Stop Criticizing!
Matthew 7:1-6
 
This evening I want to encourage you to turn in your Bible to Matthew 7:1-6. Now, this is a fascinating portion of Scripture, a Scripture that is frequently referred to and often quoted, and yet sometimes not really put together in a total package as I believe the Lord intended for it to be.
 
Let me give you a little background as we approach it. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus touches on all of the areas of a believer's life.  
 
He began with our perspective on self in the Beatitudes, with our perspective on the world in the statements on salt and light, with our perspectives on the Word of God as He talked about the law and the fact that it was immutable and unchanging, our perspective on the moral law or holiness as He discussed the fact that we are to have an inward commitment as well as an external one.
 
He discussed our religious activity -- giving, praying, fasting. He discussed our perspective, as we have just recently seen, on money and possessions, material goods.
 
And now he comes to a text that deals with our relations with other people.   Now, as in all the other elements of the Sermon on the Mount, the perspective here is given in contrast to the view of the scribes and the Pharisees. They were the existing religious influence of the time, and, against the background of their perspective, the Lord presents the truth.
They came along, and their view of life was to be proud, and the Beatitudes were to be humble. They were a part of the system. Christ said that we are to be salt and light to the system.
 
They had denied the Word of God and established their own. Christ reestablished the affirmation of His Word and His Word alone. They believed only in an external morality. Christ brought about an internal morality. They acted out their religious activities of giving, praying and fasting in a hypocritical, superficial way, and the Lord said it has to be from the heart. They were preoccupied with money and possessions, and the Lord says you are not so to be, but with the kingdom.
 
And they were very involved in wrongful human relationships, and the Lord sets it right here. And in so contrasting Himself with them, He is unmasking the inadequacy of human religion, and reaffirming the fact that true religion comes only from God.
 
The last area, then, of His comparison, is this area, in chapter 7, of human relations. And then from there He goes to sum up and finalize His message.
 
Now, the area of human relations goes all the way through verse 12, but we're only going to be considering the first six this evening, and we'll get to the second section, the second six verses, next time.
 
But suffice it to say at this point that the Pharisees were so proud and so self-styled and so self-righteous and so smug and so convinced of their own superiority that one of the natural results of that was that they became totally condemning and judgmental of everybody else.
Did you ever notice that? If you want to invent a system that measures everyone else and how they live and what they do and how moral they are and all that since it’s your system, you get ot be judge. 
 
That's exactly what happened in the Pharisees' case. And so they became extremely judgmental of other people. They condemned and criticized any and everybody who didn't come up to their own standard.
 
So Jesus comes along now in the Sermon on the Mount to address human relations from a Kingdom perspective. You might not think you could sum up all there is on human relations in 12 verses, and I suppose a man couldn't, but Jesus can.
 
I mean, there are books on behavioral psychology ad infinitum, ad nauseum, trying to figure out how to coordinate human relations. Jesus says more in 12 verses than all of them put together. And He has an amazing way of summing up the whole world of human relationships in very simple terms, because He sees the whole come together.
 
And in Jesus’ typical style, he approaches the subject in a very practical way. 
 
In verses 1 to 6, He deals with what we are not to do. Then in verses 7 to 12, He tells us what we are to do. First a negative and then a positive. And the sum of the two addresses every human relationship you can ever imagine. If you want to know how to act in your family or on your job or in your neighborhood or in your recreation, or you want to know how to deal with people in business, this is the sum of it all.
Now, for this evening, we're going to look at the negative, what not to do, verses 1 to 6, and the principle appears in verse 1.
 
Note it. "Judge not."
 
That's the principle. Don't judge.
 
Now the initial response to that is to say, "Well, you can't reduce all of human relations down to that." That sounds so simplistic.
 
Yes you can, and I’ll prove it to you as we move along. 
 
But let’s begin with the principle: Don't judge.
 
You hear people throw that around alot. "Judge not, lest ye be judged." "Who are you to judge?" This perhaps one of the most misunderstood of Jesus’ teachings. Tolstoy, for example, the Russian novelist, said, "Christ here totally forbids the human institution of any law courts." Now, that is a gross misunderstanding of this.
 
On the other end, there are people who say, "We should never criticize. We should never condemn anybody for anything. We should never evaluate anything at all. We don't want to judge, lest we should be judged."
 
It’s complicated by a gross ignorance of Scripture and hatred for theology. Our time hates theology. Our time hates dogma. Our time resists doctrine. Our time doesn't like convictions. People speak about love, and they speak about compromise. They speak about ecumenism.
They speak about unity, anything to get everybody together. And somebody who talks about doctrine or dogma or convictions is generally unpopular in many circles.
 
Our time dislikes strong men, even though I think we're waking up to the fact that we could use a few. Our time dislikes men with convictions, who speak up, who confront society, who disturb the status quo, men who know what they believe and why they believe it and are not intimidated about saying it. Such men today are branded as troublemakers. They're branded as controversial.
 
But, you know, as you go back, if you have any sense of perspective in church history, you know there have been times in history, the history of the church, when men were praised for being men of conviction. They were praised for being men of principle, men of standards, men of dogma.
 
But today such men are difficult, non-cooperative, self-styled, unloving. And the man who is praised is the compromiser.
 
And so some people have taken "judge not" and just fit it into the mentality of the time. The Lord is obviously not condemning law courts. He designed and instituted them. Nor is the Bible condemning any kind of judging or discriminating. The Bible tells us, as believers, that we must discern; we must know the truth from the falsehood; we must evaluate the fruits of people.
 
 
 
In fact, majority of the Sermon on the Mount is predicated on a clear understanding of the distinction between true religion and false, between hypocrisy and reality.
 
For example, look at verse 6. it says, "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine." Now, if you're not going to do that, you're going to find out who the hogs are and who the hogs are so you know not to give them that. There must be a judgment made.
 
Look at verse 15. "Beware of false prophets who come in sheep's clothing." Now, if you only perceive things superficially, you'll see the sheep's clothing and never know the wolf that's under there. There must be discernment. There must be judging, or we don't know the false prophets. We don't know the dogs. We don't know the swine that we're to avoid.
 
So in the very passage itself we are told to test, discriminate, evaluate between the true and the false.
 
Later in the Gospel of Matthew, the church is told to confront a sinning brother in chapter 18, and to confront that brother boldly, forthrightly about his sinfulness, and to make it a matter of public knowledge if he doesn't repent.  Scripture calls us to discern.
 
We must discern. We must discriminate. We must evaluate. There are things we must judge. That's not what the Lord's talking about.
 
 
What is He talking about? What He's talking about is the critical, judgmental, condemning, self-righteous egotism of the Pharisees. They weren't criticizing people because of sin. They were criticizing them because of their personality, their character, their weaknesses, their frailties, perhaps the way they looked or the way they dressed or the fact that they didn't do the things the way they did them. They were criticizing their motives, which they couldn't see or perceive anyway in their humanness. You don't know why a person does what he does.
 
So if you want an easy translation of what it says in verse 1, it says, "Stop criticizing." Stop criticizing. Who are you to criticize other people? That's the issue.
 
We have a right to make discernments based on observations, but we are never to be condemning and critical, especially when we are guilty of the same kinds of sins we criticize others for. 
 
We're not to judge people's motives. We're not to condemn them because they don't look like we think they ought to look or they don't act or talk like we think they ought to talk or act.
They don't come up to our standard. We have no business doing that. That is forbidden.
 
Do you ever come to a conclusion and you were wrong? Maybe it was a hasty, snap decision, and you didn’t have all the information? Isn’t that embarrassing? 
 
 
 
That’s what the Lord is forbidding here. That hasty, unwarranted, unjust, unmerciful condemnation. We're not to do that. And then, worst of all, after we've made that judgment in our heart, we go tell people about it and we become a tale bearer or a gossiper. So we're not to do that.
 
He gives three reasons why not. And I'm going to go through these rapidly, so hang on to your seat.
 
Number one, to make that kind of a judgment shows we have a
 
1.    Wrong View of God
 
Jesus says: "Judge not, that ye be not judged." And He simply reminds them that they are not the final court. You do this, and you will be judged. Have you forgotten that you are not God? That is precisely the bottom line in this sin. To judge other people, their motives and so forth, is to play God. It is to usurp the divine position.
 
John 5 tells us that judgment belongs to God, and He's committed that judgment to the Son, and that's the extent of it, folks. We are not, at this particular time, to sit in judgment.
 
There will be a time millennially when there will be a joining together with the Lord as He reigns, and we will carry out some of His rule and judgment, the Bible says. But at this time and for now, we have no right to judge. We literally blaspheme God by usurping His proper place.
 
 
Think of it that way. Every time you sit in judgment on someone, every time you criticize their motives, or every time you think you have a right to make an evaluation, you're playing God. Every time you carry out vengeance or a vendetta or you get even on your own, you are playing God. Every time you pass sentence on someone arbitrarily, you're playing God.
 
Every time you criticize somebody because they don't do something the way you think it ought be done, or because you think you've figured out their motive, you pass judgment and set yourself up as God.
 
Secondly, don't judge, because when you do, you show you have a
 
2. Wrong View of Others
 
Verse 2
 
You see, most people think that they can judge because they're under a different condition than everybody else is. The Pharisees thought they were exempt. They lived on some strata beyond the purview of any judgment. I mean, they were up here where everything was fine, and only people down here got it.
 
But he says in verse 2, "With what judgment you judge, you'll be judged, and with what measure you measure, it'll be measured to you again." You're going to get just what you give.
 
 
 
Now, some people think this is talking about human relationships. You judge somebody, they'll judge you the same way. You measure out something to them, they'll measure it out to you the same way. And they keep it on a human level. There is a sense in which the way we treat people, they'll treat us. That's true, to some extent, but that's not the heart of this verse at all. That's to miss the point.
 
Because, you see, how men treat us is not what motivates us. That's a small issue with me. I mean, what people think of me is not a major restriction on my behavior. A man or a woman who walks with God is not so concerned about what men think as about what God thinks. And the great restriction on our life, the great confining element of our life, is what God thinks and what God feels about us.
 
Oh, we're not indifferent to what men feel. Everyone likes to be liked. But more than anything else we seek God and His judgment and His evaluation. 
 
And so I believe it's talking about God's judgment. And what He's saying is, what judgment you judge, God will judge you with. And what measure you measure, God will measure to you again. In other words, God is going to evaluate you on the basis of your knowledge, your light. If you say, "All right. I know enough to judge all of you people on this," then you prove you know enough to be judged on it yourself.
 
I mean, if you're the guy who is going to be able to judge everybody else at that level, then you manifest evidence that you know enough to be judged for that same standard.
That's why the Bible says, "To whom much is given," what? "Much is required." That's why the Bible says that when you trample underfoot the blood of the covenant and count the sacrifice of Christ an unholy thing, and you reject the full gospel, as the Book of Hebrews says, you reject the whole knowledge of everything there is to know, and you reject all of that, you're going to receive the hottest hell and the sorest punishment of all. Because the more you reject, the greater evidence you give of guilt. And that's really what He's saying. The more you know, the more you're responsible for.
 
You see, they had a wrong view of others. They thought they were exempt and everybody else was going to get it. And He says, "No, I don't have a double standard. You're going to be judged on the same basis that you're judging everybody else."
 
There's no double standard. We should not criticize, because in criticizing, we play God. And in criticizing, we assume that we're exempt from what other people are not exempt from, and we miss the point. That's the wrong view of others. They're not under us. They're equal with us. And God will judge us by the same standard.
 
If you're negative, gossipy, tale bearing, critical, judgmental, you're under the false illusion that you're exempt from judgment. For whatever you condemn in somebody else, you prove that you should be condemned for in your own life by virtue of such knowledge.
Criticism then becomes a boomerang. You throw it out and it comes right back. And unloving criticism will recoil on your own head at the hand of God.
 
Listen. To judge wrongly is to play God. And it is a serious thing. Because you will be biased and you will be bribed by your own self-righteousness, by your own pride, by your own ego. And you can't judge righteous judgment, because you don't have all the facts.
 
In early Greece, whenever they had a very severe case to try, they tried it in the middle of the night, in the pitch dark, so there were no faces, so that no one would be prejudiced. And all they would hear were the words of the case.
 
In Persia once, there was a judge who accepted a bribe.  And so he rendered a wrong verdict, for money. Cambyses was the Persian king. And he heard what happened. And so he ordered the judge to be executed. And after the judge was executed, he ordered his soldiers to skin him. Strip off all his skin. He took all of the skin of that judge, and with it, he covered a chair. He then ordered that every judge sit on that chair when judging in a court in Persia. I’d say that would be a fairly good reminder of justice.
 
You see, we are prejudiced by our own egos, and we are impotent by our own ignorance. We have no business trying to play God or assume we are operating on another standard than anybody else is.
 
Finally, when you critically judge other people, you show
 
3. A Wrong View of Yourself
 
 
Here’s what Jesus was really getting at: Do you think you are so good that you can sit around checking out everybody else? You've got nothing to work on? You got it all under control, so that you could spend your time evaluating everyone else?
 
Some of us would do well to take the time we spend criticizing other people and put it to action in prayer and confession of our own sin somewhere in a closet. Because until we get our own life straightened out, we have little usefulness in trying to assist someone else.
 
That is essentially what the Lord says in
 
verses 3 and 4
 
See the picture? Here's a guy with a twig in his eye, and he's miserable.
 
But imagine a twig or a splinter in your eye, and here comes a guy, "I'll help you," and sticking out of his eye is an 8-foot 2x4. I mean, he can't even get over there to help the guy, let alone see what's going on. It's the blind leading the blind. "Or how wilt thou say to thy brother," verse 4, "let me pull the splinter out of your eye, and behold you've got a 2x4 in your own eye?" Ridiculous. It's comedic, it's so bizarre.
 
We are unfit judges, not only because we are fallible and we can't play the part of God, and because we are partial in our own favor and tend to think we have a different standard than everybody else, but because we are hopelessly and utterly blind when it comes to perception.
 
Because, listen, as soon as you approach someone to judge them or to criticize them or to force them to your standard, you give evidence of the fact that you are blind, or you'd be working on your own plank instead of their splinter. See? That's the point.
 
Now, people have argued back and forth about what the splinter is and what the plank is. And some have said the splinter is sort of a little sin. Well, I don't see it as a little sin. I think it's pretty severe sin, a twig in your eye. And then they say, "But the plank is a vulgar, heinous, vile, wretched, evil, horrible sin." I don't see that, either. I mean, people with a vile, wretched, evil, heinous, horrible sin in their eye aren't going around trying to straighten out other people. They're usually trying to justify themselves. And so someone with a smaller sin they would easily justify, right? That wouldn't be a problem for them.
 
Usually the people who see everything wrong in somebody else's life see absolutely nothing wrong in their own life. And the only gross, vile, wretched sin that never sees anything wrong in its own life is what? Self-righteousness. And that's what the plank is. As long as you're self-righteous, as long as you're spiritually proud, as long as you set yourself up as a judge, you can't help anybody out with any sin.
 
It is interesting, though, that in the Lord's caricature, that is a far worse sin than any other, because it plays God. It is the vilest of all sins. Do you realize that every situation in the New Testament, Jesus condemns sin, not the sinner, except one, self-righteousness. And there He blasted the sinner with the sin, because it is the worst sin of all.
It plays God. It denies the gospel. It denies the need for redemption. It says, "I'm holy like I am." And so the plank is self-righteousness.
 
And as long as you're self-righteous, and you think you're all right, and you never bother dealing with your own sin, there's no way you're going to help anybody else. You're blind. It is the sin of subtle, self-righteous criticism. And it's a plank in your own eye. And you cannot help anybody else.
 
That’s why Jesus began with the Beatitudes. Listen, they aren’t just thrown out there at the beginning as some sort of introduction that is unrelated to the rest of the Sermon. 
 
He’s getting to application now, and it builds on those Beatitudes. They are the key to this whole thing. Until you have humbly and meekly hungered and thirsted for righteousness out of a recognition that you're sinful, you can't follow up on any of these things. The truly holy person is lost in his own sinfulness. He's not trying to pull splinters out of people's eyes with a plank in his own eye. He sees himself for the way he is.
 
Verse 5
 
You hypocrite; you phony; you absolutely false person, pretending to be what you're not.  We can't judge, because it's a wrong view of God, others and self. Who are you to do that?
 
Now, let me close this up this way:
 
You say, "I'm not going to judge. I hear that message. I'm going to go in a corner and confess my sin and take care of me. 
 
You immediately run into two dangers.
 
Danger number one is we will not be willing to confront a sinning brother.
 
We'll say, "Boy, I'm not going to judge. Judge not, lest ye be judged. Who am I to say? We certainly don't want to do that."
 
And danger number two, we will not discern or discriminate at all. We'll say, "Well, we don't want to get into that and we become vulnerable. 
 
We'll just take everything in and accept it at face value.
 
Why are they dangers? Because first of all, if we don’t confront sin, then the church is going to get corrupted. And if we don't discriminate the true from the false, we're all going to go waltzing down the line into heresy. So the two dangers are that we would fail to deal with a brother in sin, and we would fail to deal with a heretic, or one who would corrupt the faith, or one who would mock the faith or blaspheme the faith, and we must do that.
 
And so the Lord closes, then, with an injunction to cover both of those, and it is a masterful balancing.
 
First of all, he says we must still, even though we have to be careful, we must maintain the tension and the balance, so that we still reprove and rebuke a sinning brother.
Verse 5, "First, cast the beam out of thine own eye." Now, He doesn't stop with, "It's in your eye." He says, "Get it out of your eye. Get rid of your self-righteousness. Get rid of your pride."
 
How do you do that? I believe it's a matter of confession of sin. Don't you? I think first you have to look and see that it's there.
 
Verse 3 Consider not the plank in your own eye?" And the word "considerest" there means to perceive in a meditative, prolonged way.
 
It is a constant look, a look of understanding, a look of comprehension.
 
And so he's saying, "Take a good look. Don't you see you've got a spiritual problem yourself? Don't you see you've got an ungodly self-righteousness that makes you judgmental and critical of other people? Consider that."
 
Having considered it, you go to verse 5.
 
Cast it out.  And how do you do that? By confessing it to the Lord.
 
I Corinthians 11:21, "If we judge ourselves, we won't be judged." Right? God's not going to have to chasten the sin of self-righteousness if we deal with it. And so I bring my life fully to the judgment of God, and I ask Him to cleanse, to purify, to remove it.
 
And once I've done that, I can move on to verse 5, and "then shalt thou see clearly to cast the moat out of thy brother's eye."
Listen, we've got to get the thing out of our brother's eye, don't we? We can't let him go on in sin. That's to hate him, Leviticus 19:17 says. We've got to get it out. But we've got to deal with, first, ourselves.
 
Listen to how David put it. Psalm 51. "Create in me, oh, Lord, a," what? "Clean heart." Did you hear that? "Create in me, oh, Lord, a clean heart." Now listen. "Then will I teach transgressors thy ways and sinners shall be converted to thee." But there's no way to teach a transgressor the right way, and there's no way to convert a sinner to God, until I have in my own life a clean heart.
 
He's not saying, "Don't help a sinning brother." He's saying, "Get your own act together first." Because then your help is going to be the right kind. It's going to be the humble help. It's going to be the meek and quiet spirit. If you restore a brother, it says in Galatians 6:1, "restore him in love, in meekness and fear, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted." You don't come to a sinning brother on top. You come from underneath, in humility.
 
Jesus said to Peter, and this is a very potent passage, in Luke 22, He said, "Peter, Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you like wheat." He's going to find out what in you is real. "But I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not." Now, listen to this. "And when you are recovered, strengthen the brethren." The point is, he couldn't strengthen the brethren until he got recovered himself. He was useless until his own life was made right.
 
"Ye who are spiritual," Galatians 6:1, "restore such a one." We have to be right before we can help. So the key is a selfless, humble love. We are not to be a judge, playing God. We're not to be a superior, thinking there's a double standard. We're not to be a hypocrite, blaming everybody else and not seeing the sin in our own life. But we are to be a brother, and, having dealt with that sin, we are to deal, in brotherly love.
 
The second danger is that people who say, "Well, judge not, judge not," like today, in this flabby, sentimental day, they say, "Well, we don't want to discriminate. No doctrine. We don't want to get anybody upset. We just want to love everybody. We'll all get together." They don't discern, and they don't discriminate.
 
And then verse 6 comes like a thunderbolt to them. Listen to it. "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs. Neither cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and lacerate you."
 
Now, listen. This is a fascinating verse, and I want to pull it together for you, because I think it'll really open your understanding.
 
Dogs in those days were not the little nice smelling, painted nails, rhinestone collars, funny little sweater things that flip flop around the houses today. They were not the little lap dog, pet dog things that we spend a fortune on and all.
 
Dogs in those days, apart from the dogs that worked with the flocks, and, of course, in Job it talks about the dog of the flocks, it would be a trained dog that worked with the sheep, but the dogs in the cities were a mongrel, ugly big bunch of dogs that scavenged around the city and ate the garbage, and they were a horrible, ugly bunch of wild dogs.
 
The Jews believed them to be filthy. The Old Testament talks about that. Unclean. The Psalms say they threaten, they howl, they snarl, they are a greedy, shameless group. They are called contemptible in I Samuel. Dogs were an ugly kind of a being. They weren't anything like we have today, except for those that worked with the sheep. They would be pariahs, savage, mongrels. Lived in the garbage heaps. And holy things were not to be thrown to the dogs.
 
What are the holy things? Well, when you came to the temple to make a sacrifice, the sacrifice would be presented to the Lord, you'd keep a part to take home. A part would go to the priest for his meal. And a part would go on the altar. The part that went on the altar was for God, and it would be consumed on the altar as an offering to the Lord.
 
Now, no priest would take the part on the altar and give it to dogs. He might throw the bones left from the part that he took, and you might throw the bones out so the dogs could have something to eat, the wild dogs roaming the streets, but no way was a priest going to take that which was offered to God on the altar and throw it to the dogs. That would be a horrible desecration by an unclean, filthy, vile animal. They wouldn't do that.
 
 
 
Jesus says, "Anybody knows you don't throw the holy part of a sacrifice to a bunch of wild dogs." In other words, the Lord is saying, "Look, you'd better be discriminating in your ministry. There are some people who will hear your criticisms and who will respond to your work and respond to your word and respond to your efforts, but don't waste the precious truths on those who would shred it and tear it without a thought of its significance."
 
And then He gives them a second illustration.
 
Secondly, He says hogs. Dogs and hogs. He says, "You don't throw pearls to swine, either, because they'll trample them under their feet, and they'll get so angry they'll turn and tear you up."
 
Now, the pigs in those days weren't quite as domesticated, perhaps, as today, and you get a bunch of hogs mad at you, you could be in real trouble. You come out pretending to feed them and throw them pearls. You say, "Who'd do that? Nobody would do that." That's the point. I mean, a man would have to liquidate his entire fortune to get just one pearl from the Persian Sea or the Indian Ocean. They were priceless things, incredible things.
 
Who's going to throw a pearl to a hog? The hog can't appreciate a pearl. True? Hogs don't appreciate pearls. Don't waste things on those who don't appreciate them. Therefore, you're going to have to discern, discriminate that.
 
This is a tremendous truth, people. We have to learn in our ministry to be discriminating. You don't say everything to everybody.
Paul even said to the Corinthians, "I could not speak unto you certain things because you were carnal. I wouldn't waste them on your misunderstandings. I wouldn't waste them on your sinfulness."
 
So what’s the point? Who are the hogs and the dogs? Look at II Peter 2, and I'll show you. II Peter 2. It says, in this chapter, that there were false prophets among the people. "And there will be false teachers," II Peter 2:1. And verse 2 says, "And many will follow their pernicious ways." Listen, many are going to follow the pernicious ways of false prophets, false teachers.
 
So all the people who are involved in the false systems of religion, the adamant, covetous, lustful, evil, vile people, such as those who were drowned in the flood, verse 5, those who were destroyed in Sodom and Gomorrah for their homosexuality, those who walk in the lust of uncleanness, who are self-willed, who mock angels, who are scabs. He calls them scabs. Filth spots. Verse 14, cursed children, in the way of Balaam. Verse 17, wells without water. Liars. So forth.
 
And who have, verse 20, "escaped the pollutions of the world through a head knowledge of the Lord Jesus, but have turned away from it."
And then verse 22, "that it has happened unto them according to the true proverb. The dog is turned to his own vomit again, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire."
 
You could take one of those street dogs and bring him in and try to change his diet, but he'll go right back to his vomit.
You can take a hog in the house, clean it up, leave the door open, it'll be right back in the slop. Hogs and dogs are those who, having known the truth, have followed the way of false teachers and false prophets and liars and deceivers.
 
They have intentionally turned their back on the truth of the gospel. 
 
You look at all the junk going on in America and around the world today with homosexuality and gay and lesbians. 
 
And your first reaction is that somebody ought to give them the gospel. And your second reaction is that they are the hogs and the dogs of which Jesus spoke, who have willfully and wholesale turned their backs on the truth of God, and we should not allow them to trample under their evil feet the purity of the gospel message.
 
That's a hard, hard word from the Lord, and only God can guide us in what we should d in a specific situation. When the disciples were sent out in Matthew, chapter 10, he said, "If you come to a place and they don't hear your message, you leave that place, and you shake the dust off your feet."
 
Listen, Jesus was patient with Peter and He was patient with Thomas, but He didn't say one single to Herod Antipas, because Herod Antipas had a hard heart, and He didn't waste the pearls.
 
 
 
 
And the apostle Paul in the 18th chapter of Acts went and he preached to the Jews and they blasphemed and they mocked and they rejected, and he said, "Your blood be on you. From now on I go to the Gentiles." He turned his back and walked out. You say, "Well, what about them?" Well, listen, later, some of them were saved. But they had to be saved by coming to the gospel, not by the gospel coming to them. Paul turned his back and walked out.
 
In John's epistle, he says, "If somebody comes to your door and he belongs to one of these false systems, don't let him in your house and don't you bid him godspeed." You say, "Well, what about his soul? Maybe I could win him to the Lord." You let God take care of that. Don't you let him trample the pearl. Don't you throw holy things to dogs.
 
Now, what is it saying? What is the holy thing, and what is the pearl? I believe without a doubt it's the Word of God. It's the truth of the Word of God, encompassing the gospel and all of the contents of the Scripture.
 
We ought to be careful how we use the Bible because there are things they will reject out there in the world. There are things they will refuse. There are things they will mock and despise. And I choose not to give them that opportunity, for the precious treasures of God's Word.
 
We must make judgments, beloved, but they must be proper, righteous judgments. We must discriminate, and we must deal with sin in the life of another brother or sister.
 
But we must never be judgmental and critical, because we set ourselves up as some self-righteous judge. And I'll tell you frankly, folks, it all comes down to an attitude.
 
Are you criticizing, are you evaluating, are you discerning, are you discriminating in order to know the truth and honor God? Or are you doing it to exalt yourself and hurt somebody else. Ultimately, it comes to that decision.
 
Let's pray.