Text: Matthew 7:1–6
Preacher: Pastor Brian Sauvé
And With a Rather Large Stick in Your Eye, Too
It is good to open the Bible with you all this morning. We love the Bible here at Refuge. We often describe our aim as a people as being theological and cultural maximalists—that is, a people who open this book, do the lifelong work of studying it to the bottom, and then aiming to fling our whole lives into orbit around it, to obey it cheerfully.
We are a people who care deeply about truth and goodness and beauty, about wisdom and ethics, about skillful living and right knowing. As with any good thing, this good thing—this love of truth and wisdom—comes with temptations and dangers.
One of those dangers lies in the fact that it is far too easy for our knowledge to outstrip our virtue. It is easy to learn in a few months—sometimes a few minutes—what will be the work of a lifetime to apply. Think of Paul’s command in Philippians 2:3,
“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.”
-Philippians 2:3
Easier said than done, right? Knowledge is easier than obedience. This morning, the Lord Jesus warns us about a related danger—the danger of becoming hypocritical judges, of examining others harshly and ourselves lightly, of receiving millions in mercy and then demanding a few dollars from our debtors.
Look with me, if you would, at Matthew 7:1. This is the Word of the Living God:
“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
“Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.”
-Matthew 7:1–6
Thus ends the reading of God’s Word; may he write it on our hearts by faith.
Trembling & Steady
I believe the Lord Jesus would have two things happen in us through this portion of his sermon:
First, he would have us tremble to seat ourselves in the judge’s seat. He would have us tremble at our own sin, our own need for grace, our own poverty of righteousness. He would have us judge ourselves rightly, and so tremble to sit in the seat of the judge. He would have us see that the vast majority of human judgment is an exercise in rank, vile hypocrisy. He would have us tremble before his awesome holiness before we try to convict our neighbor of their unholiness.
But secondly, by the end of the passage, and maybe somewhat ironically, the Lord seems to want his teaching to also steady our hands to actually be able to remove specks from our brother’s eye.
He wants us to be able to judge rightly and justly and with skill and wisdom and care. He says it right there in verse five—take the log out of your eye, and then you will be able to see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. I mean, speck removal is pretty fine-toothed sort of work. So we are to tremble in order that we might be steady.
A Walk Through The Text
The first thing I’d like to do is to walk through this paragraph fairly briefly, and just aim to understand what the Lord is saying before we ask how we might obey it and what that obedience would look like and not look like. So starting in verse 1, Jesus says,
“Judge not, that you be not judged.”
-Matthew 7:1
There is something about sitting in the seat of the judge that invites judgment. This is good and right, isn’t it? We rightly require this of our own human judges in human courts of law. When the Supreme Court issues a decision, that decision is open to judgment and evaluation.
But even more than that—the judge himself is open to judgment and evaluation. This is why we have confirmation hearings, for example, for judges. We need to know the character of this man before we entrust him to judge the character of other men. We need to know the wisdom of this man before we entrust him to judge in matters requiring great wisdom.
So Jesus warns us: If you want to be a judge, beware. You are going to be judged. And then, in verse 2, he gives us the standard by which those who climb into the judge’s seat will be judged:
“For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.”
-Matthew 7:2
We’re going to get to the golden rule in verse 12 of this chapter, where Jesus tells us, “…whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
What Jesus says here in verse 2 is the golden rule applied to rendering judgment. And the point isn’t that all judgment is bad, but rather that we ought to judge as we would want to be judged. How should a Christian want to be judged?
According to the law of God and the gospel of God. We should want to be judged by a just law—and understanding the inevitable verdict of that just law, given our manifest sinfulness—we should want to stand before a merciful judge.
This is exactly what the gospel of the Kingdom of God does: It judges the whole world as bloodguilty, and it does so perfectly. And then the cosmic Judge, who is himself the source of all the law, says, “Yet I am slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. I will die for you. I will clear your bloodguilt by blood payment. I will take your penalty and offer you grace.” And so any man who will—by the resurrecting of grace of God—judge himself unworthy, repent of his sin, and cry out to God in for mercy will be saved.
That standard, that law and gospel, is the only measure we ought to reach for in rendering judgment. No manmade laws, not our opinions or intuitions, nothing but that.
But the danger that the Lord warns us against is that we love to set aside the mercy of God the moment we are finished receiving it, and to become all law and no gospel.
We want a generous measure for ourselves. We want the King to forgive our ten-million-dollar debt, and then we want to leave that house of mercy and become debt collectors for personal vendettas, demanding the petty debts owed us, forgetting the cosmic debt forgiven us.
This tight-fisted, bitter, and unmerciful spirit is like a beam jammed in our eyes, rendering us blind:
“Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”
-Matthew 7:3–5
The hypocrite condemns what he himself unrepentantly does. Now listen, I’m not, and Jesus is obviously not saying that you can’t ever say something is sinful if you’ve done it. How would we obey the commands of Scripture, for example, to discipline our children if that were so? We’ve all disobeyed our parents!
That’s not what he’s saying. No, the point is that father’s ought not discipline their children while they disobey their heavenly Father. If you are in sin, repent and run to the throne of grace, then do your duty. Leave your gift at the altar and deal with the weightier matter, then you will be able to deal with the lighter matter.
The point is that our decree of law ought come with the proclamation of grace for the repentant sinner—that’s the measure we need.
And so the most pressing danger for the one sitting in the judge’s seat is rendering verdicts that would condemn you. If you are all law and no gospel, you condemn yourself—because you’re condemned by the very law you pronounce. Finally verse 6,
“Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.”
-Matthew 7:6
That just and merciful judgment that we are to use—God’s law and gospel—is a pearl of great price. It is unfathomably glorious. And Jesus would warn us that even if we go out in obedience to this text, and bring the law of God to bear in convicting the sinner, and even if we then pronounce the grace of God and plead with sinners to repent and believe—many will not receive it.
Many will turn like a rabid dogs and revile you, snarl at you, and seek to devour you. Many will treat the glorious gospel of the Kingdom of God as a light thing, and trample it underfoot like grunting, foolish hogs. And so the Lord would warn us not to pretend to be gods. Even if we don’t have logs in our eyes, we can’t make dogs and pigs listen. We can only judge justly, love mercy, walk humbly, and trust our God.
A Dangerous Thing
So if I might summarize Mathew 7:1–6, I’d say:
Judgment is dangerous thing amongst the fallen. It is a dangerous thing even amongst the not-yet-glorified redeemed. Like a sharp knife or a loaded gun, it is a powerful and often necessary tool—but one which can kill the uncareful or foolish user. We must therefore be careful to be both just and merciful judges, not hypocritical and harsh judges.
Judging Like Jesus
So how do we do that? How do we obey this passage? How do we judge justly and mercifully? Because I hope you saw that in verse 5, saw that we are meant to grow in the grace of God such that we can judge justly and helpfully.
We are to be able to remove even specks from our brother’s eye. Think about it: If we love our brother, we would be concerned with a speck in his eye. It’s painful to have something in your eye, even a small thing. Sin is like that. Whether it’s a two-by-four or a speck of sawdust, it hurts you. It brings death. It clouds your sight. If we are to do for our brother what we would have them do for us, of course we would want to be able to remove even specks.
So what must come together for a judgment to be just? Because make no mistake, judgment is an inescapable concept. You will judge. You must judge. Paul even says in 1 Corinthians 5:12 that we are to judge those inside the church—that’s part of what church discipline requires.
I’m going to point at six things that need to be present for a judgment to be just and helpful. There are likely more things we could add, but these are essential.
1. Just judgment must be measured against the standard of truth.
Imagine an NBA referee who somehow ended up reffing an NFL game, and tried to use the NBA rulebook to judge the game. You wouldn’t get a play off without a whistle—he’d think everything was a foul. In the NBA, you can’t even look the other team funny without getting a whistle.
If you judge against the wrong standard, you will judge wrongly.
Our feelings are not the standard.
Our intuitions are not the standard.
Our instincts are not the standard.
Our deeply held beliefs are not the standard.
A popular vote is not the standard.
The decree of a politician is not the standard.
Only the Word of the Living God is a sure standard.
2. Just judgment must be rendered on the basis of lawfully established facts.
Having the correct standard for weighing truth claims and moral claims isn’t enough. Even if you have the correct standard in hand, getting the facts of a matter wrong will prevent you from judging a matter justly.
We are not to judge by mere appearance, or merely by what you think is true. You have to actually have reasonable evidence that a thing is true. Once again, this is simply to obey the Scriptures. If we were using that biblical standard, we would know this. For example, criminal guilt can’t be established without two or three witnesses in Scripture. Church members are not to bring charges against elders without two or three witnesses.
Even though we have drifted far, our own legal system descended from Moses—which is why our legal system requires that we treat the accused as innocent until proven guilty.
But our culture hates this standard. We often legislate via public opinion through gossip and rumor-mongering, not with just judgment. It is often enough to ruin someone for a mere allegation to be made against them, provided it is public enough. We are to show a better way in the Kingdom of God, ruled by our just King. We are not to judge without cause, and we are not to judge by our own, invented standards, but by the Word of God.
3. Just judgment is given by an appropriate party.
There is a matter of jurisdiction in rendering judgment. I do not have the same responsibility to the members of Washington Heights Church as I do to members of this body. That’s not to say I have no responsibility; if I came in contact with a Christian from another church in serious error or sin, it’s not as if I just say, “Welp, not my problem.”
But jurisdiction matters. We ought not appoint ourselves to be like a sort of roving moral code enforcement group. I will correct my own child, but not necessarily all the children at the park. Again, as Paul said, we are not to judge unbelievers the same way we do those in the church.
What does that mean? At the least, it means that I am not primarily trying to get unbelievers to morally conform to the law prior to being convicted by it and coming to living faith in Christ. But I am trying to get my brothers and sisters to morally conform to the Law, because they are new creations in Christ. They can do that. The unbeliever cannot.
4. Just judgement is given by a morally qualified judge.
If Jesus’ words in this paragraph mean anything, they mean this. Unrepentant sinners ought not judge other unrepentant sinners.
What I’m saying is that if you have known, unrepentant sin, you have no business getting into the industry of removing objects from the eyes of your neighbor. You have repenting to do, not judging. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:31 that if we would judge ourselves truly, we wouldn’t be judged. That’s our first task.
If you step into the judges seat as a morally unqualified judge, you are the hypocritical judge Jesus warns about in this text. And the dangers of that are many.
First, even if you are totally right about the nature of the object in your brother’s eye, you are not qualified to remove it.
Second, the log in your own eye makes it highly likely that you are not correct in your assessment of the condition of your brother’s eye! I mean, duh. Would you go to a blind ophthalmologist for Lasik?
Sometimes the one who is quickest to give a judgment proves to be the least qualified to actually determine who is and is not in sin, because he himself is so mired in the sin of arrogance that he is blind. Set a watch over your soul before you set that watch over another’s.
5. Just judgment is given with godly motives.
Why are you judging your neighbor? Is it because you love them and want them to be free from sin? Or is it because you are proud and like to feel superior to others? Just judges must judge with right motive—and the safest motive for redeemed sinners is the love of God and neighbor.
6. Just judgment is given in the right manner.
How you say a thing matters. We are not USB drives made out of meat; we’re not merely exchanging 1s and 0s when we speak to each other. The same exact string of words can be said fitly and unfitly. The Proverbs tell us that a word fitly spoken is like fine jewelry.
Paul says in Galatians 6 that if anyone is caught in a trespass, you who are spiritual should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, keeping watch on himself as he does so. Meaning that there is such a thing as a correct word spoken ungently.
This requires wisdom, because I am emphatically not talking about a kind of sugar coating that is to be put over all of our speech. The Lord called the Pharisees whited tombs, full of rotting corpses. He called them snakes and devil’s sons. He overturned tables.
Ezekiel called Israel a whore who paid her Johns—and worse. John the Baptist called Herod names, and did so publicly.
What gives? What gives is that a shepherd has one voice for his sheep, and another for wolves who would tear the sheep—and both are love. You must know when to be firm and when to be soft, when to be tough and when to be tender, when to be quick to speak and when to hold your tongue.
This takes wisdom, charity, discernment, and humility. If you are always stuck on one mode, you are almost certainly a fool. Fools give vent to their spirit and call it being prophetic just as much as fools never raise their voice and call it meekness. We must have range, because the world we live in requires it.
Missing Pieces
So what happens if you miss any of these elements?
If you judge without the right standard, the Word of God, your judgment becomes meaningless moral relativism.
If you judge without the facts, your judgment is a lie.
If you judge without jurisdiction, you pretend to be God, who alone has jurisdiction over all things.
If you judge without moral qualification, you become the hypocritical judge.
If you judge without godly motives, you are in danger of becoming a clanging cymbal.
If you don’t give your judgment in the right manner, you risk saying the right thing in the wrong way and so fall into error yourself.
Dogs & Swine
All of this matters, and matters deeply, because the gospel of the Kingdom of God is a pearl of great price, and just judgment is essential both in proclaiming that gospel and in living with joy within its borders.
Let me leave you with three exhortations.
1. Always judge yourself first.
Judge yourself, that you might be one who cherishes this pearl rather than one who is like a herd of trampling swine, casting it into the mud and treating it lightly.
Judge yourself, lest in your judgment of others you prove a fool. Judge yourself, lest you forget the blood your debt required.
2. Love mercy with your whole soul.
Love the mercy that lives at the heart of this gospel of the Kingdom. Be eager to share this treasure, judging the unbeliever with love, slow to anger, eager for their repentance.
Make is plain that you are a son of God who delights in mercy, because you have received much of it. Be slow to speak, quick to pardon, eager for peace.
3. Don’t try to be God.
Don’t try to be God. If they refuse, don’t cast this pearl under their feet. The point of verse 6 is to free you from feeling that you have to fix everyone. If a person is simply hard-hearted and won’t receive correction, feel free to walk away. Pray for them. But don’t play God.