Bible Studies for Life Series for November 18: The cure for anxious care

Posted: 11/09/07

Bible Studies for Life Series for November 18

20/20 vision

• Matthew 7:1-12

By Steve Dominy

First Baptist Church, Gatesville

The Christian life cannot be lived in isolation; it is not an individualistic affair. Our tendency is to make our faith private, to wall it off from the rest of our life and fly solo.

Tom T. Hall wrote a song that captures our isolationist Christianity, “Me and Jesus, got our own thing going; Me and Jesus, got it all worked out. Me and Jesus, got our own thing going. We don’t need anybody to tell us what it’s all about.”

While I love listening to Tom T. Hall, his theology in this song is way off base. It may be that he writes in response to the kind of judgmental attitude Jesus condemns in chapter 7. Jesus does not believe the Christian community will be without conflict and gives us the way to deal with conflict between brothers.

“Judge not lest ye be judged” is one of the best-known phrases in all the Bible. It also is one of the most misunderstood and most wrongly applied phrases in all of the Bible. We cannot understand it to mean that we are to turn a blind eye to other people’s faults (or our own), nor can we understand it to mean that we cannot distinguish between right and wrong.

To declare an action or attitude to be sin is not casting judgment on a person. Jesus calls us to use the discernment we have been given to choose what is right and to do what is right. This section deals with the manner in which we are right.

The story of the prodigal son is a good example of what Jesus was teaching. While we generally associate the story with the son who left and squandered everything, it really is the story of a man with two sons.

The son who stayed home had done everything right. The problem was he had judged his brother, and in doing so, he was right in the wrong way. If he had recognized his brother had done wrong yet accepted him home, he would have been right. But he not only condemned what his brother had done, but also condemned his brother.

The word we translate “judge” carries with it the idea of condemnation. Jesus is concerned with the self-righteous attitude that finds fault in everyone else but never looks at its own faults.

All of us have known Christians with this attitude, and if we are honest with ourselves, we have been guilty of it as well. Jesus had every opportunity to condemn not only our actions but us, yet on the cross he asked, “Father, forgive them.” If Jesus, who is Lord and Judge of all, refuses to condemn us, who are we to condemn?

Jesus follows this with a section on hypocrisy. All of us are sinners. We stand before God guilty of sin and rebellion. None of us has an excuse, and all of us have been disqualified from the bench. To stand in judgment when we are just as guilty as the person whom we judge is the height of hypocrisy.

That is the point that Jesus is trying to get across in verses 3 and 4—not that we are supposed to ignore the speck in our brother’s eye, but that we do so with the recognition that we are in the same shape. The hypocrite’s error is not in recognizing fault in his brother but in not applying that same criticism to himself. The standard Jesus sets for us in verses 1-4 is that we are to play neither the judge nor the hypocrite, but the brother.

Verse 6 is one of the most difficult for us to deal with, so much so that most of us never deal with it at all. When we deal with a passage such as this, it is a good idea to look at other passages with similar themes.

In Matthew 10, Jesus sends his disciples out on a mission with specific instructions. One of those that is applicable to our text is Matthew 10:14: “Whoever does not receive you, nor heed your words, as you go out of that house, or that city, shake the dust off your feet.”

What we must take note of is that Jesus’ admonition in verse 6 comes immediately after his instruction not to be judgmental or hypocritical. There are those who never will respond to the gospel. As we share the gospel, there comes a point at which we recognize that our efforts will be more fruitful somewhere else. This does not mean we cease to pray for those who are stubborn to the gospel. It does mean we have to be willing to go to those who are receptive to the grace of God.

It is a natural move for Jesus to go from our relationships together to our relationship with God. Perhaps he makes this transition because we cannot do what he has commanded us in verses 1-6 without divine help. Jesus’ call to ask, seek and knock is the call to persistent prayer. Not the prayer that badgers God, but consistently and constantly seeks his wisdom, presence and mercy.

It is confident prayer because God wants to give us all good things. We can have confidence in our requests to God because of God’s great faithfulness. If even we can seek the best for our children in our fallen nature, how much more does God seek the best for us?

The Golden Rule concludes this section. It sums up what Jesus makes explicit in our relationships to one another; in all that we do, we are to treat others in the manner we desire to be treated. Jesus goes on to say this is the law and the prophets, which places it in pretty high standing. We will not be wrong before God and others if we keep this in the forefront of our actions.