author: Ryan Hayden Take your Bibles with me and turn to Luke 6. Luke 6.

As you are turning there, let me ask you a question: What's your "life verse?"

When I was a kid, people made a big deal about having a "life verse." It was popular in Christian circles to put a scripture next to your signature - your "life verse."

Maybe it was Philippians 4:13, or 1 Corinthians 13:7, or Isaiah 53:6 or Proverbs 3:5-6. You know, there were popular ones. But the idea was that one verse, that one passage sort of was the theme of your life. Your "life verse." It was fashionable for awhile, and now it's fallen out of fashion.

I bring that up because I want to ask you a related question: if our culture had a life verse, what would it be?

I think I know exactly what it would be. It would be either Matthew 7:1 or Luke 6:37

Luke 6:37 says:

[!bible] Luke 6:37 - KJV 37. Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:

Matthew 7:1 cuts out the other stuff and just says:

[!bible] Matthew 7:1 - KJV

1. Judge not, that ye be not judged.

If there is one verse in the Bible that our culture likes to quote, it's that one. "Don't judge me man." Seems to be people's biggest takeaway from the scripture.

People seem to think that all judgment is bad. That the worst thing you can be is a judge or judgemental.

Last week, I preached about this a little.

(Let's be honest, it was a snow storm and more than half of you were home.)

But I talked about this idea of judging and it was just a one part of my message. Today I want to keep going in the text and judging is going to be the whole theme.

I'm going to show you how our culture completely misses the point of this text. Judgement isn't bad. In fact it is necessary. What is bad is judging the wrong things, or judging things in the wrong order.

Let's read the text. I want to start today in verse 36 and read down through verse 45.

[!bible] Luke 6:36-45 - KJV 36. Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful. 37. Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven: 38. Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again. 39. And he spake a parable unto them, Can the blind lead the blind? shall they not both fall into the ditch? 40. The disciple is not above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his master. 41. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye? 42. Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother’s eye. 43. For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 44. For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. 45. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.

Last week I talked about how Christians attitude towards others is supposed to be summed up by one word "merciful." Part of being "merciful" is not being a judgmental jerk.

Today, I want to drill down on this idea of judgment and judgmentalism and cover three things:

1. You have to judge.
2. You can't judge others until you judge yourself.
3. Most people judge themselves backwards.

Then I'll make three applications from these principles.

Let's pray and we'll get into that.

author: Ryan Hayden

The first point I want to make today is...

1. You have to judge.

Yes, the scripture here says "judge not, that ye be not judged." But you cannot take one verse outside of it's context.

In the very same passage where Jesus says "judge not" he also talks about inspecting fruit to see what kind of tree it is. That is a kind of judgment.

Back in Matthew 7 Jesus said "Judge not, that ye be not judged" and then just five verses later, says give not that which is holy to the dogs". So Jesus, almost in the same breath goes from saying "don't judge" to judging between holy and unholy and saying we need to exercise judgement in the way we share things because some people are dogs. That doesn't sound like the kumbaya, let's all hold hands and get together interpretation of that verse we are used to.

Down in verse 15 of Matthew 7 Jesus said "beware of false prophets, that come to you in sheep's clothing."

It's impossible to go through life without making judgments. Jesus here wasn't commanding us never to judge or make judgments. He was warning us not be a judgemental jerk.

Judgment is necessary. You have to judge.

Just to bring that point home, let me share a few ways we are commanded to judge in the scripture:

First, we have to make moral judgments. We have to make judgments based on what is good and evil.

Listen to Hebrews 5:14

[!bible] Hebrews 5:14 - KJV 14. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

The common misunderstanding of "judge not, that ye be not judged" is that we cannot make any moral judgments.

• You can sleep with whoever you want.
• You can murder your babies.
• You can make a living however you have to.
• You, as a forty-five year old man can dress up like a bad version of a lady and strut your stuff to kids at the library.
• You can get black out drunk at a dorm party.
• We cannot judge any of it.

That's absolute rubbish. We are commanded to "discern both good and evil." We are commanded to make moral judgments.

And the way we make correct moral judgments is we grow in our understanding of scripture. You see, God is the judge and God will judge man's actions, in fact, He's already laid out what is right and wrong in this book.

So when Jesus says "judge not" he's not telling us to give up all moral judgments or that moral judgements in themselves are bad.

If we can't make moral judgments, then we cannot have morality. That's the problem with the world we are living in today.

One of the huge stories the last few weeks in the news has been the discovery of these grooming and rape gangs in England that raped thousands of underage girls over a period of decades.

It was covered up. Do you know why it was covered up? Because we can't judge those people. All cultures are equal. Who are we to say the way they do things are wrong?

We have to make moral judgments, to discern between right and wrong, good and evil.

A second type of judgments we are commanded to make is religious judgment.

[!bible] 1 John 4:1 - KJV

1. Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

I've already read from Matthew 7 where Jesus said we need to beware of false prophets who are wolves in sheep's clothing.

Did you notice the word in both of these verses? The word "false."

Our world today wants to erase the idea of false. They want to erase the idea of objective truth. But we as Christians are commanded to look out for false prophets. For false teachers.

We have to be make religious and doctrinal judgments. If I start teaching false doctrine, you are absolutely right to judge that and to either leave or force me to leave. If we start doing things that are inconsistent with the spirit than you are right to judge that.

We have to make moral judgments and religious judgments.

There is a third kind of judgment we have to make and it is behavioral judgment in the church.

In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul is writing to the church at Corinth and they have a problem. There is a man in the church who is living in very open sexual sin that threatened to give the church a bad testimony.

What did Paul say to the church? Did he say "Oh, I get it, judge not and all." No, he condemned the church for not judging their own.

He said it was not their job as the church to judge the world and the actions of the world, but it was absolutely their job to judge the actions of the people in the church.

Listen to 1 Corinthians 5:12-13:

[!bible] 1 Corinthians 5:12-13 - KJV 12. For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within? 13. But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.

So we have to judge and we have to make moral judgements (for ourself) and religious judgments and to judge those within the church.

We have to judge, but Jesus still said "judge not, and ye shall not be judged." It's right there. Verses 37. So what does it mean?

I think the thing Jesus was getting at here is our second point:

2. You can't judge others until you judge yourself.

Remember, we are talking about being merciful. The key is what Jesus said in verses 41-42:

He said you can't go trying to pick little flecks of sawdust out of other people's eyes when you have a giant stick sticking out of your own eye. Then he said

[!bible] Luke 6:42 - KJV 42. ...Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother’s eye.

You see, it's not wrong to help other people with the speck in their eye. It's wrong to go around looking for specks in other people's eye without giving proper attention to our own eye.

Put another way, it's wrong to go around judging the sins of others if you haven't dealt with your own sin first. It's not the judging that is wrong, it is the hypocritical judging that doesn't deal with yourself first.

Listen to what Paul said in Romans 2:1-2:

[!bible] Romans 2:1-2 - KJV

1. Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.
2. But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things.

If I'm going around and judging someone and I'm guilty of what they were doing - that is inexcusable. It's not that what they are doing isn't wrong - God is going to judge all of that - what is wrong is me looking for the sins of others when I have sins in my own life that haven't been dealt with first.

Judgment is necessary but you have to judge yourself first. You have to take the beam out of your eye so you can see clearly to judge.

And that brings me to third point, which is the main things I wanted to preach on this morning:

3. Most people, when judging themselves, do it backwards.

We have to judge ourselves. We have to pull the beam out of our eye so we can see clearly to judge right?

And here is the truth - most of us are really bad at judging ourselves.

Let me put it this way: you can't see my heart. I can't see your heart.

A lot of times, when people get in trouble they say something like "if you could just see my heart, then you would see that I didn't really mean that." Or "if you could just see my heart, you would see that I'm really a good person."

But here is a truth of the scripture - we can't even know our own heart.

Jeremiah 17:9 says:

[!bible] Jeremiah 17:9 - KJV 9. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

The answer is - not you. Not me.

So when we judge ourselves, we are far too likely to give our actions and our words a pass. We are far too likely to say "I know I just insulted that guy, but that's not really me. I know I just gossiped, but I had good intentions."

And that is exactly backwards of how we should be judging ourselves.

You see, Jesus gives us a principle here - what comes out is what was in..

And to that point, Jesus gives us two illustrations of that principle. Look at verses 43-45 again.

[!bible] Luke 6:43-45 - KJV 43. For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 44. For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. 45. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.

What comes out is what was in. The fruit matches the root. That's the principle we should judge OURSELVES by.

Jesus illustrates this principle with two illustrations - a horticultural illustration and a banking illustration.

The horticultural illustration is that you judge the kind of tree by the fruit that it produces.

A bramble bush can kind of look like a grape vine. How do you tell them apart - by the fruit that comes out of them. In Israel they have this thorn tree that resembles a fig tree - how do you tell them apart? By looking at the fruit.

What comes out of the tree shows us what kind of tree it was. A good tree brings out good fruit, a bad tree brings out bad fruit.

You will never get oranges out of an apple tree. You'll never get apples out of an orange tree. Trees produce fruit based on their kind.

That's the horticultural illustration. The banking illustration is in verse 45. When it says "the good treasure of your heart" that is one word and it is the word for a treasury or a storehouse.

The idea is, you can't go into a treasury and bring out bad stuff if there wasn't bad stuff in the treasury. You can't go into a treasury and pull out good stuff if there wasn't good stuff in the treasury. You can't bring it out if it wasn't in there in the first place.

Let's say I go into Rural King empty handed, and I come out with a bag and it has a bunch of junk in it. I couldn't get that junk in there if it wasn't in the store. The same thing would be true if I went in and came out with a bag full of treasure. I couldn't bring it out if it wasn't in the store.

Again. What is the principle? What comes out is what was in..

Now, when we apply that to our heart. How do we judge our own heart? Well, we judge it by what comes out of it.

Jesus said for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.

Listen, we don't assign good motives to bad actions and speech. We don't get to say "I meant well." When we judge ourselves, we have to judge our heart by what comes out of it. Not the other way around.

Do you understand what I mean when I say "most people, when they judge themselves, are doing it backwards?"

Now, we have the principle. Let's me quickly make three applications:

Applications

1. Be on guard against the tendency to judge others more harshly than you judge yourself.

Jesus was addressing a problem here. Yes, we need to judge, but we need to be careful that we don't become judgmental.

• Judgmental people are blind to their own sins.
• Judgmental people are quick to judge others and slow to judge themselves.
• Judgmental people believe the worst about others and the best about themselves.

None of that is being merciful as our father is merciful. If you want clear eyes about the sins of others, it starts with clear eyes about your own sins. Most of us don't want to take a good look in the mirror because we are afraid of what we might see there.

A second application I think we need to get from this is

2. Make sure you are the right kind of tree.

It's very possible that you are a bad tree. That you are producing evil fruit because you have an evil, unregenerate heart.

The night I came to Christ, I was a teenager. I thought I knew it all. I had the verses memorized. I thought I was the good kid.

Do you know what made me aware of my need of Christ - I started looking at my fruit. I looked at my actions and my words. I took an honest look at how I treated my parents. I took an honest look at the kinds of things I was thinking about and doing. I realized I was an evil tree.

The good news is that if we come to Jesus, we can be born again. We can come to Jesus and have the root replaced. We can come to Jesus and have a nature transplant.

Maybe, as you look at your own fruit. As you take an honest look (maybe for the first time) at what is coming out of you and see what is in your heart - maybe that will drive you to the cross.

If you are realizing today that you are an evil tree producing evil fruit - then come to Jesus and He will make you a new tree.

There is one more point of application I think we need to make and that is...

3. Cultivate a good heart.

How do we as Christian's produce good fruit? Does the Bible tell us?

Jesus told us in John 15:5

[!bible] John 15:5 - KJV 5. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

Do you want to produce good fruit? Do you want to keep a good heart? Abide in Christ. Stay close to Him. That's where the fruit comes from.

Another way of thinking about this is this:

Jesus said here that we have a treasury in our heart. What are you putting in the treasury.

If gossip, and bile and lust and hatred are coming out of the treasury - then that's probably because you are putting them in there. If goodness and grace and coming out of the treasury, then that is because you are putting them in there.

So hide God's word in your heart. Dwell with Christ. Fill your heart with the word of God. Eventually, what comes out will change.

Let me close by asking you this:

• What is coming out of your life? What kind of fruit are you producing?
• Do you need to become a new tree - then come to Christ?
• If you are a Christian, maybe you need to abide in Him more.

Let's stand for prayer.