The Son of Man // Before You Judge [Luke 6:37-49] (Billy Hanna)

But we thank you this morning for every remembrance of you and

of your Son and Father God. We thank you that those of us

who have trusted in you as our own Saviour could say this with

Paul in the book of Galatians, that we have been crucified with

Christ. And so far this morning, this

occasion that we have had a rod around your table, the bread,

the cup that we have taken, ohh. God reminds us of the fact that

Christ has been crucified on our behalf and we or Lord God have

been crucified with him. So we thank you, Lord God, for

the life that we now have in our Lord Jesus Christ, and as Paul

says, for the life that we live, we live for him, for the Son of

man who loved us and gave himself for us.

So Father God, what a privilege this morning to be able to come

into your presence to remember what your Son our Lord and

Saviour our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us.

And Father God, we pray a Lord, this morning as we now read your

word and as Billy speaks to us from your word.

Lord God, we pray that we through Your word become to know

you day by day more clearly and more dearly.

Or Lord, that He would speak to us, Father, through Your Word,

that Your Word, the Lord, may have an impact in our hearts and

our lives. We pray that You'll open up our

understanding as we seek Your Word, and we play a lot for your

hand upon Billy as he speaks. Father God, that the words that

are spoken may be afraid, that the words that are spoken, the

Lord may not return void as promised in the Scriptures.

We also thank you, Father, for our Sunday School kids.

Each and everyone of them are not player for each of those

children. Is that they too, Lord, may come

around under Your word this morning, that they alone,

through Your Word and through all of the activities in the

Sunday School, we get to know You that much more dearly.

And our prayer is for each and everyone of those kids as they

grow up to not only come to know you personally, but grow up a

lot in the ways of the Lord to be tremendous men and women for

the Lord. We thank you for us and the

school teachers and for the commitment that they have made.

We pray, Father, that you will bless them this morning as they

interact and as they share your world with these Sunday School

kids. So, Father, once again we thank

you for the morning that you've given us, and we commit this

time once again into your hands and save us, precious, and in

his worthy name, Amen. I mean, good morning, Church.

Hey, open with me to the Book of Luke chapter 6.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

We're gonna be in Luke Chapter 6, continuing on where we are in

Luke 6 · chapter mention

our series and the book of Luke. And in the last two weeks we

have been looking at a specific section in the book of Luke,

which is the sermon that Jesus gives, which we call the sermon

on the plane. You'd see the same or similar

sermon in Matthew chapter 5 through 7.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

It's assuming that Jesus gives and he brings to his disciples

and a group of people who were listening.

And this morning we are going to finish off that section of Luke

the sermon that Jesus preached. And, and simply as we've been

seeing the summon, Jesus is showing us the life of a

believer. What is the the life of a

Christian? The life of a follower of Jesus.

What does it look like compared to the way that the world lives?

So let's read this morning's passage.

We're going to be in verse 37 through to the end of chapter 6,

verse 49. We're mainly this morning.

We're going to focus in on mainly versus 41 and 42, but

we're going to read the whole passage.

This is this. This is the words of our Lord.

Judge not and you will not be judged.

Condemn not, and you will not be condemned.

Forgive and you will be forgiven.

Give and it will be given to you.

Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over,

will be put into your lap, for with the measure you use it will

be measured back to you. He also told them a parable.

Can a blind man lead a blind man?

Will they not both fall into a pit?

A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is

fully trained, will be like his teacher.

Why do you see the spick that is in your brother's eye but do not

notice the log that is in your own eye?

How can you say to your brother, brother, let me take out the

speck that is in your your eye when you yourself do not see the

log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, First take the

log out of your own eye, and then you'll see clearly.

To take the spec, take out the spec that is in your brother's

eye. For no good tree be as bad

fruit, Nor again does a good or bad tree bear good fruit.

For each tree is known by its own fruit.

For figs are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor are grapes

picked from a Bramble Bush. For good person out of the good

treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of

his evil produces evil. For out of the abundance of his

heart, his mouth speaks. Why do you call me Lord, Lord

and not do what I tell you? Everyone who comes to me and

hears my words and does them, I'll show you what he's like.

He's like a man building a house who dug deep and laid foundation

on the rock. And when a flood arose, the

stream broke against that house and could not shake it because

it had been well built. But the one who hears and does

not do them is like a man who built his house on the ground

without a foundation. When the stream broke against

it, immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was

great. I mean, well, last week, if you

remember back to last week, we looked at the passage before

this and we, we looked at what Jesus had to say to us about

love. And one thing we found, and we

spoke about it at the start is the world and the society around

us loves love, at least what it thinks love is.

And Jesus had a, a different vision for love for us.

But the world around us loves love.

And, and this week we're turning to this concept of judgement and

judging others. And if the world loves love, I

think what we're going to see is the world hates judgement.

The society around us hates any form of judgement.

And in fact, I think in this passage, verse 37, we've got

what what is I think one of the most misunderstood verses in the

Bible, one of the most misunderstood.

And it's probably widely known. Judged not, judge not.

In fact, I think many, yeah, many people in society are

familiar with this verse. Maybe you've heard someone quote

it to you. When when they find out you're a

Christian. And maybe they find out some of

your views and they go, didn't Jesus say judge not?

You said judge not. So you shouldn't really be

saying anything about the way I'm living.

Or maybe someone else has made a comment about you and the way

that you're living your life or some of the decisions you're

making. And this is kind of a wall you

put up. Well, what Jesus said judge not.

Okay, so back off. You live your life.

I'll, I'll, I'll live mine. And it's often said, and I think

it's important for us to understand the society we live

in. It doesn't really believe in

truth. Some would call this we live in

a post modern society, we live in a pluralist society.

Essentially what what that means is that I think in our society

that the the main view is no specific religion or no specific

claim of truth can be seen as superior to any other claim.

So simply there's no basis for truth, there's no standard for

truth. And I think the outcome of that

is any form of judgement is, is prohibited because there's no

basis to make a judgement if there's no truth, if there's no

common absolute truth, I have no basis to make any form of

judgement about the way you are living.

You mind your business, all mine, my business.

You live your truth and and I'll live my truth.

I think it's inevitable that this kind of thinking, it seeps

into the church as well. It can be tempting to want to

live as isolated Christians. I'll live my Christian walk.

You live your Christian walk. You don't comment on mine.

I won't comment on on yours. But I think when I, when I look

and I think about the church and I look at my own heart, I think

my bigger concern is that we have fallen too far in the other

direction. Because as Christians we

believe, right? We have the word of God.

We have a standard for truth, and my concern is that often we

jump too far the other direction.

We say, well, no, we have truth. So I'm gonna call it like I see

it. That's wrong.

I don't like that. You didn't say that right.

That wasn't good because you know what?

We've got truth. We should call it like we see

it, right? I don't think so.

I don't think so. And this is the question that

that we've got to think about as we come to this passage.

As followers of Jesus, in what way should we make judgments on

other people? As followers of Jesus, in what

way should we make judgments on other people?

There are two extremes laid out before us, and I think Jesus is

telling us in this passage that they're both wrong.

These two extremes, and he's telling us they're both wrong.

We can fall off the boat from either side.

We can either be isolated and say we're not going to judge

because Jesus is judge not or or or we could say no, no, no.

The Bible says what's right and wrong.

So we need to be judgmental and and Jesus is gonna speak to that

and the main versus we're gonna spend most of our time and as

verse 41 and 42 where he's gonna use this analogy of saying it's

like we've got a log in our eye and we're pointing out a spig

and our brother's eye. But it's important to understand

as we go into this that Jesus isn't telling us to make no

judgments. In fact, end of verse 42.

I guess the end goal of this is that we would see clearly to

take out the spec and our brother's eye, which in itself

is it's a form of a judgement. The end goal is not that we

won't judge. The end goal is that we would

judge well, that we would judge faithfully, that we would judge

lovingly. And so I think the way that

Jesus is crafting this is he's helping us to understand what do

we need to do before we remove the spec?

What do we need to do before we make judgments on each other?

And I think the claim he's making is that we are all far,

far too quick to remove the spec.

He's not saying don't do it, but he's saying maybe we need to get

there a whole lot slower than we do at the moment.

What do we do before we remove the spec?

And it's, it's a big question to ask.

And I think as I've assist my own heart this week, I feel like

it's easy when Jesus is giving us instructions, he's giving us

the way that we, we, we should live our life.

It's very easy to turn it into A to do list.

Okay, what do I need to do this week?

Jesus to not judge, but actually in this process, Jesus is asking

us as we come to this passage to really perform heart surgery

here. It's not a do this, do this.

He's really asking us to dig deep, assess our motives, assess

our desires, what is going on in our heart.

Jesus is after our hearts. He's not just after our actions

or our obedience. He's after our hearts.

O what do we do before we remove the spec?

Well, firstly we're going to look at versus 37 to 38.

Before we remove the spec, we must know that we will all stand

before the true judge. We must know that we will all

stand before the true judge. He sees this inverse 37.

Judge not and you will not be judged.

Condemn not and you will not be condemned.

Forgive and you will be forgiven.

Give and it will be given to you.

Good measure pressed down, shaken together, running over

will be put into your lap for with the measure you use it use

it will be measured back to you. And so he starts here by giving

us 4 commands. Two of them are negative and two

are positive. So judge not condemn not.

And then he says forgive and and give and, and the main principle

he's saying here is he's pointing us to the reality.

When we think about judgement before we think about judgement

this way, we need to understand that each of us will be judged

by God. We are not the final judge.

We are not the final judge. And it's interesting.

And this is going to, this is going to make us think because

it seems like he's saying there's some form of reciprocity

here. What I mean by this is that you

kind of summarises it at the end of verse 38.

He says with the measure you use, it will be measured back to

you. So to the extent that we judge

critically, we will be judged critically.

To the extent that we judge, we we forgive and we are gracious,

it will be given back to us. And that's an interesting thing.

And that's going to make us think.

And I want to wrestle with what he's actually saying here, but I

just want to understand when you're speaking about judgement

and, and condemn what he's Speaking of here.

This is a fault finding mentality.

This is the kind of mentality that is looking to other people

and, and looking to find the worst and other people.

And as we're going to see, there's a right way to judge.

He's speaking here of the wrong way to judge.

And the principle that we're going to see here is, is this

pretty simply. We must judge others with the

reality in mind that one day we will be judged by God.

We should judge this way with a mindset, knowing we will be

judged against God and God has got plenty of evidence against

us. God has got plenty of evidence

against us. We certainly want God to judge

us with grace. In fact, we're banking on the

fact that God is going to judge us with grace because if he

doesn't judge us with grace, he would judge us based off our

sin. And so how could we then turn

and judge others without any drop of grace?

How could we then turn and judge others, only assuming the worst,

only looking for the worst, when we actually are going to stand

before God and we need Him to judge us with grace.

And I will say this, and we need to know this, if you've believed

and put your faith in Christ, we have confidence.

We have more than confidence. We have assurance that God will

judge us completely with grace. We don't have to be anxious as

God gonna judge me with with with grace or judgement.

If our faith is in Jesus Christ, the judgement that God will pour

on us, it's completely lopsided. It's completely gracious.

In fact, he's going to give an example here.

He speaks about this this, it will be given to you and he says

good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over

will be put into your lap. This is a lopsided amount of

grace. And so the analogy here is that

of grain. If you're pulling grain and any

saying the person here who's giving you the grain as is

pretty much packing it in all of the grain that they can get in.

So I picture it like this with you having ice cream on a cone.

I haven't had this since I was a kid, but there's two ways you

can put ice cream on a cone. You could get the scoop and you

can put it right on top. But I remember as a kid, mum and

dad would do that. I'm like you, this, this hollow

cone in there. You've got to get the little

scoops and fill up the cone and then you put the ice cream on

top. I think this is the kind of

picture here is using with the grain.

It's like good measure pressed down, really jammed in there.

This is an abundance of grace. That is how God if, if we put

our faith in Jesus Christ, that is the kind of grace God has

poured on us and will pour on us when we are judged.

And so the idea is we need to understand this and what we've

received should be should be reflected in the way that we

judge others. Many of you would be familiar

with a parable Jesus uses in Matthew chapter 18 where he

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

speaks about the servant who who had owed their master and

incomprehensible debt. You're talking millions upon

millions of dollars and the master forgave the debt.

There was a date he could never repay.

The master forgave the debt and then the servant, he just been

forgiven of his debt. And he goes out and he finds

someone who owed him about 3 months wages and he pins him up

against the wall by the scruff of the neck and he says when

you're gonna pay me? And he says, look, just give me

some time, I'll be able to pay you.

I can pay you back. He's like not good enough, not

good enough any any seems them to gaol.

And the point Jesus is saying here is he's this guy who's been

given this, forgiven, this unbelievable date, and yet he

didn't go and extend it to those around him.

And I think the warning here is this, if our life is is

characterised by a harsh critical judgement of others,

that should give us pause to ask whether we have truly trusted in

Jesus Christ, whether we have truly tasted of the freedom of

forgiveness. If there's nothing going this

way, if we're not extending any form of grace, we need to ask.

And this should be a mirror to us.

Have I truly tasted forgiveness? We should judge others how we

would want God to judge us and ultimately how God has judged us

through Jesus Christ. Imagine if if you got caught

speeding down, why did you drive and what is its eighty?

Why did he drive? So imagine you got caught going

100 and the cop pulls you over and he goes, look, this is

actually a bit too much for a ticket.

I'm gonna give you a court summons and you have to go to

there, the Hamilton District Court and you go and, and and

they say, OK, you need to wait in the courtroom.

The judges kind of filing through the different cases.

You've gotta wait. And then when it's your turn,

you'll come and stand before the judge.

And so you're sitting there waiting and the judge is

actually dealing with the case before yours.

And it's a very similar case. They were going 15 caves over.

You're going 20 days over. This guy was going 15 caves

over. And the judge is mulling over

the case and he's trying to work out what kind of punishment he's

going to hand down. And he's looking through it and

he's kind of can't really work out what to do with this one.

He's thinking, he's thinking, and then he looks at you,

sitting waiting, He goes. What do you think?

What kind of punishment should I hand down?

I I would guarantee that you are not gonna go.

You know what, Judge? You should really make this one

sting for him. He should learn his lesson.

Then you'll never do it again knowing that you're right up

after him. You're probably going to be

like, look, you probably didn't mean it.

You should be kind to him. I I think what Jesus is saying,

he's putting us in, in the seat of understanding.

We judge others, but we will be judged.

How are we judging others? And in light of that, we should

judge others. Before we think about judging

others, we should know that we will stand before the true

judge. We will be judged.

And secondly, we need to understand this before we remove

the spec. We must recognise and remove our

own log. We must recognise and remove our

own log. And verse 41 and 42, Jesus is

going to use an illustration essentially diagnosing the

problem of what's going on in our hearts when we judge.

And it's a familiar illustration and it's familiar to the point

where I think there's a danger it loses its humour.

And I guess what Jesus is trying to portray here, he's saying,

imagine he talks about a log and a spec.

So someone's gotta speak. So let's say Gavin here's gotta

spec. And it's like Gavin, Hey, he's

got a spick and he's talking like a like a wood chip, a tiny

little spick. And, and, and the word for log

is actually the Greek word, you think for like a load bearing

beam and a house. So like, I almost picture like

one of these big beams that are going across here.

So imagine literally I've got one of these honking out of my

eye. I'm like trying to keep my

balance and I kind of come up together and I'm knocking him in

the head because of this big beam in my eye.

I'm like, hey, Kev, I couldn't help but notice.

Let me just help you out. You got a little spick.

Right there in the corner. I maybe I'll just help you get

that out. And you can imagine Gavin's just

being like, are you serious right now?

You've got this, you got this house sticking out of your eye

and you're pointing out this spick in my eye.

I kind of happened as a child growing up, you know, we'd be

saying grace and I'd always want to catch my siblings during

grace before dinner and, and, and grace would finish.

I go, Dad. Blake had his eyes open during

grace. And here you go.

Well, how do you know it's not important?

How I know it's important that Blake had his eyes open during

Grace? What's going on here?

I mean, it's pretty obvious we are completely ignoring what's

going on with ourself, but we are so captured by pointing out

what others are doing wrong. And it's I mean, this is a great

analogy that Jesus uses because it really gets right to the

heart here. And look, notice this can happen

in two ways. It happens silently and it

happens verbally. Look at verse 41.

He says why do you see the spec? And then in verse 42 he says how

can you say to your brother so this can happen in our hearts

silently or verbally? I think for most of us, the

problem we need to deal with is the silent judgement.

In fact, we can often go, well, this isn't really for me.

I don't often say stuff to other people.

I think in our hearts we are judging all the time.

It's it's prevalent. Even think about today, how

often today have you made some sort of judgement towards

someone else in your mind, really, you're wearing that

shirt. You chose to wear that shirt to

church. Well, as someone kind of cuts

you off in traffic and you wanna get up beside them at the lights

and kind of make some eyes at them, maybe you're going, why

are we singing that song? I don't like that song.

Maybe even right now, maybe you're thinking that was a good

point. I hope so, And so is listening I

and I'll actually admit in my own heart there were some points

this week when I was studying this passage.

In the back of my mind, I thought, I hope so and so's

there. And what I want to suggest to

you is when our mind goes there, that means that we're the one

who needs to hear that. When our mind says, I wish

someone so heard that. I wish I should send this sermon

to so and so. I think that means that was for

us. We need to hear that.

But verbal judgement is also a real problem.

Being quick to point out to others their faults and their

sins. Being very quick and I think we

take a joy in it. Often this is where gossip comes

in as well. And I think this often comes in

the false pretence of good motives.

Did you see what science has been doing?

I'm worried about them. Are you worried about them?

You noticed that too? What else did you notice?

Yeah, it's a bit of a concern. Ohh dear.

So often I think verbally, silently, we are so full of

judgement and the diagnosis I think of this is that what we

are doing is we are circumnavigating our own hearts

and jumping right to the faults of the other person.

Why? Well, because to us they have

got a log. They've got this huge log

sticking out of their face and we've got nothing.

Maybe we've got a little spick, but the most urgent thing is

that I deal with their log and that's the loving thing for me

to do. I think behind this, often we

want to feel superior. We judge others because we want

to feel better about ourselves. Maybe there's an underlying sin

in our lives and it actually makes us feel better about the

sins we're tuning through by actually highlighting the sins

and other people's lives. At least.

At least I'm not doing that. Maybe I can help them by by

pointing that out, especially when someone's dealing with

maybe an era of sin that we aren't.

Maybe someone's wrestling with anger and that's not an area of

sin that I'm dealing with, but there's plenty of areas I'm

dealing with that they're not. But let's just focus on the

arranger for a moment. That'll make me feel better

about myself. And Jesus is saying that this is

it's sinful judgement. This is sinful judgement.

When he's saying judge not, This is the kind of judgement he's

Speaking of because we've got the wrong motives and we're

doing it all in the wrong order. We're looking outward before we

assess ourselves. And that's why he says in verse

42, you hypocrite. It's the height of hypocrisy.

And yet I think it's one of the most prevalent sins that that we

struggle with as Christians. Many of you would be familiar.

It's it's, it's a fascinating example of this and Second

2 Samuel 12 · chapter mention

Samuel chapter 12, how we have King David, who's just committed

adultery. He has committed adultery with

this woman named Beth Shebe. She's fallen pregnant and to try

to cover this all up, he's committed murder.

He's murdered Beth Sheba's husband and in the Prophet,

Nathan comes to David and Second Samuel chapter 12, and he

2 Samuel 12 · chapter mention

doesn't like come forward and say exactly his motives here,

but he says to him, hey, David, I want to tell you a story.

There were two farmers, One farmer, he had flocks and flocks

of sheep, he had tonnes of them. He was rich and wealthy, had

sheep everywhere. And then his neighbor was a

small farmer and he only had the 1 little you a little sheep.

And he actually loved this shape.

He raised the sheep like his own daughter and the kids love the

sheep. They they bring the sheep.

They let the sheep sleep inside. The sheep is precious to them.

And in this this rich guy, he's got a friend coming to town and

he goes, well, OK, well, I need to kill a sheep to feed my

friend and so he sees to the servant.

But no, don't go into my fields. I don't want to use one of my

sheep, go into the poor man's field, kill his sheep.

We can feed my friend with that sheep and all my sheep can stay.

And he and Nathan sees this to David and David jumps out of his

seat and he goes, well, that man should die.

He's he's angry, he's going, then you can't do that.

That man should die. What's he doing in the night?

And sees David? You are that man.

And what's going on there is David has got this huge log in

his eye, Adultery, murder, lying, deception, and he's

beside himself about what is really a far smaller sin.

So often we've got this this log in our eye that that we try to

move and shift out of the way because we want to be focused on

other sins. We need to look inside, we need

to recognise it and we need to remove it.

Need to remove it. Just want to ask what what is

this log? If we if we were to remove this

log, what is this log? As I look at the passage, I want

to suggest to you that this log itself is a judgmental spirit.

The log that is in our eye is a judgmental spirit.

Now say that because of this, the log, he says in verse into

verse 42. That's what's stopping us from

seeing clearly to judge well. And so if what we need to remove

in order for us to judge well, I believe that would be a

judgmental spirit. It's a it's a spirit or an

attitude of sinful, prideful judgement of assuming that I'm

up here and they are down there. And So what do we need to do to

remove this log? We need to humble ourselves.

We need to look inward before we look outward and assess our own

spiritual condition, assess our own motives, assess our own

desires. I wonder how it would change our

attitudes of whatever room we're in.

We assume that we are the most sinful person in that room,

removing that log of a judgmental spirit so that we can

judge well. And then when we confronted with

us and we worked to confess it, we worked to kill it, We work to

to hate it. And and I will say this can only

be done in the context of the gospel.

As people who have been forgiven by Jesus Christ, we've had his

grace lavished upon us. That's the only context that we

can actually deal with our sin. That's the only context that we

can pull out this log from our eye because we can fix our sins

to Hermes faithful and he's just to forgive us from from all

unrighteousness. Only then, once we have looked

at ourselves, assessed our heart assist, our motives, can we see

clearly to then remove the spic from our brother's eye.

And I will say this, and I want to speak about what it looks

like to remove this spec because Jesus isn't condemning this.

He isn't condemning the act of, of, of correcting someone else,

of removing their spec per se, but rather he's going to reframe

the way we get there. And he's saying often we just

get there far too quickly and far too often.

And I think if we treated our logs as as logs and everyone

else's specs as specs, and actually if everyone did that,

then by the time I've pulled my log out, Gavin here is actually

already assessed his speak and he's pulled out his spec.

But if I'm viewing his speakers a log and he's viewing my speak

as a log, we're just gonna be judging one another.

Jesus says there's a better way. There's a better way, but it is

important that we correct one another because actually we need

one another. We need one another to point out

our logs and point out our specs, but we need one another

to do it with the right motives and and in the right order.

With the right motives and in the right order.

We see this in in First Corinthians chapter 5.

1 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

There is rampant sexual immorality within the Corinthian

church and Paul's actually saying to them in First

Corinthians 5. Why did no one deal with this?

Why did no one address this? Why did no one call this out?

Why did no one judge this? If we will just say, OK, I'll

mine my business, you mind your business.

It's actually not helpful because as a church we should

care about the effects of sin. We should care about the effects

of sin and each other's lives. And Paul sees and 1st

Corinthians 512, he says, is it not those inside the church whom

you are to judge even and, and in seeking Timothy 316, when

Paul is talking about the value of the word of God, he says what

it's valuable for rebuking, it's valuable for for correcting.

So, so we should do this, but we need to do this well.

We shouldn't run from judgement, but we shouldn't judge harshly

and arrogantly. Jesus is offering us a better

way. It's judge well.

It's assist our motives. Let's do it in the right order.

Let's let's look at ourselves, let's pull out our log and then

and, and this is kind of going back to last week.

Everything we do, we do and love.

With the motive of love and humility, we confront one

another about the sin we see. We speak to one another with

love. I've been seeing this with the

with the genuine heart to call one another higher.

We we should be at people who who care deeply about sin, but

also who who respond with grace. So before we confront someone's

and we must confront our own, but then we should also be

prepared to confront the ears. And I wonder this morning which

side of that spectrum you need to be called inward from with

the you actually need the challenge this morning to end

love, be willing to address someone else's sin, to have a

difficult conversation with someone out of love and saying,

I've been noticing this. How can I help you with this?

But I think for many of us we also need the reminder to be

much, much slower and have far better motives to come to that

point as well. So before we pull the speak, we

we need to know we are not the ultimate charge.

We need to recognise and remove our log.

And I think we need to remember in this our Lord Jesus Christ,

who face the ultimate judgement of God and our place.

Jesus is the ultimate example of one, of an action, of one who

cares deeply about sin. He's not pushing it aside.

He cares deeply about sin. And yet we were judged with

complete grace, because on the cross, Jesus Christ, He paid the

full weight. Judgement was not withheld.

He paid the full weight of our punishment with sin so that God

may judge us not based off the way we've lived, but by grace

and we judge one another in the way that we have been judged.

And as I close in, as we kind of close this zoom and that Jesus

preached and Luke 6:00, I've got 2 quick thoughts and I'm talking

a couple of minutes and then I'll be done. 2 quick thoughts

as I finish. And I just want to look at the

last two sections as we think about how we alley this because

Jesus, he puts these sections that about the tree and its

fruit and about the the, the foundation that we build our

house on. He puts them at the end of his

sermon for a reason, because he's essentially asking, OK,

I've given you this information. What are you going to do with

it? What are we going to do with

this? Say this firstly, as we think

about how we're applying what we've talked about the last few

weeks, I'd say this as we look at versus 43 through 45, Jesus

is after our hearts. He's after our hearts.

He's not after our obedience. It's after our hearts, but not

after our obedience. He uses this example of a good

tree and a bad tree. He's a good tree is going to be

a good fruit and a bad tree is going to be a bad fruit.

It can be easy when we see these instructions to go, okay, I need

to do, I need to do. And then the question comes,

well, what do I do if I have been that judgmental person?

How do I address that if I have been confronted with the fact

that I'm super, super judgmental?

Jesus is not looking for obedience.

He's after our hearts. He's He's looking for fruit.

But the secret to good fruit is a good tree.

Secret to good fruit is a good tree.

He sees in verse 45 from the abundance of his heart, his

mouth speaks. And the good news of the gospel

is Jesus Christ has come not to say do this and do this and do

this, but he's come to give us new hearts that if we put our

faith and trust in him, he will replace our wicked broken heart

with a new heart, give us his Holy Spirit.

And and to use another analogy, in John 15, it says Jesus is the

vine. And when when we're connected

and with the vine and we're a branch off of Jesus, we're going

to produce fruit. So Jesus is not just after

obedience, He's after our hearts.

And he's saying that fruit will come.

And so if you're worried this morning, if you're thinking,

man, I can't do that, I'm not doing well at that, Jesus is

saying, come to me and be a good fruit.

And if you follow Jesus, I'd encourage you continue to be

connected in with with the vine. Continue to be a fruit from him.

And the last thing I'll say is I look at the last three verses of

of Luke 6 is that to follow Jesus words as to be on solid

ground. To follow Jesus's words is to be

on solid ground. He uses this analogy.

This is a verse 46. Why do you call me Lord?

Lord and you don't do what I tell you?

Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them,

I'll show you what he's like. He's like a man who built his

house on a good foundation. He dug down and built his

foundation on the rock so that when the storms come, the house

stands firm. I mean, it's easy for us to hear

these words and these instructions and what Jesus

Christ is saying about what it means to follow him.

It's easy to hear it. It's even easy to say, yeah,

Jesus is Lord, but Jesus saying if you think I'm, if you really

believe that I'm Lord, man, we, we ought to listen because the

way that he's calling us to live, it is a firm foundation.

It is a firm foundation in which we should build our lives.

And, and, and closes in the Matthew account.

He's gonna close with us as well because he's essentially asking

what are we gonna do about this? Are we going to just hear it or

are we going to hear it and are we going to do it?

And this is my refer us as we consider the last few weeks on

the Sermon on the Mount, especially as we consider what

we've talked about this morning around judging one another.

May we be people this morning with new hearts.

Judge slowly, who judge with the right motives, who judge in the

right order. Building our foundation,

building our house on a foundation that will last.

So let's pray as we close. Gracious God and King, we thank

you for your word, we thank you for your goodness to us, and we

thank you for the gospel. Jesus is not just calling us to

blind obedience, but He wants our hearts.

God, I pray that we may be people and we may be a church

community who judges one another well with the right motives.

God, would we deal greatly with our own sin?

Would we care deeply about our own sin and then and and love

seek to help one another? God private and practise.

You would just remove ego, would you?

Remove false motives. Lord, would we love one another

well in the way that we judge one another well.

Jesus name, we pray these things.

Amen.