Righteous Judgment: Mercy, Self-Examination, and Love

1. "The judgment we're going to be talking about is righteous judgment. And we have to distinguish that. See, because without righteous judgment, we can't discern the difference between right and wrong, between what is good and just and holy and what is wicked and unjust. And we have to distinguish that. Without judgment, without discernment, without being able to recognize the difference between things, how can we ever make good choices? How can we ever make wise decisions? How can we be sure that we're walking in the will of God? We need to exercise judgment. But here's the truth. We already do. We already make judgments and judgments are like armpits. We have more than one and sometimes they stink." [06:30] (39 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2. "As Christ followers, we need to learn how to judge like God does or we need to learn or we don't need to judge at all. Amen. We should write that down. That's a good one. In the Greek, the word, this word used is krino. It means to sunder. Like if you're cutting something in half means to decide. It means to judge. It has the sense though of evaluating. We want to evaluate things. Judging like God means we evaluate things to make a proper judgment. You know what it really means? It means that we judge without being judgmental. See, when we apply Jesus's teaching on judgment, we'll judge with righteous judgment and we'll be way more quick to show mercy and less inclined to judge." [07:09] (51 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3. "Jesus said, do not judge. Now, some people are taking that literally, right? And remember Matthew chapter five, Jesus said, hey, if you're struggling, with lust, pluck your eye out, cut your hand out. Now, did he mean do that literally? Absolutely not. So here, when Jesus is saying, don't judge, does he mean that literally? No, because we have to look at this whole chapter. This whole chapter, Jesus is judging things and telling us to judge things. Throughout the Bible, we're told to judge things. So Jesus is not meaning do this literally. But sometimes we do that, don't we? We hear that, the world says that to us. They love that verse. They tell the Christian, only God can judge me." [11:32] (40 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4. "Judge yourself first. Let's look at three through five again. It says, and why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me remove the speck from your eye and look, a plank is in your own eye. Hypocrite. First, remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. Now, notice here that Jesus is using a particular word that's supposed to give us some insight. You know what word he's using? Brother. Brother. So is Jesus talking about us judging the world, or is this, the context is judging a brother and sister in the faith? In the faith. He's saying brother. He's not saying judge someone else. He's saying your brother, your sister." [18:59] (47 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5. "Listen, one of the reasons why we need to judge ourselves first is because we don't see everything, do we? We don't have all the details. Sometimes we can look at the picture in front of us and get it, get it wrong, right? Look on the screen for me for a second. What does this look like? This look like this lion is eating her baby, swallowed the head whole, but let's see it from another angle. She just carrying that baby. She didn't eat the baby's head off. But this is us. We see one thing and it's this and it's terrible and it's wicked and it's evil. A mom killing her kid or this or that, the other thing. We don't see the other side. And because we don't see the other side, we make an inaccurate judgment." [20:34] (47 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6. "Judge righteously when you judge. So now we get to the actual judging of other people. And when you get to other people, judge righteously when you judge them. Matthew 7, 6 says, Do not give what is holy to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn and tear you in pieces. Now, Jesus is using two word pictures here that indicate that if we give something good to something defiled, it won't be received well. Dogs in Jesus' days, you know, they're not like the cute, awesome dogs that we have today. You know, in Jesus' day, they were considered scavengers and dirty things. Why? Because they ate every kind of bodily fluid, which made them unclean." [29:37] (46 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7. "Judging righteously begins with seeing ourselves rightly and then seeing others through the lens of God's loving standard. And when we do that, we will not come across as so good and so great and so awesome. And people who need to hear loving correction will listen to you, because they know that you are actually genuinely concerned with, helping them and blessing them, not attacking them. If people feel that you're judging them without seeking to know more of their story and circumstances, they're not going to receive what you say, even if you have the words of life." [32:28] (41 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8. "If we judge people unrighteously, they feel that. And they're going to reject what you have to say. This is why Christians don't have a good voice or a good testimony in the workplace or in the community, because we've come across as judgmental and judgy instead of, and operating in righteous judgment. But if you're, if you're correct, like the Lord and you, you try to judge in love, or you try to, you know, even when I say judge, we're getting that idea. But if we're trying to evaluate and, and correct things in love, like Jesus did, then people who love the truth will receive it and they'll respond to it." [33:53] (39 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)