Don’t Be A Blind Judge
Luke 6:37-42 ·May 7, 2023· Joel Passmore
Part of: Luke
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now, but that's not the original meaning of the blindfold. Justitia was introduced as a goddess in the Roman pantheon by Augustus, who was the emperor of Rome during the birth of Christ, and for about 1,500 years, she was not depicted with a blindfold. The first known image of Justus being blindfolded is this one, it's the next picture, in 1498. This is from a book that was put out called Ship of Fools. This book is giving critical commentary about society and evil, the problems with humanity, and it's all set to poetry.
Sounds like some good poetry to read. Justice is being blindfolded by the fool, that's the fool blindfolding justice. The fool represents humanity. Justice is being blindfolded so that people can be endlessly judgmental of each other. And treat each other mercilessly. It was a blinding of justice so that they could do all this really crummy things to each other. Take each other to court endlessly. Criticize each other. Be judgmental. But the blindfold symbol stuck, and it became reinterpreted as impartiality.
But at first, it was really a critique. It was a critique of how people blind themselves and blind other people so that they can be unjust, be hypercritical, be judgmental towards each other. In today's passage, Jesus is in the Sermon on the Plain, and he talks about how we treat each other. And he, too, connects how we treat each other with blindness. But then he offers us a way forward. This book and other commentaries don't provide a way forward, but Jesus offers us a way forward.
He says, yes, we are blind, but he gives us a way forward, a way out of that. So let's read this today. This is Luke 6. This is the Word of God for us. It's trustworthy. It's true in every part because it comes from a God who is trustworthy and true in every part. He's reliable and dependable. So read this with me. Starting in verse 37 and going through 42. It's in your bulletin also. Judge not, and you will not be judged. Condemn not, and you will not be condemned.
Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. He also told them a parable. Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone, when he is fully trained, will be like his teacher. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?
When you yourself do not see the log in, oh, you hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye. Then you will see clearly to take the speck that is in your brother's eye. Pray with me.
Lord, we ask for your spirit to come near to us, work in us. Lord, it's only you that can produce new life in us, that can show us who you are and who we are, and can change us. We do ask for your change, Lord. We ask for you to breathe new life into us, bring new life forth. Thank you for that work that you do in us. Thank you that you are faithful to keep going with it and to finish it. Lord, we rely on you alone. Work now through your word. Help us to be attentive to it, to be not just hearers, but doers of the word.
Thank you for Jesus. Thank you that you sent him, God, because we could not do this by ourselves. Jesus, we pray this in your name. So, the sermon title today is Don't Be a Blind Judge.
The main point of this passage is being gracious is only possible when you rest in God's grace. This passage is enormously useful. Very, very practical in your life. In my life. And it's really important within the church community. Living this out, it goes a long way towards making our church, this church, a place that's inviting, that's attractive for the right reasons, that's thriving.
But this passage is really, it's actually pretty easy to understand. But it's very, very difficult to do. So, let's just remember that God's going to help us. He will help us with this. So, let's start here. The principle of graciousness. Let's start by clearing something up. The beginning of this passage is one of the most familiar passages of Scripture. Judge not, and you will not be judged. You may know it in the King James. This is one of those King James passages that people know in that language better.
Judge not, lest ye be judged. You've probably heard this before. Like any well-known passage, it is often understood and used in ways that are much different than intended. Way different than intended. We sometimes think that this means we should never, ever make any kind of evaluation of other people. This verse is brought up when someone is told that they're wrong about something. That they're doing something wrong. That they're believing something wrong.
People will say, hey, wait a minute. Jesus said, don't judge. You can't tell me what I'm doing is wrong. Mind your own business. This little fragment of a verse, judge not, and you will not be judged. It seems to offer us a complete affirmation of our secret desire to be left alone. I am an individual. I make my own rules. I live my own way. I set my own boundaries. I define my own right and wrong. Who are you to judge? Don't judge me. You do you.
Let me do me. And then we'll all just get along fine. But if we build our life on God's Word, if that's something that you're interested in doing, you don't do it by isolating little fragments of Scripture.
You read things in context. The interpretation of Scripture is guided by other Scripture. Verses sit in paragraphs. Paragraphs sit in chapters. Chapters sit in books. And all of those books come together from a single source, the living God, who does not change. That's how we're supposed to read something like this. We cannot isolate, judge not, and then you won't be judged. We have to read it in its context. And when we look at the broader context, we see that when Jesus says, judge not, he cannot mean everybody minds your own business.
Look at verse 42. In this same passage, look at verse 42. First, take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck that is in your brother's eye.
He doesn't say, and then you will see clearly to leave your brother alone. There is a type of judgment exercised here to see the speck, to recognize it as a speck, and to take it out. In case you don't believe me, yet, here's a few other passages that tell us that there is a right time and a right way to exercise judgment. Including judgment towards other people. A couple of quotes from Jesus. John 7, 42, 24. Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.
Matthew 7, 15. Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You can't beware if you don't make some kind of judgment. If this person is a false prophet or not. Matthew 18, 5, 15. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault. You can't do this without making some kind of moral evaluation. Now let's shift to Paul. Paul says, for what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?
Again, Paul from Titus. As for a person who stirs up division after warning him once, and then twice, have nothing more to do with them. Sounds a little bit like judgment.
Last one. Although I could have added more. Second John. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting. So in the context of scripture, judge not, it cannot mean, it doesn't mean that we can't ever evaluate what people do or say or teach. That we can't ever confront them about it. That we can't ever act on these evaluations. It can't mean that. It doesn't make sense. So what is Jesus saying?
Now that we've cleared up probably the most common misconception with this passage, what is Jesus saying? Well, taken together, Jesus gives two negative commands, two positive commands. Judge not, condemn not, forgive and give. Jesus is putting forward a principle of graciousness towards each other. Of charitable treatment of each other. He isn't prohibiting moral evaluations. He's calling out a posture of judgmentalism. Of treating people lesser than us.
Of condemning them as a lost cause. That is not for us to do. He's saying this. Don't be a self-righteous fault finder. Put away your critical spirit.
This is not how I want you to treat each other. Instead, be lavish with grace and mercy. Meet needs when you see them. Then you will see and experience that God does the same for you. This is really an extension of the golden rule, which we heard about last week. He's taking the golden rule further and saying it will come back to you. You might call it the boomerang rule. What goes around comes around. That's the promise that Jesus has here. You know, kids, think about this.
Who's ever tried to throw a boomerang? Raise your hand. It's actually pretty tough to throw it and get it to do right, right? If you look at a boomerang, if you never saw a boomerang before, if you didn't know what it was and it was handed to you, there's nothing about how it appears that makes you think that if you throw this thing in the right way, it's going to come back to you, right? It doesn't make any sense. Just a little curved piece of wood.
How is this thing going to come back to you? But it does. It comes right back to you. It'll hit you in the head. And that's exactly what Jesus is saying your attitude is going to do to you. It's going to come back to you.
Jesus is saying that our attitude comes back to us in the same way that we give it out. He says, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. And we're like, what? What does that even mean? It sounds strange, but he's referring to buying grain in a market. This is the best practice that a seller would do to make sure that you get everything that you're entitled to. You press it down, you shake it, you add a little bit more until it's heaping over, everything that you paid for.
Jesus is saying it comes back around. In fullness, it comes back around to you. The way that you treat other people in the community, if you have a posture of suspecting the worst, of judgmentalism, it'll come back to you. If you have a posture of graciousness, of being charitable, of assuming the best things, it'll come back to you. If you give, it will come back to you.
He's particularly speaking about relationships in the community of faith. You know this because four times in verses 41 and 42, he uses the word brother. That's a little word. Brother and neighbor mean two different things in the New Testament. It's talking about inside the church community.
But he says if we're going to be able to do this, a problem has got to be dealt with. And here it is. It's the problem of blindness. Jesus diagnoses our problem here. Can a blind man lead a blind man? All of the things he's calling us out of, all of the things we do naturally, judge, condemn, withhold forgiveness, be stingy, he diagnoses them all as blindness.
Not literal blindness, of course, but metaphorical blindness. It's like the fool in that picture earlier, putting the blindfold over justice so that you can do whatever you want. It's shutting our eyes to our own mess. It's an act of denial about who we are. It's acting superior, focusing on the failure of other people. That's the blindness Jesus is talking about. And why do we do this? We don't like it when people do it to us, so why do we do it to them?
Why do our hearts do this? The reason why is that we're insecure. We're insecure people. We know that we're not good enough, so we try to reassure ourselves by pointing out the failure of other people, of assuming the worst about them. This blindness, when it's pervasive in the community, it is perilous.
When we're blind, we lead each other into pits. It's mutual assured destruction. It's like a scene in the action movie when it comes to the climax, and everybody has their guns pointed at each other. And no one is willing to put their weapon down. And it's this tense moment. Everyone is threatening everybody else. And then something dumb happens, like a pan clatters to the ground, and everybody jumps and shoots, and then everyone's dead. That's what Jesus is saying we do to each other.
How can we put our weapons down? Who's going to be the first? Jesus says that we're shaped by one another. He gives us some additional insight here. A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone, when he is fully trained, will be like his teacher. If the world is full of blind people, leading other blind people, this is a warning. Who is teaching you? Who is influencing you? Who's shaping you? Listen, today there are more people than ever trying to have an influence over you.
Podcasts galore. Cable news shows galore. YouTube personalities. Many of these people, they succeed and build up their viewership by finding someone to blame. Don't they? Someone to blame for all society's troubles. That's why we like listening to them. They confirm that we're right and other people are wrong. They explain this crazy world in terms that we like to hear. Because we come out feeling pretty good about ourselves. Problems over there.
Not in here. Church, listen. Watch out. You will be like your teacher. That's a promise from Jesus. You'll be like your teacher. If they are full of venom, you will be full of venom. If they are hostile, you will be hostile. If they blame everyone else, then you will blame everyone else too.
But if your teachers are gracious, then you'll be gracious. If your influencers are humble, then you'll be humble. If they're peaceful, then you'll be peaceful.
Jesus is telling us to choose our teachers carefully. Is the personality that you're dialing in to and listening to someone that you want to be like? Because you will be like them. Just ask yourself that. This person that I'm listening to right now, do I want to be like them?
Are they under the influence of his teaching? Our true teacher should be Jesus. Now that he's diagnosed the problem, Jesus wants to give us a way forward. Here's the solution that he offers. It's the solution of grace. Jesus gives a silly, exaggerated, cartoonish solution. An illustration to give us a way forward. Two people, face to face. Kids, I want you to just imagine this because it really does make you laugh. But I want you also to imagine yourself in the situation.
Two people, face to face, one trying to help the other with something a little tiny in their eye. Meanwhile, the person trying to help has got a log in their eye. By the way, log in this verse, it refers to the main beam of a house. So imagine like a 40-foot 2x12 jutting out of someone's head.
Yes, Jesus is being absurd. Ouch is right. He's making a point. He wants to make a point. You can't get much more blind than having a 2x12 that's 40 feet long sticking out of your head. And you can't get, you can't act much more blind than to ask to help someone while that thing is sticking out of your head. Just imagine what's going to happen when that person tries to get close to get the thing out, right? He's going to be turning this way and that's going to be pop, pop, slapping them around.
He's going to knock them out. That's what happens when we're judgmental. Our big log is just whap, whap, beating them up, knocking them down. Here's the solution. Redirect the criticism to yourself. That's the first step. First, take the log out of your own eye. Put away self-righteousness. Examine yourself with humility. Acknowledge your faults. Sincerely repent and seek change. Let me just say that again. Examine yourself with humility. Acknowledge your own faults.
Sincerely repent and seek change. All of that is supposed to happen first. Otherwise, we'll stay blind and we'll hurt people. Many years ago at another church, this is before we had kids, the church was in the startup phase. In fact, it was around the same phase of our life back then. My heart really began to get bitter towards someone. It wasn't really like an open conflict. It was just resentment in my heart. I was just really frustrated with this guy.
I was interacting with him a lot. He was getting on my nerves. I thought he was just making a lot of, he was doing a lot of things wrong. Um, why can't he just change? Why did he say that? Why did he do that? I called up our pastor, Clint Dowda, and he listened to me basically rant about this other person for probably a long while. And I don't remember much of what he said, but I do remember this. It's very clear in my mind. He said, you know, Joel, I've heard it said, assume the best in others' intentions and the worst in your own.
Assume the best in others' intentions and the worst in your own. And I, it just, it hit me like a bucket of cold water. That simple phrase was a revolution for me. Not that I immediately did that perfectly, but it was, it's like I heard a timeless truth in a new way. And I saw in that situation exactly what I was doing. That is what I was, I was doing the opposite of that. I was immediately convicted of how unfair I was being, how judgmental I was being, how right I thought I was, and how wrong I thought he was.
Reversing that perspective was the way out of my bitterness, my frustration. I realized a lot of things that I was reading into weren't really there. I was assuming them. I was assuming the worst. in him and the best in myself. When the spirit reminds us of how deep our sin goes, how helpless we are apart from God, and how we still need him constantly, that does, that fierce desire to condemn other people, it loses its energy. It goes away.
Some of you may have heard this story. In the early 1900s, the Times of London, they posed a question to several prominent authors. It was meant, this one question was meant to elicit essays from all of these prominent authors that lived in England. The question they asked them was this, what's wrong with the world today?
Christian author G.K. Chesterton responded with a letter, but it was only a single sentence. Dear sir, I am. Yours, G.K. Chesterton. That's just a much different, that's a much different way of answering that than the human heart wants to answer that question. What's wrong with the world today? It is only by the work of God that we can have that kind of response. Pray for that kind of response in your heart as I do for my own. Now listen, let me clarify something that you may be thinking right now.
Please don't tell yourself, well, pastor, I'm a Christian. I've repented of my sins. I've trusted in Jesus, so my log's already out. I've done that thing. My log is out now. I'm seeing clearly. I once was blind, but now I see. Listen, Jesus is not telling a parable about salvation. He's telling a parable about sanctification, about your growth in Christ. This is a parable about growing in Christ through the ongoing practice of humble self-examination.
A lifetime of taking logs out. This is the putting off of the old self that Paul talks about. Jesus wants us to stop overestimating, overestimating and overvaluing, over believing in, overvaluing our own character and instead be compelled and be led and look as a model and a source of faith to God's character. He wants to draw our eyes to God's character. Look at this passage. The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.
This is over and over and over in the Old Testament especially. The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. That is how He treats you.
His patience is abundant. He wants you to come to Jesus and rest in Jesus. The character of God is most clearly shown in His Son. Think about the man speaking this passage to us from Luke 6. Who was judged and condemned? And Jesus was in our place so that we could be forgiven, so that we could be given new life by Him.
Are you examining yourself? Are you resting in His grace? He is offering us release, sweet release, from the blindness of denial, from the prison of a judgmental attitude.
You and I are not the solutions to other people's problems. Jesus is. Here is a good rule of thumb. Until you genuinely feel like you are just as big of a mess as you think the other person is, then you are not ready to talk to them about their sin.
Until you see and believe that you are just as big of a mess as you think they are, then you are not ready to talk to them. But once you do feel that way, do talk to them. That is what Jesus wants you to do. Something we often miss, something that is in this passage, Jesus says, after we have taken the log out, we should go to our brother, our sister, and help take the speck out of their eye. This is not, let us just all leave each other alone. We are all a mess, let us just leave each other alone.
That is not what Jesus is saying. Come to Him, repent, seek change, rest in His grace, and then, be a force of good for your brother, for your sister. Jesus is calling us to a whole different way of treating each other. Leaving behind the judgmentalism of our nature, of our flesh, but also rejecting the individualism of our culture.
As we rest in God's grace, we can practice graciousness and we can build each other up. Only the church can do that. Only the Spirit of God working among us can do that. And it happens when we are taking hold of Christ and we are feasting on Him. May Christ be our teacher. May He be the one that's fully training us and making us like Him. Pray with me.
Jesus, be our teacher. Lord, I and we repent of the ways in which we allow the world to teach us and instruct us. It only keeps us blind. We need, Lord, a different teacher and we need you to be our teacher. Please call us and bring us out of blindness. Help us to have a humble posture towards other people. Show us the log that's in our own eye.
Help us to feast on your grace. Lord, when we do this, it's such a relief to experience your grace and your mercy and your forgiveness again and again to find how amazing it is.
And Lord, you do want us to be involved in each other's lives. Sometimes to have hard conversations. We know that that too can happen with people who are being sanctified and who are humble. Lord, would you please help us to follow what you've said here but not to do it in our own flesh but to do it trusting in you, Jesus, and looking to you always. Jesus, we pray this in your name.