Judge, righteous judgment. Ever
since Eve saw in the garden and listened to the judgment of God
and gave the fruit to Adam and all of humanity fell in him,
we are judging people. We're always making judgments,
aren't we? We're always making judgments about all sorts of
things and people. It is just part of what it is
to be human. And so let's turn back to John
chapter 7. And I love the Lord's command to
us. He has a warning to these people
who saw him. See, they had made judgments
on the Lord Jesus Christ. They'd made judgments about his
teaching. They'd made judgments about his
miracles. They'd made judgments about his
law-breaking. They'd made judgments about his
word. They'd made judgment about him. Verse 20, thou hast a devil.
The judgments of men, and particularly the judgments of religious men,
are prone to be wrong. Judge not according to appearance,
but judge righteous judgment. So I want us to examine together
and trust the Lord will be our teacher and that we In the words
of that promise in verse 17, if any man will do his will,
which is to judge righteous judgment here, he shall know of the doctrine,
whether it be of God or whether I speak of himself. And the test
that we looked at last week is who gets the glory. He that speaketh
of himself seeketh his own glory, but he that seeketh his glory
that sent him. The same is true and no unrighteousness is in
him. There is no unrighteousness in
the Lord Jesus Christ. There's no unrighteousness in
his judgment. I want us to know and to obey
this command What is it to judge righteous judgment? That word
judgment, if we were to just read out the Greek letters, is
the word crisis. So judgment does involve something
that's critical and something that is of incredible importance. And when it comes to judging,
the very first thing that's going to come into your mind and it's
come to my ears on many, many occasions and into my mind as
well when it comes to judgment is what about Matthew 7.1? So
let's turn back there very quickly and let's deal with Matthew chapter
7 verse 1 and get it put in its right and proper place before
us before we go on to looking at what is right judgment. You
know the verse and you've heard it many times and it's been used
as a weapon against you when you've challenged people about
what they believe and what they're saying the gospel is. And it
says, judge not that you be not judged. For with what judgment
you judge, you shall be judged. And with what measure you meet,
it shall be measured unto you. The verse is telling us how incredibly
important it is to judge righteous judgment. And people will say
then, you can't judge anything or anyone. Well, if you just
turn over in our page, we'll go down the passage a little
bit. You have to know what it is to have a mote in your brother's
eye. You behold a beam. You see a splinter in your brother's
eye and you have a beam in your own eye. How on earth do you
know what a beam is? The scriptures are telling us
to judge righteous judgment. In verse six of this passage
of scripture, it says, give not that which is holy unto dogs. How do you work out what is holy?
You have to judge what is holy. How do you work out what is a
dog? You have to know what a dog is. Neither cast your pearls before
swine. What are pearls? In light of the gospel, we know
what all these are, don't we? We know what the Lord Jesus Christ
is talking about. He's encouraging his people not
to look to outward appearances and not to look to the letter
of the law. In fact, the Bible commands us, as it does here
in John 7, 24, to judge righteous judgment. It's a command to be
judging. It's a command for us to know what is righteous judgment. We are commanded to test the
spirits in 1 John 4. We are commanded, you are commanded
to test the people preaching to you. It's a command of God
and you have a simple command and you have a simple way to
test that command. Are they faithful to the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ? Are they speaking according to
this word in the context of what this word affairs, or are they
taking passages like Matthew 7-1 completely out of context
and using it as something to flog people? The spiritual man
in 1 Corinthians 2 verse 14, he that is spiritual judges all
things, yet he himself is judged of no man, for who has known
the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have
the mind of Christ. As I said earlier, I want to
judge righteous judgment. I plead with the Lord that he
might guide us and direct us that we would actually judge
righteous judgment when it comes to what is his gospel, when it
comes to what it is to be a place where we claim that we worship
God in spirit and truth, and we claim, as the scriptures say,
that the Lord Jesus Christ meets with us, his angels encamp around
us and that he speaks to the hearts of his people where his
gospel is proclaimed and it's a place that he has established
for his witness. I want to judge righteous judgment. I want to be found faithful to
God and I want to be found faithful to your eternal souls. And we
want our gospel that we declare to be judged with righteous judgment. Never once have we seen someone
come to us and say, your gospel is not the gospel of the Bible.
We've had many people come and say, you preach the gospel, we
won't have any fellowship with you, which is a very, very strange
way of treating the gospel when you declare that it's the truth.
We don't and we pray the Lord doesn't allow us to rest the
scriptures to our collective destruction because God says
that the blind lead the blind. and they both fall into the dish. There is no comfort given in
the word of God to those who follow blind leaders. No comfort whatsoever. The scriptures again and again
and again command the people of God and especially the servants
of God and those bear his name to judge righteous judgment. The judges of Israel were commanded
to judge righteously because judgment is God. And he says,
in criticism of the children of Israel, how long will you
judge unjustly and accept persons of the wicked? You know that
Proverbs 17 verse 15 that we quote so often, it says that
to, I'll read it to you. He that justifieth the wicked,
he that declares the wicked to be just in the sight of God,
and he that condemneth the just, he that condemns the righteous
man. So there's a judgment, isn't
it? The world is condemning the righteous man. And they're saying,
as they said to the Lord Jesus Christ, this man has a devil,
this man is deceived. He that justifieth the wicked
and he that condemneth the just, even they are both abomination
to the Lord. There is no place of neutrality,
brothers and sisters, ultimately. There is no place of neutrality.
Either I'm speaking on behalf of God, or ultimately I'm speaking
on behalf of Satan. I pray that it is the former. There is just one door to the
sheepfold. There is just one Christ who
saves, and there are in this world multitudes of false Christs. who are Satan's means of deception. There are countless millions
of preachers who are angels of light who are leading people
Australia and they're preaching a righteousness, but it's not
the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, it's your righteousness.
We declare, as we saw last week, the doctrine of Christ. The Gospel
is a person. God is revealed in a person.
The Gospel describes a person and his work. The Gospel is a
description of him and if you change anything of his characteristics,
you change all of him. We want and love and delight
in him as he is. Don't you love everything about
God's revealed character? Don't you love his absolute sovereignty
over all things? Don't you love his absolute justice
in all things? Don't you love all of the attributes
of God that he must be just? He is glorious. So God's servants
are, and the people who listen to God's servants, are commanded
to judge. They are, as Jeremiah was told
the preachers are, to separate the precious from the vile. To
do that you need to know what is precious and what is vile.
He that hath my word, let him speak faithfully, for what is
the wheat to the chaff? The chaff will be blown away.
We can't obey the commands of God without a righteous judgment. God says, come out from among
them and be ye separate, saith the Lord. Touch not the unclean
thing, and I will receive you. Who do you have to separate from,
unless you make a judgment about the gospel they're proclaiming?
God commands that his people who carry the vessels of the
Lord be separate. So the question is, isn't it,
and that's the question that these men brought before the
Lord Jesus Christ, they claim to speak on behalf of God. They claim to be the custodians
of God's law. They claim to be the ones that
judged people, whether they were obedient to the law or not. Who speaks for God? Nothing has
changed, brothers and sisters. Judge, righteous, judgment. God's servants, God's ministers
are ambassadors. We are ambassadors. We are beseeching
people, be reconciled to God. Be reconciled in the reconciler. Our God is a reconciled God in
the Lord Jesus Christ. And outside of that reconciled
one, there is no reconciliation between people and God. And his
ambassadors are responsible just for the faithful delivery of
his word. And he is fully responsible for
the reception of it. Men will judge. and men do judge
the things that they hear. This has been a glorious journey
through John's gospel, but the word of God comes through the
gospel, and without the gospel, there is no word from God, and
they just go, and people just go on in blindness. You must
be born again, even Nicodemus, with all of his morality and
with all of his great learning, came to the Lord Jesus, and he
came out of the darkness into the light of the presence of
the Lord Jesus Christ, and in that light he was revealed that
he was ignorant, as dumb as a box of rocks, as people say. He didn't
have a clue about who God was, he didn't have a clue about God's
word, and he didn't have a clue about himself. and the Lord alone
can reveal it. You must be born again. He came
to his own and his own received him not. They made a judgment
about him. They made a judgment about what
they saw and they made a judgment about him on the basis of what
the religious leaders said of him. That multitude that cried
out, crucify him, crucify him, who was behind all of that? these
very same religious leaders we have here. The Lord commands,
the Lord commands these people that are seeking to kill him
to judge righteous judgment. There is a time of mercy, isn't
it, for these people word that was from God. He's saying to
them, you judge righteously. I will reveal righteous judgment
to you. And so we can follow the Lord
Jesus Christ as he deals with his enemies and he speaks these
glorious words. Judge righteous judgment. We
need to judge righteous judgment about God. We need to judge righteous
judgment about his word. We need to judge righteous judgment
about the Son of God. We need to judge righteous judgment
about man. about the law of God, about salvation,
about what happened on the cross, about the law and what is obedience
to it. We need to judge righteous judgment
about the miracles of the Lord because it was a miracle that
caused them to want to kill him and to continue that hatred for
this long time since the events of John chapter 5. We need to
judge righteous judgment about the circumstances in which we
live in this world, don't we? We need to judge righteous judgment
about all the events of the world. So let's listen to our Lord and
let's see if he can teach us something about judging righteous
judgment. Verse 24 he says, Judge not according
to appearance, but judge righteous judgment. He says to these same
people in John 8.15, You judge after the flesh. Your judgment
is based on what you see. The world that he came to was
a world that was already condemned. He didn't come to condemn the
world, the world was already condemned. The world, this is
the condemnation that light has come into the world and men loved
darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. So the
Jews saw the Lord heal a man in John chapter five and command
him to take up his mat and walk on the Sabbath and therefore,
Therefore, this man has a devil. Therefore, this man is a Sabbath
breaker. Therefore, this man cannot possibly
be the Messiah. Therefore, this man must be a
deceiver. Therefore, we are right and we
have the right to judge him. They saw. They saw. They saw. Throughout the scriptures you
have example after example of men who saw God's men, God's
servants who saw and couldn't see clearly at all. You remember
the story of Samuel who was sent to Jesse's house and Jesse had
all these fine sons and you bring them all in and he brings them
in and the Lord says I haven't chosen that one, I haven't chosen
that one, I haven't chosen that one and finally In desperation,
Samuel says, there must be another one. I've been sent by God to
the house of death, and all these ones look fine and upstanding
to me. Samuel was a man of God's own calling and speaking to. Eventually, what do they do?
They go out and find a shepherd boy. And this is the one Samuel
couldn't judge rightly. Naaman came to Israel seeking
a cure for his leprosy, and he went to the king, and the king
was terrified, and then he goes to Elisha's house, and he thinks,
here I am, a great man, and Elisha must come out and treat me as
a great man. And Elisha doesn't even bother
to get out of his chair. He just sends his servants out
to him. See, Naaman saw, and he saw wrong,
and Naaman had to be brought down. It wasn't the waters of
the Jordan that healed him so much as the fact that Naaman
had to be brought down. He saw, and he saw incorrectly. Again and again and again throughout
the scriptures, the children of God, the servants of God,
are a remnant, and they speak almost as one man against a whole
nation. Jeremiah. was just one man with
very, very few friends in all of Jerusalem against that whole
religious setup. It's just one man. Who do you
follow? Do you follow Elijah or the 700
priests of Baal? Do you follow Moses and Aaron
in Egypt with a stick and a word from God or that Egyptian superpower? Who's right? Who is right? Martin Luther stood against that
what was so wrongly called the Holy Roman Empire, and he said,
here I stand, I can do no other. God's people had stood as one
man and been prepared to die. Judge not according to appearance. If you judge not according to
appearance, then you must judge in light of something else. And
what is the light? In his light, we see light. We judge things on the basis
of what says God, what saith the Lord. And the only people
who ever see clearly are those who have been illuminated by
Him. And when you have been illuminated
by Him in that new birth, Then you will see not only Him with
clarity, but when you see Him with clarity, you see everything
else with clarity, including yourself. For we preach not ourselves,
but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus'
sake. 1 Corinthians 4, 5. For God,
who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in
our heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of
God in the face of Jesus Christ. The light of the knowledge of
the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It's not earthly
eyes through which we see the Lord Jesus Christ in his glory. God shines in our hearts. Paul prays for the Ephesians
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the
knowledge of him that the eyes of your understanding may be
enlightened. That's what's enlightened in
the new birth, isn't it? The eyes of your understanding.
They're not external eyes. We see the Lord Jesus Christ,
God's children see the Lord Jesus Christ with much, much better
clarity than Peter did on the Mount of Transfiguration. That's
what he says in 2 Peter. That's what he says. The eyes
of your understanding may be enlightened that you may know
what is the hope of his calling and what is the riches of the
glory of his inheritance among the saints. The Lord Jesus Christ
judges because he sees with perfect clarity and we see in his sight. His word judges all things. He is the judge of all. He says in John 5.30 when they
wanted to kill him, my judgment is just because I seek not mine
own will but the will of the Father which has sent me. Judge, righteous judgment, he
does, always, always. So what is righteousness in this
context? Righteousness means to be legally
correct. Judge in light of the law of
God. right reading of the law, a right
obedience to the law, a right understanding of the law, a right
application of the law. So let's go back to verse 19.
He says in verse 19, did not Moses give you the law? Yet none
of you keepeth the law. Why go ye about to kill me? Now the thing about judgment,
judging righteous judgment, is when the Lord speaks, it's always
perfectly true. He sees your heart. and he sees
my heart, and I'm very thankful that he does. And if you're his
child, you are thankful that he sees, and he sees with absolute
clarity. There is one that judges justly,
and he's always perfectly true. These religious leaders have
judged the Lord as worthy of death. He had in their eyes broken
the Sabbath law. Had he broken the law? Was he
a lawbreaker? He who wrote the law perfectly
obeyed the law. He must magnify the law and make
it honourable. That's why the law, one of the
reasons the law was given, it was given to expose sin, but
it was given to expose him in the fact that he kept it perfectly.
He kept both all of its commands and he suffered the full punishment
for all of it being broken for his people. He's the only one
that ever kept the law. He kept the law with his heart
and his soul and his mind and his strength. In action, in heart,
in thought and word and deed, he lived a life of perfect obedience
to the law. And it was his delight to do
it. He says, I delight to do thy
will, O my God. He could say at the end of his
life, he said, can any of you accuse me of one sin? It's extraordinary
that they didn't bring this one up. Maybe they had been convicted. He speaks truth all the time. You can trust everything that
he says. His judgment of you and his judgment
of your thoughts is 100% just all of the time. Did not Moses give you the law,
yet none of you keepeth the law? Why go ye about to kill me? See, his judgment of the law
and your obedience to it is him judging righteous judgment. He says, none of you keep the
law. None of you keep the law. If
you want to offend a self-righteous religious person, you just tell
them that not only have they not kept any of the law, in every thought, word and deed. You might remember that that
was Stephen's accusation against those people who sought to kill
him. Listen to their rage when he
tells them. He says, you stiff-necked, Acts
7.51, you stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ear, you do always
resist the Holy Ghost as your fathers did. So do you. Stephen
was judging righteous judgment. Which of the prophets have your
fathers persecuted and have slain them which showed before the
coming of the just one of whom you have been now the betrayers
and murderers? who have received the law by
the disposition of angels and have not kept it." They've never
kept it. They never kept it. They never
kept it. Paul was there, Saul of Tarsus
was there, and he was wonderfully, wonderfully converted, and he
had and suffered the same reaction as Stephen did when he went preaching
in Acts 13. He says, by him, speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ,
All that believe are justified from all things which you could
not be justified. by the law of Moses. No one has
ever kept the law of Moses. If you read on in Acts 13, you'll
see how much they're enraged about it. These religious leaders
judged themselves as righteous, and in their righteousness they
judged him. It's exactly the same today,
isn't it? People are standing in judgment of the Lord and standing
in judgment of his gospel. and standing in judgment of his
serpents and saying, we'll have nothing to do with them. They'll
preach sermons against him as these men preached sermons against
the Lord Jesus Christ. See, these religious leaders
had judged their law-keeping as obedience, an acceptable obedience,
and an obedience which enabled them to judge others. Every legalist does it all the
time. Every legalist does it all the
time. These words must have offended
them and cut them. And listen to what they say.
Thou hast a devil. Judge righteous judgment. You
have a devil. What an extraordinary thing to
say to the Lord Jesus Christ. What an extraordinary exposure
of their hearts. that God Almighty, Emmanuel,
God with us, would be in their presence, and they would say
that he has a devil. Who goeth about to kill you?
They had determined in John chapter 5 to kill him, and they'd continued
in their determination to kill him. And so did the self-righteous
religious people now. They want to kill the Lord Jesus
Christ in the minds of his people, kill the wonders of what he has
done. Jesus answered in verse 21, and
said unto them, I have done one work, and you all marvel. They didn't marvel in amazement,
they marveled in unbelief. Let's go back to John chapter
five and just have a brief look at this offensive miracle, this
one work that he did that offended them. We've looked at the story,
I don't want to go through it in any great detail for want
of time, but there was at the Pool of Bethsaida, this man,
and he'd been there 38 years. There was one man in a great
multitude. These religious people had walked
past this man for 30-odd years. It shows the impotence of their
law and the impotence, and their reaction to him shows the hardness
of their heart toward him. The Lord Jesus Christ comes to
him and he says in verse 6, Will thou be made whole? And the infinite
man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled,
to put me into the pool. But while I am coming, another
steppeth down before me. Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take
up thy bed, and walk. And all of these miracles of
the Lord Jesus Christ are pictures of His way of saving His people,
the completeness of it, the act of a creator in the saving of
it. Listen to it. Verse 9, And immediately
the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked. And on
the same day was the Sabbath. And the Jews therefore said unto
him that was cured, It is the Sabbath day. It is not lawful
for thee to carry thy bed. And he answered, he that made
me whole. That's a Christian's confession,
isn't it? He that made me whole. The same sat under me, take up
thy bed and walk. And then they went looking for
him. and the Lord finds him. And I love the confession of
this man in verse 15, man departed having met with the Lord Jesus
and being told not to sin anymore and told the Jews that it was
Jesus which had made him whole. That's a confession of every
believer, isn't it? It was Jesus that has made me whole. The response
of these people, The Lord answered in verse 17, My father worketh
hitherto, and I worketh. Therefore the Jews sought the
Moor to kill him, because he not only had broken the Sabbath,
but said also that God was his father, making himself equal
with God. These men were judging their
judge and they got it as wrong as you could possibly get it
wrong. These men were seeking ultimately to kill their creator
and their God. He said God was his father and
he spoke the truth. He judged righteous judgment.
It's extraordinary, isn't it? from God, heal their enmity against
the Lord Jesus Christ. Why won't they even try to examine
any possible reason? They don't go to the Lord to
ask why. This may not be Sabbath-breaking.
Why was the healing of the man had no weight in their decision
whatsoever? For 38 years he'd been lying
there and these people had no interest in him whatsoever. They
had one interest in mind, that wasn't it, to condemn the Lord
Jesus Christ. The witness of Nicodemus a year
earlier was not helpful. It is a picture of the response
of the natural man to the grace of God and why the natural man
judges unrighteously when our God has judged graciously and
been right. Our God exposes and brings light,
and in his light he reveals the darkness from which we must be
saved. Because when we read those accounts,
as we read the accounts of the crucifixion and other things,
your automatic response may not be the same as mine. But I can
tell you what mine is all the time. When I read those accounts, I
wouldn't have done that. If I'd been there, I wouldn't have done
that. I wouldn't have shouted. And in the very thought of that,
we think we're self-righteous, which is exactly the problem
of these people we're dealing with in John 7. In their own
self-righteousness they stood in judgment of God and they had
no idea of what they were in their hearts. This man, this
impotent man, the cause of this hatred of these people is a picture
of salvation. It's a picture of salvation in
the midst of depravity. This man was healed without asking
or thinking of the Lord being a healer. This man was healed
without any means whatsoever. This man was healed by a word,
a voice, which brings with it the power to perform that which
is impossible. There was one thing that he couldn't
do, was take up his bed and walk. He could do all sorts of other
things, couldn't he? He could talk, he could ask someone to help
him, but the one thing he couldn't do was pick up his bed and walk.
It is a glorious picture of the new birth. In the new birth we
have a life from above, a life from God. A life that allows
us to believe, a life that allows us and causes us to repent, to
love what was once distasteful, to rise up and take up our bed
and walk. And where did he walk? He walked
into the temple, praising God. The purpose of this miracle is
to show what happens in the new birth, isn't it? That it is a
creative activity. The Lord makes. He made this
man whole. Being made whole is a creative
activity of God. It was a creative activity to
display the glory of God. It is like the first miracle,
the most significant miracle recorded in John. He made the
water wine. He didn't make the water to look
like it was wine, to taste like it was wine. He made the water
wine, something that didn't exist before now exists. And so it
is in the new birth, something that didn't exist before now
exists. It's Christ in us, the hope of
glory. And this Sabbath, the Sabbath,
the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The
Sabbath was to show Israel that God had rested from his works
because his works are perfect. What he'd made was perfect. That
was what the Sabbath was about, wasn't it? He stopped because
it was very good, there was nothing to be added, nothing incomplete,
nothing lacking in any way at all. So Christ's miracles and
his miracles so often, he did miracles on the Sabbath, that
people might be made to realise that he is the Creator and that
we rest. We rest in his finished work,
we rest in his provision, we rest in his sovereignty, we rest
in his promise. We rest. And that rest is a picture
of the eternal rest. in the absolute sovereignty in
the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's to rest in his arms,
to lean upon his breast. It's to rest in his word as spoken,
in his word where he creates reality. The Sabbath is a person. The Sabbath is a person. He has exposed these people for
what they are. He said, didn't Moses give you
the law, yet none of you keep it? Why do you go about to kill
me? And he reminds them of the fact that there's an interesting
thing in the law in verse 22. Moses therefore gave you circumcision.
Not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers, and ye on the
Sabbath day circumcise a man. If a man on the Sabbath day receives
circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken, are
you angry at me, because I have made a man every whit hole on
the Sabbath day? Circumcision, the Lord reminds
them, was given to Abraham. It was then incorporated in the
law. But the law of circumcision meant that 14% of Jewish males
were required to have circumcision on the Sabbath day. And so everyone
involved was, according to the law, breaking the Sabbath. Weren't
they? The parents were breaking the Sabbath and bringing the
baby along. The priests were there performing the circumcision. All the other people were involved.
embedded in the law was the fact that it's impossible to obey
it perfectly and keep it. The only one that can solve all
of these things is the one who is the Sabbath itself, the one
in whom his people rest. Judge righteous judgment about
the Sabbath day. Judge not according to appearances. It looked as if They had broken
the law. Had they broken the law when
they circumcised a child on the Sabbath? They hadn't broken the
law. Had the Lord Jesus Christ broken the law when he healed
this man? Judge righteous judgment. I want us to judge righteous
judgment about the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. I want
us to judge righteous judgment about his word. I want us to
judge righteous judgment about his people. When you look at
the one who was given circumcision, and circumcision was given as
a sign and a seal of the covenant that he had before he was circumcised,
Abraham received the promises of God, and circumcision came
after the promises of God. Abraham was a righteous man. He was a righteous man because
he believed God. He believed a word from God. Did Abraham look like a righteous
man? when he lied about Sarah. He didn't look like a righteous
man, did he? But was he a righteous man? Judge, righteous, judgment,
he was a righteous man because God declared him to be righteous.
Was he more righteous when he took Isaac up the mountain to
slay him and didn't hesitate a minute? Was he any more righteous
than when he was lying about Sarah? His righteousness was
the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was robed in
that righteousness that the Lord gives and robes his people with. Lot. You know something of the
story of Lot, don't you? There's nothing in Lot's history
that would indicate anything about Lot being a righteous man.
Fancy him getting drunk. Fancy him wanting, in the midst
of those people of Solomon and Gomorrah who wanted to rape the
angels that the Lord had sent, he said, you can have my daughter.
Is Lot a righteous man? Where did Lot's righteousness
come from? God declares Lot a righteous man, perfectly righteous. It is like the healing of this
impotent man. It's a picture of grace, doesn't
it? Does the grace of God offend you? See, the grace of God offends
everyone who is working. And the grace of God, the righteousness
that God robes his people with. the righteousness of the Lord
Jesus Christ. It's the comfort and delight
of sinners. We are to judge righteous judgment
about the word of God. We've got to judge righteous
judgment about how God saves sinners. We're to judge righteous
judgment about our brothers and sisters. Judge not according
to appearance, but judge righteous judgment. If you got to look
at a whole lot of my life, you would say that man cannot possibly
be saved. And the same with you. If we
took snapshots of your life, there would be a whole lot that
would indicate this person cannot possibly do that and be a Christian.
Satan will come along and accuse you, and the religious world
will come along and accuse you. Our righteousness was weaved and it has a seamless
robe and there's not a single stitch in it that's got anything
to do with us. It's the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's
judge our brothers and sisters not according to appearance but
judge righteous judgment. the circumstances that God places
his people in this world. So often we say, like Jacob,
all these things are against me. And he didn't realize that
the best years were ever to come upon him would come. That his
son was the king of Egypt. The son had all the provision
for all of him and his family forever. Judge, righteous judgment. Let's not judge the circumstances.
I love what Scott Richardson said, ever since I heard the
good news, there's been no bad news. God has it sorted. God sits on the throne, and he's
made a promise that he's working all things for the good of all
of his people. And it's the spiritual good,
and it's the eternal good, and it's the good that brings him
glory. And it's ultimately a good that we will rejoice in and say,
hallelujah, our God has done all things well. In all the circumstances
of our lives, it doesn't appear to be good, but we judge righteous
judgment. And the best illustration of
all that is the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. what seemed
like an utter failure. God forsaking God, everyone forsaking
him, the triumph, it seemed, of Satan and of wicked and evil
men, these very men that we're talking about in John chapter
7. And yet, and yet, the glory of God and the character of God
is revealed. Let's judge righteous judgment.
Let's judge righteous judgment about those outside. As Ben read
in Psalm 73, we can be so envious of what the world is doing and
the comforts and the success. The world doesn't have the trials
that the believers have. The world doesn't know about
the trials that believers have and can't sympathize with them.
And we look at them in their comforts and their ease and their
wealth. Let's go to the sanctuary of God and judge righteous judgment. And finally, we need to judge
righteous judgment about ourselves. Do we really believe what God
says about us? Do we really believe it? Do we
judge righteous judgment about us who believe? He has taken
upon himself, our great Redeemer, the responsibility to present
you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight. He says in Colossians 2.10, you
are complete in him right now. Judge righteous judgment, brothers
and sisters, about ourselves. Let's judge righteous judgment
about our walk in this world. How did you receive Christ Jesus
the Lord? You received him as a sinner.
You received him as a mercy beggar. You received him as someone who
had nothing in their hands to bring. You received him as someone
who needed his salvation to be saved the way he alone saves.
Therefore, as you've received him, so walk ye in peace. above being mercy beggars, we
never rise above being in need of a glorious and gracious Saviour. And one day we'll see His righteous
judgment with absolute clarity and we'll rejoice that our God
does all things well. Amen.