Judgment vs. Judgmentalism | Matthew 7:1-5 | Gary Hamrick

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] for today we're looking at jesus's sermon the sermon on the mount and so matthew chapter seven so let me take you to a very serene place uh so that we can recalibrate our hearts this morning in a peaceful place the northern coast of the sea of galilee which is where jesus delivered this sermon again the longest recorded sermon in the bible that jesus delivered traditionally called the sermon on the mount matthew chapter five six and seven is the record of this sermon that jesus taught and so we're in chapter seven now i'm gonna begin at verse 1 and read just the first section here we're only going to look at the first five verses from matthew chapter 7. this is what jesus said judge not that you be not judged for with what judgment you judge you will be judged and with the measure you use it will be measured back to you and why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye but do not consider the plank in your own eye or how can you say to your brother let me remove the speck from your eye and look a plank is in your own eye hypocrite first remove the plank from your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye let's pray together lord we thank you on this day that we can gather here freely in your house to worship you and to study the bible together and i thank you for all those who are here and the many who are watching online we continue to pray for an end to the coronavirus so we can once again gather freely without restrictions and lord we just continue to just want to honor you and do our our due diligence and and during this time but uh lord we just we pray for for our nation for physical healing for spiritual healing for uh healing of all the divides lord right now and um we're we just know that you're the only one who can really provide that kind of peace and and unity and so we pray for revival in our land we thank you for the opportunity that that many had yesterday tens of thousands of people to gather on our national mall to just pray and to seek your face and and to just approach your throne of grace and and petition you lord with thanksgiving so thank you for the gift of prayer for the ability to commune with you and connect with you through prayer lord and we just continue to pray for our nation we lift up right now the the um the nomination process uh the confirmation process for uh judge amy uh coney barrett and um lord we we thank you for her strong faith and uh we we pray lord for her confirmation uh by the senate and um we we're just grateful lord that we get to live in the freest and greatest nation on earth continue to guard our hearts continue to use this sermon lord this teaching of jesus to challenge us and to change us to encourage us to equip us we love you lord and we thank you for your word and it's in jesus name that we pray and everybody said amen well it is interesting to me how people who know the bible and even those who don't really know the bible love to quote jesus on this point about not judging others and it is usually quoted for self-serving reasons nobody likes to be judged by somebody else and so again even people who don't know the bible reference this from time to time in defense of themselves you know don't judge me you know jesus said don't judge lest you be judged but the truth is that jesus did not say that we can't judge or that we shouldn't in fact in a few verses later from what we just read uh jesus says that we should be judging when it comes to certain people and he gives the example of false prophets if you look a little bit further here in chapter 7 look at verse 15 where jesus says beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly they are ravenous wolves you will know them by their fruits now i ask you how are we going to be wise and discerning about false prophets unless we exercise some kind of judgment jesus is actually telling us here that we must exercise some measure of judgment when it comes to people like false prophets so that we won't be deceived by them so there has to be the exercise of some discernment in order to make these kinds of evaluations it's not just in regards to false prophets think about the guy that shows up at your door to date your daughter okay you need to use a little judgment there all right if he shows up and you find out he's been kicked out of school he shows up high on weed and he thinks that socialism is just being really active on social media you need to judge the guy at least as it pertains to whether or not he should date your daughter if somebody you hire to paint your fence white and they end up deciding they're not going to paint it white they're going to stain it brown as as a christian are you saying to yourself well i just shouldn't judge the guy i mean after all he might have had a bad day maybe his mom didn't give him enough hugs or something and so you know jesus said we shouldn't judge no judge the guy don't pay him or else tell him to do it over and then you'll pay him if he does it right so contrary to belief contrary to popular belief that jesus says we shouldn't judge anybody that just simply isn't true exercising judgment when it comes to people is not a wrong thing in fact it is a necessary thing so then what is jesus talking about here well what jesus is condemning in this section of the sermon on the mount is not about judging others per se but it is about being judgmental and there is a big difference between judging and being judgmental judging someone is about discerning the truth based on facts being judgmental on the other hand is about finding fault with people being critical without cause based on personal feelings or assumptions that's the difference i'll say it again judging someone is about discerning the truth based on facts and that's not necessarily a bad thing in fact that's a necessary thing sometimes but being judgmental on the other hand is about finding fault with people being critical without cause based on personal feelings or assumptions now there are two basic ways that we can be guilty of being judgmental and and i'll put these points on the screen for you the first way that we are typically guilty of being judgmental about other people is based on their appearance and when i say based on their appearance i don't mean just their physical appearance although that's part of it i mean also their actions or their behavior which may not always be as it appears but because we don't know all the facts we are often quick to jump to conclusions and we become therefore judgmental so let me first talk about the idea of how we are judgmental about people based on their physical appearance because that that's an obvious and a bad way that we are often judgmental about people you talk about being judgmental i mean this is one typical way i mean the very definition of the word prejudice is the idea of pre-judging someone and oftentimes it is based on appearance it is to form to being prejudiced is to form an adverse opinion about someone based on whatever differences you might have with them this is prejudice this is this is being judgmental it can be based on the color of their skin it can be based on their accent it can be based on their culture it can be based on their gender it could be based on the way that they dress it could be based on the way if whether or not they are fit or whether or not they are overweight it can be based on whether they are attractive or unattractive which is obviously a very subjective thing and we will unfortunately and wrongly uh draw judgmental conclusions about people based on their appearance and our preference you see both favoritism and discrimination are often based on appearance those are those are evil twin sisters favoritism is wrong discrimination is wrong and it is often based on appearance i don't know if you are aware of this but studies have shown that attractive students get more attention and higher evaluations from their teachers that good looking patients get more personalized care from their doctors and that handsome criminals receive lighter sentences than less attractive convicts it's true and looks matter at work too apparently according to economics professors daniel hammermesh of the university of texas and jeff biddle of michigan state university what they call plain people plain people earn five percent to ten percent less than people of average looks who in turn earned three percent to eight percent less than those deemed good looking height and weight matters too a survey of male graduates of the university of pittsburgh found that the tallest students average starting salary was 12 percent higher than their shorter colleagues another study by the london guildhall showed that overweight women are more likely to be unemployed and that those who are working earn on average five percent less than their tremor peers according to dr gordon patzer who has spent more than three decades studying and writing about physical attractiveness he said quote human beings are hardwired to respond more favorably to attractive people even studies of babies show that they will look more intently and longer at prettier faces which come to think of it explains why my grandchildren stare at me all the time but anyway that's another thing i just came to my mind anyhow this is the very thing that james and his epistle condemns you don't need to turn there but in james chapter 2 verses 1 to 4. listen to what james said my brothers as believers and our glorious lord jesus christ don't show favoritism suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in if you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say here's a good seat for you but say to the poor man you stand there or sit on the floor by my feet have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts further on there in the same chapter james 2 verse 8 to 10 he adds if you really keep the royal law found in scripture love your neighbor as yourself you are doing right but if you show favoritism you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers so we need to understand this god loves all jesus died for all he shows no favoritism or discrimination and he wants us to treat others in the same way that he does so being judgmental based on appearance physical appearance is wrong it's sinful and being judgmental based on behavioral appearance appearance can also be wrong if you drive a car that has a side view mirror with these words etched in it you're familiar with how sometimes on our side view mirrors of our vehicles it says objects are closer than they appear like we didn't know but you know they're helping us out just to make sure that we know that little car in your side view mirror is actually a lot closer than it appears because appearance you know not everything is as it appears in john 7 24 listen to what jesus said john 7 24 do not judge according to appearance but judge with righteous judgment now notice again he didn't say you can't judge at all he just says there's a difference between judging by appearance which is not good and making right judgment we'll distinguish between the two in a minute but the mistake that we often make in life is to jump to conclusion about people based on one tiny part of the story that we see or that we hear it's a terrible thing that we're guilty of we jump to conclusions about people or circumstances based on one little tiny snippet of the story that we see or hear and with the rise of social media we have to especially be aware of this because with the rise of social media and everybody taking pictures and videos there is an epidemic of rushing to judgment there's an epidemic in our culture right now of rushing to judgment where you are expected to draw opinions about people and about situations through a limited snapshot often without context or facts just by appearance all based on what it looks like it's a terrible thing let me show you a picture here and just get your quick opinion based on just a quick snapshot of of a picture and i want you to just you know shout out what it is i'm gonna i'm gonna give it to you just for a couple seconds i'm gonna show one two three and on number three i want you to say what it is just a quick snapshot now it doesn't matter whether it is a human or whether it's an animal okay that's not the point just what the object is okay ready one two three what is it eyeball or what it's a sink draining it's an eyeball it's a sink draining which is it now when you first saw it though many of you saw an eyeball it's a kitchen sink that is draining and the water is swirling down the sink and soap suds are around it but most of you on the quick first impression it's an eyeball and you drew that conclusion based on something that you saw real quickly and you didn't have context or you weren't able to examine it longer when we don't have all the facts about something and we often don't we can end up making foolish assumptions and drawing conclusions that are often false and worse damaging to people's character and reputation i remember years ago a pastor friend of mine in florida was seen by someone in his congregation he was in a car driving around town with another woman in his car who was not his wife and someone else in the congregation saw it and started gossiping about it made a stink about it got other people riled up about it come to find out it was the pastor's sister visiting from out of state but by that point the damage had been done be very careful before speaking out about someone or something if you don't know all the facts context matters facts matter giving the benefit of the doubt instead of being reactionary matters people deserve that rather than judgmental assumptions so we make these kind of assumptions based on their appearance physical appearance behavioral appearance the things that it looks like that we think it might be we get little snippets of information we draw all these conclusions we have to stop that kind of stuff as followers of christ jesus is calling us to live by a standard that our culture may not live by but we have to be measured people we have to be patient people we have to gather facts before we draw conclusions we have to understand things more than just the appearance of it but another way that we're guilty of being judgmental if not by their appearance it's by our experience by our experience we impose often our own experiences or our own standards on someone else and judge them accordingly this is what we typically are guilty of the yardstick we use for ourselves is the yardstick that we use for the world for example if you're driven and successful but your co-workers are more methodical and diligent you may tend to look at them as incompetent and unambitious if you like to go out on the town and have a good time but someone else prefers to be a homebody and read a good book you may tend to look at them as inhibited and no fun if you have close relationships with your family then you will measure others by the same standard how close their family is to them how close they are to their family if they're distant from their family or they don't call them very much you'll judge them as detached ungrateful and uncaring we tend to judge people through the lens of our own life experiences or through our own personal standards and that tends to be judgmental if there is no clear biblical instruction about a matter but we quietly condemn someone in our own hearts or worse with our mouths because they don't do it the way we think it should be done we're being judgmental you know here's a simple example the public schoolers look at the homeschoolers as socially backwards and isolated the homeschoolers look at the public schoolers as secular and worldly am i right now neither is wrong just different but when we start to have those thoughts we're just simply being judgmental look you know if you want to be gluten free and if you want to eat free-range chicken and if you want to recycle your plastic and you're opposed to childhood vaccines that's you and and that's okay it just doesn't have to be me right and and the problem is the danger we get ourselves into is when we are so judgmental to think that you need to be just like me based on my experiences or my personal convictions or standards about something again john 7 24 jesus said do not judge according to appearance but judge with righteous judgment so appearances aside now their appearance or our experiences what is the right way then if jesus says don't judge a current appearance but judge with righteous judgment how are we supposed to make right judgments of others how do we do that well in in a word it's by god's preference it's we have to understand god's way of viewing things and then we make those kind of discerning judgments god's way and again judging is different from judgmentalism and so let me read the text again it's just five verses but but so that we can understand exactly what jesus is saying here verse 1 judge not that you be not judged for with what judgment you judge you will be judged and with the measure you use it will be measured back to you and why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye but do not consider the plank in your own eye or how can you say to your brother let me remove the speck from your eye and look a plank is in your own eye hypocrite first remove the plank from your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye now there are a few ways i think that this can be interpreted but i think the simplest way to just understand what jesus is saying here is that you and your friend okay it may not be a friend just you know might be just another person you and the other person you and your friend the reality is have the same sin struggle you and whoever it is have the same sin struggle now the particular sins that you struggle with and versus your friends struggle with with might be different okay all together we have all of them right but just individual to individual your particular sin struggle or your main one or your main couple of ones might be different in kind to the sin struggles of your neighbor but they are the same in size and by that i mean all sin carries the same weight and has the same offense against god all of it so whether one sin is lust or whether one sin is gossip it's the same size has the same weight now if any of you in that moment as i said that thought to yourself well i kind of am guilty of gossip but that's not as bad as lust you are exactly the person that jesus is talking to here okay because when you start to internalize that kind of thing and think to yourself well i have this issue but it's not about as bad as that issue then you're deceiving yourself and you're not aware of the sinfulness of your own heart when you start to compare yourself with other people and you think well yeah this is sin but it's not as bad as wait a minute it might be a different kind but it's the same way it's the same size it has the same weight it's the same offense against god another person's sin is no worse than your own we got to get this romans 2 verse 1 paul said this you therefore this is romans 2 1 you therefore have no excuse you who pass judgment on someone else for at whatever point you judge the other you are condemning yourself because you who pass judgment do the same things you do the same things might be a different type might be a different kind but it's the same size which is the point that jesus is making here when he talks about plank and spec some of your bibles will say um splinter instead of speck it'll say beam instead of plank or log okay in reality what he's saying is they're both the same size the difference is proximity and perspective proximity and perspective you see my sin is in closer view to me so therefore it looks bigger when it's in closer view your sin is your sin it's not up close and personal to me like it should be to you so your sin is your sin and it looms large my sin is my sin and it looms large but in reality they're the same size it's just that in perspective my own sin should be glaring to me more than your sin so because it's up close it looks a lot bigger it should be a lot bigger it's the plank versus the speck it's the beam versus the splinter but the reason that jesus is challenging us here is because to be judgmental is for me to see your sin as a bigger deal than mine that's what he's condemning here in fact jesus called this kind of judgmental person a hypocrite in verse five circle your bi the circle the word hypocrite and your bible's in verse five it's the greek word hupocrites hupocrites is from two other greek words hupo meaning under and krino meaning to judge a hypocrite is one who under judges self and over judges everybody else that's a hypocrite you look at everybody else and you see oh they got this problem they got that problem they got this issue they got that issue but you don't see it in your own heart that's a hypocrite you're under judging self you're over judging everybody else it's the lady who comes into my office and says i've been married five times and every single one of those guys loser lazy alcoholics and i'm thinking to myself lady you've been in my office five minutes and already i feel like a drink do you know what i'm saying to you because what does she say she's thinking it's all them those are all losers all those guys are bad and it's like she can't see she can't see the plank in her own eye you think it's all them always do you think it might not be a little bit of you when we have this mindset that it's always everybody else they have the bigger issue than i do you're deceiving yourself you're looking past the plank your own sin is what should confront you more than anybody else's that's why it looks like a po that's why it should look like a plank in your eye it's the same size but it should look bigger because it looms larger it confronts you closer it's your issues let me put it in in different terms because you know remember jesus was a carpenter and so he's using this illustration about a splinter and a log a speck and a plank back in those days actually carpenters were more like masons they did a lot of stone work because there was a lot more stone in israel but there were also trees there was also woodworking carpentry and so you know no doubt as a carpenter uh jesus may at times have been you know chiseling some wood and gotten some sawdust in his eye or a little a little speck a little splinter and so you know he's using an illustration here that would have been common to his own life into his own day since most of us are not carpenters let me just put it in some different words so we can understand what he's saying here all of us at some point probably on a hot summer day have had a nap fly in our eye right you ever had a napkin in your eye and when a neck gets in your eye you feel it's just like a bird has landed in your eye just like that is huge somebody help me and it blocks your vision you can't even look through it it's just a little tiny knot but all of a sudden you can't you can't even see out of the eye and you're like somebody help me and they they take a corner of their shirt and they make it you know they then they swab that little mat out of your eye and then you're like oh thank you for doing that but it looks huge it feels huge but that same size gnat in someone else's eye doesn't look huge to you it looks tiny it looks little and you're able to help them in the same way that maybe they helped you the idea is again it's proximity then that looks bigger in your own eye because it confronts you it's up closer it's in your eye but it's the same size as what your neighbor is struggling with and in reality what jesus is saying here is how are you able to look past the big thing in your own eye like it doesn't even exist to point out the thing in your brother's eye you've got similar sin issues is what he's trying to tell us so why do you take care of your own gnat which is up close and and and glaring so that you can see clearly to take the nat out of your brother's eye or your sister's eye so again he's he's not saying don't ever judge you know don't ever make any discernment about others but he's saying there's a right way to do this in fact he calls us to help help someone else with the speck on their eye but what he's basically teaching through this i'll summarize it in three quick points here's what he's saying there's a way to make right judgment and the first one is in the right order we have to deal with our own sin first otherwise it's hypocrisy to think we have no issues and so i'm just here to help you with your issues because it's always about your problem i don't have any problems no no no we all struggle with some types of sin issues so there's a right order to this we have to deal with our sin first number two we have to also make right judgments with the right heart it has to be about humility we have to understand that my sin is no different from your sin might be different types of sin but still the same size and then number three we have to make right judgments for the right purpose to help a brother or a sister not to shame them not to make them think that you have the issue i don't have the issue no it's about humility it's the right order it's for the right purpose i want to help you in the same way that i know that i'm going to need your help and so we approach we approach life together with a sense of humility a sense of grace a sense of understanding you know we don't we don't make allowances and like well that's okay i do the same thing go ahead it's it's it's you come under conviction you deal with your sin then you want to be able to help a brother sister with theirs we're in this together we're helping one another but there's a right order there's a right heart and there's a right purpose for which we are supposed to do these things and to basically summarize all of that into one takeaway it would be this what he's saying here is be more concerned about your own sin and have grace to help others with theirs okay can we at least just take that home with us right be more concerned about your own sin and have grace to help others with theirs amen amen let's pray together lord we thank you for your words and in this area many of us struggle we find ourselves being judgmental and oftentimes not even aware of it so i pray right now in jesus name as you bring it to our hearts if we are fault-finding people convict us of that right now by your holy spirit if we have a critical spirit toward others convict that right now in our hearts in jesus name if we are prejudiced towards others either showing favoritism or discrimination convict us of that right now in the name of jesus help us to understand lord what you're saying here in a deeper way even as we leave here later that it's okay we need to be wise and discerning about some people in certain situations judging is different from being judgmental and if there's any kind of judgmentalism in our hearts lord root it out rooted out right now in the name of jesus show it to us show it to us lord so that we would not continue to live like that and act like that towards others this is what you're calling us to this is your sermon on the mount lord where you are asking your followers to live in such a way that we show ourselves to be devoted followers of jesus christ if there's any fault-finding critical spirit or judgmentalism in our hearts or prejudiced rooted out rooted out lord show us in jesus name and i just want to pause in my prayer if if the lord's showing you that right now just confess that a sin just just say lord i know you're convicting me of this i see it as sin i'm sorry help me to live in a way that i'm more concerned about my own sin than the sin of others and let me only be concerned about the sin of others to the degree that i might help them in the way that they might help me with mine that lord we would remain humble before you broke in before you and gracious toward others this is our prayer in jesus name and everybody said amen and amen

Channel: Cornerstone Chapel - Leesburg, VA

Views: 13,786

Rating: 4.9120879 out of 5

Keywords: Cornerstone Chapel, Calvary Chapel, Gary Hamrick, Biblical sermons, leesburg va, cornerstone chapel leesburg virginia, great sermons by great preachers, Don’t judge me, Stop judging me, Why are Christians so judgmental, Why do Christians judge, Does the Bible say not to judge others?, Is judging someone wrong?, Doesn’t the Bible say I can judge someone’s actions?, What’s wrong with judging someone?, Why shouldn’t I judge someone?, What does Jesus teach about judging

Id: LgHxsDUyJeo

Length: 33min 33sec (2013 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 28 2020