How to rightly judge?Notice: This video and audio have playing issues, some parts are missing and are not recoverable!

How to rightly judge?Notice: This video and audio have playing issues, some parts are missing and are not recoverable!

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Living Hope SDA Church

Christian Martin

Judge Others and Why Jesus Said Don’t

My message today through the preaching of God's word is entitled, Judge Others, and Why Jesus Says Don't.

Let's bow our heads together as we come before his presence.

Lord, just acknowledging you once more as I stand here.

Lord, I choose to humble myself and pray that you would be the 1 who has heard.

Your word is living and powerful into your house, and that your word, because it's living and powerful, can and will speak to our hearts as we listen.

I pray, Lord, that the Holy Spirit would prepare us to receive your word, that we may leave this place different than in the way that we first arrived.

May we be transformed, edified, and incurrent.

While waiting for a plane, a woman decided to just walk into a store, into a gift shop, and buy herself a magazine.

While she was walking around the store, her eyes caught a bag of cookies and so she bought those cookies too.

As she waited, a gentleman shows up and comes and sits 1 seat away.

He sits and he soon opens a bag of cookies that was in the seat between them, and he took 1 out and proceeded to eat it.

Shocked that this stranger that didn't even introduce himself would do such a thing, she immediately reached over and took 1 cookie herself and ate it.

Not saying anything, the man then took another cookie and ate it.

Well, the scenario played itself out until there was only 1 cookie left.

And the man picked up the cookie and he broke it in 2 and then gave her the other half.

And by now the woman was completely beside herself.

Well, before she could do anything else, they announced that the boarding would begin.

And so after boarding the plane, oh, believe me, she was still upset, quite upset, until she re-unopened, immediately recognizing the embarrassing moment that took place without her even realizing it.

You know, we don't always judge correctly, do we?

You know, the Greek word translated as judge actually occurs more than 100 times in the New Testament.

As Jesus said when He replied to Simeon's correct answer.

I want you to take note of these passages with your very own Bibles.

For there in Luke chapter 7 beginning with verse 41 we find our first use of the word translated judge.

There in verse 41 Jesus is telling a story and he says There was once a certain creditor who had 2 debtors.

And when they had nothing with which to repay, He freely forgave them both.

Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love Him more?" And He said to him, you have rightly judged.

Again, the use of the word judge in this context simply means that you've come to the right conclusion.

Let me take you to another use of the word judge.

As Paul said when he exhorted the Corinthians to escape from idolatry.

And there in 1 Corinthians 10, verses 14 and 15, he says, therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry, he says.

Judge for yourselves what I say." Again, for yourselves.

The word judge can also mean to justly sentence.

Like when Nicodemus, for example, said in John chapter 7, let's go to yet another text, John chapter 7.

We're looking at the use of the word judge in John chapter 7 verse 51.

Here Nicodemus says, does our law judge a man before it hears him?

And so we have multiple meanings of the word judge.

But now, we come to Jesus' own words in Matthew 7.

In Matthew 7, right there in verse 1, we find these letters in red.

If you have a red letter addition, you know what that means.

That means that Jesus himself spoke these words.

And Jesus unequivocally states, judge not as something that a Christian, a citizen of the kingdom of God, shouldn't do.

So to understand the meaning of Jesus' use of the word, lest we concoct a Bible reveal?

And so what is the meaning of the use of the word that Jesus is recorded here in Matthew 7, verse 1?

And to understand the meaning of Jesus' use of the word, we must understand the context.

That's 1 principle of good, the setting, the context, if you would, of how the passage ought to be interpreted.

So the context of Matthew, Chapter 7, is the sermon on the mount.

In fact, Matthew, Chapter 7 is content early on in the sermon.

You have to remember that the Bible didn't come with chapters and verses.

And so in Matthew, early on in the sermon, going back to Matthew chapter 5 in fact, There in verse 20, Jesus shows that the character and the conduct of His followers should be radically different than those of the scribes and Pharisees.

What Jesus is doing is He is outlining that would be a part of the eternal kingdom of God.

A conduct, a character that would be radically different and He calls them out by name than of the scribes and Pharisees.

In other words, everything should be done, everything done should be characterized by a mature kind of love.

Not in the fashion of a country who are spiritually mature, spiritually mature, reflecting their Father in heaven.

And everything that follows, the rest of the discourse, as he outlines these various characteristics, must be understood in the light of this statement.

It is of a heavenly country, 1 that is radically different than those of scribes and Pharisees.

So what did Jesus have in mind when He said, Judge not, that you be not judged.

Well, let's begin by considering what he is not referring to.

What is he not referring to when he says judge not?

Well, first of all, he is not referring to a sense of spiritual discernment that Christians of all ages should possess.

He's not talking about don't have discernment.

For there is a place in this fallen world to rightly judge between good and evil, between right and wrong.

Because as Christians, we live in this world, but we are not of the world.

Because the world is under the sway of the enemy.

And as inhabitants of this world, We must judge rightly between good and evil.

That's at the very heart of the great controversy.

The battlefield is in the mind, and we ought to judge rightly between right and wrong.

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Judge Others and Why Jesus Said Don’t

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