Sermon on the Mount: Censoriousness Forbidden — J. Glyn Owen

Resuming the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7

Earlier on in the year we began a series on the Sermon on the Mount and when the summer season came upon us the series fell into abeyance. This morning we would like to take up the thread once again and we shall from now on continue with Matthew chapter 7 leading to the conclusion of this remarkable Sermon on the Mount inside uttered by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Reading Matthew 7:1–6

We turn this morning to the first passage in this remarkable chapter verses 1 to 6 in Matthew 7 and I would like to read these words now if you have your New Testament's handy before you I'm sure you'll find it helpful.

Do not judge or you too will be judged for in the same way you judge others you will be judged and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

How can you say to your brother let me take the speck out of your eye when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite first take the plank out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

Do not give dogs what is sacred. Do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do they may trample them under feet and then turn and tear you to pieces. Sensoriousness forbidden is the title we have given to these words of our Lord and I trust that is accurate to what our Lord had on his mind and on his heart when he first uttered these words.

From Relationship with God to Relationship with Others

Now whereas chapter 6 has been concerned particularly with the relation of the Christian to his God and the promotion of that perfection referred to by our Lord in verse 48 when he said that we are to be perfect even as our Heavenly Father is perfect.

This first section of chapter 7 forcefully fixes our gaze upon our relation to others, other people. Though we shall also find some things in this chapter that will turn our gaze again back directly to our Heavenly Father.

The point is of course in the in the ongoing movement of this great sermon the things mentioned in chapter 6 need to be supplemented by the things that are brought out in chapter 7 and we are dealing with only one thing at a time we tend to forget the wholeness of things.

Giving to the needy, praying, fasting, laying up treasure in heaven and then learning not to worry because of God's unique relation to his people. Things we discussed, things we expounded in chapter 6 all those are absolutely indispensable.

So also is this matter before us today to use the words of one commentator, one moat hunter, quoting the translation of the King James about seeking to cast out the moat in your brother's eye, one moat hunter in a congregation can divide the people of God and decimate them.

One censorious individual among the fellowship of the Saints can scatter the Lord's people and bring disaster in the train of his loose thinking and his loose speaking. So in this passage we have our Lord forbidding something which is quite important.

Judgment Belongs Ultimately to God

He is forbidding us not so much to judge where judgment is necessary but to walk among the people of God or out in the outside world as if judgment were committed to us. As if it were a gift given to us alone and our judgment is infallible and we feel that we have a right to judge everybody and tell everybody where to get off and what to do and what not to do.

Ultimately judgment belongs to God alone. In so far as it is necessary for us to discriminate between one thing and another, and it is as we shall see in a moment, we must do so in the spirit of God and according to the Word of God.

But this is the most delicate thing committed to Christian people to do. It is to have to distinguish between truth and error, right and wrong in the lives of other people as well as in our own. And it must be handled with due care, with compassion and sensitivity lest in so doing we dishonor our Lord rather than honor him.

Judgment and Discrimination Are Necessary

Now in the first place I want you to notice therefore a vital distinction which emerges here right at the beginning of this passage and it needs to be made very clear. When Jesus is here forbidding us to quote not to judge, he is not he is not and cannot be thereby telling us to hold our faculty of judgment in abeyance completely.

We have to distinguish between black and white, between right and wrong, between truth and error. The whole of the Bible, the whole of the New Testament is based upon that. When you became a Christian you had to choose one thing from another.

You had to choose truth from error, God's Word against the words of men. The Lord Jesus Christ rather than other objects of faith or Lords over your life. You had to choose, you had to make a choice, you had to judge in that sense.

Now Jesus cannot be meaning that we should forego that kind of discrimination and distinction, process of distinguishing. Otherwise he would be undermining the whole teaching of the Old Testament and of the New.

We have to distinguish between one thing and another. What then is he saying? Well we shall come to that but in a moment let's get this very clear. Judgment and discrimination are absolutely essential and you all of you and I included we've all had to be distinguishing things during the week that has gone.

We distinguish between people whom we're going to befriend and those that we're not. People who are worthy of our confidence and those whom we may not be quite sure of. Something was suggested to us and we thought well now the standard is not quite right and we distinguish.

We say no no I can't do that but I will do this. This is altogether necessary. We are summoned to live a moral life, a Christian life, a God-honoring life and in all of this we have to discern between the one thing and the other.

Truth must be distinguished from falsehood, right from wrong, good from evil. Right. The next thing I want you to notice is this that Jesus practiced that and his disciples practiced that principle and after our Lord Jesus was ascended and the church was began to grow in the book of the Acts of the Apostles the same thing was necessary.

There had to be this kind of distinction, distinguishing between one thing and another. I say it and I have to dwell upon it for a moment because you might think that Jesus is saying well don't judge one another in any way at all.

Just go on let everybody do right or wrong, good or evil and we do not try to teach each other and help each other towards truth and righteousness and godliness and sanctity. Jesus expected his own disciples to distinguish as they engaged in their ministry.

Jesus Sends His Disciples to Discern

Now if you've read the Gospels recently and if you've got a good memory I don't need to repeat anything to you. But let me just give you one or two illustrations very quickly. When our Lord sent his disciples to preach into the villages for example, he told them something like this, whatever town or village you enter search for some worthy person and stay at his home until you leave.

As you enter the home give it your greeting, if the home is deserving you notice they have to judge. If the home is deserving let your peace rest upon it, if it is not you see they've got to discriminate.

Let your peace return to you, if anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words. Now here it is again, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or that town. I tell you the truth it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for you.

So we've got to distinguish one thing from the other. The same thing again with reference to the Pharisees. Jesus said every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots.

But don't you touch them he tells the disciples, you leave them. They are blind leaders of the blind. The same principle, there are some people we are not to listen to. They may be they may be commissioned by the church to proclaim what should be the Word of God as the Pharisees were and the scribes were by the church of the Jews in New Testament times, if we may so speak.

But they were not doing so honorably and correctly and our Lord says they're blind leaders of the blind. You've got to forget about them and just go on follow my words, follow my teaching. So Jesus expected his disciples to distinguish and to discriminate as they went about their business.

Peter’s Discernment at Pentecost

Again the Apostles had regularly to do the same in their ongoing ministry this side of Pentecost. Peter on the day of Pentecost had to distinguish between those who were believers and those who were not.

And on that great Pentecostal sermon you remember at the heart of it he says this, save yourselves from this corrupt generation. There he's distinguishing again, there he's judging again. This generation says Peter is corrupt and you've got to get away from the corrupt generation.

Separate yourselves from the corrupt and the corruption and you've got to repent of your sins and turn to Jesus Messiah that your sins may be blotted out and that you may receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

You have to do that, they distinguished you see. Now you go on into the book of the Acts, you will see that they likewise had to distinguish between true believers and false believers. Let me give you one classical illustration there is the case of Simon the sorcerer in Samaria.

We read in Acts chapter 8 and verse 13 that Simon believed and was baptized and he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and the miracles that were done. And everybody thought this sorcerer as he is called, he's become a Christian.

But Peter when he arrived on the scene addressed this same man and he had to say this to him, you have no part nor share in this ministry because your heart is not right before God. Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord.

You see the Apostles had to judge and you may go on and you see not only did they have to distinguish between true believers and false believers, but they had to discern and distinguish between babes in Christ and mature Christians.

Distinguishing Spiritual Maturity

And Paul was writing to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians chapter 3, he said this to them rather pathetically, he said brothers I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly mere infants in Christ.

I give you milk not solid food for you were not yet ready for it. Now just imagine it, here is the Apostle of the Lord, here is the mouthpiece of the Almighty God and he's writing to Corinth and he's telling them look he says I want you to know that I can't talk to you as mature believers.

I've got to cut up everything I have to say into little bits and pieces more than that I can't give you, I can't give you meat, I can't give you anything to chew, I just got to give you milk like a baby or like to what a mother gives a baby.

And you know there are many congregations of Christians in that situation still, they can only take a few drops of milk and in little drops, few drops, they can't take the deep things of God, they would go quite mad either at the preacher or at the truth.

You have the same thing in the epistle to the Hebrews we have much to say says the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews concerning the high priesthood of our Lord but it is hard to explain because you are slow to hear or sorry to learn.

In fact though by this time you ought to be teachers you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's Word all over again. You need milk not solid food, anyone who lives on milk is still an infant.

What a condemnation of a people who profess the Christian faith for many years and they can still only take a little drop of milk now and again. Their digestive system is such they cannot take the meat of God's revealed Word.

And you see the apostles had to distinguish. It's very interesting that John Calvin in interpreting that passage about rightly dividing the word of truth tells us that what it really means is this, it's the father at the head of the table, the family meet for meals and he looks at them and some of them have been working assuming there's a large family, of course some of them have been out plowing in the field and perhaps they come in and they're very hungry and that man needs a good chunk on his plate.

Somebody else has got a very weak appetite he doesn't need so much and there's a babe there well he'll have no meat at all he'll have milk. Brothers and sisters we've got to distinguish there is no such a thing as a Christianity which does not pass judgment.

Whatever it is, it is not the Christianity of the New Testament. I would have to, I've no time to go any further but just to mention this, the same goes with relation to false prophets. But of course the clinching thing here is this, if Jesus were meaning that we must never judge anything or anyone, then he's going to contradict himself in the sixth verse of this same paragraph.

Because there Jesus is calling certain people dogs and hogs, dogs and pigs. Now I'm not using that, the Son of God did and he's passing judgment and he is exercising this, this, this, this, this discrimination of one from another, between one and another.

So then we've got to take note of that vital distinction. Now that brings me to the second thing. What is the forthright prohibition that we have here? Well now I would plead this morning for one thing which is not as obvious in the New International Version as in most of the other versions.

The Prohibition Against Censorious Judgment

I would plead for one thing and I have no time to dwell upon it but only to ask for it. That we should look upon these first six verses as one paragraph undivided. I had come to the conclusion that the New International Version, the translators of the New International Version, must have had a reason for splitting it up into three little paragraphs.

I thought there must be some textual reason for that. Well I can find none, none whatsoever. It's only a linguistic matter. They like to split things up into small paragraphs, that's the best way they think to get the message across.

Well now I'm not quarreling with them, but what I am saying is this. In order to see the full significance of what Jesus is saying you've got to take the whole paragraph one to six very closely together.

And if you just take the opening words on their own then you're going to make nonsense out of them. Do not judge are the first words. If you're going to put a period there and forget that the whole thing is linked very intimately with what follows, you're going to land up in a position that you're going to make our Lord contradict himself.

And that he never would do. What then is our Lord saying here? I can only summarize it. First of all he is saying something like this. When it is necessary for us to judge between one thing and another, good and bad, truth or error, we must do so according to a standard which we apply to ourselves before we apply it to others.

In other words this is not just a theoretical matter, or this is not something that I do merely in relation to other people. It must be a conviction. It must represent my acceptance of the truth in question, or of the right portrayed by God's Word.

And I must be applying the principle or the standards to myself that I am applying to other people. Do not judge or you too will be judged. For in the same sense, in the same way you judge others, you will be judged and with the measure you use it will be measured to you again.

God will judge you ultimately, he says, by the standard you employ to judge other people. Therefore the sooner the better you accept that standard. Before you start judging other people, see that you use the same measuring rod for yourself.

This is very important for a Christian community, because it's so easy to judge other people with a measuring rod that we don't use on ourselves. But the concern of our Lord, you see, was really to prohibit a kind of censorious attitude which goes around looking for other people's faults, bringing them out into the open, whether they're imaginary or real, and spreading rumors.

Did you hear about so-and-so? What do you think about this? And suddenly we are sitting in judgment upon other people, sometimes utterly baseless, without any basis for what we suggest, or what we say, or what we imply.

You see the scribes and the Pharisees tried to do this kind of thing with Jesus. They spread rumors and they were not true. Rumors, for example, that he was disloyal to Moses, or that he was disloyal to Abraham, or that he was disloyal to Caesar, and so forth.

And they would have pursued those things, those charges. But our Lord was able to show that the thing was quite baseless, the charges were baseless in each case, and in every other case. Lurking behind the words of Jesus is a highly important principle.

Applying God’s Standard to Ourselves

And if I have time this morning, I would like to refer back to Romans chapter 2, and the first few verses there. You can do that at your leisure. You wonder how heathen people, how people who've never heard the gospel, are going to be judged at last.

Paul has got something to say about it. But what I want to say, and that is related to it, what I want to say is this. If we know a standard of behavior to be God's standard, and we only apply it to other people, then we are very perverse to say the least.

And we are not acting for the well-being of the church, nor for the glory of God. First of all, we must apply the truth to ourselves, and then maybe we shall have the humility, and sometimes the courage that is needed, and the right spirit to apply it to people at large.

Because you see, ultimately judgment doesn't belong to you or to me. Judgment doesn't belong even to a church, or a session of a church. Judgment is the prerogative of God Almighty. And he has committed all judgment to the Son.

And insofar as it is necessary for us to discern, to distinguish between one course of action and another, we've got to be very careful that we do it in the way God does it. With mercy and with judgment.

With compassion, as well as with right, in righteousness. Now when we judge others, this is the second thing, we must never therefore do it hypocritically. Why do you look, says our Lord, and this is hyperbole of the first order, why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye, and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

How can you? How can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye, when all the time there is a plank in your own eye, you hypocrite? First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother's eye.

This is remarkable hyperbole really, isn't it? And it exposes the sheer impropriety and perversity of somebody doing like this. Let me put it in different language. Here is a man coming and there's a there's a 12-foot plank sticking out of the socket of his eye.

Well now that's not possible of course. But that's what Jesus is saying here. A 12-foot plank, 8 by 6, coming out of the socket of his eye. Everybody can see it everywhere, and he can't see anything.

But he comes up to somebody and says, hey brother, you got a foreign body in your eye, let me deal with it. You know it's nonsensical. It can't be done. If you've got a problem like that in your eye, you can't see a speck in somebody else's eye to start off with.

And even if you can see it with your one good eye, you're not in good shape to take it out. I wouldn't trust my eye to you. Did you ever know of a blind leader of the blind? Well you may have, but I don't think you've ever heard of a blind doctor attending to people's eyes to get rid of foreign bodies.

And Jesus says it's as nonsensical as that. You might be tempted to say that that man was thinking of others more than he was thinking of himself. And he was willing to help others whilst he had a great trouble in his in his eye.

Well Jesus doesn't look at it like that. That man was not really concerned about truth or error, right or wrong. He was out, he was a moat hunter. See he was a fault finder. He was, he was, he was, he was looking for things.

And where he couldn't see them he imagined them. And if he didn't like such and such a person, well he would stick something on to him and say, oh brother what's, what's that in your life? This kind of hypocrisy is found in unexpected places.

David, Nathan, and the Plank in the Eye

But unless somebody thinks, and I shouldn't be at all surprised that there may be somebody of this morning who says, now that's really exaggeration. Nobody would do that. I won't ask you to put your hand up if you believe that.

But let me give you a classical illustration from Scripture. And I think I could give you some illustrations from experience too. But I will confine myself to one classical illustration from Scripture.

It was read for us this morning from 2 Samuel chapter 12 verses 1 to 7. You remember the story very well. A man with a plank in his eye and yet he wanted to deal with a little moat in somebody else's eye.

And it was none other than Israel's great King David. You remember what happened? David lusted after Bathsheba, who didn't belong to him. She was somebody else's wife. I don't need to go into the details save to say that he committed adultery with her and he fathered a child to her.

And then so that so that her husband would not find out, he worked things so that her husband, who was in military service, should be killed on the field of battle. And if her husband Uriah was killed on the field of battle, no one would be any the wiser.

All things would go well and go on just as usual. Well, no. God had seen. God saw. God sent his prophet Nathan to David. You know God makes some wonderful choices. And Nathan went to David and did you notice Nathan didn't speak to him in ordinary speech, that is in plain language, in prose.

He spoke to him in a kind of parable. And he said to him, you remember, he said to him there was a certain wealthy farmer, a very rich man. He had large flocks, many sheep, and strange to say, when somebody came and he wanted to make a meal, he didn't want to take one of his own sheep out of the flock, but he set his heart on getting a little ewe lamb, the only one that a neighbor of his possessed.

And he just went on with it, says Nathan, to David and he got this one little ewe lamb that meant so much to this other neighbor. And David got hotter and hotter and more angry and more angry. And he said ultimately, who is that man?

He'll have to pay back fourfold. And Nathan said, David, you are the man. See the point? He condemned in others. In the parable he saw it was wrong. And with all his soul he boiled in righteous indignation against it.

He was blind to his own guilt at that stage. I'm not saying that he didn't know that he was guilty. What I'm saying is this, that he didn't recognize the heinousness of it, the gravity of it. There was a plank in his eye.

You see, Israel's great king was blind to that plank in his own eye, whilst he boiled with fury at the thought of such a sin in someone else's eye. Are we ever in danger of that? Jesus would tell us what he told his disciples at a later stage in John 7 24, stop judging by mere appearances and righteous judgment.

Those aren't Jesus' own words. Here then is an area of life we all need to consider very carefully. Our communion season is coming up. Brothers and sisters, it is necessary for us to make sure that we are right with God and very right with one another too.

And if there is any such a spirit abroad, not only shall we miss something, but we shall be guilty of grieving the spirit of God as he would come to us via the sacrament and the word as we meet together in his good providence.

Giving What Is Sacred with Discernment

That brings me to the last thing, a challenging application to exercise sound judgment in verse 6. Do not give dogs what is sacred. Do not throw your pearls to big pigs. If you do, says Jesus, they may trample them under their feet and then turn and tear you to pieces.

Now you see what Jesus is doing, having told them not to be quick to judge others. Nevertheless, he says, it is necessary to discriminate between one thing and another. This verse has shocked many people.

Unless you are familiar with the Gospels, you may have long forgotten that the one who could be gentle as a lamb could also act like a lion. And there were times during his earthly ministry when Jesus was exceedingly outspoken, as when he called Herod Antipas, that fox, when he branded some hypocritical people as whited sepulchers, and again in the same context in Matthew, you snakes, you brood of vipers.

Those are the words of gentle Jesus, meek and mild, and you can be sure they were justified before he spoke them. And it was he who spoke in this context of dogs and pigs. What can this mean? How are we to discern who is who and to separate the one from the other?

Well, let a contemporary commentator help us here. Who then are the dogs and the pigs, he asks. By giving them these names, he replies, Jesus is indicating not only that they are more animal than human, but that they are animals with dirty habits as well.

The dogs he had in mind were not the well-behaved lap dogs of the elegant home, but the wild pariah dogs, vagabonds and mongrels who scavenged the city's rubbish dumps. And pigs were unclean animals to the Jew, not to mention their love of mud.

The Gospel as a Sacred Gift

Now there in few brief words we have the explanation. Let's look at it just a little as we come to a conclusion. Dogs and pigs describe some people in terms of their reaction to the gospel. Dogs and that which is sacred.

Do not cast that which is sacred to the dogs. Do not throw the sacred to the dogs. Brothers and sisters, followers of Christ have been given something which is altogether sacred, divine. Our gospel is divine.

It originated in the heart of God, in the mind of God. No one else had a word to say about it. Did you know that? Not a man, not a scholar, not a simpleton, not anybody. Our gospel originated in the heart and mind of God and God alone.

He didn't consult with anyone. And in the execution of it, he put all the work of our redemption in the hand of his co-equal Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And his own Son came and was born of the Virgin and lived a holy life and laid it down in death, so that in the execution of it, as well as in the in the origination of it, it is sacred, it is divine, also in the application of it.

How does the salvation that originated in God and was made possible by Christ his co-equal Son, how does it come home to me? How does it come over to me? By the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit. You can never work up an awareness of your lost condition without Christ.

You can never repent of your sin unless the Holy Spirit convicts you. I can't either, of course. None of us can. The whole of our salvation is of God. God is in it. It is the power of God working unto the end of salvation.

That's what the gospel is. You see, it's a sacred thing. And what Jesus is saying in the proclamation of the gospel, there comes a point when you cannot give the gospel to some people. If you've started to give them the gospel, you'll have to stop.

You have to distinguish. Because in relation to the gospel, they will treat it as a dogwood. Now, what does this mean? I believe that it's something like this. It doesn't imply that we do not preach the gospel to sinners.

When to Move On from Gospel Rejection

The gospel was originated in the heart of God to save sinners. God sent forth his Son to save that which was lost. It doesn't mean that, but what it means is this. There are some unbelieving men and women, and the more you offer them the gospel, the more they will blaspheme.

And the more it will provoke the sin of their hearts, and the unbelief of their souls, and the anger of their spirits, and you will only provoke the work of Satan in them, the more you offer them the gospel.

There comes a time when you don't cast that which is sacred before the dogs. You see, the Old Testament Jews would never give sacred food, food that had been consecrated in the temple or in the synagogue, in the temple or the tabernacle.

They wouldn't give that to the dogs. They wouldn't give that to a man, only to the priest. Now, says Jesus, bringing up the illustration of bringing it up to death, you cannot cast that which is sacred to the dogs.

And when you see sinners blaspheming against the gospel, stop, pass on. Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, move on, he says. There are others waiting, as Jesus himself did. You remember after spending a whole day in Capernaum, the beginning of Mark's gospel, and they wanted him to come back another day, and he was praying, and the disciples went and woke him up or alerted him from his prayers, and they said, everybody's seeking for you.

Oh no, he says, I'm not coming back to Capernaum today. Let us go forth into the next villages, the other towns also, for therefore came my force. I've got to move on. They've heard, they've seen, and what they've heard and seen has not brought forth faith, but something else.

It will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for them. Brothers and sisters, this is an element of the gospel that we don't pay attention to. And in Christian work, in church planting, in missionary work, it is all important.

There comes a time, there comes a time when people have been so, so overwhelmed with the gospel, that it only makes them more angry or harder. And I believe our Lord is telling us at that point, move on.

The Pearl of Great Price

Same is the principle in the next. Do not throw your pearls before swine. Oh, the language is harsh, but the truth is a terrifying one. The gospel is a pearl of great price. Are you a believer in the Lord Jesus today?

I want to tell you, you've got the most wonderful pearl in all creation and of all time. In the parable, Jesus said, the man who should be prepared to sell everything that he's got in order to gain this pearl of great price, that's what the gospel is.

You don't throw that, you don't throw that to hogs. Feed them with corn, feed them with acorns, feed them with whatever their menu may be, but don't feed them with pearls. They don't know how to distinguish between pearls and acorns.

And when they put the pearls in their mouth and try to eat them and can't, they will just trample them underfoot. And if they get angry, they may turn upon you too. Move on. You've got to distinguish.

Balancing Discernment and Evangelistic Zeal

Oh, my good friends, we're dealing with something this morning which may sound strange, and we do not often preach about it, but it is something exceedingly important in the work of our Lord. And we need the gracious spirit of Jesus himself to be able to discern the right from the wrong, the truth from the error.

May he grant to you as you meet people out in the outside world this week, may he grant you that spirit. May he grant it to all of us. May he grant it to us as a congregation. May he grant it to us in whatever work we're involved in, to know when we have reached saturation point in presenting the truth to people.

I know men and women who have sat for over 50 years under the sound of the Word of God, and when you speak to them about faith in Jesus Christ, they get angry. I believe Jesus is telling us something.

Nevertheless, my friends, the body of men and women are not in that in that category. The multitudes in the outside world this morning are waiting. They're like a harvest field ready to harvest. The real danger, perhaps for you and for me, is to forget that the vast multitudes have not heard.

By the grace of God, let us hold these truths in balance, and thus honor him who speaks so clearly in his Word, and who has promised us his Holy Spirit to obey him. Let us pray. God our Father, grant us your spirit, we pray, that we may rightly respond to your Word and its message to us.

Prayer for Humility and Faithful Discernment

We thank you that in the delicate task that you have given to every believer, and to your church in general, and to your servants whom you have thrust forth to labor for you in your harvest field, in this you have promised yourself to come with your servants, to go with them.

Oh Lord our God, forgive us if we have sometimes acted hypocritically, and have judged things wrong in others which we have justified in our own lives. Enable us to acknowledge such sins, and to confess them before you, and to forsake them.

Straighten out the crooked in us, build up the valleys in us, that our lives may be a highway prepared for the coming of the glory of the Lord. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.