MATT. 7:1-6 "SHOULD YOU BE THE JUDGE?"
* We are going to study, what I believe is the most misunderstood, misused, and misapplied verse
in all of the Bible ... In fact, it is probably the world’s favorite verse.
* People who normally scoff at the Bible, reject its teachings, and ridicule its content, love to
quote this verse at just the right time to shut the mouths of their critics.
A) I want you to listen to the following statements: Homosexuality is a sin!
* Homosexuals are not right with God and there’s no such thing as a Christian homosexual!
* All pre-marital sex is wrong - Two people living together out of wedlock, are committing
adultery.
* Abortion is murder ... It is the killing of a human being and those doctors who perform
abortions, except for rare exceptions, are guilty of taking innocent human life.
* Now when those statements are made the world immediately trots out their favorite verse in the
Bible: "Judge not, that ye be not judged." v.1
B) Now this raises the question, "Should you be the judge?"
* The answer of Jesus was not an all and out no, as some people think.
* The answer of Jesus was, "It all depends."
* In this passage Jesus tells us to be watchful of three things - logs, dogs, and hogs.
* You’ve got to use some type of judgment to identify any of them or all of them.
* Jesus gives us here three principles to help us answer the question, "Should you be the judge?"
(1) DESTRUCTIVE JUDGMENT IS WICKED! * v.1 "Judge not, that ye be not judged."
* The word for judge is the Greek word "krino," and it means to condemn.
A) Now there is a difference between confronting the sin and condemning the sinner!
* John 8:1-11 tells us about a woman who was caught in the act of adultery.
* The Pharisees condemned the sinner, each one had a rock in his hand to carry out the sentence.
* But Jesus confronted the sin, and said to the woman, "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and ..."
B) Now the Pharisees were guilty of self-righteous condemnation! * But Jesus confronted ...!
* Now the question is, how do you know when confronting becomes condemnation?
* Well, let me give you a simple formula! * You can judge what a person does, but you cannot
judge why a person does it!
* Judgment is wrong when you judge by the wrong standard, and in the wrong spirit!
* You see, there’s only one standard we are to use to judge other people, only one yardstick, only
one measurement, and that is, the Word of God!
* When you judge others based on your standards, your opinions, your feelings, then you are
wrong. * But you are not wrong to judge others when your standard is the Word of God.
C) It is never wrong to call wrong, wrong, when God calls it wrong!
* But judgment can still be wrong even if you use the right standard if you do it in the wrong
spirit.
* You see, the spirit of judgment must be corrective and constructive, not condemning and critical.
* Someone has well said that you cannot judge a person by what others say about him.
* But you can judge a person by what he says about others.
D) Now there are two reasons why we cannot judge other people!
* First of all, we are fallible ... meaning that we are capable of falling into sin!
* It is dangerous to judge a situation when you do not know all the facts, because then you might
jump to a hasty conclusion, which is both wrong and unjustified.
* I read about an owner of a manufacturing plant who decided to make a surprise tour of the shop.
* Walking through the warehouse he noticed a young man just lazily leaning up against some
packing crates with his hands in his pocket doing nothing.
E) The boss walked up to him and angrily said, "Just how much are you paid a week?"
* Well, the young man’s eyes got rather big, and he said, "Three hundred bucks."
* The boss pulled out his wallet, pealed off three one hundred bills, gave it to him, and said,
* "Here’s a week’s pay. Now get out of here and don’t ever come back!"
* Well, without a word the young man stuffed the money into his pocket and took off!
* The warehouse manager was standing nearby staring in amazement.
* The boss walked over to him and said, "Tell me, how long has that guy been working for us?"
* The manager said, "He didn’t work here, he was just delivering a package."
F) The Apostle James had something interesting to say about this matter of judging others!
* James 4:11-12 "Speak not evil one ... He that speaketh ... There is one lawgiver, who is ..."
* There is only one who is able to judge correctly and rightly, because he knows all the facts,
and that is God.
* When you set yourself up as a judge over somebody else, you are playing God, and you have no
right to do that. * The Apostle Paul said in Rom. 14:4,
* "Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth.
Yea, he shall be held up: for God is able to make him stand."
G) But another reason why we cannot judge others is because we are fallen - v.3!
* "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not ......."
* None of us are perfect, We don’t know the hearts of others, We don’t even know our own hearts.
* The Bible says, Jer.17:9 "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately ......."
* There is an age-old poem that says it well: There is so much good in the worst of us, and so
much bad in the best of us; that it hardly behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us!
* Did you know that when you judge others, you are generally criticizing a fault that you have ...?
* Rom. 2:1 "Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest:
for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest ..."
* Jesus speaks of a person in v.3 who is trying to judge the speck in one person’s eye, while he
has a plank in his own eye!
H) The word for mote in the Greek means splinter!
* Now a splinter is just a piece of a plank. * Generally when you criticize another person’s fault,
his fault is just a chip off of your block. * That’s why Jesus said in v.2, "For with what ......."
* Now what Jesus was saying was this: The person who forms a noose of judgment for another
person, will soon find his own neck in the knot.
* I remember when Jim Bakker first had his immoral act uncovered, there was a TV evangelist,
who at that time had a world-wide ministry, who came out publicly and criticized Jim Bakker,
* And said that he should be removed from the ministry for at least two years.
* Well low and behold, this same TV evangelist soon fell into moral sin.
* Beware of the person who builds himself up by tearing others down.
(2) DELUDED JUDGMENT IS WRONG! * v. 3-4 "And why beholdest thou the mote ......."
* Jesus gives a humorous but brilliant illustration of the problem with judging other people.
* He speaks of a person trying to remove a splinter out of one person’s eye when he has a plank in
his own eye. * It reminds me of a man who walked into a psychiatrist’s office,
* With a fried egg on the top of his head, and a strip of bacon over each ear.
* He sat down and said, "I’ve come to talk to you about my brother."
* Do you know why this person could see the speck in his brother’s eye, but he could not see the
plank in his own eye? * It is really very simple ... He was looking for the speck.
A) Every church has "speck inspectors." I call them "splinter specialists."
* They are part of the FBI - The Fundamentalist Bureau of Investigation.
* They love to find fault with the other fellow.
* Is it not true that there is a natural tendency to see our faults with a telescope, while we look at
other’s faults with a microscope.
* That’s why so often that your faults look so much bigger than mine to me, and my faults look so
much bigger than yours to you.
B) The easiest thing in the world to see is the fault which others own!
* The hardest thing in the world to see is the fault which you condone!
* We somehow think that if we can blow out the other person’s candle it will make ours burn
brighter. * Now v.5 is the key to understanding this entire passage.
* You will never understand v.1 unless you link it with v.5!
* Jesus tells us how to walk the tight rope between confronting the sin and condemning the sinner.
* "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye." v.5a
C) Now notice carefully what the Lord does!
* He condemns selfish judgment, but he condones self judgment.
* Because the Lord knows that self examination will eliminate selfish condemnation.
* Now he is speaking here to "the hypocrite."
* It is just a step from the critical to the hypocritical! * Now you can be critical without being
hypocritical, but you cannot be hypocritical without being critical.
D) What is the mark of the hypocrite? * The hypocrite judges others to make himself look good!
* The humble judges himself so he can make others look good.
* It was Benjamin Franklin who said, "Clean your fingers before you point at my spots."
* But the point that Jesus makes here is this: Once your fingers are clean you can point.
* That is where the third principle comes in.
(3) DISCRIMINATING JUDGMENT IS WISE!
E) There are two words to notice in v.5 ... The word "first" and the word "then."
* "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine ... and then shalt thou see ......."
* Now the world wants us to remember the "first" clause, but to forget the "then" clause.
* But what God has joined together let no man put asunder.
* What Jesus was saying was this: We ought to judge ourselves before we can judge others.
F) But we are to judge ourselves so we can judge others.
* 1Cor. 11:31 "For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged."
* It is only when you see your sins correctly that you can see others’ sins clearly.
* Only the person humble enough to see his own sin is healthy enough to see his brother’s sin.
* After David had been confronted about his sin with Bathsheba, he wrote the 51st Psalm.
* In that Psalm he said, "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free Spirit."
* But after he had gotten his own sin confessed up-to-date, he said,
* "Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee."
G) It is important to understand that Jesus is not forbidding all judgment!
* In fact, one of the marks that you are a spiritual person is that you know how to judge at the right
time, at the right place, in the right way. * 2Cor. 2:15 says,
* "For we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ in them that are saved, & in them that perish:"
* It is not wrong to confront a person with his sin ... It is wrong if you don’t.
* Listen to Lev.19:17, "Thou shall not hate thy brother in thine heart: Thou shalt in any wise
rebuke thy neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him."
* If you love your brother, you will confront him when he is wrong, if you hate him, you will not!
* Refusing to confront a person about his sin is just as wrong as a doctor refusing to confront a
patient about his sickness.
* If you want to understand what Jesus said in Matt. 7:1, you must put right beside it what he
said in John 7:24, "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment."
* Now that says it all ... You cannot judge a tree by its leaves, but you can judge a tree by its fruit.
* You cannot judge a book by its cover, but you can judge a book by its contents.
* The key is not to judge by appearance.
CLOSE
A) There was a lady in an airport who bought a book to read and a package of cookies to eat
while she waited for her plane.
* Well, after she had taken her seat in the terminal and began to read this book, she noticed that
the man sitting one seat away from her was fumbling to open up the package of cookies on the
seat between them.
* Well, she could hardly believe her eyes that a stranger would just open her bag of cookies and
eat them. * He took one and ate it ... She was so hot and steamed.
B) She reached into the bag and took one and ate it ... Well, the man didn’t say anything.
* He just reached over and took another cookie.
* This woman thought to herself that she wasn’t going to let him eat all of her cookies, so she took
another cookie.
* When they finally got down to one cookie, the man reached into the bottom of the bag, broke the
cookie in half, ate it, glared at the woman, got up and left.
C) This lady couldn’t believe this man’s nerve.
* She was thinking to herself how fresh and arrogant he was.
* Soon the announcement came to board the plane.
* This lady got on the plane, still hot and bothered at the audacity of this man, sat down, buckled
her seat belt, reached into her purse for a tissue, and there was her bag of cookies.
* If you want to escape the condemning judgment of God, then you had better judge yourself as a
sinner in need of a Savior, & accept Jesus as your Savior.
