"Sermon on the Mount" Pt. 5

Hi, this is John Ozanting, lead pastor of Evolve Church, and this is the Evolved Church Podcast.

Thanks so much for tuning in.

We hope that you find today's message encouraging and full of hope for wherever you're at.

Welcome to Evolve this morning.

I am excited to be up here and getting to share with you from the Sermon on the Mount what God has been teaching me and working on in my life.

And I really enjoy studying scripture and teaching from books that Paul has written and other people have written, but there's something special about spending time in the very words of Jesus.

So when we're reading this today, can you imagine in your heart that this is Jesus on a mountain or something teaching you and speaking directly to you?

This isn't just some words on a page, this is Jesus speaking to your life.

And before we get to that scripture, I want to share a bit about one of my sons.

Yes, I have two sons now.

Last time I was up here, we were still waiting, but Emery turns six weeks old tomorrow already.

And uh yeah, I don't have many stories about him because he sleeps and eats, so there's that.

But Merrick, I want to talk about him and how some people might see him as judgmental or maybe a little bit judging.

Um, you know, he can be on a bike ride and see some other people biking and they're not wearing their helmets.

And this first instinct is, Dad, they need to be wearing their helmets.

Why are they not wearing their helmets?

Or he'll see somebody walking across the street, not at a crosswalk, and he points it out.

Or someone runs a red light or a stop sign, or even the sometimes when people are driving a little too slow, he has that one too.

Um, but I don't think it's purely out of judgment.

I think it's out of his innocence, and he cares about people's safety and their well-being.

So to him, when they're not doing something, it's actually, I'm look trying to look out for what's best for them.

Why are they not doing what's best for them?

They should be doing that, they should be wearing their helmet.

And I want to ask you, are you more like Merrick where you're constantly thinking about the best in others, or are you just being judgmental?

Question one What is your reaction when you hear the word judgmental?

What are the thoughts going through your head right now?

What are the emotions that God is stirring up in your heart?

The preconceived notions towards this word that are getting you thinking, why did I come to church today?

I don't want to hear about being judgmental.

Question two.

How does judgment slip into your life?

Is it maybe the judgment that has you feeling incapacitated, like you can't leave your house because you're always gonna feel judged for the things you've got going on, for your flaws, for your shortcomings?

Leaves you not wanting to go into the world because all you feel is judged and criticized.

Or maybe you're worried about going out because you know you lean the other direction.

You lean to the place where you constantly see what's going on in other people's lives, where you focus so much on other people's flaws and you don't know what to do.

Maybe that's leaving you stuck today.

Or maybe you're somewhere in between.

Maybe you're someone who sounds like this.

People are so judgmental.

I can tell just by looking at them.

Maybe that's you.

Who knows?

But what are your relationships like this morning?

With your friends, your family, your coworkers, your neighbors, the people you sit next to at a sporting event or at a movie theater.

Maybe it's the people driving too slowly in front of you.

What are you acting like with them?

And Matthew 7 talks about how we are to act with our relationships and our interpersonal dealings with other people.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, as we look at the words of Jesus today and his teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, we ask that those words will be ever relevant today, that they would be alive in our hearts, and that you would speak to each of us individually.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Matthew 7, verse 1 to 6 says, 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.

Matthew 7:1–6

Why do you see the speck that's 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 that speck out of your eye when there is 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 turn to attack you.

And then on to verse twelve.

So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets.

These verses go hand in hand, and I hope that today we can get a good picture of what judgment should look like.

Maybe it'll take away some of the feelings we have towards this word and realize that maybe the thought of judgment isn't all bad.

It's just how we use it or how we deal with it.

And there's been a lot of speculations from scholars about these verses, and some of them think that it's actually never okay for a Christian to pass judgment.

Never, ever in a hundred years, not in a court of law, even sitting on a bench as a judge, that wouldn't be okay.

And then there are others that know that there's maybe this healthy balance of an in-between workings in our hearts.

But there is one thing for sure.

It is in our human nature to over-exaggerate the flaw in someone else's life while minimizing our own.

And there is a delicate nature going on of what it means to judge.

It's not easy.

But what are some things that we can implement today?

What are some things we can learn today from this scripture that are gonna help us in our dealings with other people, in our relationships, giving us skills that we can take and use in our daily lives?

Number one, we need to work on yourself first.

Work on yourself first.

This is the first and probably the most important part of this passage, of these six verses at the beginning of chapter seven.

And the purpose of self-judgment, because that's what this is, working on ourself, is so that we can be prepared to serve others.

It's one of our Christian obligations to help each other grow.

Gabe shared about that earlier when he was sharing up here.

We care about people and want them to grow.

But we got to work on ourselves.

Verse 1 and 2 talks about judge not, lest ye not be judged, for with the judgment you pronounce, it'll be measured to you.

This is a very powerful warning that can invoke fears and worry in our life.

It can be something that gets us scared and not wanting to act because we're worried about, oh man, someday I'm gonna stand before God.

But that's not its purpose.

We don't have to be so fearful of what it's gonna be like to stand before God someday.

It's actually something that can encourage us to walk in his divine plan for our life and in his holy purpose, so that one day we can hear, well done, good and faithful servant.

Well done in the way that you cared about your brother and your sister.

Well done in the way that you tried to help them with their flaws in their life.

Well done in the way that you cared about what was going on in your own heart.

Well done, good and faithful servant.

I want to understand and know what he's doing in my life and through my life.

One of the problems with the religious leaders of the day, the Pharisees, that Jesus was dealing with and had to teach things to people because they didn't see it properly from them, they liked to play God.

They liked to condemn other people to the point that they made themselves look so good.

They made themselves look so perfect, putting themselves a step or two up on a pedestal, riding a holy high horse, looking down, trying to get the respect of everyone else because they were so good and so perfect.

But I use the word respect loosely because I don't think that's the proper type of respect.

People didn't actually respect them, they just didn't know what to do because they thought they were perfect and they were terrible people.

Like that's the relationship that they had is how could I ever be as good as this person?

But that's not the call that Jesus has for our life.

He has the call for us to all get to that place of working on our stuff so that we can be changed in his image.

Are you ready to stand before God someday?

Because I don't know if the Pharisees knew that that was gonna happen to them one day.

Would they have acted slightly differently if they knew that was to come?

So think for a minute in this room over your interactions over this past week.

Think in your heart were there moments where maybe you came across a little judgy?

Were there moments where you can check your heart and say, I don't want to be judged the way that I passed judgment on that person this week?

And God understands your motives, and that's a good thing.

He understands your heart in this room, but when we judge other people, we don't always see the motives in their heart.

We don't always know what's going on, what's driving them.

And it can be so difficult because we think, well, I did that and it's okay because I know what's going on in my life.

But then they did the same thing and it's terrible.

But we don't know what's going on, we don't see the motives and we make that mistake.

We make the mistake the Pharisees did of spotting sin a mile away, but not realizing that God sees them completely differently than how we see them.

This is why we need to work on ourselves first.

We need to work on our sins first.

Because in order to help the others with what we do see, we need to actually see clearly.

If we're blind physically or spiritually, how are we supposed to help someone else?

If we don't know the exact direction, if we're kind of taking ourselves out on a limb and just guessing where we're going, trying to act because we think we're doing good, we can do a lot of harm.

And Jesus used imagery that's hard to forget in verse three, talking about the speck in your brother's eye and the log in your own.

Another translation says the plank in your own eye, or how I like to view it a two by four in your own eye.

So get that picture, a two by four sticking out of your eye walking around.

And then I work in the construction world as well, and I've seen lots of laborers who like to lift a lot of two by fours, but they're fairly careless, and they can cause harm to themselves, they can cause harm to others, and they can cause harm to the surroundings around them.

Because they're just walking around with these big pieces of wood and hitting things with it.

It's not always pretty.

Now picture that as you're walking around in your eye, not fully paying attention to what's sticking out and the harm you are causing, even when you think you're trying to do good.

The picture of somebody struggling with the delicate operation of removing a speck of dust from a friend's eye, while a vast plank in that person's own eye entirely obscures his or her vision, is ludicrous in the extreme.

Yet when the character is transferred to ourselves and our ridiculous fault finding, we do not always appreciate the joke.

We have a fatal tendency to exaggerate the faults of others and minimize the gravity of our own.

We seem to find it impossible when comparing ourselves with others to be strictly objective and impartial.

On the contrary, we have a rosy view of ourselves and a jaundic view of others.

Indeed, what we are often doing is seeing our own faults in others and judging them vicariously.

That way we experience the pleasure of self-righteousness without the pain of penitence.

That's a powerful thing there, realizing that sometimes we see our sin in other people and we help them thinking it's helping ourselves without actually having to deal with any of what's going on.

So when we are examining ourselves, when you are looking inward, we need to be asking the Holy Spirit to reveal what's going on, to do the pruning.

But we can't rush.

This can't be a 10-second task that we get off of our list every day.

This is something that takes time and effort.

As we examine our hearts honestly and thoroughly, while pairing it with Scripture, that's how it's done.

But when it comes to Scripture, it's not just a quick look either.

It's not one or two verses that seem to speak a truth to a situation and then going on our business again.

We need to spend time in the word.

We need to spend time focusing on what it's actually trying to tell us.

Because if we are impatient and insensitive, we can actually do more harm than the spec itself was causing.

We had good intentions, but we rush into a situation thinking, yeah, I fixed myself and I'm ready to help that person, but deep down you're still hurting and you're still in pain and you still have a lot of stuff going on in your heart.

Doesn't matter how good your intentions are, it can still cause pain.

Let's not be in a rush to fix ourselves so that we can help others faster.

Let's take the time and do the hard work.

James 1, verse 23 to 25 says, For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.

James 1:23–25

For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.

But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

Are we doers of the word?

In reference to Matthew 7 here, are we being doers of these first six verses?

Or are we looking inside and just saying, oh, you know, this is good enough, but we forget to go deeper and deeper and analyze and actually restore ourselves into the heart that Jesus has for us.

Are we aligning ourselves with the perfect law that's in the Bible?

The law that brings wholeness and freedom?

Because we could focus for a little bit like that guy who looks at his face in the mirror and forgets what he looked like.

If that's what's going on when we read scripture, that's not okay.

We can't read it and then go away and forget it.

Then it does us no good.

We need to have it in our hearts, in our minds, and we need to live it, we need to walk it.

And as we spend time focusing on our own business, on our own issues, on allowing the Word of God to be alive in our hearts and minds, it actually leaves us less time to pry into the affairs of others.

Less time to see the flaws in someone else because we're spending the time.

How many of you know that when you're idle and bored and looking for something to do is precisely the time that temptation comes your way?

The same thing can happen here.

When you don't focus on yourself and think you got it together, your eyes are gonna start wandering and seeing the flaws in other people far faster than we're actually supposed to be doing.

And it's gonna try to make yourself feel good in this, not for the true purpose of this passage.

At the heart of the judge not text here is that we are not to be senserious, which means severely critical of others.

We cannot understand their motives, and we need to be careful not to be overly critical.

We need to focus on our stuff, and then as you are about to look at someone else, you can use wisdom to know when it's appropriate to speak up, in love and in grace, to point out the sin in someone else's life, not to dampen their spirits.

We're not to called to be God's frown in society, nor has God given us the gift of wet blanketry.

Thanks, Dad, for that one.

Um, he sent me a text I asked for a quote, and there it is.

Um read the Brian Globish at the end, but yes, Dad, thank you.

Um, it really casts a good imagery on what we're not called to do.

We're not here to be a burden on other people, we're not here to make them feel like they're just swamped with a wet blanket on their heads.

We're not here to ruin the fun, we're not here to take away the good things.

We're here with wisdom to help people grow closer to Jesus.

That's what it's all about.

Number two, we need to ask for discernment.

This word discernment is something that is so applicable to every area of our life.

But right now, specifically in Matthew 7, I find it so important when we're acting that we need to be ever discerning.

Our spirits need to be ever careful of how we deal with other people.

Because it's not easy, it's never going to be easy.

We ourselves can have the tendency to lean in the negative direction more often than not, so we need to be careful when we're doing it for the right reason at the right time.

A sincerious critic is a fault finder who is negative and destructive towards other people and enjoys actively seeking out their failings.

Such a person puts the worst possible construction on the motives of others, pours cold water on the schemes, and is ungenerous towards their mistakes.

Let's make it our goal to not be these people.

Let's make it our goal to be generous and caring and loving and to see mistakes and not judge instantly and criticize.

Let's ask God for a discerning spirit.

Because sometimes we can even confuse helping others with criticizing them.

It's a delicate balance, but it's so important to understand and make sure our motives are pure.

Philippians 1, verse 9 to 10 says, And it's my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.

Philippians 1:9–10

If our end goal of judgment is to help people to be pure and blameless before Christ, then that is a good thing.

That's the type of judgment we should be striving for.

But there are also moments with discernment in these cases where maybe we need to take a step back in who we're dealing with.

We are the Lord's sheep, but this does not mean we should let people pull the wool over our eyes.

You see, sometimes we can help people and they see us as a Christian, like, I could probably take advantage of that person.

They see something in me they want to help me, I'm gonna let them help me, and then they get to the point where you don't even know how far you've gone, and it becomes a point where you might actually become bitter and hardened because you thought you were doing good and this person completely used you and left you feeling hurt.

We need to be careful and discerning.

Matthew 7, verse 6.

Matthew 7:6

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.

This isn't the dogs that you think of when you're cuddling them in your living room or in your backyard playing fetch.

These are the type of creatures you don't want to interact with.

They're the mongrels walking around in the alleys and at the dumps, going through trash cans.

They're ravenous and unclean.

Just like the pigs are also unclean.

And a pig, all they care about is getting dirty and eating.

And so if you give them anything that goes against that, they're gonna want to kick it back, you stomp on it, and possibly even attack you.

And it's similar things can happen when we're dealing with people in this world.

I really like the way Eugene Peterson paraphrases verse 6.

It takes a quite different approach.

He says, Don't be flip with the sacred.

Banter and silliness give no honor to God.

Don't reduce holy mysteries to slogans and trying to be relevant.

You're only being cute and inviting sacrilege.

We don't have to change the gospel for the dogs.

We don't have to change the gospel for the pigs, we don't have to reduce it to some cheap slogans or a meme that we see because we think we're being relevant to try to help people.

The gospel is still relevant the way it is, and we need to teach it.

We need to live it and walk it.

That's how we can be relevant to our culture.

We don't have to change it or dumb it down or get to the point where it's just one little word that sticks out that someone sees.

In Jesus' ministry, he had times where he had to pull away from people.

Where he had times where he was dealing with the dogs or the pigs and he had to take a step back.

And he warned his disciples when he sent them out there are places you're gonna be received well.

Go and preach to them, but there are also places you're gonna not be received, you're gonna be rejected, and that's okay.

It was the warning that these things are going to happen.

Maybe it was just not the right time.

And this isn't a call for us to get rid of evangelism from our relationships, it's a call for discernment.

When we have people in our life that don't know Jesus, sometimes they can be overly unreceptive when we continually only ever invite them to church.

We only thump them with our Bibles and what scripture says about what's wrong in their life and how much they need Jesus, but we don't even show them love outside of that.

All we do is want the end goal of getting them saved.

Where's the love in that?

Our goal is to sow seed and know that God is the one at work.

Maybe we do have to take a step back and trust that, hey God, in your timing, this is gonna happen.

But right now in this season, maybe this isn't for me.

Maybe I shouldn't cast the pearls before this swine right now.

It's not their time.

And asking in all situations for that discernment, saying, Hey God, what are you doing here?

Are you at work here?

What would you have me do here and now?

Because imagine trying to tell someone who's far from Christ all the sin that's in their life, and then saying, I want to help you get rid of that.

And they're saying, Well, my life's pretty good.

I have a good marriage, I love my kids, I have a house, I go on vacations, like a good job.

What's wrong with my life right now?

I love my life.

That's not gonna go over well.

They're gonna tell you to go back to your church and stay there.

As we learn to examine our relationships and allow scripture to be At the forefront, that's when we can start discerning what the Holy Spirit is asking of us in each instance.

And from there, it's up to us to walk in what He's asking us to do in obedience.

When God puts on our hearts it's time to share, we share.

When He says it's time to love, we love.

And when it's time to prune, that's when we have to prune.

But it's not all of these things all the time.

The only thing that we know for sure we need to be doing all the time is that we need to be acting like Jesus did and being image bearers of Christ everywhere we go.

Sometimes we are there to help others with their sin.

Sometimes we are there to share Jesus and His forgiveness, but we're always there to walk like Jesus did in grace and kindness and patience.

And then in some extreme cases, we need to take a step back and walk away and trust that God still has a plan.

But this is why we need to be praying constantly.

This is why we need to be asking over and over and over again that God will give us discernment, not once a year or once a month, but this is a daily ask.

And as we get to start to understand his voice more and more, it becomes more and more clear the discernment that he would have for us.

As the Holy Spirit becomes more a part of your daily life and is more in your surroundings, you'll be aware of those things around you.

And that's what we need to be asking discernment from the Father, getting closer and closer to who he is and what the Bible says.

That's how you're going to know proper discernment.

And then third, this morning, we need to understand the balancing scales of grace.

Did you know it's possible to judge someone wrongly even while using scripture?

Well, even using the Bible and literally word for word quoting scripture, you can do harm.

If it's the measuring tool we use, yes, that's good.

But sometimes all we're so focused on, but this is what the Bible says, you have to believe it.

And we stop there.

But sometimes we still forget, well, if it's not evident in my life, it's not evident in this situation, maybe it's not actually the right time for this.

Or maybe we're twisting the words of scripture without even knowing it because we don't know the scripture well enough yet.

We need to keep spending time in it, keep praying about it, keep pouring and growing closer to Jesus so that when we are using scripture, we're using it in a way that helps and doesn't do harm.

And then by using scripture, we can judge people in the proper way, not unfairly.

We don't have to use the excuse anymore of, but but the scripture says we're actually going to know and understand how to have that proper scale of grace and love.

Proverbs 11, verse 1 says, A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight.

Proverbs 11:1

And then 20, verse 3, it says, unequal weights are an abomination to the Lord, and false scales are not good.

It can be easy to read these Proverbs and think it's talking strictly about economical or financial things and being fair and not cheating each other of our things, but there's a far more spiritual application that Jesus teaches us here in the Sermon on the Mount.

The speck and the plank are Jesus' version of unequal and unfair weights here.

Do you judge yourself on a different scale than the judgment you show others?

Do you show more grace for yourself than you're willing to show for other people?

Do you forgive yourself quickly what it takes you a long time to forgive in other people?

Using that line again about motives of you don't know me, you don't know what's going on in my heart, it's okay.

But that other person you say, How dare you?

Talk about unequal and unfair balances, that's an abomination to the Lord.

And when we picture this scale, we need to know that there is that delicate balance.

We're trying to keep things equal on both sides, we're trying to keep it to the point where it doesn't tip in one direction.

And one of the ways that it can tip in the wrong direction is something that I think is so applicable for people in this room.

Maybe you've never even thought about it this way, but in chapter 7, verse 5, when it says, you hypocrite, I'm not calling you hypocrites today, that's not what this is about, but it's about taking that and how do you feel when you read that?

Are you in a continuous phase of analyzing your heart because you're so worried that you have this log in your life that you go deeper and deeper and you're overly hard on yourself?

You continuously jud yourself and you don't give yourself a break ever?

Because in God's scale, we're his children, we're important, we're worthy.

But in the enemy's scales, he lies to us and tells us that we're useless and hopeless and that sin is never gonna be able to get rid of, it's gonna have a hold on our life forever, and we're never gonna be able to help our brother or sister.

That's the unequal balance that we need to be careful of in our lives.

When we start thinking in that direction, we get stuck in what Wearsby calls perpetual autopsy.

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in self-examination that we become unbalanced.

But we should not look only at ourselves, or will we become discouraged and defeated?

We should look by faith to Jesus Christ and let him forgive and restore us.

When you're taking that time to look inward and seeing the stuff that's going on, are you getting stuck in how unworthy you feel?

Or are you finding it, dealing with it, and taking it to the Lord and saying, Lord, fix me, change me?

Because he's already called you worthy.

He's already waiting to forgive you and restore you.

You don't need to be in a perpetual autopsy.

You don't need to be so hard on yourself, or you get stuck not wanting to even leave your house, like we said earlier, because you're so worried about all the things going on.

There's freedom and wholeness even now for you as Jesus works in your life, as you take it to him and surrender, and he says, I forgive you.

You're worthy, you're my child, I love you.

Even now you can help your brother.

Because as we start looking inward and taking it to Jesus, he can do what no friend, no coworker, no parent or pastor can do for you.

He's already done the work on the cross, he's already forgiven you.

And he doesn't want you to feel like every time someone says something to you, it they're trying to criticize you negatively.

We can get so defensive when we're in this perpetual autopsy that we never can hear any of the good in someone's statement because all we hear is the negative.

That's not what he has for your life today.

Do not judge yourself as unworthy, church.

Do not focus on yourself and saying, ugh, I am so terrible.

You know, you might be full of sin.

And we've all been there at one time or another.

But on God's scale, you're still balanced, you're still worthy just as you are.

When one is truly walking with God, his only concern is what his divine master thinks of him.

If he makes conscience of all that displeases him, if he daily confesses to him every known sin and begs him to cleanse him from sins of ignorance and omission, if he be sincerely endeavoring to walk in the path of obedience, it will trouble him very little what other worms of the dust think or say about him.

He is conscious of the fact that God knows his heart.

God knows your heart.

That if only he has the approbation of the Lord, this is worth infinitely more than the highest esteem of all mankind.

Do you care so much about what the world says that you take everything negatively?

Or do you care more about what God says about you and about how he says you are worthy?

How he says, hey, you've got your stuff, but I'm here to help you.

There's no amount of stuff that's too much for me to help you through this.

Are you focusing on what God thinks and says about you in this room, or are you focused only on your flaws?

Because we need to understand what Jesus says about us.

Otherwise, we'll never be able to help others know what Jesus says about them.

And if you want to understand a great way to tip the scales of grace for others to the things of Jesus, we can look at that in verse 12, the golden rule.

Here is a simple rule of thumb guide for behavior.

Ask yourself what you want to do, what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them.

Add up God's law and prophets, and this is what you get.

The golden rule.

Something that many other religious religions practice in their faith.

But it's not the same.

If you study a lot of them, they're actually more on a negative context than a positive one.

They say, Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you.

Which is still good.

We're not to harm other people.

But Jesus flips that a little bit more to the other side and he says, take an initiative and go out and already do for others what you want them to do for you.

They don't have to come to you and seek that behavior, they don't have to beg for it.

Sometimes they might not even know it's coming.

But we need to take that initiative and act.

Because Jesus has laid out a call for us.

Go and treat someone in a positive light, the way you want to be treated.

That gives us responsibility in our lives.

And it allows us to imitate Christ.

And as we do that, we can allow other people to start imitating Christ as well.

And in the end, God gets all the glory.

When we practice the golden rule, it allows us to walk in the love of God that is in our lives.

It allows it to flow and it enables us to truly help others.

Even others who would might have wanted to hurt us, hey, they still deserve, they still deserve good.

Sometimes it involves paying a price.

Sometimes we are gonna be opposed and we're gonna feel difficult situations and have to take that step back.

But remember, we are salt and light, and salt hurts an open wound, if you've ever felt that.

There's gonna be pain that comes sometimes when we have to deal with people's stuff.

When we're dealing with our stuff, but we need to be aware of this and know it's still important.

Light exposes dirt, it exposes the things in darkness.

We're called to do that.

And we need to have discernment and love and patience and kindness.

And as we understand how the golden rule can be applied here in the first six verses of chapter seven, I want you to see this.

Going back to that picture Jesus gives us of the speck and the log.

That dust is indeed foreign to someone, it shouldn't be there.

And if left unchecked, it can cause immense damage.

It can make someone blind even if you get dust in your eye for too long.

So if we're to leave it there and to say, well, I can't go help them, that's not truly loving either.

But it's always that delicate balance of how am I working on my life while I'm helping others work on their life.

Am I taking it the right way?

Am I doing it out of love?

Are my motives pure here?

But then there's a swallowing of pride when we need to admit this.

We should also desire people to speak into our lives that are willing to help us remove the dust in our eyes, to get rid of the sin in our hearts, to help point out the things that we might not even see because we are blinded by that plank.

So if we are to fully practice the golden rule, it revolves around wanting others to do for us what we're doing for them.

We're there helping others get the specks out of their eyes, and they're gonna get the specks out of our eye.

Don't only focus on the one and reject the other.

When someone comes to help you, it's not time for you to deny or turn away and condemn them for judging.

As many of us can lean to when we get any form of criticism.

We no longer need to worry about being judged harshly because this is about relationship with Jesus and with others, and he calls us worthy.

It's not something we need to be scared of, but it's something we are called to do, to speak the best in each other so that we can be restored back to that image of Christ.

Do unto others.

Are we helping others with their specs and also fully willing to allow them to help us?

Proverbs 9, verse 8 says, Do not reprove a scoffer or he will hate you.

Proverbs 9:8

Reprove a wise man and he will love you.

Are you wise in this room asking for correction, being okay with correction?

Or do you fit on that other side?

Because you know, the gospel doesn't teach us that God is some stern judge who always wants to get us and cause us problems for our sin.

Even though it might feel that way when we feel unworthy when we sin, but God is so loving and his desire is to find you and to search you out.

And so our call as Christians is not to judge on a on a throne, but it's actually to search and find the lost, the hurting, the broken, and to pull them back to the way Jesus sees them, to his scales of love and his scales of grace.

Sometimes that involves taking a step of faith in love and going to a friend and having a tough conversation with them.

But it always comes with humility and the willingness to say, Hey, I'm not perfect either.

We're in this journey together and we need each other.

So I hope that when you leave today, you will understand this command not to judge in a new light.

It's not a requirement for you to be blind and turn an eye away from what's going on.

It's not a requirement for you to only do it when you're perfect, because you're never gonna be perfect, but it's a plea to be generous and to allow grace and love to be on display in your life, never out of a desire to inflate your ego, but out of a desire to find the lost and the hurting and the broken.

And our homework for today is gonna be lifelong.

I have two things for you.

One, can you examine your heart and deal with the sin that's in your life so that you can go and help others?

And two, are you willing to allow others to step into your life when there's sin that they see?

It doesn't always have to be judgy for someone to point out your flaws.

Are you willing to submit to Jesus and allow the community of believers to help you as you are transformed in his image?

Sometimes it's through pain, sometimes it's through struggles, sometimes through tears.

We are going to be shaped and formed.

We are gonna deal with our sin.

Could you stand in the room today?

I want to encourage you.

If you don't have a friend or someone in your life right now that's willing to be open and honest with you, can you find one?

Can you search one out?

Can you pray that God will bring someone into your life?

Because we all need people that are willing to be honest with us.

It's not we're not gonna be there for every single person in the room, we're not gonna be there for every single family member, even, but there are people in place that we need to have in our lives, and we're asking God that we can have those people because without them, we're gonna have a blindness to some of the things going on.

We all have spiritual blind spots that we need people to be looking out for on our side.

So, do you have that person in your life right now?

Do you are you gonna go and find that person because you desperately need it?

You do.

If you want to deal with your stuff, your hurt, and your pain, you need those people.

And then today, can we also continually ask for that discernment for the Holy Spirit to be so alive and present in your life that you're aware of each and every inkling that he's leading you, to be obedient and walk into the call that he has for your life, to speak out when needed, to love when needed, to evangelize when needed, and to wait when needed.

Thank you so much for listening to today's message.

If you're ever in the Edmonton area, pop by for a visit.

And if you need any more information, visit Evolvechurch.com.

We hope to see you soon.