Judgment in the Kingdom

Morning, church again. If you are new, my name is Mike Laramee. I’m sure many of you already knew that already, so there will be a quiz later on. I am a member of the preaching team here at Eastgate Church. Today is the last day of Pastor Gary’s vacation, so you’ll be happy to know that he’s planning on being here next week.

He’ll be here through the office all this week, so we pray that he had a restful and refreshing vacation with his family out at the beach. So today is Father’s Day. So happy Father’s Day to all your fathers out there. And, you know, being a dad is one of the greatest things that I think I ever did. You know, I.

It’s one of those things that just resonates with me. I mean, it’s, you know, your children are pieces of your heart that live outside of your body. You know, they’re just, you know, they’ll always be your kids. And it’s a. You know, I got kind of sappy watching that video, too, as I watched all the.

All the dads there. So happy Father’s Day to you. Whether you’ve been a good dad or you’re still working on it, you, you know, happy Father’s Day. I’m glad you are here. Now, today we’re continuing our sermon series entitled Kingdom Living.

We’re in episode 12. Can you believe it? 12 episodes so far in Kingdom Living. And this is that expositional study that we’ve been doing on Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount that we find in Matthew 5, 7. And again, you’ve heard this every week.

I’m just going to repeat it, that this has been the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest preacher who ever lived, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Now, does our country right now feel more polarized than it ever has in the past? You know, at opposite ends, and people are just at each other’s throats, you know, it sure seems so, especially politically. And if you watch the news in the last week, it’s been very disturbing on many fronts, right, to watch all this stuff happening. You know, many historians, though, think that the last time that the United States was mostly in agreement with was a period of time that they called the Era of Good Feelings.

The era of Good feelings was from 1817 to 1825. Yeah, that’s 200 years ago during the Monroe administration. It was this period of nationalism after the War of 1812, where we had political parties, but they weren’t at each other’s throats, and they mostly agreed with each other as to what the future direction of the country would look like. But you know, that only lasted about eight years. So if you know your history, you know that before that time, even during the time of the American Revolution, we were kind of at our throats already, right?

There was about one third of the people that were loyalists that were loyal to the King, and there were a third that were patriots or rebels, depending upon which side of the fence you saw. And then there were one third that just, you know, stuck their finger up in the breeze to figure out which way it was going to go. So we didn’t agree then. And certainly after the Monroe administration, we started at each other’s throats again, right? Bitter disagreements divided us.

You know, there were industrialists versus farmers and free staters versus slave states and north versus south and east versus West, Democrat versus Republican. You know, even in those times that we used to consider the good old days, you know, the post World War II environment, we had divisions then too. Young versus old, segregationists versus civil rights maybe. And then if we look in our day, liberals versus conservative, black versus white, and on and on and on, as many different lines as you can draw, People start to see that there’s divisions and they start to live that way. You know what happens a lot when these issues divide us, when we divide by different ideologies, Many times those people that identify with that become personally identified, they make it a part of their identity.

So you no longer say vote Republican or vote Democrat, you are a Republican or you are a Democrat. And you know, very few people are actually card carrying members of any political party unless you’re actually in political office. Have you paid dues to any political party? You probably haven’t. So you know, maybe you should just say I tend to vote this way instead of saying I am.

You know, we see that in all kinds of issues today. Identify with those issues. And then what happens then is when someone is on the opposite side of the issue that we might identify with, if they start to express their opinion or start talking about something contrary to the way we identify, we start to feel personally attacked, right? So if someone says something that I don’t personally agree with, we start to take it personally. And then what happens?

We start to demonize the those other people, they don’t think the same way I do, or they don’t have the correct perspective on the particular issue. So rather than discussing issues, we spend time making value judgments about them as people because we so much identify with the issue. Well, you know, Jesus has A lot to say in his Sermon on the Mount about judgment. And here in chapter seven, he’s transitioning to more of the interpersonal relationships. In chapter five and six, he’s been talking about relationships with heaven, but here he’s talking a little bit more about how we interact with each other.

In Matthew chapter 7, Jesus continues His sermon and he teaches that. He teaches his listeners specifically to avoid harsh and hypocritical judgment of others, but maintaining spiritual discernment. See, we can avoid that harsh hypocrisy of judgment while still keeping that same discernment. But how can we do that? How can we avoid that harshness and hypocrisy while discerning good from evil?

Well, the text is going to give us three ways we can do this. And so we’re going to. Join me, if you would, in Matthew chapter seven, we’re in verses one through six. I like to have the hard copy scriptures on hand, but you can join me on your phones if you really want to, or it’ll be on the screen. Matthew 7, starting in verse 1.

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.

Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. May God bless the reading of his word. Amen. We’re looking for three ways to practice spiritual discernment and avoid judgment. Here’s the first way.

Evaluate others with Christlike humility. Evaluate others with Christlike humility. So we start right there in verse one. We gotta deal with this word judge, right, Judge. Now, what does this word mean?

Now, one of the difficulties with this, and we wrestled with this all week, believe me, this was heavy lifting, looking at judgment and judging. You know, that Greek word sometimes has difficulty translating into English. We have a lot of different senses of the word judge. Sometimes it means to approve of something, sometimes it means to have an opinion. Many times we think of that person in the black robes with the gavel, and he’s Pronouncing judgment from the bench.

Right. We think of that in ancient times, it also meant to have rulership or dominion. The judges were rulers, much like the book of judges in the Old Testament. Right. Those were the rulers of Israel.

Let’s explore this idea of sentencing. This judge with the black robes, this has that concept of condemnation. And that’s what we think of a lot when we think of the word judge today. Right. Well, I think the best definition of this word, this Greek word, is called krino.

And I’m going to attempt to use that word to describe the judging that we’re talking about through throughout the rest of this message. The Greek word krino, the best way to define this is to observe, evaluate and make a decision between two things. To observe, evaluate and make a decision. So this can be between good and evil. So you observe and evaluate, make a decision, choose good or evil.

But it could be between something that’s good and something that’s better. Right. Oh, these are both good. But this is better for me right now. So I’m going to judge.

I’m going to observe and evaluate and make a decision. You know, there’s another Greek word that’s very closely related called Croesus. Sounds like crisis. That’s where we get our word, crisis. In the first century.

Croesus just meant to make a decision. It didn’t mean the thing that we do today. Now, if it’s a crisis, it’s a big event. Right? It’s a big thing.

Well, you in the Greek world, you come up to making a crisis. So Krino and Croesus is very closely related to. Excuse me, Verse one in chapter seven is probably the most quoted verse of the Bible outside of the church. Okay. I used to think it was John 3:16.

Right. Because you’d see all those sporting events. Every single one, you see a sign, someone holding up John 3:16. But I would bet you that very few people outside the church actually know what John 3:16 says. Okay, but almost everybody outside the church knows Judge not.

Right? They all know that. Judge not, lest you be judged. Actually, they don’t even go to the second part. Judge not.

They don’t know it’s from Matthew 7. Okay, but Judge not. Don’t judge me. That’s awful judgy. Aren’t you being kind of judgmental there?

Right. Didn’t you ever hear that criticism before? Yeah, it happens all the time. See, in this sense, it’s typically used to argue that no one is qualified to comment on whether some other person’s Actions are right or wrong, even if that person’s behavior is clearly condemned from Scripture. Huh?

That doesn’t make sense. Is that what Jesus meant? Are we to suspend our critical thinking, our critical faculties in relation to others? Are we to refuse to discern between truth and error, good and evil? I’m not sure that’s right.

See, this idea that, hey, you can’t judge me, it goes all the way back to the early church days in the second century. The bishop Irenaeus, who was a. Who was an early church father, had written a long letter, an encyclical, defending his ability as a bishop to judge between right and wrong in the actions of others. He clearly understood this Krino judgment related to this idea of judgment. As we think about it, as we think about that condemnation kind of thing.

Is this idea of critique, right? Critique or critical thinking? See, many people in our culture find that word criticism to be wrong or evil in some way. If I criticize somebody, that’s bad. Well, no one really wants to be criticized because we define criticism a lot of times as things that are negative and evil, like, you’re fat, you’re ugly.

That’s not criticism. That’s just insults. Okay? Criticism, to really understand it should be thought about in terms of a constructive criticism. So a lot of times when we dismiss criticism, we don’t think about constructive criticism, which is one of the keys to our growth.

When someone offers constructive criticism, they have our best in mind. They’re thinking about the best for each other. That’s constructive criticism. It’s this idea of like, hey, I found this thing in you, and let’s work on this, and then you’ll be better. Kind of like a doctor does, right?

Go in and make a surgical incision and make things better. So this idea of judge that Jesus is talking about, I’m a little uncomfortable with having it be like this condemnation thing. I don’t think that’s what Jesus is doing. I think he’s speaking about this. Krinos Judgment.

Observe, evaluate, make a decision. The Bible has a lot to say about judgment. If you pull up all the verses on judgment, you’re going to be reading for a while. There’s a lot that the Bible has to say, and sometimes it seems like it’s all all over the map, but it’s not. First Corinthians 6:2 says this, that we are all to exercise some form of judgment.

In First Corinthians, Paul writes, do you not know that the saints will judge the world? Whoa, we’re to judge the world? And if we’re to judge the world, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? In other words, what he’s saying is, if we’re eventually going to judge the world, shouldn’t you be able to see these minor things that are right and wrong, and shouldn’t you be able to discern that kind of thing? He also goes on to say, do you not know where to judge angels?

How much more then matters pertaining to this life? So then if we are eventually going to judge the world and judge angels, well, then certainly we should have that Krinos kind of judgment, that Krino observe, evaluate and decide kind of judgment. But you know, most of the time the people that quote this verse out of context stop reading after the first phrase. You can’t judge me. Well, that’s not exactly what Jesus says.

He says, judge not lest you be judged. Right there. Lest you be judged. So Jesus, I think as he’s saying this to his listeners, I think he’s assuming that his listeners are using that hypocritical type of judgment that we’re talking about, that condemnation kind of judgment that we’re talking that we talked about momentarily. You know, so judge not lest you be judged.

You know, while this phrase can mean, okay, I don’t want to judge somebody else because they’re going to judge me, that is certainly part of it. I think what the believer really needs to remember is that not only could we be judged by other people, but we will be judged by the Lord. We will be judged by God. The scripture is very clear in this. Now.

A lot of times, again, since we have such problem with the word judgment and we don’t define it correctly, we don’t understand this because you’re going to say, well, Mike, you know, it says that we’re not going to be under judgment. Okay, let’s define what we’re saying. God will certainly judge whether we have accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior or not. That’ll be the first judgment. Then he’s going to look at your life and go, what did you do with the life I gave you?

There will be judgment there. That doesn’t mean that you will be finally condemned. Okay, the judgment that we talk about then is for the people who have rejected the Lord, that final judgment. Again, it’s a difficult word, right? We have a hard time wrapping our mind around what the real meaning of the word is.

But look, as well in verse 2, what Jesus says, by that measure, you will also be judged by that measure. So he’s saying that same yardstick that you use to measure other people will be applied to you. So. Hmm. So this tells me that we need to deal with this concept of judgment with a little bit more care.

And it’s not just. It’s not a blanket. Don’t judge. Let’s see what it really means. So what we settled on here, righteous judgment is the privilege and responsibility for those walking in genuine faith.

Okay? So righteous judgment is our responsibility. We are required to do this. Here’s some situations that you will, that you’re going to encounter. Okay.

Hopefully this is where the first one is going to be, where the majority of your judgment happens. So a believer has been given spiritual discernment to lovingly speak into the life of another believer. That’s judgment. Okay? We should be able to have that discernment to come alongside a brother and sister and say, hey, I see this.

Let’s make you better. Let’s fix this. There’s another kind of judgment. There’s another situation here where someone who claims the faith without really walking in it, okay. Someone whose life actually contradicts the gospel in Jesus time.

This might have been some of the Pharisees, right? If they’re not walking in it, they do not have the privilege and the right to speak into the life of a believer. And they really won’t receive it either. Right? So that’s a difficult situation.

You got somebody whose life is contradictory to the gospel who may not really be following Jesus, and now they’re going to start judging based upon whatever. Okay, that’s a difficult situation. Here’s the third situation.

This is where the non believer may actually have a point here. When it comes to those outside the faith, our posture should not be correction, it should be cultivation. We are not called to critique the fruit of an unbelieving heart, but we are called to plant seeds of faith that may one day produce that believing heart. We ought to share that salvation and redemption that we’ve been offered. Share that salvation through the gospel rather than the correction of actions and choices through judgment.

So my point is that for those people, yeah, those are the people we’re probably not supposed to be judging, Right? These are the people we should be sowing into the gospel. Now, don’t mishear me. I am not saying we don’t stand up for righteousness. We absolutely should stand up for those things that are right.

If you want to go out and do a peaceful protest or you want to share a petition, or you want to do things in political action to bring about change, you know, you can certainly do that. Okay. If you want to say, this is what I think is right, you can have that discussion. Absolutely. Okay.

But we are not to judge unbelievers outside the faith by the measure that we’ve been given. We’re clearly called, though, to discern sin within the body of Christ. Look at Galatians 6. 1. It says, Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person to gently.

And this is to be done privately, with discretion. Matthew 18 says, Jesus speaking, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault. Between you and him alone, if he listens to you, you have gained your brother. You know, when we do this, we need to show humility. We need to show kindness.

We need to remember that we, too are going to be judged by the Father. Zechariah 7, 9 says, Thus says the Lord of hosts, render true judgments, Judge, show kindness and mercy to one another. Now, many of you might know, and some if you don’t, I’ll let you know. I used to be cool, okay? I used to be.

You know, I used to fly fighter jets for a living. You know that? Back when I was cool. I’m not cool anymore. You know, that is long past.

But one of the things that we used to do after every single flight was we would debrief the flight. So we would gather together after the flight. So, you know, you come back from doing that cool stuff, and. And for the maintenance guys, I know there’s a couple of y’ all in here, you know. You know, most of you guys think all we did was drink coffee all day until we went and flew jets, broke your jets, came back and then drank beer.

Well, that’s not really what happened. Okay? We would come back all sweaty and tired and stuff, get our. Get our life support gear off, do the paperwork, and then we’d go back into the room that we briefed in and we would debrief the entire sortie, starting with the briefing. So.

All right. Anybody have any questions on the brief? You know, that kind of thing? And we would go methodically through the whole sortie, including engine start, taxi, takeoff, all the way rejoin out to the area. What we did out in the area, all the simulated bombs that we dropped and simulated missiles, we shot, and we debriefed the whole thing, run tapes, and we’d pick it apart.

There were several reasons for this. One of the first reasons is we recognized that flying fighter jets was expensive for the national treasure. So every time we flew those airplanes, and it was expensive and what we wanted to do is we wanted to squeeze every bit of lessons learned out of every sortie we could because we recognized that the American people were paying big money for us to do this really fun job, okay? The second thing that we recognized was that all of us eventually were going to go kill people and break things for a living, right? The real mission was combat.

And we understood that, you know, if we had a weak swimmer with us, that person was necessary to bring up to speed. We had to get them as good as they can possibly be. And so while rank came off in the debrief, you know, it was not unusual at the end of my career to be sitting there as a lieutenant colonel having a captain debrief me. That happened all the time, okay? That the purpose behind that was to make everybody better.

Okay? To walk out of the debrief room with some nuggets to fix for next time, because there would be a next time. See, that same thing is something that we as believers need to do. Now, I’m about to say we should do this with humility. And humility is not something that most fighter pilots know how to do, okay?

But with that being said, we are in combat, all of us. We are in a spiritual battle. And. And so we need to look out for each other and figure out where those errors are that we can help fix. We need to be able to do that with humility.

Are you in some sort of accountable relationship with other Christians? One of the ways we offer here at Eastgate is our community groups. You know, your first step, especially if you’re new, might be to join a group. Or if you’ve not been in a group for long time, join a group. This is an opportunity to get into accountable relationships, to become like family and be concerned with each other.

Not in a gossipy, naggy kind of way, but in a genuine love for each other kind of way to help each other grow. If you’re already in a community group, is that group a safe space where you can share your struggles with others? Do you feel comfortable allowing others to point out where you’ve fallen short? If not, let’s work to make those places a safe place. A loving community that really can discern without hypocrisy, that is concern for each person’s Christian growth.

That’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking for us to evaluate with Christlike humility. Here’s the second one. Correct ourselves with sincere honesty. Correct ourselves with sincere honesty.

Now, Jesus here starts with a parable, and he uses a Lot of hyperbole here, okay? Because he says, hey, you got a speck in your eye. Think like, you ever done woodworking, you get like a piece of sawdust in your eye. Now I wear contacts. When I get a piece of sawdust in my eye, it hurts.

It really hurts, right? And now can you imagine? I go, hey man, I got some sawdust in my eye. Can you help me out? And the guy coming to help me has got a two by four sticking out of it.

Like, okay, that’s ridiculous, right? Take that thing out of your eye so you can see to get my sawdust out, right? So that’s. Josephus actually used the same word in the first century as he was writing. He used the same word for this beam or plank, right?

And what he was describing was a mast, like big log that would stick out of the front of those Roman sailing vessels with a big iron prow. It was a battering ram, okay? So this same word. So you can imagine one guy’s got a speck of sawdust, the other guy’s got a battering ram sticking out of the front of his eye, and he goes, hey, you got a speck in your eye. Yeah.

Hypocritical, right? That’s what Jesus says in verse five. He calls them hypocrites. That’s a Greek word. It’s fun.

That means actor or stage player. It means a pretender. Did you know that actors, up until about 150 years ago, we’re considered the lowest part of society down there with prostitutes and drug addicts and stuff like that. That’s what actors were considered. They were not high members of society.

We have made them, with our celebrity culture, have some high place in society. For some reason I don’t really understand, but. So Jesus is calling them hypocrites. This is an insult, okay? You’re an actor, you know, you got this big old log sticking out of your eye, you know, and you don’t even see it.

He says, pull out that log so you can see clearly. So again, we’re talking about interpersonal relationships here. And you know, if you remember, Pastor Steven helped us out a couple weeks ago when he, when he brought us Matthew chapter 6, verse 22. He said, the eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.

Remember, he explained that the eye was the lamp of the body in terms of you needed to have a clear eye to be able to see situations where generosity was required. So too Jesus refers to the eye in a Very similar manner. We need to have a very clear eye as we consider those areas that we should exercise judgment. So the eye, you know, you’ve heard the eyes, the window to the soul. It also kind of means that you can see inside.

So the first way that our eyes need to work is to look in and go, okay, what’s in here first? That could be getting in the way of me making a good, righteous Kreno Judgment. What’s in the way? So Lamentations 3 says, Let us test and examine our ways and return to the Lord. So right away we should examine ourselves before we start looking at other people.

Now, there can be a problem here. There can be a ditch many times, as I say, let’s examine ourselves and turn inwards. We can get self absorbed. We can start really mulling over that thing, that plank that’s in our eye, right? And we start really thinking about all the things that we did to make it bad and what are we going to do?

Oh, woe is me and stuff like that. And we get self absorbed in self examination. Well, Charles Spurgeon says any practice that detracts from the faith is an evil practice, but especially that kind of self examination, which would take us away from the cross. So what he’s trying to say is it’s good to look inside, but let’s get the Holy Spirit involved. Let’s not just do it ourselves, okay?

One of the most dangerous prayers you can do is Holy Spirit, examine me and show me where I’m not measuring up. That’s scary because he’ll show you. He will believe me. I’ve prayed that, and it’s not pretty sometimes. But that’s the kind of self examination we need.

We need the Holy Spirit to examine us, get in the Word, hear the voice of the Lord, get some silence and solitude, experience that flood of light that comes when the Holy Spirit comes and reveals that only then can we turn our judgment outwards, our creno judgment, in order to observe, evaluate and make decisions. Now, some people will object that, you know, that some sins are more grievous than others. You know, and this is kind of, you know, popular theology teaches us that all sins are equal in the eyes of God. Well, that’s not quite biblical theology. Okay?

The Bible teaches us that all sins are serious, all sins are sins that Jesus Christ died on the cross for. So they are serious and they’re equal in that regard, right? For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And the wages of sin is death. So it doesn’t really matter what kind of sin it is.

But clearly Jesus is teaching here that this level of sin, one sin is a speck in the eye, the other one is that gargantuan log. Okay, so there are differences there in the sin. So Jesus is pointing this out. But the good news is Jesus has paid for it. All right, Jesus has paid for your sin.

Whether you’re dealing with a speck of sawdust or you have a two by four in your eye Jesus standard then, for relationships in our Christian counterculture is very high. In our attitudes and our behavior, we’re neither to be that self righteous judge, that condemning judge becoming harsh, okay? Nor should we be the hypocrite, that actor, you know, blaming others while excusing ourselves. But he calls us to be a true brother or sister, caring for each other so much that we first look at ourselves. We blame and correct ourselves, and then we seek to be constructive.

This is not a gotcha thing. Hey, I found something in you. This is more. I see this and this is preventing your walk. Let’s work on this.

We need to be as critical of ourselves as we often are of others. And we need to be as generous to others as we always are to ourselves. Let’s examine ourselves first. Romans 2 says this. Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges.

For in passing judgment on one another, you condemn yourself. Because you, the judge, practice the very same things. See, Paul is calling out hypocrisy as well. We need to keep this self examination up. Psalm 51 says, created me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit, spirit within me.

When we do this, we need to show kindness and humility, remembering that we’re going to be judged as well. Romans 14 says, why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you? Why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.

We need to remember that part. Remember the story of David with Bathsheba, King David in the Old Testament. You remember at one point he looks down and he sees Bathsheba and he wants her. And he takes her, right? He sleeps with her.

She becomes pregnant. She’s married to Uriah the Hittite. What does David do? He puts Uriah the Hittite on the front lines and has him killed in combat. And now he takes Bathsheba as another wife.

Yes, another wife, right. You know, more than one wife. You’re probably screwing something up anyway. But he takes her as another wife, right? And well, what happens?

Nathan gets sent because God is indignant. God is angry, Nathan the prophet comes up to David and says, hey, David, let me tell you a story. You know, we got two men, we got a poor man and a rich man. And this poor man has this little ewe lamb. That’s all he’s got, right?

He feeds it like a pet, feeds it from his hand, right? He loves that little lamb like a pet. And then this rich man here, he’s got flocks, he’s got a whole bunch of animals. And this rich man had, you know, house guests. And he’s like, hey, you know what?

We’re going to have a feast. So I don’t want to use one of my flock. So he takes the poor man’s lamb and slaughters it and feeds his houseguests with it. And David gets angry, right? We’re going to deal with that rich man, right?

That rich man’s wrong. And what does Nathan say? You’re that rich man. That’s you. And David all of a sudden realizes the depth of his sin.

He realizes, as Nathan says, that poor man, Uriah, the Hittite, they’re the same people. Uriah only had that one wife and he loved her so much. And you took it. You took her, you know. And so as David repents, he realizes just how much he messed up.

So he did some self. Now if you know the story, there’s a lot more to it later on. I don’t have time to go into all that. But David did eventually repent. Self examination is the key, one of the keys to a Christian life again.

Spend time in silence and solitude. Speak to the Lord. Allow the Holy Spirit to examine your heart. Search you. Bring to mind those things that we need to hand over to him.

As Martin Luther said, all of a Christian’s life is one of repentance. Here’s the third way that we can practice discernment. Share spiritual truths with open hearts. Share spiritual truths with open hearts. Now here we come to the Last verse, verse 6.

And this may seem like a what in the world? You know, kind of a. That doesn’t follow. Now Jesus starts talking about dogs and pigs. We were just talking about judgment.

You know, Jesus likes to do this, right? You remember last week he started talking about birds and flowers and stuff like that. And you’re like, jesus, what are you talking about? Well, here he starts to say, you know, don’t give to dogs what is holy. Now keep in mind in the first century, dogs were not the holy, well groomed fed golden retriever.

That’s AKC papers and all that Stuff that lives in your house. The pet. That’s not what we’re talking about. When Jesus says dogs, he’s talking about wild dogs. These are wild dogs that live on the periphery of society, right outside the camp or outside the town.

And they would attack and they would scavenge. You know, these are not good dogs. This isn’t one that you walk up to and pet, right? And he says, don’t give that which is holy, that which is sacrifice. And to that first century audience, you might think of the temple sacrifice, right?

The meat that was sacrificed that only the priests could eat, that was considered sacred and holy. And so that’s the word picture that we kind of have. And then as we think about pearls. Yeah, pearls are that little precious stone that forms in an oyster. You know, the little precious stone.

But even in the first century, it had this idea of a proverb or maybe a little bit of wisdom, a little nugget of wisdom. And he says, don’t give those pearls to pigs, okay? Pigs, first century Jew, that is the antithesis of that which is holy, right? Is the most unclean animal to the Jew, right? So dogs and pigs are both unholy.

And Peter actually continues to reinforce this in the first century. In 2 Peter, he says, a dog returns to its verse and a sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mire. So you can see these are not good things to call people, right? He’s already called people hypocrites. Now he’s calling people dogs and pigs.

What’s this all about? Are we literally talking about the animals here? Probably not. This is a figure of speech. See, Jesus is talking about people, and he’s talking about those people who consistently reject and mock or attack sacred truth.

So this is very similar. Wild dogs would tend to attack people who fed them. And pigs could trample you. Pigs can be very violent and destructive as well. So when Jesus is speaking of judgment here, what he’s trying to caution us to is to not make a judgment over that person that I’m about to share the gospel with before I’ve shared it with them.

Like, oh, that person will never hear this, or that person will not listen to them. I know they’ve already got a hard heart. That may not be exactly what we’re talking about, but what is happening? If someone is repeatedly unreceptive or hostile to the gospel, Jesus tells them to move on. You got enough things to do, you’ve got enough people to witness to that.

If you’re mining that hard field, he’s saying, move on. This is similar to the instruction that he gave to the disciples in Matthew 10. In Matthew 10, you remember, he sends his disciples out two by two and he says, whatever town or village you enter, find out who’s worthy in it and stay with them until you depart. As you enter the house, greet it, and if the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it. But if it’s not worthy, let your peace return to you.

And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, he says, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that town or that house. So he’s basically saying, move on. You’ve got business to do. Now, there’s more that we can say about this verse. Tim Keller, as he preached on this, you know, he asks a similar question.

He says, you know, Jesus is likening someone to a dog and a pig. He says, almost Contradictory to verses 1 through 5. Right? How does it square with his charge, though, to tell everyone about the Gospel? So don’t mishear me.

I’m not saying don’t share the gospel, okay? What Jesus really means here is that animals need care. Right? Animals need care. You shouldn’t give pigs something that they can’t handle.

You don’t give dogs something that they can’t digest, that they’re not ready for. So when we look at the parable in this light, we see that Jesus is actually scolding the caretakers. This parable is less about the dogs and the pigs and. And the people who would give that holy stuff to the dogs and pigs. He’s focusing on the caretaker and not on the animals.

See, this doesn’t mean that we’re to abandon or ignore unbelievers. Don’t hear that. That’s not what it is. But we’re to show discernment. Look at Colossians 4, 5, 6.

It says, Be wise in the way you act towards outsiders. Make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation always be full of grace seasoned with salt so that you may know how to answer everyone. See, there’s no all in one, you know, one size fits all evangelistic technique. That is not the case.

You will have to use discernment with people that are outside of the faith. You have to figure out what is going to be the most effective way to share. Remember, Pastor Gary likes to say, say, build a bridge of trust that the weight of truth can support. So sometimes it may be that you’re just gonna love on them. And you know what?

Maybe if there’s somebody that’s in your Life that’s really, really hard hearted. Maybe you’re not the one to share it with them and maybe somebody else is. And that doesn’t mean you don’t love on them, doesn’t mean you don’t pray with them. It doesn’t mean you don’t answer their questions. Okay?

But you may not be the one that is going to present every bit of the love of Christ to them. Love them. Please continue to witness to them, but remember that if they’re really hard hearted, Proverbs 9 has instruction for us here. Whoever corrects a mocker invites insults. Whoever rebukes the wicked and cures abuse, do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you.

Rebuke the wise and they will love you. Remember who it is that we’re supposed to judge. In 1 Corinthians 5, it says, what do I have to do with judging outsiders? There it is. Don’t judge outsiders.

Maybe those non believers are correct. Okay? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? Let’s look again at another example from Jesus ministry in Matthew 15. What’s happening here is Jesus with his disciples is moving towards the city of Tyre and Sidon.

And a Canaanite woman comes up to him from that area and starts crying out, lord, son of David, have mercy on me. My daughter’s demon possessed and suffering terribly. And Jesus doesn’t even answer. He doesn’t even answer. And the disciples start coming up to him and saying, hey, will you deal with her?

She’s bothering us. She’s making all this noise, you know, can you deal with her? And then the woman comes up and kneels before Jesus. She says, lord, help me. And he replies, it’s not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.

She responds, yes, it is, Lord. Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table. Then Jesus said to her, woman, you have great faith. Your request is granted. And her daughter was healed.

At the moment, do you see where Jesus actually calls her a dog? Okay. And at one point she is a dog. But you can see the beginnings of repentance there. You, you can see that she is starting to come to faith.

And Jesus shares with her what is appropriate. Now, this came to me first service, and I wasn’t planning on sharing it. And I apologize because you know what, I’m going to go a little bit long. Let me just share this. This happened on Friday.

I was out for lunch doing Life on Life with one of my disciples. And we were meeting in a restaurant and as the server brought food, as she served us, she stood there afterwards because we had met this person a couple, two, three times before. And she said, aren’t you guys going to pray? I said, yeah, we are. I said, is there anything I can pray with you about?

And she said, yes. And so we prayed for her and we prayed with her. And then she left and had some busyness to do. But then the restaurant got really slow. And so I trying to, you know, I’m very task oriented.

I’m trying to work through, go through our life on life lesson. And she shows up again. And so I said, how are you doing? And she just verbally vomited all over us for about 10 or 15 minutes. And she just poured out her heart.

She poured out all these things that she was going on that were going on in her life. And it was obvious that she needed Jesus. She needed Jesus in a big way. Okay? Now I could have at that point gone and just started preaching at her, you know, and said, you need to repent, okay?

You need Jesus, and then you need to do this and this and this and this and this and this. But you know, I don’t think that’s really what she needed at that point. What she needed was someone to hear her. She needed someone to love on her. And so what I did offer her, I said, hey, look, here’s my email address.

Here’s our church’s website. What you really need right now is connection. What you really need is some Christians to come around you and love on you and start so you can start to experience the love of Jesus. And then as that happens, we will start to crack that door open and then Jesus will work on her. It’s not my job, okay, to work on her.

I could have pointed out all the things that were wrong with what she said, okay? She said a lot of kooky stuff, okay? She needed connection. That’s our job. We need to use that discernment with unbelievers.

We need to see, just like Jesus did, Jesus dealt with the issue that the person had and then called them to repentance. That’s what our job is. Our job is not to make value judgments on everything that somebody’s doing in their life, especially if they’re a non Christian. Our job is to bring him Jesus. Are you in a place with someone that feels like you’re just beating your head against the wall when you’re witnessing to them they’ve had a hard heart, you’ve been working on them and, you know, they hear the truth, but they reject it.

See, don’t mistake the idea that someone wants to talk about the Bible with someone who really wants to discuss the meaning of Scripture. Some people would like to talk about ideas that are in the Bible, but they don’t really want to open themselves up to the meaning behind it. Are you sowing your seed on a hard path? Jesus is telling us to use discernment to give the people the appropriate amount of care. Right?

Don’t throw the pearls. And again, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying you don’t witness and you don’t love on people and that, but you need to give people what they need at the time. And you need to pray for the discernment and the judgment to know exactly what that is. Our calling is not to force fruit to grow, but to faithfully sow seeds in love.

That’s our calling. Jesus wants us to exercise that good judgment. See, when we use that judgment, you know, he’s given us this guidance on how to do this. And part of that is prayerfully considering what we’re doing using that good discernment. See, we can judge biblically when we evaluate others with humility, correct ourselves with honesty, and share that spiritual truth with an open heart.

Would you pray with me, Lord God? This has been a difficult word and this has been a difficult message to prepare for. And I thank you that I think you’ve given me the word that you want me to share. And so I pray that. That this would go out and that this would accomplish your purposes.

Holy Spirit, you’re welcome here. Help us to have that good credo judgment that we would evaluate, that we would observe, evaluate, and make decisions with your Holy Spirit to do this effectively. And maybe you’re sitting in the hearing of my voice and you don’t know that, Holy Spirit. You don’t know that, Jesus, you’ve come in here and you’ve walked in here and, and you felt judged by Christians in the past. Well, I want to pray for you.

And I want to pray specifically that you could enter the kingdom and know this Christ that people may have been beating you over the head with. And I pray for you and you can join me as well by just praying these words. And Jesus, yeah, I’ve messed things up in the past, and maybe I felt judged by people in a negative way. But Jesus, I know that I want to face the judgment that allows me into heaven. I want to face that with you on my side.

I want to face that as the Lord with you being the Lord of my life. And if you prayed for Jesus to come into your life and to save you to be the Lord of your life, then you’re in that first camp that I talked about. Welcome. We’re going to help. We’re going to let Jesus make you better.

Maybe, perhaps you have been in a place where you felt judged by other Christians. You’re a Christian. You’ve been in that place where maybe you’ve been hypocritical, maybe you’ve received that hypocritical judgment. And I want to pray for healing for all of us because I know we’ve all experienced and so Lord Jesus, send your spirit on us. Send your spirit to heal, to seek out, to find the places where we’ve been hypocritical, we’ve been hyper judgmental, we’ve been an actor.

Reveal that to us, bring healing to us so that we can go from here and judge with the way that you want us to judge that we can all be better that that we can all be sanctified. In your name I pray. Amen.