Best. Sermon. Ever.: Don't Stop There

It's a good friend of mine here, everybody. Missus Cindy Romero and her family, they're visiting today from Saint David's. Thank you so much for being here. But not just them, but all of our visitors and new people that are here today. Welcome, welcome, welcome. We are so glad you're here on Labor Day weekend. Thank you for being here.

As you can see, our preaching staff is out. Jeff is with his son, and James is preaching at Christ Our Hope. So today you got me. I'm Danny Yancey, the worship director here. Throughout the summer, we have been embarking on a preaching series looking at Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, and we have walked verse by verse through that sermon. We are landing today at chapter seven verses one through six. As is our custom, let's read God's word together.

Do not judge so that you will not be judged for in the way you judge, you will be judged, and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye and look, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite. First, take the log out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. Do not give what is holy to dogs and do not throw your pearls before pigs or they will trample them under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces. — Matthew 7:1-6

This is the word of the Lord.

I'd like to title this sermon today, "Don't Stop There."

I'm all about some spoilers. I haven't yet seen Thor Love and Thunder, but I've seen all the spoiler videos. So I'm going to go ahead and give you the spoilers—what the key takeaway of this sermon will be about.

Takeaway number one: Context matters.

Number two, borrowing from our friend in New York, pastor Tim Keller: You are far worse than you think you are, but you are way more loved than you could ever imagine.

Will you pray with me?

God, we are amazed at how the words of Christ find us. Spoken some two thousand years ago and yet today, we are grateful that they still challenge, convict and comfort us. And Lord, as we dive into your word, we pray that the Holy Spirit would stir in our hearts and lead us towards transformation. That through your word, he would find us, challenge us, convict us, and comfort us. It is in the name of Jesus, the living water, whose words are breath and life to us, who reigns with you and the Holy Spirit both now and forevermore. Amen.

On Transformations

I don't know about you, but I love transformations. I love watching one thing start as something and then become something else. My top three transformations—you ready for them?

Number one: car detailing. Have you seen car detailing videos? I love watching them. This super muddy, dirty, junky car and they start pressure washing. You see the mud falling off. They start getting in there with the vacuum cleaner and the seam cleaner and it transforms into this showroom ready beauty.

My second favorite: Bob Ross paintings. For me, I'm not a visual artist at all. I'm a musical person. But to see him transform a blank canvas, and he adds his happy little trees, and he takes his brush and he beats the devil out of it—I love that. Total transformation.

And my third favorite transformation is actually up on the screens. Do you know what those pictures are from? These are pictures of this space in process of becoming the space that we're in right now. For me, it's hard to imagine this space the way it was. There were pews instead of chairs. There was red carpet everywhere. And there was a baptismal font where we now have our drums. I'm sure my Baptist friends were like—it was a very different space.

There were moments when we, on staff and as leaders, weren't sure how this space would turn out. We weren't sure how it was gonna best fit our congregation, but by the grace of God and by the work of so many people—especially, and I'm gonna give a quick shout out here—especially the work of mister Aaron Granger. We can clap for Aaron. Total transformation. And it's still transforming as we speak, as you can see with our bathrooms over there in the upstairs offices wing.

One thing that all good transformations have in common for me is that there's a moment in the process in which I deem each one ruined or unfit. A moment when the transformation gets ugly, messy and I judge the project either not worth finishing or worse yet, not even worth starting.

And obviously, as in the case of the pictures that were on the screen, I judged too soon. Now, premature judgment might not be that big of a deal when it comes to car detailing or Bob Ross paintings or even when it comes to buildings. But what about people? What about people? You see, all of us are in process. We are a community of people on the way. Yet, far too often, we offer more grace to buildings in process than we do to people.

You know, we hire contractors to work on buildings, and we trust that that general contractor knows exactly what to do to fix the mess, to make it like new. Yet we fail to trust God our creator to finish his work in ourselves and others. We judge too soon. And we judge too soon because we are judgmental people. Ever since the fall, we have judged each other, we have judged ourselves, we have even judged God.

And today, in this section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks directly to judgmental people like me and like you. And as we read in the text, he does not mince his words. He gets right to the heart of the matter and in this passage offers us three things that we're going to look at. He offers us warnings, a wake up call and a welcome. And if you're tracking with me, those are my three points.

Warnings as we look at verses one, two and we're gonna jump down to grab the second warning in verse six. A wake up call as we look at verses three through five. And a welcome as we look at all six of these verses in kind of a study in which Jesus models it out for us through the lens of John chapter eight verses one through 11. You ready? Let's jump right in.

Point One: Warnings

Now I want to start this point by stating the obvious. No new theological ground being broken, nothing super spiritual or super deep, this simple idea. Context matters. When you separate words from their original context, meanings get altered, nuance gets lost and words begin to take on new meanings, meanings that were never originally intended. And this is the issue that we face with verse one in our text today.

Judge not that you be not judged. — Matthew 7:1

This verse, we've all heard this verse before in places way outside of the church. It's been usurped, hashtagged, coffee mug, posterized, and turned into memory verse number one for every person seeking to escape criticism. Perhaps even surpassing John 3:16 or even Psalm 23 as the most popular Bible verse.

Judge not that you be not judged.

It seems that in our world today, everybody wants life without accountability. Let me do me and you do you. And if you even so much as ask a clarifying question about someone's pronouns or about their life choices, like a wild card at the end of an UNO game, you've got a wild card, then whatever color they change it to, it doesn't matter. Like a wild card at the end of an UNO game, they have their Matthew 7:1 card locked and loaded. Well, doesn't the bible say judge not that you be not judged? Uno.

But in the world's defense, it is right there in the text. It's a red letter statement from the mouth of Jesus, the savior himself. Could the world be right? Is Jesus actually calling us to live a life without accountability? The world seems to think so, but God's word beckons us. Don't stop there.

Because verse one says, do not judge so that you will not be judged. But verse two takes it further and explains it.

For in the way you judge, you will be judged and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. — Matthew 7:2

So since Jesus goes on to explain what happens when we judge, he's obviously not saying that judging is prohibited. Instead, he's offering to us a warning about being judgmental. To paraphrase the verse, he says it in this way: in the way that you judge others, others will judge you. The warning that Christ is offering to us here is that when we judge, and yes, there are moments as believers when we must judge, when we must discern between what's right and what's wrong, but when we do so, we must judge fairly. But not just fairly, we must judge equitably.

Now I want to take just a quick moment and break down what I mean when I talk about judging equitably. Because I know that words like equality and equity, they've also been hashtagged and usurped and taken to mean things that we might not necessarily mean. So I want to take a moment to break down exactly what I'm talking about.

Equity takes unfair disparities into account and judges accordingly. Equality, which is the other side of that coin, says just give everyone the same thing. Equality says judge everyone the same way. Equity says context matters.

So now let's apply that to our Christian walk. When I'm dealing with a brother or a sister, dealing with, struggling with a particular sin, judging with equality looks like this. I don't struggle with that sin.

What's wrong with you? Why can't you just stop it? Turn away from it like everybody else. You alcoholic, just stop drinking. Here, I'll take your bottle away from you. There you go. Sin solved. You who struggle with pornography, just stop watching it. Here, download Covenant Eyes on your computer. There you go. Sin solved.

Equality assumes that everyone has the same starting point and that everyone experiences sin challenges in the same way. Equity affirms that the experience of every image bearer is unique and different. Equity affirms that sometimes, not always, but sometimes sin patterns can originate as a result of forces over which we have no control. Equity affirms that mental illness is a real thing. And though we may not talk about it here in the church very often, it is real. And it impacts many of us even within the church.

Judging with equity affirms that context matters. Now hear me, I am not saying that truth is relative. By no means. Sin is still sin. God's word is still inerrant and Christ is still the only sure foundation for our lives. But when we are dealing with fellow image bearers for whom Christ died and in whom the spirit is at work and whose sins are covered by the blood of Jesus, context matters. Equal judgment isn't always fair. Christ warns us to judge with equity, to judge fairly.

Now before I move on from point one, if you remember I said that my three points were warnings, a wake up call, and a welcome. That means there are two warnings. So we're gonna jump down and we are gonna do our best to tackle verse number six, the second warning that Christ gives us in this passage.

Do not give what is holy to dogs and do not throw your pearls before pigs or they will trample them under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces. — Matthew 7:6

Collectively, can we just say, yikes. Now, before we judge Jesus for being too harsh, let's remember context. Absolutely, context matters. So we've got to step back and take a second to understand how original hearers would have understood these words.

Common practice of that time was for Jews to refer to Gentiles and Samaritans as dogs. You see, Jews and Gentiles were not in community together. And Jesus' hearers at that time would have readily understood what he meant by these terms. They would not have been as shocking to their ears as they might be to ours. And so Jesus in this moment, discerning his audience, uses this colloquial language, this imagery of dogs and pigs as a bit of hyperbole to say to you and I: connection before correction. Relationship before revelation.

So let me break that down a bit. What it's saying is, before I can look at you and tell you what's wrong with you, we should probably have some kind of connection first. I should probably seek to get to know you first, to get to know your context. And so before I can correct you, before I can reveal what areas in your life need to be worked on—connection before correction, relationship before revelation.

Let me illustrate that a little bit further. If you ever walked down the streets of DC or New York or even sometimes here in Raleigh, you might see what we call street preachers. You've seen a street preacher before? They've got their megaphone and they're standing on a corner and they're preaching to whomever happens to be passing by. And oftentimes, they're preaching real truth. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. The wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life. But more often than not, that truth falls on deaf ears. Now, I'm sure there are some who receive their message and they're pricked to the heart, but by and large, people walk on by and interpret these holy words, these pearls of wisdom as the ignorable ramblings of the weak minded.

You see, these preachers, they're preaching real holy truth but because there is no relationship with those being preached at—pearls before pigs. And pigs aren't looking for truth. They're looking for slop. Dogs in Jesus' day weren't pets like we think of them. They were wild dogs. And wild dogs aren't looking for truth. They are instinctual creatures just following their every desire and their every instinct. And if you get in their way, they will attack.

And so the warning that Christ is offering to us here in verse six is to discern your audience. And as you share the good news of Christ, seek to build connections before seeking to make converts. Also know that sometimes your efforts may fall flat, but remember that the work of transformation is the work of the spirit, not yours. The spirit begins the work and we simply respond to what he has already started. And when the spirit begins a work, the Bible teaches us that he won't stop there. He will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.

But speaking of don't stop there, let's not stop at point one. Let's continue to point number two, a wake up call.

Normally, I'd read those verses that go with it, but for time's sake, it's up on the screen. You see them there, you can read that. I want to dive right in.

End of Day Routines

End of day routines. We've all got one, right? How you end your day. So my usual end of day routine involves watching YouTube. And my favorite thing to watch on YouTube are nerdy infographics videos. I love them. They're just super nerdy about all sorts of random, nerdy fun facts in a really fun and engaging way. Infographics videos. I love it. Don't judge me.

My least favorite thing to watch on YouTube are reaction videos. Have you seen reaction videos? And so every time I even just see a thumbnail for a reaction video, I'm always like, are we really so devoid of creativity in the world that the best we can do is just make a video of ourselves reacting to the creativity of someone else? Apparently so.

But here's the thing about it though, we thrive on it. Criticism aimed at someone else, especially when it's negative, makes for great entertainment. Some of the highest rated episodes of our beloved reality talent shows, American Idol, America's Got Talent, there are so many I can't even keep up. The highest rated episodes are usually the ones in the beginning in which the judges are being excessively harsh to some poor performer who was not quite as prepared for the moment as they should have been. And they're getting torn down because of some small speck or deficiency in their performance.

But if we value that as good entertainment, the tearing down of a fellow image bearer, what does that say about the deep log-like flaws in our own character? And that's the point of verses three through five. That's exactly what Jesus is getting at.

The Log and the Speck

Jesus, the masterful teacher himself, using the hyperbolic imagery of specks and logs shows us that our self-righteousness is like a huge log sticking out of our eye. Take a look at the image on the screen in just a second. Indeed, it's kind of comical, but I love this image because it shows three things that our logs are doing.

First, it obstructs our view and prevents us from fully seeing those around us. Secondly, it keeps people at a distance and it prevents them from being able to get close. But not only that, it also prevents me from being able to get close enough to be of any help at all.

And then thirdly, and this is my favorite, this is why I picked this, it also shows that our logs are unintentionally hurting and injuring people in ways that we can't even see. And I want to dive into each one of those things.

Our Logs Obstruct and Distort Our View

First, it obstructs and distorts our view. Our logs. Again, it reduces people because our view is obstructed. All we see of our fellow image bearers are their perceived specks and it strips them of their humanity and it reduces image bearers to specks.

And so then in our spec-obsessed minds, we replace their title of neighbor, we replace their title of brother with other sin titles. Like criminal, thug, junkie, terrorist, illegal, insurrectionist, liberal, conservative. You see, these human-ascribed titles are only tools of self-righteous people like me and you to erase their God-ordained title of image bearer in a half-hearted attempt to nullify Christ's command to love them.

You see, the Bible tells me that I have to love my neighbor, but the Bible doesn't say I have to love a criminal. The Bible tells me that I have to love my neighbor, but in my mind, the Bible doesn't say I have to love an illegal, a conservative, a liberal. And this is what our logs do. It reduces people down to a speck.

And I love the fact that he used this image of a speck because we are reducing the entire life of a person, the whole life, down to moments of sin, down to a speck in time. We reduce people to a speck. And we replace that title of image bearer with other titles so that we can somehow justify the fact of not loving them the way Christ commands.

Our Logs Keep People at a Distance

But in addition to obstructing and distorting our view, our logs also unintentionally keep people at a distance. And it can injure those with whom we try to come close. And this is a hard reality for many parents, for husbands and wives, for anyone in close relationship with others.

We sometimes struggle because we feel like our loved ones are pulling away from us. They don't talk to us anymore. Our children, with faces buried in their phones, retreat into worlds that we don't even understand. With our spouses, we argue more than we say I love you. And things just feel tense. They're angry, and we're angry. We're angry because we feel lost. Where is my little baby? Where is the love that we once felt? Why are they so distant?

And if that's you today, know that God sees you. He knows where you are. He hears your prayers for things to change. He hears your prayers for transformation. But remember that transformation, that transformation we're looking for, it's the work of the spirit. It's not something we can bring about in our own time or in our own power.

And so as you're praying and as we as a church pray for you and with you for transformation, would you also pray for this? Would you ask God to show you your log? Ask God to show you your log. Now hear me. I'm in no way victim blaming, and I am not saying that things are all your fault. But it is a fact that all of us, each and every one of us, we have logs. These issues from our childhood, these sin patterns that have been handed down through our families of origin or self-adopted as coping mechanisms for stress. These implicit biases, prejudices, and predispositions that keep others boxed in and at a distance. These logs, they're invisible to us, but they're visible to other people around us, which makes them all the more dangerous because we are crashing into and beating up on people in ways that we don't even realize. And we think we're being helpful, but we're injuring people, and we're causing hurt and resentment. Parents, children, husbands, wives, friends, coworkers, fellow image bearers of the Most High God.

Let's all of us, each and every one of us, ask God and those with whom we live to help us. Help us not be so spec-obsessed and help us to see our log. Ask those around you that will give you honest feedback. And if you don't have people in your life that will give you honest feedback, please get some people that will give you honest feedback and ask them, "Help me see what I can't see about me."

But don't stop there. Confess your log and say to God and to others around you, "I am sinful. I am self-righteous and I am sorry."

But don't stop there because building and especially rebuilding relationships takes time. It takes patience. It takes consistent confession, consistent forgiveness and consistent log checks. And so CTK, if you get nothing else from this sermon today, take this: Check your log. Check your log. Amen?

A Welcome: Dealing with Judgment

Now as I prepare to wrap up, I wanna move on to point three: a welcome. And with this, I wanna close with a bit of application. How do we deal with judgmental people? And how do we offer help and hope to ourselves and others who feel crushed under the weight of judgment? How do we do that? We look to Jesus. He is our perfect example. And so today, as we close, let's look at Jesus in action as he deals with the judgmental folks of his day and how he shows his love to those being judged. You with me?

It was an early morning in the temple in Jerusalem and there's Jesus teaching in the temple when out of nowhere, a group of Pharisees, the judgmental legalists of his day, burst into the room, interrupting his teaching and they dragged this unnamed woman into the center of the room and threw her in front of Jesus. With stones in their hand, they shout, "This woman was caught in the very act of adultery. Now the law of Moses says she should be stoned. But Jesus, what do you say?"

These self-righteous, judgmental religious leaders were hoping to trap Jesus in his words. You see, if he says stone her, he proves that his righteousness is no better than theirs. But if he says free her, he violates the law of Moses. So what does Jesus do? He models for us verse six of our preaching text. He remains silent. He ignores them and begins writing on the ground.

Now this is a great example for us as we deal with the judgmental folks in our lives. When the internet trolls make their posts just to get a reaction from you, or tomorrow, when you're at your Labor Day cookout and conversations move toward topics just to get a rise out of you, instead of exhausting your words to try and educate folks who were only looking for discord, look to Jesus, follow his example, and don't even dignify their nonsense with the attention of your words. Sometimes silence is louder than any words you could ever say.

And so Jesus ignores them. But the Bible says these religious leaders, they persisted. And I can imagine that Jesus probably would have been perfectly content to keep writing on the ground and completely ignored them and just let them rant and rave, but there was still this woman. I can imagine as these religious leaders are getting more and more ready to launch their stones, Jesus looks up from his writing in the sand long enough to see her. He ignores the Pharisees, but he sees—deeply sees—this woman. He sees her terrified face. He sees how their judgment and their self-righteousness is causing her pain. The name calling, the fault finding, the shaming, none of it is helping her. None of it is impacting her sin. It's crushing her.

Jesus knows that she didn't need to be stoned. She needed the stone that the builders rejected. He knows that the shedding of her blood in the streets would do nothing to impact sin but the shedding of his blood would change everything. And so with compassion for her, he stands up and says to the spec-obsessed Pharisees:

He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.

And with this one sentence, he truncates all of verses one through five of our preaching text with this one sentence and it pricks them to the heart so much so that they drop their stones and begin to walk away one by one starting with the oldest. You see, our rock throwing, our sinner shaming, our legalistic self righteousness only serves to make us feel good about ourselves. It doesn't remove sin. Sin can only be fully handled by one who is sinless. And that ain't you. And it ain't me. There is only one and his name is Jesus.

And so with all her accusers gone, Jesus didn't stop there. He says to the woman, where are your accusers? Does no one condemn you? And I can imagine with her voice still trembling, she responds, no one, Lord. And then Jesus offers her freedom. He offers her a welcome and says, neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.

Can you feel how powerful those words were for her? She was dragged to this moment, fully expecting to die. Fully expecting that she would never get to go home again. Fully expecting to feel the ouch of every rock thrown at her face. But Jesus said, go. She's no doubt looking at and seeing all these stones on the ground and she realizes that because of her sin, she knows what the law of Moses says. And she realizes that because of her sin, she deserved every one of those stones. But Jesus said, go.

And yes, I know at the end of it, it says, sin no more. But Jesus knew that it was impossible for her to go and live a sinless and perfect life. And so this wasn't a command for her to go and live a perfect life. Instead, it was an invitation, a welcome to freedom. She was no longer bound to her old adulterous life. She was free to go and no longer be in that environment again. She was free to leave it. Jesus said, go.

I wonder what it would look like for CTK to be known as a go church. A church that helped each other recognize the logs in our life and offered freedom from sin instead of the condemnation of judgment. What would it look like if we held the cross of Christ in higher esteem than our specs?

You see, all the specs, all the logs in the world aren't big enough to overpower the blood of Jesus. He knows about our specs and our logs, and he loves us still. He knows that we are a work in progress. He knows that we are people on the way. But hear this, your past does not define who you are. And your present doesn't define who you will be. All of us are people under construction.

And when a building is under construction, we say things like this: Wow. I can't wait to see it all finished. Imagine, people of God, if we gave people that same kind of gospel hope. As we look at each other's messy lives, wow. I can't wait to see it all finished. CTK, let's work to give more grace to people than we do to buildings.

You see Jesus, he's the contractor of our broken rundown lives. He's a greater builder than anyone we could ever hire for ourselves. And he has a plan to fix the broken pieces, to do more than just restore what was. He plans to make the whole thing new. And the most wonderful thing of all is that he, our contractor, has already paid the price for this new construction when he carried our logs and our beams to a hill called Calvary.

But he didn't stop there. A sharp spear tied to a beam pierced his side, but he didn't stop there. He bled and bled and bled until our beams were covered by his blood. But he didn't stop there. He died until the earth ripped open and the veil in the temple was torn. But he didn't stop there. Early on Sunday morning, no death, no grave, nor our beams could hold him down. He rose with all power in his hands. But he didn't stop there. He ascended into heaven where he now sits on the right hand of the father interceding for us. But he isn't stopping there. One day he will return and welcome all of his chosen as his own and all of the damage that our logs have caused will be undone. And we will no longer cling to our self righteousness, but we will be clothed in his righteousness alone, faultless, spotless, specless, logless to stand before his throne.

And on that day, we will sing of his goodness and his glory. But we won't stop there. We will sing and we will dwell in his presence throughout all eternity. Come, Lord Jesus. Come. In the name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

As the worship team is coming forward, there may be some of you here as you're sitting in this moment, in this service, you feel it. You feel that crushing weight of judgment. You feel that judgment that we talked about, maybe it's not coming from out there, maybe it's coming from in here. And just like that woman caught in adultery, Christ is still offering freedom. He still welcomes us to go.

And so if you are feeling that weight today, I'm gonna we're gonna do something a little different as we sing this next song.

I'm gonna ask all of the elders that may be here in the room, would you stand? All of our Parikaleo team members, would you stand? And would you just find a spot against the wall?

And if you are here today and you feel that crushing weight of judgment, would you just as we sing over you this next song, would you just make your way to one of these people and just say, will you pray for me? You don't have to tell them your business. You don't have to give them any other information. Just ask, will you pray for me? And they will do just that as we sing this next song.

And I love this next song. It's so fitting for right now. It's "Come ye souls by sin afflicted. Look to Jesus. Look to Jesus. Look to Jesus. Mercy flows from him alone."

Would you stand and let's sing.