Judgement
Transcript
Well, I am really excited this morning. In just a minute, I'm going to have the privilege of calling Spencer Carey up here. He is going to be walking us through the next section of the Sermon on the Mount this morning. I just wanted to kind of tell you a little bit about him and what's going on. A little over a year ago, I got a call from him. I went to school with him at Presbyterian College.
He just said that he felt called to plant a church in Lexington, South Carolina, and was planning on being down here and just wanted to grab coffee. So we got together and talked. Then this past June, he and some of the Antioch guys started being around, and Spencer actually started hanging out in the office. We basically just said, we want your church plant to be good, and we want to be your friend, so come hang out. He kind of came in with this idea of, I'll hang out, learn what I can. Probably half of what they do is dumb, and I think he found it's only about 15%, and I think he was really excited.
We brought him in, and we just kind of, one of the things we do in our meetings, we said you can be involved in all of this, but we have in our meetings, we have view seats, voice seats, and vote seats. So a view is, you're welcome to be in here, but you're just looking. You're not talking. And a voice seat is, you're a full-fledged member of the meeting. You can say everything you want, and at the end of all the things you said, the vote seat people will then decide what we're going to do, so that you get to say all of your words, and then vote team gets to be like, good. And then we get to make a decision.
And so we kind of said, look, you're a view seat, and we put him in in a couple of our meetings, just kind of hanging out, watching, and then we would kind of go around, everybody would talk, and then we'd be like, okay, Spencer, do you have any thoughts? And then he would say his thoughts. And we did that for about two weeks, and we started realizing that all of the things Spencer had said were pretty good. And so about two weeks later, we said, hey, just be a voice seat. Just say your words when you think them, because it's been really good. And so we've been blessed to have him around, to have the Antioch church family around.
They've been hanging out kind of on this back row, and they have a community group. We actually get to celebrate with them in baptism on Easter. And so it's just been a beautiful, encouraging thing, and we want to actively help plant more churches. And you may be thinking to yourself, or you may have had conversations with people when they find out you're a part of a church plant, and they say something along the lines of, don't we have enough churches? My answer to that is, nope. We want the world crawling with churches, with people actively trying to follow Jesus and be his people and see more people welcomed in.
And we think we've been specifically designed to reach certain groups of people and to pursue them. And we want as many churches as possible that are faithfully following Christ and trying to see people become disciples of him, that help make more disciples of him. And so we want to forever be planting churches. And so we're excited to be able to partner with Spencer. Spencer, if you want to come on up. We're excited that he's here this morning and going to be able to teach from the word for us.
And so we have him come up here. I'm going to pray for you, buddy, and then I'll get out your way and let you open the Bible and let you start. So y'all pray with us. Father, we thank you that your Holy Spirit is still working to call people to use them to expand your mission. And whatever role that is, we praise you where you empower people and use them. And we thank you that we got to be a small part in the story of Antioch Church as they begin to pursue the people of Lexington.
We pray that we would continue to have a role to serve them, to love them, to be generous towards them in however you have you see fit. Pray, Lord, that you would speak through Spencer this morning and use him to teach us and to help us grow in our love for you. In Jesus' name, amen. All right. Good morning. I know how Chad feels now when he says that.
Yeah. So like you said, my name is Spencer Carey. We moved back in June to start the work of planting Antioch Church on the other side of Lexington, the Lexington side, going towards Gilbert. And we decided to call this church Antioch. It is a city in the New Testament in the book of Acts where the gospel explodes. The gospel moves there.
The city is changed. And then Paul and Barnabas, they come and they spend a year there. And then they are commissioned out on the first missionary journey of Paul. And it changes Europe. It changes the whole world from that city. And we want to be that.
We want to be a church that impacts Lexington well with the gospel. We want to see people changed by Jesus. And then we want to be a sending force down the road that can send people to change the rest of North America and the rest of the world. So, yeah, we moved here in June. Didn't really know what this would be with you guys. We know we needed a sponsor church if we wanted to get money.
So we're like, all right, well, let's let's I know Chet and Matt. We went to college together. Let's start this conversation. And it started with a conversation. It has blossomed into a friendship and a partnership that we never expected. Your church family is loving and caring.
And that isn't normal in church planning. It should be. But it's not. And we are so thankful for you guys. And I'm thankful that I get to open up the world with you this morning. I feel like as Matt and Chet were thinking through, what's a text that I can preach?
Since some of you don't know me that well. What's a text that I can preach that's easy? It's not confrontational or controversial. So they said, give him judgment. And that's where we are. Matthew 7 verses 1 through 6 this morning.
We're going to be walking through one of the most misunderstood passages in the New Testament. It's one of the more popular ones. People that have never really read the Bible in our culture can at least reference, didn't Jesus say, don't judge? Tupac had a song. I didn't even realize this until this week. He had a song called Only God Can Judge Me.
That Only God Can Judge Me phrase shaped our generation in ways that I didn't even realize. It was kind of my anthem. Throughout my teenage years, I wasn't a Christian. I was in rebellion. One of the guys that I used to get high with back in the day, we're all at Wendy's. He says, dude, I'm getting a tattoo.
I was like, tell me more. He's like, I'm getting a tattoo that says Only God Can Judge Me on my back. I was like, that's really cool. I want that. When I turn 18, I'm getting that too. Praise God, I did not.
I became a Christian at 17. If you have that tattoo, that is fine. That is just not my taste. But that was my justification for why I could live the way I wanted to live. And I feel like our culture is symptomatic of our culture. We live in a postmodern culture.
And to boil that down for our purposes, that means that I can live my life on my terms. It's my truth. And you don't get to speak into it. And that was my life. It shaped much of how I acted. I didn't think I had consequences for my actions.
But here's the deal. The idea that God would judge me should have never been comforting. I wasn't a Christian. I wasn't changed by the gospel. It should not have been a comfort. And I feel like so many people have a very similar story to me.
They had this Tupac philosophy blended with Matthew 7 that justifies the way that we want to live. So, this morning, we're going to walk through this passage. I want to see how the New Testament uses the word judge. I want to see how it's being used here. And I want us to see how this shapes our view of others. So, I'm going to pray real quick and we'll dive in.
God, thank you for your word. Lord, I pray that you would block out any distractions that we may have this morning. You would speak to us that we receive tough teaching like this. You'd open our hearts for it. In Jesus' name, amen. All right.
So, we'll do the first two verses of chapter 7. Judge not that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged. And with the measure you use it, we'll be measured to you. All right.
So, in order to understand this text, we have to see how the word judge is being used. Like I said earlier, I think our culture has a ranging view of this word. But I think if you had to define how it uses this word, it's making any kind of statement about anyone's actions or character or anything of that sort. So, if that's kind of your running definition, here's my question for you. Does that definition really hold up? Does that narrow definition of judge hold up?
Like if I say that if you like Pepsi more than Coke, you're crazy. Is that crossing the line? Because like when I go to a restaurant and I order a Coke and someone says, is Pepsi okay? I look at them funny. Because Coke is objectively better than Pepsi. How about if you say, I love Nickelback.
And I say, I don't think you have good taste in music. Is that okay? Am I crossing the line with that statement? Can a pastor who maybe preached here last week, stand up in the pulpit and make the ridiculous claim that a Moe's burrito is better than a Chipotle burrito? Now, we're not talking about chips and queso. All right?
We're not talking about cost. I'm saying just the burrito itself. Can a pastor make that absurd claim? They can. Is that crossing the line? How about if you have a neighbor that has a dog and it's the middle of July and it's melting here because we're in Columbia.
And they leave a dog chained out to a tree with no water all day long. Is it okay to say, that guy doesn't deserve to have a pet? Is it okay to call the authorities? Is it okay to make that judgment? What if you have a neighbor that's beating his kid? Is it okay to say, they don't deserve kids?
I'm calling the police. Is it okay for us in our culture to look at other cultures that mistreat women so badly, that treat them as property, that rape and do all kinds of terrible things? Is it okay for us to say, that's not okay? Can we make judgment calls like that? So at this point, I hope you see that our culture has a really fuzzy and unhelpful definition of judge.
And it's unhelpful as it is unbiblical. So I want to walk through some passages real quick to give us a New Testament, a biblical definition of what judge looks like. The first one comes from 1 Corinthians 5.12. It says this, For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? All right, so context for this.
At the beginning of chapter 5, Paul highlights a case of sexual morality. It's actually incest. A man is sleeping with his father's wife. And they haven't done anything about it. They haven't addressed it. So Paul in verse 11 before this says, Don't associate it with them.
Don't eat with them. After this verse in 13, he says, Purge the unrepentant man from the congregation. He practices church discipline. Get him out. So the way that we see judgment used here is accountability.
Paul wants accountability for the church. So he commands them to judge those inside the church. So judgment holds the idea of accountability. That's one positive definition of it. A second one is discernment, which is determining through good judgment. So later in Matthew 7, we'll get to this in about a month or a couple weeks, Jesus talks about discerning false teachers by their fruit.
And what he means is you have to judge them by the way they live. Our culture looks at that and like, that's crazy. But Jesus did this all the time. I mean, he calls the Pharisees, the religious leaders at the time in Jewish culture, he calls them whitewashed tombs. He says, you look clean on the outside, but you are dead on the inside. Jesus and John the Baptist call the Pharisees a brood of vipers, which is kind of a creative insult.
That he says, you are a viper. You are venomous. You are the offspring of snakes. So he makes that discerning call that we see later in Matthew 7. So those are some positive uses, discernment, accountability.
Then we get to this, verses 1 and 2, and this is definitely a negative use. So what is Jesus trying to say here? First, we have to look at who his audience is. He's got the crowds. He's got the disciples. In the middle of all that, he has this group, the Pharisees.
This teaching, verses 1 and 2, is an indictment on them. He's calling them out. This group was known for being very cold and condemning towards anyone who wasn't holy like them. That was their MO. And in these two verses, man, Jesus is fighting against some righteousness and hypocrisy that is so prevalent amongst these religious leaders. So the way that judge is being used here leans towards meaning condemnation.
So we've got three different uses. We've got accountability and discerning. These are two positive uses. And we've got cold condemnation, which is the negative use. I think one of the clearest examples of this comes from Luke 18. Jesus tells a parable about a Pharisee and a tax collector.
And he says in Luke 18, Pharisees must have been fun at parties. I mean, they... This is the kind of stuff that Jesus was dealing with. This pride and self-righteousness. That's who he's calling out. So I think it would be most helpful if we looked at verse 1 and 2 and it was read like this.
This is the kind of thing that Jesus was dealing with. Don't give condemning judgment toward others or you will get the condemnation you deserve. For with the condemning judgment that you practice will be given right back to you. With the same measure you dish it out, it will come right back. That should scare the pants off of us. I mean, it should because the condemnation that he's talking about that you'll get if you dish it out is hell.
And when we hear teachings like this, I think what we do is we distance ourselves from the Pharisees. We're like, well, at least we're not the Pharisees. We're not... I'm not prideful or self-righteous. That's... I'm not condemning.
That's not me. And I think we fail to see that we have that embedded in our flesh. That we've got a little Pharisee that lives inside of us. I'll give you a few examples. It's tax season. If you did not know that, you should do your taxes because tax day is coming.
And when you do your taxes, maybe you don't report all of your cash earnings. Maybe you shave the Numbers a little bit. And when you're doing that, you may be thinking, I'm just doing... This isn't a big deal. I mean, I'm not Bernie Madoff. I'm not Wall Street.
That's not me. And you've compared yourself and condemned a group of people to justify yourself. Do the same thing with sexual sin. It's just a little bit of pornography. It's just a little bit of explicit content. At least I'm not the porn star.
At least I'm not the stripper. At least I'm not the man running around on his wife. And you've condemned other people to justify yourself. Maybe you have somebody in your community group who is always coming and confessing the same sin over and over again. And if you're not in a community group here, maybe it's somebody in your family or friends that makes the same mistake over and over again. And when they do, your first reaction is, well, of course.
It's cynicism. Well, of course they would. That's who they are. That's what they do. And you're not led to compassion. How about another scenario?
What are the thoughts that go through your head when you were standing at the checkout line in the grocery store? And you see somebody that has their snap card, which is food stamps back in the day. Their snap card in one hand and they got an iPhone in the other hand. What are the thoughts that go through your head? Well, I'm just being discerning. I mean, if he or she's got a snap card, she shouldn't have an iPhone.
She shouldn't be able to pay for that data plan. You don't know them. You don't know them. They may need that iPhone for their job. And they also might have three or four kids that they need to feed. You don't know them.
And you are quick to condemn others with your thoughts. We do the same thing with if you own a business or you're a waiter and somebody from a different race or a different socioeconomic class comes in. And you've already sized them up based off of stereotypes before you even talk to them. We do the same thing when we're in downtown Columbia. And we're walking and somebody who's homeless comes up and says, can I have some money? What are your first thoughts?
Drugs? Alcohol? I mean, we do this all the time. And about a month ago, we walked through this. There is a helpful way to help others. But what we're looking at here is we're diagnosing the heart.
And we do it all the time with simple things. That church doesn't do church like us. That couple doesn't do finances. I wish they could just live in a budget like we do. I wish that this couple that has marital problems would just listen to us. And they would have a marriage like us.
I wish that this family would discipline their kids like us. And we position ourselves in a prideful way and we condemn others. And we have thoughts like this that happen all the time. And here's the deal. We as Christians, we don't let those thoughts go unexamined. That's not our play.
We are called to diagnose those things. To see where they're coming from. And ask Jesus to go to work on those parts of our heart. And as Paul says, to crucify that sin, that flesh, and put it to death. That's our calling. Because self-righteousness is a cancer.
Self-righteousness is a cancer that affects so much of our judgment and discernment. So Jesus, he wants us to check ourselves before checking others. And that's what we get in verses 3 through 5. We get a pretty extreme example. He says this in verse 3. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but you don't notice the log that is in your own eye?
Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your own eye when there is a log in your own eye? You hypocrite. First, take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. So in college, I studied abroad. I did something called semester at sea. And we spent a semester traveling on a ship around the world.
It was a really tough semester. And I made a friend on that ship as we were traveling that, there's no way to say it, he had really, really bad breath. Like, could have been halitosis, I don't know. And we would talk, and he would be getting closer to talking to you, and you'd just be like leaning back, like, yeah, okay. And you, I mean, because you didn't want to get too close to his face. And I remember thinking the whole time, like, do I say something?
Has anybody said anything to him? Like, has his family said something? Have his friends said anything? I mean, he's got a girlfriend back home. She has to know. Like, I'm thinking, what, should I say something?
And the whole trip, I didn't say a word. Like, I was a terrible friend. Fast forward six months. Six months later, it's Christmas. I've got a stocking. Typically in my stocking, I get fruit, some candy, some toiletries, stuff like that.
And I pull out of the stocking a bag of mints. And then a second bag of mints. And then mint-flavored gum. And as I pull all this stuff out, as Chet would say, it was an aggressive amount of mints and mint-flavored gum. And I was like, and I'm not Columbo. Like, I'm not really quick.
Like, we watch movies with my wife, and I'm not quick to figure out the ending. But I read into it. I was like, you know, I feel like my mom is trying to say something. So I was like, Mom, what's the deal? It's a lot of mints. It's a lot of gum.
What are you trying to say? And she said, well, once you got to college, you started drinking coffee, which is fine. But afterwards, your breath is really bad. You should keep these on you throughout the day in your car, in your dorm. It'll be helpful. And I was like, no.
There's no, that's, you know, I push back because I'm argumentative sometimes. And then my sister jumps in and says, no, no, no, it's terrible. You need to do something about this. We're in the teaching team this week, and someone, I can't remember who said it, someone said, what if it was you on the ship just talking to him and it was coming off his face? I never thought of that. I was like, no.
That was not the case. That was not the case. But that's a helpful story that explains this. And Jesus, he gives a really hyperbolic exaggeration in this story. He compares a tiny little splinter to an entire beam. Now, I want you to visualize the absurdity of that, like how crazy that looks.
Like somebody's got a four by four beam sticking out of their eye. And they see somebody with a splinter, and they're like, I got it. I mean, just they're, I hit them in the face, and they don't know what's going on. And they're just reaching awkwardly to grab it. It's a silly picture. It looks ridiculous.
And I think what Jesus is saying here is when you're blind to sin, and you're trying to correct others, you look silly. You look ineffective. What Jesus wants is humility-soaked accountability. That's what he's calling for here. Humility-soaked accountability. Not the cold condemnation that the Pharisees dished out.
But here's the thing in this teaching. I feel like people miss this. If they're big on the hypocrisy part, and they miss what he's saying, he still wants accountability. That's what he's calling for. He says, then you will see clearly to take out the splinter. So we have to see that.
As a Christian, we are called to hold others accountable. We're just called to work through our own junk before we deal with others. So this passage, it has a two-part command for really people on both ends of the accountability spectrum. All right? On one end of the spectrum, we've got people that are quick to confront and slow to reflect. And on the other end of the spectrum, we've got people that just hate confrontation.
All right? So if you're on this end, people might say you're blunt. All right? If you're quick to confront, you're slow to reflect like you have good company. King David from the Old Testament, one of the biggest figures in the Bible, he was quick to confront. One of my favorite stories from the Old Testament is when David, he sins.
He has an affair with a woman named Bathsheba. She conceives to cover it all up. He has her husband killed, one of his soldiers killed by sending him to the front lines. And then he looks all great because he says, well, I'll take her as my wife so that she doesn't have to remain a widow. Here's the thing. God does not let sin remain hidden amongst his people.
The New Testament says that he disciplines those whom he loves. And that's exactly what he does. He sends his prophet Nathan. Nathan comes to David. David is the king, which means he's also a judge in the land. And he comes to David and he says, David, there's a man in the land who had many sheep.
And then there was another man that had one sheep. And the man that had many saw the man that had one. And he saw that sheep and he said, I'll have it. And he took it by force. And as David's hearing this story, he's steaming mad. And he says, I want to find that man.
I want justice to be done. And Nathan, in the middle of his anger, says, David, you're the man. You're the one that took Uriah's wife. You're the one that slept with her. And he's got a four by four beam sticking out of his eye. And he's trying to point out a splinter.
So if you're on this end of the spectrum, if you're like David, if you're quick to confront and you're slow to reflect, you have to start a new pattern of confrontation. You have to be slow. You have to, maybe it's hard for you to see things. Maybe you invite somebody from your community group or a trusted brother or sister to help you point out stuff. But here's the thing.
If you are this, if you're quick to confront and slow to reflect, like you need to change. You need to repent of that. Start this new pattern of confrontation. Maybe when you see sin in somebody else, you take a few days to pray, to ask God if that's going on in your heart. Bring others into it. Address it.
And then examine others. So that's one of the spectrum. If you're on the other end and you just hate confrontation, like maybe you're completely content to just let people live their own lives, make their own mistakes, make their own decisions. And as we talk about accountability, you're like, well, I guess I'm supposed to. And maybe there's somebody in your community group that is blind to a sin. And you're like, well, somebody else would take care of it.
Like we have other people in our community group. We have community group leaders. Like isn't that a pastor's Job? You might be thinking, but if I talk to them, like I might lose them as a friend. Like it's going to make it weird. They're going to get really, really angry at me.
And what you've done in those moments is you've placed your comfort, your need for friendship or approval over their sanctification, over them knowing more of who Jesus is. And if I'm honest, like that's kind of where I land on this spectrum. Like I don't hate confrontation. That's not me. Like I'm willing to confront people. I've done it before.
It's not like I'm not scared of it. If I'm honest, I just get lazy. Like it's a lot of work to do this because I know if I see someone else who's blind to something, that means I got to stare at my own junk. And I know I got a lot of my own junk. And that's not fun. And then I got to wade through that.
I got to pray. And then I know that I'm called to walk in the light. So I got to bring others into this. And then we got to address this together. And then I have to go and confront them. And it's a whole long process.
And if I'm honest, I don't want to do it. It takes a lot of energy. And I'm a pastor. That's just, I don't want to do it. I say, I'll put it off until next week. Or maybe sin will resolve itself since that's how sin works.
And I put it off. If you are like this, this kind of selfishness is terrible for biblical community. It's terrible for your community groups. Because when sin doesn't get confronted, it destroys lives. It wrecks marriages and families. It spreads like a cancer.
God calls us to do the tough work of confronting one another in love. That's our calling. And it's hard. It is hard. Living out the gospel in community, it's difficult. Confronting others, it's hard.
And sometimes, sometimes it doesn't go well. There was a time my wife and I, we moved to Louisville, Kentucky. We're from here, but we moved to Louisville. We spent five years in Louisville at our sending church, sojourn, community church, and in seminary. And the first couple friend we met, we got to know, they were kind of our best friends for about a year and a half. So we got to know them, and I started to recognize a pattern in the husband.
We started seminary at the same time. He had a job. He worked for a computer company. And then he also was at a church. A few months later, he leaves that job and that church, and he goes to a new church to be a worship pastor for a season. For about a few months of that, he leaves that job at that church, goes to a new church, starts a new job.
Then he starts another Job. Then he quits seminary. Then he moves to our church. Then he says, well, we're going to move to Chicago. Then he says, we're not moving to Chicago.
And then a few months later, he says, we're leaving sojourn in our church. And they didn't really give a lot of good reasons. So I said, man, let's get coffee. Let's talk about this. I sat down. I was like, man, I pointed all this out.
I was like, I feel like you make a lot of really quick decisions. You don't really pray through it all. You don't really think through that dragging your family like this, this pattern of life is not sustainable. And I tried to point it out. And then that was the last conversation we ever had. This is one of our best friends.
The last conversation we ever had. A few months later, I realized we hadn't spoken. And I texted them. And I was like, hey, man, I've been a bad friend. Let's get coffee.
Let's connect. And he texted back. He said, let's call this what it is. We've grown separate ways. Have a nice life. What do you text back to that?
I was like, all right, take care. And I fought over that conversation like a hundred times since then. Like, what did I say? What could I have said differently? How did I approach this? Like, what happened?
And I could take that instance and say, you know what? That's a reason why I don't have. That's why you don't confront people. Because you lose friends. And it's not worth it. And I could believe that.
But I don't. Because here's the thing. First, I was being faithful to the teaching that Jesus teaches here. I was being loving towards my friend by calling that out. And I've had dozens of conversations before them and since then where I've confronted somebody in love. They have confronted me in love.
And yeah, it's not always gone perfect. It's not always been pretty. But what came out of that is both of us knowing more of Christ. And as 1 John 1.7 says, you have true fellowship when you walk in the light together. Meaning, we grew closer as friends. So I do it all over again.
Because in God's kingdom, he wants his people to check our hearts for sin and self-righteousness and whatever before we check others. Like, no matter the cost, that is our calling. So the first five verses here. Jesus, he fights against that cold condemnation. Then he lays out why we do biblical accountability.
And then we get to verse 6. Walking through the Sermon on the Mount is heavy. Like, if you've been here for the past couple of months, like, this is weighty stuff. And sometimes Jesus says things. Like, I feel when the disciples go, what? Because every now and then he says something where I'm just like, what did you say?
And that's kind of what he says here in verse 6. In verse 6 he says, do not give dogs what is holy. And do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. I mean, you read that and you're like, what did you say? All right, so firstly, that picture, it's connected to what we just said, to judgment and accountability.
So we've got to take it in its context. Now he doesn't fully explain what he says. He just keeps teaching. And there have been a lot of pastors and a lot of theologians who love Jesus deeply, who have studied this, and they've come to different conclusions. So with our brief time left, like, I don't want to nail down, like, one interpretation for us.
I want to really give one helpful application that I think is faithful to the teaching here. So given the immediate context, which is correction, correcting your brothers and sisters, I think what he's saying here is don't spend your time correcting those who don't believe. Don't hold unbelievers accountable. They're outside of our faith. So Jesus' context, he's speaking to a Jewish audience.
Jews did not, dogs and pigs were considered unclean. That may be difficult for you to see this because some of you have dogs that are like children. They've got ten sweaters and they sleep with you. We can't import our view onto this. Dogs were like the vultures of the ground in their time. They cleaned up after everyone else.
They're considered unclean. And when you read this, what he's doing is he's making a comparison between dogs and pigs to unbelievers. And as you study that, you're like, wow, like that. Really, Jesus? Like, that's a heavy comparison. Here's the deal.
I don't think from the text and from the context, I don't think that what Jesus is saying here is he's making a statement of value. I don't think he's making a statement of value. I think he's simply saying, like, you wouldn't have your dog eat off of fine china. We have a dog. We have a little dachshund. He looks cute.
He's actually a really bad dog. But we love him sometimes. And after I've eaten a meal on our regular dinner plates that we've had for the past, since we got married about almost six years ago, I set the plate outside and he cleans it up. We just now got fine china and we use that. He ain't touching those plates. So you wouldn't have your dog eat off of fine china and you wouldn't throw your pearls before pigs.
So don't focus your effort on holding unbelievers to values that we find precious. Morality doesn't save people. Only belief in the finished work of Jesus on the cross and the empty tube saves people. So if you're the kind of person that holds your family or friends or coworkers to values and morals that we find precious, I think what Jesus is saying here is stop. Stop doing it. I do.
I'm a church planner, but I'm a bivocational church planner. I do real estate as well. And every now and then in real estate, you'll walk into a house where you first walk in and you're like, wow, this house looks really good. They painted the walls. They've changed out the flooring. And then as you dig into it, you see there's major problems with the house.
It has termites that have eaten through the walls. The foundation is crumbling and falling apart. The house is a mess. And C.S. Lewis, he has a metaphor like this. He says when God comes in to change our lives, he doesn't come into our house and basically just paint and change some things.
He completely remodels the house, rips out everything, replaces everything to a brand new creation. And if you're the kind of person that is trying to force morals on those who don't believe, you're trying to put paint on the walls. And what you need to see is that they don't need paint on the walls. They need an entire new house. So stop forcing morality on those who aren't ready to receive it, who aren't ready to receive what is precious.
Like love them, share the gospel with them, but don't force morality on them. All right, so that's verses one through six. Here's something you don't hear in the church very often. Tupac got it half right. He got it half right. God is our ultimate and final judge.
The gospel teaches that we deserve judgment, that we've incurred wrath, and that we deserve punishment. It teaches us that one day Jesus is going to return. He's going to make all things new. But when he does, there will be a day of judgment. And a lot of pastors and theologians disagree on how that's going down, because when you read Revelation, you're like, huh? But there's one thing we can all agree on.
It's a terrifying picture. Judgment is coming. But the good news of the gospel is that Jesus came to rescue us by taking that judgment that we deserve on the cross. Colossians 2.13-14 says, And you who are dead in your sins and the sinful nature of your flesh, God made alive together with Christ, having forgiven us of all our trespasses. Hear this. By canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, this he set aside, nailing it to a cross.
Like, see that picture. All the record of debt. Past, present, future sins, all placed on Jesus. And the judgment we deserve was death. This he set aside, nailing it to a cross. What a beautiful picture of the gospel that we have in Jesus.
So here's the deal. Like, we all have self-righteousness. We all have pride in our hearts. Like, we have hearts that constantly condemn. So Jesus took that condemnation for us on the cross.
We have four by four logs that are jammed in our eyes. So Jesus was nailed to a log so that we might be a community that holds others accountable. So we're being transformed as a community into those that don't condemn, that love and hold each other accountable. That's for us as those who believe. But here's the deal.
If you've never placed your faith solely in Christ, like the gospel has not changed you. Paul has a picture of an old creation and a new creation. In 1 Corinthians. If that picture for you isn't true, this passage cannot be a comfort anymore. Like, you can't use it as a comfort. It's a warning.
This passage cannot be your excuse to live your life on your terms. Tupac, he got it right. You will be judged. We just hope that you will be judged in Christ.