Sermon 6.14

The Opposite of Love

Scripture

 ¹ "Judge not, that you be not judged. ² For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. ³ And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? ⁴ 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? ⁵ Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
⁶ "Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.

 

Sermon

Perhaps a generation or two ago if you were to go up to try and discover the Bible verse that people know the best, people would say, "For God so loved the world" (John 3:16). Today, when people do this kind of survey a certain other verse comes to the forefront. What is the verse? The verse is the first verse of our Scripture passage, "Judge not that you be not judged". A rapper who was shot in the 90s named Tupac Shakur was best known for the tattoo that was on his right shoulder. What was that tattoo? "Only God can judge me", with a huge cross beneath it.

Perhaps one of the most common objections to people not coming to church is the fear that when they walk through the church doors they will be judged. People say this in a number of different ways. When they are being polite they say things like, "I am afraid if I walked through the doors of that church the roof would fall in." or "church is fine, but I am not sure it is the place for me". When people are angry they say things like "the church is full of hypocrites" or something similar.

We as Christians also know about judgment because it does not take very long before those outside of evangelical Christianity angrily judge us. If we have moral convictions that stand in conflict with mainstream behavior we are judged and labeled. If you are pro-life it is not very long before you are labeled anti-woman. If you believe that homosexuality is immoral you are a bigot. If you refuse to cut corners or cheat at school or at work you are judged to be self-righteous. If you help the poor in Jesus name you are labeled as a liberal.

Self-centered judgment is not constrained to religious life. It permeates all of our lives. It even runs through about everything we watch on television. Judging what the phenomenon of reality tv is about. It is why Reality TV is so popular. Voyeurism allows us to watch people and judge them. Especially celebrities who we suspect think they are better than us. It is what the Miss America pageant is about. At least it was when people watched it our house. We sat at our tvs, ate junk food, and nit-picked how poorly dressed or poorly spoken these women are that place themselves up for us as models of beauty. And every once in a while my aunt would yell, "I don't know what that woman is doing up there, she a horse-faced blonde." For some reason my aunt had a thing against skinny blondes in bathing suits. Anyway…

Watching sports is not all that different. We watch, we say what we would have done, we yell at the TV when someone made a bad throw or a poor tackle. In fact, if you sit in a group of people watching a game you will probably hear some balding, overweight man jump up and yell, "I could have made that tackle!" It might even be your pastor. Television news does the same thing. People pick a side, and they look for every little thing and every little way to judge people.

Being judgmental is a part of our sin nature. From the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve judged God as unloving and not looking out for what was best for them, judgementalism and sin have been entertwined. From the time Satan tempted us to try and play God in the Garden of Eden by judging God, we have been easily seduced into doing the Devils work by judging and accusing one another.

And because being judgmental is actually playing God in people's lives, it can be very seductive in religious folks' lives. It can come across feeling very spiritual, righteous, and holy. As a matter of fact, judging one another is one of the most destructive things to God's work here on earth. This is because choosing to judge people is the opposite of loving them.

The minute we judge someone we can easily slap a label on them, never get to know them, never get to understand them. The minute we judge someone we can place ourselves in the "good camp" and others in the "bad camp" and never treat them with courtesy, never have to actually care enough to be involved in their lives. We even can excuse ourselves from associating with them. Once we judge someone we can place them on a list of less valuable. Jesus teaches that each person has intrinsic and eternal value. When we judge others, we demean the one that Jesus has created and come to die for. Once we begin to judge others, we contradict the message of Jesus that says there is no such thing as a hopeless person or a lost cause. When we judge others, we judge Jesus as a liar, when the truth is that Jesus is THE WAY THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE. Judging others is sin. Very subtle and insidious evil.

This command to not judge is an integral part of Jesus' message. It is something that we need to understand. It is something that we need to live. So, this morning we are going to look at this oft-quoted and even more misunderstood passage. We are going to look at what the command not to judge means, and how it is misunderstood. We are going to look some more at why it is important not to judge. And that we are going to try to get to how a non-judgmental life looks in our everyday lives.

 

1. What does it mean to judge someone?
   

This may seem like a simple question to start with, but it is worth investigating.

I think it is easier to start with what judging is not. And you have to look no further than the last verses in this passage. The text talks about not throwing our pearls before swine, and about casting what is holy before dogs. In other words….

1. Choosing not to judge others does not mean we have to sacrifice discernment or good judgment.
   

Just because we are told not to judge does not mean we need to sacrifice and the common sense that God has given us. We are called by God to make good choices. To discern what is wise from what is foolish. What is smart from what is dumb. What is God's will from what is not God's will. That is our responsibility as apprentices or disciples of Jesus. When we are told not to cast our pearls before swine, we are told to exercise GOOD JUDGMENT in our relationships with others without JUDGING THEM. There is a difference between being discriminate and discerning, and being damning.

So let me quickly run through what Jesus command from not judging does not refer to:

1. Choosing not to judge my neighbor does not mean that I should not have moral convictions.
   
2. Choosing not to judge my neighbor does not mean that I should avoid making difficult decisions in my life, at my job, with my family, or at school.
   
3. Choosing not to judge other PEOPLE does not mean I should not use my critical thinking skills, even though that might lead to disagreements with other people
   
4. Choosing not to judge does not mean that we will never need to compassionately and humbly confront others about anything. Though it does mean that we may need to learn compassion and humility before we confront others
   
5. Choosing not to judge does not refer to having wisdom and discernment in our dealing with people and with situations.
   

If a man were to run into this church on a murderous shooting spree, it would not be self-righteous or judgmental for you to evacuate as quickly as possible. If a person has a history of abusing children, it is not judgmental to not allow them to then work with children. That is just good common sense.

Some of you have to spend your work time evaluating people. You are a police officer that has to deal with dangerous people. You are a banker that has to evaluate if someone should receive a loan. You are a supervisor on a construction site that has to hire and fire employees. You are a trucker that has to do decide who to drive for. These kinds of decisions, in and of themselves, are not what we are talking about when we are talking about being judgmental.

You are a teenager or a young adult. You are invited to a party where there is a lot of drugs, and a little booze. You know people are going to get in trouble. You are not being judgmental by choosing not to go.

 

1. What judging does refer to….
   

The word used in the Greek for judging when Jesus says, Judge not…or you will also be judged by the same standard is the word krino. Say it after me: krino.

Krino is the Greek word from which we get the English word CRITIC. The word is also translated in the Bible as condemn. To pass a final verdict on someone. Again, the temptation to judge someone in the way the Bible commands us not to is an attempt to play God in their lives. We may recognize sin in others, but when we do, we need to recognize that person as a fellow sinner, not as someone who is less or more righteous than we are.

When we are commanded not to judge, we are commanded not to do the following things:

1. We are commanded not to have a critical spirit toward someone.
   
2. We are commanded not to see that person who we see sinning as a lesser person than ourselves.
   
3. We are commanded not to create a hierarchy of holiness or righteousness in the church
   
4. We need to not spend our time comparing ourselves with others
   
5. We need to not spend our time trying to figure out is good and who is bad. Who is in and who is out. Who is one of us, and who is not really good enough to be one of us.
   

Again I repeat, when we harbor the kind of critical, self-righteous attitude that creates a holy huddle, and everyone else as sinners unworthy of our hope, time, resources, and attention, then we stand against Jesus. We stand against the cross. We stand against the gospel.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Because the next thing I want to look at is why we should not judge.

 

1. Why does Jesus want us to stop judging others?
   

Before I get into the points on your outline, I want to tell you a story about myself, and a friend and a mentor of mine. When I was younger I really discovered what it meant to follow Jesus at a church in Ashland, Oregon. I was loved into the faith really. The pastor and the assistant pastor there at Mountain View Baptist Church took me under their wing. They supported me and loved me. And because they did I am here with you today. They taught me a love for the word of God and a passion to help people grow in their knowledge of Jesus.

Yet there was a darker side to life at Mountain View Baptist Church. It was legalistic and judgmental. Wearing shorts on any occasion was immoral, and anyone who wore them had moral issues. Listening to any contemporary music was considered a betrayal of our Christian convictions. Boys who wore earrings were shouted down from the pulpit. Boys and girls were not allowed to swim together. Dancing was never acceptable. Regular beatings of your children were required to be the kind of parent's God wanted. Only the King James Version of the Bible could be read in worship. School textbooks were protested.

I left that church after my mom graduated from college and I entered 9^th grade. But later I reconnected to my pastor friend. I was asking if our church kids could sleep at his church on our way to San Francisco, CA. He told me his story. He told me how in his life became more and more legalistic, and he became more and more judgmental. As the faith he taught became more and more legalistic, and it got to the point to where he could not live up to his own judgments and legalisms. And somehow, he was not quite clear how, he stumbled in his faith to where he dropped out of the ministry, almost lost his family. He sold insurance for a couple of years. And then he started to be mentored by another pastor in a different denomination. At first he just wanted to get his life together. The key to him putting his life back together was what he learned in those mentoring discussions. "It is all about the love of God, Clint, and us sharing that love with others."

Why stop judging others?

1. One reason is that it blinds us to our own faults and our own need for God's grace.
   

Verses 3-5 put it this way. It says that we should remove the plank from our own eye before we attempt to remove the speck from our neighbor's eye. It is a comical picture really. The Greek word for speck refers to something super small and very minute. The Greek word for plank has to do with a foundational support for a building. If you wanted to modernize the metaphor Jesus uses here you might say remove the telephone pole from your own eye before you help your neighbor with the speck of sawdust that is irritating his own eye.

You might think this means for instance, that before you judge someone else for not giving enough to the church, you should make sure that you are a good giver. Some Bible commentaries try to get away with this. I think this is too narrow a reading of the passage. We tend to be less judgmental of those sins we commit ourselves, because we don't want to be judged for those, and more judgmental of people who commit sins that we don't struggle with.

I think what the Bible is saying is that we need to really look the sinfulness and pride that fills our whole lives before we take the time to judge the one or two little things we do not approve of in our neighbors life. It says that it is easy to get all focused on what is wrong with our neighbor, their problems, and their sin, and totally ignore the sin that is in our own life.

1. Another reason to stop judging others is that it weakens our relationships with God and one another.
   

Look back at my former pastor's story. His legalism nearly destroyed his relationship with his children and his wife. His judgmental attitude and the repercussions of it did cost him the church that he served. I am convinced this is because when we judge we are acting like we want to take the place of God.

Look at verse 2 for this. It says that the same way we judge others in the way that God is going to judge us. In other words, stop judging because God is our judge and we are not called to be one another's judge. When we pass verdicts on one another we are forgetting that we have been saved by God's grace and not by our own power.

How can we expect to have healthy relationships with people when we come to them as fault finders? How can we hope to help people when we come to them as aloof and self-righteous? How can we have loving relationships with people when we make it impossible for them to disagree with us without being thought less of?

How can you have a healthy relationship with God when you think you are already righteous and you know everything? How can you walk humbly before your God when you are playing God in the lives of others?

Do you want a faith that seems powerless and useless? Do you want to have a form of righteousness where you have a whole bunch of reasons why you are a good person, but yet God seems far away and your friends seem distant? Be a judgmental person. Because being judgmental will leave you feeling alone and tired, and more vulnerable to all sorts of temptation.

1. Judging hinders our church and our witness to the world
   

We have already discussed what people's greatest objection to the church is. It is that they feel judged by people that call themselves Christians. I will admit there are several places where I do not feel comfortable attending church. Because when I walk into the church I know that I am going to be judged instead of loved. And I am a preacher. If we want to be a church that God uses, we need to be a church that when people walk through the door, they are overwhelmed by acceptance. And they know that they can come to church and be honest about their pasts and the mistakes they have made and not have people wag their finger at them or shake their heads in disgust.

The minute we as a church become judgmental, people outside and inside the church see God as the kind of God who sees people as hopeless instead of a God who has a great plan for us. The minute we become judgmental we communicate that God is like a sheriff hunting us down for breaking the law instead of a loving Father waiting for his runaway son to come home.

A man named John Ortberg tells a story about feeling like he needed to have someone in his life where he could confess his sins to and open his heart to. He made an appointment with his friend. And he laid out the struggles he was having, some of them not very pretty, and waited for his friend to disown him. His friend said, "John, I have never admired and respected you as much as I do right now!"

That is the kind of church I want to be a part of! The kind of church that has as its goal journeying together to be more like Jesus. Our spiritual lives are not graded on a curve, where we try and be better than the average person. In fact, we should forget this idea that God is up there grading us at all. God is our Father, calling out to his runaway children, urging them to come home. He doesn't want to place a pass/fail label on us. He just wants us to bear the labels "forgiven" and "born again".

1. Judging someone is the opposite of loving them.
   

As I have mentioned before, we need to not judge because judging someone is the opposite of loving someone.

When we love someone, we value them as the unique people they are. When we judge someone we place a label on them, put them in a category, and see them as someone other and less than ourselves.

When we love someone, we want and hope for the best for them. When we judge someone we look for the worst in them.

When we judge people, we try and get them to meet our expectations to make us happy, and get angry when they disappoint us. When we love people we accept people for who they are and hope that God can transform all of us into the people he wants us to be.

When I judge someone I make them my enemy. When I love someone, I see them as someone like me.

III.    So how do I learn to be less judgmental?

1. Learn to be transparent, open and honest about how God is working on you.
   

You don't have to be therapeutic or dramatic about this. We don't need everyone bearing their souls and sharing everything about their lives with everyone all the time. But, be honest about the sins you struggle with and how God is helping you with them. Don't try and hide it. Don't try and impress people with how holy you are and how good you have been. Be honest about how God has worked through your faults, and continues to change your character.

1. Take time to walk in another person's shoes
   

Once you learn a person's story, it is much easier to understand where they and have sinned and struggled and why they have done so. Remind yourself when you are feeling judgmental that you are who you are by God's grace, and not because of anything you have done. And seek to understand why your friend or neighbor may struggle with the sins they struggle with.

Remember that Christ came to save sinners like you and me.