Wonderful. Let's do that one more time. Good morning, everybody.
Good morning.
Awesome. Sweet. As you guys could tell, I am not Pastor Nathan.
I am blessed to be able to cover and take over for Pastor Nathan while he goes out to family camp with everybody.
But for those of you, it's your first time. Welcome, whether it's online or in here.
Yeah, let's give a hand. My name is John. For those of you who don't know, I do run the men's ministry here at Hosanna.
And like I said, I'm blessed to give the message this morning.
The message that the Lord put on my heart this morning is about judging and judgment.
We all can be judgmental at some point, right?
We hear a lot of people, a lot of nonbelievers say, Christians are so judgmental.
They're like very judgmental. They always have an opinion. They're always, you know, they're just so judgmental.
And then, of course, there's other Christians who say, well, you can't judge me. Only God can judge me.
And we see that all the time. But unfortunately, there are some truths to those statements.
And again, like I mentioned, unfortunately, a lot of us tend to be very judgmental.
You know, we say things like, wow, who let them leave the house looking like that?
Or who let them dress like that? Or, you know, oh, they need a designer or whatever.
And a lot of people say, too, it's why are they always talking about the Bible at church?
Why are they always doing that? You know, don't they have anything else better to do?
Shouldn't you just give us a good, you know, feel good message?
But there are a few types of judgment that is mentioned in the Bible.
You know, in the New Testament, we see that there's the judgment seat of Christ.
Now, the judgment seat of Christ is where Jesus judges us on our good deeds as Christians is what we do.
And from there, he rewards us and gives us crowns.
Then there's the great white throne judgment.
That's where it's the last and final judgment that God gives on the whole world and all the living.
That's where the nonbelievers will be cast down to the lake of fire.
And then that's where we as Christians will reign with Christ for eternity.
And there's one more judgment that's usually, you know, cast upon.
And that judgment is on believers or of believers.
Now, this judgment is usually for us Christians to judge other Christians.
Now, that doesn't mean we can judge unrighteously. That means we judge righteously.
The way that we judge as Christians is we say, OK, what are they doing? Are they sinning?
How can we help them? How can we correct them? How can we evaluate their heart?
That's the type of judgment that we do.
But there are two words this morning that I'm going to be talking about, using a lot this morning,
and that is condemning and judging.
And I'll be talking about what the difference between condemning and judging is.
But my prayer for this morning, guys, just so you know, is to provide a biblical insight as to are we to judge?
How are we supposed to judge? And who am I to judge?
There is a quote from an unknown author that I don't know who said it, but I thought it was great.
It says, don't judge someone just because they sin differently than you.
It's just so true. You know, there are some sins that we struggle with and we see that same sin in somebody,
but we just point the finger and say, you're a horrible person.
What are you doing? Like, why are you doing that sin?
And it's so much so that they create their own standard of judgment of what's acceptable and what is not acceptable.
And what they do is they take God of the equation and they just make their own self the standard.
But first, what we like to do here at Hosanna is we like to spend time and praise and worship
before I dig into judgment and a lot of conviction.
We do usually, every single Sunday, we like to praise the Lord and worship.
And let's just all lay our troubles aside. Let's lay everything at the foot of the cross.
And let's just praise the Lord. Let's pray and we'll begin worship.
Lord, I just thank you so much for this time that we have here.
Lord, I just pray that you bless every single one of us that's in the room, Lord.
I pray that you convict our hearts. If we're unrighteously judging one another, Lord,
I just pray that you just convict us to not do so.
But Lord, I just pray that you give us a heart into want to help another brother and sister if they're sinning.
Lord, please bless this time as we worship and please bless this time that we just praise you
and just thank you for everything that you have done, Lord.
Thank you, Lord. It's in your precious son's name we pray. Amen.
Let's all turn our Bibles to Matthew chapter 7. Matthew chapter 7.
Now, I'll give the context of what's going on here. In Matthew chapter 5 to chapter 7,
Jesus gave a sermon of a lifetime. Jesus went up on top of a hilltop,
or He went up on a hilltop on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee.
And the twelve disciples followed Him up there. And this is where Jesus was able to give a message of the how-tos.
We today can use this sermon as well. We learn a lot of things from this sermon.
And this is how we can learn how to be Christ-like, how to do things that God commands us to do,
all where we can learn right from wrong. This is the famous sermon called the Sermon on the Mount.
And in this sermon, Jesus began with the Beatitudes in chapter 5.
This is where Jesus said the famous, 8 blessed are the statements.
He said, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek,
blessed are those who hunger and thirst, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure in heart,
blessed are the peacemakers, and blessed are the persecuted.
Then Jesus goes on and He speaks about how, again, we as Christians could be salt and light of the world to the unbelievers.
Jesus spoke about how He fulfilled the law in these chapters. He spoke about how murder begins in our heart.
And Jesus also spoke about adultery begins in our heart as well.
Jesus declares that marriage is very sacred and binding, and Jesus there in the Sermon on the Mount forbids oaths.
Jesus spoke about how we are to go the second mile on those who don't like us, and we may not like them either.
But Jesus tells us how to love our enemies and that we should love our enemies.
And again, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus modeled how we are to pray, how we are to fast, and there's just so much more.
But Jesus ends here in chapter 7 concluding His sermon with how to judge, are we to judge, and so on.
So read with me here, we'll read the first six verses here.
It says, Do not judge so that you won't be judged, for you will be judged by the same standard with which you judge others.
And you will be measured by the same measure you use.
Why do you look at the splinter in your brother's eye, but don't notice the beam of wood in your own eye?
Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the splinter out of your eye and look, there's a beam of wood in your own eye?
Hypocrite, first take the beam of wood out of your eye and then you will see clearly to take the splinter out of your brother's eye.
Verse 6, Don't give what is holy to dogs or toss your pearls before pigs, or they will trample them under their feet, turn and tear you to pieces.
Let's ask for the Lord to go before us.
Lord, I just pray that you just bless this time of study, Lord. I just pray that you give me the words to speak.
Speak your words, Lord, not mine, Lord. I just pray that you just bless this time and just open our hearts, Lord, to the words that you want us to know.
It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
So we go on the first verse, Do not judge.
This reminds me of a story of an elderly woman that walked into the local church one Sunday.
She was greeted by a friendly usher at the door and he helped her up the flight of stairs.
And he says, Where would you like to sit?
And she says, Well, I'd like to sit in the front row, please.
He says, You really don't want to do that.
The usher says, The pastor is really, really boring.
She says, Do you know who I am?
He says, No. She says, I'm the pastor's mother.
He's like, Oh, he's like, Do you know who I am?
She's like, No.
He's like, Good. Enjoy the sermon.
And he walked off.
But the whole point is it just reminds me of not to judge.
You know, what somebody may think is boring or whatever the other person may think is edifying.
But this verse here in verse one would better read, Do not condemn so that you will not be condemned.
We see this in Luke 6 37, where Jesus says, Do not condemn and you will not be condemned.
But for here, Luke uses, Luke uses condemn and judge in his gospel account.
Matthew, for whatever reason, just records just the judge part.
Do not judge so that you will not be judged.
I mentioned that because there's no contradiction.
There's nothing that makes any difference.
It's all the same message.
Everything that Luke said is the same that Matthew.
It's the same message.
But to distinguish the difference between the two words here is.
Condemning is the final judgment, which is God reserved for himself.
It's the final judgment.
But the judgment here that we see in Matthew 7 means to evaluate one another or to use discernment.
That's the type of judgment that we're to use.
So in a sense, Jesus is saying, Don't condemn your brothers and sisters.
When we do, we become self-righteous to the point to where, as I mentioned earlier, we create our own standard of goodness.
We create our own standards of morals and our standards of morals.
We tend to look at as better than God's because, you know, we just say, well, you're a horrible person.
Well, why? What did they do?
Well, they sin.
Well, don't you sin?
Don't make that moral standard.
You know, don't make your standard higher than God's.
But God's moral standards are the Ten Commandments.
They're also known as God's moral law.
So we can most definitely use God's moral law to point out sin.
But we are not to condemn one another for sins that everybody else commits.
But the biggest thing that happens a lot here is a lot of carnal Christians cast their own personal condemnation with their own moral standards on others.
Now, a carnal Christian is someone who has never denied self-life and one who has never taken up their cross daily to follow Jesus.
Yes, they still have salvation through Christ, but they just still going around doing their own thing.
They think that they're self-righteous and they think that they don't sin and they think they're better and they still go around condemning people.
Since they create their own standard of what is acceptable, they use their own standards.
They don't use God's moral law.
They are the type of Christian who sees someone who looks a little bit different, who doesn't look like a Christian, whatever that may be.
I don't know.
I still don't understand what that is.
But they still see somebody who looks just a little bit different, who dresses a little bit different, somebody who may struggle with same sex attraction,
which the struggling with the sin or struggling with same sex attraction is not the sin.
Acting on the sin is the sin.
I just want to make that clear.
But when they see this person who struggles with same sex attraction, they just go and they condemn.
They condemn them and they look at them.
But really deep down inside, this Christian who struggles with same sex attraction, they still bear the fruits, the good fruits of someone who has truly accepted Christ into their hearts.
Because they are the ones who deny themselves daily.
They deny their sins daily.
But the carnal Christian still goes around and says, I don't care.
You're going to hell.
Instead of evaluating or discerning what their heart is, they condemn them.
They say it doesn't matter what Jesus says.
They just condemn them.
That's what a lot of carnal Christians do.
Far too many of us Christians, we do the same thing.
There have been a handful of celebrities that have accepted Christ in the last few months.
And instead of Christians rejoicing, they cast their condemnation upon everybody.
You know, they say things like, oh, they're not really saved.
They're just looking for the next best thing.
You know, they've already tried all the drugs.
They've already tried, you know, drinking alcohol.
They've done everything.
But they're not really saved.
We need to stop doing that as Christians.
We have to stop doing that.
The Bible says there is joy in the presence of God's angels over one sinner who repents.
Who are we to say, oh, well, they're not really Christians?
We can't do that.
We must rejoice with them.
We must welcome them to Christ.
We should know more than anyone that as soon as we become a Christian, the world is against us.
You know, Satan doesn't want to see his people.
You know, Satan doesn't want to see anybody come to Christ.
Satan doesn't want to see anybody repent and become God's children.
Why?
Because he wants everybody to go with him.
He wants everybody to be cast down to hell.
But we have to stand with God's people and welcome them.
You know, help.
We need to welcome the repented sinners to Jesus.
You know, I don't know if you guys know who Russell Brand is,
but about three, four months ago, maybe a little bit less, Russell Brand accepted Christ.
And that's a very big thing because he went through a lot of, you know, alcohol abuse,
drug abuse, going through every religion that you can think of.
But then just a few months ago, he says, you know, I'm going to try Christianity.
I've never tried it. I've tried everything else.
I'm going to try Christianity.
Well, everybody else, and unfortunately a lot of Christians, they went out and said,
oh, he's not really, he's not going to be a Christian.
He's tried every single religion.
He's done every single thing.
He's just not, you know, he's not going to stay there.
But instead of looking at him accepting Christ, they went and judged him.
They shouldn't do that.
We should never pronounce condemnation upon anybody who accepts Christ.
That right is reserved for God only.
But we can use discernment.
We can evaluate their actions.
We can evaluate how they are reacting with one another.
We as Christians should treat them as they are a believer
and pray for them as if they aren't believers.
Now, that's the hard thing is because with Russell Brand in particular,
he's taking every measure that I've seen.
You know, I don't know how he is reacting, you know, because I don't know him personally,
but I see everything.
He's acting, you know, as a Christian online.
He knows that he's like, well, I'm not going to do these sins.
I'm not going to do this.
He's even, because he's very opinionated, and he even said,
well, I'm not going to give my opinion on certain things because I know that's a sin.
I shouldn't be judging people for the things that they're doing.
And again, we should rejoice.
We should rejoice when people come to Christ.
You know, there's also another guy named Richie the barber.
I don't know if you guys have ever heard of him.
Well, this guy doesn't look like your average Christian either.
You know, he dresses as a clown.
He's got tattoos and piercings and everything.
And again, unfortunately, there's a lot of Christians who judge him.
They say, you're not a Christian.
You know, you have tattoos, you have piercings, you know, you're doing all these things.
But the fruit he bears, he goes to church.
Not that going to church saves you, but he has truly accepted Christ.
He goes out and he gives the gospel.
He uses his platform as a Christian, as an influencer to give the gospel.
Not many people do that.
But they, you know, again, unfortunately, the carnal Christians go out and judge him.
But we must stay away from the carnality of our flesh when we're evaluating other Christians.
Because when we let our carnality of our flesh jump in front of us,
we become extremely judgmental as the world calls us Christians.
As they say, you guys are extremely judgmental.
Christians are so judgmental.
Then we see here in verse one, the second half of verse one, so that you won't be judged.
So don't judge so that you won't be judged.
Romans 2, 1 says, Therefore, every one of you who judges is without excuse.
For when you judge one another, you condemn yourself, since you the judge do the same things.
So Paul is saying, do not pronounce condemnation on anyone,
especially your brothers and sisters.
If we were to call out a sinner and call out the sins of a judgmental person who is a sinner,
how would they react?
For the most part, they will be extremely offended instead of receiving it and saying,
you know what, I am being judgmental.
I am, you know, I am doing all these things.
I should turn from that.
They tend to just deflect it back to the person who points out the sin.
So people do not like it when their sins are pointed out by someone else.
And we just have to be very cautious when we do that.
When we evaluate them, we have to be very cautious.
Don't condemn, just evaluate.
But when we give our righteous judgment, the judgment that is by our standards,
we better understand that we will be judged the same way that we judge the people.
You know, one pastor said that our unrighteous judgment is like a boomerang effect.
It will come right back at us.
If we judge somebody for the things that they say and the things that they do,
it is going to come back at us as well.
So you better make sure, you know, all of us better make sure that we are not, you know,
judging them harshly or condemning them or doing, you know,
judging them on the same things that we do.
You know, because God knows what we are doing late at night.
He knows what we are doing, what we are looking for.
You know, if you struggle with stealing, He knows that you are looking for that.
He knows that the person that is lusting is looking for the next person to lust after.
But we try to justify our sins.
When we are so deep into our sins, we try to justify them
and feel better by calling out somebody else.
We feel better calling out somebody else on their sin
because we are just completely stuck in it.
And then we condemn them because they are doing the same thing that we are doing.
And we could see that sin.
So the question here is are we to evaluate and use discernment with others?
Yes. You know, as Christians we should.
You know, Paul says in Romans 16 verses 17 and 18,
he says, Now I urge you, brothers and sisters,
to watch out for those who create divisions and obstacles
contrary to the teaching that you learned.
Avoid them, because such people do not serve our Lord Christ but their own appetites.
They deceive the hearts of the unsuspected with smooth talk and flattering words.
So we saw that there was contamination that was entering the early church in the Romans.
Paul wasn't condemning the church.
He didn't say, Oh, all you guys are going to hell.
All you guys are sinners.
All you guys are just going to, you know, burn in the, you know, lake of fire.
No. Rather he says, evaluate the church.
He evaluated the church.
He looked at what the church was doing wrong.
He saw that they were sinning and he pointed it out.
And when he wrote, you know, to the Romans, you know,
the church in Rome, he said, Hey, this is what I've evaluated.
This is the things that I've been seeing that's going on in the church.
You guys better stop that right away.
But again, we are told to evaluate and not condemn.
I know I keep saying the same thing over, but I just want to make sure we get that clear.
Evaluate, not condemn.
We are to evaluate righteously without condemning.
John 7 24, Jesus said, stop judging according to the outward appearances,
rather judge according to righteous judgment.
So we should evaluate their actions as Christians, as believers,
but don't do it with unrighteous acts or our own standard.
Look at God's, you know, use God's moral standard.
And that is with righteousness is when we look at, you know, when we evaluate others.
When I first became a believer, I was, you know, I hate to say it,
but I was very judgmental, you know, when I first became a believer,
I was working at this old job and there's one friend of mine who, you know,
he knew the things that I struggled with because unfortunately I didn't try to hide them.
And we would go through these things.
And so one day he finally asked, he says, hey, you're doing all these sins.
You're doing X, Y, and Z. Aren't you a Christian?
I'm like, yeah, of course I'm a Christian.
He says, well, then why are you sinning and why are you doing all these things?
And I said, well, look at this.
You're not a Christian. You can't judge me.
Only God can judge me.
And I'm like, thinking back now, I'm like, what kind of nasty stuff is that?
But like, I have to think about it.
Like, we have to really evaluate our heart.
We can't say only God can judge us because again, like I mentioned earlier,
yes, only God can judge us.
But if somebody is evaluating our heart, evaluating the things that we're doing,
don't do the boomer, you know, don't deflect.
Just accept it and look at our hearts.
What are we doing wrong?
You know, are we being too judgmental?
Are we using our standards instead of God's standards?
Verse 2.
For you will be judged by the same standard with which you judge others,
and you will be measured by the same measure you use.
So, being a hypercritical, being hypercritical by our standards just assures us
that we will be looked at according to the same standard.
We will be hypercritically judged.
Now hypercritically, for those of you who don't know,
it's excessively and unreasonably judgmental.
So, if we're going to be hypercritical,
don't get mad at when somebody else pulls the Uno reverse card on you
and does the same thing to you.
We cannot get mad at somebody who does that.
But this here reminds me of 2 Samuel 12.
You guys all know the story.
It's where Nathan the prophet went to King David,
and he told King David a story.
He says, hey, there's a rich man and then there's a poor man.
Now the rich man has an abundant of cattle, sheep, everything,
but the poor man only has one lamb.
That lamb, he lives and treats that lamb as if it's his child.
That's the only lamb that he has.
And the rich man knew that there was somebody coming into town,
so he says, you know what?
We need to sacrifice an animal to feed everybody.
And the rich man says, I don't want to use mine.
I don't want to use any of mine.
So he says, you know what?
There's that poor guy down the street there.
Let's get his lamb.
Let's sacrifice his lamb.
So what they do is they go and they grab the lamb and they sacrifice it.
So, of course, like anybody else, the poor man was distraught.
He was so saddened.
He was upset.
He's like, why would you take mine when you have so many?
So when David heard this, he told Nathan, he just basically looked at him
and says, as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die.
And then Nathan had the very, very hard thing to respond with by saying,
David, you are the man.
You know, and we know this, that David is the one who took Bathsheba
and basically got her husband killed, and he took them.
So in a sense, David was condemning the man who stole the lamb from the poor guy
and said to put him to death.
But David was that man.
Of course, David didn't get put to death, but it was that boomerang effect.
He judged and says, hey, you know what, they're doing wrong.
And it came right back at him at his heart.
He says, no, you're doing wrong.
You're that man.
You know, it kind of reminds me, I took, how many of you guys took biology
in high school or whatever?
Yeah, I failed all four years.
But it was funny, it's just this, my wife loves this story.
So I was horrible at biology.
I tried to study all the time, or well, I tried one time to study.
That's besides the point.
But I tried one time, I said, you know what, I'm tired of failing.
I'm not going to do this anymore.
I'm going to study.
So I studied for a whole week, and that night before the test, I studied so much.
I stayed up late.
I was so confident.
I said, you know what, I'm going to pass this.
I got this.
Like, you know, I didn't know what anything meant up until now.
So we took the test, and I was just, oh, man, yep, I got this one, this one.
I was like, pff, A, you know what, I got an A.
So a week later, the teacher, he got the test, and he never put anybody's name.
He always put our ID next to the grade.
He says, all right, here's your grade.
So he put it up, and so I'm like, all right, cool.
He went to the bottom, and I looked down.
I was like, dang, so we got a 14%.
Oh, they're stupid.
So, you know, I'm just going up, looking at A.
I was like, ooh, nope, I didn't get an A.
Whatever, I got a B.
Nope, not a B.
All the way down, turns out I was that person that got the 14%.
I was judging somebody by thinking, oh, well, they're dumb.
They didn't know what they were doing, but that was, in fact, me.
So it was, again, the boomerang effect.
Anyways, I never passed biology, but I'm here today.
But if we are guilty of condemning others, though, by our standards,
we had better be careful because people will be looking at all the faults
that are in us, and they will condemn us when they see all those faults.
So I have a question for you guys today, or this morning.
Are you guys evaluating others righteously?
Are you guys evaluating the good fruits of others?
For us to know what is good and bad, we must evaluate the situation.
We must evaluate their heart.
We must evaluate so much.
Jesus said in Matthew 7, 15 that we will know who the false prophets are,
you know, the wolves in the sheep clothing, if you will,
and we will recognize them by their fruits.
What did Jesus mean by this?
Well, he says in the following verses, 18 to 20, he says,
a good tree can't produce bad fruit.
Neither can a bad tree produce good fruit.
Every tree that doesn't produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
So you'll recognize them by their fruit.
So in a sense, Jesus is saying to know who is living righteously,
you are not to judge them unrighteously, but to evaluate the fruits.
What are they doing?
You know, are they responding as Christians?
Are they responding in love?
And if we are the ones who are complaining constantly about people who are judging
and complaining about, you know, people from church or people at our work,
you know, and we're just being nasty and we're being disrespectful to everybody,
then we're probably the ones bearing the bad fruits.
We should probably evaluate our hearts.
We should always check ourselves before we wreck ourselves.
I'm just kidding, but we should check ourselves before we check others anyways.
Jesus tells us that in verses 3 and 5, but we'll get to that.
But again, if we are constantly going around judging and condemning others,
just like a hawk, we can point out the bad fruits and all the sins and others.
They too will be looking at the flaws in us.
The boomerang effect will, you know, hit us.
We should be the good fruit.
Paul says in Galatians 5, 22 and 23, speaking of the fruits of the Spirit,
what the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
The law is not against such things.
So the law, God's moral law is not against these things.
So are we bearing the good fruit today?
Are we showing love to our brothers and sisters?
Are we being joyful with one another?
Are we being patient, peaceful?
God wants us to love one another.
The world is already watching us as Christians.
Sadly, the world rejoices when they see pastors who have to step down
because of the sins that they've committed or the things that they've been hiding.
The world just rejoices in all those things.
And the world responds with, see, we were right about Christians.
They abuse their authority.
They really are judgmental.
They really are disgusting.
And they are fake.
That's what we get accused of.
But we must fight back from that.
We must not live that stereotype of being a Christian.
We must fight back with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
We have to fight back.
We have to use the fruits of the Spirit.
We have to be loved.
We have to be the only Christ that they will ever see.
Not that we are Christ, but living as Christ that they will ever see.
Most people in this world won't see anybody who is loving.
They won't see anybody who is very patient.
They won't see anybody who is gentle.
Most of the people they see as harsh, judgmental, mean, rude.
But we shouldn't add on to that.
We as Christians should have self-control and love one another and love the world.
In 1 Corinthians 5, 19 to 13, Paul wrote to the church in Corinth.
He says, I write to you in a letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.
I did not mean the immoral people of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters.
Otherwise, you would have to leave the world.
But actually, I wrote you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister
and is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or verbally abusive, a drunkard or a swindler.
Do not even eat with such person.
For what business is it of mine to judge outsiders?
Don't you judge those who are inside?
God judges outsiders.
Remove the evil person from among you.
So this brings us to the next question.
If we are permitted to judge by the fruits, evaluate by the fruits,
are we supposed to judge the unbelievers?
Well, Paul gives us the answer in verse 5. Paul says not to judge the outsiders.
Why?
Well, in verse 13, Paul says God judges the outsiders.
The word for judge here is the condemnation, one which only God can do.
That is the condemnation that is reserved for God only.
Paul writes in Romans 2.16, says, On the day that when God judges,
what people have kept secret according to my gospel through Christ Jesus,
no man will escape the judgment of God.
No man will escape the judgment that is coming from God.
Even the ones who are violating and ignoring God's written revelation, they will not escape it.
We shouldn't try to jump in and say, oh, well, we're going to condemn you to hell
because we don't know everybody's heart.
We don't know the unbeliever's heart.
You know, there's many people in my family who I never thought would be Christians.
I'm like, oh, man, it's going to be so hard.
But guess what?
The Lord had, you know, other plans.
The Lord broke their heart, broke through and says, you know what?
And they've, you know, accepted Christ.
But Paul is talking about the judgment of the unbeliever, which, again,
this judgment will penetrate the thoughts and the intentions of their hearts,
of the unbeliever's hearts.
We have no such authority to condemn with condemnation on unbelievers
or the, you know, condemning of the no fruit that is being produced by the unbelievers.
We can evaluate them, but that's all we can do.
Only God knows the hearts of men and women.
Only God can condemn them with his own righteousness.
And we have to remember that.
We can't judge the unbelievers by not knowing Christ.
We have to share Christ, but not judge them for not knowing Christ.
We as Christians will not be judged by our sins, though.
They have already been forgiven.
Our sins have already been forgiven on the cross, so we won't be judged again by our sins.
But the judgment will not be for salvation, but Christ has already sacrificed that for us.
So we have to let God, you know, judge the sinners, the unbelievers,
or not the sinners, but the unbelievers.
But the Bible does say that we will be judged by our righteous acts.
This is where we will receive the rewards in heaven.
I mentioned this a little bit in the beginning.
This is called the judgment seat of Christ.
But the nonbelievers will be judged by their sins.
But the judgment, that is by the great white throne judgment.
That's where the unbelievers will be judged and cast.
But we as believers will receive rewards and crowns at this judgment seat of Christ.
And then the great white throne judgment, we will live in eternity with Christ.
Verses three and five, almost done here.
Why do you look at the splinter in your brother's eye,
but don't notice the beam of wood in your own eye?
Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the splinter out of your eye,
and look, there's a beam of wood in your own eye.
Hypocrite.
First take the beam of wood out of your eye,
and then you will see clearly to take the splinter out of your brother's eye.
So if we look at this through the context,
the splinter or the piece of wood that's in our brother's eye is a small piece of wood,
and that is sin.
That's the same exact piece of wood, the log that's in ours.
That's the same thing.
So the wood represents sin here.
As I mentioned again earlier, our sin doesn't seem to be so bad when we're committing it,
but when somebody else is, it's always bad, right?
We can be like, well, how dare they commit that sin?
If we're struggling with, say, adultery and we see somebody committing adultery,
how dare they do that?
You know, it's like, well, you're doing the same thing.
We shouldn't point out the small sawdust in our brother's eye
while they have, you know, while we have the log sticking out of our eyes.
We should first take the beam of wood out of our eye,
then help our brothers and sisters.
But are we to judge our brothers and sisters?
Yes, but only by evaluating, not condemning.
Jesus shows us that we shouldn't condemn our brothers and sisters
with the splinter in our brother, or the piece of wood that's in our brother's eye
while we have the beam of wood in our eye.
Jesus says in John 8, when the Pharisees brought the woman
who was caught in the act of adultery to see, you know,
they went to take, they took this woman to Jesus,
and they wanted to see if Jesus would condemn her.
So the Pharisees said in verses 4 and 5, said,
Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of committing adultery
in the law Moses commanded us to stone such woman.
They asked them to see if they could trap him.
You know, the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus.
And remember what Jesus said.
Jesus responded, the one without sin should be the first to throw a stone at her.
And then, you know, we all know the story, he leaned down and started writing.
Jesus, in a sense, was saying to take care of the massive log that's in our eye
before we start sinning the person with the splinter in their eye.
Because when we do, that's us not casting our stones,
not throwing our judgment at people and not knowing their heart
because we're doing the same thing.
We should evaluate ourself.
We shouldn't be condemning the sinners because we are sinners too.
But we should be loving.
We should be caring.
We should be more willing to help them through their struggle of sins.
Well, how can we do that?
Well, we can become, we can be an accountability partner for those who are sinning,
who are struggling with sins.
We shouldn't just judge them and say, oh, you're a horrible person, you sin.
No, help them.
Ask if you can be the accountability partner.
Ask if you can, you know, help them, walk with them with whatever they're struggling with.
Help them.
If they need somebody to talk to, talk to them.
We should never say it's okay that they're sinning.
We should never be like, oh, no, it's okay, brother, or it's okay, sister.
Go ahead.
Continue to sin.
No, Christ says we are called to help one another out.
You know, Galatians 6, 1 and 2, Paul writes, he says, brothers and sisters,
if someone is overtaken in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual,
restore such a person with gentle spirit, watching out for yourselves
so that you also won't be tempted.
Carry one another's burdens.
In this way, you will fulfill the law of Christ.
So how many of us are willing to carry our brothers and sisters' burdens?
How many of us are willing to help those who are struggling
instead of judge them and condemn them?
Those who are struggling with illnesses and they don't know what they're doing
or if they're feeling lonely, feeling lost, are we willing to help them?
It's our duty as Christians to fight the good fight alongside of them.
We are to continue to run the race with one another,
to help each other through the sins, not through judging.
We shouldn't judge them.
We should always be loving.
But if we just sit there and judge our brothers and sisters with the log in our eye,
we just become hypocrites.
That's what Jesus says.
Now, the word hypocrites in the original language is hypocrite.
It means someone who is an actor or somebody who puts on a mask over their face.
We too are hypocrites if we don't help them out,
if we just point the finger at them and condemn them.
We are the hypocrites if we don't help them.
So we shouldn't act like we are somebody who we aren't.
We shouldn't act like we're holier than thou.
We shouldn't act like, oh, well, you sin way more than I do.
I'm just going to judge you.
No.
It's by the grace of God that we are redeemed.
He has called us to repent.
Jesus has called us to repent and to follow him so we can gain eternal life.
And without that, we can't receive that if we're just continuing to judge
and be so judgmental.
So we can become adopted in God's family by just loving one another,
by accepting Christ.
So let's not be hypocrites.
Let's not condemn those who are sinning because we too sin.
Instead, let's help them out.
Let's help them turn from their sins.
Let's walk alongside of them.
Let's fight the fight with them.
You know, Jesus constantly called the Pharisees hypocrites.
Why?
Well, because they were claiming to be holier than thou.
Matthew 6, 5, Jesus said, whenever you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites
because they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners
to be seen by people.
They don't worry about anything but glorification.
That's what the Pharisees want.
And we see that constantly everywhere.
We see a lot of cults do that.
We see other religions do that where they want the glorification.
Instead of giving Christ the glorification, they want the glorification.
So what they do is they take that and they say, this is my self-righteousness.
This is my self being better than everybody.
Glorify me.
And that's what they do.
And it's horrible.
It's extremely horrible.
All right, last verse.
It says, don't give what is holy to dogs or to toss your pearls before pigs
or they will trample them under their feet, turn and tear you to pieces.
So for us to be able to tell who are dogs or to tell who are pigs,
we must use righteous judgment.
We must be able to evaluate and to discern what is holy.
This last verse was extremely challenging for me when I was studying through this
because there's a lot of different commentators who differ on this verse.
Some commentators believe that this verse is talking about giving the gospel.
They say it refers to the scriptures and the things concerning the gospel.
I'm sure we've all heard that.
That says, believers should not continue to preach the gospel to those who have rejected Christ.
You know, for instance, if you're giving the gospel to, say, a Jehovah's Witness
and they say, no, I don't want to hear it and they just walk away,
they say, don't cast pearls before swine.
That's what the commentators say.
And they use verses like Matthew 10 and 14, Matthew 10-14 and Matthew 15-14.
I don't have time to go through that, but if you guys want to talk to me after, we can.
But basically, they're saying if you're giving the gospel to somebody
and they reject it, just turn away and just walk away.
That's what some commentators believe.
And then there's other commentators who say that what is holy is referring to the standard
that is in Jesus Christ, the moral standards, God's moral standards.
So what do I mean by that?
It says, we live in such a time that if we accept Christ and we call ourselves Christians
and we say we believe in Jesus, we've accepted Jesus Christ in our hearts,
the world turns on us and says we're judgmental.
They say you're literally just following a man who just had talked about good things.
He had a lot of good views on philosophical things.
And the whole world says no, like you guys are just, you guys are horrible.
So with that moral standard that we live by, they judge that and say no, we reject it.
So us Christians tend to expect the nonbelievers to live by Christ or God's moral standards.
We expect them to know what sin is.
I mean, most people know what sin is, but we basically say, oh, you're a sinner.
You're going to hell.
But they don't know what that means.
If they're not believers, if they're not Christians, they don't know what that means.
So we have to be willing to talk to them.
But unfortunately, we come off as condemning and judging and all that good stuff.
So that's why we have to walk them through that.
But for the most part, you know, those who are not Christians, they receive that.
They're not like, oh, wow, thank you for telling me that I'm a sinner.
No, I'm just going to go to Christ.
No, for the most part, they say you're just judgmental as a Christian.
But the what is holy here is referred to as giving correction to the unbeliever or giving counsel.
So they're basically saying correcting those who will not receive the gospel in correction and futile.
And I would agree with this statement here.
Basically, if we try to give counsel to an unbeliever, they won't receive it well because they don't know Christ or they don't know God's moral standards.
So I would, you know, not that my opinion matters, but I lean more towards this side than the other side
because we are commanded as Christians to give the gospel.
Matthew 28, we're to give the gospel to the whole world.
And so that's why I personally stick with this one, you know, the belief what the other commentators say.
But again, this isn't saying to not give the gospel.
It's not saying, oh, well, you don't want to believe it.
You don't want to hear it.
We're not going to give you the gospel.
We're commanded to do so.
But it says basically to not correct those who have rejected the gospel.
Just know that the seed was planted.
Just pray for the sowing of the seed that was planted.
But, you know, we shouldn't force our beliefs on the world.
We are to be the light and the salt, you know, as we are called to be.
We must share the gospel with sincerity that one day we will meet the judge and one day they will meet the judge.
But God doesn't want us to suffer.
God doesn't want anybody to suffer.
He doesn't want to condemn us.
He doesn't want to, you know, have us spend eternal separation from him.
That's why we are to give the gospel to unbelievers.
You know, in John 3, 16, the most arguably famous verse is, for God so loved the world in this way, he gave his only one and only son that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
And I would say amen to that.
But as Christians, we are also commanded to let the world know that.
We are commanded to let the world know that we are all sinners.
We all have fallen short of the glory of God.
And with our sins, we have committed we need a savior.
And I'm speaking to the hearts of those who have not accepted Christ.
We are all sinners.
Every single one of us in this room, we're all sinners.
But we need a savior.
Because if we die in our sins, we are heading towards eternal punishment.
Romans 6, 23 says, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
This is what we should be preaching to the nonbelievers, not judging them, but preaching.
We should be willing to point them to the cross.
We should be willing to point them to the suffering that Christ endured on the cross for all the world.
And how Christ died for all our sins.
And that they too can be forgiven for all of the things.
All they have to do is accept and receive Christ into their hearts and believe that Christ died for them.
We shouldn't judge them. We should not go on judging them.
So before we take communion, I just want to say in conclusion of this study, a lot of judging, a lot of condemnation.
We are called to be fruit inspectors to all Christians.
But only God can judge us and condemn us.
We can use God's moral standards, not ours.
We are called to judge righteously, but not to condemn.
Condemning is reserved for God.
We must take care of the beam of wood that is in our eye before pointing out the splinter that is in our brothers and sisters eyes.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't help them.
We shouldn't help. You know, it's not saying to not help them with that piece of splinter in their eye.
No, we are. But don't condemn them.
Help them through everything.
Help them and point them to the reality of sin.
Sin kills, literally.
So for communion, everybody should have gotten a cup now.
Everybody got a cup? Everybody awake? Wonderful.
You didn't get one?
All right, if you have not got one, let's raise your hand real quick.
All right, so we got one over here.
Yeah, can you?
So I just wanted to point out that as everybody gets their communion cup, by the way, today is communion.
If you guys didn't know.
Communion is a reminder as to what Jesus has done for us.
Communion isn't just something we do once a month, right?
Here at Hosanna, that's what we do.
It's a covenant that we have with our Lord and Savior as a reminder of the sacrifice that he has endured for us.
We must remember that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Christ once and for all time.
For those who have received Jesus, we are forgiven for all of our sins.
Although we deserve the death that Jesus took, that he bore all the pain and all the suffering,
he took all of our sins with him on the cross and he wiped us clean.
He defeated death and resurrected three days later to prove his love for us.
Now, God will not judge us again for our sins, as I mentioned earlier.
They have already been dealt with on the cross once and for all.
He took Jesus' standard and tried to make it our own and he says, no, that's not what it is.
We have made a standard for ourselves that if we judge, then we can live by our own standards.
But Christ says, no, it's my standard.
We have to live by that.
Jesus also said, truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves.
We cannot hold ourselves higher than Jesus.
We are not good.
We are not good despite of what, you know, the world says.
Oh, we have a good, you know, we're all good.
I would disagree.
We must realize that Christ gave his body and sacrificed his blood to atone for our sins.
And so let's, this is a new one, so we're all used to the other one.
Let's all carefully open up the tab for the bread, the offering, the cracker.
Now, this, the bread here, this is in remembrance of Jesus' body.
We break the bread as we remember that Jesus is the bread of life.
This bread of life is a gift from God.
This bread is without leaven because leaven represents sin.
Jesus knew no sin.
Jesus wasn't filled with any sin.
Jesus' body had no sin.
When we eat of this bread, we are not eating his physical body as some believe,
but this bread is symbolic of Jesus' body.
It's symbolic of his perfect body.
Jesus gave us his body for us.
He gave it up for us.
We should have suffered for our sins.
We should be the one that have died on the cross, but we didn't.
Christ put himself there purposefully because he loves us.
It's by your wounds, Jesus, that we are healed.
Let's pray.
Father, I thank you for sending your son, Lord, for your son accomplished so much
that we could not.
But instead of doing away with us, you gave us your son.
You gave us his body so we can have remembrance of all the goodness
that you have done for us.
Father, I just thank you for everything.
Thank you, Jesus, for enduring the suffering on the cross
and the punishment that we deserve and taking that from us.
Thank you for giving your body as remembrance,
for it is by your wounds we are healed.
Let's partake in the bread, guys.
Now, the blood is the new covenant that we have with God,
that we have with Christ.
Not that the old was worse and that the old didn't do anything,
but this new covenant was accomplished to accomplish what the old could not
because we were the ones that distorted it.
The old could not do away with sin once and for all.
The new covenant is a removal of sins and cleansing of the conscience.
Christ's blood cleanses us from all our sins once and for all.
We must remember that.
His blood represents life.
It's a reminder that we have been crucified with Christ,
and it is Christ who lives in us.
It's Christ's life that was offered for us and given to us.
It is Christ that wiped away every blemish, every sin,
to cleanse us all of our unrighteousness and for the forgiveness of our sins,
our past, present, and future.
So, as you guys can tell, let's pull back on the juice here.
Let's go slowly so we don't spill it so we have enough juice to partake.
Let's pray.
Thank you, Jesus, for your shed blood.
Thank you for taking the horrible suffering that we deserve,
but you knew your blood and only by your blood that we can be cleansed of all unrighteousness.
Thank you, Father, for loving us so much that you sacrificed your one and only Son
so we would not perish but have eternal life with you.
Thank you, Jesus, for wiping us clean.
We are cleansed forever because of your blood.
Let's partake.
As the message that we had is to not judge one another,
let's just go out and be the salt and the light of the world.
Let's continue to give the gospel.
Let's continue to tell the whole world who Christ is.
Let's continue to go out and fight the good fight and tell everybody who God is.
God didn't create us just to kill us, to condemn us.
God created us because he loves us.
So let's all continue to fight the good fight with one another,
and let's all love one another. Amen?
All right, let's worship, guys.