Seeing Jesus: Judgmentalism

Announcement that i just wanted to feature is that uh next saturday that's six days from now we're putting on a spiritual gifts workshop now i have to say a couple things about this just just to make super clear number one and i and i and i hate to i wrote this in the email that i sent the other day about this i hate to be honest with you but probably this saturday is going to be raining as will most saturdays for the next four months so you might say oh i don't

want to do something on a saturday because i'm planning on enjoying the sun and you're just lying to yourself You're not going to be enjoying the sun.

And so where would you rather be? Where would you rather be? You'd probably rather be warm and inside somewhere with people that you like, eating delicious Chipotle, and learning about spiritual gifts. That is my opinion of what I know about you. I think you would enjoy this more than sitting around on the couch and saying, I wish I could go outside, but you're not going to do that because it's too cold and it's going to be rainy. So that's my big plug.

My big plug is it's not going to be sunny. And, like, learning about your spiritual gifts, I think, is really a part of Christian maturity. And there's so much around the ideas of spiritual gifts that we just, like, don't, like, sip into that because we maybe have some ideas about, like, well, this is a weird thing.

It's kind of like I'm not comfortable with it. And I get all of that. But if I read Scripture—, And every time Paul or any of the, you know, in the epistles, like teaching about what the church is, like people who have spiritual gifts and who are using those things to love and serve and care for one another, like that's right at the heart of what makes the church the church.

And so really, what I'm just asking you to do is to just learn a little bit about what it means to be a Christian and on mission and filled with the Spirit. And I don't think that's weird. I really don't think that's weird. And we're bringing in a guy, Jimmy John Morris, which is a great name. Just such a great name, Jimmy John. He's from Seattle, of all the places to be named Jimmy John. Yeah, so he's going to come in, a local pastor. I mean, he's going to be teaching

this, and it's going to be really good. So I just wanted to encourage you guys to sign up. You can use that QR code to get the link, or if you go to our website, you should be able to RSVP there, or the email that we sent, you can RSVP through that. But please let us know that you're coming, because we are providing lunch. And I will not be able to make lunch miraculously appear unless it goes really well.

That was funny. That was actually really funny. I don't plan on it. I'm going to tell Chipotle that we need the food. All right, so there's that. So anyways, we are continuing on in the Sermon on the Mount this morning. And I really want you to bring out your Bibles because especially this one, it's going to be real Bible study-y, which I think we always are, but this one in particular. So we're going to be looking at Matthew chapter 7, verses 1 through 12.

So get your Bible out, and there's some in front of you if you need them.

And I'm excited to jump into this because this is actually a really interesting set of verses. It's actually made up of two what we tend to think are distinct passages that are actually quite well known. The first passage, the first couple of verses, is dealing with judging. And I mean, you know this verse, right? Jesus says, do not judge so that you won't be judged. That's how that little section begins. Have you heard those verses before?

You're familiar with Jesus' teaching about not judging? Yeah, I think most of us have heard about that. The second passage actually begins this way. It's another familiar passage, something you're probably familiar with. It says, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and their door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and the one who knocks the door will be opened.

Heard that one before? Usually when we're talking about prayer, we pull this Bible verse out and we say, well, this is a verse about prayer. And here's why I'm really excited to look at these two passages. I'm excited because these are both well-known passages that we tend to think of as just kind of freestanding individual bits of wisdom. Like we know these sets of verses in these passages in isolation,

like they're pretty well-known. We think maybe Jesus is getting to the point at the end of his sermon where he's just spitballing unrelated things. So he's like, oh, here's a little bit on judging, and here's a little bit on prayer, totally unrelated.

But actually, what I intend to demonstrate to you is that these two passages are actually part of a single section, and Jesus is actually making one argument throughout this little bit, all the way from this, all the way down to the therefore in verse 12, which is the way normally arguments are structured. There's a conclusion at the end, and it wraps up and enfolds the previous ideas, and that's what we see going on here.

He's presenting one idea, and I really want to show you that because actually it's really important in order to make sense of the first section that we have the second section because it tells us what's actionable in it. Okay, so we're going to just work our way through the passage.

Let's just start at the beginning. Matthew 7, verses 1 through 5 says, do not judge so that you won't be judged. For you will be judged by the same standard with which you judge others, and you will be measured by the same measure you use. Why do you look at the splinter in your brother's eye, but you don't notice the beam of wood in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, well, let me take that splinter out of your eye and look, there's a beam of wood in your own eye.

Hypocrite. First, take the beam of wood out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take the splinter out of your brother's eye. So this passage, and especially this first verse, are probably the verses most commonly quoted by non-Christians. That's what I would say. If I had to guess, one of the things that non-Christians love to tell us about Jesus, it's this, don't judge. Jesus taught that we ought not to be judgmental. And you know what? That is not wrong. It's entirely correct.

Jesus here very clearly in black and white tells us that we ought not to judge one another. I mean, he says your brothers and sisters in particular, but I think we can extend that beyond to pretty much everyone. The question is, right, interpretively, what does it mean to judge people?

What is judging anyway? I think the wrong answer, which is the one that's commonly held by many, is that Jesus is arguing that upholding or believing any kind of objective standard of right and wrong, of morality, that that's judging. But I think it's really hard to make that case from the text, right? I mean, just in particular, because if we think about the context, this is a long sermon, right? This is a long sermon. We're well into it. There's been two chapters of this sermon so far.

And if we think about what is this sermon about, we think about the context of the sermon. We think about what is going on in chapters five and six. What this sermon is about, it's about true righteousness. Jesus is making the case that righteousness actually really matters, that God cares that We would be people who are being morally and spiritually transformed as human beings.

So to say that by not judging Jesus means that we just need to not worry about what's right or wrong, it's just totally contradictory to the logic of the sermon up to this point. The context makes it clear that that can't be. I mean, Matthew 5.20 says, I tell you, unless—and this is kind of his introduction to the practical sides of the sermon. He says, I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.

So Jesus is not saying that we shouldn't judge because, well, God doesn't care. God's just really chill and you guys are so uptight. That doesn't make sense because in fact, he's calling us to greater and truer and authentic righteousness, something that is tangible.

So what is he trying to say? What is Jesus trying to say? I think to answer that, we can continue to think about the context. Because just like meaning is guided by context, that's an important part of interpreting scripture, we can also just kind of follow the logic, particularly when we have a unit of thinking like we do in the Sermon on the Mount here. We can follow the context through. And if you want to think with me about what we've learned so far about what Jesus has been teaching.

He's been teaching in this Sermon on Righteousness. He's been instructing his disciples how it is that they can pursue transformative and authentic and genuine righteousness. What would it mean for them to be truly good, truly right with God? And as we've discussed, Jesus spends most of chapter five talking about righteousness in the realm of our relationships, right?

So he starts with chapter 5, and he's describing what it would look like for us to be righteous relative to other people in the way that we treat them, right? And if you'll remember back to chapter 5, that's where we talk about loving our enemies, you know? It looks like serving other people even when they treat you poorly. It looks like just hanging in there and caring about them and loving them beyond what is just legally prescribed in the law of Moses, right? Moses told people, don't murder.

And Jesus says, well, I think we can do a little bit better than that, right? Like love and true righteousness is not just not killing someone. True righteousness is something more. And so in chapter five, he focuses in on the interpersonal dynamic of true righteousness. And then in chapter six, he goes on as we've talked about. And if you have questions about these things, like we're doing sermons on each of these things.

So you You could go back and listen to the past ones. They're all in YouTube and podcasts and stuff like that. He begins to focus in chapter six on righteousness in my relationship with God. What does it look like to love God, to serve him, to not have idols before him, to really give my all in worship and devotion to God? So it's true righteousness in terms of my relationship with God or your relationship with God. Jesus lays into that.

And then the question is, okay, if that was chapter five, others' righteousness in terms of others, and chapter six is righteousness in terms of God, then what is he doing now? He talks about not judging. And well, is that focusing back in on interpersonal? Is he going back to the same theme as chapter five? I actually don't think so. I don't think that's what he's doing. Here's what I think he's doing.

He's actually talking about the way we think about God's relationship with other people, other people's relationship with God, and our perceptions of it. At first glance, it might seem like he's going back to relationships, but I don't think that's what he's doing. I think this is what he's doing. Lookit, there's some inevitability to this.

Inevitably, as a person in the world, you're going to look at other people, you're going to see what they're like, and you will form impressions about them and their relationship with God, and if they're a healthy, spiritually healthy person. I mean, that's just life. I'm not saying that Jesus says, just kind of put up blinders to other people in their actions and don't interpret what they're doing or saying. I don't think what he's saying is that.

That's just normal. But I think what he is saying is that usually when we judge, we're going beyond that. We're going beyond than just saying, I might have some concerns about this person. When we're judging, we're going much further than that. And there are at least three big things that we do. and three big issues with judgment. And the first is that it's unloving, all right? Judging is unloving. And I think actually Paul explains that really well in Romans 14. He says this in Romans 14.

He says, but you, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or, and this is what he describes judging as, why do you despise your brother and sister? For we all stand before the judgment seat of God, For it is written, as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow to me and every tongue will give praise to God. So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore, let us no longer judge one another.

Instead, decide never to put a stumbling block or pitfall in the way of your brother and sister. Judging is unloving. It's unloving on two counts. It's unloving to the others, the people whom I'm judging, the individuals, because as Paul says here, it is to despise them. It is to usually paint them in the least charitable and unkind way possible. It is to presume knowledge of what's going on in their heart in a way that is very likely and very likely to be prone to a kind of blindness.

And we'll talk about that in a second when we get to hypocrisy. Secondarily, though, it's unloving to God because God has already told us he's the judge of the world. When we judge, we stand in God's place and we tell him, God, I've got this. Why don't you sit down? I think I know what's in people's hearts. And I think I can discern what's going on in them very clearly. It's simple for me.

You need to just sit down, God. I've got this. When I form strong opinions about other people's life without talking to them, without praying for them, without getting into it with them, this is just judgmental. It's unloving to them. It's unloving to other people. And the second issue with judging, and it's what Jesus points out here, is that it is hypocritical.

There we go. It's hypocritical. Jesus explains how hypocrisy works out in Matthew 7. He says, why do you look at the splinter in your brother's eye, but you don't notice the beam of wood in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, well, let me take the splinter out of your eye. And look, there's a beam of wood in your own eye. And Jesus calls this what it is. He says, it's hypocrisy. That is hypocrisy.

See, Jesus warns us against judging others. And the reason, I think this is really at the heart of why we're so incapable of doing this well, it's because we oftentimes just fall into hypocrisy. We take it upon ourselves to identify other people's failures. To look at their life, which we really have very little access to, and assume that we can understand what's going on with them, and then we pass judgment on them. But we rarely hold ourselves to the same standards.

So I look at someone else's action and I say, they're loving or they're being, you know, it's immoral or whatever the thing, whatever the thing that I'm looking at, I pass judgment, I hold them to a standard. And yet what Jesus tells us is that it's a constant part of the human condition is that we will rarely look to ourselves and we will rarely rightly assess our own condition. In fact, we're pointing out other people's minor flaws when in fact we are blind to our major flaws.

We we explain we explain we're very quick to say that our failures and our issues are just benign because we we know the reasons why we did something and and we can tell ourselves the stories about well why is it okay for me to do this right so we're very quick to to forgive our own faults and yet we are so quick to pathologize and exaggerate other people's issues, and to overread their words and actions as being more representative of their heart than it actually is.

So we're prone to hypocrisy. It's a huge issue when we judge. And the third problem with judging is that it's always tied up in legalism. It's always tied up in legalism. Really just by virtue of what judging is. Judgmentalism is always tied up in legalism because we don't actually have the capacity to judge rightly. I don't have the capacity to judge rightly. We fool ourselves into thinking that we can see what's going on in a person's heart and in their relationship with God.

That thing on the left is an eyeball, just in case you are wondering. I realize I'm like, is that a spaceship? So this is like me. like I see people and I think I see someone and I think I can see their relationship with God. That's what we do when we judge. I see the person and I have some insight into their relationship with God. That's how deluded you are when you're judging. But the truth is, this is what your judgment actually looks like. You can't see what's going on in a person's heart.

You can see something. you can see the outward, but you have no access by virtue of you not being God to someone's heart. So when you judge, you presume a kind of knowledge or clarity or understanding that you simply don't have. You could try harder. You will never be able to overcome this obstacle.

You are not God. You are not called to be the judge. God is able to see what's going on in people's hearts, but you are not, and you never will be. We can't know. We cannot access those things. And so in light of that ignorance, what we do when we judge is that we look at the outward. And again, it's not abnormal or wrong to notice and wonder, maybe this person has a problem. Maybe this person needs to get right with God.

In fact, all of ministry is noticing and caring enough about that question that we might go ahead and talk to them and pray with them and work with them. That is what we're called to do, but we're just not called to pass judgment and to over-presume upon a knowledge that we don't have. We cannot see what's going on in someone's life. To notice how someone behaves is normal, and it might be legitimate to be concerned about someone because of their outward actions.

But when it goes past that, that's when it's a problem. Because that's what legalism is. Legalism treats outward behaviors that are not biblical, non-biblical outward behaviors as tests for spirituality. There are some things that the Bible makes really clear. These are totally inconsistent with a healthy spiritual person. You know, like, so I'm not talking about those things because those things are not legalism. These are, those are revelation, like given just by God.

Like certain things are incompatible with a healthy spiritual life, with a good relationship with God. But there are lots of things that we ascribe power, to give us insight to a person's spiritual conditions that are simply just like laws that we're making up, things that we are fixating upon, that we're deciding, no, this thing is something that is giving me unique insight into the soul of a person.

And I can, on the basis of my knowledge about this thing, which is extra biblical, decide if a person is right with God or not and decide if they're worth my time, decide if they're worth my compassion, decide if I should love them or not.

We've just, as Americans, gone through our every four-year ritual of judging each other, right? This is a really great one that we do every four years. And especially if you're on Twitter, like I am, usually about the last month before the elections, people are very nice. And they're like, oh, these are very serious issues, which I'm fine with talking about that. Things are serious. Moral issues are at stake. The direction of the country is at stake.

Of course, we should have opinions. We're not saying that we can't have any impression that maybe one way is better than the other. But right in about the one month before the election, you get these takes. And it's usually really ripe legalism, where it's, you can't do this and be a Christian. How could you possibly vote for party X? If you vote for party X, then clearly you don't know God. You have no relationship with God.

Or if you vote for candidate Y, you clearly hate God and you clearly hate people. As if these little behaviors, which we've just invented in the last couple hundred years, voting, are somehow the definitive insight about what's going on in our heart. We've decided to give these things weight. And again, I'm not saying that these aren't ethically meaningful things. Voting is ethically meaningful, yes. And I'm not saying you can't have an opinion.

But to claim that this thing gives you unique insight into what's going on in someone's soul is just crazy. And it's judgment par excellence. You can judge me for saying that. I apologize. I don't. I read a lot of books, and I don't talk to a lot of people. And this is what happens. I say things like par excellence, and it's terrible. Okay. And we do this in so many ways, not just in political. We are great culturally and individually as setting up tests of the heart.

Christians do this to non-Christians. Non-Christians do this to Christians. Legalism is ubiquitous in our world. It always has been because we can't see people's hearts. And so we try to establish proxies for understanding what's going on. So we judge people by who they hang out with, what their friends are like. We say, well, if you hang out with certain people and they're not a good character, that must mean you're a bad character.

The Pharisees did this with Jesus all the time. He says, you're eating with tax collectors and sinners. How can you call yourself a good person? This is clearly some sort of insight into what kind of person you are. And so we can judge you on the basis of that. We do this on when we decide, you know, what kind of church do you go to? Oh, you go to that kind of church, you must just... Right? You go to this kind of church, oh, you must just be, you must be a super judgmental person.

Isn't that great? We can judge people for thinking that they're judgy by the church that they go to. We're so creative in our judging. We can come up with so many legalisms. We can judge people by the question of, do they occasionally smoke or drink, right? We can say, well, that is just a clear indication of something going on, right, in your life, even though the Bible doesn't necessarily exclude those things entirely from the possibility of a moral life. Oh, this is a fun one.

I was thinking about this a lot. We judge people on the basis of where they live, right? And this kind of ties in with politics, but also with culture, right? So, I mean, let's just be honest, guys. You meet someone. You say, oh, where do you live? Oh, I live in Seattle. Well, where in Seattle? Because if you're like one of us Eastsiders, oh, okay. We get, you have to live here. You have to work at Amazon. So, you know, but you live downtown.

Oh, why would you do such a thing? Right. Oh, or, oh, oh, oh, I live in, I live in Texas. Oh, somebody from Texas. Where in Texas? Oh, I live, I live in Austin. Oh, okay. That's all right. Cause Austin people, those are good people. I mean, as long as you're not from Houston or, I mean, God forgive it, West Texas. My goodness, you must be a terrible person, right? Yeah. Again, Perspectival. And I'm not saying it's just illustration.

Just an illustration. Or how about this one? Have you ever done this one? This is really good. I live in Washington. Oh, where in Washington? Oh, Eastern Washington. Okay, well, that's fine. That's fine. That's fine. Eastern Washington. I mean, that's Idaho for all intents and purposes, right? Like we look at things about people and we have all this symbolic meaning.

And that's just legalism. We treat things as insightful to the state of a person, their soul, like their relationship with God, and we load up meaning in these things. And we then treat them differently on the basis of those things. That's what judging is, and that's what legalism does.

And it's such a problem because if we think about, again, as Jesus has been going on in the sermon, he's been talking about true righteousness, he makes the point really clearly in every area that true righteousness is not by law, that law is a really bad metric for righteousness. To equate law-keeping with righteousness is foolish, and he repeats it over and over and over again. He says, yeah, the law of Moses, it's good. It's good not to murder.

Jesus is not questioning that, but he's saying, but you can't say, oh, I'm good with God just because I never murdered anybody. What Jesus does throughout this is there's this logic in the life of a person, which is that we judge ourselves according to the legalisms that we've set up or that we think are true. And what Jesus is making clear over and over again is that it's not a good basis to know if I'm righteous.

He talks about that in the realm of our relationship with God in chapter six, you know, talking about the ways that we fast, the ways that we pray. And we oftentimes treat these things as a proxy for our own understanding. But what Jesus has proclaimed throughout his ministry and in other parts of the gospels, it's so clear, is that we're called to love. Faith working its way out in love. That is righteousness.

That is truthfulness. That is the way of loving people, having faith in Jesus, our faith leading us into greater and greater love for God and for others. This is how we achieve righteousness. And to set up these standards of legalism, it's just going back to the same thing. It's a false version of righteousness, and we're setting those things up all the time. Paul in Romans 2 says, a person is not a Jew.

And for our intents and persons, I mean, it's a long letter about Jewish and Gentile relationships. But let's just think about Jewish as a child of God, okay? Let's think of it for the way that we're illustrating the point here. A person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, and true circumcision is not something visible in the flesh. On the contrary, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart. By the Spirit, not the letter.

That person's praise is not from people, but from God. The point that Paul is making in Romans, and I think that Jesus has made consistently throughout this sermon, is that the outward stuff, the things that we assess ourselves by is not the ultimate true basis of righteousness, but what's going on in our heart. The Spirit of God working within us, calling us to greater faith, pouring out more and more love, us giving ourselves over and devoting ourselves to love of others and love of God.

These are the things that bring about true righteousness. When the spirit of God comes in us, we are filled with his presence and God loves it when we have faith and he accounts us righteous and he pours out more of himself and that works itself out in love in greater and greater measure. The whole point of the New Testament is that God is revealing a new way of righteousness, a new way to be righteous, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ, we will grow in love of God and love of others.

And basically the point of the Sermon on the Mount up to this point is we have to stop with the legalisms and we have to continue on down this road of the power of the Spirit, faith, and love working its way out. And Jesus actually goes on. This is really great. Between these two major sections, there's this little verse, Matthew 7, 6, and Jesus explains that legalism is dangerous, but not just spiritually dangerous, right?

That's what I think he's saying here. He says, don't give what is holy to dogs or toss your pearls before pigs, or they will trample them under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces. Dogs and pigs in ancient Israel, and I mean, Jesus was Jewish. For Jewish people, these are unclean animals.

And the point that he's making is, man, if you try to take God's holy law and you just set it up and you try to force it on people, or even your interpretation of what the right way to understand this, and you just kind of force it on people through legalistic application, Jesus says, good luck with that. Not only will it not have any effect, but it will be trampled upon and then you're going to get torn to pieces.

Right so so again jesus has a problem with with judging has a problem with hypocrisy the unlovingness of judging and the legalism that we normally we normally revert to and then he's telling us that man it's actually just like kind of a fool's errand to try to enforce legalism on people who just have no interest in what god is doing so then the question is so what can we do about judging? Is it just, we just mind our own business?

Is Jesus saying, just ignore people and do your own thing? Don't speak up. Don't intervene. Just let people go their own way. Because honestly, that seems pretty lame and seems pretty unloving. But I don't think that's what he's saying. What do you do to be nonjudgmental in the right kind of ways? Well, I think it's clear that this next passage is the answer to that. What Jesus tells us, so we don't want to judge, what can we do?

Here is our instructions for what we can do. Instead of judging people, risking hypocrisy and legalism, what can we do? We can do this. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks finds and the one who knocks the door will be opened. who among you, if his son asks him for bread, will give you a stone? And if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?

And if then you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father who's in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him? Therefore, whatever you want others to do for you, do also the same for them, for this is the law and the prophets. As we think of these passages as kind of unconnected, I really think that they are intimately tied up together. This ask, seek, and knock is what we are to do instead of judging. Don't judge, do this instead.

And Jesus' point, I'm arguing, is don't judge, don't try to force the law on people, but just ask, seek, and knock. If you look at someone's life, as you will do, and you have this suspicion, I just think there's something off. I don't think they know the Lord. I don't see the fruit of love. I don't see peace coming out of them, which of course, the absence of those things should make us wonder how that person's relationship is with God. There's nothing wrong with that. But what do we do?

Well, what we do if we see something like that is that we pray with them and we pray for them. We intercede. And I think this is one of these things that of course God will answer that prayer because you can't pray it selfishly. You can't pray it selfishly that God would reveal himself and pour out his grace and his kindness and call another person to a greater understanding, a deeper understanding of who he is, how much he loves them, how much he cares for them. You can't do that selfishly.

God is saying, of course I'm gonna meet this prayer. You see someone who's hurting, you don't know what's going on in them. Well, hey, just play it safe. Come before me, ask, seek, No, do you say, I'm worried about this person. There's like just some fruit in their life that just seems bad. It's hurting them. And I am concerned. You don't need to sit around judging. You just go before God in your ignorance. Say, Lord, I don't know what's really going on.

Whatever's going on. If this person needs your grace, they don't know you. Would you just please intervene? And God's not going to do some bad thing to them as a result of that. God's going to hear that prayer and he's going to say, yeah, you know what? I know how to give good gifts to people. I know how to care for people. I know how to watch over people. And he's going to meet us in the midst of that.

And then we don't have to do the judging anymore because we're going to see God is going to start to do something in someone's life. So you know someone who's hurting, you know someone who's broken, you know someone who's just like torching their own life. You don't have to waste time judging. You can lean into and care for that person. Ask, seek, knock.

Be persistent in prayer on their behalf and pray with them. Pray with them. You know what? Most people are going through life, they don't think anyone cares. And a lot of like, I think the anger and the lashing out that people do, it's because they're just like wanting anyone to care at all about them. And so instead of looking at them and just saying, oh, you are so messed up, Could you just take them by the hand and just say, I have compassion for you.

And so I want to be a little awkward here, right? Because praying for people is a little awkward. And I want to pray with you that whatever it is that God is doing in your life and in your heart, that it would just be like effective. And I love it because the motive of this is, according to verse 12, whatever you want others to do for you, do the same for them. This is the law and the prophets. I make lots of mistakes. I am blind to my sin in so many areas that I can't

even tell you what they are. I am certain of this. I am certain that there are things in my life that just like, I'm unaware of them and probably that's okay. Because God in his mercy doesn't just, when you come to Jesus, he doesn't say, here is the extensive list of your problems. You just work your way through one by one and then we'll see you when you die. That is not how it works, I believe to say. What God does is he says, oh, I'm so glad to be in your relationship with you.

Let's just work on one thing at a time. God doesn't just like open up the floodgates of conviction of sin, unless he does. Like sometimes God, he has the right to, and sometimes God. But I think the more common part of the normal Christian life is that we are usually not aware of our sin, but if we are praying, if we're growing, God will make certain things clear along the way in the right moment, in the right time, in the right order, according to proper urgency.

So there's lots about me that I'm blind to, and I'm okay with that. Because if I continue to seek the Lord, I think he'll show me what I need to work on and he'll allow me the grace to not be aware of the things that I am unaware of, blissfully unaware of. Now, let me ask you this. Do you want the floodgates of conviction on your life to come down so that you know all of your problems or would you like to. What I think is the better way of God knows your heart.

He knows what you can handle in any given moment. And he knows what to put before you and to ask you to deal with and that he's going to deal with you one thing at a time.

I would rather take the way that I think is the way of grace, the way of God, like caring about my soul, caring about my heart and showing me that my issues one at a time, as opposed to somebody standing outside as a judge and saying, you've got this problem and you've got this problem, you've got this problem, and this is a problem, and this is a thing, and you need to change this thing. I would rather, if you see something in me, that you do it the more gracious

way. And I think that's what God wants us to do. And so we come, we ask, we seek, we knock, we say, Lord, this person, it seems to me that they have an issue with whatever this thing is. Okay, Lord, would you help them with that? Would you give them grace? Would you teach them to repent? Would you remind them of your faithfulness and your goodness? We can come in that way, just like we would want others to do to us. Galatians 6, 1 through 2 says, it's Paul writing to the church in Galatia.

He says, brothers and sisters, if someone is overtaken in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual should give them a list of their problems. Is that what he says? No, he says, you should restore that person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourselves so that you also won't be tempted. Carry one another's burdens. In this way, you will fulfill the law of Christ. Asking, seeking, knocking on other people's behalf, that's carrying their burdens for them.

That's saying, this person isn't even aware of this thing that's in their way. And so I'm just going to pray on their behalf. I'm going to pray with them. I'm going to pray for them. I'm going to love them enough to hang in there with them. I'm not going to be harsh or judgmental. I'm going to, with a gentle spirit, saying, hey, I'll take you by the hand. Let me tell you how much I love you and how much the Lord loves you.

And can I just invite you to something like his presence, his grace, this kind of transformed life that he invites you into?

That's the way of Jesus. And we're invited to deal with other people. It is not judgmental to do this. In fact, it's kindness. It's kindness to do this sort of thing, to look at people and say, you know, with a gentle spirit, just like Go, serve them, bear their burdens. John Chrysostom, the 5th century, I think, pastor says this. He says, We may correct others, but not as a foe, nor as an adversary exacting a penalty, but as a physician providing medicines.

For neither did Christ say, Stay not him that is sinning, but judge not. That is, be not bitter in pronouncing sentence. Worship team is going to come up here, but I just want to remind you of what Jesus is like. And we read about this in John 3.17. It says this, God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Like this idea, that's the gospel.

The fact that Jesus Christ has come down for a purpose to reveal true righteousness, but not in such a way that it's like, oh, you losers. You're such sinners. You're awful. You don't know what righteousness is. But in such a way where it's like, I'm revealing to you what's good and right and beautiful and true in the world. And I've come to save, not to condemn.

I haven't come to be a judge who is harsh and exacting punishment, but instead one who's coming in rightly judging the world, who has access to the heart and who can assess what's really going on. And in the midst of all of that, looking at the sin of the world, looking at our darkened soul, looking at how much enmity we have with God, he says, and I'm going to save you from that. I mean, In Romans 5.8, that famous verse, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

And if we want to be people who are making a difference in the world, calling people to something better, calling people to something greater, blessing people, changing things in the world, we don't do that as a judge. We do that as someone who's coming alongside demonstrating the love and grace and kindness of God to people. And so that's what I want us to think about today. We're going to take some time to worship.

And I'm going to say two things. Number one is, as you go out into the world today, and you look at people, and you see their brokenness, and you see the ways in which they're just clearly like have the wrong idea about what's good and what's right and what it is to be a person, right? That happens, you know, like everybody does that. The opportunity to not judge is to look at them with compassion, and to bear their burden and to pray for them.

That's how you avoid judging. So could you try that this week? Try to put that into practice? And the other thing that I want us to do is I just like, I'm really aware in my own self that... I'm moving past the line of noticing a problem and onto judgment all the time and in ways that I'm not aware of. So there are things that are just really a part of the way you see the world that are just kind of judgy. They're just like really built in.

And so here's what I want us all to do. I want us to ask and seek and knock together right now in this moment and invite the Holy Spirit to just come and do what the Holy Spirit says he'd do, which is to convict us of righteousness, sin, and judgment. So if there's something that was in our heart, like some kind of judgment that we're holding on against people, like I want to see us identify those things and leave them behind because they're really in the way. They're in the way.

So I'm going to pray and then we're going to worship. Okay, so Lord, we're just gathered in your name. We've heard your word.

We believe that it's true. We believe you have good plans. And so God, we just come to you with all that we are. Lord, we can't see each other's spiritual states, but we see us. We see how we are with you, Lord. And so we lift our hearts before you, God. And we ask you, Lord, the one who can discern what's in us, who can seem more accurately and more truthfully than even we can, Lord. But is there anything in us? Like, is there some bitterness that we're hanging on to?

Lord, are we looking at the people around us or even looking at you, God, and just like, are we being judgmental? Are we hanging on to things that are false? God, are we trying to navigate the world through what feels more comfortable to us, which is through legalism, Lord? And instead, Lord, would you show us what it means to bear one another's burdens, Lord?

So we just ask you now, Holy Spirit, we ask you to just bring to mind the people that we judge, Lord, the people that we can't forgive, the people that we can't understand or have compassion for. And God, as we just pray, Lord, we just pray that you would give us repentance. Lord, repentance is a gift from you. Lord, teach us how to lay those things down. All right, let's worship the Lord together. Holy Spirit, would you come into this place? Would you lead us?

Would you lead us into truth and repentance, God? Thank you.