Over the past 3 weeks Barry has given us a deep look into one of the most important, and I must say, timely passages in the New Testament. This important passage is found in the 6th chapter of Luke, and what we’ve been looking at is found right in the middle of Luke’s version of what is called either The Sermon on the Mount or The Sermon on the Plain. What we have seen over these last three weeks is that in this passage, Jesus is talking about the difficult subject of ‘loving our enemies and doing good to those that hate us!’ And what Barry has shown us is that Jesus’ teaching concerning loving our enemies wasn’t simply a suggestion; Jesus wasn’t talking philosophically here… in fact, these statements by Jesus are commands for those of us who claim to be followers of Jesus… but they are commands that, to be honest, are about as hard to obey as anything Jesus every said. I’m sure that if you’ve heard any of Barry’s first three sermons on this passage, you’ll agree that he has given us a lot to think about… especially at this time of great division and animosity in our world. One thing I do think is important to point out as we talk about this difficult topic of ‘loving our enemies’ is that when Luke quoted Jesus saying these difficult things, he’d already shown his readers that Jesus knew what it was to have enemies… yes, he knew what it was to be hated. In fact, just before Luke gives us Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, he tells us about the day that Jesus had healed a man with deformed hand, but he’d done this healing on the Sabbath, and healing someone on the Sabbath was something that strict legalists like the teachers of the Law and members of the Pharisees believed was a terrible sin… to them this was working on the Sabbath! And when these judgmental men saw Jesus healing this man on the Sabbath, Luke tells us they were filled ‘with a rage like madness!’ A rage that was so enflamed that they began plotting to kill Jesus! Jesus knew what it was to have enemies that hated him. So, you can bet he knew how difficult it was to ‘love your enemies and to do good to those that hate you! He's not asking us to do anything that he hasn’t done!
Today we move on in this sermon to chapter 6 verses 37-42. Let’s just start by reading these verses. You can find these verses on page ???? in the house Bible. “Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn others, or it will all come back against you. Forgive others, and you will be forgiven. Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full… pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.” Then Jesus gave the following illustration: “Can one blind person lead another? Won’t they both fall into a ditch? Students are not greater than their teacher. But the student who is fully trained will become like the teacher. “And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying, ‘Friend, let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye.
Now, I must start off by saying that the first part of this passage of scripture may be one of the most quoted and most misused of all the words of Jesus. I’m sure that many of you are familiar with these verses, especially the part that is so often quoted in all sorts of contexts, usually in the King James, “Judge not lest ye be judged.” Here is why I say it’s misused. A lot of the times when someone says, “Don’t Judge others.” What they really mean is more like, “Don’t’ go sticking your nose in other’s business, you judgmental, narrow-minded busybody!” And everyone knows that being a judgmental, narrowminded busybody is always wrong. Certainly, I’m not going to be advocating for elevating the status of nosey, judgmental busybodies today. But have you noticed that it has become almost impossible to say that anything is wrong without being accused of being overly judgmental? I think people often unknowingly quote Jesus when they say, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” But they’re just using Jesus’ words as a big club to say, “Keep it to yourself, buster!”
Now, if there is one thing that I’m confident about it’s that Jesus didn’t have this in mind at all when he said this. To begin with, Jesus’ statement really wasn’t as simple as “Do not Judge.” Here is my raw translation of what he literally said: "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Pardon and you will be pardoned. Give and it will be given you. They will pour into your lap a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For your standard of measure will be measured to you in return.’
When Jesus said this business about ‘pouring a good measure into your lap,’ he was referring to a very common, everyday 1st century situation to illustrate his bigger point, and it’s a reference that could be easily lost on us. Ancient Near Eastern farmers would often bring their grain into town to sell to the local grain merchants… and unscrupulous grain merchants were known for using one scoop for measuring out the farmer’s grain and another scoop of a slightly smaller size when selling the grain and pouring it into the front of (generally) a woman’s robe; yet they’d act like they only had one scoop. In this way, the merchant could cheat everyone. By Jesus’ day, Jewish law had actually addressed this unscrupulous practice demanding that grain merchants had to use the same scoop whether buying or selling… So, when Jesus said, ‘a good measure will be poured into your lap’ everyone knew he was talking about a ‘good’ as in a fair and legitimate measurement. And in reality, Jesus wasn’t saying anything he’d not already said before in different ways. He’d said that when we pray, we should ask God to forgive our debts in the same manner that we forgive other people’s debts; that’s using the same scoop. He’d said that we should always do to others as we would want others to do to us; again, that’s using the same scoop. And this new statement was simply a different twist on a constant theme in Jesus’ teaching: In the kingdom of God, the way we treat others will determine how we are treated; God uses the same scoop on us that we use on others and, of course, knowing this should make us a lot more gracious and fairer with others… or so you’d think.
Now this may seem like such an obvious truth to us, but that’s because we’re so familiar with this passage. In the moment though, Jesus was saying something somewhat surprising. Here’s what I mean. To the people listening to Jesus that day the word ‘judge,’ (or krinw in the Greek) was a word that was almost always used in a negative way). If you were being judged, it almost always meant you were going to be condemned in some way! And there were only 3 types of ‘official judges’ that would have come to Jesus’ listeners minds that day. First, there were the Roman judges who served as a part of the government’s court system, and they had power that came straight from the emperor. A Roman judge could decide to sentence you to death or ship you off to the ends of the earth, or whatever… they could change your life at their whim, and you really couldn’t do anything about it. In fact, only Roman citizens had the right to defend themselves in court. Everyone else had to take what a judge gave them in silence. Then, there were the religious judges, who made decisions about matters of Jewish law. The members of the Sanhedrin, the ultimate religious counsel of Israel, could really punish you if you weren’t living up to the very complicated letter of the law. The regular priests also made religious judgments, but their judgments were earthier; they made decisions about skin diseases and mildew in homes and such, decisions which also had a huge impact on people’s lives: they determined things like who could enter the temple and whether your house needed to be torn down. And the people that made these sorts of religious judgments claimed their authority came straight from God…and they had no qualms about exercising their power. Truth is that for most people listening to Jesus that day, being judgmental was not a big issue… at least not in any strictly official sense… But there was one kind of judging everyone there was worried about in some way: God’s coming final judgment… everyone thought about this and, just like we do today, everyone wondered what God would do in the end. And what Jesus was doing was giving everyone a hint as to what God’s ongoing and final judgments are going to be like. And I’d say his point was pretty clear: God will use the same scoop on us that we are using on others. Jesus wanted everyone on that hillside, whether they didn’t think they had a problem with being judgmental or if they thought that they had earned the right to be judgmental, everyone needed to realize that we’re all capable of affecting another person’s life in huge ways by our judgments. And these judgments show up in the way we speak to people, and the ways we speak about people, and by the assumptions we make about others, and the way we prejudice people against each other… this is all a part of what Jesus meant when he talked about ‘judging.’ Bottom line, we’re just fooling ourselves if we think that our judgments don’t have consequences for others and for ourselves.
I also hope it’s clear that when Jesus spoke these words he wasn’t saying, “Don’t be discerning.” Not at all. He certainly wasn’t saying that we should always keep our mouths closed, or that we shouldn’t be able to say something to someone who might be destroying their own life or the lives of others. No, the reason he brought this subject up in the first place was that he wanted us to know how to speak openly and honestly with others without the fear of being accused of being a hypocrite. This is why he soon went directly to showing us what discernment looks like in the God’s kingdom. But first Luke gave us some additional words from Jesus that at first might seem like they don’t really fit in this spot of his sermon. Let’s read verses 40 and 41. Then Jesus gave the following illustration: “Can one blind person lead another? Won’t they both fall into a ditch? Students are not greater than their teacher. But the student who is fully trained will become like the teacher. We don’t have enough time today to say too much about these verses… I did put some further notes in the app that I think can be helpful. But I will say this: Jesus must have known that what he was saying was hard to hear… so much so that it might have seemed like he didn’t know what he was talking about… like he was blind to reality. But Jesus wanted everyone to know that he wasn’t blind… in fact, he had the clearest vision of anyone that has ever lived, and as hard as his teaching was, it wasn’t going to lead anyone into a ditch… and even if following him is going to be difficult, everyone who pays close attention to his teaching and follows him completely, could become like Jesus! And the promise of that possibility, becoming like Jesus, coming from the mouth of Jesus, is something that should give us all confidence that following him is worth all of the difficulty!
And then we get another of Jesus’ most famous statements... Verse 41: “And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying, ‘Friend, let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye.
The word translated “speck” is Karfos (Karphos) in the Greek and it means a tiny, dry, sliver of straw… and this word was often used metaphorically to say that something was insignificant and unimportant… now, let’s be honest, having even a small sliver of straw in your eye isn’t insignificant… it’s something you’d want out of your eye, even if it took someone else getting it out for you. But the bigger issue is that a Karfos is tiny! And ‘log’ here is the word doken and a doken was a cross beam or a structural post… it was a carpenter’s word. What Jesus said here was hyperbolic, ridiculous, beyond imagination… how could anyone have a structural beam in their eye? My bet is that some people may have chuckled when they first heard him say this…but I don’t believe Jesus’ point here was to be funny. I think he was being hugely hyperbolic to make a hugely important point! Jesus surely had seen his father working with beams; he may have worked with them himself. And he knew that you couldn’t help but be blinded to what is really going on if you had a huge beam in front of your face. My bet is that he also knew how careful you’d have to be when you did try to take a small bit of straw out of someone else’s eye. Here’s his point: we won’t be able to do the up close, delicate, gentle work of removing a speck from someone’s eye if we can’t see anything. I’m sure that certain people in the crowd that day felt that Jesus’ message was only for people that were known for making official judgments. And I can see people looking back over their shoulders at the gatherings of religious leaders that were more than likely huddled together on the fringes of the crowd and thinking “I hope the Pharisees heard that.” And I’m just as sure that many of the Pharisees huddled on the edges of the crowd were thinking, “Hey, you don’t know how long it’s taken me to earn the right to make judgments!” But notice Jesus would have none of this; his language is direct, it’s forceful, and most importantly, it’s all inclusive. He turned a spotlight on each individual when he said, “You hypocrite, you people acting like you are so religious and righteous, first take that beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.”
As I was thinking about this, I realized that much of Jesus’ teaching revealed different “beams” if you will, that could be blinding us. Jesus often talked about beams of self-righteousness; beams of lust; beams of changing the rules to suit ourselves; beams of not keeping our word; beams of revenge; beams of acting religiously only to be seen by others; beams of only looking out for number one. And these are only a few of the kinds of beams that Jesus pointed out that can blind us and cause us to damage the lives of our family members, our friends, our co-workers, and our neighbors. Plus, beams like these not only make us judgmental, but they also make us distant and careless and rough; and we cannot be distant or careless or rough if we are ever going to help take tiny splinters out of other’s eyes. Jesus was telling us that we’ll only be able to help others after we are first willing to deal with our own prejudices and self-righteous attitudes. Only after we have done the difficult work of taking the beams out of our own eyes will we be properly prepared to move into other’s lives with the gentleness and the graciousness it takes to remove the karfos, (Karphos) the tiny bits of straw, from other’s eyes.
Of course, the question becomes how willing am I to look at the beam in my own eye? This kind of self-examination isn’t very pleasant. In fact, even talking about the need for self-examination, can be unpleasant, but let me assure you, I know from personal experience that the results that come from doing this kind of difficult self-examination is worth all the unpleasantness.
And I also want to say this before we go on? While our emphasis today is on the issue of making judgments about other people, I know there are also those of you here who have suffered terribly at the hands of judgmental people. God knows your heartache and wants it to end. Part of the reason we are talking about this passage today is our hope that some, shall we say, beam-blinded eyes will be cleared and in the process some of your suffering will end.
And now I want to get ridiculously practical. Here are some questions I have been asking myself to kick start my thinking for making sure there isn’t a beam in my eye: Do I always have to be right? Do I think that I have the answer for everything? Is there something in me that always says, “I can do things better than anyone else. Just let me do this?” Do I find myself quickly noticing the flaws in other people? Is it common for me to think, “They just don’t get it.” Or “What’s with them?” Do I jump to conclusions without knowing all the facts? Am I apt to determine the truth of a situation even though I have never been in that situation? Am I generally cynical? Do I find myself constantly questioning people’s motives and mistrusting their actions? Do I make lots of assumptions that I know what things mean, what the situation is all about, and how things ought to be handled?
Or how about this: How do I respond when I hear someone described as, say, a: Carmel housewife; or a person who lives in a mobile home; or a boomer; or a gen-Zer; I know that my responses to labels like these can say a lot about me… truth is, each response could carry a beam’s worth of judgmental attitude that I need to deal with.
As I’ve been thinking about this short passage, I’ve sensed 2 themes running through Jesus’ words. If I’m serious about following Jesus then first, I have to be willing to allow God’s Spirit to work in my own heart and root out the sources of my judgmental spirit. It’s not pleasant, it involves honesty and maybe even some confession and asking for forgiveness. But it is an imperative if I ever want to honestly speak well into other’s lives. Secondly, part of serving the Jesus is discernment… but it is discernment that grows out of wisdom, it is discernment that is applied gently and carefully and for no other reason than someone else’s good. This is self-giving love at its best! It is a discernment that keeps in mind that the ways I make judgments on others will be used on me as well, both in this life and very likely when I stand before the King.
I had a moment a number of years ago that taught me a great deal more about this subject than I really cared to know. In a former life I was a musician… of some notoriety… not much, but some. I had a close friend that had been a big part of my life for a long time… he was a blues and jazz musician and the music I was playing at the time was about as far from blues and jazz as music could get. One night I was playing in front of a huge crowd… a crazy crowd on one of those special nights… and as I looked out over what seemed a sea of thousands of excited people, I could see way in the back this friend of mine with his arms crossed and a disapproving scowl on his face. … I remember feeling a rush of panic come over me as I realized that he had weighed me in the balance and found me wanting. Suddenly what was happening around me didn’t matter anymore. I knew I hadn’t met his standards and as far as he was concerned everything about me had suddenly become meaningless. No words… just body language and yet it sucked the joy out of my life, and it destroyed me. And just a few minutes later he was gone… and it didn’t just ruin the evening… it had a strong, long-term impact on me. It took me a long time to recover from someone that I respected, someone that I thought would encourage me and maybe give me some helpful feedback, blowing me off like I was inconsequential and silly. I worked to avoid him for years. And the more I thought about that whole thing and what his judgment had done to me the more I prayed, “Dear God, never allow me to ever be that kind of a judgmental person to someone else. Lord, please don’t let me ever be that person.”
It is amazing how fragile we really are… people often say we should just get thicker skin, but harsh judgments, biting criticism, undeserved assumptions about our characters and our motives can cut through the thickest of skin and slice us right down to the to the core… and sometimes harsh judgments change our destinies forever. And we can just as easily change other’s destinies as well when we are the ones with our arms crossed. And so, this brings us to why all of this is so important… so important to Jesus… well, first, it’s because the people around you are too important to Jesus to be destroyed by your harsh judgments and secondly, you are too important to Jesus to have your life destroyed by harsh judgments. And finally, this is all important because what we can do together for the kingdom when we are carefully and gently helping one another through life is too valuable to be destroyed by judgments that have no place in Jesus’ kingdom.
My prayer is that we will take this warning from Jesus very seriously. And that we like David in Psalm 139 will pray: ‘Lord, you know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord. So, search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.’