Judge Not

I'm going to read from God's word for us now.

We are in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 7.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 7, verses 1 to 6.

Matthew 7:1–6

Why do you see the speck that's in your brother's eye,

but do not notice the log that's in your own eye?

Or how can you say to your brother,

let me take the speck out of your eye when there's a 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 attack you.

Amen.

This is the word of the Lord.

Good evening.

If you have a Bible with you,

please do keep it open at Matthew 7, verses 1 to 6,

Matthew 7:1–6

which Chris just read for us.

Cultures, even generations,

culture after culture within the same place,

have very different values on judging other people.

Way back, a long, long time ago,

when I was a teenager, back in the 1990s,

UK culture, and it was the same in US culture as well,

was all about not judging other people.

Don't be judgmental was the message of that age.

And that had all of its own values behind it.

The idea was nobody has the moral high ground over anyone else.

We're all trying to live life on our own terms,

so you just don't have the right to judge someone else.

But really, the thing that made that so normal

was the world's most popular TV show at the time,

which was called Friends.

Some of you are just old enough to remember it,

so I commiserate with you.

Some of you are too old or too young,

and you should count yourself blessed.

But when I was a teenager, this is what everyone watched.

It was about six young adults living in New York,

living life without any bigger moral framework,

all trying to make their own way in life.

And the big idea in that show with what it meant to be a friend

was that you were never judgmental of your friends.

You were always affirming, always supportive.

A friend would never say to one of their friends

that there's a connection between their actions

and the consequences of those actions.

That's not what friends were supposed to do.

So the worst thing that you could be was judgmental.

Nowadays, though, that has all flipped around.

And now we live in a culture in the West at large,

here in Edinburgh, that is pro-judgmental,

that's highly judgmental.

There's something wrong with you nowadays

if you don't judge people,

if you see evil in the world,

if you see evil in someone else's life,

when you don't call it out,

what do we say to that?

We say, silence is violence, right?

Who's the icon of our age?

It's not Joey and Chandler

not pointing out the consequences of their actions.

It's Greta Thunberg who's become a global celebrity

by going around saying,

how dare you?

Shame on you to everyone,

making us all feel really bad about ourselves.

And ours is the age that has given rise

to what gets called cancel culture,

which is a really deep rejection

of the kind of culture that I grew up in

in the 1990s,

which was only a firm culture.

So the question is,

if we think about these two cultures,

1990s culture, 2025 culture,

which one gets judgment right?

Because they can't both be true.

Let me say something

that's going to end in a prediction.

I don't claim to be a prophet

and we don't really do that

in a reformed church like this,

but a humble prediction.

The reason that the culture we have now,

at this moment,

which is so into being judgmental,

the reason for that is that

what came before that age of,

don't judge me,

don't make me face consequences

for my actions,

that way of living

just doesn't really work in real life

because actions do have consequences.

And even back in the 1990s,

nobody really believed

that we should never judge

another human being for anything ever.

Imagine you walk into your home

and you find someone burgling it

and you say,

stop, burglar, that's wrong.

And the guy turns around

and says to you,

don't judge me.

Did anyone ever say,

well, it is 1995,

so I suppose you're right.

People just didn't do that.

But what that culture back then

tried to hold on to,

we could put it in Christian terms,

was something like this.

show me grace,

but don't you dare tell me

I'm a sinner.

So, it was something like

grace without righteousness

and that doesn't work.

So, what our culture has done

is just to swap all of that around.

It inverted it.

And now we have the opposite.

I will condemn you

for being a sinner,

but there's no grace for you.

There's no redemption.

There's only shame.

And there's your cancellation.

And that doesn't work

in real life either.

That is a crushing way to live

because nobody is perfect.

And if the judgment turns on us,

there isn't a prospect of redemption.

So, then life becomes a game.

And the way that you play the game

is you keep the arrow of judgment

pointed away from yourself

as much as you can.

Always point it at someone else

because the moment it turns on you,

the game is up.

And you don't want anyone

to go looking for the skeletons

in your closet

and that motivates you

to look for them

in everyone else's.

Okay?

It's all a big game of distraction

away from ourselves.

And that's not satisfying either.

It's a really ugly way to live.

So, here's the prediction.

What will come next?

Well, eventually,

the culture we have now

will give up

on this way of being judgmental.

And what will come next?

Well, I think what we see now

is that it's changing already.

Our culture is really tribal

in lots of ways.

Identity, political groups,

all that kind of stuff.

And what people increasingly expect

is righteousness without grace

for whoever the opposite tribe

to mine is

and grace without righteousness

for me and my tribe.

Okay?

We want acceptance for ourselves

and condemnation for the other.

But those things are really separate.

But that doesn't work either.

Eventually, people will move on from that

because it's just another way

to shuffle around

the same set of options

that don't work.

Now, what I want us to see tonight

when we're looking at these verses

in Matthew 7

is that Christianity

offers us a way

to think about judgment

that you will not find

in the same holistic form,

the same true-to-life form,

the same true-to-God form.

You won't find that

in the culture around us.

However, the culture

tries to shift itself

unless our culture

were to be really deeply,

profoundly impacted

by the gospel.

So we're looking at verses 1 to 6.

And these are a really puzzling few verses,

a really puzzling unit

in the Sermon on the Mount.

So the Sermon on the Mount

is this big, long sermon

that Jesus preaches.

And this is a very strange part within it.

At least it seems like that

when we read it first.

Because it begins with Jesus saying,

don't judge other people,

verse 1.

But then in verse 6,

Jesus himself calls some people

pigs and dogs.

And which sounds like

he's judging them.

And in the middle of that,

there's this really puzzling story,

this parable,

about someone who has

a whole log of wood

stuck in his eye

and who can't see

that log of wood there.

And he's trying to take

a tiny splinter

out of someone else's eye.

So there's a lot going on

in these six verses.

And the big challenge

in reading them

is trying to work out

what verses 1 to 5,

don't judge people,

don't be a hypocrite,

you know,

with a plank of wood

in your eye,

what that has to do

with verse 6.

Don't cast your,

don't give what's holy

to the dogs,

don't cast your pearls

to pigs.

And it's such a strange

combination

that some scholars

on the Bible,

even some really good ones,

have thought

that they just,

that they can't be connected.

This can't really be

one whole idea

that Jesus has.

So even,

so John Calvin,

really great commentator

on the Bible,

thought that

when Matthew was writing down

Jesus' sermon,

these were simply

two different things

that Jesus was talking about.

And they follow one another

in what he writes down,

but they're not intended

to be read

as one whole unit.

But one scholar

who saw that they are connected,

I think he was right,

was John Stott,

a great preacher,

Bible commentator

in London.

And John Stott said that,

I think he was right on this,

that these verses,

one to six,

and actually even

what comes next as well,

are all one movement,

one idea,

because there's a thread

that runs through all of them,

and that is relationships.

So verses one to five,

if you are a Christian,

are about your relationships

to other Christians.

Verse six, then,

if you are a Christian,

is about your relationships

to some non-Christians.

And what comes next

from verse seven

is your relationship

to God.

Okay, so Stott saw

that these are all

different ways

that Jesus is addressing

how the gospel shapes

the relationships we have

to all these different,

these different people,

and then to God.

And when you read

the verses like that,

it makes a lot of sense,

not just of these verses,

but actually of what we see

throughout the gospels

at large,

and throughout the New Testament

at large.

Because when Jesus says,

don't judge,

he's not saying,

never use your critical faculties,

you know,

never form an opinion,

never reach a verdict

where you have to discern something.

Imagine you take your car

to the garage,

you know,

you're driving it,

something doesn't seem right,

and you think it needs looked at,

so you take it to the garage,

and you ask a mechanic,

have a look at it,

tell me,

is this car safe to drive or not?

And then the mechanic,

you know,

does what he does with the car,

but then he tells you,

I'm really sorry,

but I'm actually a Christian,

so I'm not allowed to make

that kind of judgment call.

That's not what Jesus is saying.

The word for judge here

comes up a lot in the gospels,

comes up a lot in Matthew's gospel,

and it's something that Jesus says,

God the Father does,

something Jesus says that he does,

and the word means specifically

someone who sits in judgment

over someone else

to discern the difference

between good and evil,

okay?

And now this is a really important point.

There are other places in the gospels

where Jesus tells his followers

that they should judge.

In John 7, he says,

do not judge by appearances,

but judge with right judgment.

In Luke 12, he asks a crowd of people,

why do you not judge for yourselves

what is right?

So what we have here in Matthew 7

is Jesus teaching on judgment done badly,

okay?

If it's possible,

if Jesus says judge with right judgment,

it's also possible to judge

with wrong judgment,

and that's what he's addressing here.

Judgment done badly between Christians,

people judging with wrong judgment,

and then after that,

Christians lacking good judgment

in how they relate to some non-Christians.

So there was a,

I already quoted John Stock,

pastor in London,

there was another pastor in London

called Charles Spurgeon,

and he had a really excellent insight

also on how these verses hold together.

And he said that if you really take

the Christian gospel to heart,

it will shape you in two ways.

It will make you a particular kind of person

in two ways.

On the one hand,

it will stop you from being censorious.

I'll explain what that means in a minute.

And on the other hand,

he said it will stop you

from being a simpleton,

okay?

And we could update the language.

It will stop you from being naive,

okay?

So it'll stop you from being censorious,

and the gospel will stop you

from being naive.

So I'm just plagiarizing Spurgeon entirely

because those are the two points

of the sermon, okay?

The two ways that the gospel

shapes you in your relationships,

as we think about judgment,

stops you from being censorious,

point one,

and it stops you from being naive,

point two.

So don't be censorious.

In our culture nowadays,

a lot of people confuse the word

censorious with censorship.

So if you look up,

if you Google censorious

and look at the news,

you'll find a lot of journalists saying,

we live in a censorious culture

when they're talking about,

you know,

books that get banned by libraries

or something like that.

But that's not what the word censorious

means, okay?

But in the way that I'm using it.

So someone who is censorious

is someone who is severely,

harshly critical of other people.

Okay?

John stopped,

defined it like this.

Censoriousness is a compound sin.

It's a sin made up of different parts.

It's a compound sin composed

of several unpleasant ingredients.

It does not mean to assess people critically,

but to judge them harshly.

The censorious critic is a fault finder

who is negative and destructive

towards other people

and enjoys actively seeking out their failings.

He puts the worst possible spin

on their motives,

pours cold water on their schemes,

and is ungenerous toward their mistakes.

So the thing is,

if you're a censorious person,

it means that you appoint yourself

the judge,

the jury,

and the executioner

for other people.

And deep down,

you actually enjoy it.

You like being the judge,

and you take it upon yourself

never to be the one who's judged.

You think that you belong

on the bench,

but not in the dock.

And here's where this is exactly,

why this is a very pervasive thing

in the culture that we live in,

why this is an idol

that's offered to us every day.

Our culture in Edinburgh today

believes in something like righteousness

and judgment,

but our culture doesn't really believe

very strongly in forgiveness or grace.

You know, we talk about karma

a lot nowadays,

but much less about grace.

And that means that in our culture,

to be judged by other people

is terrifying,

it's devastating,

because our culture can offer,

it can condemn us,

but it doesn't really have ways

to offer us a path back.

It can't offer us redemption.

And that means that we have an incentive

to judge other people.

And the more we do that,

the more we think

that we're protecting ourselves

from the judgment

ever turning on us.

And so we tell ourselves

that we are righteous,

that whatever the big issue is,

I am on the right side of history,

and other people

are the immoral ones,

and I rage against them.

But really,

we just become censorious,

which is a way of trying to hide

underneath all of that,

trying to hide from the judgment

ever pointing around to us.

So in real life,

if this is you,

maybe you are that person

in the staff room

who always likes to draw attention

to other people's failings.

You know, if you talk about a colleague,

it begins with,

you know, the problem with her is,

the issue with him is,

and maybe you enjoy the way

that you think it makes you

look better than them.

In real life,

maybe this means that

you're the person who lurks

on social media

waiting for one of the people

in the other tribe

to say something

that you can condemn them for,

and those are the comments

that you lead with.

And you express your righteous anger,

and you enjoy the,

all the wee dopamine hits

that come with everyone else

in your tribe liking it.

Or maybe you're the bully

in your playground,

and you love to point out

how rubbish

all the other kids are.

In the Sermon on the Mount,

if that's you,

Jesus' counsel to you is,

you need to live a different way.

Don't be censorious.

And he says that in a way

that speaks very directly

into our culture.

The reason that Jesus gives

for why you should not be

a censorious person

is that you can only pretend

to be the judge for so long.

You can't do it forever.

Eventually,

you must be the one

who also gets judged.

You can't put it off forever,

and when that happens,

you will be held

to the same merciless standard,

the same harshly critical standard,

that you've been dishing out

to everyone else.

It's exactly the same logic

as when Jesus said,

if you live by the sword,

you will die by the sword.

If you live by censoriousness,

you will die by censoriousness.

If you choose,

in a censorious culture,

to be a censorious person,

eventually,

well, that's the only game in town.

You will have to be

on the receiving end of it.

Eventually,

some other judgmental person

will shine a light

into the dark corners of your life

and show you no mercy.

Okay?

True story that many of you

will have read

in the newspapers

a week or so ago

here in Scotland.

There was a politician

who was doing moral grandstanding

against second homeowners.

Because we have

a housing crisis,

there are a lot of people

who really struggle

to find a place to live.

This politician was railing

against second homeowners

and how immoral this is.

And shame on you

if you have a second home.

Only for someone else

to do some digging on her

and it turned out

she has a second home in Scotland,

she has a third home in Spain

where the housing crisis

is much worse.

If you live by censoriousness,

you will die by censoriousness.

But the gospel

offers you

a different way to live.

It offers you the chance

to be a different kind of person.

If you've really taken it to heart,

then the gospel tells you

that before God

you were morally bankrupt.

You were spiritually empty.

And you were guilty

before God

as a rebel.

And you were his enemy

but he showed you

completely undeserved mercy

and he made you,

he put you in the category

a friend.

And he adopted you,

not just a friend,

he made you his child.

And he welcomed you

into that

and it was all

completely gratuitous.

And it was lavish

and you didn't deserve

any of it.

Not the tiniest speck.

And there's something

that just doesn't work

if you say,

I have received

all of that from God,

all that lavish forgiveness,

all that mercy,

and now when I turn around

to my fellow human being,

none of that flows through.

And I will show

other people no mercy.

And I'm only hard-hearted.

And I don't believe

in forgiveness for them.

And I actually really like

dragging them down.

I like seeing them

not being redeemed.

There's something

that just doesn't,

that doesn't work with that.

Okay?

And we see this,

if you read through

all of Matthew's gospel,

when you get to chapter 18,

Jesus tells a parable

about this.

About a king

who had a servant

who owed him

a massive debt.

You know,

up in the millions of pounds.

And he asked the king

for mercy.

And the king said,

I free you of the debt.

I'll show you mercy.

I forgive you.

And the servant

was delighted.

He goes off.

And then there's someone else

who owes that servant

a tiny sum of money.

You know,

ten pounds,

something like that.

And he can't repay it.

And he says to the servant,

I can't repay this.

I'm bankrupt.

I ask you for mercy.

And the servant

grabs him by the neck

and throttles him

and says,

no mercy for you.

And he throws him in prison.

He's happy to receive forgiveness,

but he does not pass on forgiveness.

He loves to get mercy,

but he does not love to give mercy.

And when the king

in Jesus' parable

hears about this,

the king is furious

with the servant

because although he received forgiveness,

he didn't show forgiveness.

And the king then

has him thrown in prison

and has the other man released.

See,

that is why

censoriousness

and the gospel

don't fit together.

They're like oil and water.

If anything,

believing the gospel

should make you less censorious

and certainly not more.

Now,

if you're listening to this,

maybe you're not a Christian,

maybe you're skeptical.

And in our kind of culture,

then maybe you're listening to this

and thinking,

you know,

in a silence

is violence culture,

where we do really believe

in righteousness

and there's a lot of evil

in the world

that needs to be called out

and challenged.

Maybe you're listening to this

so far and thinking,

okay,

so the Christian message

means

that people who believe it

become naive

to the evil in the world

and that's why,

you know,

they don't call it out

like I want to.

Or maybe

does Christianity

just dull your conscience

and make you passive

and you just learn

to tolerate

all the evil in the world?

In which case,

Christianity seems like a problem.

But that's not what

Jesus teaches here.

Not at all.

In fact,

look at what comes next

after he says

don't be censorious.

Look at verses 3 to 5

and the story

that Jesus tells.

He asks you

to imagine someone

who sees a problem

in someone else's life.

So there's something

to be corrected.

There's an evil

in someone's life,

let's say.

And there's a person

then who's trying

to correct that

in someone else.

And Jesus compares

that problem

to a tiny speck.

It's a splinter

in an eye.

Okay?

And if you have

a splinter in your eye,

you probably do want it removed.

I mean,

that's not a good thing.

It's not there

to be left in the eye.

But here's the issue.

The person who's trying

to take the splinter out

happens to have

an entire log,

a beam of wood.

So not just a little bit of wood,

but the word he uses

is the word for,

you know,

a rafter that you would have

from the roof of your house.

This person who's trying

to deal with the problem

has that sticking out

of his eye.

I mean,

it's meant to make you laugh.

It's a ridiculous image,

but this guy has that

sticking out of his eye,

and even more ridiculously,

he doesn't even see it.

He's completely blind

to this fact.

And the ridiculous picture

is, you know,

if you want to take

a splinter out of someone's eye,

you have to get quite close,

and you need to be able

to see it clearly.

If you,

I don't know,

I've never had a beam

stuck in my eye.

I can't imagine it would be easy

to get near someone else's head

doing that,

but that's what he's doing.

He's trying to fix something

in someone else's life,

all the while assuming

that his life

also doesn't need

to be fixed

in very fundamental ways.

And Jesus

calls it out.

There is no silence

is violence here,

but there's something

much better.

There is speech

that is redemptive.

Because Jesus here

says that the guy

with the beam in his eye

is a hypocrite.

He's looking at

someone else's life,

having forgotten

first to look at his own.

You know,

there's an Old Testament

story that teaches

the same thing.

And it's the story

of King David

where he abuses

his power as a king

to steal another man's wife.

And then he abuses

his power as king

to have that man

sent to the front line

of a battle

where he will certainly die.

And he does.

And he does all of this.

He has multiple beams

in his eye.

And then the prophet Nathan

comes to David

and says,

let me tell you a story.

Once there was a rich man

and there was a poor man.

And the rich man

had many sheep

and the poor man

only had one.

And the rich man

had to feed a guest.

But he didn't take

any of his own sheep.

Even though he had so many,

he took the poor man's

only sheep

and he slaughtered it

and he fed it to the guest.

And when David's hearing

the story at this point,

he becomes furious

and says,

that man deserves to die.

And Nathan says to him,

David,

you are the man.

Right?

The beam in his eye

that he could not see.

You're,

this story is about a,

is about a speck.

It's about a splinter.

It's about a sheep.

You are the one

who stole

another man's wife

and who had that man murdered,

who murdered that man

by arrangement.

And here you are feeling rage

about someone

who stole a sheep

because he was a bit

of a cheapskate.

So there,

David is like the guy

who doesn't see

that he has a plank

in his eye

when he's looking

at someone with a speck

in his eye.

And Jesus' judgment there

is,

you hypocrite.

But here's the thing

where Jesus doesn't fit

into our way

of doing this

in our culture.

Jesus' judgment

is redemptive.

It's not,

you hypocrite,

cancelled.

Jesus says,

first,

take the plank

out of your own eye.

Then you can actually

help get the speck

out of your brother's eye.

It's not that Christianity

doesn't,

it's not that Christianity

makes you naive

to the problems

in the world

or in other people's lives.

And it's not that Christianity

means you just tolerate it

and that you do nothing.

Instead,

it changes

how you respond

to these problems.

It means that now

you respond to them

with humility.

A kind of humility

that only the gospel

can form in you.

It means you respond

with gentleness

that only the gospel

can form in you.

It's not randomly

that Jesus chooses

for his story

an eye,

something that is

so sensitive

and that would feel

even a tiny splinter

and be irritated by it.

You can only take it out

with tremendous care

and gentleness.

And the gospel

shapes you like that.

It gives you

a new way

of judging others

that is grounded

in humility

because the gospel

says you sit

under the same judgment.

And that's

the real difference

between the gospel

and censoriousness.

If you're censorious,

you judge others

as though you don't

need redemption

yourself

and as though

there is no redemption

for the people you judge.

But if you believe

the gospel,

it's different.

If you judge

someone else,

you also recognize

that you stand

under the same judgment

and that you both

need the same redemption.

You know,

it's like the difference

between,

if you imagine

someone who just

lambasts someone

who struggles

with alcohol addiction

and writes

that person off,

the difference

between that kind

of person

and someone

who comes alongside

that person

and says,

I have the same struggle,

let's get you help.

Right?

Those are two

completely different things.

So,

that's the first thing.

The gospel shapes you

and says,

don't be censorious.

And the second is

that the gospel shapes you

and says,

don't be naive.

See,

the other effect

of the gospel

is that it changes

the kind of judgment

or discernment

you have

about people

who don't yet

believe the gospel.

So,

here,

in verse 6,

Jesus pivots

from talking about

people who do

share the faith

with you,

don't judge your brother,

to people who don't.

So,

now,

just like with

don't judge,

we have to read Jesus

here in the whole context

of the gospels.

So,

what you see in the gospels

more broadly

is that Jesus

talks about

the kingdom of heaven

as a pearl,

as a pearl of great price.

So,

there's another parable

also in Matthew

where he talks about

a merchant

who travels

the whole world

looking for

valuable pearls.

And

he finds

what he knows

instantly

is

the greatest

pearl that there

ever could be.

The pearl

of great price.

And he knew

how valuable it was

and he knew

it was actually

more valuable

than everything

else in his life.

So much so

that it would be

worth giving up

everything

to get this pearl.

So,

he sells

everything

to get the pearl

of great price.

So,

elsewhere in the gospels,

Jesus speaks about

how there are some

people in this world

who are looking

for goodness

and truth

and beauty

and they encounter

the gospel

and then somehow

it strikes them

down to the ground.

It strikes them

so powerfully

that they will

reorder their

entire lives.

They'll give up

anything to get this,

to get this Jesus.

It's what they've

always been looking for.

But here in Matthew 7

when he says

don't give what is

holy to the dogs,

don't cast your pearls

to pigs,

he's talking about

people who encounter

the gospel,

who are not looking

for truth.

They're more like

a stray dog

that scavenges

in the rubbish.

So,

Jesus says

don't throw

what is holy

and there he's

drawing on the idea

of holy bread

in the temple.

Don't throw

that holy food

to dogs

who will just

treat it

as though

it's any old

rubbish

in the scrap pile

and don't throw

your pearls

to pigs

who get all

the waste food

that the farmer

doesn't want

because that pig

will know

that the pearl

isn't that waste food

and the pig

will just trample

the pearl.

Now,

that maybe sounds

like a really

strange thing

for Jesus to say

after everything

that he said

in verses 3 to 5

about planks

and specks.

But here's why

I think Jesus

says this

in verse 6.

In verses 1 to 5,

he tells us

that we have

to go

into a

censorious world

as non-censorious

people

and we have

to do that

with a way

of living

in this world

that will be

deeply

counterintuitive

to the people

around us.

Some people,

when they

hear our gospel,

when they see

what it looks like

and how we live,

will think

they'll be like

the merchant

who finds

the pearl

of great price

and they'll see

our way of life

and the reason

for that

in the message

of the gospel

and be attracted

to it

and they will

join us.

But not everyone

will be like that.

Some people

will hear our message

and they'll hate it.

It's not

what they're

looking for.

So,

some people

will respond

like that.

Now,

to be sure

what Jesus

does not

mean here

is that we only

share the gospel

with people

who will

respond well,

like the merchant

looking for the pearl

of great price.

We can't do that

in any sense

because until you

share the gospel

with someone,

you don't know

how they'll respond.

So,

that's why

Matthew's gospel

ends with the

great commission.

Bring the gospel

to everyone.

And you just

don't know

when you do that

whether someone

will say,

finally,

this is the pearl

of great price

or,

why have you

given me

this round,

hard,

white ball?

I wanted

a rotten turnip

and I would

have just been

happy with that.

I don't want

what you offer.

You see,

you just don't

know in advance

and that's why

Jesus,

at the very end

of this gospel

tells his followers

that you must

share the gospel

with everyone.

But if you want

to understand

what Jesus means

here in Matthew 7

about not casting

your pearls

before swine,

you actually need

to think of

what happens

in a few chapters

time in Matthew 10

because that's

the chapter

where Jesus

takes his disciples

and he tells them

you are now

my apostles

and he sends

them out

to preach

to everyone

that they come

across

in the towns

and villages

around them

and he sends

them out

to give people

a deep,

remarkable,

life-changing

window

into the

kingdom of heaven.

So he tells them

as he sends them

out,

you are now

my apostles

and he sends

them out

to give people

this deep

exposure

to the

transformation

the gospel

will bring

to the world.

So he sends

them out

to heal

the sick,

to raise

the dead,

to cleanse

lepers,

to cast

out their

demons

and he sends

them out

saying,

and you won't

make a penny

from this,

you will not

ask anyone

for anything,

you will not

exploit anyone

financially,

you will not

make money,

in fact you

will give

lavishly

and you will

make their

lives better

and even

when you've

done all that

some people

will still

reject you

and everything

you've done

for them

and the message

at its heart

they will just

say is garbage

and when that

happens,

Jesus tells them

in Matthew 10,

after you've done

all that for them

then you shake

the dust off

your feet

and then you

bring the message

of the kingdom

of heaven

to other people

and that's

actually the

context where

when Jesus

is sending

them out

he tells

them I am

sending you

out as sheep

among wolves

so be as wise

as serpents

and as innocent

as doves

so you see

taking us back

to Matthew 7

if the gospel

has made you

or is making

you a non-censorious

person

in hyper-censorious

Edinburgh

2025

that means

that the gospel

is making you

the kind of person

who is

discerning enough

to see the speck

in someone's

eye

but it also

makes you

someone who

is gentle

enough

trustworthy

enough

non-pompous

enough

humble enough

honest enough

about the plank

in your own eye

that maybe

they'll trust you

to get close

enough to their

eye to help

them take the

speck out

but

if you're

doing that

you're doing

it as

sheep

among wolves

because the

gospel in a

censorious

culture

will divide

people

some people

will hear it

and think

finally this

is my

liberation

from

censoriousness

from this

world's

harsh

judgmentalism

but other

people will

hear the gospel

and see it

lived out

and think

I'm going

to be

you know

what

I'm going

to be

more

censorious

than ever

shame on

you

for bringing

this message

to me

and

that's why

if you want

to live

like this

you need

to be

as wise

as a serpent

and you need

to be

as innocent

as a dove

and that

is why

Jesus

follows

judge

not

do not

judge

with do

not cast

your pearls

before swine

amen

let me pray

our father

in heaven

we thank you

for your son

Jesus Christ

we thank you

for the

fathomless

wisdom

in his

teaching

we thank you

for his

perfect

judgment

of the

human

heart

of

the

goodness

and the

evil

in this

world

the goodness

that you

have made

the evil

that must

be redeemed

and we thank

you that

Jesus

has come

into our

world

the true

judge

who made

himself

the one

who was

judged

we thank

you that

when his

gospel

when his

perfect

person

when his

lavish love

confronts us

that it

shows us

ourselves

in a new

light

and that it

helps us

see the

the beam

in our

own eye

but also

that Jesus

is the one

who comes

to open

our eyes

to help us

see the truth

about himself

about yourself

about ourselves

we thank you

for his

great redeeming

love

for the way

that he

is patient

with us

that he

came to us

in all

humility

and gentleness

we pray

that in

small ways

day by day

you would

help us

to grow

more and

more

into being

like Jesus

in all

of those

ways

we pray

for your

forgiveness

for all

the ways

that we

are shaped

by the

world

around us

and all

the ways

that it

does not

resemble

your

gospel

and we

pray that

you would

help us

in this

world

then

to be

people

who

are

reworked

refashioned

by your

gospel

and because

of that

who are

sent out

as sheep

among

wolves

help us

to be

both wise

and innocent

in following

our saviour's

teaching

we pray

for this

in his

name

amen