Good morning. In light of that hymn that we
just sang, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Our gracious and merciful Heavenly
Father, how thankful we are that you
have given your spirit in power to reveal to the hearts of your
people the glory and the grace given in Christ. Lord, we thank you for how you
have revealed to us throughout all of your word, his glorious
person and his accomplished work. Father, how hopeful we are again
this morning as we've come here to worship the that you would
bless us again with your spirit. We know that if our hearts are
drawn to Christ and we find our rest and our joy and all of our
salvation in him, it will be by your Holy Spirit. Lord, open
your word, open our hearts. We ask it for Christ's sake. Amen. I do love that hymn. It reminds me of how so many
years ago the Lord was pleased to reveal himself at the same
time he rewrote my Bible. was able for the first time to
see Christ in all of Scripture. I'd like to begin this message
this morning from Matthew chapter 7. At the beginning of the next hour,
I'll give a report on our trip to Canada. I want to thank Jeff
and Hugo for faithfully preaching Christ to you in my absence. I've titled this message, How
Shall We Judge? How Shall We Judge? No one likes to be around a judgmental
person, a critical person who's always looking down their self-righteous
nose at others and attempting to build themselves up by tearing
down other people. That's always a very uncomfortable
place, an uncomfortable person to be around. And I would confess
to you that the only thing that I hate more than being around
that kind of person is when the Spirit of God reveals to me that
sort of judgmental attitude in my own heart. That certainly
grieves me more than being around someone like that. I don't want
to be judgmental. I want to not hold men to a higher standard
than I hold myself. Whenever we're around that sort
of attitude, we're always left wondering, I wonder what they
say about me behind my back. The Lord speaks to that here
in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 7. He says, judge not that ye be
not judged for with judgment for with what judgment you judge
you shall be judged and with what measure you meet it shall
be measured to you again and why beholdest thou the moat that
is in thy brother's eye now the word moat here is a splinter
a splinter so why Do you behold the splinter that is in your
brother's eye, but consider not the beam that is in your own
eye? And that's a beam. The analogy,
the picture here is very graphic and very clear. Or how wilt thou
say to thy brother, let me pull out the mote out of thine eye,
and behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite. First cast out the beam in thine
own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to cast the mote
out of thy brother's eye. May the Lord deliver us from
being holier than thou. May the Lord deliver us from
being critical and judgmental and holding others to a standard
higher than we would want to be held ourselves. Now, that
being said and that being very true, if you'll turn with me
in your Bibles to John chapter 7, there is another context in which
the Lord commands us to make judgments. In John chapter seven, verse
24, judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous
judgments. the Lord is commanding us to
make righteous judgments. Now, it is common of the flesh
and in the world to judge based on appearances. And as I've already confessed
of my own hypocrisy, I find that spirit often in my own flesh. We judge outward appearances,
what a person looks like, the color of their skin, cars they
drive, clothes they wear, the houses they live in, and we are
prone to categorize and make judgments based on outward appearances. And of course, the motivation
behind those sort of judgments is to promote oneself. If I can
promote myself based on my outward appearances for the praise and
approval of other men, then I prove myself to be a hypocrite. And
I prove myself to love the praise of men more than the praise of
God. May the Lord enable us and deliver
us from such fleshly motives. It is the world that lives and
acts and thinks that way all the time about all things. So what does the Lord mean when
he tells us that there is a sense in which we're not to make judgments?
There is a sense in which we're not to exalt ourselves and hold
other men to standards that we do not keep ourselves. And what he's telling us in John
chapter seven about making righteous judgments. Well, the context
of Matthew chapter seven is that the Lord had healed a man on
the Sabbath day. And in so doing, he had offended
the religious people. And because he violated what
they considered to be required on the Sabbath. And he rebukes them by saying,
if a child is, he doesn't say it like this, but here's what
he's saying, if a child is born on a Friday, the law requires
a male child to be circumcised on the eighth day of their life.
So their date of circumcision would come, according to the
law, on the Sabbath day, the following Saturday. you don't consider it to be a
violation of the law, though that is a work. In another place
he says, if a man's ox falls into the ditch, would you not
get him out? Even if it was on the Sabbath
day, though that requires labor. What these religious people were
doing was they were making a work out of not working on the Sabbath. And what the Lord did in healing
this man on the Sabbath day, they considered to be a work
and therefore any works performed on the Sabbath
day were worthy of death. They were thinking back. to that
law that God had established when the children of Israel came
out of Egypt, and the Lord gave to Moses the Ten Commandments
on Mount Sinai, and the Sabbath, being the fourth of those Ten
Commandments, is the one and only commandment. The moral law
is in those other commandments, but the Sabbath was called a
sign. a sign. Now, a sign is that which
points us to something. We have road signs and those
road signs identify a place or a direction to go in order to
get to that place. And the Lord calls the Sabbath
a sign. What does the Sabbath point to? Well, it points to Christ. In
Hebrews chapter four, the scriptures are clear that the Lord Jesus
himself is our Sabbath. He is our rest. The work that he accomplished
is a finished work. We cannot add to the accomplished
work of Christ. This Sabbath rest goes all the
way back to creation, when on the seventh day, God rested Not
because he was tired, but because he was finished. He was finished. He looked upon his creation and
he saw that it was very good and the work of God's creation
was finished. It was accomplished. Nothing
could be added to it. And that is a sign. pointing
to the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. But like all men
who are judging based on outward appearances, they were making
judgments about salvation dependent upon what was done and what was
not done in the flesh, particularly on the Sabbath day. And they
were reminded the first time that a man was found working
on the Sabbath day. The children of Israel are in
the Sinai desert. They are between Egypt and the
Promised Land. They spent 40 years there. The
Lord had just given the law. No work was to be done on the
Sabbath day. They were to rest on the Sabbath. A man was caught picking up sticks
in order to make a fire to either warm himself at night, I guess
it gets cold in the desert, or to prepare a food, but all he
was doing was picking up sticks. And they brought this man to
Moses for having violated the Sabbath. And Moses went before
the Lord, And the Lord told Moses, now God told Moses, we don't
call this into question in any way. We don't say, well, that
was harsh or that was unread. No, no, God said it. Moses stoning. He and his whole family put them
to death. And Moses, before all the people
of Israel, took this man and his family and stoned them, killed
every one of them. God made an example out of that
one individual to press the point that no work was to be done on
the Sabbath, but it was a sign. Now, I recommend, well, I recommend,
that's a dumb way to say it, Resting one out of seven days
is a good thing. It's a good thing. Not working,
if you don't have an ox in the ditch and you don't have to work,
to rest and to gather together with God's people, not on the
seventh day of the week, but as we do on what's called the
Lord's Day, the first day of the week. It is a day to worship. It is a day. It's interesting
because in the Old Testament, the Sabbath was the last day
of the week and they made sacrifices to atone for the sins of the
week. In light of the gospel and the
finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, his accomplished work
of redemption, we gather on the first day of the week to acknowledge
how all the sins, not only of our past, but of our future,
are atoned for in the accomplished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. What rest we have, what joy,
what peace we have. And we don't make a law out of
the Sabbath, You know, monitoring people's behavior on what they
do on Sunday, we were just with some people that came out of
a very strict Sabbatarian culture. And not just culture, but doctrinal,
gospel-killing error, where the elders monitored what you could
do and not do on Sunday. And if you violated the Sabbath,
they would have been just like these people who were judging
Christ for having healed a man in the synagogue, in the temple,
there in Jerusalem, in the temple on the Sabbath day. And the Lord
says to them, judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgments. Judge not according to what you
see outwardly. Judge not whether a man's keeping
the Sabbath based on what he does and doesn't do on one day
of the week. You know, we're not, if we're God's people and I'm
preaching Christ or whoever's in this pulpit is preaching Christ,
God's people don't have to be shamed or manipulated to come
and worship him. They build their lives around
this experience, this time to gather together and worship him.
We don't have to put men under the law to force them to come
to church. That's not it at all. And so
the Lord's saying in the context of what's being said now John
chapter seven. He's rebuking these people who
are making judgments about him because of what he did on the
Sabbath. And he's saying to them, and
he's saying to us, judge not according to appearances, but
judge righteous judgments. Judge not based on what is done
or not done on a day of the week. They that are after the flesh,
they that live according to the flesh, do mind the things of
the flesh. They judge everything by what
they see. Outward appearances is everything. And child of God,
because we still have an old man of flesh, we find that judgmental
spirit in all of us. judging based on appearances. But the Lord is correcting us
and teaching us that the real judgments that are to be made
are not according to the flesh. That which is they which are
after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, but they which
are after the spirit They mind the things of the Spirit. We
look not on those things which are seen, for the things which
are seen are temporal, they're worldly. We look upon those things
which are not seen, for the things which are not seen are eternal,
they are spiritual. And it requires the eye of faith,
it requires a work of grace in the heart to be able to look
beyond the temporal and the worldly and the natural and to see that
which is spiritual. If God enables us to look at
that which is not seen, if he enables us to look beyond the
temporal and see the spiritual meaning of things, then we will be making righteous
judgments. Men that are after the flesh judge their worthiness for salvation. And that's what this Sabbath
rule was. It proved and approved a man
for heaven based on what he did on the Sabbath. And men look not only at what
they do on a certain day of the week, but they look at outward
appearances to make judgments about their own worthiness for
heaven. They determine their acceptance into
heaven based on what they do and what they don't do. And that's
what the Lord is saying when he's saying, my child, my child,
believer, Judge not according to appearances. Don't make judgments about your
worthiness or about any man's worthiness for heaven based on
what you see in what you do, but rather make
righteous judgments. Men by nature, all men, go about
trying to establish their own righteousness. You hear men say this, I know
I'm not perfect, but I'm doing my best. Two problems with that statement,
number one, You've never done your best, ever. I have never done my best at
anything. There's improvements to be made
in every single thing that we have ever done. That's the first
problem with that statement. The second problem with that
statement is assuming that I had done my absolute level best In
one thing, if God judged me for that one
thing, I'd go to hell for it. Because what men say, I know
I'm not perfect. Well, there's the problem. There's
the problem. God requires perfection, absolute,
complete perfection. In every thought, in every word,
in every deed, in every action, in every omission, he will settle
for nothing less than absolute perfection. That's what God requires. How are we gonna be fit for heaven? How are we gonna be saved? If
I've never done my best, and even if I had, I had not achieved
perfection in the sight of God, how am I gonna make it to heaven? That's the reason Christ came. God's perfect man. In thought, in word, in deed,
Perfect. Perfect. Everything he ever did. We go about trying to establish
our own righteousness. Why? Because we're ignorant of
the righteousness of God. Now that word ignorant doesn't
mean stupid. It means we don't know. It means
without knowledge. Not knowing that Christ is the
end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. The
Lord Jesus Christ is the only one that was able to stand under
the bright, all-seeing scrutiny of God's holy law, and the law
could find no charge against him. And that's what righteous
means. That's what the word righteous
means. To be righteous means that I can stand in the presence
of a holy God and be judged by His holy law, and the law can
find no charge against me. The law finds me perfect. How can that ever be? Only one way. I've got to be
found in Christ. I've got to have an advocate.
I've got to have one who stands in my stead before God. I've
got to have a sin bearer. I've got to have a substitute.
Nothing else will do. And here's the glorious truth,
and God requires nothing more. Nothing more. He is satisfied
with Christ. Are you? Are you satisfied with the Lord
Jesus Christ for all of your righteousness before God? Because that's what faith is.
That's what faith is. I'm resting. Remember the context
of this, judge not according to appearances, but judge righteous
judgments. What does God say? If I'm going to be making righteous
judgments about myself, I come to this conclusion. There's nothing
in me that's righteous. Everything about me falls short
of his glory. Lord, don't judge me based on
myself and my law keeping. I'm going to hell. There's no
question about it. The Lord says make righteous
judgments. Judge true, judge it as true
that what God says is right. And that the Lord Jesus Christ
is your only righteousness before God. Judge as God says, all of your
righteousnesses as filthy rags. Make that judgment about yourself.
Best thing that I can do is a filthy, bloody rag, needing to be thrown
into the fire, not worthy, not worthy, and not able to make
me worthy. Judge that the person and work
of the Lord Jesus Christ is all of your righteousness and rest
in him. That's making a righteous judgment.
You can't see the Lord Jesus. Yeah, I'm gonna think in the
last few days what Moses said when he said, Lord, I wanna see
your face. I wanna see your face. And the
Lord said to Moses, no man can see my face and live. Not in
our sinful state, but as a believer, that is what we long for. We
long for the day when we are going to see the face of the
one that we love. We look through a glass darkly
now, we see veiled images of him given to us in his word.
But we want to see the full glory and radiance of His face. And that's not going to come
until we shed this flesh. We can't see it now, not with
the natural eye. We see it by faith. And that's making a righteous
judgment. Judge not according to appearances. but judge righteous judgments.
The appearance, if I judge myself according to the appearance that
I see in myself, I'm nothing but sin. Everything about me falls short
of his glory. But if I make righteous judgments
and I'm able by the grace of God to judge myself as God judges
me in Christ, then this is my boldness in the day of judgment.
For as he is, so are we in this world. Now that's making a righteous
judgment. You see, how God sees it is how
it really is, isn't it? So making a righteous judgment
is seeing things as God sees them. But that can't be seen
with the outward appearance. It can only be seen by the Spirit
of God. I can only see the Lord Jesus
seated at the right hand of God. You know, I've mentioned this
several times in the past, but it's so glorious to think about.
That Old Testament temple. There were lavers and wash basins
and tables and candlesticks. And there was one thing that
was conspicuously missing in the tabernacle and in the temple
of the Old Testament. And that was a chair. There was
no chair there. Why? Because the priest's work was
never done. They were making sacrifice after
sacrifice after sacrifice. It was never finished. And when
the Lord Jesus, as the Lamb of God, bowed his head on Calvary's
cross and said, it is finished, and then rose from the grave
and ascended back into glory, he took his rightful place on
the one piece of furniture that's mentioned in heaven, a throne. Sit thou here, the father said
to him, at my right hand until I make all thine enemies thy
footstool." I can't see that. There's no outward appearance
to reveal that to me. People that say, well, I had
a vision or I saw this or, you know, they look at all sorts
of stuff and they think that, you know, God has... That's why
we don't use crosses, we don't use images that can be looked
on as outward appearances. Those just feed the flesh. The
Lord said, don't take that which is in heaven and make an image
of it on the earth. We don't make images of angels.
We don't make images of crosses. We don't make images of all the
religious trappings that men have. Why? Because they don't
have eyes of faith to look righteously and make judgments righteously
through the eye of faith. They've got to have something
they can see with their natural eye. They've got to have something
they can tangibly hold on to, something they can feel. They
that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, but
they that are after the spirit, the things that are the spirit.
You say, well, how do I know those things are there? Because
God has said so. and he's given me faith to believe
him, to believe him. I can't look at outward appearances. I look to his word as the only
perfect revelation of truth. Paul asked this question twice
in settling controversy. Very simple question. What sayeth
the scriptures? Whatever God says, that settles
it. Isaiah put it like this. He said,
let the potsherds of the earth contend with the potsherds of
the earth. Let those that are just clay, broken clay pieces,
let them contend with each other. will rest the hope of our salvation on Christ and the revelation
that God has given us of him. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing
comes by the word of God. What sayeth the scriptures? For
the child of God, that settles all controversy. Whatever men
want to debate and argue about, I was reading a statement by
Augustus Toplady. He's the one that wrote Rock
of Ages back in the 1700s. And John Wesley, who believed
in a works gospel, wanted to debate with Toplady. And Toplady said his gospel's
so dirty, he said, I would never argue with a chimney sweep. with
a chimney sweep. And then John Wesley said about
Augustus' top lady, he said, your God is my devil. Wesley
said that. Your God is my devil. Someone
says to us, my God's not like that. What do we say? I'm sure
he's not. Someone says to us, your God
is my devil, amen. And so is your God mine. We don't debate with men over
the gospel. We just believe what God says.
What sayeth the scriptures? Whatever God says for the child
of God, that settles it. That just settles it. And what
rest there is in having a word from God that is your final authority? So that when the world says this
or that, Now, I'm gonna stick with what God says. That's why we don't have creeds.
The group that I was just with up in Canada, they're real big
on creeds and confessions. Matter of fact, they opened the
service Sunday morning by reciting the Apostle's Creed. And there's
no gospel in the Apostle's Creed. I got to preach, I made a point
of that right away. No gospel in that. But men who have man-written
creeds always test the scripture by the creed. The creed becomes
their standard of truth. And we judge not righteous judgments,
but we judge God's word by what man said. It's just the opposite,
brethren. We judge everything that man
says by what God says. Whatever God says, that's it.
God hadn't changed his mind about sin, but every generation and
every culture changes their moral standard as to what's right and
what's wrong. God hadn't changed it. Whatever
God says about that is what I believe. That's what it is to judge righteous
judgments. You know, I'm feeling discouraged
and I'm feeling depressed and I'm feeling lost and so I must
be. Well, a couple of things about
that. When you really were lost, did
you feel lost? No. Feelings are so unreliable,
aren't they? Now, I can get caught up in a
tailspin of a dark, dark, I mean, I think about a tornado going
down in a well. And you get caught up in that
real quick. And the further you go down,
the darker it gets and the more confusing it is. And you can
try to make judgments about how you feel and what you think and
what your experiences are and all that kind of stuff. That's judging according to appearances.
Judge not according to appearance. but make righteous judgments.
What does God say about it? Here's what God says. You know
that all things work together for good for them that love him
and those that are recalled according to his purpose. Now, what are
you gonna believe? You gonna believe your experience or believe
your feelings? You believe your circumstances or you believe
God? Judge not according to appearances,
but judge righteous judgments. What comfort there is. I don't always feel very bad
about my sin. God says I'm a sinner. That's
enough. That's enough. God says when
I look down from heaven, I see that every thought and every
imagination of the heart of man is only evil, and that continually,
and I look at my own thoughts, and I say, well, I've got some
good thoughts. Am I gonna judge according to appearances, or
I'm gonna judge righteous judgments? I'm gonna believe God. That's
how God sees me, and that's how he sees me, apart from Christ. But thank God, in Christ, that's
been put away. My righteousness is all Him. It's all Him. Lord, don't leave
me to myself, because I'm nothing but sin. We look at circumstances in the
world and think that things are out of control. Are we gonna
judge according to appearances? There are a lot of things in
this world that are chaotic and confusing. And most of us have
never really experienced the trauma that this world can offer
in terms of war and just awful, awful stuff. Is it out of control? Or does our God reign in heaven
over the armies of heaven and over all the inhabitants of the
earth? And has he done all things according to his sovereign will
and purpose? Is he in control or not? Are
we going to judge according to appearances or are we going to
judge righteous judgments? You see, this can't be done apart
from the Spirit of God. The Lord Jesus died in the eyes
of men a most shameful death. All the demons of hell were doing
whatever they do to delight in themselves when the Lord Jesus
died at Calvary's cross. Are we going to judge that death
according to outward appearances or are we going to judge it righteously? Did what the Lord Jesus accomplished
at Calvary's cross, was it Was it something to be ashamed of? He endured the cross, despising
the shame. He thought little of the shame
that men considered his crucifixion to be. Or is it the most glorious, glorious,
hopeful act of victory that's ever been accomplished. No war
has ever been finished like that war. So the Lord told the prophet
Isaiah, comfort ye, comfort ye my people. Tell them that their
warfare is accomplished and their iniquity is purged and God has
given them double for their sin. That takes righteous judgments. That takes the spirit of God
to believe what is contrary to outward appearances. But all
the things of God are contrary to outward appearances. What
am I going to believe? What I see? What I feel? What I think? What the world
says? Or am I going to make judgments? according to righteousness, that
which is perfect in the sight of God. Lord, deliver us from being judgmental
and self-righteous and hypocritical when it comes to looking at other
men. Lord, help me. Save me, don't let me be that
way. But Lord, give me your spirit
so that when I do make judgments about truth and error, about
right and wrong, that those judgments are righteous,
they're true. And I can hang all the hopes
of my immortal soul on the truth of them. I heard that it was quite a bit
of a virus here.