Good morning, everyone.
Would you remain standing for the reading of God's Word?
Turn your Bibles or your bulletins to Matthew chapter 7.
Matthew chapter 7, we'll start in verse 1.
This is God's Word.
Judge not that you be not judged.
For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged.
And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye,
but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?
Or how can you say to your brother,
let me take 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.
This is God's Word.
Please be seated.
Do you pray with me?
Father in heaven, we have come into your house expecting you,
and we know that you are here.
You've been with us as we sing, as we give, as we greet one another,
doing spiritual things in our midst.
And we pray now that as we look at your Word,
that you would not stop,
but that you would all the more through the power of your Spirit work in our hearts,
in our church, in our families, in our marriages,
that you would be glorified,
and that Christ would be big and beautiful.
It's in his name that we pray.
Amen.
Just a quick introduction.
My name is Jonathan Clark.
I'm a local pastor here in Colorado Springs.
I grew up here in Colorado Springs.
I've been away for a while,
but I just recently moved back in April with my family.
I'm married to Caroline.
She's an artist in town,
and we have a little girl that God's entrusted to us.
She's three.
And so they're worshiping at another church for consistency for my daughter's sake.
But I'm here occasionally.
If this is your first time,
I'm not normally here at Cheyenne Mountain,
but I come occasionally,
so you'll see me around.
If you have been around a while,
then you've probably known me for a shorter or longer time.
I serve as a campus pastor with an organization called Reformed University Fellowship.
It's the campus ministry wing of our Presbyterian tradition.
So I'm at UCCS,
but also looking at other colleges around Colorado Springs.
And so it's great to be with you today on this Lord's Day
to open up the Bible and ponder it with you.
So I was this week...
...on the Internet.
You know, I spend a lot of time on the Internet
as I'm hanging around with college students
trying to discern and hear what they're thinking.
And I saw a video.
This video was of someone who double parked their car, right?
We've all seen it.
Somebody who takes up more lanes than they're supposed to.
And somebody else looks at this and says,
well, this is unjust.
And so they're criticizing it, right?
And very quickly,
the whole episode in the video
explodes from two people ignoring each other
to all of a sudden,
two complete strangers absolutely yelling at each other.
And you've probably seen something like this.
One person is mocking the other person.
One person is saying,
stay out of my business.
You don't understand, right?
And there's another person
who's recording, live streaming the whole situation, right?
And they're watching the whole thing.
They're watching this scene take place, right?
And so the person who double parked
is feeling wrongly judged.
And the critic is feeling the need to judge,
to assess at the very least.
And it's escalating.
And both are feeling superior.
Both are feeling vindicated in their position.
And I'm sure that, you know,
many of us are thinking,
well, you know, this would never happen, right?
Maybe you've seen a video like this.
Maybe you haven't.
But you know, there was another person
who was at work in this.
And it was me who's watching the video saying,
well, I would never,
I would never get caught up in this situation.
Look at these two fools
yelling at each other in a parking lot, right?
Thinking, oh man,
I would never, ever be caught in a situation
of yelling at a total stranger, right?
And so lots of criticism at the very least
at its very worst,
the word that Jesus asks us to focus on today,
judgment is happening in this moment.
One person is judging another parker.
The parker is judging the recorder
and then I'm judging the whole situation, right?
Well, as my black pastor in seminary would say
to this whole situation,
Jesus has a word for us.
If you found yourself like this,
and it's a sharp word
and it's a generous action, right?
Jesus today commands us
not to judge other humans,
but in so doing,
he saves judging hypocrites
by becoming judged for them.
Jesus commands us not to judge,
but then he saves judging hypocrites, right?
So look down at your text, if you will,
and you look at verse one.
Jesus is in the middle of his Sermon on the Mount,
which is Jesus' great exposition
and teaching on the law.
And he's telling how the Old Testament law
continues to have relevance
for the life of the Christian today, right?
And how the standard of holiness
is not lowered by Christ's coming,
but is actually elevated,
strikes to the very core of our hearts,
and pervades all of our society, right?
And he says here,
he says in these striking words
right from the get-go,
judge not that you be not judged, right?
For with the judgment you pronounce,
you will have measured against you, right?
Well, what's going on here?
What does Jesus mean?
Well, honestly, it's pretty straightforward.
Jesus is not necessarily saying anything
that's too hard for us to understand.
Jesus is saying here that no human being,
no person has the right or the responsibility
or even the ability to judge, jury,
and be executioner for another human being, right?
That no person has that responsibility.
No person has the right to declare the final verdict
for another human being, right?
That is alone God's role.
It is God's right to condemn.
It is God's right to not condemn, right?
And if you think about the opposite of this,
in Romans 4, Paul says that Abraham
is reckoned or counted as righteous.
And that word that Paul uses
is the Greek word for logizomai,
which means to declare something is true,
to declare that Paul or Abraham
is righteous by faith.
This is the opposite of what is happening here.
This judging is to declare unrighteous.
Unrighteous.
To judge, even to the very core
of who a human being is, right?
And so here, judging is snatching from God
the right and responsibility of final condemnation.
And in a sense, then,
it's to pretend to be God for a moment.
For a brief moment in time to say,
I know this world and this person
and this universe well enough
to declare this person's status, right?
It goes beyond what a person does or believes or says
and strikes to the core of this person, right?
And so if we sit in what's actually happening here,
we are quickly, throughout the book of Matthew,
placed with sort of the archetype,
the stereotype of this judgment,
and it is the Pharisees, right?
Jesus is constantly lambasting, attacking,
saying that you are the worst example
of this judgmental spirit.
Here are men who are so quick
to assess the spiritual status and social value,
compare it to their own,
and then say, you are wanting,
spiritually, socially, in every way,
that the Pharisees were some of the most vindictive
and judgmental people in Jesus' society, right?
To make a snap judgment,
to look at a person and say,
you can never be holy like we are.
Oh, you are spiritually inferior to me.
They would say things like,
oh, Lord, I am so thankful
that I am not like this tax collector.
Or to Jesus, Jesus,
do you know who you are eating with?
What kind of a person this is?
What they have done?
Does Jesus know?
They claimed to do often
what only God can do
and deliver the final verdict
over a person's dignity, value, and status.
Now, what does this have to do?
How does this apply to our day, right?
Well, I shouldn't have to spend too much time
because we all know this is true,
that we live in one of the most vindictive,
judgmental times in all of society, right?
That 21st century America
is full of this judgmental spirit.
Think about with me of a non-religious context,
perhaps a secular context.
Think with me about the reality,
the phenomenon that we know today
is cancel culture, right?
What is cancel culture?
Well, it's the ability for a group or a person
to eliminate a person's social standing
almost immediately, right?
Cancel culture is when a person or a group
can shun, shame, fire, derail a career
of a person almost overnight
for any little thing, right?
Cancel culture or call-out culture
is a giant social exercise in this judgment
to say you have no role in our society anymore.
You are done for, condemning a person
to social and even career death, right?
And we've all seen examples of this
where a tweet, a very old tweet possibly
or a new tweet can become unearthed
and immediately this person's career
is if not eliminated, set back decades
and they have to go into hiding, it seems, right?
Right?
And this happens everywhere from junior high schools,
middle schools to A-list actors, right?
This is the kind of judgment
that our world lives in, right?
But consider it's not just the non-Christian world
where this sort of thing happens, right?
It happens as much in the religious world
or in the Christian church, right?
So I hang out with college students
a good bit of my time
and I hang out with students
who are not Christians,
not walking with the Lord,
unchurched or de-churched.
And what is the number one complaint
both that I hear anecdotally
and the research says about Christians, right?
The number one reasons why someone would say
I'm not going to church with you
or I will not come to a faith event.
They say Christians are what?
Judgmental hypocrites, right?
They look at the church and they say
you say one thing but you do another
or I walk in the door
and I immediately fell judged, right?
And now whether or not there's validity to that
is a different question
but it's true that we live in churches,
we live in marriages and families
that can be incredibly judgmental places.
And it might be tempting for us to say
well that's the secular cancel culture
or no that's the fundamentalist church.
But like when you stick a magnifying in the sun
and let it burn a little bit until it gets hot,
I want to let the magnifying words of Jesus
to sit on our hearts until we squirm
under the gaze of Jesus' words, judge not.
A few weeks ago I went to Estes Park, Colorado
which is a big old tourist destination
if you've gone into the mountains at all.
And I was walking around Estes Park
on a busy weekend afternoon
and I was thinking about this text
and I was astonished at how quickly
I could look around me in Estes Park
and assess, nay, judge the people around me, right?
I would judge the people
who were in mountain yuppies, right?
Oh, look at those granola hippies here.
And then I would look at the Texas tourists
for ruining my Colorado mountains, right?
How I was perfectly capable
of judging the Florida license plate
for how they drove the mountain roads, right?
How I was perfectly capable
to judge someone
for what clothes they wore
in the mountains, right?
Incredible how our hearts
are so capable of this, right?
From parking jobs
to a person's politics,
from their sitcom taste
to their sexuality,
to declare a verdict
about someone's value
and even their eternal status, right?
And I think if you're honest with yourself,
if you sit in this,
you start to see,
oh my goodness,
I am the one
that Jesus is talking to, right?
Because Jesus' words here
challenge and alarm us
with the possibility
that I am the judgmental one
that Jesus is speaking to, right?
I'm rereading currently
The Lord of the Rings,
which is J.R.R. Tolkien's
just epic narrative
about the finding
and destruction of the one ring.
And Gandalf,
who is the wizard,
the kind of the spiritual father,
shepherd for this whole saga,
is telling Frodo,
who is the one
who has found the one ring
and it must destroy it.
He's telling the story
of how the ring has passed
from Sauron,
the great evil dictator
of the universe,
to Gollum,
the sniveling,
griping worm of a creature,
and then how it passes
to Frodo, right?
And he's talking about
how the Gollum,
when he finds the ring,
it slowly corrodes
and corrupts his soul, right?
And Frodo is disgusted by this,
and he declares
that Gollum is loathsome.
And you're imprinted
in your text
as Gandalf's next word
in your bulletin.
Gandalf says,
I think it is a sad story,
and it could have happened
to others,
even to some hobbits I know.
And Tolkien hits something
right there to say,
don't be so quick
to judge Gollum, Frodo.
You are just as capable
of the same corrosion
and destruction
that Gollum is.
And as the story continues,
we see that that happens
to Frodo gradually,
to where he eventually
claims the ring as his own, right?
That Frodo is perfectly capable
of the same corruption,
and therefore has no standing
to judge the creature Gollum.
Try this on.
When we go to a grocery store,
this is some of the,
go to a grocery store
that you don't normally go to.
I went to the Walmart
last week on Platt.
I'm not normally
at that grocery store.
And I saw a pig's head,
literally a head of a pig,
and I thought,
who buys that?
And I found myself
incredibly judgmental
of the people
who are in that Walmart, right?
You'll be astonished
when you go
to a different grocery store
how quickly you can size up
another human being,
stereotype them,
judge them for wearing clothes
too expensive
or not expensive enough.
Judge them
by what's in their cart
or by what's not
in their cart.
Outside of a store,
we assess people
by how little they're
on social media
or how much
they're on social media,
by how woke they are
or how anti-woke they are,
by how they think
about politics
and race,
little things,
big things.
We are a world
and a society
that is subconscious,
constantly,
impulsively judgmental, right?
Dr. Adam Moore,
he's a psychology professor
on social judgment thought
at the University of Edinburgh,
did several clinical studies
on this phenomenon.
He says this,
he says profound words,
he says,
we enjoy that feeling
of moral superiority
and the feeling
that we are a good person
or the one in the right.
It feels great
to be in that self-righteous place
where you stand
on your pedestal
and look down on others,
but he says,
it is not healthy.
So why is this judging
so easy for us?
Well,
this non-Christian professor
put the nail on the head.
Self-righteousness,
this self-righteous impulse
that is at work
in all of us
and the Bible
has a word for that.
Sin.
It is sin
that all of us
are this judgmental,
knee-flexed,
subconscious condemnation,
right?
And sin brings judgment,
the Bible tells us,
right?
Listen to what Jesus says,
judge not
that you be not judged.
Verse two,
for what,
with the judgment
you pronounce,
it will be,
you will be judged.
And with the measure
you use,
it will be measured
to you.
The standard
that you and I use
to assess
and ultimately condemn
another human being,
Jesus says,
will be meted out
back to you.
You will be judged.
That's in the passive voice,
which whenever there's
a passive voice
in the Bible,
often that is,
that God is the active agent
behind that.
God will judge us
based on how you judge
others,
right?
God assesses us
based on our own standards,
right?
Martin Lloyd-Jones,
who's an old British preacher,
writes a commentary
on the Sermon on the Mount
and he says of these two verses,
Matthew 7, 1 and 2,
that they are some
of the most alarming
and indicting verses
in the whole Bible.
And the longer you sit in it,
the longer it hounds us.
It condemns us
because we are a self-righteous,
judgmental people,
right?
And Jesus has a word for this.
If you skip down
to verse 5,
you hypocrites,
all of us,
Christians,
non-Christians,
conservatives,
liberals,
man,
woman,
child,
old,
all of us are the kind
of people who are guilty
of the vices
and the sins
that we judge in others.
And this hypocrisy
has the root
of self-righteousness,
of sinful condemnation
and error,
right?
It's the Pharisees' error
and it's our errors,
right?
And we should feel
the sting of it
because we are all sinners.
And this leads us
to this broken place
of saying,
what hope is there
for a person like me,
a judgmental sinner?
We are all condemned
to be judged
by each other
and ultimately judged
by the living God.
And when we find ourselves
in this place,
we must return,
friends,
to the very core,
the heartbeat
of the Christian message,
the gospel.
And it is this,
that God is a great Savior
who saves judgmental sinners
like you
and like me.
That the whole mission
of the Christ
who comes to earth
is to deliver us
from this mess
of judgmentalism
that we have created
from ourselves.
The message of the gospel,
the heart of the Christian good news
is even though you and I
are judgmental hypocrites,
Christ died to save
us from judgment,
our own and ultimately His,
right?
This is what the Bible says.
Yes,
I am the judging one
and God does not judge me
but places another one
to be judged in my place.
If you have a Bible,
turn to Matthew chapter 26.
Scroll ahead a couple of chapters
and Matthew 26
is when Jesus
has done His ministry,
His time has come,
He has been arrested,
He's now on trial,
He's innocent of the charges
but He's on a trumped up trial
for charges of blasphemy.
He claims that He is God
which was a punishable offense
by death.
Now He is God
so it's a false trial
but if it turns out to be true
then He deserves to die,
right?
And so look with me
at Matthew 26,
verse 65.
The high priest
is interrogating Jesus
and it says,
then the high priest
tore his robes
and said,
He has uttered blasphemy.
What further witnesses
do we need?
You have heard
His blasphemy.
Look at verse 66.
What is your judgment?
And they answered,
He deserves death.
The council and the people
cry out,
kill,
judge,
condemn,
destroy
this man.
Karl Barth
who is an amazing scholar
of the Bible.
He's not right on everything.
He's not right on everything
but he hits the nail
on the head with this.
This is a bit of a wordy quote
but it's beautiful.
It's written in your bulletin.
He writes this,
Those who are to be judged
are given space
and freedom
and power
to judge.
The judge
allows himself
to be judged.
The punishment
falls on the very one
on whom it ought
to fall
least of all
and not at all
on those
on whom it ought
to fall.
Jesus,
the judge,
the righteous one
who never wrongly judged
places himself
in the position
of being judged,
condemned,
and destroyed
by sinful hypocrites,
Pharisees.
He is judged
by them
even to death
even though
he has done
nothing wrong
to be judged.
And friends,
if that is true
2,000 years ago,
it is still true
for us today
as Cheyenne Mountain
Presbyterian Church.
Jesus,
with the most authority,
the most authorization
to judge
and condemn us
says,
No,
I will not judge
but I will be judged
in their place.
The judgment
that we deserve
falls on him.
the one who can only
rightly judge
does not exercise it
but is gracious,
merciful,
kind,
and generous
to you
and to me.
Judgmental hypocrites,
right?
The only non-hypocrite
in the history
of the world
suffered
and died
the judgmental
hypocrite's fate
so that hypocrites
like you and I
would escape judgment.
That is the good news
of the Christian message.
And friends,
that has the potential
to begin to dig us
out of
this judgmental mess
that we find ourselves
in our families,
in our marriages,
in our churches,
even in our society,
right?
We read earlier
he was crushed
for our iniquities.
The righteous
suffered for the unrighteous.
The judge is judged
in our place.
And that, friend,
is an undeserved gift.
It's a free mercy
that the good
God,
who is active
in our world,
gives us,
right?
That is the gospel.
And I think
it's incredibly compelling.
I think it's
incredibly beautiful.
It's more than just
intellectually plausible.
It's satisfying
to the great need
of our heart
and to our society
and to our families,
right?
It becomes hope
for a world
of hypocrites
like you and me.
And so what do we do forward?
Where does this leave us?
Well, it leaves us
right where
chapter 7
places us,
which is it forces us
to do radical
self-examination,
right?
Why do you see
the speck that is
in your brother's eye
but do not notice
the log that is
in your own eye?
Or how can you say
to your brother,
let me take the speck
out of your own eye
when there is a log
in your own eye,
right?
Jesus used an illustration
that has a rhetorical
question behind it,
and it's this.
Can you tell someone
to remove a splinter
or a speck of dust
from their eye
when there is a whole plank,
a two by four?
And those are the words
that Jesus is using
in your own eye.
Well, absolutely not.
It's impossible.
And just like a speck
is far worse,
a log is far,
a log in the eye
is far worse
than a speck of dust,
self-righteousness,
judgmentalism
is far worse
in your life
than any other issue
you may see
in another person's life.
And that the self-righteous
judgmental spirit
is the one thing
that is preventing you
from being able
to accurately see
around you, right?
And so the application
here for us
is to take
a hard look
at ourselves.
It means that
each of us
must be in consistent
patterns
and relationships
and liturgies
of self-examination,
of constant repentance,
of self-reflection.
There's an author
whom I respect greatly.
It's named Fleming Rutledge
and she says this,
every Christian
is summoned
to see him or herself
among the perpetrators
for whom Christ
has substituted himself.
That we must be people
who are daily,
weekly,
monthly,
examining our own hearts,
looking for the specks
in our own eye,
not snapping out,
searching for the errors
and logs in others, right?
And this self-respect
is especially important
when we come to a task
of speaking to another brother,
right?
Or a sister.
Notice,
Jesus doesn't say
never go to another person
and call out their sin.
He says just do hard work
on yourself first.
And this is so important
for those of us
who are in positions
of authority
or leadership
in our world, right?
And all of us
have that authority
in some ways or another.
Elders,
parents,
husbands,
peers.
If you are going to go
to your brother and sister
and say,
hey,
this needs work
in your life,
spend days
in prayer,
examining your own heart.
Spouses,
if you know of an error
in your husband
or your wife's life,
before you go and say
this needs to change,
spend days
looking to your own heart.
Roommates,
before you get on
your roommate
for cleaning the dishes again
or not picking up
their shoes at the door,
look at your own heart.
Where are there failures
of love in you, right?
I often tell
in premarital counseling,
which I do a lot
with college students,
that if you're going
to have a fight,
you have to go into it
saying,
I'm 51% of the problem.
I'm bringing more error
into this relationship
than you are, right?
If you have two people
who are willing to do this,
there can maybe
be reconciliation, right?
Parents,
this is so true for us.
As we're shepherding
young hearts,
as we're directing
young minds
to know and love the Lord,
we must be
constantly repenting.
I had to do it
this morning
with my daughter.
Here I am,
a preacher,
having to tell my daughter,
I'm sorry, honey,
I snapped at you.
Will you forgive me?
Constant repentance.
And this is true
for all of our lives,
neighbors,
co-workers,
classmates,
to be examining
ourselves more and more,
to be examining
for the specs, right?
And think with me,
if we were to create
cultures,
marriages,
families,
churches,
community,
home groups
that are animated
by this kind of
repentant
self-reflection,
what kind of a church
would we be?
If we,
Christians,
if Cheyenne Mountain
Presbyterian Church
was a church
known inside
and outside
as a church
that is a repentant,
self-examining community
that looks to the one
who was judged
in their place
and then responds
with self-examination
and repentance,
what kind of a model,
what kind of a good news,
what kind of a salt
and light contrast
would that provide
to a world
of condemnation
and judgment?
Suddenly,
I hope,
I trust that our peers
and our non-Christian friends
would say something's
different in this place
and we can say,
yes,
we are not a people
condemned.
We are a people
who know mercy.
Though we are hypocrites,
we serve a merciful God.
Husbands,
how are you?
Session,
how are you?
Wives,
how are you?
Children,
how are you repenting?
One of my favorite pastors,
he's a missionary theologian,
commenting on this passage,
writes,
he says,
the world does not need
a perfect eye,
but a consciously imperfect eye.
The world does not need
a perfect Cheyenne Mountain
Presbyterian church.
The world needs
a consciously repenting,
imperfect Cheyenne Mountain
Presbyterian church.
That is what Jesus
is getting at here.
That means as long
as we are a world
full of logs and specks,
we are in this
conscious,
vicious cycle.
But as long
as we are people
who are aware
that we are imperfect
and repentant
and looking to the judge
judged in our place,
then there can be hope.
Then there can be
goodness and sweetness,
right?
And so this passage
does not command you
to go out
and beat you up
and say,
stop judging others.
No.
That would abuse us all.
That would beat us up.
But rather,
as John Owen,
the great pastor
of mortification,
says when he talks
about killing sin,
he says the only effective
and long-term way
to kill sin
is to not focus
on our sin,
not focus on the brokenness,
but to focus on Jesus.
Focus on his loveliness.
Focus on,
in this text,
the judge judged
in your place.
how sweet
and compelling
and how generous
and how merciful
that is
to marvel
at the anti-hypocrite
punished
for your hypocrisy.
And if that,
when that,
as that is sweet
to your heart,
that becomes the balm,
the healing
for our judgmental
and your judgmental world.
So don't try
to not be a judgy person.
Look to the one
who was judged
in your place
moment by moment,
hour by hour,
and be ever humbled
by that
and refreshed
by that good news.
Would you pray with me?
Father in heaven,
your word cuts
to the core
as it always does.
We are struck,
I'm struck
by my desperate need
for you to be gracious
to us all,
that we live
in a time
and in a world
that is full
of judgment,
wrongly placed judgment,
and that you alone
are our hope.
Thank you, Lord.
Thank you, Christ,
that you were indeed
judged in our place.
You received
the condemnation
that we deserve
and we receive
the acceptance
and the mercy
that we don't deserve.
I pray for each
heart in here,
maybe people
who have heard it
for a million times
or for the first,
that it would sink
in deep
and that you would
minister to us
and send us out
more Christ-like
through your word.
That it's in Christ's
name we pray.
Amen.