Righteous Judgment

Last month, a guilty, a not guilty verdict came down in a case that everybody was following, on cable television at least, for several weeks. A woman named Casey Anthony was declared not guilty in the case that was being made in the death of her infant daughter.

And I think all of us are aware, to one degree or the other, about what was taking place at that time, and maybe you were watching it. I wasn't really glued to it and just caught it only in fleeting bits and pieces. I did not get caught up in that. But there was a great deal of comment of shock and dismay that she was found not guilty as a result of the jury trial that she went through. What it did was point out the fact that a lot of things were said.

You can say our system of justice doesn't work or people can get away with things and some say, well, our system did work in that particular case. Unfortunately, in the case of the little girl, any verdict would not bring her back. Was justice done? No, in one sense. However, as we'll go through here today, there are certain lessons for us all to learn. There are other cases that have been in the news of late.

There was another one where the head of the International Monetary Fund, a man by the name of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was accused of sexually attacking a hotel maid in a swanky hotel in New York City. And he was hauled out of the first class section of the Air France jet before it could take off and thrown into Riker's prison in New York because of the charges that were made against him.

They didn't want him to get away from American soil because they knew they wouldn't get him back. Well, as the weeks went on, other information came out and the prosecuting attorney decided that there wasn't enough evidence, credible evidence, to prosecute, and so they let Mr. Strauss-Kahn go. That one didn't really bother us too much, as much as the Casey Anthony trial, because you had a little girl that was killed in that and, you know, it was much more dramatic and it was an American case. And after all, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was French.

And who cares? You know, for some people, for a lot of people. And, you know, he was rich and he was a white male and powerful and he was preying on a, you know, an immigrant woman and this and that. So, but it also pointed out some of the problems of making judgments and of the risks and the matters in the jury system, the trial, and evidence and cases that come and go and how they work out.

In these two and other cases we could probably bring up, we go back 16 years to the OJ trial of the mid-1990s and that particular situation and how it worked out. It causes us to stand back and it should ask ourselves a few pertinent questions like, do we really have enough evidence or accurate information to know and to judge the matters that come to our attention all the time in any given situation? Can you and I sit as a judge and make an accurate determination in cases that we either see in the news, big cases like these, or some of the things that might come across and into our lives in smaller details and matters of judgment and evaluation that we have to make?

If we're honest and if we would learn from all the real-life examples that are in front of us, we would temper a lot of our judgments and a lot of our evaluations and say that, you know, we may not always have all the information and what information we do have may not be completely accurate and cause us to take a step, maybe two steps back at various times.

But you know what? It doesn't always happen that way because we all make judgments based on the information that we have. Sometimes we will make a judgment that may turn out to be wrong or we may be proven to be wrong or we just don't want to know about that. The reality is that all of us, you and I, have donned the judicial robes and sat in a judgment seat at any given time in our lives many times over. And sometimes we've even become hanging judges, a judge who's very quick to put down the gavel and say, guilty to the gallows.

Texas, or not Texas, but western justice in the old west, often revolved around a judge that was very quick to do that and he would gain the reputation of a hanging judge. Sometimes we've been like that, while others have not been able to see the evidence and make even a sound evaluation of the fruits of a situation. In the church, we've always had that problem from the days of the apostles until now. The church members and situations, at least in our times that I've dealt with, we tend to fall in two different ditches.

First one is a self-righteous ditch where we are quick to judge a situation or to judge someone.

That's one ditch. The other ditch is the ditch of the really the inability to recognize sin, to recognize something that is in front of us, and to remove ourselves from its influence. And we might tolerate a problem, a sin, a sinful situation, far, far too long in the guise of tolerance, not wanting to judge or it's not my place type of reasonings that we often get into.

This matter of judgment is a very important matter. It is a subject that God does want us to understand, and it is a subject that you and I must master in our life to exercise righteous judgment, to judge righteous judgment, and to exercise mercy and tolerance when it's due at an appropriate time. There is a time to make a judgment or an evaluation, and there is a time to exercise mercy, because even exercising mercy is a form of judgment as well. And in a particular situation, we make a decision to give a person mercy. These problems have always been a part of the church in these situations. We can see examples in the Bible, as we'll look at a number of them, but it comes down to learning the balance of being conservative with God's law and yet liberal with His love in our sphere of influence and application where we may come into contact with that. We're the people of God. God says that we will judge angels in one place in the book of 1 Corinthians, but He also tells us in the New Testament that we are not to judge one another. How are we to judge angels and yet be very careful not to judge others? How do we blend two different concepts that we find essentially in the scriptures and come together with an appropriate approach in this matter? Listen, let's look in Matthew 7 and let's look at a statement that Jesus makes, which often comes from our lips when we get into situations where we are confronted with a matter, an issue, and very often we will quote this verse. Matthew 7 and 1, Jesus says, judge not that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged. And with the measure that you use, it will be measured back to you. He goes on to read the whole passage here. But how many times have you said, well, I can't judge, or you're not my judge in a situation, or felt it if you didn't say it. Sometimes when we're maybe truly caught in a sin and we know we're sinning, we know we're wrong, but we are not repentant yet, and our heart is hardened to one degree, we will lash out at somebody. Well, you're not my judge. You have walked a mile in my shoes. Or we will say that maybe to the minister. We may say it to another member. We just may kind of say it to the congregation and kind of just go off to ourselves for a while until we kind of work through. But we'll throw this statement out. Well, you're not my judge, or I can't judge this particular situation. But if you look back in John chapter 7, Jesus made another statement that might seem to be contradictory to this. John chapter 7, in verse 24, in the matter of a Sabbath question here in the context, circumcision, Jesus said in verse 24, John 7, do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment. So in one passage, Matthew 7, he says, don't judge, but you be not judged. And then in here he says, judge with righteous judgment. What's the difference? When do you know not to judge? And how do you know when to judge righteous judgment?

Well, we're going to go through this today. We're going to look at it. I'm going to go through three stories and then draw three keys, three principles from these stories, because it's never too late for you and I to learn something about this matter, to learn to make godly judgments. And in some ways, even with what we have gone through in recent months within the church, where there have been a lot of judgments made and a lot of evaluations made that led to a division. Sometimes I wonder if we might be facing kind of a do-or-die, last-ditch effort and need for us in the church to learn some of these types of principles, that we not rip ourselves apart ever again, or to a point where the damage is irreparable. It's never too late. And with what we see around us in the world and even what impacts us within the church life, it's important we learn to judge righteous judgment, to make godly judgments. At times when we are faced with information, situations on which we are going to make evaluations, and sometimes we're going to make judgments because we're human, and we will have to make decisions about certain situations. Let's first of all come back to these two scriptures. Judge not that you be not judged, and judge righteous judgment. And let's look at two concepts that I think we can help us sort out this English word judge to break it down a little bit to understand how god expects us to use it and look at it in light of what we just read in these two statements in Matthew and John from Jesus Christ's own statements himself. First of all, I'd like for you to turn back to Psalm 51, and we're going to look at a statement that David makes in this famous psalm of self-judgment that he made, the 51st Psalm, prayer of this psalm of repentance, which we all know very well, Psalm 51. And this is a case of his own judgment upon himself. But let's look at verse 4, Psalm 51. David says, Against you, speaking to God, and you only have I sinned and done evil, done this evil in your sight. And the evil was twofold, adultery and murder. Quite strong.

Against you, God, and you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight, that you may be found just when you speak and blameless when you judge. Here David is speaking to God as a judge, and God does make certain judgments. The word here is Shabbat, S-H-A-P-A-T.

And it is used here out of the Hebrew in a sense of acting as a magistrate or as a judge setting in a final position of judgment and pronouncing a punishment or mercy based on a total review of the evidence that might be there. What David is saying here is he speaks to God and uses this term where God will make a judgment. It is a sense of a final judgment where a decision is made that is final that will mete out punishment or mete out a not guilty verdict in that sense.

From God's point of view, the judgment would be just and right because he alone knows the heart. But David is using this here in a sense of making such a decision that only God can make, and is God's alone, not ours. And that is where we find the statement in Matthew 7 in verse 1, where Jesus said, judge not that you be not judged to apply. Jesus is saying, don't set yourself up as the judge with a final condemnatory power. Don't, you know, be very, very careful to not let yourself get into that role if you're not supposed to be there, or if you don't have the access to all of the information and, you know, pronounce a sentence upon an individual in this way. In certain situations, only God has that authority. And in other situations, you know, at least in the human realm, only certain individuals are given that. In the case of the state, certainly a judge in a trial does. And other types of judgments that might be made, it might be a supervisor, it may be a principal, it may be an owner of a business, it might be, you know, where someone has to make a judgment in the course of an operation, they have that responsibility, and it may not be yours. I think everybody, you know, you get into a work situation, and for a workplace to function smoothly, everyone needs to know the lines of authority and responsibility. And not everybody can hire and fire. And certain, you know, decisions are left only for management, ownership, and president, CEO. And when people understand that and accept that, then a business operation can function smoothly, given all the other factors work out. There's another scripture that we should turn to here in 1 Corinthians chapter 6.

1 Corinthians chapter 6.

In verse 5. This is where Paul gets into the case of the Corinthians going to law against one another.

Verse 1, and he says, verse 2, he says, do you not know that the saints will judge the world?

And verse 3, judging angels is part of that future role as well. And then in verse 5, he says, I say this to your shame, is it so that there is not a wise man among you, not even one, who will be able to judge between his brethren? Paul was addressing a problem where they couldn't make proper evaluations among themselves in certain situations within the church, and it led to them even going to the courts, then letting it spill out into that situation. And he was saying, that's a shame to you, because on some of these matters you should be able to judge among yourselves and come to certain decisions. And the word here in verse 5 for judge is a Greek word, diacrino, diacrino, which means to separate thoroughly, kind of like separating sheep from goats, to make a separation from bad influences from the rest of the group, if you will. You get into a school classroom situation, sometimes people start acting up, you've got to just send them to the principal's office, or send them to the library to where Mrs. Dickey is, or some other truant official who deals with disciplinary issues and disciplinary problems. You separate the good from the bad at that particular time, and an evaluation has to be made. And Paul is saying, look, learn how to do this, to discern right from wrong, to, at the very least, withdraw yourself from the evil, from the problem, from the disruption, from the trouble. And he says that's purely and solely and definitely in our role now, and something we need to learn to do. But avoid going over into the other ditch at times, in some situations, of making a judgment when either it's not yours to make, or you don't have all the facts, and it's not in your role to do. If you bring these two concepts together, you're really talking about two different matters, condemning and evaluating.

Condemning and evaluating. When it comes to condemning, ultimately, spiritually, God is the one who has the right to judge in that in that case, in that sense, in those situations.

But evaluating, as we all can see, only God has the ability to look into the heart. We're forbidden to condemn, but we're cautioned to learn to evaluate.

This is the principle. We have to study both and learn both, and there are situations where we will have to take evaluations and make certain judgments as to how we're going to deal with a situation within our power, within our influence, and at the same time learn the boundaries and how far we can go, should go, or should not go. Let's look at three examples from the scriptures, I think, that will help us to kind of flush this out. The first one is back in 1 Samuel chapter 16. It's an example of where the prophet Samuel was sent to select from the family of Jesse a new king to replace Saul. We know the story very well, but let's go back and look at it. 1 Samuel chapter 16.

1 Samuel 1. Beginning in verse 1, God said to Samuel, I've rejected, how long will you mourn for Saul? I've rejected him from reigning over Israel. Fill your horn with oil, sending you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, and there provide myself a king among his sons. And Samuel said, How can I go? If Saul hears about it, he'll kill me. So God says, well, go in the guise of making a sacrifice and invite the family of Jesse to that sacrifice, and I'll show you the one to anoint for me the one that I named to you. So Samuel did what God said in verse 4, went to Bethlehem. The elders trembled at his coming and said, Do you come peacefully? Always get a chuckle when I read that section of the story here and how the people saw Samuel walking up the road or riding a donkey up the road. And they said, Uh-oh, we're in trouble. You know, it's like when you see the principal coming, you're a student, and you think you automatically feel guilty. Or, you know, you look in your rearview mirror and you see a policeman back there and you begin to think, Uh-oh, he's got me. And we automatically assume we're guilty. We tremble a little bit. When they saw the prophet, Samuel, they said, Uh-oh, are you coming in peace? What have we done? They said, Well, I'm coming peacefully. I've come to sacrifice to the Lord, sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice. And he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice. And so it was when they came that he looked at Eliab and said, Surely the Lord's anointed is before him. Now, Eliab was likely the oldest firstborn of Jesse. And he looked at him and he said, This is the one.

He looked like he just stepped out of a GQ magazine, perfectly attired, starched shirt, nice tie, just looked like a king. And God said to Samuel, Don't look at his appearance or at his physical stature because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see his man sees. For man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. Now, this is a very, very basic and so important lesson that we are quick to forget at times. We all look at appearances. It's one of the great sins of our age. Quite frankly, this is one of the idols of our culture that has been erected where we were appearance, outward appearance, stature, looks, mean everything in our culture. That's why the fashion industry, the cosmetic industry, the media cater to that. And we get caught up in it and we can be deceived. We can look only at the outward appearance. That's why in the book of James, God makes the warning, look, somebody comes into your midst, meaning the church, and he's dressed in fine apparel. Don't get caught up in wild by that person. That doesn't mean by itself anything. And yet, that is so much of our modern culture. So here you see that an experienced prophet of God, one who was close to God, erred in his judgment. He didn't properly evaluate. He thought, he's the one. God says, no, he's not. And he, you know, the story, he went on down all of the sons. None of them were in front of him and he said, well, you have any more sons? Yeah, well, I got this runt, David, out in the field.

And it turned out that it was David, a man after God's own heart. God knew the heart of David. Now, the other brothers, they weren't bad probably, but they weren't the ones that had a heart that one that God was going to use to be a king at this point. But how do we... Here's the question.

How do we judge the heart? How do we judge the heart? God judges the heart. We look at the outward appearance. How do you judge the heart? That's a tricky one. There's no one answer for that. I would say you certainly... You begin by not looking at the outward appearance only, by not getting caught up in that. That's where you begin, and then you have to go beyond that.

God judges by faith and character, just to use two examples. You and I have to certainly want to give a person time, get to know them, talk with them, several months, maybe even several years. Quite frankly, even that might not be enough time.

I've learned over the years that I can know somebody for a long, long period of time, 15, 20 years, and then you can overnight find out that you didn't really know them. I've had to come to that conclusion in recent months. People that I thought that I've known for a long, long time and thought I knew. I didn't know their heart. But God did, just as He knows my heart and He knows yours. We have to look at the pattern of life and one's a person's decisions over a period of time. Compare words, indeed, with Scripture. Do you like the Bereans when it comes to that? Search the Scriptures.

That's how you begin to even scrape through the surface and try to learn this godly quality of discerning the heart and a person. And that doesn't again mean that you and I get into a final judgment, but we will as we come to know. I mean, look, some of us have been together a long time here in this Fort Wayne area and you know people. You know what to expect. And for many of you, what you see is what you get. You're the real deal. The real deal. You come to know those things. When the pressure's up, when the chips are down, when the need is there, you'll know who will come through. And time proves that.

Ask God to give you that help to do so. But that's important. That's a very important quality for us to work at, even though we'll never completely master it, but it is one to go for. Let's look at a second story in Luke chapter 18. Luke chapter 18.

This is a parable.

The Pharisee and the tax collector.

Christ spoke this parable to those who trusted in themselves in verse 9, that they were righteous and despised others. Two men went up to the temple to pray on a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. Tax collectors were verboten. They were the scum of the Jewish society in the first century because they were collecting money for the Romans from the Jews and they were Jews collecting money from the Jews for the Romans. And they were collaborators and they were not looked upon as good people. So the Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank you that I am not like other men. Extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. Today we might throw in the word even a lawyer. Even like this lawyer here.

The Pharisee said, I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I possess.

So he thought he was pretty righteous. The tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, the tax collector, rather than the other, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted. The Pharisee had already judged, sentenced, and condemned the public in his own heart.

He went right to the shepat, the judgment that Christ warned against in Matthew 7.1, where he judged this man and condemned him to be wrong, evil, and he looked down upon him. You know, too often this type of an attitude raises its head within the church. We tend to take on too much of this approach. And it's sad when it happens. A self-righteous, Pharisaical, legalistic approach. Legalism is a problem that will always be with us. And when you keep the law of God, when you obey God's law, there will be the tendency towards legalism that you have to guard against, every one of us. The idea that we can become self-righteous by our works and earn righteousness, earn favor from God, earn salvation, which the scriptures do not teach.

Now, we do have an expression of our faith. James says, show me your faith by your works. Yes.

We are created in Christ to good works, Ephesians 2 says. And those works are defined by the parameters of God's spiritual law. And so we obey that law. But there will always be the trap of legalism, where we think that by what we do, we're earning ourselves something.

Favor even a seat in God's kingdom. We don't earn anything. That doesn't mean we throw anything out, but we don't earn it. And the big problem with the Pharisees was their legalism, as you see as Christ addressed it. And we will get hard on ourselves, and we'll be hard on others if we fall into that trap. The march up the kingdom of the mountain, the march up the mountain to the kingdom of God is heavy enough for any of us without loading it up with non-essentials, like other people's problems where we start looking at someone else and evaluating unnecessarily or judging others. We have enough of our own to deal with. We tend to focus on the baggage of the Christian traveler rather than where he's going.

The starting point versus the destination. We're all headed toward the kingdom, and we need to encourage and point each other to the aspiration of the kingdom of God. We all have enough daily struggles to deal with in ourselves, and we don't want to become a self-righteous Pharisee, in a sense. I'll be real blunt with you. I am tired of self-righteous Pharisees in the Church of God. I am tired of legalism, and those who think that they are holier than thou and want to judge, point fingers, and divide. That has been a problem, and quite frankly, it's been a problem. It was a problem that was at the heart of our recent troubles. Legalism, Pharisaicalism, and judgments, condemnatory judgments, rushed to judgments.

I'm just tired of them. I'm going to—where Rur's head, I will deal with it, or I will point it out. It's not something that you excommunicate or put somebody out, but the Church of God has no place for that. It just doesn't.

And some who left fall in that category of legalists, Pharisees, wanting to worry about somebody else rather than themselves. And the hypocrisy, the plain, raw, blatant hypocrisy of this recent episode is shameful. Just shameful.

I've never seen something so prevalent within the Church, but nonetheless, it's there.

There's a third story for us to look at, and that's in 1 Corinthians.

1 Corinthians chapter—well, beginning in chapter 1, we're not going to go through a lot of this, but it is the story of the Church in Corinth. Verse 10 of chapter 1 tells us that they had deep divisions. Paul said, I plead with you that you speak the same thing, that there be no divisions among you. Be perfectly joined together in the same mind and of the same judgment. They were spiritually immature. Chapter 3 in verse 1, he says, Brethren, I could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to carnal, as babes in Christ. That's an evaluation that Paul made of the membership, that you're weak. You're not spiritually strong, and I have to speak to you as a baby. Nothing sets me off more, is baby talk. There's a time to talk to a baby.

Our granddaughter, Cameron, is nine, ten months old, and I'll make a fool of myself in front of her.

I will talk baby talk or say things to her. Now, the four-year-old, Liam, the kid's been talking in sentences for two years and using words that I didn't learn until I got to college. So we carry on conversations with him. We don't talk baby talk to him.

I think we all recognize there's a time to talk baby talk and then move it, in our opinion, move away from that as quickly as you can and don't carry it on. Nothing more irritating or grating is to see parents talking baby talk to a kid who they should be talking in a more straightforward way. Not necessarily always like an adult, but at least in a more straightforward way. And that's a matter of evaluation and judgment. And yeah, maybe I'm judging them, I guess, in that sense. But Paul is saying here in a spiritual sense, I can't talk to you other than as with baby talk. Simple sentences because you're not spiritual enough. And in Corinth, they even turned against Paul, chapter 4, verses 3 and 4. He says, it's a small matter if I be judged by you or by a human court. In fact, I don't even judge myself, for I know of nothing against myself. Yet I'm not justified by this, but he who judges me as the Lord. They had, they were judging Paul and they had pride and it led to division in the church. And he warned them and he said, don't do it, avoid it, move away from it. And then he comes down to chapter 5 and he does chide them because they didn't properly evaluate and deal with one who was living in sin. In the case of adultery, verse 1, he says, there is sexual immorality among you and such immorality that is not even named among the Gentiles, that a man has his father's wife. He's saying, this is wrong. And it was a man evidently living with a stepmother. And they couldn't deal with it. He said, you're puffed up rather than mourning and removing this blatant open sin. You're making a, you're not showing proper judgment with this individual. And then back in chapter 6, he says, again, you're going to judge angels. You've got to learn how to properly evaluate and learn judgment in a proper way. So in the first six chapters of Corinthians, Paul sketches out a problem of a congregation that is divided, prideful, divided, that is quick to judge someone in authority like him, but then is overly indulgent and tolerant of an open moral problem within their midst. And so they had not learned the balance, and they were even going to court with one another. And they needed to learn proper judgment, proper evaluation in this. So here's three stories. The Church of Corinth, a publican, and a Pharisee, and Samuel looking for a king of Israel. And they all tell us three different matters and approaches and problems to avoid, qualities to cultivate, and how all this impacts us within the Church. Let's draw three keys from this. Let's, if we can, draw some three keys in helping us to formulate an approach to judging properly and making discerning proper judgment. The first is this. Ask God for the wisdom to make proper judgments and evaluation. Ask God. Let's turn back to 1 Kings 3. In this we see the approach that Solomon had when he was young and experienced in the New King. 1 Kings 3.

The prayer that Solomon made when God appeared to him in a dream, in verse 5, God said, Ask, What shall I give you? And what Solomon asked for was wisdom.

He said in verse 8, Your servant is in the midst of your people whom you've chosen, but great people too numerous to be numbered or counted. Therefore, give to your servant an understanding heart to judge your people that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to judge this great people of yours? Solomon knew he needed help. He was inexperienced, and there were a lot of matters that he knew would be coming to him every single day that he would have to make judgments on and evaluations about. So he asked God for wisdom to be able to do it. That's a starting point. Ask God for wisdom. You and I, we're all young spiritually in that sense. Solomon was young in years and inexperienced, and we need to ask God for that and make sure that we ask for it on a regular basis and not look to ourselves in that sense. But just to ask God for that wisdom. Because as James chapter 3 says, the right kind of wisdom that we need comes from God. James chapter 3.

Verse 17. James writes, the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield full of mercy and good fruits without partiality, without hypocrisy. A good judge or manager, one who works with people, lives with people, interacts with people, will not show partiality. It takes wisdom to do that. Now, the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. This comes from above, this type of wisdom. The qualities that make up that type of wisdom are pretty well laid out here in verse 17, being able to yield to God. Point number two. Avoid rumor, gossip, and hearsay. And avoid looking only at the appearance. Avoid that rumor, gossip, and hearsay.

You know one of the tricks that defense attorneys use in a criminal trial when they've got somebody accused of a horrible crime, some drug addict, some person who, you know, with long, scraggly hair and dirty clothes, and they haul them in. You've seen the mug shots when they get booked. They look awful. And then their trial date is set, and when they come in before the jury, they'll be in a three-piece suit, a two-piece suit, hair trimmed, shaven. It's a ploy. It's commonly done because they're wanting to make a good appearance, and they know that if that person came in looking like a jerk, an addict, a bum, that it's going to prejudice immediately the jury because of the way they look. And so dress them up to look normal, even though they are a heinous criminal. And all the evidence is there. They're playing all the odds, and you've seen it done, whether it's on television or in real life. But it is a common ploy, one of the tricks that is used in the courtroom. They will dress that defendant up. And so you have to look beyond that. You've got to look at the facts and know how to make these judgments. In Isaiah 11, there's prophecy about the Messiah. There's also instruction about godly judgment. Isaiah 11.

This is one of the Messianic prophecies that is talking about the rod that will come from the stem of Jesse in verse 1. The branch will grow out of his roots. The Spirit of the Lord will rest upon him. Verse 2. Spirit of wisdom and understanding. The Spirit of counsel and might, and of knowledge, and of the fear of God. Verse 3. His delight is in the fear of the Lord, and he shall not judge by the sight of his eyes, nor decide by the hearing of his ears.

This is how God's servant, the Messiah, will judge. How many times do we judge by the sight of our eyes? Well, we saw where Samuel did that, fell into that trap, and we see it all around us, and I've talked about how it's part of the idols of our age where we look only at appearance and dress and, you know, good looks, count for a lot. That doesn't cut it in this case, or deciding by the hearing of his ears. When you look at that, then in verse 4 it says, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. He shall strike the earth with the rot of his mouth and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked. God is able to cut through outward appearance, and he doesn't judge by the hearing of his ears. If you and I just did those two things, we'd go a long way toward exercising godly judgment. In other words, don't get caught up in rumor or gossip or hearsay. Be able to know the difference.

Hearsay or criminal evidence will not hold up in a fair court of law. And quite frankly, from what I read, after the verdict was brought out in the Casey Anthony trial, there was a great deal of circumstantial evidence. Now granted, you can say what you want about the mother, and certainly her lifestyle and a lot of things about that were not good. And again, just looking at what was presented in court, some lawyers said that they went for the death penalty. Had they gone for something less, they might have got that. But they went for the death penalty. And when you go for the death penalty, even in a court of law, I mean, and it should be this way, the evidence should be iron-tight, iron-clad. And circumstantial evidence should not cut it, no matter how circumstantial it may look. Did our justice, you know, did the justice system work? Well, I will go there this morning. I'm saying, you know, don't decide by the hearing of your ears.

This is what the quality of the Messiah is, godly judgment. Don't decide just by the hearing of your of your ears. Don't judge others without a knowledge of the facts. There are many, many proverbs that deal with this. Proverbs 18 and verse 13 says that, He who answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame. And yet we've all made that mistake. We've answered a matter before we heard it.

And it can be folly and shame upon us.

Don't listen to the first report. He who is first, another proverb says, He who is first in his cause seems just, but his neighbor comes and finds him out.

You know, it's just sometimes as simple as the tattler who comes in within the family or within the classroom and tattles, and then you find out, well, it's not exactly that way. When you, you know, you wait and gather the information.

When you get the facts, you and I, we must be careful then even how we use them. What do you after you get the facts? Put yourself into a situation.

Well, there are a lot of things you should ask. Is it your role?

You know, sometimes, especially in a work environment, you may have the facts on somebody, or it may be clear to everybody in the office what the facts are in a situation.

But then there's another question to ask. Is he your servant or is he another man's servant? There's a proverb that talks about that. If he works for somebody else down the hall or in another department, that's not your business. That may be that supervisor's responsibility to deal with it, but it's not yours or mine. He's another man's servant. You know, you talk about some things that happen, you know, in that way. If it's your responsibility, if it's your role, okay, then where you go from there, if it is. Ask yourself if you're self-righteous. Ask yourself if you're filled with pride. Ask yourself, do I have a life? Or am I a busybody involved in everybody else's business but my own? My dear mother had a phrase when I was growing up when she would see certain situations that were going on in the world in the news that in her evaluation wasn't their business. She said they should learn to sweep their own back porch. And there's a time to sweep your porch and stay off the other person's porch. That's true. She was that was one of her famous sayings. And I'll adapt it. Do you have a life? Well, yeah, you do. It's called yours.

Get the moat, get the beam out of your own eye. My experience is that it is a very complicated matter when we allow ourselves to get too far to pull too far into a case that's outside our realm of responsibility. And again, in the recent church crisis, people involved themselves and made decisions over matters that did not involve them.

Were not their concern. People were all caught up in how somebody was keeping the Sabbath in another part of the world. And they were the most hypocritical of their own case in how they kept the Sabbath. But they made somebody else's situation their business. And other issues that, quite frankly, were between responsible parties at the level of management, that was not the responsibility of someone beyond management, beyond the leadership. But people got involved based on second, third, fourth hand hearsay, information, and made decisions over matters that did not involve them and were not their concern. But pride, self-righteousness, ambition complicated their response. It's important to evaluate in the light of God's law. Christ does that, and we have to do that. And when we do that, the result is righteousness. Back here in Isaiah 11, again, look at what happens when you employ these principles that God says Christ will employ of having a spirit of wisdom and understanding and counsel and might and knowledge and the fear of God, and will not judge by the side of the eyes, nor by the hearing of the ears. Look down in verse 9. What's the fruit of that?

It's the kingdom of God. It's a just world. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Verse 9 is the result of sound judgment described by the principles of the earlier verses. When you don't judge by the hearing of the ear, when you don't judge by appearance, when you ask for godly wisdom and seek counsel and employ all of the principles, or even a handful of the basic principles of sound godly judgment, the result is what you see in verse 9, where there's no hurt, there's no offense, where there's peace, there's not destruction. Substitute the word division in there. You won't have that. This is what will produce the kingdom of God, and this is what should produce peace among the people of God today in advance of that kingdom. This is what we are to learn.

Point number three, we should learn to judge as Christ judges, which is value-oriented and not incident-oriented. Value-oriented, not incident-oriented. Quick to judge on every infraction, again, a legalistic approach. This requires time and godliness and discernment. Look at the case in John 8, where a woman was taken in adultery. We'll turn there and read it, but let's rehearse it just at least in general. You know the story. A woman was taken in adultery, brought before Christ. The Jews wanted justice. They wanted the law applied. Very legalistic. Jesus said, he who is without what? Stones. Cast the first one. When Jesus mentioned stones, he couldn't be accused of overlooking the law. There was a reason he said, if you know he who is without offense cast the first stone. That was the law. So he laid it out there, okay? He didn't do away with the law.

He said, if those of you that are without sin, you can stand up here and take the first stone. You throw it. You couldn't do it. He chose, though, to highlight the importance of compassion and forgiveness while he told the woman, go and send no more. That's how Christ exercised value-oriented judgment in his own life.

Look at the advice of Gamaliel in Acts 5. Again, I won't turn there, but this was the wise Jewish sage who, in the executive session of the Pharisees at that point, as they were evaluating what to do with the apostles, he said, look, don't get too fraught. Let's not rush to judgment here. He said, if they're like some of the others that have come up and some of the other insurrections and problems, they'll fade out. But he says, if not, and it's of God, you're fighting against God. Gamaliel's advice was to judge by the fruits.

Now, how do you know the fruits? How many of you have said, well, judge by the fruits? You ever use that term? Got to judge by the fruits? I heard that a lot lately. You got to judge by the fruits.

Okay, how do you judge by the fruit? How do you judge by the fruit?

Well, you... Let me ask it another way. How long does it take for fruit to be grown and made known?

Well, how long? From April to August, September, several months? It takes a season, doesn't it? It takes a season. It takes a period of time. It might take a few seasons. You know, even there's an example where Jesus said, you know, he was going to cut... he used an example, cut down this tree that wasn't... was barren, a fig tree. And he said, well, you know, let's dig it and dung it and give it another... another try. Give it another season and maybe there's a way to deal with a fruit-bearing tree to nurse it along. I've got a... I've lived 21 years in this house we're in, down in Greenwood, and we've... we've always had this cherry tree, wild, sour cherry tree in the backyard that just abundantly produced cherries. And it's grown large year by year, and this year no cherries came out. In fact, a good portion of the tree is dead. But there's a little bit of growth leaves up at the top and some sprouting out here and there. But the other day I had a tree guy whack out what was out the dead wood. He and I were looking at it, was looking at it, and we think that there's life still there. And so I'm going to come... having come back in November because you don't cut a tree down, top it out in the heat of the summer. So I'm going to have him come back in in November after the sap has stopped running, and we'll top that tree out, and we think we can save that tree. And maybe by next year or the year after there'll be some more cherries there. Even though, to look at it right now, you think, ah, just cut it down. You know, it's taken up valuable real estate, plant a new one. But I think there's life there.

And so I'll wait and see if there's fruit before I make my final judgment on that cherry tree.

You take the time to see if there's going to be fruit. That's what Christ did, and that's how we come to know whether we can judge by the fruits. Give it time. That doesn't mean you tolerate something that does need to be corrected to create, to stop division, to stop harm, or a bad example at a given time. But that's where godly discernment comes in. Now, why is this so important? Why is this matter of godly judgment so important? Well, it's because God says the saints will reign with Christ, setting on thrones of judgment. He says we will judge angels. That's why it's important. Learning to judge righteous judgment is a sacred duty. With God's help, it is in our power to turn a page in life and get this right. And you and I can begin today to make right and sound judgments. But why do we need to get this? Well, I think this recent media trial of just the Casey Anthony media circus illustrates the sad, sad self-absorption of so much of our media-driven, celebrity-soaked culture that we have around us today. We make a household name out of a spiritually bankrupt individual, plastering their name, their face on every cable news outlet, while the larger house of the country and the world is burning down. And yet we get absorbed in something as sordid as that and wallow in that. But it's symptom of our world. It shows how angry and how polarizing we are as a nation. The big issues that need solutions get polarized and divide us as a people without sound leadership, and there's no solution. Scripture describes our nation as so self-absorbed, so often that comes into the church. We are not immune to the cultural trends that are so prevalent around us as we absorb it and watch it. It begins to impact us, begins to affect us and wear down the saints. We need to focus on the big picture. God and Christ, the Bible, God's word, the mission of the church. And we need to learn the godly principles of sound godly judgment. We can take these three keys and these three stories and we can learn a great deal. And if we do, it will help us to learn to judge as Christ and as the Father, and it will create a condition of peace. Let's look at one final Scripture in John, Chapter 5.

John, Chapter 5, verse 30.

Let's make this your motto. John 5, verse 30. Christ said, I can of myself do nothing.

As I hear, I judge. And my judgment is righteous because I do not seek my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me. If we can follow that pattern of Christ and seek to judge as he does righteous judgment because we get our will out of the way, then we can come very, very close, be on the path to developing sound godly judgment in our life. Your and my life will benefit for it and the church will be better off as well.