What do you have in your life that helps you feel safe? Okay, do you have a security blanket? I remember when you were a kid, a lot of times kids have a blanket or they might have a special stuffed animal. My sister kept a pacifier until she was like five years old.
We had to tell her the banky monster came and took it away. And then the idea of thinking that you're telling your child there's a monster who came in the house and they'll have a knife and stole something from them and they don't freak out. That's pretty amazing. So something that I'm pretty, it's so ludicrous I have to be open about it.
But I tell people pretty frequently, I'm scared of fish, most people know that. Like earlier this summer I caught my first fish ever, it was a one pound bass and I took it off the line, myself had a pair of gloves on. So on Facebook made fun of this, it was Chez's fish mittens. My cousin heard me at collaring across the pond, I go Chez just caught a fish.
And so people make fun about that, but I'll duck hunt. And for some reason being in the water in waders, I'm not scared of the fish that are around me. My waders are like my safety blanket because I know I can't feel them or anything like that. So it's not a problem.
So when we flooded a few months ago, my friend John, he was in Frenchman's bin. Their floating dock came up off the moorings and went into the channel. Like many people in Frenchman's bin floating dock did. So we got in the boats, we went out there and we tied the floating dock off with a few pieces of rope.
So it wouldn't go crashing down the bridge further down the channel. But my problem was we didn't get out there quick enough after the floating dock back to the shore. And so about a month ago, we had to get out there. And here's the thing, how many of you all, does any people, I know some people here that live on the bayou?
Okay, how many of you all are fully aware of what is in that bayou? What's up, a conversation about this real quick? Do y'all know that the state champion alligator gar shot with a bow came out of that piece of water? Have y'all seen the pictures of that thing?
People ask me, they're not from Louisiana. Why don't you get in water? I'm like, let me show you, we pull out of that water. And then just earlier this summer, they had to call the wildlife and fishers.
And they like to shoot a 12 foot alligator that was hanging out at the boat dock. I'm a big guy, but I don't like to be in any environment where I'm not at the top of the food chain. Okay, so we're gonna have to get out there. So I got a phone call, hey, can y'all come out here and get my floating dock back up?
Which turns into hey, can you put your waders on and want 25 feet out of the bayou and drag this thing across all these big creepy things that are hitting up in that mud? This is what I told myself though. I just held my first fish. I'll put my waders on.
I'll be all right. And we got the floating dock back. And my waders is stupid, it's a 315 pound man scared of a fish, but the waders on. But it's my safety blanket.
It makes me feel safe. It makes me feel secure. It's a stupid story about how I feel safe. But think about the things that we all do, that feel safe, okay?
I'm sure everybody can tell a silly story about what makes them feel safe. But we also have things in our life that are not silly stories about how we feel safe. About the things we do to keep ourselves safe. The things that we're willing to do to keep ourselves safe.
And many times we are willing to keep ourselves safe at the expense of other people. But here's the thing about that. If we're willing to keep ourselves safe at the expense of somebody else, then we're actually not that safe, are we? So this morning we're jumping in, we're kind of making the last lap in a certain amount.
We can call in the series, Jesus is greatest to it. It's Matthew 5, 6, and 7. And we're making this last lap, starting verse 7. But this morning we're talking about judgment.
And we're getting into the idea of why we judge and what makes us judge. And what does Jesus have to say about judgment in his passage? And it's about staying safe. But here's the thing I want us to think about to reflect before we even start this conversation.
And you'll understand this later on. But this is about a living room. It's not a courtroom, okay? It's about a living room, not a courtroom.
So let's open up our Bible, Matthew chapter seven. You can read it on the screen behind me. If you brought your Bible, you can read it there or you can open up your phone and use the Bible app. And so let's just jump in, Matthew chapter seven, verse one through 12.
Let's read what Jesus has to say this morning. Do not judge others and you will not be judged. For you will be treated as you treat others. And the standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged.
And why worry about a speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own? How can you ever think of saying to your friend, let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye when you can't see past the log in your own eye? First, get rid of the log in your own eye and then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend's eye. Don't waste what is holy on people who are unholy.
Don't throw your pearls to pigs. They will trample the pearls, then turn and attack you. Keep on asking and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking and you will find, keep on knocking and the door will be open to you.
For everyone asks, receives, everyone who seeks, finds and to everyone who knocks the door will be open. Your parents and if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not.
So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give good gifts to those who ask him? And do unto others, whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets. Where's the Jesus?
Kind of, those deep digging passages, isn't it? So as one as we have to start asking, instantly asking ourselves to internal questions. But I'm excited about talking to say, because what we're gonna see is that judgment takes on a completely different shape than what many of us naturally assume it to be. So in the Bible, a judgment or idea of judging is pretty important.
There's a whole book in the Old Testament called Judges. And we have to begin building a biblical view of judgment before we can really have this conversation. So what we see right there in the very beginning of the story of God and his people, that he sets aside people that have the role and the responsibility to judge, it's an administrative role. They're making decisions for other people and based on other people.
But also the judge, and if you read this book of judges and you see these stories, there's a side level attached to it, is that person is responsible for restoration and redemption? So judging is making decisions, but it's also based off of restoring and redeeming. So right there we see this idea expand a little bit. It's by the living room, not a courtroom.
Let's think what happens in a courtroom. Let's think about this. When a judgment is made in a courtroom, who's responsible for that judgment being carried forth? It's you, it's right on you.
After you walk out of that room, the relationship that you found inside of there is not gonna exist much longer. But think about the judges that might be made in the living room from a perspective of a family. Jesus talking to his father, how God has revealed himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So whenever judgments are made, whenever responsibility is entailed, you see that it's done inside of a community.
It's done inside of an intimate setting. It's done inside the context of relationships. And it's not focused on right and wrong, but it's focused on redemption and restoration. So this idea of judgment, it's much bigger than we think it is.
When we go into the New Testament, we see how Jesus talks about judgment a lot. He adds on another layer to it as this idea of sorting or of separating. So we can't escape the idea of right and wrong from judgment as part of it. Just sorting and separating stuff.
The holy and the unwholly and the righteous and the unrighteous. But it's about a living room, not a courtroom. It's done inside the context of a covenant relationship with people. When we read this passage in chapter seven, he's not talking about strangers at all.
He's talking about your friends. He's talking about your children, the judgment in scripture. And this passage is held inside the context of a relationship. And that's what we really have to dig down deep into it to look at our own motivations.
And Jesus in the middle, there's this thing that writers of scripture do is they'll sandwich an idea in the middle of something. So we read what Jesus says about judgment. And we read about prayer, the ask, seek, knocking, giving good things to your children. And then we come back with that classic passage, the golden rule.
So Jesus has put this conversation of prayer in a hope in the middle of a conversation about judgment. And it's not accidental. We have to realize then that, okay, these two things are going to inform each other. And inform each other by the way that we look at our own motivation for what causes us to jump in to judging.
So Jesus talks about getting good gifts to your children. They're gonna ask you for fish. You're gonna give him a snake. How many of you, it's my hand at you, a snake, what would you do?
That's just not a cool thing to dig whatsoever at all. For bread, for a stone. I don't think it's ironic that Matthew is showing us that Jesus is talking about the very things that he uses to feed multiple people in the feeding of the 5,000 just a couple more chapters. We speak about these good things.
And this is the way that helps us understand this larger conversation. So this is not just an idea of items. It's not just stuff. It's not like a random box of things that you have to give out to your kids.
When I was a kid, my friend's mom always had a box of fruit roll ups in her car. And she'd just throw them back to us to try to contain the madness. Always that's my mom, my gonna fruit roll ups. And then never like to answer.
Okay, this is not like that, but this is a good gift is a very interesting word. And in Greek, the word is DOMA. That doesn't mean anything to you, it doesn't mean much to me. But it's a different word than just stuff.
There's only one vowel away from the word Dokso, which means glory. This word DOMA is what's used for treasured gifts. And the story of the three wise men, they come to Jesus and they give him his gifts. They're giving him DOMA good gifts offerings.
Jesus talks about tide and giving him the poor earlier than the start on the mountain. He's talking about DOMA. He's talking about offerings. So here's Jesus saying right here, you're gonna give good things to your children.
It's not gonna be the normal average stuff. He's saying a fish or a piece of bread. These are normal everyday things. But you're wanting to give good things.
You're wanting to make holy offerings to them. Special things. So we see this idea of asking and receiving and knocking. This is not about getting, but it's about experiencing.
It's about experiencing what's holy. It's about learning the persistence of seeking who God is and wanting the things of God. The persistence of seeking what God is, is actually promising to give us. So what if I told you our conversation about judgments based off of this idea of asking?
It's not about asking to get stuff. It's asking to see things. It's us asking about what is it about this extraordinary power that Jesus is promising us? What is it about us asking and persisting in a holy boldness when we ask God, we want to see more of who you are.
We want to see more of what you have promised for this world. The songs that we just sang earlier is about us saying, we know that you have something completely and radically different plan for us, and we want to experience that. And so I'm going to keep on knocking. I'm gonna keep on asking, because I believe that's absolutely promised.
Jesus says, I'm gonna do things even greater than you can believe, and I'm gonna let you do things even better than the promising the bigger than me. This is promised to us. It's not the context of relationships. This judgment, this sorting out happens because we have to understand this extraordinary power that Jesus has promised us.
There's unlocked through obedience. It's unlocked through living a different life. It's unlocked by us understanding what discipleship means. It's unlocked by us understanding what it means for us to accept and to treat him as Lord.
That he's doing the sorting, that he's doing the judging. And it's not our job whatsoever at all. So three things about judgment, and this is what I want to dig in deep this morning. It's the first one is this.
It's about relationship rather than retribution. When I was in Kentucky, I had a youth ministry for all these kids that pretty much lived on the streets. And they were always trying to get even with somebody. They lived life in terms of every relationship, that is a system of credits and debts.
Then I owe that person or that person owed me. And if that person owes me, I need to make sure they pay me back. That's a retribution mindset. This is not what Jesus is talking about.
Relationship. Because that relationship that we choose, it leads to so many other things. When we live in a retribution mindset, we can get in that place where we feel like God is always judging us. The first century Jewish understanding of what salvation looked like, of what heaven looked like was, that everyone always has a system of credits and depths with God and what you hope that when you died, that you had stuff in your credit account and not stuff in your debt account.
That's how you went to heaven. That's not the way it works. It's our relationship, not retribution. We have to realize our relationship with Jesus, when we choose, when we make that conscious decision to choose God, when we become confronted with the message of the gospel and our heart begins to change and we begin understanding what grace looks like, we begin understanding what justification looks like.
Our paths change, the situations change. Our decisions actually judge us. You see that there are decisions that begin separating us out. So we think about this, so why do we feel the need to judge people?
If judgment's about separation, why do we feel the need to become separators of people? What happens when we begin saying, okay, you're good, you're not good, you're good, you're not good, you're not good, you're really, really not good. You're really, really great. We begin living a life that does that, besides just eating ourselves alive, let's look at what Jesus, His argument was constant with the Pharisees, it was the fact that they viewed themselves as separators.
But that wasn't their rule, that wasn't their call. Jesus, I trust a lot of people, lovers, not separators. It's our eternal relationship with Jesus, our attorney in heaven, it's not reward, it's not punishment, but it's the inherent outcome of the choices we make when we begin following Jesus. We don't have to worry about judgment.
It's not our job, it's not our station in life. Judgment, it doesn't have to be something that we develop. What Jesus is asking us to develop, is to understand what redemption looks like, to understand what repentance looks like, to understand what holiness looks like. That's the separation he's focused on, it's not a living room.
It says a living room, it's not a courtroom. Second thing is acceptance rather than assault. Okay, let's get into the core of this, what happens when we choose to judge people? See, judgment's a social sin, it's us tearing down somebody.
Let's get into that, what happens when we begin to judge? It holds us back. It makes us relational pariahs. We all have that person that we might work around or go to school around or to have a social group that just is constantly bagging on everybody else.
And sometimes it's good nature and you can laugh about it. And sometimes it's not. I know people that I'm terrified to know what they say about me when I leave the room, because I know they're talking about everybody who's not in the room and in there. People are aware of it.
And what's really going on is we're rationalizing our own guilt to Jesus saying right there, this whole conversation about a log and a spec. He said, your friend, the person that you know, the person that you're in a relationship with, and you're choosing to exercise out the relationship you have with them by telling them, you've got something going on that's wrong. And you're so focused on it that you can't see what's going on wrong in your own life. And I said this before, it's right there, that the things that we have wrong with us that we might not be aware of, everybody can see.
And so us trying to cover them up, us trying to hide them by being outward focused, it makes it just even worse. Instead we get into a relationship with a personal examination. Begin asking Jesus to heal us, asking Jesus to make us aware of what he's called us to do. Asking Jesus to make us aware of where we need healing, of where we are broken.
Asking Jesus for us to see those places in our heart that we have not willed over to him yet, that we wanna understand what it means to accept us, to accept ourselves to the person Jesus made us to be. And then to step forward and to the person that Jesus wants us to be. So acceptance, not assault. What if we then start stepping into frustrating relationships then with an attitude of love?
Okay, that person that drives us absolutely crazy, that we want to judge, because remember, I'm better than you, you're better than me, we're calling it, this is all that just a nasty, gnarly relational things that happen. What if we then begin stepping into those relationships? In our mind knowing I'm not gonna get out anything out of this, but what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pour into this person. And if they're acting out of their brokenness, I want to help them fill those cracks.
I wanna be part of Jesus' call for us to be the healing for the nations. And sometimes just by knowing that we're not gonna get anything out of the relationship, we find ourselves free to walk alongside of that person while they're in their brokenness. Because everyone who knows what relational healing is like, can name the people that walked alongside of them. And we're willing to accept them and not assault them.
And be part of that life change that Jesus wants to bring. The third thing is this, it's about belief rather than blame. You understand this judgment, this sorting. That there are two worlds that we live in.
There's this kingdom that Jesus is talking about, this kingdom of heaven, he's speaking beautiful, beautiful things about, and there's the kingdom of this world that is hurtful and is broken. And it's not the way God intended on things being. And the boundary between those two worlds is unmistakably apparent, but the boundary between those two worlds is permeable. What Matthew seven begins outlining is how we move from one world into the next.
How we learn to coexist inside of Jesus' kingdom while we are here on this earth. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and a theologian in the 30s and 40s. He ultimately died at concentration camp, because he was part of a plot to assassinate Hitler. But this is what he says about Matthew chapter seven and being a disciple and seeing what these two worlds are like.
He says, what makes us disciples is not this new standard of life, but Jesus Christ alone, the mediator and the son of God himself. Okay, Jesus is not in the do's and don'ts game. He's not in the credit and the debit game. He's in the game of our hearts.
He's in the game of restoration. He's in the game of redemption. He wants us to focus on him and to trust, he's gonna give us every single thing we need to get rid of all these other things. That's that simple act, that's that flip.
So many of us have such a hard time making his realizing the power of simply focusing on Jesus and believing he is who he says he is and having faith that that's gonna be enough. Having faith that that's gonna be exactly what we need. We don't have to blame ourselves then. I mean, how many times have we found ourselves just locked in this inner turmoil because we feel like we are not good enough and we feel like we are not good enough.
We lash out in many ways. And one of the ways we lash out was beginning that we're not even good enough for God. Even Jesus can't fix what we have undone. We're blaming ourselves, we're blaming other people, we're blaming situations.
And what all Jesus says is, I can take care of this, I just need you to trust in who I am and we'll begin understanding that our ability to see ourselves through a vision that's made possible by Jesus and possible in a community of forgiveness that allows us to be aware of our sins. Found our mission statement, it's creating environments for people to experience that God big enough for all their needs. Imagine what it's like to create an environment for people to be aware of themselves. To create a safe environment where people are able to heal.
To create an environment where we can be open and we can be honest. We can be honest with ourselves, we can be honest with those people who care about us, we can be honest with Jesus. That's a radically different concept for church right there. I tell people all the time that they ask about me and I say, I'm just a chief misfit, that's all I am.
That's the only way I can understand myself. That when we move our idea of judgment to a living room and not a courtroom, it dramatically changes everything. We do these things in the context of relationships, not in the context of good or bad or better than or less than. It's an amazing thing.
And we have to do that in order to fully understand what it is that Jesus has for us and what He wants for us. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for this word, for this call. We fully recognize there are times that it's very, very easy for us to judge.
That our own attitudes of judgment come from our own feelings of insecurity and not being safe in inadequacy. And what we pray for and ask is for us to understand that the call of a disciple, the call of a disciple of honesty, Jesus is the first step of that is for us to be honest with ourselves, honest in how we need You to heal us and how we're then sent out into the world to become part of that healing. For people to know what relationships and what acceptance and what belief looks like. Because part of the vision for the world that You're giving us.
Well, it's not one without judgment. But it's one where we realize that is Your job. And our job is to be part of the healing for the nation's heart. Our job is to begin praying and looking for these great things.
Our job is to draw close to You. Our job is to be holy. Our job is to be sons and daughters who live in the living room of Your Father. And we pray.