God. So let's bring this closer to home. What about someone in this congregation who's perhaps just very different from you, right? Very different from you, maybe in every way they don't appear to have anything in common with you, and yet the Bible tells you this, that they, again, if they believed on Jesus Christ, they have Christ, and you have Christ, and therefore you are family. You are family and you ought to then, and you need to, love one another as family. There shouldn't be partial judgment within a church. Jesus would condemn also self-righteous judgments. Those are judgments where we put others down simply for the sake of exalting ourselves, and he also condemns false judgments. We could show that through scripture. So truth, justice, mercy must always be, must always accompany Christian judgment for the fact these qualities are integral to Christ. Jesus said, do not judge so that you will not be judged. And he explains, now verse two, for in the way you judge, you will be judged, and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. He's shown us, or we've talked about the kinds of judgment in other places in the Bible or in Jesus' words, what kind of judgment he's forbidding, But he goes on to reason that one day you will be the one in the dock. The reason you don't want to judge others in a way you don't want to receive judgment is because one day you are going to receive judgment. One day you will be the one in the dock. Oh, when we're sinned against we naturally desire justice. But we need to remember this morning that we sin against others all the time. And so just Maybe our prayers ought to be more for God's mercy rather than just praying his justice on others. Imagine if God will only be as patient with you as you are right now with those in your life. Imagine if God will only be as merciful with you as you are with someone else in your life right now that comes to your mind. We need to put ourselves in the position of those we're judging because the way we judge others is how God is one day going to judge us. That's what Jesus is saying. In John chapter 8, the Pharisees bring to Jesus a woman caught in the very act of adultery. I always thought it was interesting that they didn't bring the man. I don't know where the man was, but they sure brought the woman. While they reminded Jesus, the law of Moses said that adultery was a capital offense worthy of death. It is a serious crime. It is a serious crime against society. There's a lot of issues, much we could say on that. But Jesus also knew that every man standing before him was guilty. Guilty of, yes, adultery. Adultery in the privacy of their own hearts. And so he said, whoever is without sin, let him cast the first stone. And if you know the story, being convicted in their hearts, they, all of them, from the eldest to the youngest, went out one by one, dropping their stones as they went. Now, Jesus was the only one who could have thrown a stone because he had no sin of his own. Yet, Jesus never cast a stone. He showed compassion. Jesus knew this woman's heart. He knew she was repentant over her sin, and so he tells her, and sin no more. But I mentioned that story out of John 8, because in the way you judge, Jesus says, you will be judged. And by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. Maybe this morning you have a stone in your hand that you're lifting to throw against someone else, and it hasn't yet occurred to you that you're guilty of the same thing. What goes around comes around. That's what Jesus is saying. That's true, the judgment we pass on others. And this is because God is the judge of all the earth. So before you pass a sentence on another, before you open your mouth to criticize, before you pick up the stone to throw it, just remember this. One day you will be the one in the dock. And at such a time, you will need God's mercy. A second rule of thumb for Christ-like judgment before judging others is, in addition to put yourself in their shoes, a second rule of thumb for Christ-like judgment is fix yourself first. Fix yourself first. Jesus asks in verse three, why do you look at 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? And behold, the log is in your own eye. So here's this guy walking down the street. You know, I brought this handy log, if you will, this beam. to help you understand what Jesus is saying. This guy is walking down the street with a log sticking out of his eye, a big old plank. In other words, it's a problem that's evident to everyone from a mile away. And yet this person with an obvious problem apparently doesn't realize it. Why? How do we know that? Because he sees somebody else with a speck in their eye and he's interested in helping them out. He's in a place to adjust them, correct them, deal with their problems. You know, you usually can't see something like a speck unless you get up close, right? Ever help somebody with like, they got like an eyelash about to go in their eye and you're like, here, let me get that for you. You can't see that from far away. You got to get up close. But this guy's got an obvious problem, and it's like Jesus is saying, this guy, he's mentioning this person who is not in a place to judge anyone, is carefully scrutinizing others for problems while ignoring his own or her own obvious ones. So Jesus says, verse five, you hypocrite. You first, first, Take the log, remove the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. Fix yourself first. That's Jesus' rule. And to follow this rule, you will need to do a couple things before you can even attempt to help others. First, number one, look in the mirror. Look in the mirror. Before making others aware of their problems, take a good look in the mirror. Mirrors help us see things that others see, right? They help us see ourselves the way others see us. But actually, when you look into a typical mirror, you aren't actually seeing yourself the way you really are, right? You're seeing a reversed image. I think there's a good object lesson for us here, perhaps, and that is the reality is even looking in the mirror, you cannot, we just cannot see ourselves the way others truly see us. And this ought to caution us. There's a great object lesson here. The scriptures teach in Proverbs 16, 2, that all the ways of a man are clean in his own sight. Proverbs 21, 2, every man's way is right in his own eyes. The Bible indicates we are inclined to imagine ourselves so much prettier, smarter, nicer, more likable, more virtuous than we really are. That is at least the tendency of every person in this room. We need a special kind of mirror then, a special kind of mirror to see ourselves. And thankfully, that's what God's word is. God's word is a full length magic mirror that will show us the way he actually sees us. This is his word recorded for us in the Bible. James 1 tells us God's word is a mirror that shows us what needs to change in our lives. Now, what may only appear to you as righteous anger Righteous. It's righteous. It's justified anger. I have good reason to be angry. And what may appear to us that way may actually be a sinful, a lot of sinful hatred, pent up toward another person that Christ is calling you to forgive. You're not going to know that unless you get in the Word of God and allow God's Word to x-ray your heart. What may only appear to you this morning as, it's a bad habit. It's a bad habit. That's all it is, just something I do, may actually be wicked idolatry. Wicked idolatry where you are continually choosing to serve some idol, some person, some thing, to indulge in some simple pleasure rather than to please Christ. We need to call our sin what God calls it and see it the way he sees it and see ourselves the way he sees us. And as you actually look in the book, In the mirror of God's word, you come to see, wow, this is a serious problem. It's offensive to God. So Christian, here's the question. Are you daily in God's word? Are you meditating on God's truth? Are you taking time to look good into the mirror? And are you understanding what you're reading? Christian, do you see God's word making any practical difference in your life? You should. That's why God gave you his word. That's what he intends. And as strange as it may sound, if you're a true child of God, I dare say to you that you will appreciate God's word judging you. You understand? If you're a true Christian, you will appreciate a brother or a sister using God's word to yes, judge you. They're not the one judging you. They're using God's word to judge you and say, this is not right. This is not helpful in your life. You need to change. And if you're a child of God, or you call yourself, or you want to live up to that, you will appreciate that. Because you will recognize that this is what God desires for His children. This is the way we can make corrections to our life. David said to God, search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me. Psalm 139, 23, and 24. That ought to be our feeling. That ought to be our sentiment. attitude, our response. This won't always feel good. It won't always be easy. There will be many times we wish we hadn't heard that or we didn't have to, you know, see what we saw in the Bible about ourselves. But if you belong to God, you will have to accept what God says about your sin. And so Jesus is saying, in order to fix yourself first, this is the second rule we're studying here, You gotta look in the mirror of God's word. The guy with the log in his eye, he's gotta look in the mirror. And then he sees, oh, I got a problem, I gotta take care of this. And then here's where it gets more painful. Here's where really the rubber meets the road. You must remove the log. Yeah, you gotta, to fix yourself first, you gotta look in the mirror, but you gotta remove the log. Quite obvious, but this is where it hurts. Jesus said, first, take the log out of your own eye. Now, Jesus isn't concerned with cosmetics here. To unpack the analogy, he's saying you need to remove from your life the sin that has entered into you, a sin that is a part of you, and you need to cut it off, amputate it. You need to put it to death. Whatever God's word shows to be sinful in your life, you need to deal with it, to be a doer of the word, to make changes. And if we won't deal with our own problems, We're not in a position to help others. That's the idea of verses three through five. You probably have seen Tim Conway's classic dentist sketch, right? Good old comedy there. Tim is a dentist trying to help this guy with his tooth pain. The problem is he keeps jamming himself with a Novocain needle and so like his arm is limp and numb and his leg is numb and actually gets himself in the head and you know, this is just a mess. And I'm pretty sure if anybody Any one of us walked into an office like that and saw a dentist so inept, so pathetic, we would run. We wouldn't want somebody like that anywhere near us because we understand this person is not in a position to help me. Not exactly able to help. That's pathetic. But it gets worse. It can get worse than that. Three times in this gospel, Matthew records Jesus calling the Pharisees blind guides. He says they are blind guides of the blind. Have you ever heard of a blind optometrist? Probably not, right? Probably not. They're not going to be in a position to help you. And Jesus put it this way. He said the blind cannot guide the blind or they will both fall into the ditch. Jesus said of these hypocrites, spiritually blind, He said they strain at a gnat while swallowing a camel. Wow. They're so concerned about that speck and they don't realize they got a log out of their eye. But you know, there are people, they're very good at finding problems in other Christians and other people in the world. There are Christians that can tell you everything wrong about a certain political candidate. They never stopped and thought about the sin in their own life. not in a position to help others. That's what Jesus is saying. Here's what this looks like. When I'm driving, I'm just in a hurry. But you know, when that person is driving, they're just a real jerk, you know? I mean, I'm just an aggressive driver. That person is a real jerk though, just cutting me off. When I'm angry, I'm just having a bad day. When she's angry, she's just got a real attitude problem, you know? She's got a bad attitude. The things we see in others that we criticize and we condemn are all too often the things we excuse in ourselves. So back to Jesus' words, and maybe Brother John, if you wanna just come up here, you don't mind, do you? Jesus said, here's this guy walking down the street, and he's got this beam sticking out of his eye, and he, oh look, he sees someone over there, and he's, do I see a problem? Here, let me help you with that. Brother, let me get that speck out of your eye. Okay, now I don't wanna hurt John and I certainly don't want him to push this into my face. Thank you, brother. I think you can get the picture. Jesus says this guy walking down the street with a beam out of his eye isn't really in a position to get anywhere near somebody else. How are you gonna help somebody? You're just gonna end up hurting them. And what's worse about it, It's a person that has a serious problem and doesn't know it, thinks they're in a position to help others. That's the incredible irony to this whole situation. And it's comical, but it's all too real. That's a whole lot of people in this world right now. And it's the condition of many of us in the church that we want to be a part of the solution. We see specs, we see problems all over the place. But we don't want God to fix us. We pray, Lord, fix him. Lord, fix her. Lord, fix this world. Don't fix me. Oh, you know, that thing, you know, that's just a part of me. That's just who I am. You know, this is my M.O. That's how I respond. This is how it is today. No, Jesus is saying we need to look at God's word. Look into the mirror, see what God says, and remove the problem. Remove what God says is sinful from our lives. That's repentance. And if this morning that's you, you're saying, Lord, not me. You're not considering yourself. You're not looking into the mirror. You're not dealt with yourself. Jesus says, you hypocrite, fix yourself first. Now isn't that the truth? Many of our neighbors do not think it's ever appropriate to point out sinner lives. Many of our neighbors would say, yeah, this is great. Amen! You know, give it to those Christians. Pastor, you know, all of you realize that you all got problems, so you can't say, you shouldn't say anything to anyone else. You should never judge another. But notice here, Jesus isn't discouraging his disciples from ever pointing out something sinful in the lives of others. Because if that were the case, we wouldn't have the rest of the New Testament. And basically, What Jesus tells the disciples to go into all the world and preach a gospel of repentance. That would have never happened. Jesus is going to tell his disciples, you go into all the world, other places, people of all these ideas and religions and lifestyles, and you tell them they need to repent from idols and serve the one true and living God. Oh, yeah, Jesus is not forbidding us to ever help others give the judgment of God's word to others. No, not at all. Jesus is just saying here, first remove the log in your eye, then help others. Notice he says, that we are to, that once we remove the log out of our eyes, then we may go and help our brother with the speck in his. So that is important. Galatians 6.1 says, brethren, if any one of you is caught in any trespass, you which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of gentleness, each one looking to yourself so that you too will not be tempted. You may have some sin in your life that's obvious and serious to God, and God wants you to deal with that. But if you'll admit to God your sin and you'll have him remove that, you'll take his cleansing, God will forgive you, he will use you, and he desires to use you, yes, to help your brother, to help your sister in ways that they are also not living according to God's word. That's biblical. If somebody comes to you, brother or sister, if somebody comes to you in the church and says, your attitude wasn't right, I don't think that was very Christian, and you need to listen to them. And maybe God's word will show you from the word of God, yeah, I've done something wrong. I'm sinning against God, or there's some area I'm displeasing the Lord. We need to help others, and we also need to respond well to criticism from God's word. Jesus gives us three rules, we said, to follow Christ-like judgments, use Christ-like judgment. First, put yourself in their shoes. Secondly, fix yourself. And thirdly, he will say, don't waste words. He adds this third rule in verse six, don't waste words. Jesus says in verse six, do not give what is holy to dogs and do not throw your pearls before swine or they will trample them under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces. Now Jesus is not actually talking about literal animals here, if you're wondering. He's talking about people. In not so flattering terms, he's describing how some people behave as dogs and swine. So two questions. Number one, why does Jesus say this? Or what does he mean in this saying? To Jesus' original Jewish audience, wild dogs and swine were symbolic of that which was unclean or unholy And it does sound kind of harsh, right? Calling some people dogs or swine. But Jesus isn't insulting anyone. He's bluntly describing how some people behave as dogs or swine when it comes to what is holy. What is holy? In the Bible, if a thing is said to be holy, it means that thing was especially set apart to God. Well, to give what is holy to the dogs, that would be sacrilege. to cast pearls before swine, that would be absurd. But in this context, what is holy is clearly what, is clearly Jesus' way of referring to the sacred truth, the sacred truth that God has entrusted to us, namely in the gospel and in the scriptures. The pearls Jesus mentions would be similar to his mention of pearls in Matthew 13, where he describes the gospel of the kingdom as a pearl of great price. And so what Jesus is saying, to put it all together, is that when someone rejects God's holy truth, they are refusing to receive what is most precious in life, so that they've no more interest in Christ than a pig has interest in pearls. just like the beam in the guy's eye, Jesus uses quite strong graphic metaphorical language to make a powerful point. But just realize that we see this kind of thing illustrated in Jesus' earthly ministry, where he's continually speaking the truth and he never once spoke or acted falsely and he even used miracles, performed miracles to demonstrate the validity of his message, the truthfulness of everything he said, however extraordinary. And yet, not everyone was ready to receive what Jesus had to say, were they? Eventually they put him on the cross. And we see, even before Jesus is crucified, we see Jesus at times walking away from people, like in John chapter 2, because he knew it was in their heart. He knew, not everyone is ready to receive what I have to say. And Jesus knew, I'm not gonna waste words. Don't waste words. When Jesus sent out his disciples, he told them in Matthew 10, 14, Whoever does not receive you, nor heed your words, as you go out of that house or city, shake the dust off your feet. And he was saying, if they don't receive your message, they reject you, you literally shake it off. You shake it off and move on. Their rejection is not your failure, and you must leave them to God, who alone can change their heart. In summary, verse six means that we must give truth to those who will hear it. Not everyone will. So don't waste words on those who will not receive them. There's somebody else. Everybody who won't hear you is just a reminder, somebody else is ready to listen. So move on and find that open door. Now, a final question from verse six would be, how can you know someone's not ready to receive your word? Well, let me be clear. You cannot know by their appearance. You cannot know by their appearance or even by how deep they may be in sin at the time that you approach them. While doing some evangelism in a rough neighborhood, I once approached a guy with a Bible in hand and he led the conversation by, you know, making light of what I was doing and all that stuff. And he really told me up front that he had just, he had murdered somebody and had been in prison and was just out on bail. And as I got to know him more, I had several more visits with him, he wasn't lying about that. But he did tell me that up front because he thought that would sort of surprise me. And when it didn't, I found he was one of the most open people I've ever talked to regarding the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yeah, Jesus came for murderers too. Jesus has a message for murderers as well. You see, there's a difference between someone appearing closed and actually being closed to the gospel. You aren't necessarily going to get that from a resume, all right? And we have to be very careful that we are not the ones who judge whether or not someone is ready to hear the gospel. We don't want to make that judgment if we haven't yet shared it. That's the reality. And so the situation Jesus describes in verse six involves those who have already heard the truth and have demonstrated they are not interested in receiving it. Does that make sense? Maybe there's a friend or family member, somebody that comes to your mind that you love. and you have offered them the gospel, and you've been speaking to them, and yet they have told you, they made it very plain, do not speak to me about Christ. What do you do? Well, I think Jesus' instruction is very helpful. He's saying, don't provoke someone to anger by wasting words on them they won't receive. Instead, seek to show them Christ. Apply the truth of 1 Peter 3, where you have these women that are married to men who are not Christians in the church, and Peter's saying, just show them Christ by your godly lifestyle. As Francis of Assisi put it, preach Christ, and if necessary, use words. Preach Christ in the way you live. Let your actions speak louder than your words. But don't waste words. As Christ followers, we must be Christ-like in our judgment. That's the point of Jesus' challenge here in these verses. If you are certain that you eternally belong to Christ, you're one of his people, then let me ask you, brother or sister, how's your judgment this morning? Are you holding yourself to the same standard that you're holding to others? Has the Spirit of God put His finger on anything in your life this morning? Some area where you may be resisting Him? You know, God is particularly particular when He puts His finger on something. The Holy Spirit is a way of bringing a certain person, a certain situation to our mind. We know. And we need to do business with God if that's the case, and make it right so that He can use us to help others. If you need any counsel, about working through some issue like that and please speak to myself or speak to Pastor Kevin and we'd love to talk with you and guide you through the Word of God in that situation. Maybe you're here and you'd say, I'm not certain I eternally belong to Christ. My friend, if that's you, God isn't going to use some special grading scale just for you that is different from everybody else. He's not going to, that means, ignore his righteous requirements and just bend the law because you're just such a nice person and let you into heaven. That is not a holy God. God is going to grade you in the same way. He's going to grade you using the same scale as everyone else. You hear me? God is going to use the same scale he uses for everyone else. And that standard, he's already told us, is absolute holiness. So how are you measuring up? Matthew 5, 48, are you perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect? Of course you're not. And so the only way that you can enter into God's presence is if you are willing to admit your sinfulness, repent of your sin, and receive the righteousness of Jesus Christ. That's why he came to earth, he came to be judged for any sinner who will repent and believe on him. And so, please see me, or again, or somebody in the church today, if you, Pastor Kevin or myself, talk to somebody if you have any concern about where you will spend eternity, if you're not certain you're ready to appear before God's judgment. Father, I thank you for this time that we could look at your word. Pray that you would help us. Father, you know that it is just our nature to see