Finding Fault

SERMON: 2008-03-11--sm0847--finding-fault SOURCE DURATION: 00:33:44.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.98 APPROVED: false REASON: Candidates [0] through [7] contain language consistent with a prayer or pastoral application (sermon content). Candidate [8] marks the clear transition to musical lyrics/hymn material ('Hold me close...'). Therefore, candidate 7 is the last segment of sermon content. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:29:09.960-00:33:43.200 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, I had a very interesting experience two weeks ago after the nine o'clock service here. As you may or may not recall, I spoke in the services that morning on engaging our culture and how the presence of the Spirit of Jesus flushes out what is inside, and how in the presence of Jesus you either respond negatively or positively, nobody can remain neutral. The Apostle Paul put it this way, he said, "We are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death, to the other the fragrance of life." Well, after the service, two people, both visitors, a mother and her adult son, accosted me to challenge some of the things that I had said in my message. Now, that's not so bad. That happens periodically, and for preachers it's a bit of an occupational hazard, as you can imagine. At best, it gives you an opportunity to spar with people and to engage, and at worst it makes you suffer for Jesus, and that's not so bad either. But what was so unique about this particular situation is here you have this mother and you have her adult son, and they represent opposite polarity in the theological spectrum. The young man is ultra-conservative. In fact, challenges my interpretation that nobody can long remain neutral in the presence of Jesus because he said, "What do you do with the letter to the Laodiceans in the Book of Revelation where Jesus says, 'You're neither hot nor cold, you're lukewarm.'" So we had a conversation about that, and as we're having this conversation back at the door, his mother comes, and she says, "I'm a free-thinker," and there are two thoughts that immediately came to my mind, I've got to tell you. Number one, clearly this young man's conservative position is defined over against his mother's free-thinking position. I thought that was rather intriguing. And then secondly, I said to myself, "Now, isn't this interesting? Here you have somebody from this theological extreme and somebody from this theological extreme, and they're both disagreeing with what I'm saying. My sermon must have been right down the middle perfectly well-balanced." Sometimes as preachers, we have to comfort ourselves any way that we can. And what it illustrated for me, once again, is how often our criticisms are not based on objective truth or biblical reality. They are more commonly a reflection of our own prejudices, our own beliefs, and our own convictions. And that's what Jesus begins to address now as he continues in the Sermon on the Mount with these very familiar words, "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way as you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." As we look at these and subsequent verses in the time that we have this morning, let's first look at what that passage does not teach. That passage does not teach that we ought to never exercise discernment or even judgment over against somebody else's beliefs or actions. That is the popular understanding of these verses. You've heard me say before, this is a verse that almost every pagan in North America knows. And if you've ever been in a situation where you've tried to point out somebody's sin or correct their behavior or otherwise express disapproval about the way somebody was living or acting, what's the most common reaction that you got? Well, you're not supposed to judge. And that has a downright biblical ring to it. And because it has a biblical ring to it, often what it does is it shuts the church up because we become afraid of making waves because, well, even Jesus says it's wrong to judge. That's not what he means. It does not mean that we ought to never exercise discernment or judgment relative to somebody else's beliefs or actions, and I'll tell you why. Because if that's what Jesus means, not only does he contradict himself in the rest of scripture, he also contradicts the rest of scripture. Take for example the words of Jesus in John 7 24. What does he say? This is to his disciples, "Stop judging by mere appearances and make a right judgment." He doesn't say never make a judgment, he says, "No, don't judge by what you see on the outside," which is what we humans tend to do, "No, I want you to make the right kind of judgment based on what's really there." The Apostle Paul echoes that same sentiment when he says in 1 Corinthians 5 12, "What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?" That's in the context of discipline in Christian community, people that are off track. Don't worry so much about the people out there. It's not your job to straighten those all out, but in your own community, exercise judgment relative to those who are on the inside. And then in a very similar vein, 1 Corinthians 6 2, "Do you not know that the saints will judge the world, and if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases?" Discernment and the exercise of judgment is part of the responsibility that God gives to his people, particularly to people who occupy offices where they have responsibility for people who are under them. And what would happen if a parent could never exercise judgment about the behavior or the attitude of his or her children? What would happen if a policeman could never decide whether you are breaking the law, yes or no, or a judge could never sit in court and make judgments, or a teacher could never exercise judgment concerning the capability of his or her students? The interesting thing is that's where society is moving to. We are such a generation of people who see themselves as victims that increasingly the responsibility for our lives and behavior is rested in the hands of others. One of the teachers here told me a story a while back that still has my head shaking. She has a class of grade four or five kids, and in that class she has a girl student who does not have a learning disability, is perfectly capable of doing her work, who neglected to hand in any of the seven book reports that were assigned to the class. So as a teacher she said, "This girl didn't do her work so I'm going to fail her." She gave her a D minus, that's the lowest grade you're allowed to give now, because we wouldn't want to damage anybody's poor psyche by failing them. Her principal calls her into the office and says, "That grade is not acceptable." Well the teacher says, "She didn't do her work." Well the principal says, "If you sat her down and had her read out of a book or whatever, what level of reading could she do, what kind of grade would you give her?" And our teacher said, "I'd give her a B." And so the principal said, "That's what goes on her report card." And our teacher said, "I won't, it's not right." So you know how that goes over. So they ended up compromising, this girl gets a C because of her lack of work. And then our teacher, who is a smart teacher, calls her parents and says, "The grade on the report card may indicate a C or average, but I want you to know that your daughter has failed because she never did her work." Now to her parents' credit, they received that, not all parents do in this day and age. And they sent the girl for remedial classes I think later on in the summer or whatever. But I hear that story and I shake my head because increasingly now responsibility is no longer ours, it's somebody else's. The Bible does not teach that we are not to exercise discernment or judgment. Well, if it does not mean that, then what does Jesus mean when he says, "Do not judge so that you may not be judged?" Well, it means at least three things. It means first of all that we resist a critical and a fault-finding spirit. None of us is immune to that, are we? I mean, we all have the tendency to zero in on the one thing that is wrong and we forget a thousand and one things in somebody else's life that may be perfectly proper. Let me do just a little experiment with you this morning to see how this works. Take a look at this and tell me what you see. You see a dot, a big dot. That's very good. Your eyes are working, but you're missing the big picture. You not only see a dot, you see a dot on a blue screen, true? Now think that through with me for just a moment. We look at our lives, we look at other people's lives, what do we see? We see the big dot. We don't see the big picture. There may be 99 things in that person's life that are really good. All we can spot is the one thing that we think is wrong. That is the critical spirit of which Jesus speaks. And that critical fault-finding spirit, none of us is immune to and surfaces in many different ways. It surfaces in wanting to find fault, it surfaces in zeroing in on the one thing that we think is wrong. It surfaces in sticking our noses into people's business that is none of our business. And it surfaces in having an opinion and a judgment on issues, many of which we know nothing about, but that doesn't keep us from spouting off. Have you ever noticed around the coffee table or in the workplace or even in church settings, everybody's got an opinion on almost every subject under the sun, even though most people are terribly ill-informed about the stuff that you're talking about. And it's easy to spot that in other people. It's not so easy to spot this in our own lives, because as I said earlier, none of us is immune to falling into that, particularly if we're tired or if we don't feel too good about ourselves or if life is coming at us with all of its hardships and we just feel down in the mouth about this thought or the other thing, then the very next thing that happens is we start trying to build ourselves up by pulling other people down. And it's that spirit which is so often rooted in our own woundedness or in our own pain or in our own discontent that then gets projected onto other people and we find justification for it at every level. And when Jesus says, "Do not judge," if you don't want to be judged, what he's getting at is that critical spirit that is so much a part of the human condition, that so much provides fuel for Satan's fire that he wants us to be rid of. "Do not let unwholesome talk come out of your mouth," says the Apostle Paul, "but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen." We are to resist a critical spirit not only, but we are to be ready, now listen to this, we're to be ready to be judged by the same yardstick that we apply to other people. Because again, notice how the passage goes, verse one he says, "Do not judge or you too will be judged." And then he goes on to say in verse two, "In the same way as you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." I wonder if you've ever noticed in life as I have that people who are the most critical and are the most ready to dump on other people often have the thinnest skins when it comes to being criticized themselves, you ever notice that? They can dish it out, they can take it in turn. Well Jesus says, "You better be ready to receive what you dish out, because the standard by which you measure other people is also the standard by which you're going to be measured." And that happens I believe on two levels, it happens in our relationship with other people. Let's suppose that I'm the kind of person who is just very judgmental of other people. Let's say that I'm very critical of how somebody parents their children, or how they treat each other in their marriage, and I'm always shaking my head at how their kids are out of control, and why can't they do something about it, and all the rest of this sort of stuff, and then when their kid goes off the rails, the whole world has got to know my judgment on that particular situation. Now picture that kind of a person, and now his kid goes off the rails. What happens? Well the Germans call it "Schundesfreude." Everybody joins together and says, "What? You've got it coming, old buddy. You dished it out, what goes around comes around. You deserve it because of how critical you are." And let me tell you, it takes a lot of spiritual maturity to resist that temptation when it happens to them, because it's very easy to rejoice in somebody else's trouble, or am I the only one here so unspiritualist to feel that way by times. Other people, and then the Lord Himself, because ultimately He's the Judge of all the earth, and while He's gracious and merciful and forgives us our transgressions, He also judges us according to the measure by which we judge others, and His line of reasoning is this. If you're dishing it out to others and holding this standard up for them, then I'm going to hold onto that standard for you. Here's how Paul describes it in Romans chapter 2. "You therefore," he says, "have no excuse. You who pass judgment on someone else. For at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. So when you, a mere man," we can add a mere woman, "pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God's judgment? The same measure that you measure out is the measure that you're going to be judged by." Now again, that doesn't mean that we don't exercise discernment or even judgment on people's beliefs, actions, or attitudes. It simply means that we ought to be ready to apply that same yardstick to our own lives and to have others and God apply that same yardstick to our own lives, and we have to do all correction with a spirit of brokenness and a spirit of humility, a desire to restore rather than a desire to cast off and to kick as far away as I possibly can. Paul puts it this way in the book of Galatians, "Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him how? Gently, but watch yourself or you too will be tempted." So Jesus says we are to resist the critical spirit. We have to be prepared to be judged ourselves by the same standard that we apply to other people and then he says we have to deal with our own stuff because notice now how the passage goes on. First of all, verse three, "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?" Verse four, "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?" And then verse five, "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." Now again, that's a very familiar passage and most of the time we look at it and we say well, part of applying the same standard of measurement to my own life is to make sure that I deal with my own stuff before I deal with anybody else's because otherwise I'm a hypocrite and that indeed is what the passage means. But it goes far beyond that because why does Jesus say, "I've got to remove the plank," I like the old fashioned log better for some reason, "I got to remove the log out of my own eye to remove the speck out of your eye." It's so that I can do what? See clearly. You see, the log in my eye not only makes me a hypocrite in dealing with you, but it keeps me from seeing what the real issues are in your life and I will be imposing my woundedness, my sin, my blindness on you so that my dealings with you now are a function not of what your real needs are, but what I think your real needs are which are colored by my own perception. I'm blind to my own sin. I don't know if you've ever noticed this about Jesus in his healing ministries in the gospels. You know, people have studied the gospels and they said, "What is the secret to what Jesus does? Is there a method that we can learn from and practice?" And the interesting thing is you can line up all the miracles of Jesus, all the encounters that he has with people and you will not find one of them that is the same. You ever notice that? And the reason is because everybody is different. Everybody's needs are different. And the spirit of Jesus identifies what that need is and deals with it correctly. And when he talks to us about removing the log or the plank out of our own eye, it's so that we don't fall into the mistake of imposing our own agenda and our own pollution on the lives of people around us. And you have seen it and I have seen it. There are people, you meet with them, you know exactly what they're going to say to the next 10 people they meet because it's a function of what they've just learned in their own lives. You've met them, haven't you? They all spout the same thing. To everybody because it means something to them and now they think it ought to mean the same thing to everybody else. That's why people who go to conferences have got to learn to keep their mouths shut for at least two weeks so they can learn to settle down and not just impose themselves on other people. A couple of examples. Let's suppose that I grow up in a home that is poor. Let's say that I have major rejection issues. I look down the street and I see people who are rich and who are spending their money on things that I can't even afford to dream about and that hurts me not only but that closes my heart off. And now I grow up, I become a Christian but I don't really deal with my roots of rejection. I don't really deal with my roots of poverty. And isn't it immediately evident now that how I go through life is going to be colored by that brokenness or by that woundedness. Whenever I run into a poor person, whenever I run into a person whose heart resonates with woundedness, I'm going to do one of two things. I'm going to gravitate towards them and identify with them and take up their cause because I understand their pain and so I help them avoid responsibility for their own stuff. That's why the world is so full of victims today. Or if I have blocked that part of my life and I am trying so hard to escape it, what's going to happen? I will be totally impatient with that kind of broken world. I will leave it behind and I'll go on and try to make something of myself. I used to think years ago that if people came through a cycle of brokenness into healing, they would automatically identify with similarly broken people and that they would have great grace and patience for those who are in situations similar to where they used to be. And not infrequently, that's what happens. When God heals a person, he can call them back into that situation. They can be incredibly gifted in that spot. But you know, just as often a person says, "Listen, that chapter of my life was too painful. I want to close it off. I want to be normal just like everybody else. So don't take me back there." And if I meet somebody who is still there, they remind me too much of my pain and I have a harshness towards them that falls far short of the spirit of Jesus. Do you understand what I'm saying? Can you see yourself in that situation at all or can you see other people? Another illustration, I talk about this in my book, Olive Sheets Around Your Table. A good friend of mine grew up in a sexually very dysfunctional home. His father we think probably had same sex attractions, that kind of thing. This young man grew up incredibly shamed about his own masculinity and his own sexuality. Roll the clock forward, he gets married, has a number of kids, including a number of daughters. And when his daughters become teenagers, he almost drives them crazy with his suspicions. Now these girls, and I know them, they would know sexual sin at that point in their lives from a hole in the wall. They are that naive and that innocent, but he's always hounding them and he's almost driving them into the very things that he's trying to protect them from. Why? Because he is imposing his agenda, his fears, his insecurities on them. And that can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Jesus says you want to see, you want the ability to spot the speck in the other person's life. Then he says make sure you take the log out of your own eye so that you can see clearly. Now that's one of the reasons why in a church like this, we talk so much about dealing with your own stuff. It's not that we enjoy doing that. It's not that we enjoy having to face the pain of stuff in our own lives. And it's certainly not because we have masochistic tendencies, I hope. But if our calling is to not only lead people to Jesus, but to help them to grow up to be become fully devoted followers of his, conform to his image. If we're going to make disciples out of people and help them on their journey towards wholeness in Christ, then can you understand with me how critical it is that the water that flows forth from us be as clean and as pure as it can be lest we impose our wounding and our dysfunction on the people that we are walking with. We don't want people to become imitations of us in our dysfunction. We want people to become followers of Jesus based on hopefully the water being as clean as it can possibly be. Now we live in a sinful world. There isn't a one of us who is perfect, including myself, and there will be plenty of things that you can find in my life or that you can find in your life that are not where they ought to be. But what Jesus is talking about here, there needs to be a willingness and an attitude on our part for some serious self-examination by times where we can address the log in our own eye, just of late. Some people have been speaking some things into my life, not very pleasant, very painful. But it's easy to dismiss your critics and to say, "Well, you're all wet and, you know, I'm all right." And sometimes critics are wet, and you don't have to absorb everything that everybody comes up with. But you know what I've learned over the years? You learn more from your critics than you do from your friends. And if I want my life to be as clean as it can possibly be before God, then I always not only have to be willing and ready to listen to my critics, I have to be able to struggle before God in the context of community to find out if this is true, yes or no. We're heading into new facilities, as you know. We keep talking about that. We're looking forward to expanded ministry that God wants to take us into. It's an exciting time, but part of the price that we pay is that we have to be prepared, you as well as me, to take whatever logs there might remain in our own eye so that we can see the speck in the eye of our brother and our sister. So that with the spirit of Jesus, it's not about us and our agenda, but in true sacrificial love we can set people free and watch them flourish to become everything that Jesus wants them to be. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:29:09.960; remove through 00:33:44.000] Here I come to you, let my heart be changed, renewed, flowed from the grace that I found in you. Of your life come to know the weaknesses I see, and me will be stripped away by the power of your love. Hold me close, let your love surround me, bring me near, draw me to your side. And as I wait, I'll rise up like the eagle, and I will soar with you, your spirit leads me on in the power of your love. Lord, I pray on my eyes, let me see you face to face, and knowledge of your love as you live in me. Lord, renew my mind as your will unfolds, and my life in living every day by the power of your love. Hold me close, let your love surround me, bring me near, draw me to your side. And as I wait, I'll rise up like the eagle, and I will soar with you, your spirit leads me on in the power of your love. Hold me close. Let your love surround me, bring me near, draw me to your side. And as I wait, I'll rise up like the eagle, and I will soar with you, your spirit leads me on in the power of your love. And as I wait, I'll rise up like the eagle, and I will soar with you, your spirit leads me on in the power of your love. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:33:44.000; resume after this marked segment]