A conversation on Matthew 7:1-6.
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Well hello and welcome back to the switch youth podcast where today we are diving in to Matthew chapter seven James we've made it out of Matthew five we've made it out of Matthew six and now we are on to the last chapter within the sermon on the Mount Matthew chapter seven and it it starts off pretty strong like it starts off on a intense note where Jesus is like going for it talking about judgment which is something that fortunately slash unfortunately I think all of us are really familiar with and I'm excited to have this conversation because I think that when we learn how to do this well like when we actually get this right we become the kind of people who make a big difference in the world who stand out in a really good way yeah because people are judgmental all the time and when Jesus followers are judgmental it's just like not a good look we just look a whole lot like everybody else and like a lot of things that people hate about Christians come when we get this wrong so with all that being said let's dive in and just kind of go through the first really 12 verses of this chapter in Matthew chapter seven and I'll stop us and ask questions because there's some goofy stuff in here so 100% so here we go Matthew chapter seven verse one says do not judge or you two will be judged okay make sense we can get behind that yeah judge me but then in verse two it says for in the same way you judge others you will be judged and with the measure you use it will be measured to you and this is the first place I want to pause James because it kind of sounds like a little karma yeah like it kind of sounds like Jesus is saying like you're gonna get what's coming to you type of thing right what you put out will come eventually come back around so is Jesus promoting karma what is he actually doing here what is happening in verses one and two yeah that's a great question is Jesus promoting karma and no I wouldn't say that but I do think what karma is trying to capture is the reality that God is just yeah justice isn't it is an aspect of God's character Martin Luther King Jr. said that the universe is long or the moral arc of the universe is long but it is bent toward justice mm-hmm eventually justice will come the Bible often uses this language of sowing and reaping what you sow what you plant is what you will reap it's what you will harvest so if you sow good deeds you will often reap good blessings if you sow wickedness if you are putting wickedness out into the world then what you will receive is not good things and so right is Jesus promoting karma no but he is tapping into the universal reality of justice yeah that what goes around often does come around now it doesn't always because in addition to God being just he's also merciful and gracious but when it comes to this particular teaching of Jesus he's really setting up this idea that we are not to do to others what we do not want others to do to us it is the the flip of the golden rule if the golden rule is do for others what you want them to do for you then Jesus begins this teaching by saying don't do to others what you do not want done to you but he focuses in on judgment now what's interesting is when Jesus says do not judge or you two will be judged there would be many people in our world today that would be like awesome yeah I don't judge other people other people just judge me right and we're gonna get there a little bit later but I think this is one of the things that is so fascinating about modern people today where we all see ourselves as the victims of judgment but we almost never see ourselves as the perpetrators of judgment yeah and what Jesus is going to show us ever so kindly come on but also very directly is that we yes will always be on the receiving end throughout our lives and we will always be on the giving end of judgment throughout our lives and so what I think is an important piece of context for us to understand this well is that when Jesus is talking about judgment there's more than one kind of judgment right another time when Jesus was speaking in John chapter 7 verse 24 he says that we are not to judge by mere appearances but we are to judge correctly to judge rightly and so if we take this passage of scripture and we look at it next to the other things that Jesus teaches us we start to see that there are different kinds of judgment this is why in verse 2 he says in the same way you judge others you will be judged right if you judge others wrongly mm-hmm you will be judged wrongly that type of judgment is what we call condemnation it's when you choose to see another person as less than but on the flip side if you choose to judge others rightly then you will be judged rightly we call that right kind of judgment discernment it is seeing something for what it is and now this is really important is that you actually cannot turn off the judgment part of your brain we are constantly making judgments all day long everywhere we go because we have to judge is this decision better or worse than that decision we have to discern is this thing that I just heard true or false we have to figure out is this thing that I'm about to stick into my mouth this food that has been served to me is it good food or bad food judgment is inevitable it is essential right but condemnation the wrong kind of judgment that's off limits to us as followers of Jesus and so when we look at what Jesus is saying here I think the best way to understand it is he's saying do not condemn right or you will be condemned because in the same way you judge others whether condemnation or discernment is the way that you will be judged with the measure the type of judgment you used is how you will be judged and so I think kind of the starting point here is to recognize that all of us judge right most of us do it wrongly but Jesus wants to teach us to do it rightly really with that set up which genuinely just rings super true because I can think about like when I was younger and I just walked around thinking that I was better than everyone and letting them know that I thought that they were better that I was better than everyone like people were not inclined to be gracious to me no of course not people were inclined to be like oh you think you think that you're better than everyone I'll show you like that it just like invokes a natural response from people the way that we treat each other it's like I don't know that just rings true the way that you set that up so as we move into what Jesus says next in verse 3 he asks a question he says why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye how can you say to your brother let me take that speck out of your eye when all the time there is a plank in your own eye you hypocrite first take the plank out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye so James this is another like chunk of the teaching where it seems like Jesus is illustrating the point that he just made with the speck and plank imagery and he's calling us to a type of judgment that is judgment like without hypocrisy yes how do we actually do that make sense of this image for us yeah I mean I think what's fascinating here is Jesus acknowledges that all of us are going to see specks yeah we are going to see problems in the lives of other people once again this is just reality like we all see it we all notice it now some of us might be better at seeing it than others and I'm not even saying being better at this is actually a thing you want to be better at but what Jesus does there is he then shows us where to go with it because the natural human tendency is to see the speck the problem in somebody else's life and then try to fix it try to see the speck and take it out of their eye but what Jesus says is hey why would you say to your brother let me take the speck out of your eye when all the time there's a plank in your own eye why are you looking at the speck and somebody else's eye when there's a plank in your own eye you hypocrite first now this is important after we see the speck yeah the first thing Jesus tells us to do is to remove the plank from ourselves and I think this is really important where before we start trying to bring correction to the life of another person before we call out what somebody else is doing wrong Jesus is telling us to first look in the mirror see where we've got it wrong deal with what's wrong in us then he says you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye and that line there at the beginning verse 5 you hypocrite I think it's such an important thing because what Jesus is helping us to see is that if we are constantly trying to fix other people's problems but we are never dealing with our own issues and that right there is the pathway to hypocrisy when you tell somebody they should not do something or you try to help somebody overcome a problem when you yourself are guilty of the same thing yeah that is hypocrisy you are lacking integrity and what's beautiful here is Jesus is not just showing us how to avoid wrong judgment he's also showing us how to live with integrity which is to see the problem that somebody else has let there be a clue that there's probably something wrong with us because Jesus is saying hey if there's a speck in there are you better believe there's a plank in your own eye so then get to work on the plank once you've done that you have now moved from hypocrisy to integrity you can now see clearly so instead of looking at the other person with eyes of condemnation you can look at them with compassion instead of arrogantly viewing yourself as better because they have a problem and you don't you can humbly recognize that you are a human being just like they are so don't judge because however you judge others is how you will be judged mm-hmm when you start to notice that somebody else has a problem when you discern there's something in their eye then you've got to discern there's probably something bigger in your own eye and that bigger thing is some form of pride hypocrisy condemnation it is something that is getting in the way of you being able to see the other person clearly so what do you do you see their speck and you let that be a signal that you've got a plank that needs to be dealt with that's good even while you're talking I was just thinking about like I think Jesus is so brilliant in using the comparison between a speck and a plank right because I was almost just thinking about like when you're trying to take a speck out of someone's eye that is like a surgery that like requires precision and gentleness and care so that you don't mess up the other stuff around it like you don't actually damage them further is like trying to remove a speck when you can't actually see clearly is like a surgeon trying to do a very delicate procedure with one eye closed like that right right is insane and we'd never let anyone do that from a medical perspective so like why are we trying to do that from a relational perspective and thinking that we're gonna have good healthy relationships like that's crazy town but I love how Jesus just like makes it so that we can see clearly to remove the speck from our brother's eye because he wants us to have those healthy thriving relationships where we're able to care for each other in a way that is actually helpful and not more hurtful yeah and then James he comes out of this and he goes into what I think is the weirdest part of the passage in verse six Jesus picks up and says do not give dogs what is sacred and do not throw your pearls to pigs if you do they may trample them under their feet and turn around and tear you to pieces I just got really graphic and intense yeah so how did we go from speck and Plank to pearls and pigs yeah so it's important to recognize that this whole passage in Matthew chapter 7 verses 1 through 12 is one continuous teaching now whenever we get to the end of it we will see how verse 12 mirrors verse 1 and how they both serve as bookings for everything that comes in the middle and so it's not uncommon for people to read verse 6 as if it's this weird thing out of left field that has nothing to do with everything else I think that's a misunderstanding of it I would suggest that there's kind of like two really good interpretations and one less good interpretation of this verse and so like let's just kind of look at it real quick Jesus says don't give dogs what is sacred don't throw your pearls to pigs if you do they may trample them under their feet and turn into pieces so you've got dogs pigs sacred things and pearls and in the ancient world it was not uncommon for Jewish people to describe non-Jewish people using words like dogs and pigs it was used oftentimes to describe pagans and non-believers and so what I would consider the least good interpretation but it may actually be the most popular interpretation is to see verse 6 as Jesus warning us to not give sacred things or pearls to people who are not believers because they're not ready for it they won't be able to receive it and it won't go well and they'll turn and tear you to pieces that that's an interpretation I think a way to take that and make it work is if you view it as you as a Christian trying to force your Christian values and beliefs on non-Christians I think when you take that idea and you recognize that elsewhere in the New Testament we're told to judge those inside the church and not those outside the church then I think a good interpretation of verse 6 could be that we are not to bring correction to non-believers because they've never actually agreed to live by our standard as followers of Christ we have a set of standards that we believe were called to live by but if people are not following Jesus then they've never agreed to those standards so if we try to force our sexual ethic on to them it's not gonna go well I think that is a good interpretation maybe what Jesus is saying here is when it comes to bringing correction when it comes to dealing with the specs and other people's eyes after you've dealt with the plank in your own eye what you want to make sure that you're doing is you're only bringing that correction to family members family members in the body of Christ brothers and sisters not non-believers aka dogs and pigs I think that's a good interpretation my personal favorite interpretation the one that I'm most convinced by is that actually what Jesus is doing here is almost like a test because in the previous verses Jesus talks about how when you take the plank out of your own eye then you will see clearly right to remove the speck from who from your brother's eye and so all of a sudden Jesus talks about seeing clearly your brother's eye and then he moves to dogs and pigs and and I think what Jesus is doing here is he's almost testing us to see if we noticed what's happening because if there's a plank in your eye if you are condemning seeing someone else as less than if you're judging them wrongly then you will see them as less than right maybe so much so that you stop seeing them as human right maybe to the point where you view them as a dog or a pig and so even if you have a good thing to offer them if you're seeing them that way it's never going to go well because they will feel talked down to they will feel like you're being condescending and so I would suggest that what Jesus is doing here is he's testing us to see if we've actually taken the plank out of our own eyes so that we can see clearly yeah that the other person is not a dog or a pig they're a brother and a sister they're human being made in the image of God that they are called by God to be a part of his family and that we have been called by God to love them into and as the family of believers and so I say all that to say there's a number of different ways to interpret this I think the best way to think about it though is that the responsibility is on us to operate in a way that is loving to them it is not a problem with them that is preventing them from being able to receive whatever good thing God wants to bless them with because once again elsewhere throughout Scripture we see Jesus showing up and offering good things to Gentiles to Samaritans to those who would have been considered potentially dogs and pigs and so I don't think the heart of this teaching is to prevent us from offering good things to those who are outside of the family of God I think it's about us seeing others clearly as human beings made by God and created for a relationship with him that's good it's almost like verse six is Jesus's speed bump in this teaching he's like are we are we just coasting along and the bump comes out of nowhere and surprises you and you get thrown off kilter by it or is this like a speed bump that allows us to like check ourselves as we are moving through this teaching so I love that verse six and just verses like that in Scripture that we don't maybe necessarily understand right away can actually serve to be one of those scriptures that ends up deepening our understanding and helping us grasp it all together so as we finish this up we are going to be moving into verses seven through 12 which is like the other bookend but James I think that that's actually a really good point to stop this episode and save the next part for afterwards because there's some pretty clear action steps that can come from just what we've talked about so far like those words six verses are ripe with opportunities to look at the moments where as soon as we notice someone else's spec what is our natural reaction is it immediately to go talk about someone behind their back is it immediately to call out the thing that we don't like or is it to do what Jesus is encouraging us to do and let that be something that prompts us to come back to him to say hey Jesus I noticed this is there something that you want to point out in me and I think that if we make that our practice this week that A our relationship with Jesus will be stronger B we will get to be people who move from hypocrisy to integrity and C I think our relationships will actually reap the benefit of us practicing that so that's our challenge for you this week and we can't wait to see you at switch on December 4th for the start of our very last section of the sermon on the Mount it's been great chatting with you guys and we'll see you next time
A conversation on Matthew 7:1-6.
