Judgement

Summary:

Prioritize their allegiance to God’s kingdom above political affiliations. It emphasizes following Jesus and being guided by the Holy Spirit in every decision, including voting. By reflecting on Psalm 8, the sermon highlights humanity’s value in God’s eyes, urging believers to treat others with love and respect, regardless of their backgrounds. It clarifies that God seeks faithful obedience rather than perfection, celebrating the unique work of God in each life. Jonathan differentiates between judgmentalism and discernment, recognizing discernment as a spiritual gift. The speaker shares personal struggles with judgment and emphasizes reliance on God’s grace. Instead of criticizing others, believers are called to focus on self-improvement and to avoid using judgment as a tool for exclusion. A study is cited showing millennials view the church as judgmental, prompting a call for humility and sensitivity. Practical tips are given to avoid judgment, such as concentrating on personal growth and transforming judgments into blessings. Ultimately, the sermon urges guiding people toward Jesus by inviting the Holy Spirit rather than casting judgment.

Transcript:

As a general rule of thumb, I try not to question something that Jesus said, and I certainly keep the edits that I would have made in Jesus' story to myself, but one of those that I will share with you today comes from this passage. I would love it if when the disciples asked Jesus if they could call down fire, if Jesus would have said yes. Right? Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever thought, man, if I could summon the power of God in this moment, in this situation, against this person standing in front of me, it would make my day. Right? Am I the only one who's been there? All right.

Well, we'll keep that in mind. And then the call of Jesus to be about the business of the kingdom, I think, is a remarkable call for us today as we consider what does it mean to follow Jesus. But before we get too far into that, I have a couple of sidebars. There's some debate in the realm of pastors. When you offer a sidebar, if you call it a sidebar before the sermon, does it count as your sermon time? Right? So we're going to just sort of see how things come down here.

But just a couple of things for us today. It doesn't seem like it, I know, maybe because of the weather still being warm. We didn't get any rain in October. But regardless of how we feel, the Advent and Christmas season is just a few weeks away. Here at Journey, if you've never been around for the celebration of Advent, it's something that we really try to lean into. The Advent actually begins the church calendar year. And so it's a season for us to pause in the midst of such a busy time in our culture with all of the parties and all of the gifts and all of the shopping and planning that we do for us to pause and consider what does it mean for us to welcome God in the flesh.

And so I want to just say for us today, if you have your phone or if you want to make a mental note, just mark this day on your calendar. Saturday, November 23rd is our annual Advent event.

We call it Rediscover Christmas. It's a time for us to get together. We serve a delicious brunch and we talk about how do we celebrate Advent as a family? How do we celebrate Advent as a church? There's a craft to make. It's something for the whole family. So we want to just put that on the calendar.

You'll hear more about that as it gets closer. But go ahead and reserve that date so that you can be a part of that. And even more close for us than Advent is something that is going on in the life of our country, an election. We are just a couple of days away from electing the next president of the United States. Every four years, we have the opportunity as a country, as a people, to make our voices heard. And we are in the tail end of this year's cycle. And I want to just offer again for us another thought or set of reflections on the election.

And this will be similar to what was said last week. But I think, as you know, there's no shortage of conversations of politics in our world today, in our country today. In many ways, I think politics has sort of become our new religion of our country. And it's something that can definitely get out of whack if we aren't careful. So if you've been around for a while, you know that we don't offer partisan political opinions here at Journey. But I do want to make sure that we understand something for our community as it pertains to the election. First and foremost, I shared last week that I've kind of been up and down throughout my adult life about voting and about the need to vote and how important is it and is it our duty to vote.

I don't know if you've been there, if you've debated that with yourself or maybe with other people as well. That's not always a conversation that goes well. So if you have never had that conversation with others, it can be a very tense conversation about whether or not you're going to vote. But where I have landed is I think that it is a really awesome opportunity that we have in our country to cast a vote. And that if you are able to do it, you should definitely consider what is it to vote and who are you going to vote for. But beyond that, for us here as a community, the only thing that I feel confident in saying for us is this. If this Tuesday rolls around and you have cast your ballot and at the top of the ticket you voted for Harris and Democrats down the line, you are welcome here.

If next Tuesday comes and at the top of the ticket you voted for Trump and Republicans down the line, you are welcome here. If next Tuesday comes around and you've kind of zigzagged between parties and issues and no one can tell where your allegiance lies, you are welcome here. And if you choose to sit this one out, you are indeed welcome here. As far as we are concerned as a community of Jesus who are practicing the way of Jesus, we are far more concerned about our allegiance to the kingdom of God than we are worried about anything else. And what we believe to be true is that if we pursue Jesus, if we invite the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us, that sets the direction for our whole life, not just one part of it, but all of our lives, including who we vote for. And so I say spend some time in prayer, decide who you are most comfortable with, make that vote, and then invite God through the power of the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us forward as a nation and trust that presidents will come and go, but God remains the same. So with that in mind and thinking about our conversation on judgment, I want to begin by reading from Psalm chapter eight.

And here is what the psalmist proclaims beginning in verse three. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them? Human beings that you care for them, you have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. This is a beautiful description not only of the world in which we live and the way in which God has intricately designed the world, but it's also a proclamation about people. It says that people were made a little lower than the angels, right? It's a declaration about who and what people are. So what this scripture says is truly wonderful, but I wanted to point out what it doesn't say, and God agrees apparently with the thunder in the background.

Here's another sidebar. This doesn't count on my time. I was in college and there was a professor at my university. His name was Dr. Cawthorne. We called him, affectionately called him Moses. He had this beautiful beard and the most resonant voice that you could ever have.

And we, because it was theology school, we prayed before each of our classes. He offered a prayer. I don't remember what he prayed, but then when he was to say amen, there was a clap of thunders just like that. And he kind of took a minute and paused and he said, my hope for you is that one day God will agree with your prayers as much as he does mine. That was a beautiful gift there that he gave us with his humor. Now that I have completely forgotten where we are, a little less than angels, but let's talk about what this scripture doesn't say. It doesn't say that Christians, God made Christians a little less than angels.

It doesn't say that God made Republicans or Democrats a little less than angels. Doesn't say that God made Americans a little less than angels. Doesn't say that God made cowboy fans a little less than angels. It says God has made people. God has made them a little less than angels. Think about this. Every single person who you interact with is created in the image of God.

And it truly is a gift that you and I have the opportunity not just to spend time together, but that we have the opportunity to interact with all sorts of people all day long in a variety of different ways. It truly is a gift that we get to share this planet with whomever we are next to. And I think that one of the things that God is calling us to as a community of faith, as people following the way of Jesus, I think that as we have talked about what does it mean for us to experience revival in which lives are changed, in which faith is restored, in which our neighborhood is impacted, and all of that takes place in such a mighty way that only God can get credit for it. One of the ways that God is calling us to enter into being his people is to simply understand that the person across from us is a gift and a blessing, and we have the tremendous opportunity for a moment with them and with their attention. And if we could begin to see people as gifts that God has given us, no matter who they are or where they come from or what is the reason why we're interacting with them, if we could truly see them as a gift, then that would influence the way in which we respond to them and how we share the love of God with them. So today, as we talk about judgment, I want to just offer this for us. I know that this is a hard subject for us.

It's one that weighs heavily upon me, but I wanted to remind us that part of being a part of Journey, something that we say every time that we gather together, is that perfection is a myth, right? God does not expect us to be perfect. God expects us to be obedient and to faithfully show up. And here's the deal, right? God has tremendously high standards for us to live into, but we don't have to do that on our own, and we don't have to do it all at once. Sometimes I think that we read Scripture or we hear a sermon or we think about a person's life who is being faithful and obedient to God and to the kingdom of God, and we think, man, if I could just be like that, or if I could do what they do, or if I could be them, or if I didn't have these issues that are weighing me down. Well, the reality is that God works in our lives uniquely, differently, faithfully, and sometimes we just need to learn to take a deep breath and rest in God's grace and trust that God is working in us without comparing that to how God is working in other people.

That God is moving us and shaping us at the pace that God desires for us. We can't skip ahead. There's no cheat code. The only way for us to journey along the narrow way with Jesus is just to simply show up and allow the Spirit to work in our lives as the Spirit desires. So we're not talking today about being perfect. We're talking about simply showing up and saying, God, here I am. Do with me what you will. All right?

Let's offer a prayer together. Jesus, as we have this conversation on judgment, pray that we would not compare ourselves to anyone else, that we would not be distracted by anything that is coming into our mind that would offer us shame or guilt, but that we would trust in your grace to fill us, to displace the brokenness that is deep within us, and to replace that with your kingdom at the pace that you desire to form us and shape us into your image.

Give us wisdom. Give us your presence. Amen. So historically in the church, as far as it pertains to Christian thought, there are two understandings or applications of judgment. The first one is what we call judgment day. The idea that at some point everyone is going to face a day of judgment where God will examine their lives based on the way in which they lived. The second is an idea of judgmentalism, or a person finding themselves worthy of casting judgment on another person.

Okay, so we have those two ideas within Christian thought. Then, to sort of muddy the waters a bit, we have judgment as it pertains just simply to life, right? Being a good judge is a positive thing, right? We make judgments all the time. Not judgments about other people, but judgments about how we conduct ourselves and how we live our lives. We make judgments about what we can eat and what time we can eat it based on what that's going to do to us if we make the wrong decision, right? We make judgments on where we go and how we spend our time.

We make judgments watching a TV screen trying to decide if a person is a good singer or if their talent is worthy of me to cast a vote in their favor. If you are called a judgment, a good judge of character, that is a good quality. If we're talking about leadership and whether a person is fit for leadership, we want people who are in leadership to be able to practice good judgment. So we can kind of, the waters can become kind of muddy when we have this conversation. But as far as Jesus is concerned here in the Sermon on the Mount, He's talking about the kind of judgment where people pass judgment between two people or between another person or a group of people and decide on whether or not they are worthy, right? That is the type of judgment that Jesus is calling into question here. In all honesty, I am a serial offender when it comes to judging a book by its cover.

I try not to, but my mind is sometimes in overdrive making judgments. Sometimes unfortunate judgments about people and it's something that I try to fight with. And almost every time when I make a judgment about a person, I am pleasantly surprised that my judgments are wrong, right? Sometimes they're correct, but most of the time my judgments are wrong. But yet I find myself continually trusting in those judgmental moments that I have. Now it's important too for us to kind of pause here and realize there's a difference between being judgmental and discernment, right? Discernment is a spiritual gift.

It's something that we need to spend time doing. If we find a person who is wise in the area of discernment, they're a person who we should listen to. If we have the gift of discernment, we should lean in to that. But discernment never makes judgments on people. It discerns how we move through life with wisdom. So when we have this conversation, I think it's important for us to just sort of get it out of the way that passing judgments for us as followers of Jesus is one of the most flagrant fouls that we make or are tempted to make, and one of the areas in which we oftentimes in the church overlook as it pertains to us following the narrow way. It's easy for us and common for us to justify the judgments that we make or to even ignore Jesus's teaching and to trust our judgments over where Jesus is leading us to.

And even more than that, sometimes we are guilty of making our judgments on others, some sort of righteous pursuit. And so we want to today turn to Jesus's words to understand the importance of the way of Jesus as it pertains to this area. So Matthew chapter 7, verse 1, Jesus says, do not judge. All right? Have a great day. It's pretty clear how he begins this conversation. 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. Verse 6, do not give to dogs what is sacred. Do not throw your pearls to pigs.

If you do, they may trample them under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces. This might sound a little counterintuitive, but according to Jesus' teaching here, judgment is a sacred act. Judgment is a sacred act. When something that is sacred is then turned and used against people, it renders that sacred act ineffective, and it makes a mockery out of what was actually intended to be a beautiful expression of God. And this is what Jesus is talking about when he says in Matthew 7, 6, do not give to dogs what is what? Sacred, right? Do not throw pearls to pigs.

But unfortunately, when we, as the church, pass judgment, decide who's in and out based on our proclamations that we make about people, we are doing the exact opposite of what Jesus instructed us here. I think this is probably the most important part of the sermon for us to hear today. We are not God, right? And the only person who is capable of passing proper judgment on anyone is God. So in this area, we need to let God be God. And let go of our judgmental spirits if we have them. You and I judge based on what we can see and how we interpret a person's actions and behaviors.

But we have no way of knowing a person's heart. And as we have worked through this sermon that Jesus taught, we notice a theme that pops up about the areas that Jesus has addressed, which we have talked about. And he's identifying corrosive behaviors that have the tendency to derail the way of Jesus in our lives. And this is the same way that he talks about us being judgmental. When we are judgmental, according to Jesus, it is just as damaging to our lives as anger and lust and greed. Oftentimes we don't think about it that way, but that's what Jesus is suggesting to us here. When we make judgments to decide who's in and out based on what we see with our eyes, we take what is good and sacred and belongs to God and God alone, and we throw it to the dogs.

The good news though for us is that we can, it's not easy, but we can be formed in a different direction. We don't have to stay in this cycle where we are constantly judging people as in or out. And as we move into this part of the conversation, I wanna highlight something that is important for us to consider. When you get outside the walls of the church and you ask people their opinion about people on the inside of the church, it's not always a pleasant discovery. There's a research group which does a lot of research as it pertains to the church and what the church is up to and how it's doing and how it's being perceived. It's called the Barna Institute, and they conduct all kinds of research about all different things all the time. One of the studies that they put out suggests that 87% of millennials, millennials is a loosely defined term, people 40-ish and under at this point, millennials who are not invested in the church.

So they don't go to church, church is not important to them. 87% of them believe that the church is judgmental, that they are judging others. This is something that should be very concerning to us as we move through this conversation and think about what is Jesus calling us to do in light of this teaching. This kind of sounds like a no-brainer, but I think it's worth saying, we shouldn't be known for something that Jesus tells us not to do, right?

It's kind of a problem. And we can justify that and say like, well, maybe there's some of those people in that group and that 87% who just don't like the church, they don't care about the church, they think the church is unimportant or silly or archaic. And that could be true, but that's not all 87% of them. And furthermore, regardless of what the percentage is, if there is one honest person in that group who considers that the church is judgmental, it should cause us great concern because that is exactly what Jesus told us not to do. Now, in our evangelical bent, we have the tendency to emphasize eternity as a strategy to compel people to follow the way of Jesus. We suggest that everyone should consider where they will spend eternity and think about the implications that that has. And while that can be an effective conversation starter, one of the unintended consequences of this as an evangelism strategy is that it leads to us trying to draw hard and fast lines about who is in and who is out.

And while that might not seem like it's necessarily a bad thing, history tells us that the church often finds itself on the wrong side of this argument. Just study Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John as Jesus is interacting with religious people and how they draw these lines and Jesus constantly tears them down. When we began to draw hard and fast lines about who is in and who is out, we get into this judgmental territory and we aren't influenced by a couple of our senses that will lead us further in the way of Jesus. And instead we get derailed. And here is quickly three reasons why we can easily become derailed. Our eyes and our ears are easily deceived. All of us can be easily deceived.

Jesus talks about this as sawdust in our eye, as a plank in our eye versus sawdust in another's eye. As we said, we cannot understand the heart of the matter of people. And we are easily deceived, both about ourselves and where we are. But if you look around the church and you see some of the horrendous stories that are out there in our general geographical area, people are led astray all of the time by the appearance of holiness. And that's not necessarily the case of what is going on in a person's heart. So because we are easily deceived, we have to know that and think about that when we are tempted to judge. The second thing is that we often emphasize the sin of others while overlooking our own.

We see sin that makes us uncomfortable and we overemphasize that while we turn a blind eye towards sin that runs rampant even in the church. And that's problematic for our witness. This doesn't make sense in our transactional understanding of the world, but it is the truth of the kingdom of God is that there is no hierarchy of sin. In the kingdom of God, there's no one sin that's worse than the other.

The sin has differing effects. It has different consequences, but God does not see one sin as worse than the other. All sin is sin when it comes to the kingdom of God. So we can't make a list of what sins we are comfortable with and what sins we enforce. We have to understand that sin is sin and we can't overlook our own sin and emphasize that of others. And the third thing we've mentioned this is just simply, we cannot know the heart. So as we consider passing judgments on people when we've talked about an evangelism strategy of where people will spend eternity, there is a time and place for us to help people understand the realities of their brokenness.

But we have to earn that right. We don't just get that right. And it is most effective when we are invited to speak that kind of truth into someone's life. So if passing judgment is a sacred act, then it doesn't belong on the street corners. It doesn't belong in flippant comments. It doesn't belong with a holier than thou spirit. All of these diminish the significance of God's judgment and take away from what is a sacred act and throws it, as Jesus said, to the dogs.

It also puts us in the place of God, which doesn't need explanation. That is a wrong place for us to consider ourselves. So as we wrap up this conversation, I wanna offer us four practical tips in order for us to be able to resist passing judgment. The first one is this. Keep your eyes on your own paper. Keep your eyes on your own paper. We have enough going on in our own lives.

We don't need to manage things for anybody else. God is the one, the Holy Spirit is the one who is much more effective at pointing out problems that people have in their lives. So let's pray for the Holy Spirit to move. Let's invite God to show up and to lead us, but let's keep our eyes on our own paper and work on the planks that are in our eyes before we turn towards the sawdust in someone else's eyes. The second thing is this. Refuse to rank sin, right? Anytime somebody tries to say this sin is worse than this sin, we have to refuse that because that goes against what the scriptures teach us.

We cannot hold someone else's sin up above sin that we overlook. We will be led down the wrong path every time we do that. Pay attention to how you view other people. Pay attention to how you view other people. When you're interacting with someone, when a thought about another person comes to your mind, what are you thinking about them? What are you, what stories are you making up in your mind? What are the things that you are telling yourself about that person?

Pay attention to that because that will help you understand if you have a judgmental spirit or if you don't. One of the ways to really lean into this is through the prayer of examine. The prayer of examine is a way for us to recall our day or our week or however long of a time period you wanna put on it, but it helps us to evaluate what we are doing.

When was I closest to God? When did I feel farthest from God? When was I in line and doing what the Holy Spirit was calling me to do? When was I working against the Holy Spirit? It's a way for us to consider these things. And when we're talking about being judgmental, when did I see the image of God in my neighbor? And when did I pass judgment on my neighbor?

And understanding how we view people and how are we being obedient to the Holy Spirit or are we doing our own thing? And then the last one is this, and this is one that I'm really leaning into and trying to work on personally. Turn your judgments into blessing.

Turn your judgments into blessing. When you wanna pass judgment on someone, don't allow yourself to be caught up in being judgmental. Instead, turn that into a blessing. Someone cuts you off in the street, right? We know what the first impulse is when that happens. Get a driver's license. What are you thinking?

How could you possibly do that? And once you have let that out, turn it into a blessing, right? May the Lord bless and keep you and help you drive a little safer, right? When you have a disagreement with someone over whatever it is and you're thinking all kinds of thoughts about them that are demeaning or degrading, those thoughts can be valid, but it doesn't matter. Turn that judgment into a blessing and invite the presence of God to invade their lives. Here's the deal, right? If our desire is for people to encounter the presence of Jesus and learn to live according to the ways of Jesus, the best thing that we can do to get them there is to invite the Holy Spirit to capture their attention.

Your judgments are not going to lead people to Jesus. Instead, it's going to most likely lead them further away. So take that judgment and turn it into something constructive and offer a blessing to them when you want to judge. Jesus, we want to trust your words above our experiences, above our default way of operating. We want to take you at your word. And so, God, today I pray for each of us that you would meet us where we are at, that you would reveal to us how we take the next right step further down the narrow road and we let go of what might be distracting us or convincing us in the way of brokenness.