Stop Criticizing

Matthew 7:1-6

     This morning I want to encourage you if you will, with me, to turn in your Bible to Matthew, chapter 7.  Matthew 7, beginning at verse 1.  "Judge not, that ye be not judged.  For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye measure, it shall be measured to you again.  And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?  Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?  Thou hypocrite, first cast the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.  Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and lacerate you."

     Now, this is a fascinating portion of Scripture, a Scripture that is frequently referred to and oft quoted, and yet sometimes not really put together in a total package as the Lord, I believe, intended for it to be.  Let me give you a little background as we approach it.  In the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord has touched on all of the areas of a believer's life, in a wonderful and marvelous summation of all of the areas of truth related to living within the kingdom.  We have seen Christ meet us at every point.

     He began with our perspective on self in the Beatitudes, with our perspective on the world in the statements on salt and light, with our perspectives on the Word of God as He talked about the law and the fact that it was immutable and unchanging, our perspective on the moral law or holiness as He discussed the fact that we are to have an inward commitment as well as an external one.

     He discussed our religious activity -- giving, praying, fasting.  He discussed our perspective, as we have just recently seen, on money and possessions, material goods.  And now he comes to a text that deals with our relations with other people.  We've talked about our relations to ourselves, to God, to His Word, to the world, our relations to religious activity, our relations to the morality of the time and what God wants, and now to human relationships, right relationships.  And this is a tremendous passage that you'll be looking at. 

     Now, as in all the other elements of the Sermon on the Mount, the perspective here is given in contrast to the view of the scribes and the Pharisees.  They were the existing religious influence of the time, and, against the background of their perspective, the Lord presents the truth.  They came along, and their view of life was to be proud, and the Beatitudes were to be humble.  They were a part of the system.  Christ said that we are to be salt and light to the system. 

     They had denied the Word of God and established their own.  Christ reestablished the affirmation of His Word and His Word alone.  They believed only in an external morality.  Christ brought about an internal morality.  They acted out their religious activities of giving, praying and fasting in a hypocritical, superficial way, and the Lord said it has to be from the heart.  They were preoccupied with money and possessions, and the Lord says you are not so to be, but with the kingdom. 

     And they were very involved in wrongful human relationships, and the Lord sets it right here.  And in so contrasting Himself with them, He is unmasking the inadequacy of human religion, and reaffirming the fact that true religion comes only from God.  The last area, then, of His comparison, is this area, in chapter 7, of human relations.  And then from there He goes to sum up and finalize His message.

     Now, the area of human relations goes all the way through verse 12, but we're only going to be considering the first six this morning, and we'll get to the second section, the second six verses, next time.  But suffice it to say at this point that the Pharisees were so proud and so self-styled and so self-righteous and so smug and so convinced of their own superiority that one of the natural results of that was that they became totally condemning and judgmental of everybody else.

     I mean, any time a person, a man or a woman, invents a system of morality, they then become the judge that sits on the throne of that system and determines whether anybody else qualifies or not, and that's exactly what happened in the Pharisees' case.  And so they became oppressively judgmental of other people.  They condemned and criticized.  They were censorious.  They were unmerciful and forgiving, unkind, lacking grace, in their constant, carping criticism of everybody who didn't come up to their own standard.

     Jesus said to them in John, chapter 7, verse 24, "Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment."  Because it was their habit to judge in a very superficial manner.  Also in Luke 16, the Bible tells us in verses 14 and 15 that the Pharisees were covetous, and they heard all these things and were scoffing at Him, that is, at Christ, and He said to them, "You are they who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts, and that which is highly esteemed among men is an abomination to God."

     In other words, you think you've got the answers.  You think you've got the system.  You think you're the judges.  But you're wrong.  Their judgment was inevitably the reverse of God's judgment.  For example, in the classic illustration of this problem, in Luke 18, it says in verse 9, "And Jesus spoke this parable unto certain who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others." 

     Now, that's the Pharisees.  They trusted in themselves.  They put all their confidence in their own self-righteousness.  And because they had set their own standard, and they were the standard, and because of their pride and egotism, everybody else they looked down upon, they despised, they hated. 

     And so the Lord confronts them with this parable.  "Two men went to the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector."  Now, from a Pharisee's viewpoint, a tax collector was the most wretched, rotten, vile person in human society, because he would be a traitor among the Jewish people who had aligned himself with the Romans to collect taxes on the behalf of Rome, and for all intents and purposes to rip off the Jewish population in doing it.  He was a traitor of the first order.

     And these two went into the temple to pray.  "And the Pharisee stood and prayed with himself, God, I thank you that I am not as other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector."  You notice, the Pharisee prayed with himself.  The Pharisee was not interested in associating with anybody, because nobody came up to his level.  So he went off to a place where he stood alone and apart, to demonstrate his self-righteousness as being unattained by any other person.  And he said, "I'm so thankful I'm not like that vile tax collector.  I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess."  And the tax collector over in the corner was beating upon his breast and saying, "God be merciful to me a sinner."  And Jesus said that tax collector went home justified and not that Pharisee. 

     In other words, they made judgments, but their judgments were wrong.  They sat as condemning, critical judges of other people.  This is the one thing that marked their relations with others:  a judgmental, condemning attitude.  And, frankly, folks, it belied their claim to be citizens of God's kingdom.  They couldn't be and be that kind of person.  And so the Lord, in recognizing this particular problem, speaks to this issue.

     Now, in Matthew, chapter 7, verses 1 to 12, you have the sum of teaching in the Sermon on the Mount relative to human relations.  You might not think you could sum up all there is on human relations in 12 verses, and I suppose a man couldn't, but Jesus can.  I mean, there are books on behavioral psychology ad infinitum, ad nauseum, trying to figure out how to coordinate human relations.  Jesus says more in 12 verses than all of them put together.  And He has an amazing way of summing up the whole world of human relationships in very simple terms, because He sees the whole come together.

     Now, in this 12-verse section, you have, first of all, in terms of how we are to act with one another, how we are to deal with one another, what we are not to do, that's verses 1 to 6, and then what we are to do, verses 7 to 12.  First a negative and then a positive.  And the sum of the two is enough to govern all our human relations.  If you want to know how to act in your family or on your job or in your neighborhood or in your recreation, or you want to know how to deal with people in business, this is the sum of it all.  The negative and then the positive.

     Now, for this morning, we're going to look at the negative, what not to do, verses 1 to 6, and the principle appears in verse 1.  Note it.  "Judge not."  Now, you can stop there.  That's the principle.  Don't judge.  Now, you say, "Well, you can't reduce all of human relations down to that."  Oh, yes, you can, from the negative, as we shall see as we move along.  Don't judge. 

     Now, that sounds so simplistic.  Don't judge.  And you hear people throw that around.  "Judge not, lest ye be judged."  I've heard that.  "Who are you to judge?" 

     Now, there are many people who've misunderstood this.  Tolstoy, for example, the Russian novelist, said, "Christ here totally forbids the human institution of any law courts."  Now, that is a gross misunderstanding of this.  But there are other people who equally misunderstand it, only with another aberration.  They say, "We should never criticize.  We should never condemn anybody for anything.  We should never evaluate anything at all.  We don't want to judge, lest we should be judged." 

     And that phrase sort of fits our time, I think.  Because we live in an age when the wrong use of "judge not" would find a ready audience.  Our time hates theology.  Our time hates dogma.  Our time resists doctrine.  Our time doesn't like convictions.  People speak about love, and they speak about compromise.  They speak about ecumenism.  They speak about unity, anything to get everybody together.  And somebody who talks about doctrine or dogma or convictions is generally unpopular in many circles.

     I know this week we received a phone call from a church.  They wanted to know if we had a young man who might be interested in candidating for their pulpit, and they said, "We want someone who will teach holiness, not doctrine."  Holiness and not doctrine.  There is a resistance to any conviction.  Our time dislikes strong men, even though I think we're waking up to the fact that we could use a few.  Our time dislikes men with convictions, who speak up, who confront society, who disturb the status quo, men who know what they believe and why they believe it and are not intimidated about saying it.  Such men today are branded as troublemakers.  They're branded as controversial.

     I received a book this week, and someone was writing in the book.  They wanted me to review the manuscript of it.  And basically the book says the one thing we've got to eliminate in Christianity is doctrine, and we've got to go all out for love and fellowship, because doctrine is dividing us, and people who want to always talk about doctrine are the dividing ones in the body of Christ.  And that was the thesis of the whole book.

     But, you know, as you go back, if you have any sense of perspective in church history, you know there have been times in history, the history of the church, when men were praised for being men of conviction.  They were praised for being men of principle, men of standards, men of dogma.  Frankly, there wouldn't have even been a reformation if there hadn't been men like that.  But today such men are difficult, non-cooperative, self-styled, unloving.  And the man who is praised is the compromiser.

     And so some people have taken "judge not" and just fit it into the mentality of the time.  But the Lord is not condemning law courts.  I mean, the Bible instituted that.  The principle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is based upon a law court, and Romans 13 affirms the right for a nation to rule its people.  And the Bible is not condemning any kind of judging or discriminating.  The Bible tells us, as believers, that we must discern.  Right?  That we must know the truth from the falsehood.

     And the whole of the Sermon on the Mount is predicated on a clear understanding of the distinction between true religion and false, between hypocrisy and reality.  We're not to be undiscriminating.  We're not to be blind.  We're not to be flabby sentimentalists.  For example, look at verse 6.  it says, "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine."  Now, if you're not going to do that, you're going to find out -- have to find out who the hogs and dogs are so you know not to give them that.  There must be discrimination.

     Look at verse 15.  "Beware of false prophets who come in sheep's clothing."  Now, if you only perceive things superficially, you'll see the sheep's clothing and never know the wolf that's under there.  There must be discernment.  There must be judging, or we don't know the false prophets.  We don't know the dogs.  We don't know the swine that we're to avoid.

     So in the very passage itself we are told to test, discriminate, evaluate between the true and the false.  We have law courts to do that.  The church, for example, in the same Gospel of Matthew, is told to confront a sinning brother in chapter 18, and to confront that brother boldly, forthrightly about his sinfulness, and to make it a matter of public knowledge if he doesn't repent.  So we are not flabby and soft in obedience to Scripture.  Scripture calls us to discern.

     Paul says in Galatians 1, if somebody comes and preaches another gospel, let him be accursed.  John says, if anybody comes and talks about a Christ other than the Christ of the Bible, don't receive him into your house.  Don't even bid him godspeed, or you're a partaker of his evil deed.  We are told to remove from our midst those who are sinning as leaven that leavens the lump, in I Corinthians 5.  Hymenaeus and Alexander were put out of the church because of the corruptive influence they had upon it.

     So all throughout the Bible we are commanded to discern, to try the spirits, to have our senses exercised to know the difference between good and evil, says Hebrews 5:14.  Now, having said that, then, we look at "Judge not."  We know it doesn't mean that we're not to discriminate between truth and error.  I mean, that's infantile.  It is a child, according to Ephesians 4, that doesn't know the difference between good and evil, that becomes victimized and prey to Satan's cunning craftiness because of an inability to discern.  We must discern.  We must discriminate.  We must evaluate.  There are things we must judge.  That's not what the Lord's talking about.

     What is He talking about?  What He's talking about is the critical, judgmental, condemning, self-righteous egotism of the Pharisees.  They weren't criticizing people because of sin.  They were criticizing them because of their personality, their character, their weaknesses, their frailties, perhaps the way they looked or the way they dressed or the fact that they didn't do the things the way they did them.  They were criticizing their motives, which they couldn't see or perceive anyway in their humanness.  You don't know why a person does what he does.

     To go around saying, "Well, we should love everybody and never judge anybody," that isn't what the Lord is saying.  In fact, in Leviticus 19:17, it says this.  "Thou shalt not hate thy brother."  Thou shalt not hate thy brother?  What do you mean?  "Thou shalt in any case rebuke they neighbor and not allow sin on him."  In other words, to allow him to sin is to hate him, not to love him.  So, if you see, sin is love that makes a change.  It is love that demands a repentance.  People say, "Oh, I don't want to say anything."  We just love everybody.  No, when you find sin and you tolerate it, you are hating your brother, not loving him.  It is love that confronts.  It is hate that ignores a fault and a sin and lets a person go in that path.

     Jesus expressed such evaluation.  He condemned repeatedly.  He judged, He evaluated, He criticized.  He unmasked and stripped naked the Pharisees in Matthew 23.  we're not talking about that.  We're talking about the ugly, self-righteous, judgmental, critical spirit of the Pharisees, and not only the Pharisees, but a lot of other folks had the same problem, and we fight it, as well, even today.  We're not shirking church discipline.  But we are talking about that personal critical spirit. 

     So if you want an easy translation of what it says in verse 1, it says, "Stop criticizing."  Stop criticizing.  Who are you to criticize other people?  That's the issue.  We must judge.  We must evaluate.  Romans 16:17 says, "We must mark them that cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which we've learned and avoid them."  We must make doctrinal distinctions, and we must mark the people who offend that doctrine, and we must avoid those people.  We can't all get together.  We must make distinctions.  And that judgment must begin, says, Peter, at the house of God.  We have a right to judge righteous judgment.  John 7:24.  But not the carping criticism of the Pharisees.  And that is essentially what He's saying.

     You see, the word "judge" here is the word krino, and it's translated at least 15 different ways potentially, or even 20 different ways, it has such a broad meaning.  And so we must see the context to get its meaning.  And as we look at the context, it's a contrast with the Pharisees all through the sermon.  As we look at the Biblical context, we know He's not forbidding all judgment, because He talks in so many other places of the necessity of that kind of judgment. 

     But we're not to judge people's motives.  We're not to condemn them because they don't look like we think they ought to look or they don't act or talk like we think they ought to talk or act.  They don't come up to our supposed self-righteous standard.  We have no business doing that.  That is forbidden.  Romans 14:13 succinctly puts it, when it says, "Let us not, therefore, judge one another anymore."  Stop doing that.  Stop criticizing.

     The Bible is very clear about the kind of judging we're not to do.  In the first place, we're not to do some official kind of judging.  Do you remember when we studied back in chapter 5, eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth, and we said that that is a legal prescription, not one for personal relationships?  That's for the law courts, and you have no right to carry those things out.  There's no place in the Bible for personal vengeance.  We cannot make official or vengeful judgments.

     Secondly, the Bible forbids hasty judgments.  He that answereth a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame until him, says Proverbs 18:13.  The Bible forbids us from making great judgments on less than full knowledge and facts, to make some hasty judgment. 

     I always think about a story I told you a few years ago.  Paul Gray was in the tape room.  He was looking out the window, and he saw a fellow halfway into the trash bin, where all the tape materials and things that are no good or aren't used are thrown in the trash bin.  And he was looking out the window, and down in the trash bin was a couple of feet sticking out of the top.  And all of a sudden the guy came out, and he had in his hand a tape. 

     He put the tape in his pocket, and he came upstairs about ten minutes later, and he says, "I got a defective tape when I sent for this tape, and I'd like to replace it with a good one."  And Paul had seen the whole incident, and he said to him, "Are you sure?"  He wanted to give him an opportunity to confess.  "You sure you want a tape to replace that tape?"  "Yes, I want to listen to this tape.  Boy, I've been the series and the Lord's blessing me and I want to listen to this tape." 

     Oh, and Paul was really getting upset.  "Are you sure you want this tape?"  "Yes, I want the tape."  And finally he went over to get him the tape and he came back and he said, "I just can't give you this tape.  I want you to know I was looking out that window and I saw everything you did.  I saw you go in there and get that old tape in there and come up and then ask for an exchange." 

     And he smiled and he said, "Oh," he said, "no, no."  He said, "I was -- I've been here all day helping pastors move to new offices, and I brought that tape with me from home, and I had it in my pocket, and when I was dumping their trash it fell out of my pocket, and I just put it back in."  Hasty judgment.  One of the reasons why we're not so hot at this process is because we don't always have full information.  We don't always see what we think we see. 

     We are not to make an official judgment.  We are not to make a hasty judgment.  We're not to make unwarranted judgments, or undeserved judgments, such as in Colossians when they were judging the believers for not keeping a new moon or a feast or a Sabbath day, and those things had already been abolished.  We're not to set up some human standards, some of our own little codes, and then if people don't live up to our little non-Biblical codes put them in another category spiritually. 

     We're not to make unjust judgments, like the judges in the northern kingdom of Israel made.  They were unjust judges who took bribes.  We're not to make those kind of judgments.  We're not to make unmerciful judgments, where we're unrelenting and persistent and we never let up, and we just keep criticizing and criticizing and criticizing.  That's even more than God does, for God is rich in what?  Mercy.

     And what the Lord here is forbidding is that officious, hasty, unwarranted, unjust, unmerciful condemnation that is spawned by self-righteous pride.  We're not to do that.  And then, worst of all, after we've made that judgment in our heart, we go tell people about it and we become a tale bearer or a gossiper.  So we're not to do that.

     He gives three reasons why not.  And I'm going to go through these rapidly, so hang on to your seat.  Number one, to make that kind of a judgment manifests an erroneous view of God, verse 1.  An erroneous view of God.  "Judge not, that ye be not judged."  And He simply reminds them that they are not the final court.  You do this, and you will be judged.  Have you forgotten that you are not God?  That is precisely the bottom line in this sin.  To judge other people, their motives and so forth, is to play God.  It is to usurp the divine position.

     John 5 tells us that judgment belongs to God, and He's committed that judgment to the Son, and that's the extent of it, folks.  We are not, at this particular time, to sit in judgment.  There will be a time millennially when there will be a joining together with the Lord as He reigns, and we will carry out some of His rule and judgment, the Bible says.  But at this time and for now, we have no right to judge.  We literally blaspheme God by usurping His proper place.

     Think of it that way.  Every time you sit in judgment on someone, every time you criticize their motives, or every time you think you have a right to make an evaluation, you're playing God.  Every time you carry out vengeance or a vendetta or you get even on your own, you are playing God.  Every time you pass sentence on someone arbitrarily, you're playing God.

     Now, it isn't true if there's an obvious sin.  It isn't true if you follow the principle of Biblical judgment, which is always with two or three what?  Witnesses.  It is when you set yourself up as the authority and you're going to call all the shots, and you're going to determine who fits and who makes the standard.  And, in so doing, you've taken God's seat.

     And Romans 14:4 says who are you to do that?  Who do you think you are?  Listen to what Paul's saying.  "Who are you that judges another man's servant?"  In other words, that person is God's servant.  That's the analogy.  To his own master he'll stand or fall.  God's able to make that determination.

     In I Corinthians, chapter 4, the apostle Paul says, in verse 3, a simple thing.  "With me it's a very small thing that I would be judged of you or of men's judgment."  That's a small issue with me.  "For I don't know anything against myself, yet am I not hereby justified.  He that judges me is the Lord.  Therefore, judge nothing before the time."  Let God evaluate my ministry.

     Oh, we sit in judgment on other people's ministries and other people's teaching and other people's life and other people's attitudes, and we do this all the time.  To me, I hear Jesus saying, "If you will eliminate this, you will literally dramatically alter and transform all human relations."  Just stop judging each other, criticizing.

     In James, chapter 4, in verses 11 and 12, another word that speaks directly to this, "Speak not evil one of another, brethren.  He that speaketh evil of his brother and judges his brother speaks evil of the law and judges the law.  But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge."  Why don't you let God's law do its work?  You can't set yourself up as the judge, verse 12 says, "For there is one lawgiver who is able to save and destroy, and who are you that judges?"  In other words, you're usurping God's role.  You're setting yourself above the law, as the judge of the law, rather than one who is subject to it.

     Every time you criticize somebody because they don't do something the way you think it ought be done, or because you think you've figured out their motive, you pass judgment and set yourself up as God.  Listen to what one writer said, "Judge not.  The workings of his brain and of his heart thou cannot see.  What looks to thy dim eyes a stain, in God's pure light may only be a scar brought from some well-won field where thou wouldst only faint and yield."  Don't play Go