Finding Fault

Well I had a very interesting experience two weeks ago after the 9 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.
The best it gives you an opportunity to spar with people and to engage and at worst it
makes you suffer for Jesus, so 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 lay of the Seans in
the book of Revelation where Jesus says you're neither hot nor cold, you're lukewarm."
So we had a conversation about that.
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 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 he's in 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 anyway that we can.
And what had 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 of 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 a 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 expressed 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 724, what does he say?
This is to his disciples stop judging by mere appearances and make our 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 512, what business
is it of mind to judge those outside the church?
Are you not to judge those inside?
That's in the context of discipline in Christian community.
Well 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 62, 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.
Imagine 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 were 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 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.
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 don't 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.
One of us is immune to that our way.
I mean, we all have the tendency to zero in on the one thing that is wrong.
And we forget a thousand and one thing in somebody else's life that may be perfectly
proper.
How about you 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 the zero wing 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 sparing off.
Have you ever noticed around the coffee table or in the workplace or even in church settings?
He's got an opinion on almost every subject under the sun, even the most people are terribly
ill informed about the stuff that we'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 mouths as 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 yardstack that we apply to other people.
Because again, notice how the passage goes, verse 1, he says, "Do not judge, or you too
will be judged," then he goes on to say in verse 2, "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 skin when it comes
to being criticized themselves, do you ever notice that?
They can dish it out, they can't 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."
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 "shundice freighter."
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, what
it happens to them because it's very easy to rejoice, and somebody else is trouble.
Or am I the only one here so one spiritualist 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 on to 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 have others in 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 us far away as I possibly can.
Paul puts it this way in the book of Galatians, "Brothers, if someone is caught in a scene,
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 a 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 3, "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 4, "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 5, "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 hypocritical."
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've 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've 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.
Have you ever noticed 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 ten 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 go to conferences, they've got to learn to keep their mouths shut for
at least two weeks.
So they 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 a 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 or 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 in 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?
One other illustration, I talk about this in my book, "All of a Shutes 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.
He rolled 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 wouldn't know sexual sin at that point in their
lives from a hole in the wall there, 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 their home.
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, the hope.
But if our calling is to not only lead people to Jesus, but to help them to grow up to 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, blessed 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 want 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.
And it's easy to dismiss your critics and to say, well, you're all wet and 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, 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 expand 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 this 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.
Here I come to you, let my heart be changed, read me from the grace that I found in you.
But in your life comes to know the weakness that I see, and me will be straight away, about
the power of your life, oh, be close, let your thoughts surround me, bring me here,
throw me to your side, and as I wait, I'll rise up by the eagle, and I will so with you,
your spirit leads me on in the power of your love.
Here I come to you, let my heart be changed, read me from the grace that I found in you.
Here I come to you, let my heart be changed, read me from the grace that I found in you.
Oh, be close, let your thoughts surround me, bring me here,
throw me to your side, and as I wait, I'll rise up by the eagle, and I will so with you,
your spirit leads me on in the power of your love, oh, be close, oh, be close,
let your thoughts surround me, bring me here, throw me to your side,
and as I wait, I'll rise up by the eagle, and I will so with you,
your spirit leads me on in the power of your love, and I will so with you, your spirit leads me on in the power of your love.