Well, good morning y'all doing doing well this morning good weekends Yeah, Jerry okay some of some response. Well, uh, it was pretty good weekend wrestling for me I enjoyed the weather yesterday and went out by the pool, but I was thinking as I was preparing for this At the pool of my neighborhood if y'all can remember What in that long ago, but when the real estate market in Orlando was just blistering hot I mean two days the house had been in the market two days and it would sell for thirty to forty thousand dollars over the asking price I mean I could remember because I was buying a house looking to purchase a house during this time and now I'm going Where have those days gone? And I'm about to sell my house in in a little while and But as I was thinking about it, I was remembering a friend of mine who also was looking to purchase a house and Hand his wife wanted to kind of go on the lower end and they ended up buying a one-bedroom condo and After they purchased this condo, they decided that they were going to just Redo the whole thing and just gut it and and he had never really done anything of the sort and so he Attempted to begin to just redo the whole condo and and it was three weeks before seminary was about to begin He's a classmate of mine and as he began to do this read I guess refurbishing Complete remodeling of his of his condo everything began to go wrong I mean he he pulled back the cabinets and there was black mold He went into the bathroom the plumbing was all messed up He pulled back the wall. There was a leak from above There was clogging in the toilet. I mean you name it It was going wrong and I felt terrible for the guy It was almost it was like a mix between a comedy and a tragedy because I would laugh at him because he's like Man, I pulled back the cabinet there was black mold. What else could go wrong? And then I would think about it and just break for the guy because he's sitting there just frustrated not knowing what to do Well one night My buddy is deciding to redo the bathroom and he's cutting bead board and And I don't know if you know you're probably familiar with what bead board is and so he's in a hurry He's frustrated. Everything's going wrong and he's cutting the bead board with the salt all of a sudden The piece of wood just flies up into his right eye and he calls me. He's like man. Guess what happened today a piece of wood flew in my eye I can't see he's as frustrated. He doesn't know what to do. Everything's going wrong Well, he goes into the bathroom to get this piece of wood out of his eye and he can't see it in the mirror He doesn't know where it is and so he just ignores it He thinks it'll go away. He thinks his eye will just kind of flush it out. It won't be a problem. Well After day day one rolls rolls pass day two comes through and now he begins to blink and his eyelid is scraping over This piece of wood every time he blinks and he's like what else. I mean class starts in like two days and all this is going wrong And finally he's coerced in to go to the optometrist He thinks he's just gonna go away Well, he goes to the optometrist and within two minutes the optometrist pulls this piece of wood from his eye an immediate relief immediate vision and he can see and and as I began to think about my buddy's story and what went on I began to think that all of us in this room here this morning has our vision blurred in some way That all of us more something other something others are blurred and are our vision is prohibited by a particular Plank that is in our eye. There's a specific plank that is blurring our vision and This part of the sermon on the mount that we're going to talk about this morning picking back up in chapter seven Jesus is talking about removing the plank Removing the plank from our eye and the plank that he is talking about is the plank of criticalness It's the plank of a critical spirit and I don't even want to ask because I know humanity. I know Us as human as as a human nature. I know myself very well to know that all of us are critical at times Some more than others and so I don't want to ask do you Do you struggle with the critical spirit but more? I want to ask you how has your critical spirit Manifested itself lately Have you been critical toward your spouse lately Judging them have you been critical towards your children lately? Have you been critical towards your roommate or towards your friends? Have you been critical in a trying seemingly loving way at all towards this church? How has your critical spirit manifested itself lately and so we're going to talk and we're going to see how Christ teaches us The removal of this plank from our own eye and so pray with me before I read the passage pray with me Lord We come to you this morning and we before we even begin we bow And humility as we sang that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the double cure It is the double cure of the penalty of sin in our life and the power of sin in our life And we pray as we come to your word That you would breathe life into us That you would break us of sin and produce humility And you would point us in the way ever lasting the way in which we are to walk according To the way Christ preached this sermon from 2000 years ago So enlighten us and lumen our hearts and our minds May your words be spoken So in Jesus name we pray amen Well if you have your Bible you can open to Matthew 7 Matthew 7 is where we left off in the sermon on the mount and we're going to be looking at verses 1 to 6 and this This is the sermon that Jesus preached to the sermon on the mount and This is God's word which endures forever so read with me. It's also on the screen Do not judge or you too will be judged For in the same way you judge others you will be judged And with the measure you use it will be measured to you 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 the 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 Do not give dogs what a sacred do not throw your pearls to pigs If you do they may trample them under under their feet and then turn and tear you to pieces This is God's word I would venture to say that a critical spirit this plank of a critical spirit of being overly judgmental Is an issue that divides churches It is an issue that wounds children It's the thing that damages marriages We love to shape people don't we we think that our way is the best And so we judge and we criticize because we want to shape our children We want to shape our spouse we want to shape Your business this church whatever it may be And oftentimes it causes much more danger than it does help at all And so Jesus in the sermon right here is addressing Judging not so much judging as he is in the manner in which we judge He's talking about the manner in which we judge and he's asking is there clarity is there clarity in your judgment? Is there something skewing your vision Do you see clearly in your judgment? You know people often look at this passage In verse 1 it is probably one of the most often quoted verses today Isn't it Don't judge or you will be judged And it's used in the manner for people to say don't judge me I don't tell me what's right don't tell me what's wrong Don't tell me this is the way I need to be Don't judge or you two will be judged It that's how it's used often today and it's used to give credence for the way in which we live It's used to give justification for acting and living and thinking in ways that are wrong You know we live in a culture today that tolerance Is very prevalent Just accept everybody why why not just be a church that is warm and fuzzy Let's just accept everybody doesn't matter and so we're scared to judge And Christ is not saying here that there is no judgment He's not He's saying there is judgment But what matters is the manner in which we judge the heart behind it the attitude of our heart And the reason I know he's not talking about no judgment period Is in verses two five and six look in this passage looking in verse two five and six and verse two Jesus says from the same way that you judge others you two will be judged He he's implying that judging will take place But be careful The way in which you judge will be the same way that God judges you That's saying you'll never judge He's saying when you do be careful Be sure you're doing it in the right way in verse five He says Take the plank out of your own eye then you will see clearly to remove the spec from your brother's eye It's not saying you'll never remove the spec from your brother's eye But saying when you do make sure you remove the plank from your own eye And then in verse six he says do not give dogs what a sacred do not throw your pearls to pigs if you do That may trample them under their feet and then turn and tear you to pieces and this verse Jesus is saying to his disciples Be careful if you continue to preach the gospel the pearls of the kingdom to people and they reject it and reject it and reject it and reject it over and over and over Use judgment and they and move on to someone who's responsive to the message So there is judgment and in our culture today when we don't want to judge don't judge me tolerate except everything I think that's dangerous and we need to be aware of that And so Jesus here is dealing with the manner and the heart behind the way we judge And the first thing I want to look at in verses one to two is that we live in the eyes of the judge That we are living in the eyes of the judge look and verses one to two with me Verse one to two he says do not judge you two will be judged for the same way you judge others You will be judged and with the measure you use it will be measured to you Now we like to skip past that we want to kind of move on I'm going to be judged. What are you talking about? I'm not going to be judged We and it's real it's uncomfortable to think about being judged and even as I thought about this sermon I'm like it's going to be uncomfortable to talk about being judged And if you're a Christian you've been a Christian for a long time and maybe grown up in church Your first thought maybe as you read this Well Jesus is talking about the judgment when I appeared before God the judge And he judges on whether or not I have faith in Christ And so if I have faith in Christ I don't need to worry about a judgment because Christ took the judgment and I don't have anything to worry about Well That is not necessarily the judgment Jesus is talking about in this passage That is not the judgment. He is talking remember on some of them out Jesus is talking to believers He's talking to those who have faith in Christ And so all those who he is talking to He knows that that judgment the eternal judgment the judgment of where you will spend eternity They've already passed that judgment. They're approved. They're accepted because of their faith in Christ So he is referencing a different type of judgment He the judgment he is referencing is the judgment that Paul talks about in Romans 14 verse 9 to 12 Paul says for this very reason Christ died for you and he returned to life So that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living You then here is he's dressing with Jesus talked about why do you judge your brother or why do you look down on your brother For we will all stand before God's judgment seat And then in verse 12 so then each of us will give an account of himself to God and then second Corinthians 5 10 Paul says again For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ That each one may receive what is do him for the things done while in the body whether good or bad Whether good or bad West minister confession of faith if you're not familiar with that it was written in the 16 1642 it was a group of men coming together put together our doctrinal beliefs the truth that we believe in and this is what it says in chapter 33 But likewise all persons that have lived upon earth shall appear before the tribunal of Christ To give an account of their thoughts their words and deeds and to receive according to what they've done in the body whether good or bad The judgment that Christ is talking about here is not a judgment of eternal destiny But it's the judgment of what will take place in glory It's the judgment of the believer What will take place in glory now we don't like to talk about this We don't a lot of people have even tried to disprove or dismiss this judgment even exists There are scholars and theologians and churches that believe this doesn't exist and in churches And in our particular circles have talked about this less and less and less And for probably for a good reason because the thing that Kind of the pin on swung and the thing that we're scared of is that we don't want to make people feel like they need to work For their salvation that they don't need to work For for acceptance into heaven and so hear me this morning the eternal judgment You cannot earn You can't it's not based upon what you do It's based upon the finished work of Christ And so when we stand before God the judge and he judges whether or not we will go to heaven Or whether we'll go to hell it's based upon our belief in Jesus Christ It's by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone That is that is the eternal judgment And so don't hear me saying works earns you salvation It does not But this judgment that Christ is talking about is a post eternal judgment It's a judgment of rewards not the reward of salvation But the rewards of how you lived your life how you conducted your life and if You judge people with a critical hyper critical point out their balls all the time type of spirit Jesus is saying God will judge you in the same critical judgmental way For our heart the critical spirit within our heart reflects the lives that we live And so we will be judged on the way in which we lived in the body If you were gracious toward others The Lord will be gracious to you and the judgment as what he said in Matthew 5.7 beginning of the summer I'm out if you can remember Matthew 5.7 Blessed are the merciful For they will be shown mercy Jesus is not saying don't judge He's saying be aware of the way in which you do judge Be careful Be gracious Be humble And the way in which you judge others I don't know How you have been judging people lately I don't know if you tend to be a person that looks at the outward appearance and makes a judgment I don't know if you're someone who is quick to point out other people's faults and say how look at that I'm not sure I don't know if you say I wish my kids would just be more like this I wish my spouse would be more like that guy or that lady I wish This would be the more like this Those are all tones of a critical spirit You know in 1884 There was a young man that died in 1884 And his parents were very unassuming very unpretentious very ordinary normal looking parents And they came before Charles Elliott who was the president of Harvard University and Elliott asked what they wanted and they said we want to start a memorial in the honor of our son who just passed away Elliott looking at this couple who looked Very normal like they would didn't have much money And he said well, maybe you mean a scholarship We can do a scholarship and the woman replied the wife by no we wanted to a building And Elliott kind of dismisses and patronizes them and kind of lets them go and And then within the next year in 1885 Elliott hears that this very unassuming Ordinary looking couple had donated and started a memorial in the honor of their son giving 26 million dollars in 1885 Leal and Stanford junior university which is known today as Stanford And Charles Elliott looked at this couple Not knowing their situation not knowing anything about them and made a critical judgment of who they were And what we do is we often look at people We can observe from the outside and we make critical judgments And we don't know their situation We don't know their struggles We don't know the things that they're resting through They're walk with the Lord We don't know any of those things and we make critical judgments And you know when we make critical judgments, we tend to do it on things that are different than us Think about it We tend to do it in ways that people are different than us or are people who are different than us If you're from Say upper class higher income. It's easier to look To a lower income group of people and say They just don't apply themself If they were just driven if they just studied if they didn't have a victim mentality They they would succeed Or you're from a lower income and you look at the higher income and you go and they they just love money Look at look at all their stuff and you don't know The lower income structure they could have grown up in a terrible environment with a terrible family structure And the higher income people could be given more money than you think And we don't know and we can place critical judgments based upon appearance or just based upon what we think we know And it's dangerous We need to be careful because the way which we judge Will be the measure in which God uses to judge us We don't need to be critical the plank of criticalness is removed When we realize that we live under the eyes of a judge We need to remember that and so Jesus moves on in the sermon on the mount If you get if you go on after establishing that we're under the eyes of the judge We're living in the eyes of the judge and then he moves on to this sarcastic Strong language and he uses this word Hippocrate Hippocrate Hippocrate in its root meaning means It was it was used in ancient drama to mean To play the actor it was when character a wanted to become character b They would play the hypocrite they would put on a mask and transform from character a to character b And so they would pretend They were the actor and Jesus now is getting to the heart of criticalness of being hyper critical. He's saying The heart of it is that you are being a hypocrite You are playing the actor you are pretending You are in essence putting on the mask Pointing out the sin and others so that you do not have to face the great sins in your own life That's what criticalness is It's putting on this mask Pointing out sin and others so that you don't have to come face to face with your own sins Having a critical spirit is hiding from your own insecurities From your own sins and it's being self-righteous One of the greatest examples of this is inscripture You're probably familiar with the story in second Samuel of King David King David was It said he was in the time of battle Which he should as king of Israel have been engaged in battle Yet he was on the top of his roof and if you're familiar with the story You know he looked out his roof and he saw a beautiful young woman named Bathsheba And David knew Bathsheba was married to a man named Uriah And Uriah was a loyal servant to King David But David caused to have Bathsheba brought to himself So that he can have sex with her And he has sex and he commits adultery with Bathsheba And if you know the story, you know it's done in there But he then orders Uriah Bathsheba's husband to be placed on the front lines of battle So that he will be killed the next day they go out And that's exactly what happens And King David is guilty of adultery and he's guilty of murder And then in second Samuel 12, the prophet Nathan comes to David and he says King, let me tell you a parable Let me tell you a parable There's a certain traveler coming from a town Coming to a town and there was a rich man and a poor man And the rich man had many lambs The rich man had many lambs and the young man had one little Ulam And he cared for it and it says it's like 712 that he treated this little Ulam like it was his daughter And this traveler comes to town and the rich man takes the only lamb from the poor man slaughters it and gives it to the traveler to eat And Nathan, telling this parable to David, it's like a similar 12 says David burns with anger and says surely this man must die Let's put to death this man And then Nathan says, King, you are this man See David was playing the hypocrite David was wearing the mask of criticalness He knew the sin of the rich man and the parable he could point it out That is a tragedy. Let's put him to death Yet he was blind to his own adultery and his own murder He was playing the part He was playing the part A little side note In your judgments which we should do judgments But if there are sudden outbursts of emotions In your judgments That's pretty good sign that it's probably personal and wrong and not spiritual and right David outburst anger It's probably wrong sign if there's an outburst of emotion in your judgment How are you? How am I wearing this mask? How are we playing the part? Are we pretending? Are we criticizing and pointing out sins and others all along ignoring The sins in our own life Is there humility? Is there brokenness? Is there true repentance Of our unsin You know if we've been Christians for a long time We've become pretty good at playing the game pretty good at pretending And sometimes we don't even know it And Barrick Webb who's an artist in the musician has a line in a song that says wearing repentance as a disguise Seeing through the plank in your own eyes What he's saying is that we've become so good at playing the game That we fake repentance We can fake repentance and have a pseudo Repent and all along be pointing out the sin and others While ignoring the depth and gravity of the own of our unsin in our own life The aim and judgment is humility It's humility. It's not a aha To alleviate the conviction of your own sin It's humility I don't know if y'all've ever looked at someone and just kind of said Man, they're ugly That they are they're just ugly Uh, it could be It's probably it's a compilation of all kind of things It's a compilation of their attitude Uh, the way they conduct themselves maybe in their appearance and he's just kind of looking at that. That's just ugly And there's a guy who I've got to confess that I play basketball with often at the gym And for the long time for a long time and I still wrestle and go That guy is ugly. I mean he has got the worst mouth He cusses and yells at everybody's cocky He he looks different than me. He's he's just he's just ugly all the way through and uh And I begin to look at him and and begin to judge him and size him up and go who is this guy man? He's just ugly And I wanted to show you a picture which I don't think we can the first one Uh of uh painting from an impressionist artist named Ruo And I have to try to describe it for you in this painting Ruo draws two women and the woman on the far left he just distorts I mean her jaw is kind of big her nose is to the left and she she's just an ugly woman Just ugly and then later he paints a picture of Christ if you can show that one And this is the picture he paints of Christ Similar jaw Similar nose look to the next picture That's the ugly woman This is Christ Do you see what Ruo is doing? Ruo was saying that Christ came For the ugly the Christ came to die and to raise Again for the ugly And what I do when I look at this guy in the gym where you look at an adulterer or you look at anybody and you criticize and play the game Is that we forget that Christ died for them And we forget that's me I'm the ugly one And he died for me too Christ loves the guy at the gym Christ loves the adulterer Christ loves me And when we forget that We become critical and proud and arrogant and there's a lack of humility that is in our life We need to realize that God is judge God is judge But what have we learned in Matthew five and six up into this point and Jesus preaching the sermon What he has done all along and five to six is go he's father He's father he's father He's father he's father and nice as he's judge To understand him has judge we need to first understand him as father And we see that he is father who sent his only son Into this world to exchange beauty for ugliness To take on the ugliness of our sin and to give us the beauty of his righteousness He is first father and he sent his son to drink the cup of judgment The eternal judgment that we all will face the one the first one I was talking about Christ Took that judgment if we have faith in Christ and we can rest And we can be at peace and know that a warm embrace is welcoming us into heaven When we pass on to glory And if you're an unbeliever here this morning or you're not sure if you're a believer You're kind of on this journey or skeptical you might have grown up in church But not sure if there's a true faith in Christ a real relationship A little bit of a warning If you don't know God as father You will only know him as judge and which no one took your judgment and you will face the judgment So I plead that if you're here this morning and you're not sure To look and see him as a father who sent his only son To take upon your sins your iniquities Even your criticalness your anger your pride your lust your adultery your murder And join the journey of knowing him as father And if you know him as father this morning It transforms our view of him as judge It transforms our view of him as judge and he is not a judge. He's looking to smash us But he is a judge who wants to woo us With his fatherly love And if we remember what he said in the sermon on the mount our father who are in heaven Matthew 6 last week Scott preached on he's a father who closed us better than the lilies of the field He is a father who is ruler creator. He owns our life And when we see that and we see he is judge We don't go God what a burden that I'm going to be judged based upon my life But we go what a privilege it is that I get to know this father and that I get to know this judge And when we come before the judge we can say I lived no other way Because there was no other way in which I could have lived Because of your grace and your mercy toward me He's judge and he's father He's both And so this morning my prayers that as he reveals this critical spirit that Goes and pervades us it comes up in me And I know it does in y'all That humility and loneliness and abrokeness will come as we know him as judge and we know him as father John stop I thought he put it great. He said in all our attitudes and in all our actions Who we are to play neither the judge becoming harsh Or the hypocrite blaming others while excusing ourselves But we're to be the brother caring for others So much so that we blame the correct ourselves first And then seek to be constructive If we see sin and others Let us not be afraid to point it out That's love It's love to point it out but a lot of times we're afraid we don't want to Disagree we want to all get along that's not what Jesus is saying It is love to point out sin But we should do it with humility We should do it with gentleness The eye is a sensitive organ We need to be sensitive we need to be careful in the way in which we judge and construct others in a loving way When we see that the plank of criticalness is removed When we realize we walk and we live under the eyes of a judge Who is also father Let me pray Lord We come and as I preach this Lord I Confessed that I need to see you as father and I need to see you as judge and I need to see Christ Taking on the ugliness of this world So Lord break us lead us Make us a people of humility loving others well Because you have loved us With everlasting love since Jesus name we pray amen