Specks and planks
One of the most quoted verses of the King James translation of the Bible is probably “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” What does it mean to judge? There are three possible meanings of the word: 1. Judge as in a person who sits in a court room; 2. To discern; 3. To condemn.
Faith Service Worship Vision There may be times when you find it difficult to reconcile God’s truth to your own opinion or worldview, God’s truth is eternal, it does not change, our understanding of the truth does change as we allow God to work in our hearts and minds. These sessions are not about opinion, they are about learning truth, the truth contained in the Bible, together we are going to focus on how we apply God’s truth, black & white in a grey world. To set godly priorities, grow in Christian character and live according to God’s standards so that we are a living witness to others.
The basis of our belief: Session 12
Ashingdon Elim Bible Study 6 July 2010
Ever been called to jury duty? Ever been asked to ‘make a judgment’ about a matter? Some Christians seem to feel they are on ‘permanent jury duty’ as they go through life. And Jesus addresses this fact in the Sermon on the Mount. Are you quick to judge others? Why is it easier to jump to negative conclusions about people than it is to assume the best about them? When we do this, we ascribe to them bad intentions and evil purposes that may not be true. We also reveal something about ourselves, for the faults we see in others are actually a reflection of our own. Do you judge others by the same standards you live by, or by the standards you should live by? One of our greatest weaknesses is to condemn a person for one small action that we happen to disapprove of. We are experts at generalisation. All we need is to hear a someone say an unnecessary word to brand them as foolish. We see a parent lose their temper once and we call them the most bad-tempered person on earth. A friend fails to greet us just once and we classify them as unfriendly. Often we are quick to judge others by our standards, but we do not often judge ourselves either by our own standards or God’s. In this study we are going to consider wrong reasons and right reasons to judge. We are not supposed to judge without love and mercy. Ancient rabbis spoke about two measures of judgment, justice and mercy, and you must ask yourself what measure are you going to use. Some people use only justice, although they want to be judged all the time with the measure of mercy. But here Jesus speaks against this kind of behaviour. “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” 3
Matthew 7:1-5 (NIV) 1
Wrong reasons
“Lord, should we call fire down from heaven and consume them?!” (Luke 9:54)
They wanted to judge them right then and there. Jesus replied with a rebuke, saying, you don’t know Jesus had his group of disciples. They were constantly what manner of spirit they are of. verbally attacked by the Pharisees. Sometimes, They may have been right in their assumption, and people judge other people to gain control of them. perhaps Jesus knew they were right, but He didn’t Jesus was the Shepherd of this flock. It was his want them assuming a wrongful place of judgment responsibility to bring them into line, not the reserved for Him. Pharisees. Do you ever get involved in things that should be If a man digs a pit, he will fall into it; if a man rolls a stone, it will roll back on him. “none of your business”? (Proverbs 26:27) Remember the breakfast that Jesus had prepared for Destructive criticism has a way of coming back, if we his disciples after his resurrection from the dead? build reputations as fault finders that’s exactly how When they had finished eating the loaves and the others will deal with us. fishes, Jesus had a private conversation with Peter. He was told to “Feed my Sheep.” Then Jesus began To Clear your name. talking with John. It seems Peter was looking over the shoulder and said something like, “What about This has become an “art form” for the politicians John? What is his responsibility?” The basic response of our day. Almost every campaign issue becomes a of Christ was to tell Peter, “What is it to you?” That mud slinging contest. A politician assumes that if he is: It is none of your business! can make his opponent look bad, this will make him Why do so many people want to know everything look good.
To Control
that is going on?
Here is a good verse for us to consider:
None of us have a right to know everything. Only God can be the supreme judge of the universe. Inquiring minds may want to know, but they do not always have the right to know!
For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise. (2 Cor 10:12)
To Condemn
You may look “good” compared to someone else, but stand alongside of the sinless Christ, and you will conclude, “For all have sinned and have come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)
It would have the made the Pharisees happy if Jesus or any of his disciples were to fail. Their entire purpose was to crucify. 99% of the time when we try to judge the heart and motives of another, we don’t know all the facts. Again, God sees the heart, we do not. But instead of looking at the fruit we take it upon ourselves to pull at the root, and we miss it! “I’ve heard all I need to”, you’ll hear them say, because to further look into the other side of the situation would risk them not being able to judge negatively!
Oswald Chambers wrote in My Utmost for His Highest that Jesus would say to us as disciples: “cultivate the uncritical temper. It is not done once and for all. Beware of anything that puts you in the superior person’s place..... Stop having a measuring rod for other people. There is always one fact more in every man’s case about which we know nothing.” “Who of us would dare to stand before God and say “My God-judge me as I have judged my fellow men?” We have judged our fellow men as sinners; if God should judge us like that we would be in hell. God judges us through the marvelous atonement of Jesus Christ.”
We are fallible in our judgment. When we attempt to judge in the way God reserves only for Himself, inward judgment, we are likely to be wrong. It doesn’t take any brains to criticise. Don’t put yourself in the place of God! When Jesus sent messengers into Samaria to prepare for His arrival, and His messengers were rejected. What did James and John say?
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Conduct not motive
We are not to judge motives, but rather conduct. One is inward and the other is outward.
cannot see clearly to help him because of the log that is in your eye?” He goes on to say, “Get the log out of your eye, and then you can see clearly enough to help your brother to get the speck out of his eye!”
Imagine a policeman pulls you over for speeding and you say, don’t judge me, you don’t know my heart, what I’m going through today and he says, I’m sorry, but I’m not judging your motives, I’m judging your conduct. Conduct is concrete, not abstract, it’s objective, not subjective.
Before we can judge others, we must allow the Lord to judge us. May our prayer be: 23Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24)
Right reasons
After God has judged us and removed all our logs from our eyes, may we, with meekness help our brother or our sister in Christ removes the speck that is in their eye!
Discernment
It starts with us
Every day we have to make decisions. Often we may need to choose between a number of different things.
“Know Yourself. Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.” Ann Landers
When you are faced with a decision are you more likely to ask “What do I want to do?” or “What does God want me to do?”?
We need to start judgment with ourselves… examining ourselves first. Jesus said we should first deal with ourselves: “First take the log, the plank, the beam, out of your own eye.”
The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment: 16 “For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Corinthians 2:15-20)
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This principle is also taught in other parts of the New Testament: “But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have reason for boasting in regard to himself alone, and not in regard to another.” (Galatians 6:4)
When was the last time you asked for God to guide your decision? What happened? How often do you ask your friends rather than God to help your decision?
“But if we judge ourselves rightly, we should not be judged.” (1 Corinthians 11:31)
“Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” (1 John 4:1)
“Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith. Examine yourselves!” (2 Corinthians 13:5) What kind of church could be built if Christians would be as hard on themselves as they are on each other!
Discipleship Joshua said, “As for me and my house, we are going to serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15). It was his God given responsibility to judge his own home.
When we judge others it becomes more difficult to do an acceptable job of judging ourselves, we seldom looks at ourself with the same scrutiny that we look at others.
Duty
We may argue and say, “I do look at myself. I know I’m not perfect! But at least I’m not as bad as they are.” The issue is that we uses our naked eye on our own faults, or worse, an eye clouded with debris, but we use a microscope on others. Quite often our glaring faults are seen by everyone but us - one of the most glaring being a hyper-critical spirit!
Now it is time to put Do not judge, or you too will be judged. into its full context. The Pharisees had “beams” in their eyes and they gave the appearance that they were trying to remove the “specks” in the eyes of the disciples. Jesus told them, “How can you help your brother to see the problem with the speck in his eye, when you 3
In her later years Corrie Ten Boom told this story: “I wish I could say that after a long and fruitful life, travelling the world, I had learned to forgive all my enemies. I wish I could say that merciful and charitable thoughts just naturally flowed from me and on to others. But they don’t. I recall the time--and I was almost 70--when some Christian friends whom I loved and trusted did something which hurt me. You would have thought that, having been able to forgive the guards in Ravensbruck, forgiving Christian friends would be child’s play. It wasn’t. For weeks I seethed inside. But at least I asked God again to work His miracle in me. And again it happened: first the cold-blooded decision, then the flood of joy and peace. I had forgiven my friends; I was restored to my Father. Then, why was I suddenly awake in the middle of the night, rehashing the whole affair again? ‘My friends!’ I thought. ‘People I loved. If it had been strangers, I wouldn’t have minded so.’ “I sat up and switched on the light. ‘Father, I thought it was all forgiven. Please help me do it.’ “But the next night I woke up again. They’d talked so sweetly too! Never a hint of what they were planning. ‘Father!’ I cried in alarm. ‘Help me!’ Then it was that another secret of forgiveness became evident. It is not enough to simply say, ‘I forgive you.’ I must also begin to live it out. And in my case, that meant acting as though their sins, like mine, were buried in the depths of the deepest sea. The reason the thoughts kept coming back to me was that I kept turning their sin over in my mind. He still had more to teach me, however, from this single episode. Many years later, after I had passed my eightieth birthday, an American friend came to visit me in Holland. As we sat in my little apartment he asked me about those people from long ago who had taken advantage of me. ‘It is nothing,’ I said a little smugly. ‘It is all forgiven.’ “‘By you, yes,’ he said. ‘But what about them? Have they accepted your forgiveness?’ They say there is nothing to forgive! They deny it ever happened. No matter what they say, though, I can prove they were wrong.’ I went eagerly to my desk. ‘See, I have it in black and white! I saved all their letters and I can show you where...’ “‘Corrie! ‘Aren’t you the one whose sins are at the bottom of the sea? Yet are the sins of your friends etched in black and white?’
What can you so clearly see in someone else’s life that you can easily overlook in your own? There is a story about a man wanted to impress his friends with his eye for art as they went to a an art gallery together. He forgot his glasses, was shortsighted and could hardly see his hand in front of his face without his glasses. He figured he could wing it with any abstract comments and observations he wanted to make. He approached a frame and began criticising: ‘why would anyone want to paint something so hideously ugly? I mean, it’s a true rendering of the object, but why waste time with painting such a disgusting subject?’ Everyone around him was laughing, and his wife whispered into his ear, ‘John, it’s a mirror!’ Judgment must begin each morning as we look into the mirror of God’s Word! Our time is better spent dealing with our own shortcomings…and then we won’t have so much time to be tempted to focus on faults of others. Let’s cultivate an attitude that consistently looks at our own hearts first. Jesus is warning us not to judge people with a critical or hypocritical spirit. In the end, God will judge everyone fairly, objectively and completely. Paul wrote, “For each man will give an account of himself to God.” (Romans 14: 12) When I am wrong, make me easy to change; When I am right, make me easy to live with.” Peter Marshall If you are a Christian, you can expect folks to criticize, but you ought to live so nobody will believe them. Dr. Robert L. McKenzie
“For an astonishing moment I could not find my voice. ‘Lord Jesus,’ I whispered at last, ‘who takes all my sins away, forgive me for preserving all these years the evidence against others! Give me the grace to burn all the blacks and whites as a sweet-smelling sacrifice to Your glory.’ I did not go to sleep that night until I had gone through my desk and pulled out those letters—curling now with age—and fed them all into my little coal-burning grate. As the flames leaped and glowed, so did my heart.”
“What difference does it make to you what someone else becomes, or says, or does? You do not need to answer for others, only for yourself.” Thomas A Kempis (1380-1471)
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When we live by heaven’s record keeping instead of our own, we refuse to keep track of the wrongs that have been inflicted upon us. God’s love moves us to forgive instead of keeping score. Only heavenly record keeping enables us to see others through God’s eyes.