Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on August 4, 2024.
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Audio Transcript
Invite you to take your Bibles. Join us today In Luke chapter 6, verses 37.
Through 42. Am I on now? Thank you for letting me know.
Luke 6 Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap, for with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.
He also told them a parable. Can the blind guide the blind? Won’t they both fall into a pit? A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher. Why do you look at the splinter in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the beam of wood in your own eye?
Or how can you say to your brother, brother, let me take out the splinter that is in your eye when you yourself don’t see the beam of wood in your eye? Hypocrite, first take the beam of wood out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the splinter in your brother’s eye. May we pray one more time. Heavenly Father, as we look at your word, help us to understand it for the practical applications that we have today of how we can live differently and more fully and therefore represent your Son better in this world that others might be drawn to. Faith in Him.
In his name we pray. Amen. There are a number of concepts in this passage today. Some are in the negative, some are in the positive. Some of it’s question and answer.
Some of it’s a story.
When there’s something negative, sinful, selfish or harmful in a person’s life, we often result to talking about how to get rid of that sin, or how to remove the bad behavior, or how to remove some harmful substance or activity that’s going to be hurting them. We’re focusing on taking things away and this is all well and good, but if we don’t learn to fill up the void that is left when we move a thing that is negative, usually that same thing or something worse is going to come back to fill in the space. It’s like having a yard that has nice green grass. If you only focus on pulling out the weeds and the grass starts to dwindle and you don’t fertilize it, the weeds are going to come back. You need to pull out the weeds, but you also need to encourage the grass to grow and water and give it fertilizer.
Because when you have the healthy grass, the things that are bad tend not to grow there as well. Therefore, as we’re looking at the text today, I want to give a positive aspect to each one of these seven things. What is it that we need to fill back into our life that is positive? How do we go beyond removing what is negative and replace it with something that is good? And I want to keep in mind that there is negative and there’s neutral and there’s positive.
Obviously, negative is bad. Neutral is okay. But our goal in the Christian life is to go beyond being neutral to being positive to having our lives filled with overflowing goodness and righteousness, because that is how we reflect Jesus in the world. Just a simple example. Imagine someone in our church is gossiping, and they’re causing disruption.
They’re hurting people’s feelings. So we confront them about their sinful negative activity, and they say, you know, I’m wrong. I’ve got to stop doing this. Yes, I’m going to confess my sin. I realize I’ve been causing problems.
Great, they were negative. Now they’ve moved to a neutral position, and they say, so I’m just not going to come to church anymore. I’m not going to talk to anybody because I don’t want to gossip. And they just stay away. They’re in this neutral position.
That’s not where we want that person to be. We want them to move to what do you need to do positively if you’re going to remove this sin from your life? What. What are you going to add back in? And we would encourage that person to learn to speak words of encouragement, to build others up, to share the gospel, to send out cards.
What we’re looking at today is I’m giving you seven positive things that you need to fill your life with. Because if you have a glass on the shelf, if you keep that glass filled up with something, it’s really difficult for dust. Fill it up. But if you leave an empty jar on a shelf long enough, it’s going to gradually get filled in because you don’t have something good in it. So therefore, today there are practical applications that are meant to move you from not having negative behaviors to be neutral, but to adding positive things in.
And the applications are going to both deal with our spiritual life, but also our practical life. As Jesus goes through the list here, what are these characteristics? Cautious in judgment is the first one. Slow to condemn, quick to forgive, generous in giving, careful in advice, diligent in spiritual growth and seeking sanctification of self. Not just for self, but we’re doing that for Self, others.
Let’s look at the first one there. Do not judge and you will not be judged. Rod Mattoon writes this very well. He says there are few portions in the Bible that are so misinterpreted, misunderstood, and misapplied as this section of Scripture. These first seven words, judge not that you be not judged, have been taken by some to mean that good Christians must never exercise any critical, discerning judgment at all.
In other words, some people say, well, what this scripture means is we just take everything with a grain of salt. We love everybody. It doesn’t matter what they say, it doesn’t matter what they do. We’re not going to confront them. We’re just supposed to love everybody.
That’s not what this verse is talking about. The judge here means to separate out the good from the bad, to decide what what is great to do and what isn’t, what is evil and what is harmful, opposing what is good, and then to make an opinion and make a decision about that this is the right way. This is what we’re supposed to do. And that type of judging is supposed to be part of our life. The judging here that is not that we’re supposed to have is a judgment that says, I am better than someone else because they’re doing this thing wrong and, and I’m not doing it.
That doesn’t help the other person. That’s not the type of judgment we’re supposed to have. That is the way a hypocrite lives. They make themselves look better by making everybody else look bad. Are we supposed to judge in the church?
Yes. Let’s go to First Corinthians, chapter 5, verses 9 through 13. And we’re going to read a situation here where Paul says, you are supposed to be judging in the church but not outside. He said, I wrote to you in a letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. I did not mean the immoral people of this world or the greedy and swindlers or the idolaters.
Otherwise you would have to leave the world. But actually, I wrote you not to associate with anyone who. Here’s the key. They claim to be a brother. They say, say that they’re a sister in Christ, but they’re living a life that is sexually immoral, or they’re greedy, or they’re idolaters, or they’re verbally abusive, or they’re drunkards, or they are swindlers.
He says, don’t even eat with such a person. This type of judging others, ascertaining that the way they are Living is wrong, and evil is the way we are to behave. For what business is it of mine to judge outsiders? Don’t worry about people outside the church. But then he asks the question, don’t you judge those who are inside?
And the answer is, yes, we are supposed to do that. And he clarifies that let God do the judging for people that are outside the church. And I added the word you here, because now he switches. But you, you are to remove the evil person from among you, not to hurt them, but to help the body of Christ. There is a place for judging.
This text is an example of when that is to happen.
Cautious in judgment. Do not judge, and you will not be judged. It’s not saying don’t judge what it’s saying if you judge, you should expect other people to judge you also. We’re all supposed to be helping one another. If we go to a similar passage in Matthew, chapter seven one, two, we get a little bit better understanding about what Jesus is talking about.
He says, do not judge so that you won’t be judged, for you will be judged by the same standard with which you judge others, and you will be measured by the same measure that you use. So in other words, the way you judge other people practically is the way that they’re going to judge you. Rod Mattoon shared this story. It’s about two neighbors. One was a baker and one was a farmer.
The farmer was selling his butter to the baker and the baker was selling his bread to the farmer. But the baker began to be suspicious that the farmer wasn’t giving him an accurate 1 pound of butter. He was suspecting he wasn’t getting his money’s worth when he paid for a full pound of butter. Because when he weighed the farmer’s butter on several occasions, it wasn’t up to a full pound. So he took his neighbor to a judge and he told him that the farmer is cheating me.
He’s not giving me a full pound of butter. So the judge said, well, do you have scales? And the farmer said, yes, of course I have scales. And if you don’t know what a scale is, if you’re too young, there’s a plate here and a plate here, and they’re hanging like this. And if you want to know how much something weighs, you put a pound weight here and then you fill this side up until they’re even.
Well, the farmer said, I’m not using this over here. And the judge said, well, how in the world are you weighing your butter? He said, well, the baker sells me a 1 pound loaf of bread, and I trust him. So I’m putting his £1 loaf on this side, and then I’m filling the butter up to match it. So who was doing the cheating here?
It was the baker that wasn’t giving a full pound loaf the way he was judging someone. The judge turned around and judged him. Likewise, the Lord reminds us of a cardinal truth of Scripture. We reap what we sow, and with what measure you give out, it shall be measured back to you. The warning here is that if you judge in the wrong manner, you’re going to be judged in the same way by other people.
We need to be cautious in how we judge others. Let’s go to Judges, chapter one, six, seven. We have an example here of someone who meted out judgment and then it came back to him. Adoni Bezek was a king that had conquered many other kingdoms. And one day they pursued him, they caught him, and they cut off his thumbs and his big toes.
So just think, you don’t have thumbs and don’t have big toes. How you would be limited. It’s like, why in the world did they do that to him? Well, they were giving back to him the judgment that he had given on others. Because Adoni B said, there are 70 kings with their thumbs and their big toes cut off that used to pick up scraps under my table.
God has repaid me for what I have done. And they brought him to Jerusalem and he died there. The way we judge other people in practical terms is the way that they judge us. But Scripture also warns us here in Psalm 18 that God judges us in the same way we judge others, where he says that with the merciful God, thou wilt show thyself merciful other principles, that we are to forgive others because we expect God to forgive us. We’re supposed to judge, but we’re supposed to do it with cautiousness.
First Thessalonians 5, 20, 22. Again, it’s in the New Testament that we are to judge. Don’t despise prophecies, but test all things. Hold on to what is good. Stay away from every kind of evil.
And then John tells us in First John 4:1, Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God. Because many false prophets have gone out into the world. We should never accept what someone says in this pulpit unless we judge it to make sure that it fits with all of Scripture and and what else we know. Again, judging means to separate, to distinguish, to discriminate between good and evil. And to select and choose the good over the bad.
We are to judge, but we need to do with cautiousness.
The next application here is number two. Be slow to condemn says, do not condemn and you will not be condemned. It’s not saying we’re supposed to stop condemning. It means that if you’re going to do this, realize other people are going to do it for you. Whereas judging was to weigh the matter and come to a conclusion.
Condemning is basically just to pronounce the verdict after the judgment. You’re wrong. This is what you did wrong, or this is what you did right. It’s a pronouncement there. And Scripture tells us it’s not wrong to do this, but we need to be slow in how we do it.
We shouldn’t be quick to condemn other people after judgment. There has to be proper confrontation of people. And we won’t look at all the verses today. But Scripture tells us how to confront people, how to condemn them properly. First thing is that whenever you take point out something someone that they’re doing wrong, Scripture says that you’re supposed to speak the truth to them.
But you don’t say it with malice, you don’t say it with hatred. Your intent is what, what’s the word? Speak the truth in love. Whenever you’re condemning somebody, whenever you’re confronting them about their sin, your motivation has to be there. Not to cut them down, it means has to be there because you love them.
That’s why we confront our kids and we condemn them when they do things wrong. It’s because we love them and we’re concerned for them. But there also needs to be in this condemnation a desire to reconcile a person in both their relationships with others and with God. If you’re going to tell somebody that they’re doing wrong and you’re going to push them out the door, that’s not the right attitude. You should be embracing them.
This is what. What you’re doing wrong. But let’s work on this together. Let me help you so that we have a wonderful relationship again. And thirdly, there needs to be assistance in helping a person to move from negative to neutral to positive.
If you’re condemning someone because there’s sin in their life and you’re pointing that out to them, don’t just help them remove that sin or tell them they need to remove it. You need to walk beside them. You need to help them to do whatever you can when you condemn. Do it in love. Do it with a desire to reconcile and be willing to help the person to Add back into their life what is good.
In other words, if someone falls out in the hall today, don’t stand there and tell them, well, if you had been watching what you were doing, and if you looked at that box and you were paying attention, you wouldn’t have fallen. That’s condemning someone without helping them. The right attitude is, you fell. I’m sorry, I need to help you up. What can I do to assist you?
And how do we keep other people from falling? When you condemn, when you’re pointing out sin or what’s wrong, love them, help them, assist them, and stand there with them. The next command here is, forgive, and you will be forgiven. In other words, be quick to. To forgive.
Matthew 6:12. We read, Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. When we pray and we’re asking the Lord to forgive us, we must keep in mind that the reason why we can forgive, the impetus for why we should forgive, is because God is able to do that for us, and he does willingly do that for us. Matthew 6 says, for if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. But if you don’t forgive others, your Father will not forgive your offenses.
We receive forgiveness over and over from the Lord Almighty. And once again we should be appreciative of what he’s done for us and reflect that in the way we treat others, by forgiving them just as. As freely. Number four. Be generous in your giving.
Jesus says, give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be poured into your lap. There’s practical living application here, and there’s spiritual application of how we are blessed. We’re supposed to be generous in our giving. It’s a responsibility that we have within the body.
Body of Christ. It’s not just something that is optional. If we go back to Malachi, chapter three, we find that the Jews had found themselves in a terrible spot because they had quit giving to the work of the Lord. In his house. Malachi said, will a man rob God yet you are robbing me?
And they’re like, what did we take away from God? You know, we didn’t pull anything down out of heaven. How is it that we’re robbing God? They were asking. He said they were robbing God by not making payments of the 10th and the contributions.
We talk about giving a tithe or a tenth to the Lord that was required of the Jews, but they actually gave more than that. I forget what the exact percentage, but it’s somewhere between 22 and 27% of their income. This extra was included in these contributions because they not only gave a tenth, but they had special offerings during the year. They had a temple tax that they had to pay. All of these things the law imposed upon them.
But they had quit giving to the work of the Lord at his temple. And God said, you’re robbing me. Verse 10 Bring the full tenth into the storehouse so that there may be food in my house. Test me in this way, says the Lord of Armies. See if I will not open the floodgates of heaven and pour out a blessing for you without measure.
There is spiritual blessing when we fulfill our responsibility of giving to the work of the Lord. But isn’t just an Old Testament teaching, But if we go over to first Timothy, let’s read about giving here. In chapter six, verses 17 through 19, Paul told Timothy, instruct those who are rich in the present age not to be arrogant or to set their hope on the uncertainty of wealth, but on God who richly provides us with all things to enjoy. The first principle here is that everything that we have is from the Lord. He’s provided for us it all from the beginning, start to finish.
It all belongs to him, even if we’re holding onto it. And he’s warning them, don’t put your trust in riches, because it’s only God that can give you any certainty in your life. And he says in verse 18, instruct them to do what is good, to be rich in good works. So not only are we to give of our finances in the body of Christ, in the house of the Lord, but we’re to give of our time or to give of our talents. We’re supposed to supposed to be generous in giving good works to others.
Be generous and willing to share what you have. And by doing this, verse 19 says you will be storing up treasures for themselves as a good foundation for the coming age. There is eternal spiritual blessing when we live generously in what we do and in what we give. First Corinthians 16:1 2. How was it that the early church gave?
What is the model that we have? This instruction is given now about the collection for the saints and what Paul is talking about here is the Jews and the Christians in Jerusalem were in desperate need. They were starving and so they were collecting money at the churches outside of Jerusalem to send to a other believers. And basically that’s why we give week by week here at the church. We’re giving so that God’s ministry can assist us, so that it can assist other Believers in our church to assist missionaries outside the church.
We’re giving to the work of the Lord. Paul said, you do this on the first day of the week. In other words, every time you get paid, they were supposed to sit, set aside something and save it in keeping with how he is prospering. If you get paid once a month, you were supposed to set aside money once a month. If you get paid twice a month, you were supposed to set it aside.
Paul is saying, you don’t just give on a whim that, oh, I feel like giving this Sunday because I won the lottery, or I feel like giving because I got an inheritance. We’re supposed to regularly give of what God has provided with for us on a regular basis. And it’s supposed to be not just regular, but it’s supposed to be proportional. It doesn’t emphasize in the New Testament giving a certain percentage. It says, give according to how you prosper.
And Timothy was instructed, tell those that are rich that they’re supposed to give even more. Those that are poor are expected to give less. It’s all based on what you earn and what you make. But everyone is still supposed to give. Generosity is one of the responsibilities of participating in the church family.
It’s happening regularly and consistently. It’s supposed to be proportional on how you are prospering. And those that have more are supposed to give more. In the Old Testament, they gave a 10th plus other offerings because the law told told them that they have to do it. But in the New Testament, we don’t live under law, we live under grace.
And if it was easy to give under the law, it should be much easier to give under grace. We should be willing to give more because we understand how much more God has given to us by sending his Son to die on the cross for our sins. Application number five. Be careful in advice Here he tells them a parable. Can the blind guide the blind?
Won’t they both fall into a pit? It’s pretty obvious what we’re talking about here. You got two blind people and they’re walking down the road towards a pit. And if one of them falls in, if they’re holding hands, the other one’s going to fall in too. What Jesus is saying, if you’re going to help someone else, make sure that you’re in a good position to help them.
If you’re going to teach somebody something else, be certain that you’re knowledgeable about what it is that you are teaching. Don’t ask me to help you write a computer program or how to replace a transmission in a car. You need to talk to Hunter about number two. I don’t think he can do number one. I don’t know how to replace a transmission.
And I would be like the blind leading the blind. If you asked me how to do that and I told you and we go on a ride for the car, we’re probably both going to die. Alright, Your life needs to be in order with whatever it is you’re helping other people. There’s practical advice here with this. If you don’t understand equations, don’t help somebody with their algebra homework.
I mean, they’re going to suffer from it. But not only is this about practically helping others with what you can do, but there’s also this spiritual concept here that you need to know and understand God’s Word so that you can help other people to apply it to their lives. And there’s this warning in James chapter three. Not many should become teachers, my brothers, because you know that we will receive a stricter judgment. So spiritually speaking, if you teach someone something about God’s word that you don’t understand, God’s going to hold you responsible.
Responsible for that person’s misunderstanding of God’s Word. That’s why it’s important that we all spend time understanding God’s Word more so that we don’t lead people astray and cause them to fall in a spiritual ditch in their lives. Therefore, if you give advice, it’s not saying don’t give advice, it’s saying be prepared to give advice and be careful when you do give it. Number six. Be diligent in spiritual growth.
Verse 40 says, the disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher. Our teacher here is Jesus Christ. No one should be ever arrogant about their knowledge of the Bible because there is always someone that is going to know more. Jesus is our teacher. He always will know more and understand it better.
But still we need to try to be like Him. We need to be diligent in our spiritual growth, not haughty in our biblical knowledge, not arrogant about it, but ever trying to attain more. We’ll never be equal to or above our Lord Savior, but we should diligently seek, seek to be like Him. That’s why in second Timothy 2:15, Paul tells Timothy, study to show thyself approved unto God. How many of you love to study?
Few people do. I didn’t like studying in school, but if I wanted to make a good grade, what did I have to do? I had to study. I had to spend time. I had to work, I had to buy books, I had to pay tuition.
This is the same idea here. We’re not supposed to become believers and just think that God’s going to pour an understanding of his Word into our life. Automatically. We’re commanded to study, to be diligent, because one day God is going to ask you, did you rightly divide the word of truth? And you’re either going to stand before the Lord and say, God, I’m ashamed to say I did not stand your word, or you’re going to give the right answer, say, no, I spent time studying your Word.
I did as much as I could to understand it fully. We need to be diligent in spiritual growth. Don’t be neutral. Be on the positive side about filling yourself with knowledge. Number seven.
Seek sanctification of self for others. Live a righteous life, not just for yourself, but live that righteous life knowing that it affects other people in the church. And here’s the story. Jesus says, why do you look at the splinter in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the beam of wood in your own eye? This beam of wood, I mean, this is just ridiculous.
He’s talking about the rafters in a building, this huge rafter coming out of someone’s eye, as opposed to the. The word for splinter there could even mean just a little piece of dust. Have you ever gotten anything stuck in your eye? It’s not very comfortable, and if I can’t get it out, I want somebody to help me. I mean, it’s just miserable.
So he’s not saying, don’t try to help your brothers to take something out. It’s your responsibility to help them to take the splinter out of their eye. But you’ve got a problem if you’ve got a beam in your own eye. How can you say to your brother, let me take out the splinter that is in your eye, when you yourself don’t see the beam of the wood in your own eye? This hypocrite, first take the beam of wood out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the splinter in your brother’s eye.
In other words, I’m not just taking the beam out of my eye so that I feel better taking whatever that beam is in my eye out so that I can help other people in their lives.
Examples of this. If you have a problem with alcohol, you need to work on your own problem before you help someone else. If you aren’t good at equations and math, don’t help somebody with their algebra if you can’t drive your car and stay inside the yellow line and the white line, you probably shouldn’t be teaching other people how to drive their car. It’s both practical and it’s spiritual. Most importantly, we need to live our lives according to the Bible to help others.
Our personal sanctification, first of all, pleases God. That’s our goal. Secondly, it blesses us to live according to God’s Word. But thirdly, what we’re seeing here is that Jesus is saying part of the reason why you need to keep your own life straight, because you need to be able to bless other people. I had to take Mary to the emergency room last night, and I am glad that there were some medical people there that knew how to take care of her.
She has pneumonia, she’s going to be fine. But if I took her to the hospital and there were no doctors and there were no nurses, there was nobody trained, there would be no reason to go there. It’s the same way with us. We need to live our lives so that we’re available to help others in the body of Christ when they come along and need that help. Sinking sanctification of self for others.
Let’s go to First Corinthians 11, 28, 32 and we’ll end here today when we think about the Lord’s Supper. Every time we come to the Lord’s Supper, we are asked to judge our hearts, to confess our sins. It’s a regular thing that is part of our sacraments that we take every month, that we have to continually be reminded. I have to examine myself and make sure my life is what it is supposed to be so that I can help others. Let a person examine himself and in this way let him eat the bread and drink from the cup.
For whoever eats and drinks without recognizing the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. This is why many are sick and ill among you and many have fallen asleep. Because they weren’t judging themselves. They weren’t getting the beam out of their eye. They weren’t making sure that they were right with the Lord within the body of Christ.
Instead, if we properly judge ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned with the world. Self righteousness is judging others without judging ourselves. And that’s where our focus needs to be. We need to move from whatever’s negative in our life past being neutral to being filled with the Spirit.
Have all these positive things so we’re there for others now. The list may Be daunting. Today. There’s seven things here to do. Be cautious in judgment.
Be slow to condemn. Be quick to forgive. Be generous in giving. Be careful in advice. Be diligent in spiritual growth.
Seeking sanctification of self for others. When Mary sends me to the grocery store, if she tells me more than two things, I can’t remember the list. Can any of y’ all agree with me? If it’s more than two things, write it down. Of course, she tells me two things and I bring home the Twinkies and the other things that aren’t on the list.
But I always forget item number three. This list of seven things could be like that. Today you’re going to walk out here and say, I can’t remember all seven. I’m just asking you to look at the list and say, God, which one or two things here do I need to work on? Pray that God will empower you to do what you can’t do in your life.
Because if he wants you to do these things, he’s going to provide a way. You just have to be willing and you have to ask Him. You’re not left in your own strength. So my final conclusion today is find out the one or two things that you’re going to work at to move from being negative to being positive that you might be a better example for Jesus Christ in this world. May we pray.
Heavenly Father, you are great and awesome. God, and you told us so much about how to live that we might be successful in this world physically, but also spiritually. And, Father, it’s for the purpose of honoring you and being able to bless others more fully that we ask you today to show us what we need to change in our lives and work on that we might be more like your son. Show us those things today in your son.