Polishing the Golden Rule  --  Matthew 7:1-12

Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason,  March 9, 2003

Dodie Gadient, a schoolteacher for thirteen years, decided to travel across America and see the sights she had taught about. Traveling alone in a truck with camper in tow, she launched out. One afternoon rounding a curve on I-5 near Sacramento in rush-hour traffic, a water pump blew on her truck. She was tired, exasperated, scared, and alone. In spite of the traffic jam she caused, no one seemed interested in helping.

Leaning up against the trailer, she prayed, "Please God, send me an angel . . . preferably one with mechanical experience."

 Within four minutes, a huge Harley drove up, ridden by an enormous man sporting long, black hair, a beard and tattooed arms. With an incredible air of confidence, he jumped off and, without even glancing at Dodie, went to work on the truck. Within another few minutes, he flagged down a larger truck, attached a tow chain to the frame of the disabled Chevy, and whisked the whole 56-foot rig off the freeway onto a side street, where he calmly continued to work on the water pump.

The intimidated schoolteacher was too dumbfounded to talk. Especially when she read the paralyzing words on the back of his leather jacket: 'Hell's Angels -- California'. As he finished the task, she finally got up the courage to say, "Thanks so much," and carry on a brief conversation.

Noticing her surprise at the whole ordeal, he looked her straight in the eye and mumbled, "Don't judge a book by its cover. You may not know who you're talking to." With that, he smiled, closed the hood of the truck, and straddled his Harley. With a wave, he was gone as fast as he had appeared.

Our Text for today is found in Matthew 7 verses 1 through 12.

¹"Stop judging others, and you will not be judged. ²For others will treat you as you treat them. Whatever measure you use in judging others, it will be used to measure how you are judged. ³And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? ⁴How can you think of saying, ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? ⁵Hypocrite! First get rid of the log from your own eye; then perhaps you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye.

⁶"Don’t give what is holy to unholy people. Don’t give pearls to swine! They will trample the pearls, then turn and attack you.

Effective Prayer

The Golden Rule

Three Rules We Live By:

Some one once said that there are three rules we can live by: First of all there is the, Iron Rule. This is the might makes right rule. "What’s yours is mine and I will take it if I can."

 The Second Rule is the Silver Rule. It might be stated like this: "What’s mine is mine and I will keep it for myself."

And then there is the Golden Rule. We could paraphrase it like this: "What’s mine is yours and I will share it with you if you will let me."

Jesus put it in this form: "Therefore, however you want people to treat you, so treat them, for this is the law and the prophets." (Matthew 7:12 NASV)

What Is It There For?

Notice that we have come to another of those "Therefores" in the Scripture. I suggested last week that when we encounter them we need to check out what they are there for…That is what we are going to look into today.

Summary/Outline Of This Passage

We could summarize this section of the Sermon on the Mount like this: 1. Do not judge lest you be judged yourself. 2. Get the log out of your own eye and you will be able to see how to take the speck out of our brother’s eye. 3. Discriminate or judge properly those things for which you are responsible. 4. Ask, Seek, Knock and you will receive what you need. 5. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

This Part Of The Sermon On The Mount Focuses On How We Deal With Other People

What we have in this section of Jesus’ sermon is focused on how we deal with other people according to God’s ways of doing things. He begins with the negative and ends with the positive. The positive duty of the child of God is summarized by the "Therefore". We are to do our neighbor positive good and not just to refrain from doing him some kind of harm. The question of course is how do we do that? How can we faithfully live out the 12^th verse of Matthew 7?

In his little book Illustrations of Bible Truth, H.A. Ironside pointed out the folly of judging others. He related an incident in the life of a man called Bishop Potter. "He was sailing for Europe on one of the great transatlantic ocean liners. When he went on board, he found that another passenger was to share the cabin with him. After going to see the accommodations, he came up to the purser's desk and inquired if he could leave his gold watch and other valuables in the ship's safe. He explained that ordinarily he never availed himself of that privilege, but he had been to his cabin and had met the man who was to occupy the other berth. Judging from his appearance, he was afraid that he might not be a very trustworthy person. The purser accepted the responsibility for the valuables and remarked, 'It's all right, bishop, I'll be very glad to take care of them for you. The other man has been up here and left his for the same reason!'"

The Bishop had prejudged his roommate. He had noted the man’s appearance and had formed some interesting judgments. And of course, as the illustration points out to us…he was mistaken. The other fellow was as concerned about him as Bishop Potter was about his roommate.

Jesus’ command to us in the text is this: Do not judge lest you yourself be judged.

What was in his mind as he shared that with his disciples? He was not speaking about proper discrimination, a proper evaluation of a person, his character and the fruit of his life. No, he is referring here to that spirit of condemnation and coming to a final decision about, or the passing of a sentence upon some one.

It is the coming to a final verdict about someone that is on Jesus’ mind here. And he tells us that we are never to form that kind of judgment about anyone. That throne of final judgment is for God and God alone and not for us. Why? We can never weigh all the motives of the heart of the other person. We will never know what was involved or why they did what they did or said what they said.

Two Things We Do Not Know

It was F.B. Meyer, I believe, who once said that when we see a brother or sister in sin, there are two things we do not know: First, we do not know how hard he or she tried not to sin. And second, we do not know the power of the forces that assailed him or her. We also do not know what we would have done in the same circumstances. Stephen Brown, Christianity Today, April 5, 1993, p. 17.

The Reason We should Not Judge…We Will Be Judged Ourselves

Jesus gives us the reason why we are not to judge in the following phrase of this first verse: Retributive judgment will fall back on us when we exercise judgment in this manner. The sense of the statement is that we will be judged by God…not just other men.

There is a sense in which what goes around comes around and that we will get back what we give out. And while that is true, generally speaking, in life, that is not what Jesus is speaking about. Here he says that it is God who will do the judging. God sees the motives of the heart. There is nothing that escapes Him and he will judge us when we are judgmental. And the standard for that judgment will be exactly the same as what we have given out to others. We will be held to that same standard to which we hold others. When we pass judgment on others we should expect God to judge us…because he will! Why is this true? It is because judgment is not our responsibility; it is God’s.

We are unable to judge correctly; so we are told that it is always inappropriate to judge at all. We will never know the whole facts or the whole person. We cannot ever be strictly impartial. That unfortunately is impossible for us. Human nature is never completely impartial; therefore, we should never form judgments about any one. No man is good enough to judge another man or woman. Only those who are faultless, and merciful and gracious and kind have a right to look at the faults of others. That removes us from the ranks of the judges.

The Mote And The Beam

The mote and the beam come next in Jesus’ reasons why we cannot judge others. Jesus alludes to the beam in our eye that keeps us from being able to remove the speck or mote from our brother’s eye. What he means is something like this: The man who says there is something in the other person’s life that is inconsistent with his claim to be walking with Christ is the man who says that there is nothing at all inconsistent in his own life!

Jesus’ appraisal at that point is that there is a beam his eye. He who professes to be right and criticizes his brother has some thing greater wrong with him. That is he has a hugh beam in his eye. The passion that makes people look for motes in our eyes is a beam and is more guilty in the sight of God than the mote for which they look.. Our search for a mote is evidence of a beam in our eye and we have no power to see the mote in its true relation and proportion; there is a hindrance to the vision because of this beam in our eye. We criticize. We attack it but we cannot remove it until we get the beam out of our own eye. Get this passion for criticism removed from our life. Once this ungodly desire to find the mote in someone else is removed from our life; then we will be able to see clearly how to remove the mote from our brother’s eye.

The power to remove the mote to which you object lies in the passionate love which makes you desire to remove it. Once we have removed the beam from our own eye, we will have the a Christlike spirit of love that knows how with a delicate touch to remove the mote so that our brother’s vision might be clear.

We are not to pass judgment upon another in this sense of forming a final verdict on them. But we are required by Christ to exercise a discerning spirit and exercise discrimination when it come s to the fruit produced in another person’s life. If someone makes a choice against the will of God and refuses the light, we are to be discriminating. If his character and actions show him to be unworthy of Christ, we are not to give him holy things. If someone is shown to be a false prophet for example, we are to make sure that we do not take what is holy and give it to them. This places us in the position of being discerning and discriminating of others.

How are we going to be able to walk the fine line between judgment and proper discernment?

Ask, Seek And Knock

Jesus gives us the answer: "Ask, Seek and Knock" Jesus says. Go to God for the wisdom you need to make the proper discernment. Do you think for one minute that He will not give you the power to understand that you need? Seeking His wisdom is the answer. If we ask He will give it. "Ask" is used in the sense of dependence; of the man who comes with empty hands and says "I have nothing to buy with." We are dependent upon God. "Seek" is used with the meaning of the suggestion of care. Ask with an urgency of a great desire. "Knock" as a word contains both a sense of dependence and effort. Therefore, "Ask" when we do not know how to judge. "Seek" which is the effort of the true believer after the mind of God. "Knock" in the sense of perpetually making application of this principle to our lives. Remember, the listener is our Heavenly Father!

The Power To Live Without Judging Others

Jesus’ point here is that we must learn how our Heavenly Father listens to us. The power to live without judging others is to be found in the asking, seeking and knocking. And it is not a servant who answers the door and leads us to the compassion of the heart for our brother.

This leads us back to the Golden Rule. We cannot do this without the power that comes from a right relationship with God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Unless we are in the right kind of relationship with our Heavenly Father we will never have the right relationship with one another.

"Given half a chance, people often crawl out of the boxes into which we've relegated them." - Larry D. Wright.

"Therefore, however you want people to treat you, so threat them, for this is the Law and the Prophets." Keep polishing the Golden Rule. Make is such a part of your life that you will never be guilty of judging others.

--Dennis Gleason