I invite you all at this time to turn in your Bibles to Matthew's Gospel, Matthew chapter 7. We're turning a corner today in our study of the Sermon on the Mount. So we're turning from the things we discussed about anxiousness and not being anxious to the very practical issues of how to conduct ourselves in human relationships The Beatitudes, of course, as we started out in chapter 5, were, you could say, a road map to how any human being can become happy as we found the gospel itself embedded in those principles. From there we saw a road map, as it were, to what true faith in Christ is, what our true religious Christianity is, as he went through the issues of how the law was treated, and how the issue of our faith, as we're even studying in the first hour with Francis Schaeffer's book, is an issue of the heart. And so now, we turn to chapter 7, we're looking at verse 1 through 5 together, and we're looking at a roadmap to how to have happy, healthy, harmonious human relationships. We're getting very practical here. Jesus, of course, laying the groundwork as it involves the indicatives or the fact of what the law of Moses was given to do and how we are, what our relationship with that law is and what its use is, if any, in our Christian faith. to now the very practical issues of life itself, not worrying about what we're going to eat or what we're going to drink. We're to observe even the birds of the air and the flowers in the field that speak of their steadfast faithfulness in their creator. that the Creator will bring food for the bird, and that even in a drought, the confidence of the lily is that there will be a return of the soft, life-giving rains. And how much more so should it be for us who are of much more value, and then that convicting phrase from our Lord, O you of little faith. It's an issue of faith. So now he turns the corner with all of these things as platforms or foundations, as it were, to our human relationships. Why do we have problems in human relationships at all? And so it's made very clear, actually, with the first couple words. Judge not. Verse 1. 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 a 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. The timing of this message, of course, in our verse-by-verse study of the Scriptures is not lost on us. I hope you've made the connection, those of you who may have anticipated this message for today, this particular verse, in light of the events that took place yesterday in Charlottesville, Virginia. I found it disturbing, as I'm sure all of you did, to see the fomenting of hatred put on such graphic and ugly display for all to see and for us to notice, that we might understand our need for Jesus Christ. And he brings us his word that we might understand what the real problem is. Governor the governor, the mayor, and even the city manager spoke, and the chief of police, the usual lineup when these kind of things happen. And we grieve collectively today. We grieve the hatred, the violence of man. Yet over and over again. They make the same mistake in their refusal to know and love God They refuse to recognize Where hate resides you see if I can put it in a neat little category if I can identify the enemy and call them a particular group of It protects my pride. I don't have to deal with the fact that, according to scripture, we are born with hatred in our hearts. We're born with a selfish nature that wants our own way. The city manager said, began by saying, hate has come to our town. And already I was shaking my head. And I thought, these things will continue to circle the drain, fight after fight, As long as man continues to say, this is the group that is causing the problems. Here's what they look like. Here's their political persuasion. Here's their ideology. Here's their world view. It's not whose? Mine. Over and over again, because of man's refusal to say, you know, I know I've met the problem, as the man wrote famously to the newspaper. I've seen the problem. The problem is me. The problem is my heart. The problem is I am already self-biased. Already I have contempt for anybody who would compete what I think is important and valuable. Already I'm casting them in the role of my adversary because they interfere with the life that I think is right, with how I define love, which is a great statement of pride, isn't it? great display of arrogance. And so man fights and wars. This fighting and warring, come they not hence, even our lust that wars in our members? We fight, we war, but we have not. We have not, because we ask not. We ask, receive not, because we ask amiss. We ask according to our personal lusts. Isn't that James? Four, one to three. said, and so we pray, and so we pray, that man would finally, there would be a revival in his church, in this country, around the world, so that we could properly identify the problem, acknowledge our God, stop ignoring that he exists, stop ignoring the fact that he has something to say, as Francis Schaeffer pointed out in one of his famous books. He is there, he's not silent. He's speaking. He's speaking very clearly. There is an unrighteous, no, not one, not even one. Altogether, they are corrupt. There is hatred, Genesis 6 even, to the point where God had to flood the world. Evil continually, it said in their hearts. There was only a handful. What, eight? They survived. And here we go again. And it will be cyclical until he comes back, until we identify that the problem is where the hatred resides is in us. This passage that we have this morning is probably one of the, if not the most misused, abused passages in the New Testament. Because when there's an issue of sin or corruption, something that does not comport itself with God's will or His desire and pursuits to build His kingdom, we hide under these words. Some do. Who am I to what? Judge, well, if the people of God do not have the equipment to discern enough for themselves to see that the issue is sin, we've got a bigger problem than that, a bigger problem than Virginia does. It's abused, it's twisted. We use that to hide and protect ourselves and to selfishly ignore the things that are actually destroying the church, that actually destroy the very people that we say we love. You see how selfish we can be? See, that's the problem that I would love to share with Governor McAuliffe and the rest of the good, fine folks of Charlottesville who are grieving so deeply and so bereft of the truth. See, it's the truth, Jesus said, that will set you free. You will know it, and the truth will set you free. But they're in bondage because they've rejected the truth out of hand. They've rejected Him who is the truth, those who suffer, and allow the hatred to foment in their hearts to the point of hopping into a car and putting it in gear and ramming it into people, watching human bodies, those who carry the image and likeness of our Creator flying through the air, listening to their screams and their moans and pain callously, thinking they've done a good thing. God help us. J.C. Ryle said about this passage, it is frequently abused and misapplied by the enemies of true religion. It is possible to press the words of the Bible so far that they yield not medicine but poison, end quote. because it is killing us if we won't call sin, sin, and love people enough to tell them so in a spirit of respect and love and gentleness, seeking peace. There is no peace apart from biblical truth. There is no peace apart from identifying what problems are in people's lives. Biblically, you only have a truce, agreement between two parties for a time to just ignore the problem. That's not true peace. So beware those who say, peace, peace, when there is no peace. I can answer the question of Rodney King in a heartbeat, can't you? Can we all get along? We can't, apart from Jesus Christ. But in him we can, and we must. So judge not, judge not, lest you yourself be judged. By that same measure that you judge other people, so you will be judged. Never look down on someone unless your intention is to help them up. Just because someone else's sins are different than yours does not give us the right to judge them. Self-righteous judgmentalists, that's who these are. They use judgments to ignore and assuage their own conscience. You see, if they can keep identifying other people as having the problem, although they're so very wrong, they're living so very wrongly, they don't have to look at their own life. That's why they're drawn to do that. They elevate themselves and they subjugate others through self-righteous judgmentalism. There's a difference between having the judgment that the scriptures call the body of Christ to and judgmentalism. A judgmentalist is self-righteous. The one who's calling to a judge matters is a child of God. 1 Corinthians 5, when the man is caught up with sexual sin with his stepmother. Isn't there one among you, he says, following that in chapter six? Isn't there one among you, you're taking each other to court, chapter six opens, the first Corinthians. Isn't there somebody discerning enough to adjudicate the matters of the church? You've got to take each other before the dead and blind of your culture? Of course we judge, but that's not judgmentalism. That's not self-righteous judgmentalist, and that's what we're going to be looking at. Jesus said in Luke 16 to those who are ridiculing Him, judging Him, you are those who justify yourselves before men. But God knows your, what? Hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God. Wow. And they thought they were doing pretty good. You are justifying yourself. You are a self-righteous judgmentalist. You are not using the discernment, the God-blessed grace of discernment to help someone, to give them hope. We should all be packing up a bus today, shouldn't we? Driving to Charlottesville, shouldn't we? To give them real hope. There's enough judging going on there, isn't there? Have you had enough of that? I grew up in it in the 60s. So much hate, decades of it, and we seems like we make no progress. Had the high honor of having our first African-American president of the United States, who now others are accusing of not doing enough. And now we've got a president who happens to be a white man who is a white supremacist. I mean, when will we stop all this? When will we properly judge situations and not look at other people or other people groups as the source of the problem. The problem is us. And the only solution is Jesus Christ. If you have trouble or you struggle at all, understanding that one of the great premiums that the Lord achieved on the cross is unity. Read Ephesians 2, just in one place. He ended the enmity between people. He made the two become what? One. Thus ending that hatred. Jesus here strikes against the oppressive, judgmental way of the Pharisees, imposing the law of God on the people. These people are, there's descriptives of them, they're condemning, they have carping criticisms. That's who these people are. Unkind and they're unmerciful. They have no mercy. They're unforgiving and unloving. They use the law in a two-fold way, primarily, as a measuring stick and a billy club, constantly comparing themselves with themselves and with others, constantly measuring as though the law were meant to be used by us to measure ourselves over against other people. Who's going to win in such an activity? We are. or as a billy club, I will get my point across by misusing the scriptures and beat you over the head with it." That's how they use it. And they were constantly shadowing our wonderful Lord as He made His progress through. He who is love represents love, who is the truth. Of what great crime do you convict me? Healing people? of being a one percenter, I barely got a robe. I have no home. I lay my head on a rock, said to the one man who said, I want to follow you. You sure? Like I sleep on the ground. Jesus told the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, you remember, in Luke 18. And you remember how that goes, but he starts in verse 9 of Luke 18 saying that he was telling this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. Is this not what we saw in full display yesterday, much to our consternation and grief? I wrote this sermon before this ever even happened. God inspired it. God showed me through His Word that this is who we are. So what I want to look for the balance of our time in unpacking this passage is the self-righteous judgmentalist over against what we see the scripture were called to be, which is loving, caring advocates of the person who is struggling. So we currently have a shortage of loving, caring men of strength and character who are willing to, in a godly fashion, with respect and gentleness and patience and kindness, nevertheless fortitude, go to somebody who's destroying their life with sin instead of burying their head in the sand like a weakling, they go to them because they're killing themselves. They care enough to do that. Who'll do that at the next Klan meeting? Who'll do that at the next group of whoever that are spawning and fomenting hatred? Instead we're promoting a generation of soft men who are fearful to speak up for that which is right, true, and good. But Scripture calls us to discernment, there's no question. We've got to stop abusing this passage and using it for our own cowardice. We are called to discernment, and we'll see that. We're to be mature men and women from Hebrews 5.14 who have their powers of discernment trained. That's what I hope in part you're here today, to worship the Lord primarily and to see Him glorified and lifted up and exalted, but also to have your sense of discernment sharpened, honed. That's what we do. That's what we work on. We work on it first hour. We proclaim it from the pulpit, but we're to practice that. Constantly notice it says, to distinguish good from evil. No, you look at the screen and you say, no, that's not the problem. That is not the problem. And when will man see that the real problem is the fallenness of man, the depravity of man. Hatred is part and parcel of that fall. It's in his DNA. It's viral. It doesn't go away. He has to deal with it through the gospel. That's the only way. say, who am I to judge? Aside from being a gross misuse of Scripture, by the way, it's either a revelation of spiritual immaturity or it's a declaration of being selfish and unloving. It's abundantly clear that we're called by Scripture to expose, confront, and reject, for instance, false doctrine. How can you do that if you're not building your discernment on right orthodox understanding so that you can spot it the way they spot counterfeits, right? This is fake. But you don't just stop there and go, I'm not going to say anything. Who am I to judge? That's wrong what you're teaching. That is wrong. And that needs to be rejected out of hand. It needs to go away. To do anything less than that is selfish and unloving and missing the call of Scripture. So we're to confront and expose these things, reject false doctrine, loose living. We address these things. And divisive people in the body of Christ, they destroy churches, one after the other. You don't think they're planted sitting in seats next to you, perhaps? They are. They're there. So we deal with issues as they come up. It usually starts behind the scenes in the form of gossip. We've seen it almost destroy us in the infancy of this church. starting in the nasty, sin-sick, shriveled-up heart of sinful man, of which we all have. We confront these things. I've got some verses for you just to make sure you see this. Romans 16, I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you've been taught. Avoid them. It's not cool to hang out with them as though everything's fine. It's not. They're spawning lies from the father of all lies. There's a progenitor to everything that's error in the church because he knows that is incrementally if he can introduce lies. And it's not necessarily a 180. It's a few degrees off. That's why we have to constantly be training to be discerning so that we can see, wait a second, that's not right. That's not a fair treatment of that verse, that passage, that word. We avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ but their own appetites. They've got some other agenda here. They're driven by some position or they want the favorability of other people. They want to be noticed. I mean, what is it? I don't know, but it's not true and they need to stop. And by smooth talk and flattery, they deceive the hearts of the naive. See, that's what's at stake here. Your young ones, not just young chronologically, but those that are young in the Lord, your friends, your family members that you brought to Christ, that God used you intramentally to bring into the church, that's what's at stake. Because it's in its infancy that anything is most vulnerable. This church, when it was in its infancy, was the most vulnerable, and so here they came. and even individually with each one of you. You see the great battle, the great issue that we have is truth against the lie. Jesus is truth. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and Satan is a liar and the father of lies, the progenitor of every lie that was ever purported. John 8, 44, paraphrased. As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once then twice, have nothing more to do with him. Titus 3, if anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person. Seems kind of nosy and judgmental, doesn't it? Your issues with the scripture, if that's what you thought, and have nothing to do with him. Why? Well, that's not cool. You're gonna shame him? You know what? You hear that a lot today, don't you? Body shaming, shaming, shaming, shaming. There's probably a lot of that that's bad. Could we use a little shame in our culture? Do you know why we don't want that? You know why that's such a bad thing? Because it strikes against my pride. I need to be ashamed of some of the things I thought. I need to be ashamed of some of the things I've done. And that should carry me, allow me to comport myself with the proper humility that goes along with the understanding that I'm a sinner, only saved by grace, praise the Lord, and a loving brother or sister who may have come alongside as an advocate and said, listen brother, here's what I heard, here's what I see. I love you. I don't want you out of fellowship with the Lord. I don't want your life to get worse and worse. I don't want you to lose your spouse. I don't want you to lose your job. I don't want you to lose your health. That's love. That is love. And you can't do it without judging the matter. We're talking about discernment here. We're talking about your motive is everything for going to them. What is your motive? Why have you pointed out that which might be an error or wrong in someone else's life? Did you go in with the measuring stick and the billy club? Or did you go in with the bleeding heart of Jesus Christ who grieves over that sin because it's destroying the life of somebody he loves? If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person and have nothing to do with them that he may be ashamed. Or phonies, having the appearance of godliness but denying its power, avoid such people. Or second John, if anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting. All right, so this is split in two. We'll get as far as we can today. And if we have some more to cover, we'll cover it next week. First, we're gonna look at what the self-righteous judgmentalist looks like, and then we'll look at what we're called to be, loving, caring advocates of Jesus Christ. So verse one and two, judge not that you not 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." Jesus is confronting the unseemly critical spirit of the self-righteous judgmentalist here. That's what he's confronting. He's not saying bury your head in the sand whenever you see something that's a problem, that's false doctrine, that's error in somebody's life, that's sinful. He's talking straight at the ones he's confronted through the entirety of the Sermon on the Mount. The religionists. The self-righteous ones. So we are not to judge one another's motives. Oh, I know why you did that. Ever said that? No, not these fine people. Just me. Yep. I know why you did that. We don't condemn them for something we don't fully understand. But that, to admit, would take great... Ah, this is the word weeds the voice. What's that, brother? Louder, please. Humility, right? Maybe I don't fully understand. Maybe I haven't walked a bit in that person's shoes. Maybe I don't know enough yet. And so we have our phrase around this church, love seeks to, no, I can't love you the way the Bible calls me to love you if I don't know anything about you, except to look at outward appearances and say, you're a great sinner, brother, I know why you said that, I know why you did that. He says, stop that, or I'll use the same measuring stick to show you how low your life is. We don't need to judge them, folks. And here's the main point. Do you know why? Because they've already been judged. Oh, so what should that do to your heart right there? They've already been judged, so now what's my attitude going to them? My heart breaks for them. I'm not looking to break them. No, no, you don't understand. Don't judge me, man. Don't judge me. Don't, don't, don't judge me. I'm not. I'm not. My concern is there's already one who has, and he's far more to be feared than me. Would that I were the only one who were your judge? I'm not. Not at all. I care about you. And I'm nothing but a great sinner myself. And help me to understand this. I don't know everything there is to know about you. I'm not judging you, because the scary thing is, the fearful thing is, God already has. God's already adjudicated every little thought, every little behavior, every deed, everything I've ever thought, said, or done. You are, according to Matthew 12, going to be judged for every careless what? Word. See, it's already been judged. Those things I said in haste, those things I said in just selfish anger are already judged. So it should evoke our sympathy, shouldn't it? And send us to their side to meet in private. It's not about shaming them. It's about pointing something out that could very well be making their life very hard for them. God's already judged them. If that is in fact what's going on, but we won't know unless we go and ask them, isn't it? But we don't go, I know what you're doing, or I know why you're doing it, which is even worse. So if they're in fact living in sin, that should strike fear in our hearts to motivate us. Romans 14, 13, Paul put it plainly, therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer. Stop that. Stop it. Judge not before you yourself are judged with the same measuring stick you're using because you're just as guilty. Right now, you are more guilty. So we may not have had all the information. We may not know the full story. We have to go in the humility of saying, could you please help me with something I heard or saw, something I'm sensing about your life? Could you help me understand? Here's what I see. That's love. You can't read the heart motives of another human being. You can't do it. You don't know their whole life story. So you judge superficially, and that's the danger, and that's what he's condemning right here. Based upon what you see or what personally offends you, that's even worse because it casts you in the role of God, doesn't it? That offended me. That's why I'm coming to talk to you. You offended me. And you know how you can tell that's happening? A little litmus test for you because you go with anger in your heart instead of love, grief, and concern, right? You're hasty in your speech because you're so definitive about what you've seen or heard. Listen, can I tell you something, and it's not going to be up here on the screen for you. Here's a simple statement. Jesus Christ came to save, not to judge. We had already been judged even before Genesis 6 and the great flood. It went all the way back to the garden. The judgment of God falls on mankind for his or her sin. He came to save us, not to judge us. So when you judge another person using the law, you engage in something that even Jesus doesn't do? Wow. Listen to John 12. If anybody hears my words, Jesus says, and does not keep them, I do not judge him. In other words, if somebody's sinning, if somebody violates my word, I do not judge them. Is he excusing their behavior? No. He didn't come to judge. The judgment's already taken place. That's why he's come to pay the price for those things. He goes on, For I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. There you go. You want to be like Jesus? Judge not, lest ye be judged. The one who rejects me, he says, and does not receive My words, has a judge. He already has one. I didn't need to come to do that. He gave like these stone tablets to Moses a long time ago. He flooded the earth. His people have received His punishments through the Old Testament ages. We saw how His wrath was poured out on them. And then Jesus came. You see, I would love to say to the city manager, hate didn't come to your town. Hate is in all of our hearts, but there's one who came to this earth, and he is love. God alone is judge. Oh, we love that role though, don't we? Man, we love that role. When you judge someone according to the law, you're usurping his role that belongs to him exclusively. You're sitting on his throne and he's not happy about it. Paul asked the Romans in chapter 14, who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. That should end it right there. But that's how stubborn we are. That's how much we insist on picking up the stone tablets to hit other people over the head with them who are not living the way we think that they should, and we can prove it with this law. We just turned it from grace into stone to a billy club. He says a few verses later in verse 10 to 12 of Romans 14, why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? You're hating him in this way. For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, as I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God. God alone is judge. And we'll all stand before Him. So then each of us will give an account of himself to God, not to their husband or wife or boss. To those self-righteous judges who establish their own version of God's law, James has another warning. 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. Because they're self-righteous, aren't they, the judgmentalists? All they focus on is their virtues and the ways they keep the law. But they miss the fact that they are a great and horrible sinner in their pride and their judgmentalism. That gets missed somehow. There is only one lawgiver and judge. One. He who is able to save and destroy and the law ought to make me run to the cross for him to save me. But who are you to judge your neighbor? Psalm 50, which Neil read this morning, the heavens declare his righteousness for God himself is judge. Listen to Romans 2, 1 to 5. Here's another way it's expressed by yet another apostle. Therefore, you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. You're just as great a sinner. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who do such things. See, that same measure that you're judging other people, that's going to come back on you. That's what Jesus is saying. For by the same measure that you're judging other people, that same measuring stick is going to crush you. The only beam that doesn't is the cross. It saves us. Do you suppose, oh man, you who judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart, you're storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. Did you forget, perhaps, that it was actually the kindness of God, it was His goodness, it was His patience. When you saw the great love of God, that's what drew you to be saved. Insofar as you were only confronted by the law, you resisted it, you rebelled against it. What would make us think that we're doing anything to help another human being using the law? That's what He's saying. Do you remember what he said to the Pharisees when he was indicting them when we went through Matthew 23? Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, the scribes and Pharisees do what? Sit on Moses' seat. You see, back then, the teachers, the rabbis, would sit and everybody would stand. We do it in the reverse today. They're sitting. You've heard of the Holy See, the holy seat in Rome of the Pope, from which he speaks ex cathedra. Out of the seat comes the law, comes the judgments. That's what they were doing. They were sitting in Moses' seat, issuing the law and their proclamations, ignoring all of the deadness of their heart. great manicured tombs which are full of dead men's bones. They sit in Moses' seats so practice and observe whatever they tell you but don't do what they do. For they preach, but they do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens hard to bear and lay them on people's shoulders. But they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. That's the self-righteous judgmentalist. That's what you'll notice about them. They're not doing a thing to address the sin issues in their heart. They've blinded themselves to it because they're so focused on the sins of other people. And it drives them. And it's like a canker worm that burns into their brain. They can't stop thinking about how wrong this other person is. That's what happened yesterday. That's the fever pitch that takes. That's the genesis of it. First Corinthians 4, Paul said, but with me it's a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I don't even judge myself. I'm not aware of anything against myself, but I'm not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. That's his point. He's not trying to, this isn't an exculpatory statement. This isn't him trying to excuse himself. He's not saying I'm without sin. You just need to understand, you're not the great judge in my life. I mean, he's just making a statement of fact. Because I've got one that I fear, who is a righteously perfect judge, and there will be a day of adjudication in my life. So it's a small matter that you come to me and say, I don't like the way you talk, or I don't like how you do this, or how you do that. And I think I know why you do it, too. Wow. I thought it was a Trinity, not a quadruplex. He's not being arrogant here. He's making a statement of fact. Human judgment is a small matter because it is so very often wrong and self-serving, the righteous judge, the self-righteous judge. It's not God who judges us. We have one judge. There was a writer who cautions against ignorance and lack of understanding the other person who might be sinning. That seems to be inherent in the self-righteous judgmentalist. Listen carefully to what he wrote. Speaking about the person who you're looking at and saying, oh, what a great sinner, he's warning you. Judge not the workings of his brain and of his heart, that which thou cannot see. What looks to thy dim eyes as stain in God's pure light may only be a scar brought from some well-won field where thou wouldst only faint and yield." End quote. You have no idea what formed this person. Unless you love them enough to approach them with humility and get to know them and find out why they think like they do, why they talk like they do, why they act the way they do. I want to know what your fears are and I would love to know what formed them because I would love to come alongside as a loving, caring advocate and help you. I'm not your judge. My goodness, I'm just a man saved by grace, a great sinner saved by grace. But God has called me to care enough to do that. It may be a scar brought from some well-won field. W-O-N. They survived it, whatever it was. and it was formative in their life. Do you care? Do you care to know? Or do you want to march in with this book and weigh and count and measure and weigh and find them guilty? This has to stop. You have to change. I got it right here in the book. Be careful in your judgments. Just be careful. The defects you see in others could very well be the stripes that they wear from some terrible event in their lives. And you and I, if we were given that same divine appointment, may well have fainted and fallen apart yet God strengthened them and brought them through. But they've got their quirks. Every one of us. Find out what they are. Be a loving advocate. Come alongside. Love seeks to know. If you continue to drink from this well, you're gonna thirst again. Oh, well then help me understand this living water, saith the Samaritan woman, because I don't want to have to keep coming here in the middle of the day. Why do you come in the middle of the day, by the way? It was the middle of the day. Nobody goes and draws their water in the middle of the day. It's hot. She's alone. Why? You know why. She's ashamed. What have the townspeople done to her that would send her out to this place? And who is this that's speaking to her? Not just a Jewish man, a rabbi. You have no business with us. Who is this man who's talking to me? Go and get your husband. I have no husband. Do you have said right? The last five men you've been with are not your husband. Are you seeing the metaphor? You're going to continue to have to come to that well? But you could have, you could draw from the living water. Are we case-wise enough and loving enough in each other's lives to help each other by finding out what is going on? He's omniscient. He already knew what her life was like. He knew the backstory. Are we interested in each other enough to find out Why they act the way they act, why they do what they do. I love spending time with some of the people I've spent time with. Starbucks pouring over the Bible, getting to know somebody who you can see as this struggle on his face, the grief that he goes through and just wondering, what is it? What is it that he struggles with? and then finding out. And so speaking from a well-informed place of real knowledge about what the person went through. That's supposed to be us. What a delight, what a joy. What are their pains, what are their sorrows? Jesus said in John 7, do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment. I see so much for the person who says, I'm not called to judge. No, just be accurate in what you're doing and be loving in your approach. Go with softness, but no less fortitude, no less resolve to help the person find out the very things that are making their lives hard for them. The danger at this point, folks, is to say, aha, Jesus said, don't judge. So I'm not going to judge. Oh, so you're going to hate. Who wants to get involved with the people groups to find out more about them? Would you rather get involved with the Black Lives Matter group or the KKK white supremacists? Which one? Neither? Then why are you here? Why aren't we in heaven? There's something that drives all of these people. What is it? Jesus said, if you're ashamed of me before men, I'll be ashamed of you when you stand before the Father. That's love. Love wants to know why the human soul is the way it is, so we might bring the balm of Gilead, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the truth of Christ, which is the only true source of true, genuine peace they'll ever know. They know no peace. They know no rest. We all have our biases, but we won't ever know where they came from if we continue to just avoid each other and hang out with our own little crowd that understands us. Because they look like us. They talk like us. So we finish up this morning, I wanna start this next session, section, and we'll finish here this morning, but I can't resist. It's set up so well for us in scripture, the loving, caring advocate. So what does that look like? We begin with the scripture where he says in verse three to five, why do you see the speck 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 that 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. You see, the problem is that sin unaddressed in my life, and by the way, remember from our previous passages in the Sermon on the Mount, he's using eye as a metaphor for the heart. You got a big log there in your heart. You can't see right. Remember the haplos term. Your eye is not healthy, he said in the last passage, remember? And so you'll stagger, and you'll stutter, and you won't see clearly, and you'll fall unless that eye is clear. And if it's clear, it's healthy. So somebody has to deal with their heart first in order to be fully adequate to go address the other need of someone else. That's the point here and other places in the Scriptures. An advocate Just so that we understand, I'm sure you're familiar with the term, but to be sure, one who comes alongside another, this Greek term paraclete. Paraclete, oh, in the verb. Paraclete, who is a paraclete in the scripture, by the way? Who is? I said who, it's a person, what? The Holy Spirit, there you go. So you're familiar with the term. Comes alongside another to support them, uphold them, a booster, a crusader of the Lord and his truth on behalf of a brother or sister, we come alongside. in loving advocacy. The call to fulfill our role as advocates takes courage and kindness. At times it requires boldness, at other times softness in tone and gentleness in manner, yet never lacking in truth or substance. doesn't hide from the truth. It finds a way to help that person. After I've gotten to know them, by the way, our pride has us, you know, storming the Bastille, right? We're knocking down the gates of their house so we can talk to them because we're sure of what they're violating. And it's going to stop. That's been eating at my heart all week, and I can't wait to talk to the person. No, that's not how it works in God's economy. It's not what we're called to We're supposed to spend time going, remember, what does it take again? Starts with an H. Humility to say, you know what, I've got to find something out about this brother or sister and what I think I saw. Because, by the way, part of depravity is the noetic effects of sin, nous, Greek for mind, right? It's the fallenness of our mind, our perceptions, our judgments are skewed, right? The only thing that writes them like a compass is the Word of God. So we listen and we interpret through the scriptures and we're... I wonder why they said this. I wonder why did you do that in the past? Where did this come from? And you start to understand them. It helps soften the approach. That and the humility that you and I are supposed to have, that we're called to. It takes kindness, patience, right? always with patience and fortitude. It's standing steadfastly in the face of severe wafts of emotion. That's fortitude. You stand strong. Not because you're there to hurt them, but because you're unwilling to relent because you really believe they need you. To stand firm while they're falling apart like a great mast in a storm. That's fortitude. Don't waver. Stay with them. Listen to them. See what the Lord shows you about them. That's not judgmentalism. We go with wisdom and true spiritual discernment and never, never, ever without love. has to be the driving motive. You have the love of Christ that has been shed abroad in your heart, in your salvation experience. That's Romans 5.5. And so, therefore, it should very well be in every instance the love of Christ that compels you. 2 Corinthians 5.14. It's driving me to help. There is no love, there is no biblical love that does not help. The speck does need to come out, so it needs to come out. He's not saying there really isn't a speck there, Jesus. He's saying the speck needs to come out, but there's some heart work you need to do first if you're going to help anybody. If left unattended, a speck in the eye can obscure the vision at least. Remember, this is a metaphor for the heart. It can cause staggering and drifting. You can fall. It could get infected, resulting in great pain and misery for the person. The person could even lose an eye. My mother had something wrong in her eye for like two years. It's like something that every time she blinked, it brought great pain. Couldn't figure it out. Couldn't get at it. So they took her eye out. There's a speck there. Are you equipped and is your heart in the right place to go and lovingly, with wisdom and discernment, see what that is? You won't until your eye is clear, haploose, singularly focused. having cleansed your own sight and gone with pure motives of the love of Jesus Christ. The great issue actually is the log, obviously, that's in the observer's eye. Peter had to deal with his own heart first before he would be useful for the Lord in helping his brothers. You remember how John's gospel ends and then the opening of Acts. There he is preaching with power. He's a transformed individual, isn't he? Used instrumentally to save thousands of people. Three thousand in the first sermon, right? Acts 2. But something had to happen in Peter first. After the Peter, do you love me? And so on. Before that, when Jesus near the end was prophesying his denial of the Lord, he said something interesting to Peter, telling him, you know, Satan has demanded to have at you, but I've prayed for you. He wants to sift you like wheat, but Jesus prayed for him. he says in Luke 22, 32, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. Now listen to this. This is an interesting clause here in the second half of the verse. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers. Only when you have turned. You know, it's an interesting term in the Greek. It's epistrepho. We talk about metanoeo, which is the meta change of the heart, which we translate as repentance, and we should, but actually full repentance includes the epistrophal idea, which is you need to turn away from your sin, not just feel bad about it. You get a lot of people in for biblical counseling that feel terrible about the consequences of their sin, but they have no intention of changing the behavior. They're going to go do it again. What do we call that? Thank you, folks. Circling the drain. The only way out of circling the drain, even though you've had great conviction and you've been confronted and you've asked for forgiveness, you've reconciled with the person and you're broken, the only way out of that drain so it doesn't happen again is the issue of your heart to turn away, to turn, turn, turn ye, turn ye. Why will you perish? Why will you die, saith the Lord through his prophet Ezekiel in 18? Why? You have to turn. The Hebrews knew nothing of a repentance that didn't include turning away from the sin. There's some great turning that has to happen, Peter, and it's going to happen. And when it does, then you can strengthen your brothers. He dealt with his heart first. He was broken. He was weak. He lacked courage. He wept bitterly. You talk about shame when he denied the Lord three times right after this. Hiding, cursing, denying to a little servant girl that he ever knew Jesus. Doesn't know what to do with it all, even after he's resurrected. So what does he do? He goes back, what? Fishing. That's all he knew. He didn't get it. It didn't happen yet. The turning didn't happen. Full repentance didn't happen. People ask all the time, when was Peter saved? Well, start here. This is what's got to happen. Repentance has to happen once you've turned. Then you will strengthen your brothers. So he goes back fishing. And now look at the tenderness and patience of the Lord at the end of John's gospel. Making him breakfast, cooking what? Fish. Peter's own occupation that took him away from missing caused him to miss the main point of why Jesus had to die and be raised. Do you love me, Peter? Do you love me? Feed my sheep. Attend my lambs. And he explodes at the opening of Acts. I'm going to finish with something McLaren said. Jesus thus teaches us that all honest desire to help in the moral reformation of our neighbors must be preceded by earnest efforts at mending our own conduct. If we have grave faults of our own, undetected and unconquered, we are incapable either of judging or of helping our brethren. Such efforts will be hypocritical. But they pretend to come from genuine zeal for righteousness and care for another's good, whereas their real root is simply censorious exaggeration of a neighbor's fault. They imply that the person affected with such a tender care for another's eyes has his own in good condition." End quote. And that's just not the case. So we close with this statement. It should be up there for you based upon 1 Timothy 1.5. Let's grab a hold of this and savor it in our minds as we leave today. The motive and objective in using discernment to help another believer who's struggling with sin is from 1 Timothy, love that issues from a pure heart eye. From a pure heart and a good conscience, I've dealt with the issues of my own life first, and a sincere faith. I hope that's me. I hope it's you. Lest we be judged with the same judgmentalism with which we've judged others. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your patience with us. These things are challenges to us all for sure. Lord, we thank you for your love. We thank you for your grace and your mercy. Help us to resist the temptation to refrain from using your perfect law as a measuring stick and a billy club. If we're going to use it at all to measure, may we look into it with our own hearts. May we use, as James says, looking into the perfect law of liberty and not forgetting what manner of man we saw when the Word showed us our own faults. Oh, may we look like Jesus Christ. Oh, we long for that, O Lord, our Savior, And for all those, Lord, who are suffering in the ignorance of these things, even not just in Charlottesville, Virginia, but around the world today, may they see something different in us who have been saved by that same Lord and Savior who has been patient and loving with us, who did not come to judge us, but to save us. And for that, We give you our thanks, and for that, we owe you our lives. In Jesus' name, amen.