Morgan Teruel: Thanks for tuning in to the Sandals Church podcast. Our vision as a church is to be real with ourselves, God, and others. We're glad you're here, and we hope you enjoyed this message.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown: How many of you guys have ever had a family member or a friend that was judgy? Yeah. And if your hand's not up, it might be you. You know what I'm saying? But we've all had that experience maybe with a grandmother that didn't like the way you were dressed, your hair, your style, a parent that didn't like your career, maybe it was a hyper spiritual Christian that was constantly judging you, but we've all encountered somebody in our life that's super judgmental and really it comes out of a misunderstanding of something that Jesus talked.
I mean, nobody wants to be judgy but we all need judgment. And so what I want you to do is I want you to messages and here's the beauty of going through the book of Matthew. Normally what I would do is I would preach on these verses probably a sermon on each verse but today we're gonna look at them in context to try to get an understanding what Jesus is talking about because what I believe he's talking about is developing spiritual discernment. And some of you are like discern what? Exactly.
And we're gonna talk about what that is and why you need it. So let's open our bibles together and let's look at what Jesus says up here on the screen. Jesus says in Matthew seven one through six, he says do not judge others. Probably the most quoted bible verse by non christians. Amen?
Don't judge me Jesus said. Okay. Don't judge others and you will not be judged for you will be treated as you treat others. Amen. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged.
K? And why worry about the speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own eye. If you've been at Sandals for a while you've heard quite a few sermons about that. How can you think of saying, friend, let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye. We've all had that friend.
Amen? Yes. When you can't see past the log in your own eye. Look what Jesus says, hypocrite. That's not a compliment.
First, get rid of the log in your own eye then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend's eye. And here's where the teaching gets a little weird. Jesus says, don't waste what is holy on people who are unholy. Don't throw your pearls to pigs. I love the King James, don't throw your pearls before swine.
They will trample the pearls and then turn and attack you. Now if you're new to Christianity or you've been in church for a while, let's just be honest. This passage is not as easy as it seems. So it starts off with don't judge and you won't be judged. So here's the thing, real life like this passage requires, listen to this, some level of spiritual discernment.
Now we're all on a journey. Some of you you came to church for the first time this weekend. I'm so glad you're here. But know this, every single person sitting around you is on a journey. Some people have been at this for a while and they've worked a lot at it.
Some people have been at this a while and they haven't worked at all on it. Amen? You know? Like you're getting old but you're not getting wiser. So we're all gonna feel a little bit judged by this passage on don't judge because what it does is it convicts us.
Amen. So let's try to understand what on earth is Jesus talking about here. Am I not supposed to judge anybody? Because I hear people say this all the time. Who am I to judge?
I hear that all the time. Or don't judge me. K? And some of us hear that from our teenagers and you're like, well, I'm gonna judge you and I'm gonna throw you in jail. So listen to this.
Discernment, look at this, is the ability to judge well. To judge well. Every single one of you as a Christian in this room needs to learn to judge well. You need to have judgment. When a person has discernment, look at this, they possess the ability to perceive.
This is so important. To understand and judge things clearly. Listen to this, especially those things that aren't obvious. Yeah. Anybody been married?
Not everything's obvious, husbands. That's right. Wife's mad. You don't know what you did. You don't know why.
But I'm telling you, it's your fault. And the sooner you discern what you did, the better the marriage will be. This includes the capacity, I love this, to make thoughtful insightful decisions. How many of guys have ever had a tough decision? K.
And discernment helps you not make a stupid decision. Look at this. This includes the capacity to make thoughtful insightful decisions to identify subtle nuances and discern between the truth and error, right and wrong. You wanna know what's wrong with our culture? We have no discernment anymore.
Nobody knows what right is. Nobody knows what wrong is. Nobody knows how to to perceive subtle nuances including Christians that run to the left and to the right and everything's black and everything's white and they can't listen to the teaching of Jesus. So to develop discernment, if you're gonna be a Christian and you're gonna be serious about this, I must do a couple things. Look at this.
To develop discernment, I must be careful when it comes to judging people. Now listen to me, single ladies, you better be able to judge people otherwise you're gonna marry a serial killer. Can I get an amen? Amen. So don't run around saying, I'm not supposed to judge.
You need to have judgment. That's right. You need to have judgment. And of all your friends, all your family, and angels are like, no. No.
No. No. No. Run. Run.
And you're like, I'm the only one who knows him. You're the only one who doesn't know him. So we need the ability to judge people well. We have to do this. So let's look at what Jesus says and let's kinda kinda go slow with this.
Matthew seven one through two. Do not judge others and you will not be judged. Now, let's be honest. We gotta be careful as religious people. We have information that other people don't have.
Look, if you were raised with this in your life, you're blessed. I gotta tell you, most people have not been raised with the word of God in their life. How are you at doing things you don't know about? Like if you've never had a calculus class and I put a calculus book in front of you, how would you do on the test? K.
If you don't know, you would fail miserably. And yet as Christians, we gotta be careful. We're running around judging people and they have not ever seen the book. They've never been taught the class. They have no idea what the content is.
So Jesus is speaking to a hypercritical, judgmental religious group. Mhmm. Be careful. That's right. Be careful.
And then he backs it up with why. Why? And if you're a Christian, need to listen to this. For you will be treated as you treat others. Man, it gets worse.
The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged. So if anybody's worried about judgment day, all you gotta do is look in the mirror. How do you judge others? That's what judgment day will look like. Jesus will judge you the way that you judge others.
So as Christians, we've got to be careful. But here's the thing, we have to have judgment because things aren't always as they seem. How many of guys have ever heard the saying, you can't judge a book by its what? The letter. Okay.
Now we all heard that, but we don't know where it comes from. So hundreds of years ago, the most valuable possession in a person's home was often a book. And so what they would do is they would take a cheap book cover and put it over the fancy book so that when thieves came they would think it was a useless piece of information. And so that's where the saying comes from. You cannot judge a book by its cover because sometimes something's really valuable and it has an ugly outside wrapping.
Kinda like me. Amen? Okay. Stop looking at my outfit. Here we go.
Proverbs eighteen seventeen. The first ones to tell their side of the story seem right. Let's stop there. Everyone in our church in marriage ministry. Everyone in our church in soul care, be very careful just because the person that got to you first doesn't mean they're telling the truth.
That's right. Let me just say this and if you're taking notes, please write this down. Tears do not communicate truth. That's right. Come on.
Sometimes liars are good criers. Amen? That's right. Man, somebody tweet that. Liars are good criers.
Okay? And don't tweet that if you're the one that's lying. But you gotta be really really careful. And and I found this, man. I'll have a a husband come to me first and I'm like, oh man, his wife's crazy.
I'll have the wife coming. Oh man, that guy needs to go to jail. And then I find out I've been lied to by both. You gotta be really really careful. So Proverbs eighteen seventeen says, the first one to tell their side of the story seems right until what?
Cross. They're cross examined by their peers. Oh, yes. So we have to be able to judge situations but not judge people. Mhmm.
K? So discernment is having good judgment as a person, but not being judgmental about people. Right. Okay? And and what is racism?
Racism is judgmentalism about people, about groups. I had a guy who told me when we I went to Australia, he said, how'd you like the Australians? I said, they were alright. He said, I hated them. I met them in Nam.
I said, well, how many Australians did you meet in Vietnam? He said, four. So, well, there's 35,000,000 Australians. That's not a good sample size. But that's what we do.
Right? So we have to have we have to be able to to judge situations but not be judgmental about people. And I want you to write that down. You you gotta think like this. How on earth am I supposed to nuance this very difficult teaching?
So to develop discernment, I must look at this. Learn God's standards of right and wrong. So if you're new here today or you just started attending Sandals Church, one of the things that I love, and and and this is the beauty of Sandals Church. Sandals Church is a great church where people start their journey with Jesus. It's just a great thing.
And for everybody, I I know a lot of you guys are in bible studies and that's great, You've been a Christian for a long time, but listen to me. It's it's a terrible thing when people come to learn about God and they leave because they feel stupid. Nobody ever feels that way when I preach. Amen. They're like, yeah, can do this.
I'm pretty sure. Pretty sure I can do this. So listen to Jesus, Matthew seven two. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged. So here this requires some varsity level thinking.
What's my standard? What's my standard? Because that's the standard God's gonna judge me by. And so here's the problem. Everybody today has different standards.
That's right. And if you don't believe me, single guys get married. Your wife has a different standard. My wife was amazing when we dated then we got married and she said things are going to change. She had a different standard for what marriage was than I did.
A lot of husbands have a different standard for marriages. We're coming at it from a different perspective. We love the person. We've committed to the person, and yet we have different standards for what it means to be a husband, what it means to be a wife. How about this?
What it means to be a parent? Mhmm. What it means to have work ethic? Mhmm. What it means to be moral, committed?
Right? There's all kinds of things. And so we just assume because we're in love, we have all things in common. We have to say what is the standard by which we're gonna live. So we live in a culture in America where the church used to be overly judgmental.
We just need to own that. That's not where we are anymore. K? Sometimes, but they're they're really small churches and often extreme extreme. And just because they have a following on TikTok doesn't mean that they're a big church.
It just just might mean that they're controversial. And so the algorithms draw us to the idiots. Amen? It just is like, oh, this person's a nut head. Let's put them first.
But oftentimes when I press through and I try to find their church, it's like all their family members. You know what I'm saying? And they have to go because they're related. Right? But here's what I found.
This is where culture's changed. I have found non religious people to be very judgmental. So now we live in a culture where you can get it from both sides. That's right. So here's what we need to do.
Let's take a look at this verse in Hebrews five thirteen. You don't have to turn to it in your bibles. I'm gonna put up up here on the screen because I want you to track with me. Anyone who lives on milk cannot understand the teaching about being right with God. Let's just stop there.
This is a tough teaching. Anyone anyone who lives on milk cannot understand the teaching about being right with God. So what that means is you've got to move beyond an infant level of understanding about Jesus. That's right. Now here's the author's complaint about a lot of Christians.
Anyone who lives on milk cannot understand the teaching about being right with God. He is a baby. Come on now. He is a baby. Amen.
And so we got a lot of Christians that are mature and old and they got gray hairs and wrinkles but they're infants. So here's what I wanna say is if you wanna grow in discernment, have to grow in your level of commitment to God and his word. You have to move from milk to solid food. Now my grandson is almost five months old and all he's ever had is milk. That's it.
Morning milk, afternoon milk, evening milk, sometimes refrigerated milk. You know what I'm saying? That's just all but you know what he's starting to do? When we're eating, he's starting to notice. Hey.
Wait a minute. You guys are putting things in your mouth. And he'll just watch. You're putting something in your mouth. You're putting something in your mouth.
And and then he does this. He's, you know, hey, wait a minute, that smells a little better than breast milk. Know what I'm saying? What is that? But he's watching what's happening.
Listen to me. Even as a five month old baby, he's saying there's something else out there. That's right. Some of you have never grown past your mother's milk. You are just a baby.
And what you want when you come to church is a bottle. And Jesus is saying it's time to eat some steak. Now what does that require? A knife and a fork which you bring. I'm not giving you the knife and fork.
You're like, feed me pastor. I'm like, bring a fork. Bring a knife. Listen what he says. Wait.
Let's go back. Sorry. Let's go back to solid food. Solid food is for what? Come on guys.
Full Full grown men. But reading is hard. I know guys. It's not nearly as entertaining as video games. I know.
K? There's there's an epidemic of illiteracy amongst men in our culture. Reading is hard. And unfortunately, we speak English which is like the worst language on earth to speak. It's really really difficult.
I'm still struggling with I before e except after c. And every time I apply that rule, it's wrong. Right? So here's the thing. Listen to me guys.
You gotta take responsibility. You gotta grow up and become a man. Nothing will grow you up faster than God. Nothing. I wanna give a shout out.
There's a guy I I met at my gym and I challenged him to come to church and he has not missed church guys one time this year. Amen. I see him every single week. He see I see him in church. And this is guys, he's 26 years old.
I met him at the gym. You know he was doing? He was reading a book. You're like, what? And the lady's like, where is this guy?
He goes to church? He reads? Wow. And I just said, hey, what are you doing to grow your soul? That's how our conversation started.
So let me ask you guys, what are you doing to grow your soul? And there are some things that are difficult in the Bible. Right. There are some challenges here and we gotta push past him. We gotta become men.
We gotta become women. We gotta grow up. Come on. And we gotta learn.
audience: That's right.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown: K? So what happens when you press in and you switch from milk to food? Listen to what Hebrews says. They have learned to use their minds Wow. To tell the difference between good and bad.
K? The difference between good and bad. But I wanna give you the Greek word here. Look at this. The Greek word there for difference is Do you see it right there?
It can be translated as distinguishing, discerning, wait for it, or judging. You see as Christians, we need to be able to judge between right and wrong, between good and bad. We need to be able to judge between things that are harmful or good for us. And a lot of Christians are running around saying, I'm not supposed to judge. Yes.
You are. You're supposed to be able to judge between right and wrong. You're just not supposed to judge people. K? And this is hard.
So to develop discernment, I must, look at this, be able to see myself accurately. Now here's one of the things that I've missed. I've taught on this next passage for years. It's one of the core principles of Sandals Church, but I never taught it in context of the verses that we're looking at. And so as I pressed in deeper, this blew me away.
So Jesus says, do not judge others, lest you be judged. The standard that you will use in judging is the standard that's used against you, and then he jumps into one of the most famous teachings in the bible. And it's about take the plank out of your own eye before you remove the speck from somebody else's. So when a person has discernment, listen to this, they possess the ability to perceive and the capacity to make thoughtful, I want you to see this word, insightful decisions. Discernment is about sight.
So now pay attention. This is why Jesus is gonna talk about the log in your eye. Because if there's a log in your eye, how well do you see? You can't see. And you're like, I know the word of God.
And Jesus like, you may know the word of God, but you got a log in your eye, and therefore you're a benefit to no one.
Pastor Fredo Ramos: That's right. Matthew
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown: seven three through five. And why worry? Why worry about the speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own? How many of have ever had something go in your eye? Come on.
You know when something's in your eye. Right? Yeah. One time years ago, Tammy and I were in Hawaii, and I got up in the middle of night. I'd been surfing all all day.
My eyes were bloodshot and I I blood bloodshot. Almost said a bad word there. All the sinners heard the wrong word. The angels heard the right word. Bloodshot.
And I got up in the middle of the night to grab eye drops, and instead of reaching for eye drops, I reached for ear drops. Yes. And in the middle of the night, I put freely, not with a gun to my head, put ear drops into my eye. I thought I had made myself blind. I kid you not, and you you guys, know you you tell stories.
No. No. Google this. I googled what do you do if you put ear drops in your eye. You know what the first thing it says?
Cuss out loud. That's what it says. I was like, I'm a pastor. You know? That's literally what it said.
It said cuss really loud. And then the next line said, you're not gonna go blind. It feels like it. It was terrible. My eye I I felt like I dropped acid in my eye.
It was awful. So here's the thing that Jesus is saying. Your eye is sensitive. You're aware if you get a speck in your eye. How is it that you don't know you got a log in your eye?
And here's why. Listen to me, Christians. If we're not careful, we can be so focused on the minute sins of others that we miss the plank in our own eye. Here's what Jesus is saying. You've lost your sensitivity to personal sin.
Wow. That's good. That's good. You've lost your sensitivity. And when you lose your sensitivity to sin, lose your ability to help others in their sin.
Amen. So listen what he says. How can you think of saying to your friend, let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye when you can't see past the log in your own eye. And then this is Jesus' favorite cuss word, hypocrite. Actor, faker, pretender.
Look, if you wanna have discernment, if you wanna be able to see things correctly, if you want to be able to help people, if you want to be able to make a difference, if you want to be able to lead people to Christ, here's what Jesus says. First, get rid of the log in your own
Pastor Fredo Ramos: eye. Wow.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown: First. Mhmm. And then you will see well enough to deal with this speck in your friend's eye. Here's the temptation as Christians. We so judge the world around us that we fail to see the sin within us.
That's right. And it happens over and over again. Mhmm. We've got to be careful. Discernment is the ability to see oneself.
Now here's the thing. As your pastor, I gotta tell you, I believe that our vision is God given, real with ourselves, real with others, and real with God. And I feel like as a church we constantly run from that vision and the part that we run the most quickly from is real with self. And I love Christians. Why isn't it real with God first?
Well, God's not the problem. You are. Amen. He doesn't have a log in his eye. He sees perfectly.
You're the problem. And we run so quickly from that. So and what we do is and then we run to judging others because that's so much more fun. It's so much more fun. We love right?
We love watching the gossip of celebrities, the gossip people, the the the failure of someone else's marriage. I mean, don't know how many times I watched the president of France get shoved by his wife in the face. Right? And I laughed every time. I'm not proud of him.
Was like, you know, as I'm watching the president of France, you know, get a full fist of his wife in his face. We love that. Right? Because I'd rather watch someone else's marriage fail than look at my own marriage's failings. We gotta be careful.
It's addicting. That's right. Yeah. It's addicting to watch other people's pain so that we can avoid our own. Yeah.
So when I see myself accurately, k, what do I do? Here's what I do. I see my past and present suffering. That's right. So this happens all the time.
Pastor, there's a problem in your church. I need you to kick this person out. I need you to remove this person from leadership. I need you to confront this person. And almost always here's what happens.
They've had an experience in their past. They've been hurt. So let's just say hypothetically it's a woman who's been lied and cheated on by a man by a man and has an issue with men. So she sees another man in our church that does something that triggers her past pain and she wants me to deal with the new guy and she hasn't dealt with the old guy and the old wound. It has nothing to do with him.
It has everything to do with her past. And listen to me, every single one of us, not just ladies, every single one of us in this room and everyone listening, we are all prisoners to our past. That's right. We are. You can't help it.
It's your experience. It's your story. And we are all carefully living life making sure we don't get hurt again. Amen. And so what happens is, guess what we do?
We judge too quickly. Mhmm. We judge too quickly. I remember one time a lady in our church said, she said, I hate all men. I said, well, I'm a man.
She said, no, you're not. You're a pastor. I was like, that kinda hurts a little bit, you know? But we gotta be really, really careful. That's right.
Okay? Listen to me. If you've been abused, I am so sorry for that. Mhmm. But you gotta be careful that you don't see abuse everywhere.
That's right. I've seen it over and over again. Some of you, you're in your second marriage and God has blessed you with a new person that's faithful, that's loyal, and good. But you judge them for your past spouse's sins. That's not fair.
That's right. Go and deal with the own the old wounds so that you can bless your current marriage. So important. And let me just say this. Some of you have been hurt at other churches.
I'm responsible for a lot of things at Sandals Church. You know what I'm not responsible for? What your last church did.
audience: That's right.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown: I'm just not. I I can't be. Right? We got enough knuckleheads here knuckleheads here. Amen?
Amen. That includes this guy. Okay. Next, let's press in a little deeper. When I see myself accurately, I see my motives and desires.
Ladies, why is it that you're counseling your girlfriend to break up with her boyfriend? Do you like him? Do you know how many times I've seen that? A best friend, oh, gotta dump him. That guy's no good.
And then they get married? Where's your motives? What is it that you want? K? Why are you counseling?
You you shouldn't be friends with him. Is that because you wanna be closer with that friend? We gotta see ourself in the process. We gotta make sure that we don't assume that we're like Jesus. Come on now.
We gotta assume that, hey, I might not have the right motive here. I might not have the right reasons for doing this. I might not just like you, and I'm gonna confront you because you're better looking than I am. You're smarter than I am. You're wealthier than I am.
And instead of dealing with those things, I'm gonna come at you and I'm gonna confront you. So where is my motive in this? And this is really really hard and here's the thing, listen to me, the more talented you are the harder it is to discover your motives. It just is. What are my motives about this issue?
So when I see myself accurately now let's just jump in to the real meat. I see my sin in the process. Man, as your pastor, it is impossible for me to lead you to help you remove the speck from your eye if I am unable to see the log in my own eye. And here's the problem with vision. Where do our eyes point?
Out. They don't look in. They don't look in. And the truth is sometimes I can't see my sin. Sometimes I can't see my motives.
Listen to me. Sometimes I can't see my past. I need spiritual community to help me see that. That's right. Listen to me.
You wanna grow in discernment. You wanna grow in the ability to judge well? Then listen to me. Get in spiritual community and invite people to come around you who are able to see your blind spots. And do know what a blind spot is?
It's something you cannot see. You cannot see. Right now I'm looking at you, I cannot see what's behind me. I cannot see it. It is impossible for me to see it.
But you know this room is full of people. And you know who can see what's behind me in this room? Every single person in here, even if they're a visitor. They can see what's behind me, I cannot. And there I hear this all the time.
Well, my husband sees my blind spots. Okay. But what about your blind spots as a couple? Who sees that? All my kids.
Okay. What about the blind spots of your family? Who who sees that? You see, the more sets of eyes I have on my life, and this isn't everybody, but the people that I love, the people that I trust, the people that I know love Jesus, trust Jesus, and are following Jesus. And listen to this, the people in my life I know have discernment.
The ability to see subtle nuances. Man, those people help me see accurately. Now this last part of the teaching is just bizarre. This is just so hard. But listen this.
To develop discernment, I must identify people who are not interested in the truth. We got Christians running around thinking they're standing up and here here's the thing. It blows my mind. Christians are becoming more like culture than they are like Christ. I see Christians going out protesting.
I'm like, what are you doing? What are you doing? Well, that's what everybody else is doing. Well, show me the verse where it says, go do what everyone else is doing. Show me where Paul went and protested Rome.
Show me. You know what Paul did? He preached the gospel to who? People that were willing to listen. And the people that didn't listen, you know he did?
He went to the next town. And why did he do that? Because that's what Jesus said to do. Man, so many times though, we're just so baited. You go to family reunion, you go to Thanksgiving, you go to graduation, right?
It's graduation season and people just ask you, what do you think about this? They're not interested in the truth. They're not interested. You I I told you a couple weeks ago when I was in India the first time Trump got elected, and I got pulled back behind in Mumbai back in security. I was literally in a black room with a light in my face, and this general comes out.
I don't know if he's a general, but this high ranking military official with all of his medals and awards and he says, what do you think of Donald Trump? And I said, what do you think of Donald Trump? Because listen to me, you wanna know what I wanna do? Go home and see my wife. Amen.
He doesn't really care what I think. That's right. He wanted to say what he thought. So let's just get to it. Early on in Sandals history, we had an amazing pastor.
We we've had a lot of great staff over the years. You know, Sandals is almost 30 years old. Can you believe that? Yeah. I'm way too young for that to be true.
But we had an amazing pastor. I mean, he was, I don't know, in our first ten full time employees, maybe five. I I can't remember. But he struggled with some things sexually. And eventually, ended up leaving ministry.
He left the church. He went his own way. And towards the end of his life, he developed and I'm not exactly sure because it was a little cloudy how he died, but I think he developed a disease that was sexually transmitted. I'm not I'm not sure on this, but he wanted to have coffee with me. And so we met.
This is one of my good friends. Listen to me church, I laid hands on him and ordained him as a minister of the gospel of Christ. Good friend. Left sandals, left the church, went his own way, and he was dying. And he asked me over coffee.
He said, do you think I'm going to hell? He's very aggressive, very nice guy, very sweet man, but he got very angry. He said, do you think I'm going to hell? You know what I said? It doesn't matter what I think.
That's right. It doesn't matter. That's right. You don't stand before me. Mhmm.
You stand before the one who is, who was, and is to come. Come on. But I wasn't gonna be baited. Because you know what he wanted? He wanted to fight in that moment.
In his last moments, he wanted to fight. He wanted to argue things that we had settled twenty years ago. We'd already had all those conversations. We'd already we'd all already wrestled with all of the truth. And some of you think if I just shout scripture enough, they'll change.
Here's what Jesus says, Matthew seven six, don't waste what is holy on people who are unholy. Let me just help you Christians, you got a different standard. You run-in a different playbook. Let me give it to you in the Greek, don't throw to dogs what is sacred. You're like I love my dog.
Okay, two thousand years ago dogs were nasty and they bit you and chased you in the streets. We're not talking about your pet that sleeps in your bed. Okay? Jesus is saying look, you have to have a level of discernment. When do I share the holy truths with someone?
Amen. Now some of you've never done that and that's another sin because you're afraid. What you have to discern is, is this the moment where their heart might just be open enough for me to share the word of God with them? You know what I've learned? To ask, do you feel like this is a moment where I could share with you the truth of what I believe?
People will tell you, yes, no. And if they say no, you know what I say? Well, if you ever want me to share the hope that I have in Jesus, I'd love
Pastor Fredo Ramos: to. Amen.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown: But I wanna respect you. Early on, Matt Brown wasn't so respectful. In the name of being an evangelist, I just excuse me if you have kids present. I just piss people off. And guess how many people I led to Jesus?
Not many. We're called to build bridges, not barriers. Jesus says, don't waste what is unholy. Don't waste what is holy on people who are unholy. Don't throw your pearls to pigs.
They will trample the pearls and then turn and what? Attack you. Amen. Be very very careful. Think about this the next time you're at a family reunion, the next time you're at a graduation, the next time you see an old friend and they ask you a question.
You're not one of those holy roly Christians, are you? Woah. Pay attention. Listen to what Proverbs says. Proverbs twenty three nine.
Don't waste your breath on fools. You know what? Somebody's gotta respond to that Facebook post. I know I will. The Holy Spirit has let me.
If you're arguing with a fool, guess what you are? A fool. Don't waste your breath on fools for they will despise the wisest advice. Mhmm. You can tell a stupid person something wise and if they're stupid, what are they gonna do?
Not listen. That's right. Unfortunately, and I hate to say this, some people only learn by running into a brick wall and for others not even that teaches them. They're like, I don't know what happened. I'm like, I do.
You ran into the wall. Right. So here's the thing. Judgment is so important. Discernment is so important.
And here's why Christians, we have such a narrow opportunity to lead people to Christ. We have to be so wise, so careful now. I'm not giving you permission to miss an opportunity to share faith. Amen. What I'm saying is be cautious and careful when and how you share your faith.
That's right. And at the end of the day, here's what we're doing. We're sharing the hope of the gospel. That's right. The gospel is good news.
Amen. It's good news. It's the good news of God. And let me say this, for those of you who are young. It's hard to develop judgment and it's hard to develop discernment when you're young.
It is. Unfortunately, we learn a lot of times through mistakes. I wish that I would have read this when I was young and said, you know what? God said it, I'm gonna do it. But you know what?
I I the way I learned, I went out of that hurt and God said not to do it, so now I'm gonna trust him. That's just kinda how I learned. But let me say this, so many of our young people are engaging with alcohol and especially marijuana. Anything that impairs judgment impairs judgment. And so let me give you a word of wisdom from an old guy.
Judgment's hard enough when you're sober. That's right. Let's not do anything that impairs our judgment and makes us dumber. Can I get an amen? Amen.
Amen. And nobody gets smarter on weed. Don't care what all your friends are saying. No, bro. We reinvented the wheel.
No, you did not. No, you did not. Okay? So let me close by praying over you. This is a tough message.
But remember, discernment is the ability to see things, subtle nuances that other people can't see. And here's the beauty. The Holy Spirit can give you the gift of discernment. Amen. He can give you wisdom that you don't have.
Pastor Fredo Ramos: That's right.
Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown: So let's just open our hands like this and let's ask the Holy Spirit to give us wisdom and discernment in the name of Jesus. Heavenly father, we just pray. God, there are so many of us right now. We're struggling with decisions. We're struggling with situations where the truth is so hard to find.
Lord, the subtleties overwhelm us. Heavenly father, would you just enlighten us? Open our eyes. Help us to see the truth. God and let's just state right now.
You as the Holy Spirit will never disagree with what you wrote in the word of God. So where the word of God speaks, Lord, we don't need to pray about what to do. It's already spoken. God, for those issues where we're not exactly sure, would you speak to us? Would you give us insight?
Lord, would you reveal to us the truth that you are expecting us to act on? And God, when we engage with nonbelievers, would you help us share our faith in the moments where you're already working in their lives and help us to be attuned to that. We pray this in Jesus name and all God's people said. Amen.
Pastor Fredo Ramos: I just wanna thank you guys so much for joining us today here at Church online and we pray that you would receive the gift of discernment as we continue to become more like Jesus. And I wanna encourage you, if we have blessed you in any way, would you consider supporting the work that we are doing here at Sandals Church? Even if it means you attend another church and you give there, we are grateful you do that because we know that is a lot of you out there. But man, your support would mean a lot to us. To do so, you can go to sandalschurch.com/support.
Grace and peace.
Morgan Teruel: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you want more content from this series, we have the YouTube playlist linked in the description. And if you want more information about who we are and what we do, you can go to sandalschurch.com.