The Sermon on the Mount XVI

Subtitle:  Revealing Areas that are Pitfalls for Hypocrisy III

Matthew 7:1-6.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on April 7, 2024.

We are going to look at the second area that is a pitfall for hypocrisy in our life today.  It is in the area of relationships with other people, particularly difficult people. 

Even when we hold people in higher esteem than things (see the last two sermons in this series), there are certain people that we have trouble loving, or even getting along with them.  This area of how we deal with difficult people in our life can set us up for becoming hypocritical.

Let’s look at our passage.

In our relationship with people (v. 1-6)

Most people in the world are very familiar with the first two words of Matthew 7:1.  They can quote these two words far quicker than John 3:16.  “Judge not!”  Or, a loose paraphrase, “Don’t be judging me!”  Of course, this is not the whole sentence, and the sentence separated from the context can be misleading.

Think about when you were a kid.  If you selectively picked words out of what your parents said, and pretended like that is what they said, would they be happy with that?  Parent:  “Son, under no circumstances are you to go to the party at Bobby’s house.  I know that his parents are gone for the weekend.”  Son thinks to himself.  “hmm.  Dad said “go to the party at Bobby’s house!”  No parent is going to accept that kind of selective hearing.  The son will be in trouble.  This is what many do with the Bible when they take those first two words as a shield for all manner of sins.  “Don’t judge me!”

However, this is not exactly what Jesus is getting at, and the rest of the verses make this abundantly clear.  Jesus gives us a maxim, or pithy saying, that is very general, but it gets you thinking.  Notice that the rest of the verse says, “Judge not…that you be not judged.”    There is a connection here between the first judgment and a second judgment that will come later.  The emphasis is not on a blanket statement of never making a judgment.  Rather, it is an emphasis your judgment being directly connected to a judgment that will come later.   It is better to see this as a strong warning that cannot be separated from the consequence of being judged yourself.  It calls for us to look down the road at how my current judgment of a person could affect my own judgment.

It's purpose is not to create a world where we never make judgments, but rather a world in which we are all very careful in the judgments that we do make.  It is sort of like a sign that says, “Road closed, bridge out ahead.”  Many people who take the time to read that sign will go a different route and save themselves a lot of time.  However, another person may read that sign and drive on by it, not because they ignored the sign, but because they considered it and recognized that their house is on this side of the bridge.  It is okay for them to drive by the sign.  Yet, notice that they will have taken the time to consider the sign and the warning it was giving.

Verse 2 drives home this point of a consequential judgment, which is what Jesus is really getting at.  Essentially, he tells us that we will receive back the kind of judgment and the measure of judgment that we give to others.  Thus, if you are tough in your judgments of others and you do it a lot, then expect a lot of tough judgments coming back your way.

This begs the question.  Just who is this future judge that Jesus has in mind?  We might imagine that he is simply saying that we should be judgmental to others so that they will not be judgmental towards us.  However, our life experience tells us that this is not how it generally works.  No matter how well you do something, there will be people who like it and people who don’t like it.   People’s judgments of you often have nothing to do with how you have judged them or others. 

Jesus is talking about God judging us, whether His temporal judgments during our life, or His eternal judgment at the end of our life.  Be careful how you judge people because you are going to receive from God the same kind of judgment, and in the same measures, that you gave to others.  Can you survive that?

This does not mean that we can cause God to judge that our sin is okay by not judging the sin of others in our life.  However, this ties to his statement, “Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.”  He doesn’t mean from others, but from God.  Of course, cursed are the unmerciful for they shall not receive mercy.

So he is concerned with how we judge and our quickness to do so.  We are not being wise and are not carefully thinking through what God might think about this.

In verses 3 to 5, we see that Jesus does not intend for us never to judge the actions of a person.  He is rather concerned with our hypocritical tendency never to judge ourselves the way we judge others.

I have actually had a co-worker come up to me and ask me to get a wood chip out of their eye.  He was working with a chainsaw, and a chip landed between his eyelid and eyeball.  There was no damage, but the eye was extremely aggravated, and he had been trying to remove it by himself for a while.   It was large enough that I was able to sweep it out with my finger.  I still remember his sigh of relief when I got it out.

This illustration of specks and planks that Jesus gives are actually about sins and faults that we may see in one another.  They are not good (literally or metaphorically), and life is better when they are removed.  Yet, we can be guilty of having great mercy, and seeing the best motivations, in all that we do, and then having no mercy for others (at least for certain others that we don’t like).

You may be correct in your judgment that they have a fault, or a sin, in their eye.  However, you could be overlooking the fact that you have something much worse going on in  your own eye (life).  This does present a comical image of a guy who has a board sticking out of his eye and telling his brother that he has a speck in his eye.  “Hey, let me fix that speck for you!”

Jesus speaks about our motivation.  “Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?”  What is going on in your heart and life that you spend a lot of your time judging the condition of others, but you don’t even take a second to consider bigger issues in your own life?  If we took just one second to consider our own faults and sins, it might make us a different person.

He also touches on the audacity of it.  “Or how can  you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye?”  Yeah, just how are you able to justify such hypocrisy?  Don’t you know that God sees your poor job of acting righteous?

Only a person who has cleared their own eye (or asked another to help them do it) can help another person clear theirs.  First of all, you can’t see clearly to fix someone’s speck when  you have a plank in your own eye.  Even if you genuinely wanted to help, you would only make things worse.  The power of having dealt with your own sin is that it helps you to be far more sensitive and careful towards others, instead of harsh and uncaring.

Jesus is not leading up to saying that we should never judge.  He is actually leading up to saying that we should spend time on fixing ourselves first, and then we will be able to rightly help our brother.  That will end up being a way that pleases God instead of bringing down His judgment upon us.

Verse 6 may look like it is unrelated, if you don’t look closely.  Even when you clear your own eye so that you can help your neighbor, you still need wisdom.  You may have a perfectly clear eye, have helped a thousand people clear their eyes.  You may even be a professional doctor of getting specks out of eyes.  But, the other person may not be interested in you removing their speck.  In fact, they may not agree that they have a speck.  Perhaps, they simply don’t like you and don’t want you poking and prodding in their eye.  We need the wisdom of God that is supplied by the Holy Spirit in our life.

Jesus uses the images of dogs and  swine.  Dogs represented people who had given themselves over to wickedness.  They are people who give no thought to God and His ways.  Instead, they love to do the opposite.  Swine were connected to Gentiles who were separated from God.  These are both pictures of the spiritual state of individuals who surely have many specks and planks in their eye.  Yes, they need them removed.  However, they won’t take kindly to it.  They will end up trampling you if you aren’t careful.  If a person is not ready to be helped, whether that is a lost person hearing the gospel, or a Christian brother who is offended and doesn’t want our help, then we should back off and pray for them.

Notice that he pictures it as throwing holy things to dogs.  The holy thing is helping a brother or sister remove moral specks or even character specks in their life.  Holy places require special caution.  When you are going to meddle in the spiritual life of a person, always remember that this is a place that God is working on them.  You represent a holy God who is wanting to help them become holy.  It is a holy work.  You may want to remove your shoes and tread lightly.  This is God’s work and you can help him only by being sensitive to that.

A follower of Christ should be able to help others because they have been working on themselves, and they are being careful to be led by God.

Let me close by dealing with Jesus referring to some people as dogs and swine.  We can be quick to be offended, but he is not saying that people are born dogs/swine, and will always be such.  Similar to the parable of the soils, the point is not that we are stuck in categories.  Rather, that people may be ready, they may not be ready.  They may be repentant, or they may be given over to sin at the moment.  There is a timing of God that all people who want to help others would do good to heed.  Wait for it.  Pray for it.  In fact, you may not be the one who God uses to help them remove the speck.  However, you have still helped them by being a person who prayed for them, and were careful not to injure them through insensitivity to your own sin and insensitivity to their readiness to receive help.

May God help us to judge carefully and have His heart of love for others.

Pitfalls for Hypocrisy audio