In the sermon titled 'Look! There is a Plank in Your Own Eye,' Scott Brown explores the teachings of Jesus in Matthew 7:1-6, focusing on the principle of refraining from judgmentalism and hypercritical attitudes. Brown emphasizes that Jesus instructs his disciples to avoid self-righteous judgments and instead apply righteous judgment, which requires self-examination and repentance. The sermon highlights how self-righteousness can blind individuals to their own faults while magnifying others' minor faults. Brown uses the metaphor of a plank and a speck to illustrate how people often focus on the small faults of others while ignoring larger issues in themselves. The sermon calls for a community of love, where individuals examine their own sins more critically than those of others, leading to personal transformation and healthy relationships. Furthermore, discernment is necessary to deal with various types of people, including those who are hardened and resistant to the truth. The sermon concludes with a call for believers to live in a way that reflects the gospel, characterized by repentance, humility, and love.

Let's read Matthew 7, 1 through 6. Judge not that ye be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?

Or how can you say to your brother, let me remove the speck from your eye, and look, a plank is in your own eye. Hypocrite, first remove the plank from your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. Do not give what is holy to dogs nor cast your pearls before swine lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for this day.

Lord, please forgive us for judging. Lord, we have so little to judge others with Lord when we truly understand our sin and yet Lord what you have redeemed us from Father today be with Scott as he brings the word Lord. I pray that you will go before him Lord, I pray that you'll go before him and go before our hearts father. Soften our hearts. Lord help us not to be thinking about the day that was passed or the days to come Lord but to think about today your word and the reading of your word.

Lord, touch our hearts. Lord, judge our hearts. And Lord, help us to be receptive to that. Lord, help us to be repentive. In your name we pray.

Amen. There are few principles in Scripture that would help us to establish a happy church as the one that's here. The Lord Jesus Christ is instructing His disciples, and now He's instructing us in the same principle. And it's a principle that really establishes whether there will be love in the Church or not. And he puts his finger in the wound of lovelessness in the Church, really in our hearts.

And what's here is so significant. It really is the hinge point on whether we love the law of God or not, because love is a fulfillment of the law. If you say, oh, how I love thy law, well, there's its most visible and natural application of it in love. And so here in this passage, Jesus is instructing his disciples how they ought to love and how they ought to handle their personal relationships and how love is destroyed and how we should be handling our hearts and how we should be handling the words of our mouths and all of these things, all of these interpersonal interactions are actually designed by God to do something in us and we'll get to that later on. And you know, it's, love is something that's very fragile in human relationships.

And when people begin to think wrongly about one another, then love can die. Actually, rather quickly, you've heard of the honeymoon phase in all relationships. That's just the reality. It's the reality of a marriage. It's the reality of a new friendship.

It's the reality of coming to a new church, even this church. There's sort of the honeymoon giddy phase and then there's the real phase where there's real sanctification, there are real problems that are surfaced and dealt with according to the Word of God. It took six years to build the Twin Towers, but it only took 90 minutes to bring it down. And that happens in human relationships and in churches and in marriages as well, when they cultivate the wrong kinds of things. And Jesus here is helping us with that.

I've quoted Jerry Bridges on the top of your outline to try to identify what is, I think, the heart of this passage. Judgmentalism is one of the most subtle of our respectable sins, because it is often practiced under the guise of being zealous for what is right." And so here the Lord Jesus Christ is instructing his disciples on the matters of love. Now think of how important it is that they would learn how to establish communities of love because they are establishing the church and there's the church will be built upon the patterns that they establish and they will be continued on so here the Lord Jesus establishing a principle that ought to govern all of church life. And so these are really critical issues. Now, these six verses, just to try to place this in its context, They're intimately connected with what's gone before in chapter six.

And the flow of the thought is consistent. In chapter six, Jesus is explaining two gigantic temptations, two sort of secret sins. One, the first has to do with things religious, things that you do religiously, but what really lies underneath of them. When you give, when you pray, when you fast, you can do these things outwardly, you can do these things for the praise of man. You do them because you love yourself.

And so you do them publicly to get public praise. But these are secret sins. When you give for the praise of man, or pray for the praise of man, or when you fast for the praise of man, generally people don't know, but you know. So Jesus has dealt with this self-obsession that makes you pray and give and fast, but you're really just doing it for yourself. And then he turns to the second temptation in our outer lives, in our material lives, how we handle money, the accumulation of possessions.

And he says, lay not it for yourselves. Treasures on earth. And the key is for yourselves. You're doing it for yourselves. All of your working, all of your laboring, all of your accumulating, everything is for yourself.

And that's also a secret sin as well. You can have a little bit or a lot and be doing it all for yourself. It doesn't really matter. The rich person and the poor person has exactly the same problem. And so Jesus is dealing with this whole matter of outward appearance.

And then he talks about An expression of laying out for yourselves treasures on earth is worried You're so worried about it because it's all about you You know if you lost it for the glory of God that would be trouble for you So he's Jesus is getting underneath the the outer Appearance of things the way that we present ourselves in the world, the way we pray, the way we fast, the way we give, the way we do everything that we do in life. And He's saying, wait, there's something greater here, and it has to do with your heart. And so, so far, Jesus has been explaining the way that hypocrisy and sin follow you to the offertory, to the place of prayer, to the place, it follows you to the store, It follows you into your car that you bought to make yourself look so good. Sin follows you absolutely everywhere, and it also follows you in your personal relationships. And that's what we find in Matthew chapter 7.

So the theme is consistent, and he's continuing to deal with the same issues here. And he's instructing his disciples on such an important matter. And it is this, how easy it is to be so ridiculously self-centered, and he uses lots of ridiculous images to help them understand it, how ridiculously self-centered you can be to those around you, even when you're going to your brothers to tell them about their sins. How we can be so self-absorbed and forget the whole purpose of what that person's sin is in your life. So now, I want to sort of give you a roadmap for this text, because there are a number of constellations that I think help us understand sort of the pattern and the structure of the text.

There are a number of key words that really tip you off as far as how do you interpret it. There's the word brother. There's the word judge. By the way, in the first phrase of the passage, the word judge or judgment is used, judge not lest you be judged. For how you judge, he just uses the word judge.

I think he uses the word judge five times in just a few words. So there's judge. And then there is why do you look? Why do you look? And then how can you say?

And then there are, there's judgment and measurement, and then there are these obstacles, the speck and the plank. And then at the end there are two kinds of people, There's a brother and a dog. So that's kind of the, I think that sort of gives you sort of the subject matter that's here and Jesus is wrapping all this instruction about judgmentalism and hypercriticalism around these words. And so he's speaking of this secret sin. You know, this sin of being hypercritical and censorious, it hides behind your facial expressions, it hides behind your words, it hides behind your outward disposition that you've learned how to finesse in order to get your way in the world.

But Jesus is not satisfied with your words or your demeanor. He goes right below that to deal with something greater and something deeper because you can fake people out about how you feel about them but you can't fake Jesus out and Jesus is talking to his disciples about their about what's going on in their hearts when they speak about the sins of others And so all of these things can hide a sensorious spirit. So we have to understand how critical this is. You know, upon love hinges all the law on the prophets. So he's speaking of something of enormous significance.

OK, we start out here with there are two warnings. Judge not that you be not judged, for with what judgment you judge, you will be judged. So there are two things here. There's a judgment, and then there's a measurement. And with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.

So those are two warnings about judgments and measurements. Those are the two things. We're always doing that in our hearts and expressing it publicly in our words. So these are two really critical things that we make decisions about the way people are. That's the judgment side about it.

And then there are the measurement tools that we use. We measure them against the standard. You might measure it against the standard of your own perfect life. You may measure it against the standard of your friend's life or your culture. We're always making measurement judgments.

And we use a yardstick, a moral yardstick to do that. And often our yardsticks are flawed because we've grown up in this world and we have such need of transformation. And so our yardsticks are often wrong. The only true yardstick to use is the Word of God. That's the only one that can help really understand, help us understand sin.

And so he says, judge not. Now this of course has been so misinterpreted, you know, over particularly in our own era I believe. Leo Tolstoy interpreted this as that it's never right to make a law or punish anybody for anything. Well, that's a complete misunderstanding of this passage of Scripture. He says, judge not.

And he's using it the same way, Jesus is using this the same way that he used other terms like this when he said, do not swear or do not lay up treasures. He's talking about the abuse of it. He's speaking of a self-righteous, unself-examined, haughty spirit where this judgment is a reflection of a simple heart. That's the kind of judgment he is talking about. Jesus also said, judge with righteous judgment.

Well, which one is it? Is Jesus contradicting himself? Do not judge. Judge with righteous judgment. No, he's not contradicting himself at all.

He's speaking of a certain classification of judgment. And there are many classifications of judgment that we have to be aware of. And Jesus is speaking of one particular classification. He's not wiping out everything that the Bible says about judging with proper judgment. And he's not contradicting himself because in verse 7 he says, do not give what is holy to dogs well that's a way of judgment so he's not contradicting himself within this text or within scripture at all there are several kinds of judgment that God actually requires I'm just going to give you a dozen of them now.

The state in civil affairs, the civil government is there to make judgments and to wield the sword. This is a biblical category that needs to be understood when Jesus is speaking about judgment. Then there is church discipline. In Matthew 18, it's proper for brothers to make judgments and go to one another. Thirdly, in the observance of the Lord's table.

We examine ourselves. We make judgments. And also, church leaders are obligated to bar reprobates from the table, as has happened many times in history for people who are professing Christians, but they live in a completely contrary way. Number four, our conversion requires repentance, which is a function of judgment. We have to judge ourselves.

Number five, our relationships within the church require judgment. James 519 says, brethren, if anyone of you wanders from the truth and someone turns him back, so there's a turning back. And someone is confronting a brother for that. Luke 17.3 says, if your brother sins against you, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. In Galatians 6.1, we read, if a man is overtaken in a trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness.

So this is judgment in personal relationships in the church. There's judgment in our preaching. The very nature of preaching requires making judgments, drawing distinctions, and helping us understand what is true and what is false. Number seven, our relationship with the Word of God is a matter of judgment. It pierces, it pierces deeply, as Hebrews chapter four says, to the joints and the marrow.

And it goes to the thoughts and the intents of the heart. We're actually preparing for final judgment. And that judgment in doctrine for false teachers is critical. If you look at 1st Corinthians 15, 1st John, you'll know that, you know, if anyone does not bring the doctrine, do not let him go into your house. That's making a judgment.

So we're actually obligated to make many, many kinds of judgments. We're to make judgments about factious men in the church. Titus 2 10, reject a factious man. Romans 16, mark them and avoid them. These are judgments that were actually obligated to make.

We're to make judgments in evangelism. From time to time we would have to shake the dust off our feet. That's actually judging. It matters concerning the Sabbath. There are judgments that need to be made.

Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath and was correcting those who were misinterpreting it, and he said, do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment. There's judgment in personal training. In Hebrews chapter 5, we're called to have our senses trained to discern good and evil. So there's a personal judgment that we have to make as well. And we have to recognize that God is the judge.

So when Jesus says, do not judge, he's not saying that we don't judge other classifications. But he's only speaking of one classification of judgment here. And also, we have to understand he's talking about brothers. Jesus is explicitly talking about brothers, professing believers in Christ. And so he's making instruction for his disciples so that they'll know how to treat one another, because they will have to apply this even together in the apostolic band.

We see that there is tension from time to time in the apostolic band. One wanted to be greater than the other and things like that. So this is meant to deal with sin even among the apostles themselves. So the judgment that he's talking about here is the judgmentalism of a censorious spirit and Jesus uses a number of questions, he uses two questions to help his disciples understand exactly what he is talking about. And so, he makes a statement here that in verse 2, for with what judgment you judge, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured back you." So Jesus is instructing his disciples the reasons for the command.

He said, do not judge, and then he comes and explains why. Why you shouldn't. And he continues to explain, you know, on through verse 5, why he said what he did in the very first sentence. And just in summary, what Jesus is saying is that our souls are in danger when we make unrighteous judgments. When we have a censorious spirit, our very own souls are actually in danger of judgment.

We discern sin in someone else and when that happens we have a particular obligation. When we go in the wrong direction, there are disastrous consequences for us because there is judgment toward us for the thing that we are judging unrighteously. And we are judged by God. We see this in a number of places in Scripture where God seems to come and punish someone with the same punishment with which they wanted to punish someone else. In the woman caught in adultery, they were unwilling to judge themselves by the same standard.

That was only one issue that Jesus was bringing up. They had not gotten any witnesses. They had not followed the law of God as they ought to have, and they had also not done this. They had not examined themselves. They came to this woman and they were unwilling to judge themselves by that same standard.

They did not come with repentant hearts for their own adulteries. And they did not follow Moses' law about how to bring an accusation against someone. And of course, they all left. We see the example of Haman, who was hanged on the gallows that he built. He built gallows to hang more to KI, and he was hanged on those same gallows.

We see Adonai Bezak, who cut the thumbs and the big toes off of 70 kings. The same thing happened to him. So this principle of God meeting judgment out in the same way that men meet it out is just a principle of scripture. Jesus has already said in the Sermon on Mount, if you say, raqqa, raqqa, you will be in danger of hell fire. And after saying, you know, in danger of the council, in danger of the judgment.

So there are things that we do that actually draw judgment to ourselves. And so that's what he's saying. He's saying the judgment with which you judge and the measurement tool with which you use will be judged and measured back to you. And then Jesus asks two questions. And I think this is really the heart of the whole instruction that Jesus is giving his disciples.

And the first question is, and Why do you look? Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank that is in your own eye? So why do you look? And He's speaking to his disciples, of course, on this hillside, and he's asking this rhetorical question. Why do you look?

But he brings up the things that we always do. We're always looking. We're looking for people to stumble. We make observations. Why do you look?

But he says, why do you look at the speck? You're looking at the speck. We get so obsessed about the specks in other people's eyes. And they become so large as to actually become a plank in our own eye. We have this plank and we're just completely blinded.

And so he says, why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank that is in your own eye." So Jesus is using this outrageous example to help them understand how important this is for them to see. And he says, why? Why are you doing that? It's ridiculous to do that. He has a speck and you have a plank.

And he's just explaining the human condition. He's explaining the human personality. He's giving us a psychology lesson. He's helping us understand the way that we're wired, the way that we're built. He's sort of unpacking, you know, the content of our innermost being and he's showing us who we really are.

He's laying it out on the table and he's saying, why do you look at the speck? Why are you doing that? Because he knows that this is in our nature. This is how we're naturally inclined. I dare say there's not a single person in this room who doesn't have this problem.

It's the problem of sinful human nature. And this is the result of the fall, the thing that has destroyed so much love in the world, sin. And it's come upon us. We have inborn sin. We were born to be this way.

Everyone who has children knows that. You have a child and you know that your children are self-righteous and they're trying to blame other people. Everyone's sins are always bigger than theirs and unfortunately they're just like the parents. Parents are that way as well. And so he says, why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye?

And He's just naming just a very obvious quality of human nature. He's talking about me. He's talking about your family. He's talking about this church. He's talking about something that is resident in every single person.

So he says, why? Why do you look there, but, and that's the key, but do not consider the plank. It's so much easier to consider the speck than it is to deal with the plank. One reason it is, is because we're so blind. We are so self-centered.

We are so self-absorbed. Not only do we pray for the praise of man, Not only do we give for the praise of man, not only do we fast, not only do we work and accumulate possessions for the praise of man, we also in our own hearts do everything we do for our own praise so we don't even consider the plank that is in our own eye and so Jesus is just sort of you know unmasking the human nature here before his disciples and of course he's comparing to I'm gonna call them large objects because a speck in the eye is a large object. But a plank is absolutely ridiculously gigantic, you know, you, It's hard to imagine something like that. It's just so outrageous. Think of how outrageous and unreal he is speaking here.

Because you can't even have a plank in your eye. It just won't hold there. There's just nothing to hold the plank up, but it's there. It's actually there, and you can't see it. You might say, well, my eye could never hold a plank.

Well, that's actually not true. It's a spiritual plank. It's something that is actually there, and other people can see it, but they see the evidences of it, even though it's very, very large, and it's very, very blinding. Because here this plank is actually blinding, it's getting in the way. Remember we heard Jesus say earlier, the lamp of the body is the eye.

If your eye is not single, if your eye is not focused on good things, then your whole body will be full of darkness. And that's the same thing with a plank. When you have a plank in your eye, your heart is full of darkness toward other people. You're blinded. You're not seeing your own sins.

The plank is your sin. OK, but let's just make that very, very clear. The plank are the things that are actually wrong in your own life, and those things are actually blinding you from seeing your own sin, and they are making, it makes you make such a gigantic deal out of everybody else's sins. And so this sin of self-righteousness is one that blinds us and it completely distorts our vision. In fact, we don't even understand that it's a speck in our brother's eye when it's actually a plank in our own eye.

So it blinds our vision. Now, Jesus is instructing us here about something. I really want us to understand this, that in many ways, when we're dealing with the sins of our brothers, we are almost incapable of righteous judgment. That's the spirit with which we ought to ever go with our brother. That we are almost incapable of righteous judgment.

And so that's why he says, and why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank that is in your own eye." Now you know how many times has someone come to speak about someone's sin to you and you immediately recognize that it's exactly their sin as well. That's just a parable of life. If you see something that bothers you in someone else, in many, many cases, not every case obviously, but in many cases that's your sin. And it bugs you because it's in you. And so often, this is the way that we are.

When we confront someone, we actually ought to be confronting ourselves. It's just so much more interesting to talk about other people's sins. It's easier to deal with other people's sins. It's a lot easier to even fix other people's problems. You can just fix them in a two or three step formula.

It's much more difficult to consider and identify. It's much less interesting to consider your own sins or to deal with them, but it's just so much easier for us. We are such, you know, we really are better mechanics on other people's cars is really what we are when we really can't are completely incapable of fixing our own. So this is the whole thing of having a censorious spirit. Jonathan Edwards wrote a brilliant book called Charity and Its Fruits, and he does an exposition of 1 Corinthians 13.

I highly recommend the book. It's absolutely wonderful. And he has a chapter on there on having a censorious spirit, in the same way that Richard Baxter speaks of this vileness within him that ignores his own censorious spirit. Here's what Jonathan Edwards says. He says that a censorious spirit usually gets wrapped around three things in other people's lives.

Check this for yourself. Check this if you're doing this with anyone now. Our censorious spirit is focused on their state, in other words, just their state of life, how it's going, how well or how poorly they are doing, their state, or their qualities, the way that they're sort of naturally built, their personalities, their inclinations, you know, whether they are bubbly or summarily unbubbly, whatever it might be, just how they are, you know. A person is, you know, we're just built different ways, aren't we? I mean, some are more contemplative than others, some are funnier than others, some, you know, like some that we know well, are not funny at all.

And so their qualities or their actions, thirdly, the thing, actually the things that they do, the way that they carry themselves, the way they talk, the things they're doing out in the community. So a censorious spirit, Jonathan Edwards says, focuses on these three things, their state, their qualities, and their actions. So this should help us understand just how this works with us. Here's what Edward says, �It appears in a disposition to overlook their good qualities or to think them destitute of such qualities when they are not, or to make very little of them, or to magnify their ill qualities and make more of them than is just, or to charge them with those ill qualities they do not have." So he's speaking about this whole blindness that the moat, that the plank makes, that you can't even see the good qualities. The only thing you can see are the specs, but you don't see the glory of God, you don't see the things that are compelling and wonderful about them.

You're all wrapped around their state, their qualities, and their actions on the negative side. And you don't see anything good. You just can't see anything at all. Edwards even continues and speaks of how this whole spirit breeds an attitude toward people. Persons are censorious when they condemn others as being unconverted and carnal men because they differ from them in opinion on some points that are not fundamental, or when they judge ill of their state from what they observe in them, or for want of making due allowances for their natural temperament, their manner, their want of education, or particular disadvantages under which they labor.

So just the log in the eye, the plank in the eye has a lot of different spin-offs to it in the way that we relate with people. You know, 1 Corinthians 13, I think, makes it very clear how we ought to think about this. Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself.

It is not puffed up. Love thinks no evil. Love thinks no evil. So here, you know, Jesus is asking this question, And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank that is in your honor? So that's the first question.

Why do you look? So the first thing is about looking. You're looking at people all the time and you're making judgments. Why do you look? Why do you look?

Why do you look? That's the first question that he's asking. And then the second question is, or how can you say, or how can you say to your brother let me remove the speck from your eye and look the plank is in your own eye so now you look first and then you start shooting your mouth off that's the idea you look and then you say You go to your brother and you say. And Jesus is saying, how can you say that? How?

How can you say that? And then Jesus says, look, look, a plank is in your own eye. Look, and I've titled that, the title of this sermon, look, a plank is in your own eye. That's the heart of the matter in this passage of Scripture. So he says, how can you say, I just would love to have heard the tone and the meter of the way that Jesus spoke this to his disciples.

He says, you know, how can you say? How can you possibly say that? Jesus is incredulous to this whole matter. Do you know why He's incredulous? Because He's a merciful high priest, that's why.

He's a high priest that understands our weaknesses. This passage takes us to the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That our sins are so gigantic. Our only hope is a faithful high priest who has who has been tempted in every way that we've been tempted. And our only hope is to repent and to believe in the gospel and to flee to Christ.

He's a merciful and faithful high priest. That's why Jesus says, how can you say that? And he, the faithful high priest, understands that because he is calling his disciples to walk in a manner in which he walked not in exactly the same way but according to the same principle And so he sympathizes with our weaknesses and he speaks to his disciples this way because they're speaking out of turn. They're speaking before they should speak. By the way, he's not saying don't say anything.

He's saying that something has to happen before you open your mouth. There's a profound confrontation that must happen before you open your mouth. And he speaks of it in verse 5. Hypocrite, first remove the plank from your own eye, then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. So the cure is to recognize who you really are.

We should not be opening up our mouths until we understand who we really are. Jesus is calling, using a term here, hypocrite. And a hypocrite is someone who has a double standard, who has two ways. And it's a two-faced person, is what a hypocrite is. And so first of all, he names the sin to help them with the cure.

And then he says, first remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. Now remember, the objective here is to see clearly and remove the speck. This is a blessed ministry that God has given us with one another. We don't quit talking about the speck, but there's something far greater that has to happen before we deal with the speck in our brother's eye. And the cure, it begins with our confession.

And the confession is focused on the problem. And the real problem is that you're actually worse than the other person. That you have a plank in your eye and he only has a speck in your eye. So when there's personal confrontation, there has to be repentance. There has to be crying out to God to understand our own sins first.

That's where it all begins. Now, If I had a dollar for all the times I spoke to people about their sins without having a thorough self-examination, I would be a rich man. Now, I don't know if you're that way. Perhaps you don't shoot your mouth off before you fall on your face and cry out to God for your own sins and see that their sins are also your sins and yours are even greater. Maybe you're the kind of person who has always done that.

You may be a wife who has always fallen on her face in repentance before God, before you speak to your husband. Maybe that's the kind of wife you've been. Or maybe you husbands, toward your wives, you have criticized your wives and you have spent an hour on your knees before God, crying out for your own sins, before you even brought the matter up. Maybe you've always done that. Well, that's what Jesus is saying.

The cure is to declare yourself who you really are and then to remove the plank from your own eye. So to remove the plank doesn't mean that you've somehow achieved perfection. The principle is not you have to be perfect before you deal with the spec. That's an outrageous, ridiculous proposition. So he can't mean that because no one can do that.

But he's speaking about an insidious, careful self-inspection that actually removes the plank, that first identifies it, that names it, that hangs a term on it to describe it. You know, the beginning of healing is to name something. Jesus just named it, you're a hypocrite. And then he asks them to consider, that's sort of the, the hypocrite is sort of the big broad problem. But the other problem is the plank.

That's a specific sin. That's a, that's something that needs to be removed first before before that happens. Now this is gospel repentance, repentance that does deeds, repentance that actually changes. And so Jesus is saying that that that if we are going to deal with the speck in our brother's eye, we had better be about the business of personal transformation and change. We had better be there.

It's very difficult for people to receive criticism from someone who's proud and who's not changing. This happens with husbands and wives, this happens with friends, this happens in churches when you have a hard-hearted person coming to you and they speak harshly. It's so hard for us to hear when someone is speaking harshly to us, when they're speaking self-righteously. The moment you sense self-righteousness, your brain shuts off. It just goes into sleep mode.

Or it might rise up like a lion and go into attack mode. But one of those two things will happen. And so it matters the way that we approach one another and Jesus is saying you have to understand who you are, you're a hypocrite, and then you have to deal in a vanquishing way with your own sins. You have to deal with them. You have to turn yourself.

So the other person's sin has actually become the theater in which God is using to confront you in your own sin. The purpose of your brother's sin is your own sanctification. God is blessing you by surrounding you with sinful people. He loves you so much that He would give you a sinful person next to you in your home, in your work, so that you might be sanctified, so that you might rise up in pride, in hypocrisy, to condemn of that sin and then realize, no, you're a greater sinner than he is. God has given you these sinners around you not so that you can get away from them, so you can have a nice life.

The only way you'll ever have a nice life is that you understand why they're there. They're there as a personal confrontation to lead you to the cross of Jesus Christ so that you will be refreshed and transformed. Is your husband sinning against you? Is your wife sinning against you? You ought to praise God for the sanctifying grace that He's given to you, for His love toward you, that He would put you next to a sinner so that You could see your own log in your own eye, so that you could wipe away the stupidity, the self-absorbedness, and all the things that have gripped your heart.

So often, you know, When people sin against us or they behave poorly, something wrong with their state or their actions or their dispositions, you know, we don't like it, we want to criticize them about it, they are gifts from heaven that God has sent to expose the moat that is in our eye. That's why. That's the purpose that Jesus is explaining here. So what begins with an offense ends in the joy of the Lord and a transformed life. First of all, not their life, but your life.

And that's what Paul was talking about in Galatians chapter 6, when he said, Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, You who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself, lest you also be tender. Consider yourself. Oh, how wealthy we would be if we had a dollar for all the times that we went and spoke to our brother about their spec without personal repentance. Imagine the wealth in this church if we had that. It would be enormous.

So these two questions, why do you look And how can you say? Why do you look and how can you say? Jesus is desiring to relieve His people of such poison. And He's actually declaring also something that I don't want us to miss before we move on. He's really declaring his love toward his people in this sense, that he desires His children to be treated beautifully.

He loves us. He is a faithful high priest who sympathizes with our weaknesses. And he desires us to be just like that with our brothers and sisters, that when we confront one another, and we should from time to time. Because this actually is a case for confronting your brother. It's not a case for refusing to confront your brother, but it is a case for the right treatment of your brother, that you would deal with him as a son of Jesus Christ, as a precious possession of Jesus Christ.

And so that you would come to him in the right way. That you would understand that you have a responsibility yourself before you come. And that takes us really to this last verse, which seems to be out of place, but it's not out of place at all, which speaks about discernment. Because this whole passage is really about discernment, but here he brings the whole matter of discernment into center stage to help us understand something further about it. And he says that, he says this in verse 6, do not give what is holy to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces." So one of the things I just want to just pause and say, sort of off topic here, is just to just to see how beautiful and how logical the Word of God is.

And you know how important it is to take careful inspection of every word to consider all the thoughts and how they fit together. That they're placed together not randomly, but they're placed together to follow a logical sequence, to help us understand the will of the Lord. It's very beautiful, and it really, it's such a good argument for careful inspection of the Word of God too, to labor over every word and every phrase so that we can see how it fits together. I think this is why David could say, oh, how I love thy law. It's my meditation all the day.

So we should always take time to carefully labor over the words to consider each one as perfect and pure, tried seven times, and exactly what we need to hear at a given moment. So here He comes with this illustration of dogs and swine, of what is holy and pearls. Those are the things that he's setting in the discussion. So he's been talking to his disciples about self-righteous judgment. And now he's speaking about dogs and pigs and how you relate the truth to them.

And this passage has been interpreted in many, many ways. I have in my notes what ten commentators have said about this. I won't go over them. Augustine believed that you don't reveal esoteric subjects to outsiders because they won't understand. The Divickae, which was the sort of church manual of the early church, often many, many things, said that it was about giving communion to those who are unbaptized.

John of Damascus, the church father, says that it prohibits us from taking the gospel to the dogs, to the gentiles. That's a completely ridiculous interpretation. Bonhoeffer and Luther said that it means that you should limit your time with those who are hard-hearted. And so what does this mean? First of all, it means that there is discernment that's necessary in the confrontation of a brother.

He's been speaking of how you deal with the speck in your brother's eye. He's talked about that. But there are other kinds of people who are of a completely different category. They are dogs, and they are swine. And they are of such a nature that one is wise not to contend with them.

And it's, I don't, after reading ten commentaries on this and trying to consider this, I don't believe that this means that you refuse to take the gospel to hard-hearted people. I don't believe it means that. I think what it means is that there is a class of people who are so reprobate, they are so hardened, they are so violent, they are so wicked that you can't even have a conversation, you just can't even deal with it. And Jesus is saying, we're fishers of men. We are anglers.

We're presenting the treasures of the gospel to the whole earth, but there are some that we should not. And he doesn't tell us exactly what the qualities of them are except he does tell us what they do. He says that they, first of all, they trample and they tear. They take the message and they trample it underfoot. They just trample.

That's the first thing they do. And then they turn and they tear you to pieces. That's the kind of person he's talking about. We have to exercise discernment and ask, is this that kind of person? I believe this kind of person is rare.

I haven't run into very many of them, I don't think. But perhaps there are those that you absolutely should not because of their vicious and perverse nature. Because not only will they trample the message underfoot, but they will tear you to pieces. And so there's an avoidance. And so I think it means that you cannot preach the gospel without understanding who you're talking to.

That you don't just preach the gospel from some rote script, that you consider the person that you're talking to. And there are some that you would just actually refrain from talking to. They are dogs and they are swine. And so it's important for us to consider who we are speaking to. And so it's a very important point of evangelism, that we focus our message not on those who are so unusually hardened and blind and hateful that there's no way to have a rational conversation.

That's the way I interpret it. There are many propositions for how to understand this, but that's my understanding. I think it's a little bit about what Solomon spoke of in Proverbs chapter 9, where he says, "'He who corrects a scoffer gets shame for himself, and he who rebukes a wicked man only harms himself. Do not correct a scoffer lest he hate you. Rebuke a wise man and he will love you.

Give instruction to a wise man and he will be wiser still. Teach a just man and he will increase in learning. We have to have discernment about the way that we deal with people like this. OK, application. I've got a whole bunch of application that I want to work through here.

Number one, do you have a critical spirit that you're just calling discernment? Do you have a critical spirit that you're calling discernment? And you find fault with everything. Thomas Boston wrote something that I believe bears on this. He's commenting on blessed of those who hunger and thirst after righteousness and he says this, it is a sign men have no spiritual hunger when they are more for religious disputes than practice piety.

They just feed on disputes. Do you feed? I mean, are you the kind of person, you have a critical spirit, you're calling an assernment, but you're feeding on disputes. All you ever do is dispute matters. If that's all you ever do, you should ask yourself the condition of your soul." He continues, some men feed only on difficult questions and controversies.

These pick bones and do not feed on the meat. They have hot brains, but cold hearts. Did men hunger and thirst after righteousness? They would propound to themselves such questions as these. How shall we be saved?

How shall we make our calling and election sure? How shall we mortify our corruptions? But such as ravel out their time in frothy and useless theological disputes? I call heaven to witness they are strangers to this text. They do not hunger and thirst after righteousness." So, do you have a critical spirit you're just calling to sermon and all you ever do is feed on disputes?

You just need to ask yourself if you're that kind of person. We're of course not saying that it's wrong to dispute, it's right to dispute, it's right to consider you know particular points so that we would all grow and would understand the will of God. That's necessary. Number two. Do you cover a multitude of sins?

First Peter 4, 8 says, above all things have fervent love for one another, for love will cover a multitude of sins. And then right after that, you know what he says? He says, be hospitable to one another without grumbling. In other words, you get so, you're hospitable, you get to know people, you're not in a church where you hear a talking head, everybody leaves, you actually get to know him, you find out his foibles and foolishnesses and stupidities and blindness, you see the specks or the motes that are in his eye, and you start practicing hospitality. You're at church, you get to know one another.

Someone's in your house, they say something that offends you, they do something that really bothered you, and you have an opportunity to cover their sins. Because hospitality gives you an opportunity to cover sins. Because with hospitality, fortunately or unfortunately, you see things that you don't always see on the street. Has someone offended you when they've been in your house, something they said, some way they inflected a phrase or something they did, maybe they were chronically late or whatever it is? You know, Are you covering a multitude of sins?

When people know one another in a church, they have enormous opportunity for sanctification. This is one great thing about people knowing each other. You know, it's that sin is dealt with more thoroughly in people's lives. We don't have the opportunity to live such a veneer of spirituality. Number three, are you a dog or a swine?

Are you a dog or a swine? Now, there are a couple of ways that I wanted to have us consider this question. One, a dog, a swine is a hardened unbeliever and someone who has just been so hard. But what we all know, all of us who have been hard before, and God opened up our hearts, and he gave us a heart of flesh. That because you have a hard heart now doesn't mean that you have to have it forever?

And maybe God is pricking your heart now. You've seen how hardened you are, how self-righteous you are. You're a very spiritual person. Maybe you even pray and fast and give alms and you do all these things, but your heart is really hard and you're actually a dog. You may not be a dog as bad as this kind that'll turn and tear you to pieces and trample the message, but maybe you're trampling it in your heart And maybe you wish you could tear the other person to pieces.

And you need to be converted. The poison can be relieved by repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Now, there's a whole other level of this that I want to probe on as well. And I want us to listen very carefully about this. Now, these swine, these dogs, are so hardened that not only does the message even come close to them, they trample it, they trample it, and then they tear you apart.

Now often even Christian people do this. When they're confronted, they are so mean coming back. They respond, they find every excuse to dodge the criticism. Are you a dog like that? And is it possible that you're one of those people that people never come to to confront you because of the way you act like a dog.

You trample the message And you tear them to pieces when someone comes to you. I know husbands and wives like that who have chronic problems in their marriages because they act like dogs to one another. Their dear wife comes to them with an observation And they trample the message and they tear them to pieces. That happens. Are you a dog?

Are you a swine? Because this can happen. And this sin in its most radical form that's in this passage can happen in a less radical form. And what happens is, is because of the way you treat the messenger, you never get the opportunity for sanctification. You never see your sins because people won't talk to you about it because you're so rotten to them when they bring them to you.

So are you a dog or a swine? And have you just cut yourself off from all criticism because of the way that you respond? That you respond. Another, you jump to conclusions and make rash judgments. Because A lot of times this whole spec and log thing happens because we make rash judgments.

You know, Eli thought Hannah was drunk, right? When the children of Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh built an altar by the Jordan, the rest of the people, they just rashly concluded that they were going to go to war, but they weren't going to war at all. Thankfully, they found the truth got out. Elijah thought he was the only one left, but there were actually 7, 000 who had not bowed their knee to bail. We're so rash in our judgments often that we find ourselves in this judgmental, censorious, critical spirit because we haven't taken time to find out what's really going on.

How often does that happen? It happens. It happens with us. Do we jump to conclusions and make rash judgments and then become spec inspectors? And then, of course, you know, this is probably an obvious question.

Do you have any hard feelings toward anyone in this room or anyone in your life? You know, if you're there, you know, at the altar and your brother has something against you, then you should go to your brother. Leave your gift There. Go your way. Be reconciled to your brother first.

First be reconciled to your brother. It's very much like what Jesus has been saying. First, deal with the log that's in your own eye. First, be reconciled to your brother. And then the next one I would like for us to really carefully consider because this might be one of the most important things here.

Do you use the sins of others the way God designed? Do you use the sins of others the way God designed. The sins of others are meant to remind us of our own sinfulness and to drive us to Jesus Christ, drive us to repentance, self-inspection and real change. Jonathan Edwards in his great resolutions, resolution number eight, he deals with this. By the way, this, last year I had my father read Jonathan Edwards' resolutions and we have a CD of it.

If anybody wants one, I'll give it to you. It's wonderful. But here's the resolution number eight. Resolved. To act in all respects, both speaking and doing, as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins or had the same infirmities or the same failings as others, and that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself and prove only an occasion of confessing my own sins and misery to God?

Do you use the sins of others the way God is designed? To act not as an opportunity for censoriousness and judgment, but for personal sanctification. There's so many that I could speak of. I could speak of a whole family culture of speaking evil of others, talking, joking about people, exposing their poorest things about them, and forgetting the glory of God that's upon them. You can speak about that.

You have, you know, all of you are building cultures in your family. And if you have a censorious family culture, I just so urge you to turn that around and to stop speaking evil of people. It is a poison that will poison more things than you can even imagine. If you have little children in your house, you have to understand that you are poisoning them and you are setting them up for many pains and sorrows in their marriages, in their workplaces, and in their churches. And if you have a censorious culture in your house, you have to understand the implications of that for many, many generations.

It really matters. And it starts with the husband and wife, the way they speak to one another and about one another and how they deal with their sins together. God would have, and I pray, that He would give us a family cultures where when a husband is speaking to his wife, that he is more aware of his own depravity than he is of his wife's. That he deals with her in an understanding way. That he's a sympathetic high priest who understands the weakness.

Because he too as a husband does have weaknesses as well. I'm going to finish with a letter that was written to a person in a church who had a sensorious spirit. This letter was written in 1855, published in the Presbyterian Board publication under the title, Letters to Church Members. Here's the letter. I have noticed in you for a considerable time a growing disposition, which I fear is becoming a settled habit, to deal in undue severity with the characters of your fellow men.

It is a rare thing that I hear you speak well of anybody whenever an individual is mentioned and especially when anything praiseworthy is said of them. It seems as if your mind was immediately on the stretch for something of an opposite character. And if nothing of this kind readily occurs to you, as a matter of fact, you do not hesitate to indulge in unworthy and injurious conjectures. If a person has performed a highly meritorious action, you attribute it to some dishonorable and selfish motive. If he has done something of an equivocal character, you seem to delight to put the worst construction upon it.

If he's failed from considerations of prudence to act in difficult circumstances, you reproach him for a timid or temporizing spirit. But if he takes hold and a decisive step in such circumstances, you charge him with rashness and recklessness. In short, you are ever hunting after dead flies in the apothecary's ointment. You seem not to breathe freely, except amidst the errors and foibles of your fellow men." The letter ends with this paragraph. Let me add that You will not be likely to reform this matter, except as the result of great watchfulness and persevering, vigorous effort.

You must obey the inspired direction and set a watch at the door of your lips. You must resolve never to speak ill of anybody unless upon grounds which you can fully justify to an enlightened Christian judgment and conscience. You must bring yourself under the influence of all these considerations, drawn from a sense of your own manifold imperfections and infirmities, from the precepts and example of Christ, and from your relation to the Church and to society, which are fitted to keep in check or rather eradicate this unchristian temper. Above all, you are habitually to ask of God that he will increase your power of resistance to this spiritual foe. And you are never to relax in the conflict until you can feel that it is finally and forever dislodged.

So in this way we seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Refusing to rebuke is sinful, but refusing to rebuke with a repentant and broken spirit is also sinful. And so we've been given two warnings about judgment and measurement. We've been given two questions. Why do you look and why do you say?

We've been given two solutions to recognize who we are as hypocrites and to repent and change. And we've been given two kinds of people. We've been given brothers and dogs. And so Jesus here is trying to create a new community, a community of love, a community that fulfills the law of love. He's desiring to establish a church in the world that would be a source of love and help toward all the people who come in to be a part of her.

A place where there's repentance and where the gospel is central. Here Jesus Christ is really telling his disciples that their entire relationships are based on one single thing, the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he's explained what is one aspect of what is a gospel-centered church. It's a church where people examine themselves harder than they examine their brothers. And it's a place where they repent and change.

And so we end here with this passage of Scripture. And God has given us such a blessing to bring it to us so that we would be sons of our Father in Heaven. We would be like our Lord Jesus Christ, who has so sympathized with our weaknesses that He would actually take us in and make us part of His family. He would call us sons and He would make us joint heirs with Himself. And He would spend thousands of years preparing a place for us that He might take us in, in a great act of hospitality to take despicable sinners into His house and to bless them there for all of eternity.

Let's pray. Oh Lord, we're so grateful for the love of Jesus Christ, the mercies of such a good Father that we've just been exposed to here, the good counsels of a shepherd toward his little flock on a mountain, and his counsels toward us here in this place now. Amen.