Take The Log Out Of Your Own Eye

So this morning, we're going to be continuing in our study of the Sermon on the Mount, and we're going to be beginning chapter 7. Part of our text, just a phrase of it, do not judge, is probably one of the most commonly used phrases to shut the mouths of Christians, to silence any sort of disagreement or opposition that might be offered by Christians. They say, well, you know, you believe in the Bible. It says not to judge, so you shouldn't be judging. I find that many Christians are susceptible to this accusation that they feel as though, oh, well, the Bible does say I'm not supposed to judge. I guess I'm supposed to be quiet. It's almost like this phrase, it's like the Christian's kryptonite. It's like the thing they have no defense for. It's like if you say that, then it's like, well, I don't know what to do now. This morning we're going to be studying that phrase along with its surrounding context to see what it actually means, what it actually teaches us.

You might not be surprised to know that those who have said, the Bible says don't judge, so you shouldn't be judging people, are twisting scripture. And my hope this morning is that God will help us and teach us to make righteous judgments, and that we would do so with humility. Our text is Matthew chapter 7, verses 1 to 5. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. 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. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So do not judge.

so that you will not be judged. When you take Scripture out of context, meaning when you grab a verse or a phrase and you snatch it up out of the things that go on around it or that are said around it, this always leads to an abuse of Scripture, a misusing of it, a misunderstanding. It leads to deception, to lies. The second half of this verse, so that you will not be judged, is forgotten when it's being used out of context. And the next verse, For in the way that you judge, you will be judged. And by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. It never makes it out of the closet. It never sees the light of day. It's never said in context. And so if you were to just pull out these few words, do not judge, you're missing what Jesus is actually teaching. Have you ever talked to someone and later you hear them describing the conversation or maybe you're talking to them again about the same issue and you go, that's not what I said. That's nowhere near what I said.

Well, what often happens is that our words get taken out of context, that we edit or cherry-pick the things that were said, and we take the parts that are desirable and we leave aside the parts that are not. This is something that happens in conversation. This is something that happens in writing, where the words of someone else are taken and twisted to mean something that the original author never meant. And so when someone says Christians ought not to make judgments, they're lying about God. God did not ever tell us not to make judgments. This passage doesn't tell us not to make judgments. It tells us how to make judgments. And there's a world of difference between how to make a judgment and not making judgments at all. Jesus is warning us against making uncharitable or unjust judgments.

The sort of judgment that you wouldn't want to be made about you. Have you ever said something about someone and you think, man, if somebody said that about me, I'd get angry. Those are the sorts of judgments that are being warned against. If we had to sum up this passage in our own words, we could simply say, judge other people the way you want to be judged. It really is the golden rule applied to judgments. Golden rule, treat other people as though the way you want to be treated. Judge other people. the way you would like to be judged. In fact, this passage requires us to make judgments. It in no way forbids us from doing it. Hebrews 5.14 tells us that solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. What is it to discern good and evil? But to make a judgment. How can you call something evil or something good unless you're making a judgment about something being evil?

or being good. And our judgments are not supposed to be private judgments or silent judgments or ones that we keep to ourselves. Ephesians 5 says, do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness. And you're left going, well, how do we determine what those are? Well, we make judgments. Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them, even expose them. And so actually the work of making judgments is required of Christians. And here's the thing about making judgments. There is nobody, Christian or not, who doesn't make judgments. Unbelievers make judgments. Children make judgments. Husbands and wives make judgments. Grandparents make judgments. Siblings make judgments. Teachers, employees, everybody makes judgments. If you were to ask you, what do you think about Pride Month? You'd have something to say. You'd have a judgment.

And if you were to ask anyone else what they think about Pride Month, they would have a judgment. What you'll find among Christians, though, is that they're reticent to offer their judgments. Well, I don't want to speak for other people. I don't want to put words in other people's mouths. I wouldn't want to, you know. But I want you to understand that everybody is making judgments. And that the work here that Jesus is outlining for us is not that we wouldn't make judgments, but that our judgments would be marked by being righteous and by being humble, by being fair. Originally, when I was starting to prepare, I thought about including verse 6 in our scripture text. I'll preach on it next week, but verse 6, does anyone know what Matthew 7, 6 says? It's really, really uncomfortable because it's full of judgment.

that nobody wants to make. It's the judgment. It's a type of judgment that nobody wants to make. And this is what it says. It says, 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, that verse is full of judgment because you have to determine who the dogs and the swine are. And they're people. And they're not categories of people. Maybe they are sometimes, but they're particular people. And Jesus exhorts us in that verse to be able to make judgments between who is a dog or a pig and who is not. And to treat them accordingly. Now that's very uncomfortable. When Jesus sent the disciples out and he tells them to go into the cities, don't take your money belts, don't take anything with you. Go out into the cities and stay with whoever welcomes you. But if they don't receive the word preached, what are they supposed to do?

They're supposed to leave the city and say, goodbye, we'll see you next time. You know, God bless. No, they're supposed to leave the city. And as they're leaving, they're supposed to shake the dust off of their feet, which to us, we're like, well, I don't, I mean, maybe that was just a courtesy. It's not a courtesy. It's a curse. It was a judgment because they didn't receive the word. If they don't receive the word, then you in your leaving are not to bless them and give them a benediction, a good word, but rather a curse. And so these passages, And many more like them show us that Christians are required to make judgments. That we're not allowed to keep our thoughts to ourselves or to have no thoughts. Instead, our judgments are to be accurate, to see things as they truly are, and to be fair. The judgments that we make will be personal. You'll make judgments of particular people. This is the trouble that we all run into in our families.

Around the holidays or what have you, you say, well, if I do that, then all hell's going to break loose because I'm going to have made a judgment about my cousin or my sister or my uncle or my whomever. No, my kids aren't allowed to stay with them overnight. No, my kids aren't allowed to be in the room alone with them. No, you and your boyfriend are not allowed to sleep at our house together overnight. These are all judgments. These are common judgments that Christians are making. But you realize, if I give just a little bit of... of shape to the judgments, we're all like, oh, that's going to hurt. Oh, that's going to be miserable. And you understand that no one wants you to make these judgments. It's almost as though being a Christian means that you have to have your lips hermetically sealed. You can't have the judgment, and you really should feel bad about having them in your head. That somehow becoming more like Jesus means being completely blind to the effect of the choices other people make.

It's even gone so far in our society is that there was a marketing ploy. I think it was Planet Fitness. Do you guys remember Planet Fitness' marketing ploy or marketing thing? What was it, Mary? Judgment-free zone. Judgment-free zone. Why would a gym have a judgment-free zone? Because fat people go there. And you wouldn't want the fat people to feel insecure as they go there. You wouldn't want me to walk in and be like, oh, man, what do they think of me? So they market it and they say judgment-free zone. But they mean more than that. They mean more than just your body shape. In fact, they mean to say that there's not going to be any judgments about who can use which locker room. A few years ago, this was a really big deal with Planet Fitness. Got them in a lot of trouble because they were a judgment-free zone. But all of a sudden, when the trans guy wanted to go into the women's locker room, there was a problem. Because they were a judgment-free zone, but there was a judgment that was lacking that needed to be made. And that judgment was, you're a man, go to that locker room. The one for men. There's a lot of pressure in our society.

To be a judgment-free zone. To be the sort of place that never makes judgments. That is accepting. If you refuse to make judgments, that means that you are accepting of any and everything that comes across your plate. You say, I have nothing to say. There is no right and wrong. To refuse to make judgments is to say that there is no God. That he has not written his law into the fabric of society and that there is no such thing as good and evil. right and wrong, sin or righteousness, that none of that exists. That's what you're saying when you refuse to make judgments. You're saying God does not exist. He is not the creator of this world, and he will not return to judge it. Now, did you know that? Did you know that that's what was going on when you didn't want to say no? But this is the pressure that we feel. Some of us are probably, there's a little part of us, a guilty part of us, that's probably comforted when we think,

Christians aren't supposed to make judgments, or at least they're not supposed to make many judgments, or at least they're not supposed to make loud judgments, or public judgments. They can have their judgments to themselves. And we think, good, save me from the suffering. But here's the thing. Heaven and hell are real. Heaven and hell are real. And God's going to send every single person to either heaven or hell. And he'll do that by making a righteous judgment. And there won't be anything at that time that... the person can do about it because it will be too late. And so if we refuse to make judgments or to speak judgments, God's judgments, fair judgments, righteous judgments, if we silence ourselves and are unwilling to speak, then what we are in effect saying is, I'm happy for you to go to hell. I would rather you go to hell than me be uncomfortable. I would rather you go to hell than have you be angry at me. And where in scripture do we see that sort of behavior or reasoning being commended?

We don't. And so making judgments is costly. Personally, it's costly. Relationally, it's costly. Financially, it can be costly. And so we have to fight against this impulse inside of us, this temptation to say, you know, I don't think we should be the kind of people that make judgments. Because judgments are unloving. I remember years ago at the school board meeting where John was fired, where I had to talk. I've told you guys this story. I didn't have to talk, but I had to talk. And so I went up. And I had to figure out what to say. And I was in line, I mean, hours to think about what you're going to say. And I'm like the next guy in line. I still don't know what I'm going to say because it's really uncomfortable and really awkward and really, you know, hundreds of people there, half of them on one side and the other half on the other side. And the school board's sitting up there. And I remember saying to them, I'm sure I said other things, but I remember saying to them, I said, here's the thing. We're all up here fighting about what, we're all here in favor of love. Every person in this room wants.

the transgender kids to be loved. What we're really fighting about is what that means. Some people think that love means accommodating their behavior and their desires, and other people believe that love is saying no to them. But here's the thing. One day, all of us are going to stand before God and give an account for what we thought love was. And that's what we need to keep in mind as we hash this out. And if I remember correctly, there was a lot of guffawing and cat calling, and there was a lot of noise, snapping. That's what the other, the pro-LGBT, that's what they would do. They'd snap. They wouldn't clap. And there was a lot of quiet when I talked. Nobody had anything to say. Because I said, we're going to have to stand before God and give an account for our love, however we define it. We don't have to do it today, but one day we will all have to do it. And some of us will be right and some of us will be wrong. So making judgments is difficult. It's costly. It's painful.

And it's necessary. In that room, I said, we all have a different understanding of what love is and what should be said, what should be done. But this is not that room. This is a room of professing Christians. And so I say to you, love is not hiding God's word under a bushel. It's not being ashamed of the things that Jesus has said or that he requires you to say. The idea that because there's a cost associated with following Jesus, that somehow you're able to say, well, then I'm not going to say that, is foreign to Christians throughout history. They never would have thought that suffering was the reason not to do it. Love for sinners requires that we make judgments. And it requires that those judgments be godly, that they be righteous. When Jesus was being questioned in John chapter 7 about the Sabbath, and he's rebuking the Pharisees about their judgments, about his disciples eating. I think it was eating on the Sabbath. I don't remember if it was eating on the Sabbath or him healing on the Sabbath. But at the very end of it, he says to them, do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment. Make your judgments, but make them righteous judgments. Make them the judgments of God. Put the judgments of mouth in your heart and in your mind and in your mouth. Say the things that God says. Righteous judgment is the sort of judgment that you yourself would agree to submit to.

Some of you guys might be interested in philosophy, may know who Immanuel Kant is, or Rousseau, or these guys. They used to talk about this thing called the veil of ignorance. And the veil of ignorance is just a way of processing principles abstractly. Now that's probably not helpful for me to say, so let me explain it to you. If you had to make the rules for a society, and you had to say this is yes and this is no, you realize that in that society, there's going to be all kinds of people. There's going to be poor people, and there's going to be wealthy people, and there's going to be old people, and there's going to be young people, and there's going to be sick people, and there's going to be healthy people. There's going to be all kinds of variety of people. And in all of that variety, you're going to identify yourself somewhere, right? Well, I'm young, and I'm healthy, and I'm married.

And what you will do without even thinking about it is you will slant all of the rules of that society toward yourself to make your situation most desirable. And everyone else has to suffer at the cost of that. And so the veil of ignorance is to say simply, all of that's the same except for one thing. You don't know where you will end up in society. Make the rules fair. Because if you were the poor sick person, You would want very different rules than if you were the wealthy, healthy person, right? Make the rules fair because you don't know which one you're going to be. And all of a sudden you go, oh, well, I would make very different rules for society if I didn't know where I was going to land in it. If you were to make those rules not knowing where you were going to land in it, you would be much more inclined to make righteous judgments, to make the sort of judgments that Jesus calls you to hear, that you would see with equality.

everybody's circumstance and try to make it fair for everyone. And so a righteous judgment is a judgment that you would want to be judged by. That if you found yourself in that society as the poor beggar, or if you found yourself as the wealthy merchant, you would say, these are fair rules. These are fair rules to be governed by. They don't give me everything I want, but I didn't know I was going to be in this position when they were made. And that other guy needs to be considered as well in these rules. And so making righteous judgments demands that you not show partiality, that you not prefer yourself or anyone else in the judgments that are made, that you say, this is what's right, and this is what's true, and this is what's good. The details will have to be worked out, but this is the way that it is. These are the types of judgments that Jesus is calling us toward, righteous judgments, the sort of judgments that we would be willing to be judged by. The thing about judgments is that

the judgments when they're being made, we always presume that we're the judge and not the defendant. And all Jesus is saying here is, presume that you're the defendant. Make your judgments as though you were the defendant. You'd make very different judgments. Be a lot more lenient, a lot more gracious, a lot more kind. Then Jesus makes it personal and he says, why do you look at the speck that's in your brother's eye but don't notice the log that's in your own? Even though other people's faults, though much smaller by comparison, always seem to be our concern. We're always able to point out somebody else's failure, someone else's faults, what someone else did wrong. In fact, it's easy for us, and it's even said, that we're better at seeing other people's sins than they are themselves. That it's a good service that we give to them by pointing out their faults. Because they're unaware of them. There may be some truth to that. But there is also a danger. The danger is that you'll see their sins without the context of your own.

that you will come to make judgments about them or you'll come to speak to them as though you don't have any sins. And so personal knowledge of your own sin should always mark your interaction with other people. This is the log in your own eye. This is not meant to keep you from addressing your brother's sin, but to help you do it well. Here's another practical bit of advice about this. If you don't see your own sin, you will be of no help to your brother. People who are blind to their own sin, are useless. They're useless. They're bad parents. They're bad spouses. They're bad employees. They're bad bosses. They're bad Christians because they don't see themselves. When they look in the mirror, they say, oh, look at me. Nobody else sees what you see when you look in the mirror. They don't think as highly of you as you do. And so if you look in the mirror, if you think about yourself as though you're just a little bit better than everybody else, you will be no help to anybody. In fact, you'll be destructive.

You can't help anyone. In Matthew 23, there's a long section where Jesus condemns the Pharisees for their hypocrites, for their hypocrisy. Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites is sort of the refrain, but there's another title he has for them that he uses five times in that section, and it's this, blind guides. You blind guides. And then he describes them in one place in verse 24, Matthew 23, 24. This is what he said. You blind guides who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. Right, gnats are, you know, camels and, you know, specks and logs. Isn't that the perfect description of a man who can't see his own sin, but is always focused on other people's sins? He strains out gnats in other people's lives, but can't see the logs in his own. It's an incredible danger. It's an incredible danger not to see the failures of your own life, your own sins. We've got plenty of reasons not to see our own sins. They're embarrassing. They're inconvenient. They're painful.

They're enjoyable. It's a real danger that over time, if you give yourself to your own sins, that you will become less sensitive to them over time. Whatever sensitivity you have, whatever sort of sin that you would look at today and you'd go, whoa, you'd have this shock response to it. If you keep playing with it, it won't be long until that response is gone. And you'll think it's normal. And the shock will have moved to some other place further down the path. But it will continue to move as you go further and further into sin. And this is how logs become lodged in our eyes. And so there's a great danger to not seeing your own sins. And so Jesus instructs us. He tells us, first, take the log out of your own eye. Well, you can only do that if you can see it. And you can only do that if you're willing to take it out. To take the log out of your own eye does not mean to recognize it or to acknowledge it. I know I did that, but...

That's not what Jesus is aiming at here. That's not good enough. The log actually has to be dealt with. It actually has to be repented of. And in that process, you'll come down a few rungs in terms of your pride. You'll realize you're not as good as you thought you were. That you actually have a lot more in common with the guy or the girl that you're upset with. That there's not so much difference between you. Your sins may be different. The expression of them may be different. But the fact of the matter is not all that different. You are sinners. Jesus says, you hypocrite, 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. Here's the thing about making judgments and calling people to repentance and confronting sin. You'll never be free of the accusation of hypocrisy. Meaning you'll never have perfectly or completely removed the log from your own eye. You could take this passage where he says, well, first do this and say, okay, well, I'm just going to work on that. And I'm just not going to bother with anybody else because I'm working on me.

And if you do that, you don't love your brother. And this is difficult, isn't it? Like you're supposed to make judgments, but you've got logs in your eye, and you're supposed to remove the logs, but you can't wait until they're completely removed because that won't ever happen. And so what are you to do? What are we to do? Throw our hands up in the air and say, I just don't want to make any judgments about anybody. Or I'm just going to make judgments all the time about everybody. It can be exasperating sometimes. Some of the things Jesus says are actually hard to hear. When Jesus was talking about marriage and he's talking about whether men should get married or not get married and whether they should get divorced and when they're allowed to get divorced, the disciples' response was, well, then that's a difficult saying. No one should get married if that's the way it is.

And here we are, feeling the same way about judgments. Wait, I'm supposed to make judgments, they're supposed to be fair judgments, but I'm supposed to be aware of my sin when I make them, but I can't be so consumed with myself that I fail to love my brothers or ever say anything to them, but I've got to say it lovingly, it's just very difficult. And we would rather wash our hands of it. The Christian life is a hard life, where we have to be dealing with our own sins, but not neglecting the love that we owe to one another. The point that Jesus is making here is that if you're repenting of your own sin, if you're repenting of it, if you have a habit of it, that discipline will change the way you approach your brother when you have to confront him. You'll do it graciously instead of judgmentally. It'll be motivated by love for your brother instead of contempt for him. I wish there were a formula I could give you. Like here are the three things that you need to pay attention to. And if you can check these three boxes, then you're good enough to go. You know, we can...

push it live. You can go tell somebody what they're doing wrong. But when I thought about it, the only thing I could come up with biblically is not a formula, but rather just a principle or an admonition. In Galatians 6 verse 1, Paul says, brethren, if anyone is caught in a trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, each one looking to yourself so that you too will not be tempted. And we find the same principle in Galatians that we find found in John with righteous judgment that we find in Matthew, judging the way we would want to be judged, which is that you're to make judgments, but you're to make judgments paying attention to yourself, being aware of your own sins, having compassion and understanding for just how somebody else could get themselves into such a mess repeatedly because you've done the same thing and you do the same thing.

If, on the other hand, we fail to deal with our own sins, thinking that our brother's sins are so much more egregious, Paul warns us that we're not far behind them in falling into the sins ourselves. Each one looking to yourself so that you too will not be tempted. Here's the thing and the warning. If you don't deal graciously with other people in their sins, if you don't make righteous judgments, you're exposing yourself to great temptation in the future. and probably not far into the future. It's very easy to look on other people and to despise them and their weakness and to think, why would you do that? How can you do that? Why don't you stop that? What's wrong with you? That is the recipe for falling into that very same sin yourself. I've seen it happen. And so our work is to make righteous judgments, gracious judgments, kind judgments, judgments that leave room for the wrath of God or the grace of God.

judgments that are not final, as though we are the one who gets to do that. We're not. And so our aim should be as Christians to cultivate our understanding and be able to make helpful, righteous judgments and then get over the fear of speaking them. How can you get over the fear of speaking these judgments? I don't know. Other than to tell you that you just have to do it. Probably the best way to get over your fear is simply to square up to it and say, I'm not going to be. beholden to you. I'm going to go ahead and say the thing or do the thing. And I'm going to do my best to do it graciously or kindly or gently. And then I'm going to go home and think about it or I'm going to have a conversation about whether I did it well or not. I'm going to submit myself to learning how to make righteous judgments. This is not something that comes naturally to us. The natural man, our flesh, doesn't have any interest in making gracious, kind, or righteous judgments.

We only want to inflict pain with our judgments. We call it justice, but it's a corrupted justice. It's not the justice of God. The fact that every one of us is living and breathing tells us a lot about the judgment of God. Every single day, His judgments are kind and patient and withheld from us. So, how then should we act toward one another? And so this is our work. This is a sermon where the cookies are on a pretty low shelf. Treat other people the way you want to be treated. Speak graciously as much as you're able. When you have opportunity, make judgments. You should be learning to make better judgments over time. And the only way you'll learn is by practice. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to fail, which is to say you're not going to get the log out of your eye. You're not going to see the log in your eye.

you're going to be unwilling to deal with the log in your own eye. The only way to learn these things is to do them. There have been times I've gone into counseling sessions or into meetings thinking that I was the one going to do the confronting, and it turned out I was the one that was being confronted by the end of it. That happens. That happens. How else can we learn? What do you say when that happens? I'm sorry. I was wrong. I didn't see that thing. that you're saying, and it was a real problem. In fact, it was a much bigger problem, you know, like log compared to spec in terms of what's going on between the two of us. I'm sorry. The final thing I'll say to you about making judgments is trust God with the results of them. Your judgments are not a tool in your hand to manipulate people. They're just not. And if you use judgments to manipulate people, then you don't love them. Judgments are meant to be a warning. Judgments are

if they're done well, if they're good judgments, are a kindness or an expression of love. But many times when you make judgments, you're going to be saying things that are very uncomfortable to say and they're very uncomfortable to hear. And so ask God to give you words to speak. Ask God to give you a soft heart to hear the words that are said to you. Trust God to bring about the fruit from those words and from those judgments. Your concern is not what he does with it, but doing it to the best of your ability by faith. Let's pray.