No Judgement

As you're being seated this morning, uh we've been really entering into a moment of prayer before we go into his word.

Can y'all hear me okay?

I've got this stuff in my head, so I can't even barely hear myself.

Uh you might be the same way with all the weather changes that's been going on and stuff, but uh as we think about praying this morning, this is a little bit different.

I don't know that I've ever been in a in a situation where I've been worshiping where someone has told me, hey, why don't you stop right now and pray for your enemies?

Why don't you just stop right in the middle of your worship and just pray for your enemies?

I don't, I've never experienced that.

So as I was really thinking through what we might do today to pray before we enter into God's word, especially with the message we'll be looking at in just a moment, this feel feels very appropriate to do that.

Uh, this verse from the mouth of Jesus Himself, Matthew 5 44, as he's preaching this message to the multitudes, he he said, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

I mean, there's it's just plain as day.

He didn't put an asterisk on that.

He didn't say, unless they've done this, or unless they've hurt you in this way, then you know they're dead to you.

He doesn't say that at all.

He just says, You this is this is what I tell you, this is my message to you, this is what it means to do things my way, to live my way, to walk into the light that I'm asking you to walk into, and that is to actually not just love your neighbor, but to love your very enemies and to pray for those who persecute you.

As I was thinking about the song we just sang, uh fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love.

There's so many layers to that.

I actually believe our own anger, and maybe even when it turns into hatefulness, I believe somewhere deep underneath that ultimately is a version of um fear that we're afraid of losing control, and therefore it turns into this anger, it turns into this gripping, uh, and when things don't go our way, then we get angry about it, and then the very people we even care about, we almost see them as the enemy, the one that's making our life harder, um, which is so not in what the Lord has for us.

Yeah, it could even be that there's just somebody that you're thinking of right now that comes to your mind.

Like, what would be, and you may they may not have a name, maybe someone you just see, someone who is barely an acquaintance, someone you run into at work, or yeah, maybe this concept of someone that you might tend to see as someone who's against you, someone that makes your life harder, someone that just annoys you or gets on your nerves, or maybe it's someone who has literally been persecuting you.

They've been literally making your life harder, they've uh done things that have hurt you directly.

Well, Jesus is very clear.

What do you do when that happens?

You love them and you pray for them.

And I I think that we just have to do it and see what God does with that.

I've heard it said many times.

It's hard to stay mad, angry, or hold a grudge or hate anyone that you consistently pray for over and over.

And I think that's true.

So before we dive into the word today together, let's take a moment to lift up to the Lord the ones who may have hurt us, the ones who may have caused pain in your own life.

And let's name them before the Father and ask him to change our own heart and to help us to see whoever that is through his eyes.

Let's pray together.

Father, we come before you and we want to put into practice what you commanded us to do, to pause in the middle of our worship and to name the very one who's hurt us, or who just annoys us, or who we feel like is against us, or we feel is kind of like an enemy in our lives right now.

Maybe they are in a way, or maybe we just perceive that, Father.

But Lord, in this moment we name them before you, Lord.

This person, you created them in your image, you died on the cross for them, and you desire to walk with them all the days of their lives.

So, oh Lord, help us to continually pray for them, and Lord, we pray for us.

Give us your eyes, give us your perspective, give us your heart, give us your wisdom as we perceive, interact with, do life with this person, these persons that we thought of in this prayer time, Lord.

We need your help to do life your way.

We need your help to love like you love, oh God.

So, Father, fill us with your love and allow us to love not just our neighbors, but even our enemies and those who persecute us.

Thank you, Father.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, thank you for being here in worship today.

I'm so excited to be back, I tell you, uh about uh eight or nine days ago.

I was a little excited because about Wednesday before that, my voice had suddenly gotten really deep.

And I'm like, I'm gonna have the best voice for preaching Sunday.

It's gonna be deep, it's gonna be Barry White preaching, it's gonna be awesome.

And then it just hit me.

I got so sick.

And I'm so grateful for Jack Myrows.

He uh reached out to him on Saturday, late afternoon, and then in the evening, I'm like, this is, I think, happening.

I don't think I can be there tomorrow.

And he's like, I think God has put a sermon on my heart.

I'm like, you can totally preach a sermon you preached to the students recently.

Uh, don't be stressed about this.

And instead, he stayed up till 2:30 a.m.

and got a message ready.

And it was awesome.

I got to be in worship via the live stream last Sunday and super grateful for our staff.

We're so blessed with a great team who just loves the Lord, loves people, and is ready to do whatever he calls us to do.

Uh, but in in theory, this I should do this message really well because this was what I was supposed to preach last Sunday.

So I had an extra week to pray about it and study it.

Uh, but I want to talk about this concept of no judgment.

And I think what's funny about this concept is maybe it's just me, but I tend to use this phrase as a prerequisite for being nice with my criticism.

Um, I'll give you an example.

Let me see who here today are my fellow black coffee drinkers.

If you're gonna have coffee, it's gonna be black.

I love how the pride, yes, it is I who drinks black coffee.

Like, well, yes, and also like uh caffeinated, right?

It's gotta be caffeinated, not the decaf stuff.

So black coffee, decaf, no cream, no sugar.

And I didn't start off that way by any stretch, but I eventually got there, and it's my favorite way to drink coffee.

Uh, and I think I've probably said this no judgment, but when you put that creamer in there, you're kind of ruining the whole thing, you know?

And that's my way of being nicely critical.

No judgment but, no judgment but, no judgment but.

If we put a butt after no judgment, we can be judgy, is kind of what we do, right?

And we tend to be judgy if we're being honest about ourselves.

We're gonna talk about not judging, but I do want to preface what I'm about to preach by saying to not be judgmental does not mean to suddenly become morally dumb, if you will.

That sounds harsh, but it doesn't mean that, oh, there is there's no morals.

I'm just gonna blur all the lines and not have any opinions and any criticisms.

That's not at all what it means to not be judgmental.

So I want to say that at the start.

Yes, it's okay to know what is right from wrong, to know the word of God, to know what Jesus Himself has preached, and to understand that when someone or even yourself or whatever is taking a different path than the path that Jesus has set before us, ooh, I noticed that.

That's that's not God's way.

This is God's way, that's not God's way.

It's okay to notice that, it's okay to think on that.

To be not judgmental doesn't mean we'd throw all that away.

I want to say that.

However, we have to be so careful to not assume we have the moral high ground all too often.

Because every single one of us in this room, every single one of us watching, listening online right now, every single one of us have faults.

No one is perfect, no one is completely right in the way we think, in the way we act, the way we perceive, the way we speak.

And I have been so victimized by my own words so many times, like I know this is the right thing, and then I'm proven wrong very quickly, and usually the Lord uses my amazing bride to help me see that, and then I have to be like, wow, what I thought I was so correct about that.

And how was I so wrong about that?

The Lord, I hope, gives all of us enough of those experiences to help us to chill out our judginess and to not judge.

So today we're gonna look at three moments in Jesus' life where Jesus Himself teaches us to not judge.

Before we look at those three moments in his life where he teaches this, I want to lean into just the word that is translated judge in your in our English Bible.

Uh, the New Testament, originally written almost entirely in the Greek language, the Greek word that is translated judge is krino.

And it can be translated to separate, was probably one of the earliest usages of this Greek word, krino, is to actually separate, or it can be translated to pronounce or to condemn or even to exact punishment.

To judge is to look at someone else and to create this separation between you and them.

I'm over here and you're over there.

That's what it means to crino, to judge.

It's giving a pronouncement about someone, maybe rendering a final verdict, if you will, about someone, and saying this person should and must be punished immediately for this.

With crino, there's not a lot of humility there.

There's definitely no mercy or grace or forgiveness there.

Instead, there's this final verdict, and there's separating yourself from them.

I'm on the high ground.

You, however, are lower than me.

That's what Crino does.

And here's what Jesus had to say about Crino, about judging.

Matthew 7, verses 1 through 5 is probably the most well-known passage of Jesus' teaching about don't judging, not judging.

Matthew 7:1–5

He says, judge not that you be not judged, for with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged.

I love this.

If you end up doing a little study into the Greek language, it's pretty hilarious because even the word pronounced there is the word krino.

So what it really says in the Greek is, for with the krino, you krino, you will be crinnoed.

I love that.

Jesus is, he's got jokes.

And he goes on to say, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

That Greek word metro, uh, with the metro you metro, it will be metroed to you.

And he's driving this point home, saying, Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye?

But do not even notice the log that is in your own eye.

Or how can you say to your brother, I got you, I'm gonna help you out, buddy.

Let me take the 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.

I love it.

Jesus is very clear here when it comes to judging, he's clear.

Don't do it, don't judge.

And he basically says, Do you want to be judged?

Do you want to have someone render the same verdicts and separations in the way that you render them to others?

Do you want that same treatment?

Do you want people to have the same response to your faults that you are actually blind to and can't see right now?

Do you want to be condemned for your wrongs also?

So the Bible, let me go back and say this.

The Bible does give clear teaching about brotherly accountability.

It talks about doing it humbly, it talks about doing it gently.

We're not tossing out the accountability that we as brothers and sisters in Christ can have.

I've received that.

I've had people very lovingly come alongside me and say, I'm thinking maybe you might be seeing this the wrong way and helping me along in that way.

And I thank God for that.

That's not what this is, though.

This is I've got the moral high ground, you are on the low ground, and you are condemned, I'm rendering a verdict, you are evil, you are wrong, you are to be punished.

There is loving correction that is helping, and then there's condemnation, separation.

I am actually better than you, I have greater value than you.

We don't say it that way, but we can, if we're not careful, actually believe that and embrace that.

Not only does Jesus say to not judge, we have an amazing moment in Jesus' life where he lives it out for us.

He actually exemplifies it for us.

And it happens in John chapter 8, and it's a very dramatic moment in the ministry of Jesus.

John 8 · chapter mention

John 8, starting in verse 2, it says, Early in the morning he came again to the temple, and all the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them.

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst, they said to him, Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery.

Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women.

So what do you say?

This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him.

Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground, and they continued to ask him.

He stood up and said to them, Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.

And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground.

When they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.

Jesus stood up and said to her, Woman, where are they?

Has no one condemned you?

She said, No one, Lord.

And Jesus said, Neither do I condemn you.

Go.

And from now on, sin no more.

And there, when we see that question, has anyone condemned you?

When he says, Neither do I condemn you.

That word condemn is our Greek word krino right there.

Jesus is so radically awesome here.

The Jewish leaders found a perfect trap, actually.

Because here's what could have happened: Jesus, under the political pressure of doing things the way the Jewish leaders would have done them to keep them happy, could have easily said, okay, uh, yes, I mean, that's the law.

The law of Moses is very explicit in the Torah that any person caught in the act of adultery was subject to the death penalty.

And he could have appeased the political power of the Jewish people.

There's even a chance that even his own disciples might have felt like this might be the right move to do this right now.

If you truly are the Messiah and you want to come and bring Israel back to its glory and unify all the different people and factions under the nation of Israel and kick Rome out, this is a good way to do that.

This is a great way to show righteousness and fervor and standing firm in what is right.

You show them Jesus.

But instead, he didn't do that.

That wasn't at all what he did.

And in that moment, he just stoops down and starts writing with his finger.

The other thing that he could have done is just immediately said, No.

I forgive this woman, let her go, boom, and just let that be what it is.

And I guess in a way, they could have said he just doesn't uphold the law at all.

And therefore, that's part of the trap.

Or if he allows her to get executed, there were probably people who had been saying, But this is different.

This is a teaching like no other.

There's grace, there's mercy.

And the Pharisees have never, ever, ever led us to embrace the forgiveness and the grace and the mercy of God.

We've always lived in this fear that if we just mess up a little bit with the Torah, that we are condemned and we have to wait till we can offer a sacrifice with hopes that maybe, just maybe, just maybe, Yahweh might have mercy upon us.

But Jesus is different.

Jesus was kind of between either championing the execution of this woman and losing the message of the gospel with the people that he'd been preaching, or immediately treating it like it's no big deal and letting this woman go.

And for those who uphold the Torah to say he doesn't care about the law at all, he's a lawbreaker.

Then Jesus is brilliant, obviously, he's the Son of God, and he just stoops down and begins to write with his finger.

I've heard a lot of sermons where pastors and preachers speculate.

What was he doing there?

Probably my favorite one that I imagine is that what if one by one he began to write in the sand, in the dirt, a name of one of those men with rocks in their hands, and then a secret sin that they held on to.

And maybe he began with the oldest guy there, most likely the most respected of the men with stones in his hands, and he wrote his name down first, and then started listing his sins, and that maybe it was even visible to those men, and it took Jesus possibly doing something like that for them in that moment to actually lose their angry, condemning self-righteousness and drop the rock and walk away.

Really don't know what he did.

But we definitely know what he said.

Because as each of those men walked away, he stood up and he said, Where are those guys?

No one can not one person condemn you?

And she said, No one, Lord.

And he said, Then I don't either.

Go and sin no more.

This is radical.

Like I hope and pray that this lady walked away from there, not having just her physical life saved, but her spiritual life saved as well.

I hope and pray that it resulted in this moment of repentance and faith.

In my mind, I'm like, how could it not?

How could you not in that moment, literally facing death and humiliation and shame, suddenly walk away because of this one man with a new lease on life physically?

And I hope and pray that she did turn to him.

Jesus saved her physical life that day, but he also pointed her to something even bigger, and that was him.

Jesus is the only righteous judge, and he offers us new.

Life free from condemnation, free from shame, free from fear of punishment.

Jesus's Jesus' enemies used this woman as a pawn to trap him, to discredit him.

But Jesus flipped the script and instead pointed this woman to a loving, forgiving God who will replace the condemnation we deserve with life-changing mercy and grace and love.

Which brings me to one more passage, one more moment in Jesus' life.

The moment I want us to look at contains probably the most well-known, famous verse in the Bible, John 3.16.

I notice it's football season.

I notice there's still someone behind those goalposts almost every game I watch, holding John 3.16 up.

It's been like that since I've been alive, like as a kid watching football, John 3.16, the gospel in a nutshell.

But to set the context of that passage, one of the Pharisees named Nicodemus was so curious about Jesus.

And you could just sense that faith was birthing in him, but he just wasn't there yet.

Out of fear of being condemned and judged and crinoed by his fellow Pharisees, he waits till it's dark and he goes to meet Jesus.

And he talks of Jesus.

And Jesus explains to him that you must be born again.

And he starts to explain what that even means.

And in the midst of that explanation, Jesus said this to Nicodemus, explaining the gospel.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

For God did not send his son into the world to crino, to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Whoever believes in him is not crinod, is not condemned.

But whoever does not believe is condemned, is crinoed already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

And this is the crino, this is the judgment.

The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their works were evil.

I love this passage.

We so quickly stop at the end of verse 16, and there's so much greatness here.

In this passage, we have written here in God's Word exactly who Jesus is, exactly why he came, and exactly why some people do not believe.

Who is Jesus?

The one and only Son of God who came to die and rise again so that we may live forever with him.

That's who he is.

Why did he come to save us, to save people from their condemnation of unbelief?

He came to do for us the very same thing he did for the woman caught in adultery to save us from condemnation.

Why do some people not believe?

Why would they not accept this?

Why would they not say, cool, I'll sign me up for that?

Why?

Jesus says, this is the judgment, this is the cryno, this is the verdict.

Though the light has come, people have loved the darkness more.

And this is so true.

I don't know if you've thought that.

If you've placed your faith in Jesus, maybe you've thought this at times.

Once you've tasted and seen that the Lord is good, are you kind of like, how can people not embrace this and also taste this?

I know there's lots of reasons to doubt.

I understand I kind of a bit of a skeptic in the way I think myself, so I kind of understand all of that.

But even as you wrestle with those questions that you might have, when you understand, begin to really become convinced that there is a God, and that there's no way to explain this amazing design of the universe other than that there is a God who did it.

And then you begin to embrace this idea that He created each and every one of us, that He is intimately aware of every single strand of DNA that makes up our very bodies, that he knows our thoughts, that he's all-knowing.

When you start beginning to embrace these things, how could you not want the not guilty verdict of Jesus?

How could you not want to put your trust in him and say, I'll take it, I'll take all the grace, I'll take all the love, I'll take all the mercy?

And Jesus says, it's because so many people would rather stay in their darkness.

They'd rather still continue to do life their way instead of my way, rather than turn from the life that they're living and turn to me.

They'd rather stay there.

And that is why.

And it's kind of good to hear it from the very mouth of Jesus Himself.

And I believe that's important.

That's an important nuance.

Because that's why we're still here, guys, to continue to be in this world like Jesus was to that woman caught in adultery.

I must view every single person I encounter with no judgment because they are just like me, completely condemned, if not, for Jesus offering me life-saving grace.

That's every single living human being you could ever see or encounter.

That's true.

And I begin to wonder what it would be like if every single person that a follower of Jesus encounters would begin to look at life this way.

Begin to look at every single person through that lens of no judgment around us.

To begin to look at yourself and say, I'm not a person of greater value.

I'm not better because of what I believe and how I live and how I act.

I'm just saved.

I'm just redeemed.

I'm just adopted by it's the power of God, not anything I've done.

We begin to look at this this way, it changes the way you perceive others.

You begin to look at other people and say, they were created in the image of God.

No matter what how they're treating me, no matter what kind of actions they're living right now, no matter what their struggles, no matter how godless they might be, they're still created in the image of God.

And not only that, they are the actual motivation of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Every single person you see, they are the motivation of the crucifixion and the resurrection of the one who has saved you.

And we begin to look at every single person as the reason that Jesus died and rose from the grave.

It changes our perception of them.

And rather than wanting to judge and condemn and separate, instead, we begin to see them as someone who is just like us, a beggar looking for bread, and we could be the one that leads them to the bread, or at least try.

We could be the one that shines a light in their darkness.

We could be the one that offers them love and grace and mercy, just like Jesus did for us.

Living a life of no judgment results in unity in the body of Christ.

It results in unlimited opportunity to reach everyone.

And it results in you and I having a humble heart, a grateful heart, and a heart desiring to love others to the cross.

I could have thrown in one more passage.

It was a parable that Jesus taught.

It's in Luke 18, if you want to read it.

But it's a he actually talks about how there were two men that went to the temple to pray.

One was a Pharisee and one was a tax collector, which was considered the worst of the sinners.

Like those are the ones we were allowed to crino.

You can crino the tax collectors all day long.

Condemn them, judge them, separate yourself from them, have nothing to do with them.

They're the scum of the earth.

That was their perception back in the day.

Turns out Jesus had meals with them, asked one of them to follow him, went to eat with another one.

Jesus walked into those places with mercy and love and grace.

But in that parable, he talks about how the Pharisee prayed and he looked up to the heavens and he said, God, thank you that I'm not a sinner like that guy.

Thank you that I'm not a tax collector like that guy.

Thank you that I'm not, and you know, just kind of literally in talking to God, lowered another person and exalted himself.

And then God said, or Jesus said in the parable, the tax collector just couldn't even look up, look down, beat his chest, have mercy on me, a sinner, oh God.

Have mercy on me, a sinner, oh God.

We should never grow out of that.

We should never become spiritually mature where we don't feel that, in my opinion.

We should always be on this edge of this undeserved grace and mercy.

There's a famous CS C.

S.

Lewis quote.

He says, A cold, self-righteous man who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute.

That's pretty harsh.

A cold, self-righteous person who's always at church could be nearer to hell than even a prostitute.

There's absolute freedom in living a life of no judgment.

You don't have to play judge anymore.

And it includes yourself.

You don't have to judge yourself anymore.

You quit condemning yourself so much and others.

And instead embrace the grace and the amazingness of it and the transformative nature of it, and allow yourself to just be completely motivated by the love and the mercy and the kindness of our Savior.

I want to give you one more quote as we wind down.

I was actually listening to part of a sermon preached by Kyle Eidelman, just an hour and a half south of us down in Louisville.

He's been at uh Southeast Christian Church a long time.

And I love this quote.

I'll put it on the screen for you.

He said, religion hands out applications.

Jesus hands out invitations.

Church people can really struggle with this.

So let me say it plainly.

It's not your kingdom, it's not your party.

You don't get to decide who's invited and who isn't.

Isn't that awesome?

It's a little convicting, but it's also so freeing.

Everyone's invited.

At one point, Jesus was talking about this parable where this great banquet and the guests didn't show up.

The special invited guests didn't show up.

And so he's like, hey, go get more people.

Go to the highways and the byways and find the lame, find the sick, find anybody, and invite them to come.

Guys, that we're living that out right now.

That's our reality.

That's why you and I are here.

That's why this church and all of God's people are still here.

And Jesus hasn't returned yet in his power and the fulfillment of his kingdom, is because there are still some who have not turned to him.

There are still some, like the adulterous woman standing surrounded with men with stones in their hands that need to know the good news that there's a Savior.

And though none of us can ever deserve it, he offers complete, utter, permanent, eternal forgiveness and grace and mercy.

And it changes everything.

It changes us.

Here's a couple of next steps for us to consider before we sing again.

If you haven't yet, step out of your condemnation and into Jesus' salvation.

If you have yet to accept the complete forgiveness of your sins, and step out of that into complete permanent forgiveness.

Step into being an heir of Jesus Christ forever.

Do that today.

Turn to him.

Repent and turn to him today.

That's what he says to do.

Paul said, for anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

All you have to do is turn to him in faith right here, right now, and you are no longer condemned and will never, ever, ever be condemned by Jesus Christ.

The second step, if you are saved, determine right now to never condemn others, but to show them Jesus' love and grace.

Make a commitment that you're going to be like Jesus was to that adulterous woman, that you're going to be a dispenser of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that you will no longer make verdicts in your head when you see others, how they look, how they act, how they talk.

That you begin to see every single person you see as created in the image of God in desperate need of the sound same salvation that you have received by grace.

Let's ask God to help us live like that as we pray.

Will you bow with me?

Father, Lord, in this moment there might be someone here.

Lord, I thank you so much for your amazing love and grace and how it's changed my life.

And I never earned it.

I never deserved it ever, ever, ever.

I still don't.

Forgive me for when I try to earn it.

Forgive me when I try to deserve it.

Forgive me for trying to sometimes treat others like they need to do that.

Father, in this moment, there might be someone right here, right now.

They needed to hear this message of grace to know that you extend a hand to them saying, Neither do I condemn you.

I don't condemn you.

I offer you my love.

I offer you my forgiveness.

I offer you my salvation.

Lord, may they hear your voice and may they turn to you now.

Father, for those who would say, I've been saved by the grace of God.

Father, Lord, please remove from us our judgmentalism.

Help us to stop judging.

We're so bad to do that.

Help us to stop, oh God.

You tell us to not do it.

Help us to not do it.

Help us to have your eyes to see and your heart to offer grace and mercy to all those whom you've created around us.

We love you, Father.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.