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Welcome to the Bridge Church VB Podcast, your weekly source for uplifting and transformative Sunday messages! Each episode features insightful, practical teachings rooted in Scripture, designed to inspire and guide you on your spiritual journey. Led by our passionate Lead Pastors, Archie and Tangie Callahan, we strive to create a welcoming environment that encourages individuals from all walks of life to connect with the person, power, and purpose of Jesus Christ.
In this podcast, we delve into relevant themes and timeless biblical truths that speak to the challenges and joys of everyday living. Whether you’re commuting, exercising, or simply seeking encouragement, our messages aim to empower you to grow in faith and discover your unique purpose.
Join our vibrant community of believers as we explore how to apply God’s Word in practical ways, fostering a deeper connection with Him and one another. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to enrich your life through these dynamic teachings. Connect with us and find out more at www.bridgechurch.tv!
You ever notice that life can become blurry?
It can become something that's hard to see.
There's things hard to see in life.
And sometimes we live our lives in a blur.
Things are not clear.
Life's not clear.
People become blurry.
People become complicated.
People become just weird.
You ever have people in your life, they just become weird overnight.
And life just becomes blurry.
For me, that first service was real blurry.
It was 8.30.
But I stepped up on the stage and began to preach.
I could see nothing.
I was like, what's wrong with my eyes?
What has happened to my vision?
I'm supposed to be a visionary.
I'm supposed to be a leader.
I couldn't see anything.
I couldn't see people's faces.
And while I was speaking, I discovered I couldn't even see my iPad.
I discovered that I had forgot to put my glasses back on.
I don't know what that first service got out of that sermon because I could see nothing.
How many of you know, sometimes when it comes to the subject that we're going to be speaking on today, it becomes very blurry.
It's the subject of plank before speck.
It's the subject of Jesus talking about judging.
How many of you know, our judgment has become blurred because we don't see correctly.
And all throughout scripture, the Bible is trying to correct our vision.
is trying to correct our sight.
My sister tells this hilarious story of when she was in high school, and nobody can tell it like her, and I might not do it justice.
But she tells her this story, waking up one day, going to high school.
She was running a little bit late and decided to drive my dad's small farm truck.
She runs out the door, gets the keys, runs out the door.
She throws her book bag in the back of the truck.
She jumps in and drives 10 miles to school, pulls up at the parking lot, grabs her book bag, runs into the school, into her class, just in the nick of time, and sits down.
Teacher begins to teach.
She pulls out her books and all of a sudden she's hit with a whiff of rank stink.
And she becomes incensed to the point that she begins to accuse the people around her that they haven't washed, they haven't taken.
Who would come to school and not take a shower?
She even went as far as to say somebody's feet is rotten.
She looked around.
She was mad.
She was uptight.
She was waiting for the bell to ring.
She wanted to escape the odor cloud that had engulfed her private space.
The bell rings.
She grabs her book bag, puts her books in there and gets out and runs out in front of everybody trying to escape the stink.
She gets to her next class.
She sits down.
She pulls out her books.
Teacher begins to teach.
And again, that rank odor invades her private space.
She looks around.
She's furious.
She's mad.
Who has not taken a bath?
Your feet's rotten.
She looks around and spots a person near her who was in her last class.
And she begins to judge that person.
That person stinks, man.
I'm glad they're not in my next class.
I am glad I'm not like them.
The bell rings.
She runs out and goes to the bathroom.
She throws a book sack up on the counter.
She uses the bathroom and she washes her hands and she grabs her book bag by the bottom and picks it up only to discover that there's something slimy on her hand.
She pulls out her hand and her hand is covered in manure from the farm truck.
She washes her hands, pulls out her books and throws her book bag in the garbage and walks out furious.
The whole time she had judged everybody around her without examining herself first.
How often do we do that?
We judge the folks around us, and we don't do any self-examination.
The fact is, true righteousness examines itself before it evaluates anyone else.
Paul said this in the New Testament, examine yourself to see if you be in the faith.
We must look at our own lives.
And as we've been looking at the Sermon on the Mount, we discover that Jesus begins to take practical principles and apply them to kingdom living.
The Sermon on the Mount has been called the Constitution of the Kingdom, the Magna Carta of the Kingdom, the Charter of Christian Living.
And Jesus lays out principles how believers, how Christians are supposed to live in a world that is so manipulated, so full of wickedness.
so full of pain and hurt.
He tells us how to live.
So most of the time when I need my eyes or my vision, my spiritual eyes to be corrected, I'll go back and read chapters 5, 6, and 7 of Matthew because that gives me a spiritual tune-up on how Jesus wants me to live my life.
Now, if you haven't read the Sermon on the Mount in the last 20 years, I can tell you this.
You're probably way off course.
And you've created your own religion and your own metrics and your own standards of righteousness.
I believe on a yearly or even a quarterly basis, it would do us all good to go read that.
Because in that, he teaches about divorce.
He teaches about oaths.
He teaches about building your house on the rock.
He teaches about not to worry.
Not to get uptight.
He talks about repentance.
He talks about the eyes.
In fact, in chapter 6, he says we need healthy eyes, not unhealthy eyes.
In chapter 7, he talks about an eye that has a plank.
Now, I'm not Buford Pusser.
I'm not walking tall, but I do have a plank.
And rest assured, don't judge me on my plank.
It's a pretty plank.
It came out of the Connex box behind the church.
It's a beautiful plank.
Your plank is pretty.
We all have planks.
Don't judge me on my plank.
You say, Pastor, that plank's short.
But it's a pretty plank, isn't it?
It's a 2x4.
It's beautiful.
It's a plank.
So Jesus says we have a plank.
Some people have a speck.
And the Bible says a lot about the eyes.
In fact, Job says that he made a covenant with his eyes that he would not look on a virgin lustily.
Lustily.
Psalmist said, open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things from thy law.
The Bible says in Proverbs 6 that God hates haughty or prideful eyes.
Hebrews 12, we fix our eyes on Jesus, the author, the finisher, the perfecter of our faith.
Psalm 123, we look to the hills.
We put our gaze in the heavenward option where Jesus, God himself, is enthroned in the heavens.
We look on things that are above and not on earthly things.
The eyes are very important.
In fact, Jesus said the eyes are the lamp to the body.
And if the eyes are dark, the whole body is full of darkness.
Our eyes often grow dark because of plank.
My friend, the plank.
Pastor Chuck Swindoll, great pastor, great author.
was preaching a conference in California.
It was a multi-day conference.
And on the first day of a conference, he walks through the door and this gentleman comes up and shakes his hand.
He says, man, I've been waiting for this week a long time.
I'm going to eat up every word you say in this conference.
That night on the first night of the conference, Pastor Chuck Swindoll was preaching.
And while he was preaching, he noticed this same man on the third row fast asleep.
Eyes closed, head back in the third heavens, sawing logs.
And while he was preaching, he became furious.
He was mad.
This guy said he was going to eat up all my words.
How can he eat if he's asleep?
The next night he was preaching on the third row.
The man was still asleep.
Second night came, this man was asleep.
Fourth night, this man was still asleep.
He was furious about this man sleeping through his sermon.
The next morning, the fifth morning, his wife comes up to Pastor Chuck Swindoll, shakes his hand.
He says, my husband loves your preaching.
He wanted to be here all week.
And I want to apologize that he was sleeping during your sermon.
But he has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
He's only got a few weeks to live.
And this was his last dying wish.
He wanted to hear you preach.
Chuck Swindoll said, I could have crawled under a rock.
I had judged this man from the stage harshly, not knowing that I should have judged him with grace.
How often do we judge people harshly and we don't even know their circumstance or their situation?
So Jesus comes in and he begins to teach on judging.
And this is what he says in Matthew chapter seven, verse one through five.
And I want you to take out your Bibles and go there.
Even if it's a digital one, if it's a paperback, open it up.
I want to encourage you to bring your Bibles.
Just don't, we know we put it on the screens, but don't depend upon that.
You know, you can't carry the screen home, but you need the Bible.
You need to know your Bible.
It says, do not judge or you too will be judged.
For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged.
What way?
The same way.
What way?
The same way.
And with the measure you use, it will be measured to what?
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?
How 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 eye?
I can't see y'all.
You hypocrite.
First take the plank.
out of your own eye and then you will be able to see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye so in everything due to others verse 12 what you would have them do to you for this sums up the law and the prophets i want to ask you a question did jesus really say not to judge
We hear this all the time, man, all the time in our culture.
Don't judge.
Don't judge.
You're not supposed to judge.
Don't you be the judge.
Don't judge me.
But is Jesus making a blanket statement for all time and space not to judge?
How many of you know, some of you made a judgment this morning.
You judged whether you should go to church on a rainy day or not.
And you made a good judgment.
You're here.
Now, for all the people that didn't come, they made a bad judgment.
Don't judge.
See, judgment is not wrong.
See, there is room for righteous judgment, which the Bible calls discernment.
Discernment is based on humility and love for other people.
It's making a decision that is in line with God's word.
It's distinguishing between truth and a lie.
Between what's right and what's wrong.
What creates life and what creates death.
So we all make judgments.
We all make decisions.
So to say that Jesus said you should never judge is totally wrong.
I mean, the Bible says bad company corrupts good character.
Now, if bad company corrupts good character or good morals, that means I've got to make a judgment on the people I continually associate my life with.
Right?
Right?
So Jesus wasn't making this blanket statement that you should never judge.
No, he was teaching us to have spiritual discernment and righteous judgment so that we can tell truth from lie.
So what is the plumb line to my righteous judgment?
It's the word of God.
So I take the word of God and I begin to judge justly.
I began to make decisions based on the plumb line, the authority of God's word.
Now let's bring that down to a practical level.
In our state, there's coming an election in our nation.
We're electing politicians, right?
And I'm not a very political guy, but I understand politics and they are important.
The Bible says the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord.
And so I want righteous government, but it's hard to find righteous people in government, but I believe God places people there.
But on our state constitution, there are three amendments coming up in November.
Now, don't turn me off because you think this is political.
This is not political.
I'm just using it as an illustration.
Don't check out.
Don't judge me.
Don't judge me.
But I think there are two that are very important to the church.
The first amendment is the amendment to enshrine into law the constitutional right...
that an abortion is your right in our state.
But here's the deal about that.
As believers, if we're going to make a righteous judgment, guess what we have to do?
We have to go to God's word, not our preference, not our opinion.
We have to go to God's word and say, God, what does your word say about abortion?
Abortion is no different than the ancient world giving their kids to the god Moloch and fire sacrifice.
It's the same spirit cloaked up in doctor dress and nurse's garments.
So what in our state they're saying is that abortion at any level, unrestricted, unrestrained, unfettered abortion in our state needs to be enshrined in our constitution.
Now, as a Bible-believing Christian, what do I do?
I go to God's word and I don't get political.
I go to God's word.
Come on.
We don't vote through political lenses.
We vote through biblical lenses.
I go to God's word and say, is this righteous or unrighteous?
And if I read the word correctly and I interpret it according to scripture, I would have to say abortion is murder.
Now, here's the deal.
Does God hate people that have had abortions?
No, he loves all people.
And Bridge Church has grace for people that have been through abortions, that have given their babies over to abortion.
We have grace, but we as a people of God have to judge justly.
We have to discern rightly.
And if I don't read the word of God, I lose my discernment.
So the standard of righteous judgment is not my opinion or my preference.
It's the word of God.
And that becomes the final authority.
If I'm a Bible-believing follower of Jesus.
Now, also, there's another amendment that will illustrate this.
It's the amendment of a same-sex marriage.
Now, it's already legalized federally.
Our state just wants to align its constitution with the federal government.
However, within the statements of that new amendment, it holds all non-profits, even churches, accountable for hate speech, for not marrying same-sex people.
I mean, the government wants to get in the church.
The separation of church and state was to keep the state out of the church.
Not to keep the church from infiltrating government.
Come on.
We don't know civics.
We've taken it out of school for the most part.
We don't know government.
But I'm telling you that's true.
And so what happens is Bridge Church has to adjust its bylaws.
Look at them every three to five years because when states change laws, we have to say we're going to stand on the word of God.
And if it costs us our tax exempt status, we'll give it over to you.
Because we're not going to come off the word of God.
We're going to stand true and let every man be a liar.
Let every man be a liar.
That is righteous discernment.
And we've lost our discernment in the world because the church has not been clear.
It's been muddy.
So we muddy the gospel and everybody else is muddy.
And where the pulpit is silent, the people struggle.
You hear me?
I'm not going to back down.
I'm not a puppet.
I'm not a string you can pull to make me say what you want me to say.
I'm a man of God.
God called me.
He brought me here.
Guess what?
I'll be here when you're not or somebody else like me.
We have to have righteous judgment.
Now, Jesus was not saying never make decisions, never judge between right and wrong, life and death, good and evil.
What he was saying, he was saying, don't be judgmental.
You get it?
There's a difference.
So what's the difference between righteous judgment and being judgmental?
Judgmental is having this holier than thou attitude.
It's an attack on the personhood of a person, the core identity of a person.
It's judging somebody based on their skin color, based on how they talk, based on where they live.
It's an attack on their personhood.
When we become judgmental and we judge people that harshly,
We're losing the fact that every one of us are created in the image of God.
And when we attack a person's core identity, we're attacking the image of God in that person.
They are image bearers of God.
That's when I become judgmental.
I become angry.
I become prideful.
I become into the world with this sense of superiority.
I'm better than you.
And my opinion is what really matters of you.
It's the preference that I have about you.
How many of us today will go out to eat and if our waitress doesn't do the right thing, we make a harsh judgment on her personhood.
She's lazy.
Got quiet in this gospel church.
She probably is not lazy.
She probably has three jobs, four kids trying to take care of them and needing you to give a good tip and you don't.
You leave 4% and then you tell her you go to Bridge Church.
Don't do that.
Please don't do that.
Don't leave her track, a gospel track and leave her 4%. 4%.
We have these harsh judgments.
Look here what it says in John chapter seven, verse 24.
Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.
How many of you know, I can't see correctly unless I go to the eye doctor and he prescribes me some new lenses.
About every 18 months, I need to go get some new lenses.
They get scratched.
My vision becomes blurred.
Things get hard to see.
So if I'm going to judge correctly, I don't judge by my preferences and I don't judge by my opinions.
I take God's word out and I judge righteously.
Look here, with love and humility.
with love and humility.
That's the way we judge.
Now in this text that we read today, they're scripture texts.
There are three things I want you to see.
Number one, we're wired to spot the speck in someone else's eye and miss the plank in ourselves.
Think about that.
We're wired to see the speck.
We're wired to be judgmental.
Oh, I see your speck, man.
You've had that speck a long time.
Why are we wired like that?
Look what Matthew says.
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?
How 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?
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.
Think about this.
Jesus takes two words, a plank, a speck.
The speck comes from a Greek word that means twig.
It means sawdust.
The Greek word for plank means a big beam that can hold up a house, a big wooden beam.
Two Greek words, but both of those Greek words come from the same source, wood.
They're the same exact source.
What is Jesus trying to say?
This is what he's trying to say.
He says, the plank that you have in your eye,
The reason you can spot a speck in somebody else's eye is because you know that plank well and you see it quickly when somebody else has it.
So if I'm an alcoholic and I've got a plank in my eye and somebody else I know has got a speck of alcoholism in them, guess what?
I judge them harshly.
Because I see my sin in them.
You know, if I got the plank of lying, how many of you know, I can always recognize a liar.
There he is.
He's coming.
He's coming.
The liar's coming.
How can I recognize it so fast in the other person?
Because it's already in my eye.
In the 1980s, when the televangelism thing that came out on TV, televangelists were falling.
Guess what?
One televangelist was accusing another televangelist of the very same thing that he was doing.
Why?
Because he had the plank in his eye and he could spot it well.
Jesus says, take the plank out of your own eye.
Take the judgmentalism out of your own eye so you can see well, so you can see correctly.
Stop trying to take the speck out of somebody else's eye.
Jesus was not saying you can't help other people.
But he was saying, examine your own life before you try to help somebody else with a speck in their eye.
Because if you don't take the plank out of your own eye, you will judge them harshly because you're judging them through the lens of your own life.
How many of you have ever said, man, I'm not going to be like my parents.
I'm not going to be like my dad.
I'm not going to be like my mama.
And you wake up one morning, you look in the mirror and you're just like them.
You judge them harshly and you became like them.
Got quiet in this gospel church.
That's what happens.
He says, with the same measure, with the same measure, it will be measured to you.
See, the fact is, ladies and gentlemen, what irritates me in you often lives larger in me.
This is a tough message to hear in October, isn't it?
These are the words of Jesus, folks.
Number two, he says the measure you hand out becomes the measure you receive.
The measure you hand out is the measure you receive.
Look what he says in verse one and two.
Do not judge.
So we know Jesus is not talking about blanket judgment.
He's talking about righteous judgment.
But don't be judgmental, or you too will be judged.
For the same way you judge others, you will be judged.
And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Rabbis in the ancient world believed that God had two measurements.
The first measurement was a measurement of justice.
The second measurement was a measurement of mercy.
What Jesus was saying, if you're going to be judge, jury, and executioner, guess what?
That measurement's coming back to you.
I don't know about you, but people who are always declaring justice, justice, I want justice, justice, justice.
I'm probably going to lean on the mercy side.
Why?
Because I need mercy.
My pastor used to say this.
He says, you know why I give mercy?
Because I need a lot of mercy.
Man, I need a lot of mercy.
Because the same measure you dish out, that same measure you're going to be judged with.
It's like the woman in John 8, the woman who was caught in adultery.
Some teachers of the law, some Pharisees brought her to Jesus and said, Jesus, this woman has been caught in the very act of adultery.
First of all, how did they know she was in the act of adultery?
Were they in the room?
The law of Moses says we must stone her.
Do you know what they wanted to do?
They wanted to have a rock concert in her honor.
They wanted to stone her.
Jesus doesn't say a word.
He just bends down and starts to write in the dirt.
Now we can pontificate on what he was writing, but I want to believe that he was writing the names of all the women that those Pharisees and teachers of the law had committed adultery with.
He just kept writing.
The Bible says he just knelt down.
He just begins to write.
He stands back up.
He looks around.
He says, woman, where are your accusers?
They got out of there.
They ran.
They ran.
He said, likewise, I don't condemn you.
Go, look what he says, go and sin no more.
He did not condone her sinning, but he gave her mercy and said, go repent and sin no more.
Jesus modeled mercy for us.
And sometimes we want to be harsh and we want to condemn people and we want to judge people quickly.
But you better be careful.
Because the fact is, that judgment becomes a boomerang that comes back to you.
You know what a boomerang is?
It was a toy when I was growing up.
It was a little toy.
curvature in the toy and you could throw it and it didn't matter how far you throw it that sucker would come around if you wasn't if you wasn't paying attention it would cut you in your neck because it would come right back to that same place you had to grab it that's the way judgment is when we measure out judgment we better be careful because it is a boomerang it has a boomerang effect it comes back to us
Number three, I think this is what Jesus was trying to teach us.
The golden rule is the practical exit ramp from this whole trap.
Did you know judgmentalism is a trap?
It's a trap, man, that brings destruction on your own life.
It's self-destructive.
It begins to erode your Christian character.
It begins to erode your relationships in your family.
I've seen families destroyed because of judgmentalism.
We judge, we judge, we judge, we judge.
Not righteous judgment, but just plain out judgmentalism, pride, anger, hostility, opinions.
I mean, everybody's got an opinion.
Everybody's got an underarm.
Everybody's got opinions.
Doesn't mean your opinions are right.
Especially if they don't line up with God's word.
So it becomes, the golden rule becomes the exit ramp out of this trap that we're constantly in.
He says, do to others what you would have them do to you.
You ever been riding down the road?
All of a sudden you look at your dashboard and there's a check engine light on.
How many of you hate those check engine lights?
And most of the time, it's something simple like an O2 sensor.
Something, just something simple.
I bought a truck one time, brand new.
Within months, there was a check engine light on.
Sometimes I don't even like taking it in because, you know, they charge you a gazillion dollars.
But this check engine light informs you that there's something wrong with your engine.
It could be something minor.
I mean, but when the check, your oil light comes on.
I don't care where you're at.
Even if you're on Indian River, you better stop somewhere.
Because you're going to blow that engine up if you don't.
Sometimes in life, the check your plank light comes on.
It's called the correction of the Holy Spirit.
God, you want me to check this?
Lord, I've held on to this so long.
It's so beautiful.
Man, this judgmentalism, I love it, man.
It makes me feel superior.
It makes me feel like you, God.
I look down, look at all these, look at all these little people.
Look at me, how big I am.
I love it.
Man, I go to bed with it.
I talk to my wife with a plank in my eye.
I get up with it.
I go to work.
I'm not even a carpenter, Lord, but I like taking it.
I need it.
Because it makes me feel superior.
Makes me feel big.
But as long as you carry this around, the Bible says you have an unhealthy eye.
You don't see correctly.
You're very condemning.
You're very judgmental.
Sometimes you have to lay the plank down.
Not just sometimes, every day.
Ah, Lord, I repent.
This plank has been ingrained in me.
I got it from my parents, man.
They were judgmental, man.
They didn't like people of different ethnicities.
They didn't like poor people.
They didn't like lazy people.
They judged everybody that walked on planet earth.
And I picked it up, man.
I loved it so much.
I picked it up and I've been carrying it for 40 years through my life.
I'm gonna hand it to my kids.
I love it so much.
You gotta let the plank down, folks.
You gotta repent of the plank.
I want you to stand.
If you don't let go of this plank, your world will become small.
If you don't let go of this plank, if you're a parent in here and you don't let go of this plank, let me tell you something.
One day your kids will walk out and they will not come back home.
They will not associate with you and you'll say, oh man, they're bad kids.
No, no, no, they're not bad kids.
Man, they've been judged through the plank.
The reason we discipline our kids harshly is because we're trying to beat out of them what we see of us in them.
It's called projection.
I am preaching good in this house today.
But I believe somebody needs to let go of the plank.
Somebody needs to have spiritual eye surgery.
You just need to, hey, put it down, put it down.
Don't pick it back up.
Come on, God, right now.
Do surgery on our eyes.
Do surgery.
Do surgery.
God, forgive us right now, right where you're at.
I'm not even gonna call you to the front, but I just want you to ask God to forgive you.
If you've been carrying a plank, maybe you've been carrying it 10 years, five years, two years, 100 years.
I don't care how long you've been carrying it.
It might be a generational plank.
Man, my dad was like this.
My mom was like this.
I gotta carry it.
I gotta carry the plank, man.
It's a badge of honor.
No, you let that thing go.
Let all judgmentalism go.
Say, Lord, teach me to judge righteously.
Give me a discerning heart like Solomon.
But we let it go.
Forgive us.
Forgive us, Lord.
We change our mind.
We repent, Lord.
Godly sorrow leads to repentance that leads to life.
God, we want your life, so we repent.
We feel the correction of the Holy Spirit at this moment.
Forgive us, Lord.
Of judging people based on their ethnicity.
Forgive us Lord.
For judging people based on their background.
Based on where they live.
Based on their clothing style.
Forgive us Lord.
Help us to be people.
That judge righteously.