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Matthew 7:1-6
7:1 “Judge not, that you be not judged. 2 For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. 3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
6 “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Good morning, everyone. How are you doing? Sounds like you're about as excited to be here as I am right now. My name is Thomas Ritchie. I'm an elder here at Redeemer.
Caleb Chancey:And this is not my day job. I'm a lawyer by training. I preach once a year, and it's a highlight of my year, but it's a challenge. I'm very thankful that we have other people that preach. This is a serious labor.
Caleb Chancey:I've been prepping for this for a very long time, though it might not show in what I'm about to say and how I say it. It's a it's a large and heavy weight to bring God's word with you. It's a joyful load to carry, but I'm very thankful for Jeff and for Joel, for Craig, for Dwight, for all the people who bring God's word to us faithfully. By carrying it once a year, I can be reminded of how grateful I should be, then I will gladly do it. But this morning, we are gonna look at one of the most popular and least understood verses in all the Bible.
Caleb Chancey:Maybe the part you've been waiting to get to in the Sermon on the Mount, judge not, lest you be judged. It appears in Matthew 7. And this is a really interesting commandment. We're gonna look at it in detail today. We've received lots of hard challenges from Jesus throughout the Sermon on the Mount.
Caleb Chancey:Things like, that blessedness looks like being poor in spirit. Things like love your neighbor. Things like don't worry about where your food and clothes are going to come from. And we've accepted all that, and we've kind of nodded along and said, yeah, that sounds right. But when it comes to judgment, maybe your heart is like mine, and you say, Jesus, you don't really mean that.
Caleb Chancey:I've gotta still be able to judge people at least a little bit. There's gotta be some wiggle room in this commandment that I can try to get out from underneath. So I want us to look at it closely so that we can understand what Jesus is saying and why he's saying it to us. So read with me Matthew chapter 7 beginning in verse 1. We'll read through verse 6.
Caleb Chancey:Judge not that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that's in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that's in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye, when there's a log in your own eye?
Caleb Chancey:You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them under foot and turn to attack you. This is the word of the Lord. It is your honor. Please pray with me.
Caleb Chancey:Oh, God. Please open our eyes to see these words clearly. For a vision is impaired, we have a log in our eye. Lord, open our ears to hear. We only want to hear certain things, but, Lord, may your gospel cut through.
Caleb Chancey:Lord, open my mouth to speak. My best wisdom is foolishness to you, but, God, your words are life. Would you please speak in this time? May all of us hear from you. In Christ's name.
Caleb Chancey:Amen. So this passage exists in 3 discrete sections, and we're gonna look at them separately. We're gonna start with the first. Judge not, lest you be judged. For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged.
Caleb Chancey:With the measure you use, it will be measured out to you. Before we can really figure out what these verses mean, I think I need to clear out some of the brush of things that they don't mean. I don't have time to go into this in great detail, but there's a lot here that, is misunderstood about these verses. And so I want to very quickly hit on those things, So that maybe later if you have questions, you can come and and talk to me about it. These verses do not mean that the law will pass away.
Caleb Chancey:Jesus says very clearly that not one pen stroke of the law will pass away. The law remains, and our obedience remains important. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that our righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees, and that we must be holy as God himself is holy. Our obedience matters. More than that, teaching the law matters.
Caleb Chancey:And the great commission, as Jesus is leaving Earth is before he comes again, among his last words to the people of Earth is we must teach the nations to obey all that Jesus has commanded. We must still teach the law. These verses don't say that we can say to one another, you have no right to judge me. A lot of, people who are outside the faith interpret these verses that way. They hear Jesus' command through his disciples saying, judge not, lest you be judged, to mean that nobody has agency to speak into the life of somebody else.
Caleb Chancey:It's not what these verses say. And lastly, perhaps the most grave misunderstanding here is that these verses could be read to say that there is no judgment. I assure you that I wish I could say otherwise. There will be a judgment. Jesus himself is the judge.
Caleb Chancey:Jesus comes to earth the first time. He says in John chapter 3, I've not come to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through me. The next time that he comes, he comes as a rider on a pale horse, wearing clothes dipped in blood, bearing a rod of iron with a sword coming out of his mouth. There is a judgment, my friends. If you think there is not, it's a grave error on which you're betting your very life.
Caleb Chancey:I assure you that there is. And if we look at what the word judgment means, it doesn't just mean condemn. We need to define the terms so that we can understand what Jesus is saying here. This word judgment comes from a very broad Greek word, krine, which, means all manner of evaluation and discernment. We might want to interpret this just as condemnation, because that's what we mean today when we talk about judgment.
Caleb Chancey:Don't judge me means don't condemn me. Don't compare my conduct to some standard that I don't agree with. But that's actually not what Jesus is talking about here. Yes. It includes that, but it also includes all forms of evaluation.
Caleb Chancey:So if we understand the word rightly, we see that it's impossible for us not to judge. Of course, we have to judge. We can't have a conversation with our friend over lunch without discerning what's in their heart, trying to figure out how are they doing. That all requires judgment in the broadest sense, and that's the sense in which Jesus is using this word. And we need to judge to be able to do justice in the earth.
Caleb Chancey:There are a lot of wrongs out there that we are called to assist in making right, to protect the poor, to protect the vulnerable, the needy, the widow, and the orphan. If we do not discern their need and protect them from those that would harm them, we cannot live out the call that God has placed on us. So yes, there's a role for judgment. But Jesus's warning here is primarily about how we view ourselves in relationship to the people around us. And he uses this parallel structure.
Caleb Chancey:It appears 3 times in these short two verses. And each time it appears, it is, The judgment that we use going out will be the judgment that we receive coming back. Judge not, lest you be judged. For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged. With the measure that you use with others, so it will be measured out to you.
Caleb Chancey:That word measure is one that we don't use all that much in this sense. It's a it's a word from the marketplace. Back before the days of Publix and Winn Dixie and Piggly Wiggly or wherever else you buy your groceries. You'd have you'd buy a bucket full of grain for a piece of silver, and a merchant would have a temptation to make his bucket a little bit smaller than it appeared to be. Maybe the walls would be thicker.
Caleb Chancey:He'd find some way of keeping a little bit back for himself, some way of cheating to his own advantage. That was very commonly done. And Jesus is saying not so in my kingdom. For whatever the bucket is that you pour out for others, I'll use that same bucket in what I pour out for you. To see the clearest possible example of this verse played out in a story, I invite you to flip over with me to Matthew chapter 18 starting in verse 23.
Caleb Chancey:This is the parable of the unforgiving servant. I'm gonna read the whole thing. Starting in verse 23 of Matthew 18. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents.
Caleb Chancey:Now I don't carry talents around in my wallet anymore. You might not be familiar with this measure of money. A talent, one talent is a whole lot of money. One talent is about 20 years wages for your average worker. 10,000 talents.
Caleb Chancey:This is measured in silver. Right? Talent's a measure of silver. It's £1,200,000 of silver. It's 200,000 years of work for 1 person.
Caleb Chancey:It's like the output of a city for a year. And this guy owes his master 10 1,000 talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.
Caleb Chancey:But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a 100 denarii. It's about half a year's wages, in rough terms. And seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, pay me what you owe. And this fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, Have patience with me, and I will pay you. He refused.
Caleb Chancey:And he went and he put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what he had done, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?
Caleb Chancey:And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. And hear this. So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. The unforgiving servant did not judge as he wanted to be judged. The judgment that he pronounced was not the judgment that he wanted back on himself.
Caleb Chancey:And yet, when he judged by that harsher standard, the harsher standard was used with him. And pay attention to this. The fellow servant, the one who owed the 100 denarii, he really owed that money. He really took out that debt. But yet all of us immediately see that the unforgiving servant was wrong.
Caleb Chancey:Not because he wasn't owed the money, he was, but because his actions failed to take account of how much he had already been forgiven. He had been forgiven the wealth of a nation, and here he is throwing someone in jail over a small sum of money. Jesus teaches us to follow a different pattern. He says the way that we compare our conduct to other people needs to be affected by the way that he has treated us in our sin. Nobody can run up a debt of 10,000 talents.
Caleb Chancey:Jesus is obviously talking about the debt of sin that we owe to him, that we cannot pay with all of our righteousness, though we were given all eternity to try to do it. Given that Jesus did not hold us accountable for the great debt of our sin, neither should we seek to hold the world accountable to us for the weight of its sin, however it affects us. We need not judge others by what they deserve. Instead, we are free now to view others through the lens of the gospel, remembering how much we have been forgiven. We were once an enemy of God, and yet he reconciled us to the father by taking our sin into himself.
Caleb Chancey:He had every right to condemn us, but in place of condemnation, he gave us blessing. And it comes out of his own pocket. I'm not trying to say that there are not things in the world that require judgment. There are. But how are you going to respond in your heart?
Caleb Chancey:Do you have rights? Jesus has more rights, and he laid them down. What will you do? Have you been wronged? Has someone owe you something?
Caleb Chancey:Jesus was wronged worse. He was owed more, and yet he forgave. What will you do? Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, we've been talking about, God's kingdom. Jesus is proclaiming a new kingdom on earth, and he comes to make us citizens of that kingdom and to show what it's like to live under that kingdom's laws.
Caleb Chancey:What qualifies us to be citizens of God's kingdom? Is it our righteous living? Is it our good works? No. It's God's grace.
Caleb Chancey:It's that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He has adopted us into his family and made us heirs with Christ. If that is how we acquire this citizenship, so we should live in that in how we relate to others. We treat others according to grace. Jesus has not come to earth to create an army of little judges running around and getting offended at everybody's behavior.
Caleb Chancey:Instead, he has made us heralds of his grace. He has given us a mission to go out and to tell the world that there is forgiveness from sin, that there is a well that holds water that does not run dry, and that if we believe in the name of Jesus, he becomes an ever flowing fountain inside of us, welling up to eternal life. So, yes, we still have to engage with others at the level of their sin from time to time, but it changes how we do it. No longer are we high and exalted and looking down, but we, recognizing that we have been forgiven much, can come alongside someone who's hurting, someone who's living and doing even evil things and trying to steer them back towards righteousness, showing kindness, showing forgiveness, forbearing wherever we can, that we might point them back, to the gospel. But there are more problems with how we judge.
Caleb Chancey:Not only do we forget the great forgiveness that was given to us, we also have a hard time perceiving the world rightly. And that's what the next passage that we're gonna look at shows. These verses show another reason why we make bad judges, Not just why we make unforgiving judges, but we're really not very good at the job. Jesus uses farce to show us this. He says that we are like a man walking around with a log sticking out of his eye.
Caleb Chancey:He's using this extreme example to make a practical point, and then I think to the believers in the room, a more subtle one. The practical point is this, and and look, you all get it right now without me telling you. We judge others more harshly than we judge ourselves. It's exactly what the judge not verse has warned us about. We do it.
Caleb Chancey:We grade ourselves on a curve. If we're rude to someone, well, it's because they deserved it, or it's because we're stressed out or we're tired or we're hungry, or there's always a reason. When we think about our own repentance from sin, we judge our repentance not by whether we stop sinning, but by whether we feel sorry. In fact, we judge our actions not by the actions themselves, and certainly not by their consequences, but by our intentions. If we kind of had a good thought or if we meant something nice when we did something mean, we don't think we did anything wrong.
Caleb Chancey:It doesn't matter how the other person received it, we might say. It just matters what I intended. Yet with others, we use the exact opposite standard. Their intentions matter not at all. There is no curve for the conduct of another person.
Caleb Chancey:We are far too prone to say that we judge them solely by the consequences of their actions. Whatever is in their heart is irrelevant, because it didn't affect us. We assume that they are the sum of their worst actions, or the worst things that we've ever seen them do. Jesus attacks that double standard head on. He says, your vision is not just clouded.
Caleb Chancey:It is blocked by self righteousness, hypocrisy, and our persistent refusal to acknowledge our own sin. In fact, we will condemn others for doing the exact same things that we ourselves do, and we won't even notice the inconsistency while we're doing it. Hear this from Romans 2, starting in verse 1. Therefore, you have no excuse, oh, man, for every one of you who judges for in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who do such things.
Caleb Chancey:Do you suppose, oh, man, that you who judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. We all do that. We judge one another unfairly.
Caleb Chancey:What's the solution? Well, it's pretty obvious. Instead of thinking the worst of other people, try to think the best of them. You might sometimes be wrong. That's true.
Caleb Chancey:But the spiritual danger for your own heart is far less severe. Attach a presumption of innocence to somebody else, that they are innocent until you know for sure that they're guilty. Be gracious wherever you can, as long as you can. And remember that the sinful actions of someone else may be a result of misguided intentions. It might be a result of their weakness, some trauma in their life, even ignorance.
Caleb Chancey:They may not appreciate what they are doing as Jesus cries out from the cross in forgiving us. In fact, we might not appreciate what they are doing. Something that happens to pinch us a little bit, we may decide is evil, when in truth, we do not understand what the other person is doing at all. But hear this as well. Even if that other person really is just a jerk, even if they're wrong, rightly judged, even if they are your enemy, Jesus has told you and me what we must do with our enemies.
Caleb Chancey:We must love them, And harboring judgment in our heart will not make that job any easier. It's already very difficult. If we cling to looking down on that person and comparing their conduct, especially to our own, if we think we're better, it's gonna make our job harder. It's also gonna become an obstacle for that person. For when we judge somebody, we seldom keep it truly secret.
Caleb Chancey:It comes out in our actions. And we have now slowly and subtly built a wall between that person and the work of Christ in us, which is supposed to flow freely to them. Look, if you need somebody to judge harshly, for most of us, we can find that person in the mirror. We don't have to go look somewhere else. We should apply no presumption of innocence to our own actions.
Caleb Chancey:Instead, we should look at all of our actions with the strictest possible scrutiny. Because we know that even when we mean to do good, sometimes we do ill. Sometimes it's received in a way with someone else that causes them pain or suffering or hardship that we did we did not intend but we still would would not want to do and can repent from doing. More perniciously, we can fear that when we do good works, we begin to pat ourselves on the back to think that we're good people and we're the kind of people who do good things. So even on our best days, we need to watch what we do.
Caleb Chancey:And someone pointed out to me after the last message, very helpfully, that there are those among us who suffer the alt the the opposite presumption, that unlike me, they are not self justifiers. There are people that run to self loathing. They look down on themselves. And to that person, the gospel is the same message that it is to me. I just hear the other side of it.
Caleb Chancey:Right? The gospel is a double edged sword. It says that we are completely accepted in God's sight, that our sin is removed from us as far as the east is from the west. And there is now no condemnation for us. And we need not engage in self loathing, because Jesus who sees us and knows us better than we know ourselves does not loathe us.
Caleb Chancey:We hear and receive His approval. And yet, for the proud and the self righteous like myself, we hear in the gospel that there is nothing in me that is beautiful in the sight of God apart from the work of God, and that my flesh will run to sin if given the slightest opening. So, God, would you close those doors in my life, And would you help me to close them as well? Because we have to exaggerate this move to get it right. If we are not drastically more strict with ourselves and drastically more gracious towards others, we will not get the scale anywhere close to being flat.
Caleb Chancey:Because again, for most of us, our flesh runs in the other direction. We try to justify our own actions naturally. David explains this in Psalm 51 when he says that he needs radical action from God before he can take even gentle actions towards other people. He says, purge me with hyssop. He says, create in me a clean heart.
Caleb Chancey:He's talking about surgery, in metaphorical terms. Do something drastic to me, and then I will be able to teach transgressors your way. Then I'll be able just to teach. It's going to feel like a drastic work in our own life before we can take even gentle steps forward towards others. Or to use the imagery that Jesus uses in our text today, God, pull the log out of my eye so that I might see the speck that's in my brothers.
Caleb Chancey:That's the practical point. There's a more subtle one, and this one is for the believer here. And it requires looking back at another familiar parable, which is that of the prodigal son,
Jeffrey Heine:or
Caleb Chancey:I think better called the parable of the 2 brothers. Although I was looking today, there's already another parable of the 2 brothers. And so I guess the name was already taken before they got to the prodigal son. But this one really should have been the parable of the 2 brothers. Because we all think about the first son, but most of us in reality are the second son.
Caleb Chancey:And it's to the second, I mean, sorry. It's the older brother who we think of as being the second. I'm really not doing a very good job of this, but most of us are the older brother. And our sin is subtler and is different. Let's take a look.
Caleb Chancey:We all know the story. The dad and 2 sons. The younger son says to the dad, give me my inheritance so that I can take it and do whatever I want to with it. That is basically treating his dad like he's dead. He says, dad, I don't care that you're still alive.
Caleb Chancey:I want my half of your stuff so that I can go do what I want. The father does it. Gives it to him. The guy runs off, wasted all on sinful living, and finds himself, lying next to a bunch of pigs, longing to eat the slop out of their trough. For all of his sin, and I'm not here to excuse it.
Caleb Chancey:But for all of his sin, he saw rightly that he needed to repent. His body, yes, was sinful. His mind and his heart were twisted. But his eye, at least, was clear. He comes back.
Caleb Chancey:He says, I'm not worthy to be your son. Can I at least work on the farm? And the father runs out and embraces him and welcomes him back as a son, and rejoices that his son has returned and repented. But the older brother, the older brother never left. The older brother's actions looked good.
Caleb Chancey:The older brother was outwardly obedient. And yet when the younger brother comes home, there is no joy. There is no rejoicing. In fact, he won't even come in for the party. Why?
Caleb Chancey:Remember, the younger son has already taken his half of the inheritance and has wasted it, and it's gone. So that fattened calf that's killed for the younger brother, that's coming out of the older brother's inheritance. He's saying, This big party is being thrown at my expense. Father, you're taking my half and wasting it. You see, he commits the same sin as the younger brother.
Caleb Chancey:He does it without ever leaving the farm. He still views the dad as just a means to the inheritance. He's still treating his dad like he's dead. And for that matter, he's treating his younger brother like he's dead, too. We are in grave danger of being that older brother, we in the church.
Caleb Chancey:We are blind to the sin that we commit because we think we're righteous, because outwardly we look okay. We comply with the rules. We toe the line. Our behavior is well managed. Outward obedience is good.
Caleb Chancey:All obedience is good. But we must be aware that lurking underneath it, like an infection deep under the skin, can be self righteousness and pride and sins at the level of identity that are far graver than the outward sins that we saw in the younger brother. And in particular, those sins deep under that that self righteousness can blind us to our need to repent. Because as we all know, the story ends, the the prodigal son, not knowing how the other brother will respond. Will he come in?
Caleb Chancey:Will he accept back the younger brother? Will he accept his father? Or is he about to storm off the farm in his own self righteousness? That's for the church. We are the ones in that danger.
Caleb Chancey:On that happy note, let's look at the really fun part of this passage, verse 6. Do not give the dogs what is holy and do not cast your pearls before pigs. I'm probably gonna say pearls before swine because it just rolls off the tongue a lot easier, and it's a little King James in me coming out. Pearls before swine. You know how Joel will say from time to time, and if you've been at Redeemer for more than a month, you've probably heard Joel say, Oh, this is a really important verse.
Caleb Chancey:You need to star it, underline it, highlight it, whatever it is that you do, with verses. This one's really important. Chapter 6 is not one of those verses. This is not a verse to make your life verse. When you're dedicating your children up here, don't read this as God's promise for them.
Caleb Chancey:This verse is poorly understood. And scholars disagree about it. I would gladly skip it. But it is our obligation to teach the whole counsel of God, to engage with it. And so if I cannot tell you clearly what I think this means, I at least want to walk you through the process that I use when I run into a passage that I don't understand, because I'm gonna disagree with pretty much every commentary, that they have to say about this verse.
Caleb Chancey:I'm gonna tell you what they say so that in case I'm wrong, you can hear from them and not from me. And I'm gonna tell you why I think they're wrong, and I'm gonna try to approach what I think Jesus is trying to tell us. And if you can't pay attention to the conclusion or if you disagree with me, I at least hold up the method to you as a sound one to use. Alright. So the traditional understanding of this verse is that it's a kind of caveat or clawback to the ones that come before.
Caleb Chancey:Jesus says, don't judge. You're bad judges with sticks in your eyes. But there are some situations in which you do need to judge. You need to be discerning. You need to evaluate.
Caleb Chancey:Not all judgment is bad. And of course, I agree with that. And I hope hopefully, I've said loud and clear that judgment is important, and we need to engage in judgment from time to time. So while that's a good and true thing, I don't think that's what this verse is saying. And I can tell you for sure one thing I know it's not saying, And that is, it's not telling us that we get to pick the people that we think deserve the gospel, because the gospel's the pearl, and those people who don't deserve it are the pigs.
Caleb Chancey:Let let me say this loud and clear. If that is the case, then I, before you, have no hope. For I am the pig, and I am the dog, and yet the pearl has come to me. And so if there is any part of you that would read this verse that way, put that part to death. That's wrong.
Caleb Chancey:We are heralds of grace, as I said before, not gatekeepers who get to decide who gets in and who stays out. You are not fit to judge in that way. I am not fit to judge. I have a log in my eye. I'm prone to hate my enemy, and yet Jesus sought us out and loves us.
Caleb Chancey:So no, it doesn't mean that. No way. That's progress. It doesn't mean one thing. But I think that the people who would make this into a proverb, who would say, this is really a statement about general wisdom, about you have to be careful what you share with certain people, or you need to be guarded about certain church practices, I think they're right in their conclusions.
Caleb Chancey:But I I just can't square these kind of placid teachings that somebody might have. For example, some people say this verse is about communion. We need to be careful not to have, people who don't profess Christ to take communion. Some people say this is about sharing the higher points of church doctrine with people who are outside the faith. And look, both of those are great ideas.
Caleb Chancey:We shouldn't serve communion to non believers. That's a family meal for the church, and and no one has been led to Christ, as far as I know, by explaining the symbology of the second half of Daniel, or something like that. But that's good advice, but it doesn't match the language. Right? Who would ever throw their pearls before pigs?
Caleb Chancey:Who would take something of immense value and just chuck it away like this? It's good advice, but no one needs to hear it in that extreme form. Or if you wanna update it, maybe we would say, it's like a wedding planner coming to you and saying, alright. As you're thinking about wedding cakes, I recommend we don't put any cockroaches on it. Or, your financial planner saying, well, whatever you do, don't put your money in a pile and light it on fire.
Caleb Chancey:That is good financial advice. And yet none of us are gonna pay someone to give it to us, because we already know. Right? That's the level of advice that Jesus is giving us here. You know, don't take your jewelry and throw it to farm animals.
Caleb Chancey:So is he just wasting our time? And if we immediately understand, oh, yeah. Well, the pig is obviously something that's good about me, or good that I have, and the or the sorry. The pearl, and the pig is somebody else, then it's the most natural thing in the world for us to withhold good things from other people, because we're mean and judgmental, and we don't see the world clearly. So I think what Jesus is saying is that if we saw rightly, if we didn't have a log in our eye, we would be able to see that we are in danger of doing the very thing that he's warning us about, that in fact, when he looks at our life, He sees us casting a pearl before swine.
Caleb Chancey:And He sees the bad consequences that come from it. He presupposes that we're doing it, and we should not be so confident that we're not. Now, look. Every commentator goes wrong because they can't quite figure out what's the pearl and what's the pig. I'm gonna tell you what I think based on the verses that have come before and a few other places in scripture.
Caleb Chancey:The pearl is, your redeemed life. It's my thesis God has made you a citizen of his kingdom. He's redeemed your life from the pit, and that's the pearl. You have already been given it of church. It is what Paul might call the new man, the new creation inside of you.
Caleb Chancey:The pig is the old way of living, what Paul might call the old man. It's the, the Israelites' desire, once they've been led across the Red Sea, to go back into slavery in Egypt, the longing to leave the wilderness and just go back and be a slave again. It is our desire now that we've been completely justified by the gospel to still wanna make ourselves look better than our neighbors, to still wanna put people down because it makes us feel good about ourselves. It's our desire to condemn, even though we were due to be condemned and we're freed. And I think all of us are prone to doing that.
Caleb Chancey:And when we do it, we kick mud on the gospel of Jesus Christ. We say that his gospel is not enough for us, that we is not enough that he approves, that we want the world's approval. In fact, we want our own approval and we value that more highly. We want to look good in our own eyes and make ourselves feel good by looking down at other people and that his smile is not enough. And that that is an ugly act.
Caleb Chancey:Like we sang earlier, before the throne of God above, I have a strong and perfect plea, a great high priest whose name is love, whoever lives and pleads for me. And it's like we add on to that. Oh, yeah. And I live a better life than my neighbor. We still want to be graded on that curve.
Caleb Chancey:We still wanna be able to have someone that we can look down on, and that's not the gospel. So that's my suggestion, that what Jesus is saying here is that we, even though we don't have to, even though we've been freed from the need to compare and to judge and to live this life of comparative righteousness, we still go back and do it. When we do, we judge wrongly in that way. It comes back on us, just as he promises in verse 1, that we will be judged if we judge other people that way. So does he promise here that the dogs and pigs will turn on us and trample underfoot.
Caleb Chancey:All right. I've got 4 quick points of application. 1st, the next time you feel judgment rising up in your heart, you feel it kind of spring up out of you that you're gonna look down on somebody. It happens to me a lot. It should set off the red alarm in your mind.
Caleb Chancey:Because there aren't many times in your life that you're gonna be tempted to do something that Jesus has specifically warned you about in very clear terms, like judge not lest you be judged. So let that alarm go off. Instead of looking down on somebody, remember the gospel. However it is that you can do that. Remember the gospel.
Caleb Chancey:Remember that you were a sinner, that you were that unforgiving servant who owed 10,000 talents and that your debt was forgiven. Is there a way that you can forgive in this situation? How can you live in a way that honors Christ's great work in forgiving you? It may be that you need to move forward in judgment. That's possible.
Caleb Chancey:But remember the ground that you stand on before you do. And remember that not only did Christ die for you, but he sent you out to that person, whom he also died for, that you might be an instrument of grace to them. So we do not sit as impartial judges of the world, but whether as those who are interested in its flourishing in all places, in all tongues and tribes, nations. So when you feel the urge to judge, see the alarm go off and remember the gospel. 2nd, pay attention to those areas in your life where you're prone to judging.
Caleb Chancey:Now for me, just very practically, this might be trivial, but I don't believe the gospel when I drive my car. I don't believe the gospel when somebody interrupts me. I don't believe the gospel when somebody wastes my time. Because I will judge people for all three of those things. I might judge them rightly, but I judge them.
Caleb Chancey:I don't need to justify myself here. And yet I still am. The, those places where we long to look down on people, where it comes very naturally for us to do so. Now those are places in our lives that aren't converted. Those are places where we haven't submitted to the lordship of Christ, or at least they're very likely to be.
Caleb Chancey:So I encourage you to lean into those areas when those things come up, and look, it might be in trivial things. But let us be faithful in the small ways. If I could be a repentant driver, I wouldn't be a much better person, but I would be a little bit better. I would be a little bit more gracious, And the sum of small actions over a lifetime hopefully is gonna be evidence of God's work in my heart. Hopefully, it will be in yours too.
Caleb Chancey:3rd, for most of us, we need to be harsh with our own sin. There's never an occasion when we should judge another person more harshly than we judge ourselves. We need to establish presumptions of innocence for others, especially for people that aren't like us or that we hold biases or prejudices against. We need to intentionally think the best. Love hopes all things.
Caleb Chancey:Right? Believes all things. We want to try to live that way towards other people. And we need to stop coddling our sin. A lot of us treat, sin like it's a plant in our yard.
Caleb Chancey:It's something that must be controlled, cut back from time to time, and managed, but it is far too much work to root it out. And the truth is we kind of like it. We're okay with it. And if we tolerate our own sin, then there's never an occasion for us to judge anybody about anything. We must become ruthless to our sin.
Caleb Chancey:Root it out. Get rid of it. And as we wage that war, we will be able to see better how we can help the world become a more just a safer place, a more reasonable place. We can be salt and light in it. But if we aren't willing to do that with ourselves, we will lose the agency to do it because we're not willing to take the log out of our own eye.
Caleb Chancey:And last, it's an underpinning of the whole sermon. I hope I've talked about it from time to time, but I want to end by hitting on this note. We should all rejoice that our debt is paid. That, we can't talk about judgment, any of us who are saved by grace, without realizing that we were owed we owed a debt that we could never pay. Though we owed 10,000 talents, we have received, as we sang this morning, 10,000 charms in its place.
Caleb Chancey:And that if we can just be happy about that, if we can be thankful, if we can rejoice that God is so great in his mercy that he loves us, that will express itself in our actions. Maybe we can let go of the need to look down on other people if we see that Christ did not look down on us except with love, and he had compassion on us, and that when we long to judge or we get too caught up in weighing the scales of the world, That's a time to sing for gratitude that God has not judged us, but instead has taken our place. For the judge came down from behind the bench, and he took off the robe. He took up the basin and the towel, and he washed our feet, And he suffered for us. And when you feel self righteous, remember the gospel, and it will bring you back to that place of humility where God can lift you up.
Caleb Chancey:Please pray with me. God our father, we long to be a people that honor your gospel in our lives. We want to live out the forgiveness that you've shown us. We wanna do that by being forgiving, Have we want to, take the mercy that you've shown us and show our deep gratitude by being merciful? Not even as we do justice, may we love mercy.
Caleb Chancey:May we walk humbly with you. Lord, remind us that you are on your throne and do not require our assistance. You're in no need of my help. To make right the wrongs of the world, that you will do it, and that I can trust you, and that my mission here is not to point a finger at somebody else, though they may richly deserve it, as I did and as I still do, but rather it is to go and to identify with that person, to seek after the lost sheep, to love my enemy, to do good to those who persecute, that all of us may be marked by great love for the world, and that our thoughts about the righteousness of other people's behavior would not be a hindrance. I would change our minds, conform them to the image of your son.
Caleb Chancey:I'd do this, through Christ, our savior. Amen.