Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening and now
for today's program. Welcome to our program. Now today
I'm going to be preaching from the book of John, the gospel
of John, chapter seven. And I'm going to be focused on
verse 24, where the Lord, speaking to a religious crowd, he makes
this statement. He says, judge not according
to appearance, but judge righteous judgment. title of the message
is righteous judgment and i'll be talking about this issue of
judgment what's happening here is you know as as the lord jesus
christ continued in his earthly ministry preaching the gospel
healing the sick uh... all the things that he did in
the miracles but mainly his message he always ran into opposition
from the religious majority and if you've read any of the new
testament of the four gospels you know that one of the biggest
crowds that would constantly challenge him and throw accusations
at him were the pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes
but the religious majority gave him the hardest opposition and
the reason is is because the gospel message of salvation by
the free sovereign grace of God number one it challenges the
hope that sinners have by nature of salvation you see people by
nature will claim salvation on a lot of different grounds It
could be openly, somebody might say, well, I was saved because
I've been a good person, or I'm saved because I accepted Jesus
as my personal savior, or I was saved because I was baptized
and joined the church, or I'm saved because I prayed through,
or I've done this or done that. A lot of different reasons. And
of course, all of those are wrong reasons. They're wrong grounds.
The only ground of salvation is the merits of the obedience
unto death of the Lord Jesus Christ, His blood alone, His
righteousness alone, freely imputed to a sinner, that is charged
to their account, laid to their account, and received, Christ
received by God-given faith. You see, Christ, the ground of
salvation is the cross. The ground of salvation is not
my believing. I do believe. But that's a gift
from God. He says that, for by grace are
you saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it's the gift
of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. And somebody
told me one time, they said, well, that not of yourselves
refers to salvation and not faith. No, it refers to salvation and
our faith and my faith. The whole realm of salvation
is the grace of God. And so whenever a person's ground
of salvation, his refuge is challenged, a lot of people, they'll get
kind of belligerent. And that's what was happening
here. Now, let me say this. If your ground of salvation,
if your reason for claiming to be saved, Or if your refuge is
challenged, don't get angry. Use that as number one, an opportunity
for self-examination from the Bible. And secondly, if your
claim is true according to the Bible, use it as a tool of witnessing,
an opportunity to witness. But the Bible never tells us
to get angry when our faith is challenged. Faith is going to
be tested. not just by sicknesses and disasters,
those are tests too, but by people challenging our faith. We ought
to welcome that challenge, not get angry at it. I've heard people
say, well, you don't need to listen to that guy because he
preaches election or something. Well, the election is in the
Bible and that's why I preach it. Have you studied it? Does
that make you angry? It shouldn't. If it's true and
it's in the Bible, believe it. If what I'm telling you is not
true, show me from the Scriptures. That's what I'm telling you.
But the Lord Jesus Christ, he went about preaching the gospel
of God's grace and it challenged people's refuges, their ground
of salvation because they were claiming to be children of God,
to be accepted with God based on wrong grounds. As I said,
the only right ground We're a sinner and that's what we are. Listen,
we don't have anything to recommend us unto God in and of ourselves. Nothing at all. Our best efforts
to keep the law, our best efforts to be good people will not save
us, will not make us righteous. That comes under the heading
of ruined by the fall. We were ruined by the fall. When
Adam fell, I fell. You fell into sin and death. And as a result, we were born
in trespasses and sins, born dead, spiritually dead in trespasses
and sins. That means we have no spiritual
life. We have physical life. We have a mind. We have affections
and wills. We have a heart. We have desires.
But we don't have any spiritual life. It's gone. And that's why
we must be first redeemed by the blood of Christ. Ruined by
the fall, we must be redeemed by the blood of Christ. You see,
the blood of Christ is the full payment for the redemption of
all of God's elect people. All who eventually, by the power
of the Holy Spirit in the new birth, are brought to faith in
Christ and repentance of dead works and idolatry. And that's
the third thing, ruined by the fall, redeemed by the blood,
we must be regenerated by the Holy Spirit. Christ told Nicodemus
just a few chapters before this, John 7, you must be born again
or you cannot see the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God.
You must be born again or you cannot enter the kingdom of God.
Do you understand that? You see, man by his own volition,
his own will, will not come to Christ. Left to ourselves, none
of us, there's none righteous, there's none that doeth good,
there's none that seeketh after God. So that's the second thing
here on their approach or their reaction to Christ preaching. Not only did he challenge their
ground of salvation, but he preached a way of salvation, which is
himself, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto
the Father but by me. That's what Christ said. He preached
a way of salvation that left them no room to glory, no room
to boast. You see, salvation gives Christ
all glory. It doesn't allow me to glory
in my works or my upbringing or my physical pedigree. It doesn't
allow me to glory even in my will. Somebody says, well, I
know I'm saved because I decided to follow Jesus. Let me tell
you something. Deciding to follow Jesus is a work. If you truly decided to follow
the true Christ of the Bible, that's a work of grace in the
heart of a sinner. It's not a work of the sinner's
free will. You didn't decide to follow Jesus
because you were better than those who did not decide to follow
him. My friend, you understand, God
says of his people, he said, I'll give you a new heart. I'll
put my spirit within you. You see, I'll cause you to walk
in my statutes. So this message gives you or
me no reason to glory or boast. And so what happens when those
two things are challenged, the sinner's false refuge and the
sinner's pride or boasting in himself, Well, in these here
in John 7, they were what we call the religious nitpickers.
Now Christ, just a few, probably a few weeks before this, had
healed an impotent man on the Sabbath. The Jewish Sabbath under
the Old Covenant was Saturday, the seventh day of the week.
And he had healed a man on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees attacked
him for doing that on the Sabbath. Now the Pharisees were wrong.
First of all, even the Old Covenant, Seventh-day Sabbath, did not
prohibit acts of necessity. For example, it says, if your
ox is in a ditch, get him out. Acts of necessity. And it did
not prohibit acts of mercy. There was a man who was impotent.
And that means that he couldn't do anything. And Christ healed
him. And so they challenged him on
that. And of course he came back and he told him this, he said,
now listen, he said, what I'm preaching and what I do is from
God. It's just not of myself. Now,
Jesus Christ is God. There's no doubt about that.
He is Emmanuel, God with us, the word made flesh. But for
the purposes of redeeming His people, what did He do? He submitted
Himself as the Son of God in human flesh unto the Father so
that He could redeem His people from their sins. So we see a
submission of the Son to the Father for the purpose of redemption. Now there is no inequality in
the nature of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit. They are all equally God, one God in three persons. And I know that's a mind-boggling
thing. I know there are a lot of people who deny that, but
that's what the scripture teaches. But Jesus Christ, he submitted
himself. That's why he said this. He said
in verse 16 of John 7, when they challenged him. They wanted to
know and said, you know, how in the world can this man know,
have so much learning and not have been to school? And he says
in verse 16, Jesus answered them and said, my doctrine is not
mine, but his that sent me. Now he's not saying here that
he didn't agree with the doctrine, the teaching, the truth of the
father. He's simply saying, I didn't
get this on my own as a man. You see so many people today
who claim to be preachers of the gospel, who claim to be Christians,
they come up with such things that the scripture doesn't teach
and it's of them, it's not of God. That's why you've got to
test the spirits, test the preachers. And here's what Christ told them.
Now think about this. Now a lot of preachers will get
angry or they'll feel like they're insulted if you challenge their
message. Well, you know what Christ said
here to these people? He says, challenge my message.
See if what I'm teaching is the word of God or not. No true preacher should get angry
or upset or feel insulted if you challenge his teaching. You
can challenge my teaching, but I'm gonna go to the word of God.
And you have to show me from the word of God if you disagree.
That's the point. Don't just challenge me because
we disagree or you don't like what I say or you don't like
how I look or whatever. That's crazy. It's the word of
God. And so Christ said, you challenged
me and he went back to Moses. He said, you claim to keep the
law, but you don't. And you circumcised on the Sabbath
day because you're so meticulous about the law. Then you get mad
at me because I healed an impotent man, an act of mercy. He says
in verse 23, now listen to this, John 7, 23, if a man on the Sabbath
day receiveth 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? What he's saying here is this,
you're so meticulous and so particular on one little issue, but now
on this, oh, you're just gonna get so upset. That's religious
people for you. But here's what he says in verse
24. Judge not according to the appearance, how things look outwardly
or how things look to you, but judge righteous judgment. Righteous judgment. What is righteous
judgment? What does it mean? And then ask
this question, how can we who are sinful people, How can we
judge righteous judgment? Is that something for us? No,
he told them to do it. What's he talking about? Well,
let me just say it in a sentence here and then I'm gonna show
you some scripture on this. Judging righteous judgment is
judging things totally by the word of God. In other words,
this has nothing to do with my opinion or your opinion. It has
nothing to do with the moral majority's opinion or the political
atmosphere or situation ethics. You see, people today, they change. Religion changes. There's an
issue now in our country of marriage. What is a true right marriage? And the Supreme Court tried to
play God when they said, well, a man and a man can get married,
a woman and a woman can get married. Well, judge righteous judgment.
What does the word of God say? The word of God says, one man,
one woman, together, leaving their father and mother and cleaving
to one another. That's biblical marriage. Have
a sit down in the Garden of Eden. So judging righteous judgment
is judging according to God's word, judging right and wrong
according to God's standard of right and wrong, not according
to man or what man thinks. But let me say this. Back over
in the book of Matthew chapter seven. And it's common for people
today who claim to be Christian to make statements like this.
They'll say, well, no, I don't judge anybody. All right? I don't judge anything. Well,
first of all, that's not true. You do judge. I judge. We all
judge. We make judgments every day.
We make judgments in all kinds of different areas. We even make
judgments in religious areas. I tell people right now, you're
judging me. You say, well, no, I'm not. Well,
listen. I'll ask you this question, am I telling you the truth or
am I telling you a lie? Now, if you say, well, I think
you're telling me the truth, well, you've made a judgment.
If you say, well, I think you're telling me a lie, you've made
a judgment. Now, my question is, is it righteous
judgment? Have you judged me according
to the word of God or just based upon what you believed all your
life or what you grew up in? Now, what you believed all your
life may be the truth, I don't know, but it has to be based
on this word, God's word. And a lot of people will invoke
this passage of scripture and I'll tell you what, it's one
of the most misused and misunderstood passages in the Bible. Matthew
7 verse 1, listen to what it says. He says, judge not that
you be not judged, for with what judgment you judge, you shall
be judged. And what measure you meet, it
shall be measured to you again. Now he's forbidding judgment
there, but it's a certain kind of judgment. What kind of judgment
is he forbidding here? Self-righteous judgment. Comparative
judgment. How you compare to me or I to
you. Listen to verse 3 of Matthew
7. Why beholdest thou the moat,
that's like a little splinter, that is in thy brother's eye,
But considerest not the being, that's just what it says, a large
board, that is in thine own eye. In other words, you're so meticulous
in pointing out the sins of others, which you really can't see the
reality of their sin. All you see is what's outward.
You see, you can't see their heart, but you fail to recognize
what you know about yourself, your own thoughts. You think
about it. You see somebody commit something
that you say is a sin, and you point it out, and you may say
something like, well, I know they're lost because they're
a sinner. Do you know what you've just done? When you look at a
person and say, I know they're not saved or they're lost because
they are sinners, you've just condemned yourself. And you wanna
know why? it's because you're a sinner
too. And all sin deserves death. Now
I know there are lost people. And I know there are saved people.
But you know what? Lost or saved, we're all sinners. Only two types of people in this
world, friends. sinners lost in their sins and
sinners saved by the grace of God, washed in the blood of Christ,
clothed in his righteousness. And that's what he's saying here.
He said, look at verse four of Matthew seven. He says, 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,
verse five, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and
then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy
brother's eye. In other words, if you take it
upon yourself to deal with another person's sin, first deal with
your own. Now here's the problem. The Bible
tells us we can't really deal with our sins. Even our very
efforts to deal with our own sins are futile. Shouldn't we
try to be obedient? Yes. Shouldn't we fight sin?
Yes. But we can't take care of the problem. We just can't do
it because we're not able to. That's why we need Christ. He is able to save to the uttermost
them that come unto God by him. And so what he's forbidding there
is self-righteous judgment. Over in the book of Luke, chapter
13, the Lord goes back into their recent history to make this point. And he says in verse one, this
is Luke 13, he says, there were present at that season, or this
is Luke writing the history, but then he quotes Christ. And he says, there were present
at that season, some that told him of the Galileans whose blood
Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. These who were present,
they told Christ of the Galileans who had come to sacrifice, and
Pilate sent in a contingency of Roman soldiers and slaughtered
them. We don't know all the history
of that, but what we know is that was an active man. And verse two, it says, and Jesus
answering said unto them, suppose you that these Galileans were
sinners above all the Galileans because they suffered such things?
In other words, how do you judge this situation? These Galileans,
they were coming to worship, they were coming to sacrifice,
and Pilate had them slaughtered, and Christ asking this, well
now, why did that happen to them? Do you suppose that they were
greater sinners than the rest of the Galileans and they just
got what they deserved? I remember, and he goes on, I'm
gonna skip verse three and I'm gonna come back to it. In verse
four, he says, or those 18 upon whom the tower of Siloam fell
and slew them, think ye that they were sinners, the word there
is debtors, above all men that dwell in Jerusalem, that's a
natural disaster. In other words, this tower at
Siloam for some reason fell on them. Now, how do you judge that
situation? Do you suppose that those who
died, he says there were 18 people who died that tower fell on them. Do you suppose that they were
greater sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? And
they just got what they deserved? So here you have an act of terrorism
by Pilate who killed those people in the Galileans who were worshiping. And here you have a natural disaster. Now, how do you look at that?
How do you assess that? Oh, they were just so bad sinners,
they got what they deserve. Now, you say, well, that's not
true. We wouldn't do that today. Now,
let me tell you something. Several years ago, a hurricane
came through and hit New Orleans, the city of New Orleans, Hurricane
Katrina. And I remember I heard several
preachers claim to be Christian, claim to be believers, claim
to preach the gospel. Talk about the sinfulness of
that city, New Orleans. You know that city of New Orleans,
their music, their Mardi Gras, all that, that sinful city, that
God brought judgment down upon that sinful city, as if to say
they got what they deserved. You think about the cities in
the past in the Bible, the city of Sodom. Did Sodom get what
they deserve? Yes. The Lord is just. He never does anything that's
unjust. But listen to what Christ said. Look at verse three. Let's
go back to verse three now. He says, all right, were these
Galileans greater sinners than the rest of them? He says, I
tell you, nay, no, but except you repent, you shall all likewise
perish. And then in verse five, He asked,
were these who the Tower of Siloam fell on, were they the greatest
sinners in Jerusalem and just got what they deserve? He said,
I tell you, nay, no, but except you repent, you shall all likewise
perish. Now, let me see. Let me make
good on this. When death in any form comes
to a sinner, do they get what they deserve? Well, the Bible
says the wages of sin is death, and the answer is yes, they do. But here's the point, and let
me hammer this home to you. What, you say, well, were they
greater sinners than me, or you? What would happen to me? What would happen to you if God
gave us what we deserve at any moment in time? It would be death,
whatever form it comes in. The only thing that I can earn
and the only thing that I can deserve is eternal death. That's right. So when Hurricane
Katrina hit New Orleans, was God just? Yes. But how am I to
look at that? How am I going to judge righteous
judgment? And here it is. Lord, if thou
Lord shouldest mark iniquities, who would stand? I'm a sinner
and I'm telling you this, I don't deserve anything better than
what any sinner in New Orleans or in Jerusalem or in these Galileans
got. I don't deserve anything better
right now. You say, well, I'm trying to
do the best I can. Listen, man at his best state
is altogether vanity. The only way that we can escape
judgment is Christ, the grace of God in Christ. I hope you'll join us next week
for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
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today and may the Lord be with you.