Believers in Black Robes Pt 2

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My Pathway to Calvinism Pt 3

My Pathway to Calvinism Pt 3

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As I mentioned a moment ago, this is the second time we are looking at this passage.
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I want to ensure that we understand it before we move on in our exposition.
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In our last session, we looked at what this text does not mean.
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For if there is any verse in the Bible which has been taken out of context, misconstrued and misapplied by the modern world, it is this.
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Judge not, lest ye be judged.
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The world loves that passage.
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The world grabs that passage.
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You know, you think for all have sinned might be one that the world loves.
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Oh, well, everybody's a sinner.
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It's no big deal.
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No, they love this passage.
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For any time we try to bring the weight of the Word of God to anyone, their first response is often, judge not, lest ye be judged.
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As Paul Washer said, his response is often, twist not scripture, lest you be like the devil, because that's exactly what they're doing.
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But for those of you who were not here, I do want to simply give a recap of our last lesson just in a shortened form, because I think it's important to understand what this text doesn't mean.
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Number one, this text does not forbid us from telling lost people that they are sinners in need of repentance.
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If this text forbid us from doing that, we would be forbidden for preaching the gospel because the gospel includes the repentance that is necessary.
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For salvation.
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Number two, this text does not forbid us from telling believers that they are sinning and in need of restoration.
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If I come to you or if you come to me, I'll turn it around.
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If you come to me and you say, Pastor Keith, you have sinned and you need to repent.
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And if I have legitimately sinned, I have no right to turn to you and say you are a judgmental Pharisee.
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Because that's what we are supposed to do, Jesus said, if your brother sins against you, go to him and tell him privately that he might be restored.
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Matthew 18, that's the goal.
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That's not judgmentalism, that's love to you know what it is, true love to tell someone that they are sinning in love.
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What is not true love, as we talked about in our last session, is to go tell someone else that that person sinning because that's gossip, that's judgmentalism, that's not love.
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Thirdly, this text does not forbid us from identifying false teachers and rebuking unbiblical doctrines.
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Jesus will later say that there are wolves in sheep's clothing who have come in among us and we need to identify who they are.
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And I tell you what, the false teachers in the world are the first ones to grab a hold of this verse.
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If you say, brother, you're teaching heresy, judge not, lest ye be judged.
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I said, I judge you're a heretic, you're preaching heresy and it's damnable heresy.
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Because the Bible says so, not because Kiefoski thinks it's heresy, but because what you have said is in opposition to the word of God.
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So this text does not mean what the world wants it to mean, it doesn't mean what the false teachers want it to mean, it doesn't mean what Christians who try to live in sin want it to mean.
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But it does have a meaning.
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So now that we understand what it doesn't mean, we do need to apply ourselves to the understanding of what it does mean.
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And that's going to be the focus of today.
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Because this text does not mean that we're not allowed to exercise any righteous discernment, but it does stand as a strong warning against unrighteous and hypocritical condemnation.
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And that's what we're going to deal with this morning.
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We'll look first at the prohibition in verses one and two.
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He says in verse one, 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.
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The word judge there is a very simple word.
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In fact, it's a it's a word that can have a variety of meanings.
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The root krine can have all sorts of different meanings.
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And essentially it means to make a decision about something.
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When Paul says in first Corinthians chapter two and verse two, for I decided to know nothing among you except Christ and him crucified.
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You all know that passage of the word decided there is the same root as what is here.
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I decided I judged to know nothing among you other than Christ and crucified.
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It's the same idea.
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But in this context, the judgment that's being referred to by Christ is referring to making a pronouncement of condemnation.
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In fact, if you turn with me very quickly to Luke chapter six, we'll see the parallel passage and you'll see very clearly that Jesus is referring to a condemning judgment.
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Luke chapter six and verse 37, judge not and you will not be judged, condemn not and you will not be condemned, forgive and you will be forgiven.
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So we see right there he compares the judgment that he's referring to with condemnation.
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Judge not lest you be judged, condemn not lest you be condemned, forgive and he applies the contradiction, the counter distinction, be willing to forgive rather than condemn someone.
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And he goes on back in Matthew seven to say, for with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged.
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Now, as always in any passage of Scripture, we need to understand the context.
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And we understand because we've been going through the Sermon on the Mount now for so long that we understand the context.
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Jesus is here attacking in so much of the Sermon on the Mount, the misunderstanding and misteaching of the Jewish leaders.
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They had misunderstood God's law.
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They misapplied the teachings.
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We see that in chapter five.
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They misunderstood piety and how that piety is to be expressed.
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And so Jesus clears that up in chapter six.
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Well, here he's continuing to deal with the teaching that had been so falsely and inappropriately put out within the Jewish community.
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And the leaders among the Jews, of course, were the Pharisees.
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And when we set ourselves up as the standard of judgment, we are doing exactly what the Pharisees were doing.
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In Matthew 23, Jesus gives a scathing rebuke against the Pharisees and over and over and over again, he calls them hypocrites.
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Matthew 23, too, says the scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses's seat.
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So do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do, for they preach, but they do not practice.
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They tie up heavy burdens hard to bear and lay them on people's shoulders.
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But they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.
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And Jesus continues to say, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.
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He says it over and over and over and over in Matthew 23.
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They were condemned for setting an ungodly standard for others by which they condemned others.
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But they themselves were unwilling to live under their own false standards.
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It was a do what I say, not what I do mentality.
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Paul addresses the Jewish community in the same way in Romans 2.
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In Romans 2, he says, speaking to the Jews, he says, therefore, you have no excuse, old man, every one of you who judges, for in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself because you, the judge, practice the same things.
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When we condemn others for that which we ourselves do, we are the worst of hypocrites.
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We are the height of impropriety.
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In essence, it is wrong to condemn someone with faulty judgment.
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And it's even more wrong to condemn someone for something that we do.
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A few years ago, there was a fairly well-known megachurch leader.
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He was known for being very opposed to homosexuality.
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And rightfully so, the Bible condemns homosexual expressions of what we would say perverted expressions of sexuality.
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But he spent so much of his time in condemnation to homosexuality.
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And lo and behold, it was found that he himself had been engaging in those things.
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Secretly.
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He was condemning the very thing for which he himself was guilty.
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And what was the mainstream media's response? They were elated.
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They were happy because they could come out and say, look, they're all hypocrites.
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See, he sat in judgment against all these people who have homosexual desires.
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And yet he himself was secretly among them.
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It was damning for so many because of one man's utter hypocrisy.
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Jesus gives an illustration in verses three and four that most of us are familiar with.
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And it really is sort of a humorous illustration.
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Jesus, I like during our conference, Andy.
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Andy is my friend and he's a great minister.
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And he said something I never heard before.
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He said, Jesus was the king of sarcasm.
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And I guess and I know what he means.
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He said, Jesus said some things that sometimes just cut right to the quick and cut it like it was.
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And he would just straight out say it the way it was.
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And, you know, he called people, you know, he called the Pharisees whitewashed tombs.
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You're clean on the outside, but you're full of dead men's bones.
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You know, he just cut it right to the quick.
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Well, this is one of those times when Jesus cut it right to the quick.
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Because he says in verses three and four, he says, why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but you do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take this speck out of your eye when there is a log in your own eye? The vernacular here, how can you see the little piece of sawdust? And I don't know how many of you do any woodwork.
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I've done woodwork over the years and I understand the little specks that come off.
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If you get one of those in your eye, it's a bad day.
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And you know, it'll stop you in your tracks.
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One little piece of sawdust in your eye and you're done.
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You have to stop it.
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You stop the saw, especially the saw.
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You stop everything.
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You take a step back.
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You go to the eyewash.
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If you have one of those eyewash places or you take bottles of water and you pour in your eye to get this little speck out.
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Now, imagine you're there, you're in your woodshop and your friend has gotten a piece of that speck in his eye.
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He's got a one little piece of sawdust in his eye.
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He stops the saw, he stands back and he says, oh, what's wrong with you, brother? I've got this speck in my eye.
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And you turn and you've got a two by four sticking out of your forehead.
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Who's in worse shape? Again, as I said, somewhat humorous.
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Jesus is using a, he's saying, why would you think that you have the qualifications for taking a speck, a small, insignificant piece of sawdust out of the eye of this person when you've got a two by four sticking out of your brow? How foolish are you to think such a thing? Now, some people think that what Jesus means here is that we can never help the brother.
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That because we all have two by fours in some form or fashion in our brow, because all of us have something in our eye that ought not be there, because we all have this two by four, that we can never say anything to anyone.
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We can never help the brother with his eye because our eyes are so blocked with our own sin.
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But that's not what Jesus says.
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And he clarifies himself to ensure that there's no confusion.
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First, he says, you hypocrite, because he's identifying the fact that if you turn with that thing in your eye and you try to help get that thing out of your brother's eye, if you did try to do that, that would be the height of foolishness and the height of hypocrisy.
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And he's saying, that's bad.
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But he doesn't stop there.
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He says, you hypocrite, first, take the log out of your eye and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.
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You see, he doesn't say that we don't address the issue with the brother.
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But what he does say is before we go trying to address that issue with the brother, we need to address ourselves.
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Before we try to do spiritual eye surgery on someone else, which often is very delicate in the procedure.
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Have you ever had eye surgery? Ever had the LASIK surgery? It's such a delicate surgery.
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They keep your head in place.
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You can't move an inch because it's such a delicate thing.
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And beloved, I'm going to tell you, when Jesus talks about removing a speck from a brother's eye, it is delicate.
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When we go to a brother who is in sin, it is so easy to tear that brother down rather than build him up.
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There is a delicacy in that.
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Years ago, I did something really dumb.
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Well, it wasn't just years ago, but it was a particular time I did something quite dumb that I remember.
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And when I came back home, a brother in Christ, actually, I went to his house.
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I was going to his house for something.
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While I was there, he said, can I talk to you? And I said, sure.
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I didn't think anything.
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And he sat me down and he said, I want you to know that what you did was not right.
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And I'm not happy with what you've done.
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And I really think that you need to consider not doing this again and consider the weight of this and learn from it.
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And my first instinct, because I'm a human being, my first instinct was anger.
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You know, when somebody tells us we do wrong, we don't often respond well.
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But I will tell you this, the love that that brother had for me and the way that he expressed my sin to me, the spiritual eye surgery that he did to me, the delicacy with which he addressed me, made all the difference in the world.
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Because I had no response other than to say, you're right.
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Whereas if I would have come into his house and he said, you, you fool, you, well, I can't think of whatever word he would have said, but you dum-dum, whatever.
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You, why would you do such a thing? He would have created in me a desire to blast back.
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There wouldn't have been any delicacy.
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It would have been two balls butting heads and there wouldn't have been love from either side.
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But when I knew that I was loved, when I knew that I was wrong and I knew that this person loved me enough to tell me I was wrong, I fell under the conviction of God and I repented rather than recoiled.
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Beloved, how do we deal with those who sin against us? Do we see it as delicate as eye surgery? Or do we come in, you ever try to do eye surgery with a hammer? It doesn't last long.
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And you only got two opportunities.
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And that's the point that Jesus is making, is not that we can't address these issues.
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But first, we need to address ourselves.
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We need to know that when we're going to talk to this person about this issue, that we don't have all these hanging chads, that we don't have all these things on us.
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Talking to someone about their problem while holding that same problem in our own heart.
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Now, that's not to say, and I want to very quickly, that's not to say that if I battle with something that I can't talk to you about your battle with it.
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Because if that were the case, we couldn't ever talk to anybody.
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And that's oftentimes what happens.
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Somebody comes to me and says, Pastor, you know what, I'm battling this particular thing.
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And I will look to them and I will say, Brother, this is something that in my own life I've had to deal with and I understand the problem.
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You know, depression is something I understand because in my younger years, I understand it.
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I know what it's like to go through it.
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And I can minister to that person more effectively because, yes, I have been given to that.
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So talk to me.
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Tell me your problem and I will share with you my story.
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Now, you'll know that I did have a two by four in my eye.
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I did have a log sticking out of my forehead and God helped me remove it.
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And maybe He'll help me help you remove yours.
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It all comes down to whether or not we want to restore or whether or not we want to tear down.
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And the condemnation that Jesus is referring to here when He says judge not, He's talking about the judgment that has the heart of tearing down.
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It's the heart of condemnation.
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It's the desire to see the person broken rather than to see the person whole.
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There are times when we have to evaluate a situation with someone which would require a discerning heart.
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And there are times where in the midst of that, we may have to also decide enough is enough.
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And that's where Jesus goes from here.
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And I want to show you a lot of people look at verses six and seven.
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I'm sorry, verse six.
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And they say, you know what? That's Jesus starting a new thought.
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And in a lot of the Bibles, it starts a new paragraph.
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I don't believe it's necessarily the start of a new thought because he finishes verse five.
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He says, take the log out of your eye and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.
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He's right there telling us that there's going to be times where we've got to do the spiritual eye surgery.
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There's going to be times we're going to speak into the lives of someone else.
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There's going to be times where we're going to have to exercise discernment to help others.
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And then he brings the contra distinction, the counter distinction in.
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He says in verse six, do not give dogs what is holy and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to destroy or to attack you.
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Now, there were two animals in Jewish culture which were just despised.
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You had the pig, of course, because it's an unclean animal.
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You can't eat the pig.
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They never tasted a barbecue sandwich.
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Can you believe that? They never had a barbecue sandwich.
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And I thank God for Acts chapter 10 all the time when he made all things clean.
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That's that's beautiful passage.
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I love it.
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But pigs were just considered unclean.
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You remember the story of the man whose son opposed him, wanted his inheritance early, and he went off into a far country and he squandered his inheritance.
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Jesus is telling the story, making it just as bad as he can, telling the story about this terrible young man who took his father's inheritance.
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He squandered it.
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And where did he end up? He ended up slapping the pigs and longing to be fed what was being fed to the pigs.
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And that was Jesus's way in that story of saying he got to the lowest to the lowest of the low.
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So, too, with this, when Jesus addresses pigs here, he also says dogs.
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Now, most of us like dogs.
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We have our pet dogs.
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But in this time in Jewish history, most dogs were not kept as pets, especially among Jewish people.
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There were there were animals kept as pets more in the Egyptian culture.
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But in the Jewish culture, the dogs were scavengers.
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If you remember when Jezebel fell and to her death, her body was ravaged and eaten by dogs.
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That was just the dogs were known for eating garbage, carrying disease.
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They were the worst of the worst of the pack animals.
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And this is what I've always found very interesting about this passage.
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Jesus says, judge that lest you be judged.
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And then in the very next breath, he says, don't give that which is holy to the dogs and don't cast your pearls before the pigs.
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Well, who are the hogs and the dogs? We have to make a distinction.
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Thus, we have to make a judgment.
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So what most people think when they say judge not lest you be judged, most people think it means never make a distinction at all, never be discerning at all.
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And then Jesus turns around and says, don't give what is holy to the dogs.
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Don't cast your pearls.
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He's telling us here we're going to make a distinction and we're going to have to.
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In the same breath, same context, it's all there, because when we go to remove that speck from that brother's eye, when we go to lovingly try to take that speck out of that brother's eye.
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And that brother says, no, I'm good.
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I'd rather stand with the pain of this piece of sawdust in my eye than to have you speak to me at all about my issue.
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My eye is fine.
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Brother, I can see it swelling.
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The tears are running down your cheeks.
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I can see that you're in pain.
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Your whole body is writhing over this.
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It's fine.
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There's nothing wrong with me.
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Don't dare assume that my eye is bad.
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This is the man cheating on his wife.
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Brother, I love you and I love your family.
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Please repent and go back.
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I'm happy.
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She makes me happy.
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I don't need it.
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I don't want it anymore.
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I want to be free and I want to have this new relationship.
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And God told me it's OK.
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No, he didn't.
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But I've heard people say it.
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I've heard people say God told me it's OK.
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You're welcome to tell them that ain't so.
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If they ever say God told him that's OK.
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But that's the point of this.
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When we go to take that spiritual, we got to do that spiritual eye surgery.
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When we go to remove that speck from that brother's eye.
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When we do lovingly seek his repentance and he rejects it and says my eye is fine.
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There will come a point where we have to shake the dust from off our feet and move on.
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Now, within the church, that's different because within the church, we can't have brother so-and-so sitting here in sin with sister so-and-so and not address it.
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That's Matthew 18.
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Jesus said, if one is among you who is sinning, first you go to him, you seek his restoration.
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If he won't repent, you go to him with two or three witnesses.
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You seek his restoration.
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And if he continues not to repent, then what? He's demonstrated himself to be a hog.
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He's demonstrated himself to be a dog.
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You don't give the dogs what is holy.
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You don't give the hogs, the swine, the pearls.
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They're no longer among you.
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Put them out.
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First Corinthians five.
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Put him out from among you.
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Oh, that's so harsh.
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That doesn't sound like modern gospel evangelism.
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It's because most modern gospel evangelism is undoublable.
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It's not even it's not even really to be compared or called modern gospel evangelism.
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So I want to move now to the application of this text we've seen and we've made some applications, but I want to give you a few things that perhaps you might could make notes.
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Make an application.
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This text does not mean that we're unable to make any righteous discernment, but what it does mean is that we're to guard against unrighteous condemnation.
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So here I want us to write, if you take notes, this is point one.
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The goal of discernment is either protection or restoration.
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It is never condemnation.
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The goal of discernment.
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Is protection or restoration, it is never condemnation, so.
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If we are discerning and have to make a discernment in someone's life, we're trying to restore them.
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And we're trying to protect them and we're trying to protect the church.
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That's part of it.
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But our goal is not to see them condemned, our goal is to see them restored and the church protected.
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Now, why do I stress this? Because I got to tell you, this is not the way we normally handle it.
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And as I said, this is application and sometimes we've got to get real when we get to the application of the text.
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One of the most subtle forms of judgment, which we practice regularly.
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It's gossip.
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People don't like it when I talk about gossip, because typically we're treading on toes at that point.
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But the reality is, let me show you something.
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Turn to Romans 1.
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I always like to point this out when I bring up gossip.
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In verse 28, the Apostle Paul is crescendoing the sin of the pagans.
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And he's already talking about God has given them over to a debased mind and they've demonstrated themselves to be debased and the perversity of their sexuality and all these things.
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And we come to verse 28 and he gives us a list of things that are that are part of God having given someone over to a debased mind.
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OK, God giving someone over their sin, this is the result.
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And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
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As a result, verse 29, they were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil and covetousness and malice.
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They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.
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They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God.
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Insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents.
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And it goes on foolish, faithless, heartless and ruthless.
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You know why I think that passage is so important? Because the Apostle Paul took the Christian sin of choice, gossip.
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And he put it right next to hatred of God, gossip and slander and hatred of God are all right there.
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They sit next to one another among the list of those things which demonstrate a depraved mind.
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When a person chooses to talk to others about another person rather than talking to that person when they have sinned against them.
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They're exercising gossip, they're exercising slander, and they are right in the middle of the judgment that Jesus is condemning when he says, judge not, lest you be judged.
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There was a woman who was gossiping about her preacher.
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It wasn't in this church, I promise, this is not a personal story.
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But there's a woman who was gossiping about her preacher.
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And she fell under conviction about her gossip.
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And so she went to her pastor and she said to her pastor, Pastor, I have sinned against you.
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I have done nothing but speak evil about you.
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And it's been going on now for many months.
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I was upset with you, but I now repent of my sin and I want to be forgiven by you.
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And the pastor said, you're forgiven.
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And she said, and she said, I can't just take that.
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I've got to do something.
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I've got to I've got to do something to earn your forgiveness.
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And the pastor said, you can't earn my forgiveness.
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I give it to you freely, please.
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And she said, I can't take it.
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He said, I'll tell you what to do.
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He said, you take a pillow, a feather pillow.
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You open up the top of that feather pillow and you take a feather.
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And he said, and everywhere that you gossiped, you go and take a handful of feathers and you spread them out.
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And then you come back and talk to me.
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And the lady's like, OK, good, I want to do something.
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He gave me something to do.
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So she went out, she got her a nice new feather pillow.
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She cut the top of it.
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She took handfuls of that of those feathers and she put them everywhere that she had gossiped about the pastor.
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And then she comes back and she says, what do I do now? And he said, go get them all back.
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I can't.
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And he said, neither can you take back any word that you spoke.
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We don't realize how dangerous our words are.
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We don't realize how dangerous our condemnations are.
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We don't realize how far and wide they go with the wind.
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Another subtle place where we see condemnation and judgment and gossip is the Internet.
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I don't know if you've ever looked at Internet comment box, but it's one of the most despicable places in the world because people hide behind their computer screens and behind their keyboards and they become keyboard commandos and keyboard theologians and keyboard prophets.
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And they proliferate bad theology, bad arguments, bad behavior, horrible language.
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And then they show up at church on Sunday and they reach into that communion plate and they take a piece of bread and they put it in the same foul mouth that those nasty things were coming out of.
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If we are not seeking restoration, we are seeking condemnation and we ourselves are under condemnation.
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We have to seek the restoration of others.
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At some point, if they don't want to be restored, we have to seek the protection of those around them.
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That's what church discipline is about.
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But the goal should never be to condemn.
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The goal should never be that I lift myself up by tearing down another.
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Who did Jesus spend all of his time with? The people that the Pharisees condemned, the harlots.
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The tax collectors, all of these people that the world looked down on, that the world said weren't worthy of their time.
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Do we do the same? Are we believers in black robes standing as judges of others? Second point, and I'll end with this.
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We must remember that ultimately all condemnation belongs to God and not us.
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I want to give you two verses of scripture to consider.
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James, chapter four and verse 11.
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James, chapter four and verse 11.
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Do not speak evil against one another brothers.
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The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law.
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But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge.
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There is only one lawgiver and judge.
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He who is able to save and to destroy.
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But who are you to judge your brother? Who are you to sit in condemnation? Who are you to stand there and condemn? In Romans 14, verses 10 through 13.
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Romans 14, verses 10 through 13.
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Why do you pass judgment on your brothers? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God, for it is written, as I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God.
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So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.
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Therefore, let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or a hindrance in the way of a brother.
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Both of these passages point us to the reality that in the end, judgment does not belong to us.
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In the end, God is the one before whom every person will stand or fall.
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So when we go to a person who is in sin, our goal is not to say, Keith Foskey judges you evil.
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Our goal is not to say, I have judged what you have done is wrong in accordance with my moral standard and my goodness.
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But what we say is the word of God has told you that what you have done is wrong.
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And I beg you, I plead with you, repent because I love you, because I want you to be restored, because I want you to know Christ, because I don't want you to live in sin, because I don't want you to go to the fires of hell, because I don't want you to live apart from Christ, because I know God deserves to be worshiped and he deserves to be worshiped by you.
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And I want you to worship him.
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So I plead with you, repent.
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It's not condemnation.
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And that's what Jesus is saying.
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We don't judge with hypocritical judgment.
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But we love with the same love with which he loved us while we were yet sinners.
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Christ died for us.
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May it be that that strikes our hearts cords to know that that is how we ought to love others.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for the opportunity to study your word together.
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I pray that this message has been in accord with your word.
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I pray that the explanation of the text has been correct.
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And Father, if I have spoken error, that you will erase it from the minds of your people and protect them.
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But Lord, we do know.
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We know that it is so clear in the text of the Bible that you have called us to be restorers.
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You have called us to be protectors, but you have not called us to be condemners.
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So, Father, keep our hearts where they ought to be centered on your love and centered on your word.
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And we thank you for it all in Jesus name and for his sake.
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Amen.