Embracing Grace: Overcoming Judgment and Hypocrisy

**Welcome to Eastwood Presbyterian Church!**

We're glad to have you here this morning. If you're visiting with us, we want to give you a warm welcome. We do have visitor cards in the back of the pews, so we'd love for you to fill one of those out so we could be in touch with you and just welcome you again.

We have a few announcements. There are details in the back of your bulletin. There is no youth fellowship tonight, and the church office is closed Tuesday for the Fourth of July. Next week, on the ninth, we will be having a fellowship meal, and all are invited. You can see the details there of what we're asking you to bring. Those are always a wonderful time.

Beginning July 16th during the Sunday School hour, we are going to do one of our inquirers or new members classes. If you're interested in joining the church, coming in, asking questions, or just learning about who we are, what we believe, and why we do what we do, we would love to have you at that. You can also sign up by just emailing Lynn Grace.

VBS is upcoming very quickly, the week after next. We would appreciate all of our prayers and help. Whoever is available can see some specific ways to serve on July 8th and 9th. There are also dates for the upcoming youth activities as well as the WIC events. The WIC has put on a wonderful summer. The homeschool kickoff will be at the Sumner's house August 25th. Please keep that in mind as well. A few other things are in your bulletin to see.

For now, let us prepare our hearts to worship. Our call to worship this morning is from Psalm 72:18-19:

"Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things. Blessed be his glorious name forever. May the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and Amen."

Let's stand together and sing Hymn number four: "All Praise to God Who Reigns Above."

Let's pray:

"Father in Heaven, as we enter into your presence, we acknowledge that we come by the name of Jesus Christ, by his blood and by his righteousness. We draw near to you knowing that you will give us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, to focus our hearts, to tune our voices to sing your praise. We draw near to you in the assurance of your promise that as we do, you will draw near to us. So we pray that you would keep that promise to us. Lord, for Christ's sake, amen."

Let's remain standing as we use our offering. We the words of the first two questions from the Heidelberg Catechism as our confession of faith:

What is your only comfort in life and death?

That I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ, who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins and delivered me from all the power of the devil, and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation. Wherefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.

How many things are necessary for you to know that you in this comfort may live and die happily?

Three: The first, how great my sins and misery are; the second, how I am delivered from all my sins and misery; the third, how I am to be thankful to God for such a deliverance.

Praise God! Praise brothers! Let's go to our God in prayer.

Father in heaven, we thank you for your steadfast love. We thank you for the riches of your love lavished upon us in Jesus Christ. We thank you that in him we have righteousness and peace with you, that through him we have access into your presence, through him we have received the Holy Spirit as a gift from you and from him, and so we praise you, one God and three persons, and we give thanks to you for your saving mercies to us.

Father, we pray that you would magnify the name of Christ here and around this world. Lord, we pray that your blessing would be upon your Gospel wherever it's proclaimed in this world, from here in Montgomery to the farthest reaches of the world.

Lord, we pray especially your blessing upon Brooks Bias and upon Nolan Geiger as they prepare to go and serve you in Germany and Europe in the summer weeks. Grant, Lord, your blessing to their endeavors. Grant them strength of spirit and physical strength as they travel to these lands. Grant your blessing to their ministries as they assist and encourage and support and bear witness to your grace in their lives. Grant, Lord, your blessing on this endeavor.

Father, we pray your blessing also upon others serving you in distant lands, whether those in Central and South America, those in Africa, those in the Middle East, those in Europe, those in the farthest reaches of China, Japan, and other nations in Asia. Send out your light and your truth that they may proclaim the good news of Christ for all people, that all may come to know and worship you, subdue the nations unto yourself. Grant your grace around this world, gather your people from the four corners of the Earth.

Father, we pray that you would bless us here in this nation as we mark our anniversary of our establishment. So, Lord, remember us and we give you thanks for the many blessings and mercies you have shown to us through the years, blessings on the battlefield and victories, blessings and the provisions of food and clothing and shelter, where we may help feed many others throughout this world.

Lord, we thank you for the blessings of liberty with which you have blessed us. We pray that the gospel may be freely proclaimed and believed in this land, and that our faith and practice may not be hampered by bureaucratic regulations. We acknowledge our sins as a nation, for our leaders have turned us aside from your ways and chosen paths that are contrary to you. We ask that you turn our hearts back to you and restore us to righteousness.

We also pray for your church, that you would strengthen this congregation and build us up in our faith and faithfulness to you. Help us to not only know what we believe, but to live in the light of it and to love you above all other things.

Lord, we thank you for our denomination and for this season of assembly, and pray your blessing that we continue to look forward and move forward into the next 50 years. Grant us Godly leaders in our churches and pulpits, and faithful congregations as we follow after you.

We also lift up the needs of our loved ones who are suffering. For those going through cancer treatments, we pray that you would grant your mercy and strengthen their bodies. For those recovering from surgery, we pray that you would grant your blessing. For those facing the challenges and temptations of this life, help us to turn away from sin and to follow after you faithfully. Write your laws upon our hearts and grant us your spirit that empowers us to walk in those laws.

We lift up our schools, even as we are in recess and summer break. Refresh our students and teachers as they have time away and prepare for the school year. Grant your grace to our students that they may grow in grace and knowledge of you, and that their faith in all the subjects of this life may lead them and point them to you, who gives knowledge and understanding. Help us to know that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

We ask for your forgiveness for our sins, for our thoughts, our desires, and our paths are not always pleasing to you. We seek that through the blood and merits of Jesus Christ. Equip us to grow in grace and knowledge of you, that we would be steadfast and true, growing each day in likeness and in love towards you. We make our prayers in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Our Savior, Jesus Christ, gave himself freely and gladly for us, so God calls us to present ourselves as living offerings and to present him our tithes and offerings as a token of our allegiance to him.

Let us continue to worship God by standing together and singing from our psalter, this time from Psalm 63 on page 51.

We have just read and heard the word of the Lord from Isaiah 16. This passage is a continuation of the Oracle concerning Moab. God is declaring his judgments upon Moab and directing them to God's people Israel.

Hear the word of the Lord:

"Send the lamb to the ruler of the land from Sela by way of the desert to the Mount of the daughter of Zion. Like fleeing birds, like a scattered nest, so were the daughters of Moab at the Ford of Arnon. Give counsel, grant justice, make your shade like night at the height of noon. Shelter the outcast; do not reveal the fugitive. Let the outcasts of Moab sojourn among you; be a shelter to them from the destroyer. When the oppressor is no more and destruction has ceased, and he who tramples underfoot has vanished from the land, then a throne will be established in steadfast love and on it will sit in faithfulness in the tent of Jacob, in the tent of David, one who judges and seeks justice and is swift to do righteousness."

We have heard of the pride of Moab, how proud he is of his arrogance, his pride and his insolence in his idol boasting. He is not right, therefore let Moab wail for Moab; let everyone wail, mourn, utterly stricken for the raisin cakes of Kir-hereseth, for the fields of Heshbon languish, and the vine of Sibmah. The Lords of the Nations have struck down its branches which reached to Jazer and strayed to the desert. Its shoots spread abroad and passed over the sea.

Therefore I will weep with the weeping of Jazer for the vine of Sibmah; I will drench you with my tears, O Heshbon and Elealeh, for over your summer fruit and your harvest the shout has ceased and joy and gladness are taken away from the fruitful field and in the vineyards no songs are sung, no cheers are raised, no treader treads out wine in the presses. I have put an end to the shouting, therefore my inner parts moan like a liar from Moab and my inmost self for Kir-hereseth.

But when Moab presents himself, when he wearies himself on the high places, when he comes to his sanctuary to pray, he will not prevail. This is the word that the Lord spoke concerning Moab in the past, but now the Lord has spoken saying, "In three years, like the years of a hired worker, the glory of Moab will be brought into contempt, in spite of all his great multitude and those who remain will be very few and feeble."

Thus far as God's word.

Let us pray:

Father in Heaven, out of your hand you have freely given us all the good things we have and we thank you for your grace and mercy. We thank you for the gift of your son Jesus Christ and we thank you for the gift of your word that we have just read and heard this morning. We pray that you would help us to live out the truth of your word in our lives and that you would help us to be faithful in our tithes and offerings to you. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Introduced, there's often a tendency to push back and to question why and to ask why do I have to do this, why do I have to do that? Jesus is addressing that in this passage. He's saying don't judge, don't question why, don't push back, don't be a hypocrite.

We all have a tendency to judge and to question why, but Jesus is telling us not to do that. He is telling us to not be a hypocrite in the way that we live our lives and in the way that we question the rules that have been set before us. He is saying that whatever judgment we pronounce, we will be judged by the same measure. We should take the log out of our own eye before we try to take the speck out of our brother's eye. We should be humble and acknowledge that we are in great need of God's Holy Spirit to be our teacher and to open the eyes of our hearts. We should pray that God would bring us exhortation, rebuke, encouragement, and a greater sight of His glory and goodness.

Within the next few minutes, Jesus is warning us about our attitude towards our fellow believer. He has torn down the legalism and religiosity of his day, where sin was what you could see other people do and not what was in the heart. Jesus has shown us what it means to be a Christian and a disciple, and now he is trying to pull the reins back on us from going and bludgeoning one another with the law and fault finding. He is warning us to beware of a judgmental and hypocritical heart, as it is a distinct possibility that it is in our heart. We must be careful of how we treat others and what is the attitude of our heart behind that. Jesus is challenging us to remove specks from our brothers' and sisters' eyes in an appropriate way.

We must remember that God is sanctifying us by his grace and changing us to be more like the Lord Jesus Christ. Judgmentalism and hypocrisy often go together. Jesus said in Matthew 7:1, "Judge not, that you be not judged." This is one of the most misunderstood, misused, and misapplied verses from the Bible in the world at large. It is often used when someone is making a valid point of what God says is right or wrong, and then people come back and say, "Judge not, that you be not judged."

Jesus did not mean that we should not make judgments between right and wrong, good and evil. Just a few verses later, Jesus is commanding his disciples to make a category between people. A few verses after that, Jesus talks about good trees bearing good fruit. We must be able to categorize fruit in people's lives. A mass murderer is not someone who has the fruit of a Christian, and we can make that judgment call.

What Jesus is talking about is not making judgments, but having an attitude of censoriousness. This is the idea of being harshly critical of others. We are not the police force for the church, and we should not walk around thinking we are in charge of correcting everyone around us. Jesus is saying that having a judgmental attitude towards others has no place for a disciple.

As a Christian, we must remember who we are and where we have come from. The first Beatitude of the Sermon on the Mount is "Blessed are the poor in spirit." This means that we must come to God with humility, knowing that we bring nothing to the table and that every good thing we have is a gift from the Lord. We must also be meek, mourning our own sins and praying for forgiveness. We must recognize our position before the Lord and not see ourselves as the "Sermon on the Mount police" for everyone else.

Jesus warns against this attitude because he knows it is a natural tendency for us to take the focus off of our own sins and put them on other people's sins. Calvin comments that Jesus' teaching here is "intended to cure a disease which appears to be natural to us all." There is a natural tendency in all of us to gossip and participate in fault-finding. Calvin explains this tendency by saying that we all flatter ourselves and enjoy inquiring into other people's faults.

But why is it so hard to turn away from gossip and instead focus on praying for others? We need to check our hearts and make sure that we are not elevating ourselves by focusing on others in a bad way. We enjoy fault-finding and thinking the worst about people, and it is arrogant and the opposite of humility and charity. We should not be playing God and judging others, as they stand before the Lord's judgment seat.

We can look out at the culture and see certain black and white things and say what is wrong and what is right, but the application of that truth in someone's life is not always black and white. We need to steward our finances in a Godly way, as it is not ours, but belongs to the Lord. Jesus would have us examine our own hearts and not judge one another with harshness.

We need to remember that everything we have belongs to the Lord and that our families belong to the Lord. We need to raise our children in the Lord, but the application of these principles is not black and white. This is why the scripture is so intent on telling us to honor one another's consciences. We should not be the ultimate judge of someone else's conscience, but there are times when we need to challenge one another with the word.

We should not be walking around critiquing other people, and we should not take pleasure in seeing other people's downfalls. We should mourn when someone is caught in sin and have sorrow when their life is falling apart. Jesus also warns us against hypocrisy. We should take the log out of our own eye before we try to take the speck out of our brother's eye. We need to check our hearts and make sure that we are not being judgmental or hypocritical.

Jesus is vividly illustrating here the point: he's just shocking us into realizing the absurdity of what we do. Maybe it's because he grew up as the son of a carpenter or maybe just the dusty environment that they lived in, but he gives the difference between somebody who has a speck of something in their eye (which is very painful if you've ever had that) and somebody who has a log protruding out of their face from their eye.

It's an absurd picture and it's supposed to be, because it's supposed to capture our attention and say that you know that is crazy that the person with the log in their face will come to the person with a speck in their eye and say, "Oh let me help you with that." First of all, get a tree removal service for your head, then maybe you can talk about the speck.

He's pointing out again the tendency of our heart to maximize the faults of others, to display them largely in our vision, and to minimize our own sin. Jesus is saying, "Look at what happens when you're a hypocrite, look at how blind you are. The fact that you are so focused on other people's specks makes you forget just not even deal with the fact that you have a log sticking out of your eye."

And so he's rebuking the pride that's behind this. Again, coming back to Calvin, we enjoy elevating other people's faults because then it makes us feel better about ourselves and there's just pride there. We don't want to take an honest look in the mirror. One of the commentators says, "We've got this kind of fatal tendency just said in a different way to absolutely magnify the faults of everybody else while we completely minimize like you have to use a microscope to find yours and all you need to use is regular eyes to see other people's."

That's how we treat ourselves and it's a very haughty self-righteousness. Again, Jesus is saying, "Check your heart on this. If you find yourself being critical of others, maybe look in the mirror first, check where you are in your life, what's going on in your heart, what's going on in your life that is leading you to spend this time and this energy not examining yourself but examining them."

This comes along with a stern warning. Look at verse 2 which covers all of this: he says, "For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you." It was possible to measure very kind of in a very broad way something that's about three feet and then you can measure very very precisely.

Well, that is four inches in 89 hundredths of a centimeter or whatever. My dad helped me do a woodworking project, we had to do a bunch of measuring at various points and I felt like my eyes were crossing in front of my face if I tried to get just a little bit below a quarter of an inch. You know, I can't barely see the eighth of an inch.

Jesus is warning us to be careful how we measure and judge other people. We should remember that we too will be judged by God and that His judgment is not something that will ultimately condemn us, as believers, because we are in Christ. However, there are still consequences for sin. We should think about how God has treated us and not measure others according to the law and harsh criticism.

We should remember that God does not treat us according to our sins or repay us according to our iniquities, and that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. Living in light of the good news of the Gospel should take the wind out of our sails when it comes to wanting to judge others. We should understand that God has been exceedingly gracious to us and that He has washed us in the blood of His Son.

Brothers and Sisters, Jesus would encourage us this morning to turn our eyes off of ourselves and to turn our eyes off of each other and ultimately to turn our eyes to the Lord Jesus as he sits at God's right hand with the nail scars in his hands. He declares to you that you have not been treated according to your sins and now he says, "By the grace that I give you daily, go and do likewise." May it be so.

Father, we praise you. You do not treat us according to our sins or repay us according to our iniquities. But instead, as high as the heavens are above the Earth, so great, oh Lord, is your steadfast love for those who fear you. As far as the East is from the West, so far have you removed our transgressions from us. Lord, you have cast them into the sea, you've trampled on them, they are no more in Christ and we thank you for that.

We bless your name, we praise you and oh God, we pray that you would work in us hearts of humility and gratitude and love, not this hyper-critical censorious attitude of walking around like everybody's judge. Father, work this in us that we might love you, we might love one another. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

Let's respond to God's word and prepare to come to the table this morning by standing together and singing Hymn number 644, "May the Mind of Christ My Savior."

Please stand together.

As you come to the Lord's table today, just remember two things. Remember that the table reminds us that we are sinners, that we are not invited here because we're good, because we're nice, because we're respectable, because we're just fine people. If we were that, there would be no table here. We come because we're sinners, we come because we are without hope saved in the Sovereign Grace of our God. So we come humbly and yet confidently.

Humbly because we know that if others knew us as well as God does, they wouldn't want to hang around us too long. But there's a second thing that we know as we come to this table and that is that Jesus loves us. He said, "Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." He knows us thoroughly inside and out, all the things that we know that others know and all the things that nobody knows but God in us and he even knows things about us that we don't know. And yet he gave his life for us.

The knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves here the table reminds us that because we know ourselves, we know that we cannot atone for our sins, we cannot make up for what we have done. But the table reminds us that God has covered our tab, he has atoned for our sins, that Christ has taken our place and that by his broken body and by his shed blood we are pardoned and that our debt is canceled and that he grants us righteousness to come before God acceptably and that God the Father even is pleased to call us his children. That God is proud to call you his child.

If I knew you like God knows you, I'm not sure I would.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. I invite you to come to the Lord's table. It's not my table, it's not Eastwood's table, it's the Lord's table. If you professed your faith in Jesus Christ publicly, if you are affiliated with a gospel preaching Evangelical Church, then you come. If you have not professed your faith publicly, pass the tray to the next person. If you have not joined an Evangelical Church and are in good standing in that church, pass the tray to the next. If you're a young person who has not yet professed faith in Christ, pass the tray with your parents and ask them when may I take communion. Mom, Dad, what does it mean? Why is it important? Why do we do this?

Come if your faith is in Christ alone and your only hope of salvation is in him. If you've been approved by the session and having given indication of a desire to participate in the table, then you come.

Hear the words of institution from First Corinthians chapter 11. Elder Andy Perry will come and ask God's blessing on the elements.

Let's pray:

Lord, we thank you this morning for your great mercy toward us that flows from your love for us. That while we are yet sinners, Christ died for us and the wrath and curse that we have earned on ourselves for disobeying you, you took upon yourself the weight of your wrath and for our sin. And so now we come to worship you with communion and thank you for the redemption that we have through your blood that you shed for us. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Thank you.

Let's pray and then we'll receive God's blessing.

Thank you Lord Jesus for the death that you have redeemed us from our sins and made us Kings and Priests unto our God and Father. So we praise you and thank you for the communion we've had with you in these elements. Grant us faithfulness to you as we live this life and help us to go in light of your death for us and your coming return in glory.

As often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father and the fellowship of God the Holy Spirit be with you and abide with you forever. Amen. Thank you.