REVIEW
FLIP CHART: SOM’S KEY VERSE, GOAL, MOTTO
“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness ….” (Mt. 6:33a).
The law sends us to Christ for justification; Christ sends us back to the law for sanctification.
FLIP CHART: Show new “Perfect Righteousness” chart explaining steps to coming to Christ (As a worm, mourning, meek, spiritual hunger/thirst with the result of legal righteousness). Explain: moral righteousness, immediate moral change at conversion, gradual change through life’s challenges and speeding up moral change via CCRC (Concentration, Choice, Reflection and Confession/Thanksgiving). Key verse, “By one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Heb. 10:14).
FLIP CHART: John Stott’s outline of SOM.
I. A Christian’s character (5:3-12)
II. A Christian’s influence (5:13-16)
III. A Christian’s righteousness (5:17-48)
IV. A Christian’s piety (6:1-18)
V. A Christian’s ambition (6:19-34)
VI. A Christian’s relationship (7:1-20)
VII. A Christian’s commitment (7:21-27)
Some feel that all of SOM is an exposition on Mt. 5:20: For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
It also seems that the underlying ethic of the SOM is the idea of true Christian love.
INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER 7
Some commentators feel that the contents of chapter seven are unrelated blocks of material and that Matthew did a “cut and paste” in assembling them.
Martin Lloyd-Jones felt otherwise and wrote: There is quite clearly an underlying theme in the entire chapter – that of judgment.
John Stott feels the whole chapter deals with a network of relationships and outlines the chapter as follows:
1. To our brother, in whose eye we may discern a splinter, and whom we have a responsibility to help, not judge (1-5)
2. To a group startlingly designated ‘dogs’ and ‘pigs’. They are people all right, but such is their animal nature that we are told not to share the Gospel with them (6).
3. To our heavenly Father to whom we come I prayer, confident that he will give us nothing but ‘good things’ (7-11).
4. To everybody in general: The Golden Rule should guide our attitude and behavior towards them (12).
5. To our fellow pilgrims who walk with us along the narrow way (13, 14).
6. To false prophets, whom we are to recognize and of whom we are to beware (15-20).
7. To Jesus our Lord whose teaching we are committed to heed and obey (21-27).
To our brother, in whose eye we may discern a splinter, and whom we have a responsibility to help, not judge (1-5)
1“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3“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? 5You 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. (Matthew 7:1-5)
“I believe that this is a passage that has been misinterpreted, misquoted and misapplied more that almost any other text in the Bible. You could say that it is the favorite passage of Scripture in all the Bible among the unbelieving people of this world. This is especially true in our day, when so many people wish to justify their own sin and insulate themselves from any accountability for their behavior. Such people love to quote this passage in order to protect themselves from criticism.” (Pastor, Bethany Bible Church)
ILL: Of course we are all involved in making judgment calls everyday: Every time a young bachelor brought a prospective wife home, his mother criticized her unmercifully. The young man was at his wit’s end when a friend offered this advice: “Find someone like your mother.” So he looked and looked until he found a clone. She looked like his mother, her gait was like his mother’s, she talked like his mother, and she even thought like his mother. It was amazing! So he took her home. The next time he saw the friend who had given the advice and was asked how his mother liked the girl, the bachelor answered, “It went great. My mother loved her, but my father couldn’t stand her.” (Hughes, 228)
Tolstoy, the Russian novelist even held these verses to mean that Christ totally forbade the human institution of law courts and built his political philosophy around that idea. …. Which of course would have produced anarchy. And there was a large anarchist political movement in Russia. He developed what was called Christian-anarchism.
OUTLINE FOR TODAY:
THE CHRISTIAN AND JUDGING
I. Defining the word “judge”
II. The Christian is Commanded to Judge
III. The Christian is not Commanded to Abandon His Critical Faculty
AVOIDING JUDGMENTALISM
MARKS OF A CENSORIOUS / JUDGMENTAL SPIRIT
THE ART OF SPECK REMOVAL
DON’T JUDGE?!
I. DEFINING THE WORD “JUDGE”
“Judgment is an ambiguous word, in English as in Greek: It means sitting in judgment on people (or even condemning them), or it may mean exercising a proper discrimination. In the former sense judgment is deprecated; in the latter sense it is recommended.” Hard Sayings of Jesus, F.F. Bruce, pg.87)
The word krino is used in a variety of ways in Scripture. Here are a few:
Acts 14:46 – You do not consider (krino) yourselves worth of eternal life; Acts 20:16 — Paul had decided (krino) to sail past Ephesus … ;
I Cor. 2:2 – I resolved (krino) to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
The verb that’s translated “judge” (krinõ) is one that basically means “to separate”, or “to make a distinction” between things. In our day, the word “discriminate” has a negative connotation – often justly so. But it’s certainly not wrong to “discern” the distinctions between one thing and another. In a very basic sense, we “discriminate” between things every day. We couldn’t make sense of life if we didn’t. And the broad idea of “discriminating” between things is the basic meaning of this word. Figuratively, it refers to the act of evaluating something in terms of its rightness or wrongness, and then making a judgment-call on the basis of that evaluation. (Sermon delivered at Bethany Bible Church, March 13, 2005, from the Web)
“Krino (to judge) means basically to separate, choose, select, or determine and has a dozen or more shades of meaning that must be decided from the context.” (MacArthur, 432)
We need to clear up what the Bible does teach about judging before we can interpret this text!!!
II. THE CHRISTIAN IS COMMANDED TO JUDGE
“Do not judge, or you too will be judged (Mt. 7:1).
So why would you say that the Christian must judge even though Jesus clearly states, “Do not judge …”?
Simply stated, the task of interpreters of the Bible is to find out the meaning of a statement (command, question) for the author and for the first hearers or readers, and thereupon to transmit that meaning to modern readers. The interpreter will observe whether a given statement tends to be understood by a modern reader identically, similarly, or differently from the sense intended by the writer, and will adjust his explanation accordingly. (Mickelsen, Interpreting The Bible, p. 5)
“It shall greatly help ye to understand Scripture,
If thou Mark
Not only what is spoken or written,
But of whom
And to whom
With what words,
At what time,
Where,
To what intent,
With what circumstances,
Considering what goeth before
And what followeth.
(John Wycliffe (1324-1384)
In other words, in understanding our or any text “Context is King”! It is like the first three rules in selling/buying real estate – Location. Location. Location.
ILL: I have often wondered what would happen if such people were to say those words “Judge not” the next time they’re pulled over for speeding. What if the traffic cop pulled them over, rapped on their window, and told them, “Do you realize, sir, that the posted speed limit is 35 miles-per-hour, and that I clocked you in at 50?” Can you imagine if that person stuck their head out the window and said, “Judge not, that you be not judged”? I would hope that the traffic cop would have the composure to say, “Sir, I’m not judging you. The judgment has already been made by an authority higher than either you or me; and I’m simply charged with the responsibility of making sure that it’s enforced!” (Bethany Bible Church, Sermon, Taken from the Web)
Now if he was playing toy cars with his son and not wearing a police uniform his son could challenge him, “Judge not, that you should not be judged.” …. Location and context are key.
“In many circles, including some evangelical circles, those who hold to strong convictions and who speak up and confront society and the church are branded as violators of this command not to judge, and are seen as troublemakers or at best, as controversial.” (MacArthur, 431)
FLIP CHART / TABLE ACTIVITY QUESTION: How many instances can you see in the rest of Matthew 7 where we are clearly instructed to judge and/or make judgment calls? (Write examples on the flip chart.)
How can I put Matthew 7:6 into practice if I am not allowed go judge?
We are to judge pigs, dogs, false prophets, what to feed our children, fruit, a narrow way over a broad way, the building of a house / our lives etc.
“If this greatest sermon by our Lord teaches anything, it teaches that His followers are to be discerning and perceptive in what they believe and in what they do, that they must make every effort to judge between truth and falsehood, between the internal and the external, between reality and sham, between true righteousness and false righteousness – – in short, between God’s ways and all other ways.” (MacArthur, 431).
QUESTION: Give other Scriptures where Christians are commanded to judge and/or be discerning.
Examples in Scripture Where Christians Are Commanded to Judge.
CLASS ACTIVITY / READING SCRIPTURES: List the various verses on the Power Point. Have class members find and read the passages:
A brother who sins against you (Mt. 18:15-17)
“Judge not according to the appearance but judge righteous
judgment (John 7:24).
Keep away from those who are slaves of their appetites (Rom. 16:17-18)
Judge angels / disputes between believers (I Cor. 6:1-5)
Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather
expose them (Eph. 5:11).
Paul condemned people who deny the resurrection (II Tim. 2:16-17)
Paul condemned people who preach a false Gospel (Gal. 1:8)
Heretics are to be silenced (Titus 1:10-11)
“But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained
themselves to distinguish good from evil.” (Heb. 5:14)
Anti-Christs are to be rejected/avoided. (I John 4:1-3)
False teachers are to be rejected/avoided. (I, II John 1:7-11)
III. “DO NOT JUDGE” IS NOT A COMMAND TO SUSPEND OUR CRITICAL FACULTIES.
READING: Christlikeness is equated with a suspension of critical faculties – – a pious, all-accepting blindness. Ironically, the world loves opinionated people. Its darlings are those who are articulate and dogmatic about their positions on politics, art, music, literature, culture – – you name it! However, when it comes to matters of individual morality, the world abhors opinionated people, especially if they represent conventional morality. In these matters it adores the nonjudgmental person. The ideal Christian, and especially the ideal clergyman, is an undiscerning, flabby, indulgent, all-accepting jellyfish who lives out the misinterpretation of “judge not.” (Hughes 228)
Does this verse command us to suspend our ability to evaluate other people, to turn a blind eye to their faults? To avoid criticism at all costs? To refuse to discern between goodness and evil, truth and error?
John Stott gives a couple of reasons why it can’t mean that:
1. It would be dishonest and thus hypocritical to just live as if everything were fine when it was not.
2. It would contradict living according to our nature as created in the image of God, e.g. the ability to make value judgments.
3. The whole Sermon on the Mount assumes, moreover commands us to make value judgments.
A fourth reason added by Martin Lloyd-Jones:
4. The Protestant definition of the church is, ‘that the Church is a place in which the Word is preached, the Sacraments are administered, and discipline is exercised’. (MLJ, 164)
And a fifth:
5. In using our ‘critical powers’ we are simply evaluating the rightness or wrongness of things on the basis of God’s Word. God has set the standards and is passing judgment, not us.
As believers, it is not our duty to create the standards for right and wrong. That’s already been done by our Father who is the Lawgiver. But it is our duty to evaluate the rightness or wrongness of things on the basis of God’s word, and to call sin “sin” when the Bible does so. In that case, we are not “judging”; but are simply pointing to a judgment that has already been made by One who is qualified to make it.” (Bethany Bible Church, from the Web)
SO WHAT???
1. When interpreting Scripture, e.g. “Do not judge …” we need to pay very close attention to the context of the words being interpreted.
2. The Bible clearly states, again and again, that we will need to use our critical faculties to judge individuals and situations.
3. It is completely wrong and unscriptural for a Christian to just turn a blind eye to the faults of others and act as if nothing is wrong.