Do Not Judge
Matthew 7:1-5 (Part 2)

Baxter T. Exum (#1783)
Four Lakes Church of Christ
Madison, Wisconsin
May 11, 2025

Good morning and welcome! We are glad to have you with us this morning, and if you are visiting with us today (either here in person or online or on the phone), we’d like to ask that you fill out a visitor card – either online or on a card from the pew in front of you. And we also invite you to pass along any questions or prayer concerns in that way.

Concerning our schedule, let’s remember next week’s cookout out in the backyard here. Gary and Sara are coordinating this. Meat will be provided, so if you are able to attend, it would be helpful if you could sign up, so that Gary knows how much meat to grill. The sign-up sheet also helps to make sure we don’t all bring the same thing! We may sometimes assume that fellowship is the same thing as eating. It is not. Literally, fellowship is “sharing,” but we do know that sharing does happen when we eat together. We share in each others’ lives, we share our spiritual concerns, we share our joys and our sorrows, and we do share food together. So, I am looking forward to getting together after worship next week. If you have any questions, please get in touch with Gary or Sara.

In terms of “housekeeping,” I’d like to give an encouragement concerning some actual housekeeping. Having a building of our own has been an amazing blessing. Some of you remember when we rented a place. This is better, but with great privilege comes great responsibility. Several months ago, Denise very wisely suggested that we split up the building cleaning responsibilities so that nobody gets burdened with the whole thing. We tried it, and I think it worked very well. So, we have a chart on the bulletin board out there, and the cleaning is divided into three columns. We have restrooms, floors, and trash. Each of these is doable, and this can all be done right after worship if you’d like to get it over with without driving over here again during the week. Theresa took all three this month, and that is great as well, but we do have openings going forward. Last week, our elders asked Denise to check in with everybody on this today. So, if she comes at you with a sign-up sheet, don’t blame her, you can blame us. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but lawnmowing is available as well! We have a mower in a shed out back. We also have a very nice set of Milwaukee tools downstairs (a whacker, blower, and edger). This was donated last year by one of our seniors who is no longer able to mow. But, those of us who are younger now have this responsibility. Sign up in the entryway, and let me know if you have any questions.

As we get started this morning, we want to make sure that we share the good news that God loves us and sent his only Son to this earth to save us. He died on the cross in our place, he was buried, and he was raised up on the third day. We obey this good news by believing it, by turning away from sin, by confessing Jesus as the Son of God, and by calling out to God for a good conscience in the act of baptism, an immersion in water for the forgiveness of our sins. At this point, we are born into God’s family, and we are raised up to live a new life from that point forward. And as our custom has been, we are sharing some updates concerning what this actually looks like, and we start today with some news from Poland. The news comes to us from Marlon Rutherford, a man who owns a construction company down in Alabama, who also does some mission work in Ukraine. He says that, “Today in Warsaw is a joyous day, there were 4 women baptized. Zoya from Slavyansk, Galina and Lyudmila from Kiev, Natalia from Mykolaiv all are refugees from Ukraine. [According to] Colossians 2:12, [we are] “Buried with Christ in Baptism and raised with Him through faith.” [This is our response to] the Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Christ. Praise the Lord!” I know the war has been terrible, but I am also highly confident that without the war these four women would not have come in contact with the Lord’s church in Poland, and for this we are thankful. And I don’t know whether you can see this, but it looks like the guy doing the baptizing has a broken arm. I’ve never seen that before.

This next one comes to us from the Pinnacle congregation down in Little Rock, Arkansas. They say that, “Our hearts were overwhelmed with joy as our sister, ‘Becca Spillyards’ made her decision to be baptized into Christ, according to scripture, with her family, Matt and Fenley cheering her on!” That is awesome!

There are many others, but I’ll close with one more, this one coming to us from Steven Rudd, from Ramah, Israel, who currently preaches in Jordan, Ontario (just west of Niagara Falls). He posted this week and says, “MY 92-YEAR-OLD MOTHER: I AM LOST FOR WORDS. I never saw this coming. I became a Christian 45 years ago, and yesterday, my mother, Sylvia Rudd, was baptized and pledged obedience to Jesus Christ her risen Savior at the Jordan Church of Christ, established in 1832! Welcome to the body of Christ mommy! Happiest day of my life!” These are screenshots from a video, but Steven explains that his mom’s older sister obeyed the gospel shortly before she died a few months ago, when she was 100 years old, and that his mom then approached him about obeying the gospel as well. And we share this as our invitation: If you are ready to respond to God’s love as we have been instructed in scripture, and if we can help with that in any way, we invite you to get in touch. You can send a message to info@fourlakeschurch.org, you can give me a call or send a text to 608-224-0274, or you can simply pull me aside after worship this morning, and we would love to help in any way possible.

This morning, I’d like for us to return to our study of America’s Favorite Verse, in Matthew 7, where Jesus says, “Do not judge,” a statement that is almost always taken out of context. Last week, then, we studied the warning itself, and we learned (in verse 1) that the word “judge” can be used, first of all, in the sense of making a decision about something. But secondly, the word can also be used to describe judgmental contempt, the idea of yelling and pointing and looking down our nose at people and treating them as less than human. And it seems that this is the warning here, because of what comes next.

So, in verse 2, we went on to look at Jesus’ explanation of what he said in verse 1, because in verse 2 the Lord gives two reasons why this kind of judging is so dangerous. First of all, he addresses the way that we judge, and he explains that the punishment will fit the crime, so to speak, “For in the WAY you judge, you will be judged.” He’s referring to the MANNER in which we judge. We are to judge with the proper attitude. But secondly, he also says that we must use the proper STANDARD of judgment, “and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.” So, instead of a blanket condemnation of all judging, the Lord qualifies his “do not judge” statement by warning that we must judge 1.) in the right way and 2.) by using the proper standard (or authority).

Today, let’s return to this paragraph and let’s note a SPECIAL DANGER as well as the GOAL in all of this. And, as I promised last week, I’ll be sharing a series of pictures from the kids of the congregation who were here back in 2012. And it’s been fun to watch these kids grow up! Some are still in school, two are accountants, one I believe is heading for a career in plumbing, one (I believe) is now on a submarine with the US Navy. So, I will share these as we move through today’s study. First, though, let’s go back and look at the text itself. This is Matthew 7:1-5. Jesus says,

1 Do not judge so that you will not be judged. 2 For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. 3 Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” and behold, the log is in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

    I. As we continue looking at this passage in context, let’s continue by noting A SPECIAL DANGER.

In verses 3-4, Jesus paints a picture for us, and it’s actually pretty funny! We have a man with a log in his eye who is trying to remove a speck out of his brother’s eye. The word translated here as “log” literally refers to something that holds up something else, so it is the idea of a joist, a beam in a house or a building that goes from one side to the other, from wall to wall, and is used to support either a floor or a ceiling. Here in this building, we have what I assume is a steel beam going from the front of this building to the back, right down the middle. Downstairs, you can see the steel posts supporting this beam. The kids like to swing around those sometimes. But this huge beam is the main support of this building. The floor joists holding all of us up right now come in from the foundation and rest on that giant beam in the middle. And it’s a beam like this Jesus is describing here – a giant piece of wood that supports an entire building.

So, one guy has this giant house-supporting log sticking out of his eye (maybe 30-40 feet long), and yet this man is far more concerned about the tiny speck, the little piece of sawdust, in his brother’s eye. And I would point out: This is not to minimize the pain of having a piece of sawdust lodged in your eye. Like some of you, perhaps, I have personally been to the hospital to have a piece of sawdust removed from my eye. Years and years ago, the church down in Janesville had a steel tank as a baptistery. They literally built the building around it back in the early 1960’s. This tank was completely surrounded by concrete block walls. So, we cut it out using a torch and a sawzall, and then we installed a new fiberglass baptistery, similar to the one we purchased for this building. As we were trimming it out, almost near the end of that project, I was cutting some paneling with a circular saw, and a piece of that paneling flew up and hit me in the eye. If you ever have a splinter lodged in your eye, I can empathize! I made it to the ER, they called in an eye specialist, and that guy used one of those giant Q-tips to put something in my eye that immediately removed the pain. What a relief! And then he went in and removed that splinter and sent me home. So, I’m just saying that Jesus is not minimizing the pain of having a speck in your eye. It can be incredibly painful, it can cause permanent damage, it is serious. And let’s not forget: Jesus most likely had some first-hand experience with this! Jesus was a carpenter. In fact, the Lord worked as a carpenter until the age of 30, when he started preaching full-time. And I seriously doubt that Jesus wore any goggles. He didn’t have OSHA looking over his shoulder making sure he had eye protection. So, in no way was the Lord minimizing the pain of getting a speck in your eye, but the Lord is painting a graphic mental image here: The one who is so concerned about the SPECK in his brother’s eye has failed to see this ginormous LOG (or JOIST) sticking out of his own eye. The illustration, of course, is just an illustration. Jesus really isn’t talking about beams and sawdust, is he? 

And so the picture here illustrates the danger of judging others while being completely unaware of our own shortcomings, and really, the danger here is HYPOCRISY – lecturing or looking down on others all while we may be doing something even worse. I am reminded of the man who watches a football game from the comfort of his La-Z-Boy who will scream and shout at his TV concerning the poor performance of the team. He will criticize the quarterback, and the receivers, and the linemen, and the coach, and the officials. And yet we wonder: If he is so good at football, then why is he laid out on a chair eating pizza instead of being out there on the field playing the game? It’s like the drunken fan in the stands who thinks he is in a much better position to judge a call than the umpire standing directly behind home plate. Or we might picture similar criticism at a basketball game, where the guy at home can’t even hit the can with his crumpled up Snickers wrapper. We understand that it is much easier to criticize than to actually do something.

I have a friend who has spent some time preaching in northern Tanzania and southwestern Kenya, and in that part of the world they have an interesting little proverb, and very roughly translated, the proverb is, “Chimpanzees laugh at each other’s tail.” Very interesting! And the idea is: It is very easy for us to look for and to criticize the mistakes of others while being completely oblivious to our own. We can look at our friends and notice some of the horrible decisions they’ve made as parents. Or we may look at their terrible financial decisions. We may look at their moral failings. These things are so easy for us to see, and yet in reality we are like chimpanzees laughing at each others’ tails.

And Jesus is getting personal here. One thing we miss in English is the difference between “you” (plural) and “you” (singular). A year or two ago, I told you guys about finding the “Y’all Version,” where they make the distinction between the singular and plural “you” by using the word “y’all.” You guys know it hurts me to talk like this, but this is what Jesus says here,

Y’all shouldn’t judge, so that y‘all won’t be judged. For in the way y’all judge, y’all will be judged; and with the measure y‘all use, it will be measured to y’all. Why do YOU see the speck in your sibling’s eye, but don’t notice the beam in your own eye? Or how can you tell your sibling, “Let me remove the speck from your eye,” when there is a beam in your own eye? You hypocrite! First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck from your sibling’s eye.

Do we see the emphasis here? This isn’t a y’all problem, but this is a YOU problem! And I would also point out here that Jesus is talking about judging our “brother” or our “sibling.” So, this isn’t about us railing on the world, but this is about us judging those who are closest to us – our families, members of the congregation, brothers and sisters in Christ. We can sometimes be more judgmental of one another than of people in the world. So also with families.

Another random observation here: If I have something in my eye, I will often have to trust someone else with my pain. There are times when we may not have the expertise to get it out. It may be a speck, it may be a log, but sometimes we need help. Like I said, years ago, I had to trust that doctor at Mercy Hospital down in Janesville. He  had trained many years for this, but he also had a heart for it. So also, sometimes we need help spiritually. Sometimes we need others to see what we are not able to see. That’s the beauty of the church.

The danger, though, is that we judge harshly and hypocritically. Paul will go on to warn about this in Romans 2:1-3, where he says, “Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things. But do you suppose this, O man, when you pass judgment on those who practice such things and do the same yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God?” The context here was that Jews were looking down on Gentiles for their sins, the Gentiles were looking down on the Jews for their sins, and Paul says: You’re all guilty! I’m paraphrasing there, but that’s the gist of the first few chapters of Romans, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). All of us are guilty, and so we need to be especially mindful of that when we judge.

It’s a matter of perspective. From my point of view, your sin looks like a log, and mine looks like a speck. Your sin is magnified, and my sin is minimized, but Jesus flips this around. If I’m always fault-finding, my fault-finding may, in fact, be the log, and what I perceive as your log may in reality only be a speck. There’s an old poem that puts it like this:

There is so much good in the worst of us
And so much bad in the best of us;
That it hardly behooves any of us
To talk about the rest of us.

I appreciate that! But here’s something else that has come to mind over the past few weeks: How would I know that you have a piece of sawdust in your eye? Either you are holding your eye asking for help, or I’d have to be looking at your eyes with a magnifying glass! Isn’t that a little bit weird here? Here I am walking down the street with a telephone pole sticking out of my eye, and somehow I just happen to notice that you have a tiny speck in your eye. For that to happen, I would have to be not just HYPO-critical, but HYPER-critical of everybody but myself. This is the spirit that hears a sermon on sin and says to himself, “I really wish that so-and-so could have been here to hear this!” all while failing to apply the lesson personally. And it is this super-critical spirit that the Lord seems to be addressing here, the danger of focusing on everybody’s issues but my own. In reality, my log can keep me off the narrow path just as easily as a speck. Both of these need to be removed...

    II. ...and this leads to to the GOAL here, because in verse 5, Jesus gives the first real command in this passage.

“You hypocrite,” he says, “first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” The goal here, then, is to remove both the speck and the log. That’s the mission here. But again, the world sees this passage, and all they see is, “Do not judge.” The world sees this passage, and their conclusion is, “Leave my speck alone!” However, that is not at all what Jesus is suggesting here. Jesus is not telling us to just mind our own business, but instead, Jesus is actually giving us the mission of helping our brother. As Christians, what is the compassionate thing to do when a brother has a speck in his eye? “Oh wow, that’s terrible!” And then, do we walk away? Of course not! The compassionate thing to do is to remove the speck. When it comes to judging, then, we aren’t being called upon here to just ignore sin, but we have to start, Jesus says, by looking at ourselves first. He’s not saying that we should not help, but he’s actually saying that we are required to help. We have to start, though, by making sure that we are qualified to help.

With this in mind, I’m thinking of what Paul writes in Galatians 6:1 when he says, “Brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted.” Don’t we see Paul agreeing with Jesus here? As brothers and sisters, we have an obligation to help each other, but we have to do it with a spirit of “gentleness,” and we have to start by looking at ourselves. In a way, in fact, refusing to help a brother or sister caught up in sin is just as bad as a doctor ignoring a physical condition. I’m trying to imagine going to see the doctor. She checks my blood pressure, and it’s 190/130. Now let’s imagine she sees that reading and talks to me about the weather for a few minutes and then sends me home. She has not done me any favors by ignoring a serious issue. So also when we ignore sin in the life of a brother or sister in the Lord. We aren’t being “nice” by ignoring sin.

Jesus, then, says, “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” A key word here is “first.” When there is a “first,” a “second” or a “then” is usually implied. And that’s exactly what Jesus says here. We start by looking at sin in our own lives, and then we help others. It’s like on the plane when they tell us to put your own mask on first, and then help those around you. I’m also thinking about attending a search and rescue training with my sister out in the Pacific Northwest a few years ago. She had a meeting, I tagged along, and they emphasized that night that the rescuer should not become a point of rescue. And the reason is: If the rescuer gets injured, first of all, he or she will not be able to do any rescuing, but secondly, more rescuers will be needed not only for the original call but now also for the injured team member. And they illustrated by describing a scenario where you come upon a mountain biker with a broken leg at the bottom of a ravine 12 miles out in the wilderness. When you approach the biker, be aware that another biker may be coming over that cliff in a way that may take you both out! So also with sin. We look to ourselves, and then we help others.

And when we take the log out of our own eye, something amazing happens, “then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” That is the goal here! The goal here is to heal. This doesn’t mean that we need to reach a state of sinless perfection before we try to reach out and help, but it does mean that the goal here is to heal.

Conclusion:

This brings us to the end of today’s study. Last week, we looked at the warning not to judge, and we considered the Lord’s explanation of that warning (we are to judge with proper motives and by using the appropriate standard). And today we’ve looked at a special danger, the danger of being obsessed with the sin of others, all while ignoring our own sin. And we’ve also noted the goal here: The goal is to heal, but we start by looking at our own sin.

I’d like to continue with verse 6, but I’d like to take a slight detour next week. If the Lord wills, I’d like to have us look at a case study of judging. There is a man in one of the gospel accounts who makes a wildly inappropriate judgment. He has some issues of his own, and Jesus will demonstrate how to deal with that. So, I hope you can join us next week as we consider an example as we apply today’s passage in a very practical way. And it also happens to be one of my favorite passages.

Before we sing together, let’s go to God in prayer:

Our Father in Heaven,

We praise you this morning as the one and only Judge of all the earth. We realize that we are sinners, saved by your grace, by the gift of your only Son. This morning, we ask that you would open our eyes to our own sin, that we would be aware and open with those around us. We pray for the courage to confront sin when we see it, but we ask that you empower us to speak with gentleness and love.

We come to you today confessing that the most unjust judgment ever made was when Jesus was convicted and sentenced to death for what we had not yet even done. Thank you, Father. Help us to live each day knowing that we will one day stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

We come to you today in Jesus’ name. AMEN.

To comment on this lesson: fourlakeschurch@gmail.com