Judging and Judgement

An often quoted statement from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount we've all heard is, judge not that you be not judged. The last, what, five weeks or so I've been giving sermons from the suggestions I got at the last congregational meetings, both here and up in Nashville. This actually was a suggestion that was given to me last year. It's the only one on the list I never got to. And that was, how do we look at judge not lest you be judged, and then Jesus at another point says judge righteous judgment. Are those contradictory terms? Well, we usually talk about this subject. We go to Matthew 7, which we will here in a minute, and we zero in on what Jesus didn't mean, because he didn't mean how this verse is used. It is used many times to say that a Christian cannot judge another person's actions or wrong. You know, what may be right for you is wrong for me, what may be wrong for me is right for you, and Jesus said not to judge, so who are you to judge? And usually when we give a sermon on this, we spend the whole time showing that's not what he meant. But I'm going to do something different today. I'm going to look at Matthew 7 and just go through it very quickly. Then instead of going through what did Jesus not mean, I'm going to go through what did Jesus mean, because he makes a very definitive statement. Don't judge, lest you be judged. The implication is you're judged by God. In other words, the standard of which you judge. So what does he mean? So let's go to Matthew 7. Let's look at this. Well, look at what he doesn't mean, because it's quite obvious he doesn't mean that there are no standards that we can make no judgments. In fact, we are supposed to make judgments based upon an understanding of God's judgments. When something is wrong, it's wrong.

So let's look at verse 1 of Matthew 7. Judge not that you be not judged, for with what judgment you judge, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, you will be measured back to you. So he starts with, remember, as you make judgments, you are being judged by the same standards.

There have to be standards. He's just saying, no, no, and I've read interpretations of this. No, he's saying there are no standards. Everybody has to do what's right in their heart, and that's not what he's saying at all. Let's look at the next verse. Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me remove the speck from your eye, and look a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite, first remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

Now that couple of sentences there are very important. First of all, the plank and the speck, of course he's using hyperbole here, you know, but in his hyperbole, the plank and the speck are real. He doesn't say, why do you look at a speck in your brother's eye when there's no speck there? And why do you have a, you know, plank in your eye when there's no plank? The plank and the speck are real. So the point he's making is there are real issues, and how we judge those issues are important, and his point is that before we go and judge somebody else, we have to judge ourselves.

We have to look at ourselves. So that's his point. There are objective standards that equals plank and equal speck, and he talks about hypocrisy here. There's other places in the New Testament, especially, where it talks about hypocrisy in terms of judging other people. Paul talks about it in Romans. Well, you yourself are doing the same thing, or judging other people, but ignoring your issues. Now remember here, he says that you are to go help your brother remove the speck. He didn't say never deal with somebody else's problems. He said, but get the two by four out of your face first, okay? Take that out of your eye first, then go deal with your brother's problem.

So he didn't even say not to deal with somebody else's sin. The passage says you go deal with somebody else's problem. You help them. But remember, the whole point is not condemnation, but help. If we judge everybody by condemnation, you will be judged by the same measure.

If we deal with our problems by the objective standards, and only God can give us the objective standards, all of our standards are subjective. Mine are subjective. Yours are subjective, because they come from us. Then we understand that, okay, we have to be careful how we judge issues, and all judgment starts first with me. Every one of us starts with ourselves first. And there's times that we go, we deal with somebody else's. Look at the next verse, because if you stop this next verse, if you take this and just read this, wow, this is one of the most judgmental statements in the entire Scripture.

Do not give what is holy to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn and tear you in pieces. And he's not talking here about real dogs and real swine. What he literally is telling them, there are people who have turned against God. Your dogs and swine were unclean animals. There are people who have turned against God, who hate God, who have their backs turned to God.

And he says, you know, you can't even go help those people. You can't even go tell them the truth. They won't listen to you. They've actually become violent if you try to tell them the truth. That's pretty judgmental, isn't it? He didn't say condemn them. He was saying, there's people you can't help. There's people you can't take the truth to. They're not going to listen to you. And of course, Jesus experienced that in his own life, right? Most of the people he talked to in his own life on this earth, nobody believed what he said. Only a handful did. I mean, after three and a half years of talking to millions of people, you got 120 disciples.

Most of them ran away. So the point here, and it's easy to build a sermon out of this, because you can go to passage after passage after passage, where we have to make judgments. We have to make decisions in our own lives on what is right and wrong by God's standards. And there's times that we have to deal with other people who are not dealing or living by those standards.

And in the church, we're actually told that we are to admonish each other and to help each other overcome our sins. So instead of now going through a sermon on what he didn't mean, what did he mean? What did he mean? Don't judge. Obviously, it means that there are ways that we can pass judgment that are wrong. There's wrong ways we can pass judgment.

I'm just going to go through four ways today. Four ways that you and I can pass a wrong kind of judgment. And the first two I go through are not that common in the church. They can be, I suppose, but I think most of us have grown beyond that. But we'll get into the last couple and we'll find out that there's ways you and I make judgments all the time that are wrong, that aren't the way we're supposed to judge. Judges that make a decision.

It's to look at something. And even the word judge here has to do with justice. It has to do with legality. So this is how we judge whether someone is doing the ways of God or not the ways of God. So four ways. The first one, and once again this may not be something that you find that you do much, but it is a way that some people make a false judgment.

And that is that we can judge somebody as being beyond redemption. I mean, have you ever seen somebody that's so evil? I mean, Charles Manson. Now, I can remember thinking when he was alive, I wonder if he can even repent. Now that's not making a judgment. That's making a, I wonder, he's so evil. Can he even repent? But you know, my answer to that, even to myself, is I don't know. Only God knows how to deal with that. Not me. So I can ask the question. I haven't made a judgment.

I can't stand up here and say, and Charles Manson is going to the lake of fire. Because only God makes that judgment through Jesus Christ. And you and I don't get to make that one. You and I don't get to make that call. So we don't have the right to declare that someone's going to the lake of fire. We can't ask the question, I wonder if, but I don't know. There's nothing wrong with the I wonder if, because you're not making a judgment. The problem is once we make the judgment, because we don't have the right to make a judgment on someone's eternal life. We just don't. So that's a way in which people will make a wrong judgment. That person, you know, I have people come to me and say, is Judas Iscariot going to the lake of fire? And my answer is, I don't know.

I don't know. God is going to make that decision. Not me.

I mean, if anybody seems like she'd go to the lake of fire, is Judas Iscariot. But I don't know. And it doesn't say whether he's going to lake of fire. Now there's, you know, certain scriptures talk about people going to lake of fire. There's people going to lake of fire. God's going to make that judgment. And in that great white throne judgment, Jesus Christ is going to say, you all are going to suffer eternal death. You are going to lake of fire. And he's going to put him there. So it's going to happen, but Christ isn't going to look to any of us and say, what's your opinion on this?

We don't get to participate in that. So that's how we can make our own judgment. We can ask the question. We can wonder. And the answer is, Lord, you know. That's the answer all the time. Lord, you know. I don't.

And, you know, there's a great piece that comes in life when you many times just say, Lord, you know. What you'll see in the Bible a number of times where someone's asked a question by God. And the answer is, Lord, you know. I don't know. So we have to be careful about that. Now that's not a problem that you see much people doing. I mean, we don't go around saying, Oh, they're going to lake of fire. They're going to lake of fire, right? We realize that God makes that judgment. We don't. The second way, and this is something I brought up. In fact, the verse I'm going to read here is something that I actually read about two months ago in a sermon. And this is something that can happen in the church sometimes. Is we refuse to accept that God has forgiven someone and that they have actually repented. We just refuse it. Now there are people who pretend to repent and their lifestyle will eventually show it. You know, if a person says, I've repented from robbing banks and then every other week they're robbing a bank, you know they haven't repented. But how do you know? How do you make the judgment on their repeated behavior? Now, one day they may come in and say, I have repented. You know, I spent some time in jail and I have repented. I've come back. I've repented. And then we have to say, okay, did they repent or not? And sometimes the answer is, Lord, you know.

But we can't judge behavior. We judge behavior because that is wrong behavior. And we can judge that. And there are penalties for wrong behavior. But what if a person's truly repented? Then we have to ask that question. Then we have to be able to be willing to say, if you've repented, then I can no longer judge you for the past.

There's people in the church, all of us. Does anyone here want to be judged for your past? I don't.

I don't want to be judged for my present. The scripture I read a couple months ago, Galatians 6. Galatians 6.

A well-known passage here from Galatians. Paul writes, Brother, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a want in the spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted. Unless we are tempted to what? Be self-righteous and judgmental. Now, he didn't say, bring the person back if they continue to do what they're doing.

Oh, yes, the person continues to sell drugs to children, but they said they were sorry, so we'll bring them back. That's not what we do. Because the behavior is wrong, and we can judge the behavior is wrong. But the person says, look, I haven't done that in three years, and I've repented of that.

There's a point we have to say, Lord, you know. Now, that doesn't mean we're stupid.

We all understand our human tendencies to fall back into an old sin. So we don't let the ex-drug dealer run the, you know, the children's classes, right?

But we also don't say, you're not worthy to be with us, or you're not worthy of God's forgiveness. That's a false judgment. See, this gets a little tricky, doesn't it? Because we get that we have to judge behavior, but sometimes we can't judge where the person is with God. And that gets a little difficult. He says, verse 2, bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, and he sees himself. And this is where I read this verse a couple months ago, was when we talked about self-deception. But let each one examine his own work, and that he will have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. For each shall bear his own load. Now that harkens back to what Jesus said in the sermon of the Mount, doesn't it? Okay. If the person's repented, bring them back, because remember, look for that plank in your eye, too. We're constantly reminded in the scripture of our problem between us and God is that we are not worthy of a relationship that he is generating, that he's doing. Because all of us have a sinful nature, and yet here he is working with us. So the next person beside you, every person in this room has a sinful nature. Now we're in the process of having that change, right? You're in a relationship with God, and yet we all have a sinful nature. And we have to be aware of that, and we have to be open for others' repentance. Open for others' repentance. Now, a third way that we make poor judgment is, oh man, he's quick. He's running through these four reasons. We'll be done in another 10 minutes. Well, the next two get a little more difficult. On the surface, this next one seems apparent, but then we have to ask, can we do this? And that is, we make false judgments by making false accusations. Now, most of us are going to make up an absolute lie about somebody, and then get up and say, this person is homosexual, or this person is a thief. Or this person, you know, whatever. We get up and we accuse this person, and it's absolutely false, so we get everybody to hate them, okay? Or to do something that we want. We're not going to do that. Now, there are lots of people who have done that. You know, they find that in our own judicial system in the United States. There's been people put in jail, or even put to death, sometimes, on false accusations. So, it can happen. And God is very, very, very, very, concerned about that concept. You know, it's interesting that the commandment is, isn't thou shalt not lie? It's inclusive in this. The statement is, do not bear false witness. In other words, the exact statement is a legal statement. You can accuse somebody of something that's not true. How strict was that in the Old Testament? Let's go to Deuteronomy 19.

Deuteronomy 19.

I mean, it's how despicable is it if you've ever been falsely accused of something by someone who's just lying. Maybe it worked. This happens at work all the time. Someone doesn't like somebody, they'll try to get fired, and they'll just lie about them, right?

That's a hard thing to deal with. Deuteronomy 19 verse 16.

Let's start in verse 15. One witness shall not rise against the man concerning any iniquity or any sin that he commits. By the mouth of two or three witnesses, the matter shall be established. So this is now we talk about their legal system, and how in this legal system you have to have two or three witnesses. In other words, you have to have some real proof before you can just convict somebody.

So you accuse someone of moving the boundaries of your property. So they stole 10 acres of mine by moving the boundaries, and you bring that false accusation. It has proved that it was a lie. You know what happens to you? That guy gets to take 10 of your acres. Exactly what the penalty was, you have to pay, which is pretty serious when you get into capital punishment. You know, there were capital crimes. So you accuse somebody of a capital crime, and you're lying about it. Death was the penalty. Boy, that changes everything, doesn't it? That changes everything. So you accuse someone of kidnapping. Kidnapping was a capital crime in the Old Testament. You accuse someone of kidnapping, then you find out you staged it, so you could get, you know, how many shows, police shows on television and detective shows, there's a kidnapping, but it's really being staged by somebody else to accuse somebody else if they get the ransom, you know. They're setting up a false kidnapping. What if you set up a false kidnapping in ancient Israel? And it was proved that you just got somebody framed so that, you know, and usually Perot or somebody figures this out right away, who knows who Perot is? Okay, some of you watch English television. My wife loves English television.

The most dangerous place to live in all of history was the 1920s and 30s in England. All you have to do is watch Miss Marple. Every place that old woman went, people died! Whole village has died! I told her I'd come to the collusion. She was a mass murderer, and she was doing all these murders and then getting famous for framing people because no place. My aunt and auntie used to watch, what was that, a murder she wrote? I only watched it a couple times with my auntie and it was like every time where she went someplace, people died! She's killing them! Okay, so you know there's this theme that you see all these shows where somebody fakes a kidnapping. You fake a kidnapping and frame somebody in ancient Israel? The entire village comes out and stones you to death. I think that would cut down on fake kidnappings. You're going to be real careful about doing certain things. So that's how serious it was to bear false witness in the legal sense. Whatever the penalty, well I'm accusing him of stealing my sheep. Wait a minute, you stole his sheep! You got to pay him back four times. Four times what? Well, you accused him, so you lose four your best sheep to him. That's the way it was set up.

So they say, okay, well we don't do that. I mean, I can't imagine anybody here ever making up a lie to destroy somebody. But what happens if we make a judgment because we misunderstand something or we impute a motive? You know, there was a case in the Bible where that happened. Remember where Hannah, Samuel's mother, you know, she wanted, she couldn't have a baby. She went to the tabernacle to pray and she's praying with such just, I mean, her whole body, her whole soul, her whole mind is in this prayer and she's praying to God and her lips are moving. And I, priest Eli, walks up and accuses her of being drunk. That's a false accusation. It's a very serious false accusation. Now, he allowed her to plead her case, which was, I'm not drunk. You're misinterpreting what's happening here. I am at, you know, I am just depressed. I'm upset and I'm crying out to God. And he did that. He changed his judgment. See, if we're honest, when we make a wrong judgment, we will change it so that we're not sinning. You know, oh, I misunderstood. I'm not going, if you hang on to the misunderstanding, you're not sinning. So we have to be very open to having people tell us you're misunderstanding this. You have a misconception of what's going on. We do this a lot when it comes to imputing motives. We accuse someone before we get all the facts. We accuse someone on some circumstantial evidence. Well, you know, that person is just. Now, if you, you know, know if your neighbor, you find out your neighbor is running a, as Popeye said, a house of ill repukes out of your, you know, nearby, and they come and arrest him, and he's convicted, and there's all the... it's not wrong to say that was a bad person, okay? They were doing bad things, and they should go to jail. You know, Christians should not be against punishment of the evil people. What Christians want is to be judged by God's standards, which we can't do in this world. So it's not wrong to say that, but what if, what if it's a false accusation and you make the accusation? I know a case where a man, and no, well, maybe I shouldn't use this case. Some of you might know the situation. I guess I won't use that case. But I know of people who have had false accusations and bizarre false accusations that just aren't true, and they don't get a chance to defend themselves because it gets passed on and on. False accusations can create an anger in people, because remember, if you believe a false accusation, so once again, you're not giving a false accusation. You have made up a lie, but you're believing a false accusation or imputing a motive. It can motivate your actions, your emotions, your thoughts, and your actions until you are the one sitting. You know, perfect example of that is in the Bible. Go to Acts 6. Acts 6.

We read through this and we think, oh, what a bunch of despicable people here, because Stephen is teaching about who Jesus Christ is, and a group of Jews get very upset with him. Verse 8, as Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and signs among the people, then there arose some from what is called the synagogue of the freedmen. Now, the synagogue of the freedmen were men who had been slaves and had bought their freedom or been given their freedom. And these Jews were from all over the Roman Empire, because it says they were Cyrenians, Alexandrians. That would be from Egypt, from Cilicia, and Asia. Asia would be modern Turkey, disputed with Stephen. And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spoke. They then secretly induced men to say, okay, now you have a false accusation, but a false accusation only has power with how many people you can convince it's true. The people who you convince believe it's true.

Believing a false accusation doesn't make you right.

There's been many times in my life I have believed something about somebody and then found out later it wasn't true. It just wasn't true. And you think, wow, I'm glad I never took action on that. Sometimes as a pastor, I know of a problem, even in the church, and I don't deal with it because I don't have two or three witnesses. I wait until that happens, and it will. It always does. It works itself out. But you can't go accuse somebody on an accusation that you have no proof. You can't go sit down with somebody and say, oh, well, I've come here because, and I know I had this happen one time, I didn't do it. This was years and years ago. The accusation was this person was committing adultery. And the elder wanted me to go sit down with him and accuse the guys. He's committing adultery. And they said, what proof do we have? Well, we had two or three people say they suspected. I said, I will do that. He says, I think it's true. And he says, you know, I told him, I said it could be, but I can't go do that. And neither can you. Now, it was later proved it was happening. And I did go talk to the person, but only after I became an eyewitness in this case. Oh, okay. I know. So we have to be real careful about these things. These people, these false witnesses, got a bunch of innocent people, if you will.

So worked up, it says, verse 12, and they stirred up the people, the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him, seized him, and brought him to the council. They also set up false witnesses. And now there's more false witnesses. And in the end, they kill him. They commit murder.

A mob mentality, out of control mob, commits murder. Why? Because of false accusations. Now, you and I are going to go stone each other. But sometimes, can we shun each other? Have great animosity towards another person? Can we look at another person as being, you know, and just think of the words that we use. In our culture, we have certain words we can use. Well, they're just unconverted. Well, so there are some people that are unconverted. But I'll tell you something. At any given moment, every one of us is acting unconverted. Okay? It just happens to be the moment that you are or aren't. Right? At any given moment in your life, there may be a point where someone looking, you would say, ooh, that's not a very converted person. Now, we might be able to say, that's not a converted action. That may be true. That's not a false accusation. To say someone's unconverted, but we can stamp them with that. Or in our culture, what we can do is, this is good, you're just a lay-in to see-in. We stamp them with that, and now they have no value. Well, what criteria do you use? Well, because of this. Okay, that may be true. That may be a problem that that person needs to deal with, but we'll just stamp that on their forehead as if that's an accusation of their entire life. Or, my favorite is, that person is a Protestant.

Well, what do you know about Protestantism? No, many of you came from Protestantism. Some of you did not. They would just stamp somebody with that. They're just Protestant. Well, you're going to find Protestants who believe many things we do, and many things we don't. You can tell somebody, you know, that's a Protestant belief. We have a different belief. Now, that's a true statement. To stamp them with, you're a Protestant, we've got to be real careful with that.

Because at that point, the accusation is so strong that they can become a non-person to us.

See, all of a sudden, this gets a little sticky, doesn't it? We're going to do a sticky judgment here.

We have to be real careful. So, we have to be willing to say, no, that's not what we teach, or no, this is what the Bible says, or no, and I've even sat down with people and said, no, actually, you were a Catholic before, weren't you? Yes. That's a Catholic teaching. Let's go through the Bible and see what the Bible teaches. But you don't say, you're a Catholic, because that's a false accusation. They might be holding on to one Catholic belief, but that doesn't make them a Catholic if they're moving in the way God's taking them. So, we have to be real careful about, because, you know, you go tell everybody, that person over there, they're a lady to see it. Pretty soon, ask the people in the church who won't talk to you. What does that even mean?

So, we have to be real careful about this. We impute a motive, or we misinterpret their deeds, or we see a real problem, and we expand that out into something greater than it is. It'd be like, you know, someone coming into my office saying, you know, I need to talk to you, I have a drinking problem. And I say, oh, so you're a murderer? No, I have a drinking problem. Yes, I know. You can't come to church as a murderer. You know, I mean, you can't turn one problem into another problem.

But we can do that so easily. And there's reasons for that. Now, there's a great story in the Bible about slander. Slander is a funny thing. Because slander, you know, the first person who commits slander may or may not know what they're doing is wrong. But slander, we feel that it's right. And yet what we're doing is we're misunderstanding and we're twisting something into what it isn't. Okay, we're making decisions, we're making judgments on a misunderstanding of what's going on. Joshua 22. This one's so obvious, but it makes the point. I mean, it's so obvious, it seems almost unbelievable in one way. Because what has happened here is Joshua has led the Israelites to conquer the land of Canaan. And they've conquered Canaan and they're dividing up the land among the tribes as God instructed them to do so. But there was Reuben and Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh said they wanted to actually settle on the eastern side of the Jordan. Everybody else was on the western side of the Jordan, including half of the tribe of Manasseh. But they said we want to go over here and settle. And what Joshua told them, well, God said it's okay, but you still have to fight with the rest of us. So they did. All the warriors from those three tribes joined the rest of the Israelites, conquered Canaan, or most of Canaan. And now they're going back across. Let's pick it up in verse 10. And when they came to the region of the Jordan, which is the land of Canaan, the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh built an altar there by the Jordan, a great, impressive altar. Now they were told that they were only to bring their sacrifices to the tabernacle. And the tabernacle still existed. The one that went through the wilderness with them, and it was coming into the land of Canaan, and it was supposed to be set up in a very special place. It was not, you were just to make sacrifices throughout the land. You were to come to one place, and the three tribes that are going across the Jordan stop and build a huge, impressive altar, bigger than anything that anybody else had ever seen.

Now the children of Israel heard someone say, Behold, the children of Reuben, the children of Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh have built an altar on the frontier of the land of Canaan in the region of the Jordan on the children of Israel side. So they built it on the side where everybody else lived, and then they were going across the other side. And when the children of Israel heard of it, the whole congregation of the children of Israel gathered themselves at Shiloh to go to war against them. Why are they at Shiloh? Well, that's where the actual tabernacle is. So they had just spent five years approximately, conquering Canaan. They are all experienced warriors. This is an army of hundreds of thousands, and they now get together, and they're going to go slaughter two and a half tribes. They're going to war, and they're going to treat them just like God told them to wipe out the Canaanites. So they're going to go to war, and they're going to kill off a huge number of Israelites. They've already made this judgment. And then they get smart. Okay? Then the children of Israel sent Phineas, the son of Eleazar, the priest, to the children of Reuben, to the children of Gad, to half the tribe of Manasseh, and to the land of Gilean. And with him ten rulers, one ruler from each of the chief house of every tribe of Israel, and each one was the head of the house of his father among the divisions of Israel. So they came to Reuben and Gad, and they bring, you know, and half the tribe of Manasseh, and all the elders get together, and these, you know, the high priest and these ten rulers of Israel show up, and they immediately begin to accuse them. Look at verse 16.

Thus says the whole congregation of the Lord. I find it interesting. They say, thus says the Lord. Thus all of us, every one of us, every Israelite on the other side of the Jordan agrees. He says, what treachery is this that you have committed against the God of Israel to turn away this day from following the Lord, and that you have built for yourself an altar that you might rebel this day against the Lord? And he goes, they go on and on and on. They talk about Achan, who was, you know, stole from Jericho, and they had to kill him. They talk about all these things that showing that God was going to punish them, and they were basically there to tell them, the army's marching on you. All because of some something someone said.

Get down to verse 21. Then the children of Reuben, the children of Gad, and the half the tribe of Manasseh answered and said to the heads of the divisions of Israel, the Lord God of gods, the Lord God of gods, he knows and let Israel itself know, if this is in rebellion or if it's treachery against the Lord, do not save us this day. And they go on, I won't read all of it, and explain what they were doing. Do you know what they were doing? They were building a giant monument so that they could tell their children, see that giant monument on the other side of the river? That's where our brothers are. That's where the tabernacle is. That's we are not separate from those people just because of the Jordan. They imputed this motive that they were building this giant altar to do sacrifices. And what they were doing is building a giant monument to remind themselves throughout their generations that they were part of the people on the other side of the Jordan. They almost had a civil war because of what someone said.

Now fortunately, they didn't act on their judgment. They sent some other people to find out what the real issue was. And so they avoided a civil war. Interesting, isn't it? Do we ever do that? Can we ever make a decision that is based on a false accusation, a misunderstanding, so that we're actually now acting on a false accusation?

The fourth way that we can make wrong judgments is the way that we never think about. It is the spread gossip because it involves a judgment. Now the thing about gossip is to pass on personal or sensational information about somebody else. And you know the thing about gossip is a lot of times it can be true. Now slander is always based on something that's not quite true. It's a twisting of the truth. Where gossip a lot of times is the truth. It's the truth about somebody.

And we can pass it on.

Once again, there's a time to legitimately do that.

You know, if you find out that a registered sex offender is living next door and you look up online and this person has a very bad history, then you can't do that. This person has a very bad history. You're going to keep your children, you know, you're going to tell your husband or your wife and you're going to, you know, maybe tell the neighbors. That of itself is not wrong. You're explaining behavior. Now that doesn't mean you might hate the person. What if the person is called by God and comes into the church, but it means you understand the behavior, right? And we're making a judgment on behavior. What if someone comes to you and says that about your neighbor and you avoid him for five years and then he moves and you find out it wasn't true? See, we have to be real careful. The thing about gossip is many times it is true.

So then the question is, why do we like to gossip?

Why do we like to pass on bad stuff about other people? Why do we like to do that? Now, sometimes it's concern, and that's not wrong. You just have to be careful. Why am I doing this? And we'll talk about that in a minute. You know, I'm concerned. So and so I am seeing him at church for two weeks. Now I do that all the time. My wife says, I'm like a mother hen. I didn't see someone at church for the last three weeks. I hope they're okay. And she'll look at me and say, I don't know what you're talking about. I talked to her today. Oh, okay.

She says, I just say, why did you call them? I say, well, I better make sure they actually haven't been there for three weeks because if I call them and they have, they'll think I'm like, what's wrong with you? Weirdo, why are you calling me? You know, so I better make sure that they weren't there. Why do we like to gossip? Well, many times we like to pass on the dirt about other peoples because it makes us feel better about ourselves. Let's just be honest. We gossip because it makes us feel better about ourselves. Thank you, Lord. I got problems, but nothing like this person does. Right? And so we like to pass it on because it makes us somehow feel more spiritual.

They were somehow better than others. Gossip can be attractive because it appeals for a desire for secret knowledge. I'm going to read this. You don't have to turn to Proverbs 10 and 8 says, the words of a tailbearer are like tasty trifles.

Triples? Triples. Triples. Triples. Yeah, I'm thinking of uh, truffles. Yeah, okay. It's not truffles. Triples. Tasty bits. Okay. And they go down into the inmost body. Oh, it tastes so good. Sometimes we do it because it's just, wow, I know stuff about these people. Somehow it appeals to us to know stuff about other people. Sometimes we gossip because some people love conflict. And spreading gossip just keeps everybody stirred up because they're stirred up. A person who's stirred up all the time, what's other people who be stirred up all the time? Proverbs 26, 22-21 says, where there is no wood, the fire goes out. And where there's no tailbearer, strife ceases. As charcoal is to a burning coals, and wood is to fire, so is a contentious man to kindle strife. Sometimes people spread gossip because they have inner turmoil and they love turmoil. You know, there's a point where we have to learn peace and don't need to know everything about everybody. We don't need to know it. I don't need to know everything about all your lives.

I don't want to know everything about all your lives. As a pastor, I'm here to help you. Come talk to me. But I'm not going out and exploring. I'm not like having my secret agents going out trying to find out everything about everybody. That's not the way relationships are built.

So we have to realize that many times the reason we gossip are for bad motives inside ourselves. And we are making many times bad judgments, then, based on gossip.

Because, you know, even if it's true, do you really know the story?

Do you really know the story?

Usually we don't. So you're making a judgment on it. The problem is gossip damages people's reputations. It damages the way other people look at them. It can destroy relationships. Gossip can destroy a relationship for a lifetime.

My pastor's update a couple years ago, every once in a while, I put in one of these what I call life lessons. I told this story because it's a story that I've read. It's an old story. It's been told a lot of different ways, but it always has the same lesson.

The last time I read it, it was about a pastor. A woman came into the church early one morning to do some cleaning. The pastor's office door opened, which was surprising because it was before the time he usually came in. This young, very pretty woman comes walking out. She's a member of the congregation. She's a little disheveled. She comes walking out of his office and hurriedly goes out and gets in her car. Then a few minutes later, he comes walking out.

She just goes back to her cleaning, not paying much attention. Later, she gets some of the women in the church that are having lunch together, and she tells them. One of the women says, you know, I've heard that they've been having marriage problems.

Where was she? Was she there all night? What was she doing there? Well, they started talking about it. Pretty soon, they sort of theorized that the pastor was having an affair with this young woman. And they talk about it and talk about it until they convince themselves. They then go and tell the other women in the church.

And pretty soon, it's coming down to this woman and her husband are getting divorced. So they go up to the man and say, we're sorry to hear about your divorce. And he just stares at them and says, I have no idea what you're talking about. So the woman who started all of it realizes she's got it all wrong. So she goes to the pastor and she goes into the office and she says, I need to apologize to you.

He said, yes, this is now throughout the church. He said, it has damaged my reputation and the reputation of this young woman. And I don't even know if I can pastor her anymore. And she says, well, I am so sorry. You know, I've gone and repented before God. He says, good. If you've repented before God, there's only one other thing I would like you to do. He says, do you have a pillow? One of these feather pillows at home. She said, yes. He says, okay, I want you to take that pillow and go atop the little hill over there. You see that little with no trees on it. She said, yes, I want you to split it open and scatter those feathers to the wind. And just let the wind blow them all over. And then wait a couple hours. And then I want you to go around and pick up all those feathers. And she said, well, that's impossible. He said, yes. So your gossip, you spread these feathers. And it is now impossible to take that out of everybody's minds.

And me and this young woman will deal with this for years. That's a good point, isn't it?

All based on a wrong perception and some gossip. And as everybody talked, everybody else's perception got into it until they had mixed up a soup that wasn't true. Now, their intention wasn't to slander. Their intention was not false accusation. But it's not what it ended up being because of gossip. Gossip is a very dangerous thing.

You know, before you spread a story, and I try to do this, but every once in a while, I'll say something and I'll think later, I wish I wouldn't have said that about that person.

You know, there's enough bad things that we can say about each other, right? But sometimes, why do you even pass it on? Why do you even say it? Well, is there a nicer way to say something than sometimes the way we say we talk about each other? Because is that not making a judgment that we maybe should not be making? You know, someone brings information to you. The first thing you have to think is, is it true? Now, that doesn't mean a person's lying to you. They think it's true. Why? Because someone told them, if someone told them, if someone told them, they think it's true.

And so, if you've ever been the victim of gossip, and sometimes you try to track down where it went, it's like where it came from. They don't... Nobody knows where it came from.

And the story just got, you know, all messed up as it went along. So, the first person trying to bring it to you, it's not even remotely like the person who started it, right?

Is it true?

Is this passing on of this story... Is this an attempt to hurt the other person? He said, well, now I'm questioning someone's motivation. Yeah, well, we do question each other's motivations. We just can't... We have to be careful how we make judgments about motivations.

But you do have to ask, why is this person doing this? Maybe you ask them, why is this important?

Why is this necessary for other people to know? I don't need to pass this on about this person. It's not necessary for other people to know.

Should I go to the other person and find out what the real story is? Oh, no, that makes it hard, right? Oh, there's 10 people that believe this. Maybe I should go to the person and find out. Now, you'll be the one that, you know, hurts the other person when they find out. Maybe something not true about them is being said. Or they might say, yes, that is true.

That is true. I've had that problem in my life. You think, wow, why are we all talking about it? We're not helping the person. We're not getting the spec out of their eye, are we? We're just putting them down. We're just talking about them. We're making a judgment.

We're making a judgment.

I mean, dealing with gossip, remember, is like trying to pick up feathers after you've thrown them into the wind.

It just scatters the problem all over the place. Let's conclude by James chapter 3. So we started with, oh, yeah, good. Yeah, those wrong judgments. I don't make those judgments. Oh, well, yeah, we do.

How many times have we read this passage? My brother and let not many of you become teachers, knowing that you shall receive a stricter judgment. For we all stumble in many things. If anyone does not stumble in word, he's a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body. He says, if any one of us ever learns how to really control what we say, we're a perfect person.

Because, you know, no matter how much you try to control it. I did that with my granddaughter the other day. We spent, we took a day, and I took some work with me. They were in a cabin for four days at Fall Creek's Falls, which is a beautiful place. You've never been there. And we went up and spent the day there, and the kids were out fishing. I mean, there was no fish out to catch right then, but they didn't know that. So they're out fishing. And one of them whips that thing around and hooks one of the other ones.

So, you know, the two-year-old's crying, and I'm trying to figure out, it's deep into her clothing. I don't know how deep it is into her skin, and I'm trying to pull away the clothing. You know, I don't want to rip her skin. To figure out how deep this thing is in her skin. Fortunately, we're just poking her. But, you know, you don't know, because it's deep into the clothing. We just had to take her clothing off. But the other one's so scared, she's trying to get in to help.

And finally, I just exploded and told her to get off the porch in the house. I didn't want her out here. And if she came out here, I was going to spank her. Well, she's never been spanked by me. It scared her to death. So she goes in, and she's in there crying for a half hour. And I had to go in and sit down and say, do you know why you were angry with me? Because I hooked my sister. No. I was angry with you because you wouldn't let me see if she was okay. So I took a hook and put it through a paper towel and told her to pull it out when she did. Of course, I just ripped that paper towel. I said, that's what I didn't want to do to her. All of a sudden, she stopped and said, oh. And then she said, but I was so hurt by your words. And what it meant to her, what it came out to her was, you come out on this porch ever again, and I will spank you.

So she thought she could never come out on the porch ever again. And she said my words back to me exactly what I said. And I thought, I could see why a child would think that. So I had to say, you know, I picked my words. I did not pick my words very well. Here's what I meant. And when I told her what I meant, she goes, oh, okay. And then we hugged each other. We were fine. But I understood what she actually thought I said because I didn't say it very well because I was really upset at the time. I'm trying to make sure this kid doesn't have a hook deep in her and she won't let me check. You see what I mean? So I yelled at her, turned around, and said, yelled at her and told her to get off the porch. She thought forever and ever, you know. She'll be 20 years old and I won't let her come out onto the porch.

So, bridling the tongue. We say things all the time. We don't really mean anything later. Well, why did I say that? Sometimes you can say something while you're saying it. You think, oh, that's not very good. That's not coming out well. Oh, my. You know, we even do that all the time. We're telling ourselves, why did you just say that? Sometimes we say stupid things and within like five seconds it's like, well, that was stupid. Then you look at the look in the other person's face and he realizes, oh, that was really stupid. Right?

He says, indeed, we put bright bits in horses' mouths that they may obey us and we turn their whole body. Look also at ships, although they are so large, they are driven by fierce winds. They are turned by a very small rudder. Whether the pilot, wherever the pilot desires. Even so, the tongue is a little member and boasts great things. He goes on in this little passage and says, who can tame his tongue?

We can apply that directly to gossip.

Well, we look at gossip. We have to be very careful how we say things because we're making judgments or we're leading other people to make judgments. Now, once again, there are times when you have to say, no, this person's motivations was wrong because you know their motivations.

It's like I read something the other day about motivations. It's very interesting. He says, a person came out and the man was very logical about it and stole my car. He said, I could go to the police and say, see that man right there? He stole my car. He said, but you know what would be wrong? If I said, he stole my car because he's a man filled with envy and has no value as a human being.

He said, the law just says that he's doing your car. Yes, good. He's going to be punished. He said, I've never heard of anybody that said, you know, that person stole my car. You know, I bet what happened. His wife was a labor. He came up and knocked on the door and I didn't answer the door. And she's really in trouble. And to save his wife and child, he stole my car. He said, has he ever heard anybody impute that motive to someone?

Right. We always, the guy who cut you off in traffic is doing it on purpose. Right.

But when you do it, it's like, I'm sorry. You know, right. I didn't do it on purpose.

Now, that's not taking away the fact if someone steals your car, they are wrong. That's a judgment. And maybe they should go to jail for it.

Objective standards set by God.

But we have to be real careful how we deal with these things.

Jesus, obviously, in Matthew 6, isn't telling us that there are no objective standards. But we also have to be careful that we don't judge in obvious ways, in subtle ways we do it, where we make judgments, because we're making judgments all the day, all day long. You have to. We have to be careful how we make judgments about people, and then how we treat them through those judgments. That means we have to be careful to avoid judging someone as beyond God's redemption, refusing to accept that God has forgiven someone when they have repented, making false accusations, and probably the one that's so easy for all of us to do, and that is through gossip.