Exploring My Strange Bible - To Judge, or Not to Judge - Gospel of Matthew Part 11

Episode Date: July 9, 2018

Today we are going to explore one of the most memorable teachings of Jesus that many people, even non-Christians, know. It is the teaching that centers around judgment or the idea “Don’t judge so that you will not be judged”. What did Jesus mean when he said not to judge other people? This is one of the teachings of Jesus that has truly taken on a life of its own. How has its meaning morphed over time, and what did Jesus intend for this teaching to mean? We address these questions and more in this episode.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. All right. Well, in this episode, we're going to be continuing our series exploring the gospel according to Matthew. We're camped out in the Sermon on the Mount. These were teachings I did

a number of years ago when I was a pastor at Door of Hope Church in Portland. And we're going to explore and reflect on one of the most memorable teachings of Jesus. It's actually one of the teachings of Jesus that many people who don't follow Jesus know because they often use it and throw it back in the face of people who say they do follow Jesus. It's the teaching of Jesus to don't judge so that you will not be judged. What did Jesus mean when he said, don't judge other people? And this is one of those teachings of Jesus that has truly taken on a life of its own and come to mean all kinds of things that, of course, Jesus didn't intend it to mean.

So let's go back to the sources, back to the mouth of Jesus himself. What would it mean for him to say something like don't judge other people? And of course, he gives a famous kind of short parable and visual image about it. We're going to explore it all. It's very powerful. It has to do, as always, with Jesus about the core heart issues about how we view ourselves and other people before God and how we treat other people. So there you go. It's powerful stuff. Jesus is straight up, man. So there you go. He's going to get in our face again. And that's the best possible news that we could hear. So let's open up to Matthew, beginning of chapter seven, and we'll learn together. We are kind of at a turning point as we come to chapter 7,

and Jesus is going to explore the dynamics of what it means to be a community of his disciples and actually helping each other grow as we follow him together. Because Jesus has no vision that we can do this alone. The vision of Christianity in America, which I think I heard this, or I made it up. I don't remember at this point, but I call it me and Jesus in my pickup truck Christianity, where it's just kind of like we're cruising, and anyone else, you might be welcome in the cab, you know, with me and Jesus if I let you in, but for the most part, you're not welcome, you know? Don't tell me what to do. And Jesus, that's just not at all

what he envisions. In fact, just the opposite. He envisions that we are absolutely necessary to each other, but that can get complicated. How we help each other grow can get extremely, extremely complicated. And we have this new mic that's supposed to solve all our problems, but it's totally... Can you guys hear it? Dang it. I won't tell you how expensive it was because I don't know. But I feel like it was expensive.

Anyway, so... All right. So here we go. This is complicated. And these are familiar words. You know, these are, again, some right. So here we go. This is complicated. And these are familiar words. You know, these are, again, some of those teachings of Jesus that even somebody who's not a Christian has probably heard this line, you know. Didn't Jesus say something about not judging people? And, you know, if you Google it, you can find any number of celebrities in the last 10 years who got caught doing something

and then used this line of Jesus to make themselves feel better or something like that in public. I don't judge me or whatever. And this saying of Jesus is profound. He does what he often does, which is use this kind of broad attention-getting line to get you to be like, whoa, what does he mean by that? And then he goes on to clarify and explore through parables and metaphors and so on. And these words are familiar,

and these words actually have a really interesting history in American culture in the last 10 years or so. Almost 10 years ago, I think it was about 2006 or 2007, the Barna Research Group and the Pew Research Forum, I don't know if you've heard of them, they're large statistic gathering institutions, and they did one of the largest surveys of Christianity and the perception of Christianity in American public life and so on.

And so they surveyed tens of thousands of people who self-identify as not being Christians. And so they asked them all kinds of different questions, but one of the questions, and then it kind of made headlines and people wrote books about it and so on, is they had a huge list of words and asked people who are not Christians to pick the top three words that describe the Christians that you know. Did you guys hear about this? This was almost 10 years ago now. And so can you guess the top three? It's not flattering.

It's not flattering news report I'm here to give you. Top number one, judgmental. So looking down on people who don't hold the same whatever moral or religious values. Number two, hypocritical. They don't actually live by those moral or religious values. Number two, hypocritical. They don't actually live by those moral or religious values that they hold other people to. And number three, anti-gay. Anti-gay. So then there's one specific group of people who are targeted for that judgmentalism and hypocrisy and so on. So there you go. Now, here's what's interesting, was the

response that that generated within kind of the Christian community at large, you know, in the last 10 years, is because, you know, most, most of us, we hear those three words, and then you think about yourself, and you're like, well, I'm a Christian, right? If you are, right? You may not be, but I think most of us are, who are here, and we would say, like, I don't, I don't think that describes me, you know? And then you start to think through, like, the friends, you know, who are Christians, you're like, oh, yeah, there's Uncle So-and-So, you know? Like, yeah, he's kind of like that. And you see, like, oh, there's the people on TV, you know, they're kind of like that. But most of the Christians I know

are not like that. And maybe that's just living in the Northwest, I'm not sure, you know? But I think most of us, we would say, I don't think that's me or most of my friends. And so immediately we go, so who's being described by those three words and those tens of thousands of people who aren't Christians? And I remember when I read this and read a book about it and so on, the first place that my mind went was towards a minority, a small minority group of people who say they're Christians, and I would think maybe perhaps some of them are by how they act. I'm not sure. But a small vocal minority of people who at least claim to be representing

Jesus. They go to public places, and they gain a lot of attention, right? And they're loud and they wear sandwich boards. And it's not about like the nice, polite people just handing out literature downtown or something. It's like the sandwich boards, God hates this and that kind of person or whatever and God's sending people to hell and this kind of thing. And, you know, so here's what's interesting, right? So you've got that. That's

what comes to my mind when I hear those three words. And I think that's not actually most of the Christians that I know. It's a very small group of people. But here's what's interesting, is that how, what's interesting is to observe what goes on inside of me when I see that small group, that minority group of people representing Jesus or not, how, you know, you think about that, right? But when you see them. And my most recent time down at Saturday Market, you know, they cruise down there, you know, in their overalls or whatever. It's like the sandwich board. And like, again, it's like, it's so hateful. It actually comes across as utterly hateful. And so there's the guy doing his thing.

There was a sandwich board. You're all going to hell. This kind of thing. This is brilliant. There was someone, I don't know their gender. I assume it was a guy, dressed in a suit, a really nice suit. And the reason I don't know their gender is because they were wearing a mask. And they were standing right next to the sandwich board guy, like right kind of close, next to him, facing him.

And what they were wearing was this huge werewolf headpiece. And just like peacefully standing here right next to the sandwich board guy, just like right staring at him. And it's funny. I was like, that's actually really funny, you know, what the person's doing. And I kind of reveled in it personally. I was just like, yeah, like that guy deserves that, you know? And in my heart, upon reflection, I was surprised at how I felt towards sandwich board guy. I totally judged that dude. Like I judged him up and down, you know?

I'm just like backwards, head in the sand, don't you get how to relate to people in a normal, healthy way? All these things, and the reason why I'm sharing this is because this backlash of like, okay, so there's judgmental, hypocritical, anti-gay Christians or whatever. I think that's a small minority. So what do we do?

Instead of, like, we don't even think about judging people who aren't Christians. What we judge is other Christians. Christians judge other Christians way more intensely and way more, you know, in a rude manner than anybody. You know what I'm saying? Like, Christians are horrible to other Christians, especially other Christians that they disagree with in terms of theology or church practice and so on. We just eat each other alive. And so Jesus knows this. He knows this. He knows that there's something in us that creates this posture of arrogance towards others and ignorance towards ourselves.

But yet at the same time, it's precisely broken, screwed up people like us that he's trying to bring together around the message of the kingdom to help each other grow, which means it's going to create mess and it's going to create conflict because we actually judge each other in more harsh ways than we do anyone outside the Christian community. And so this is why these

words are so important for us. Notice that Jesus doesn't end this teaching by saying, therefore, you know, don't have hard conversations with each other and just kind of walk away if it gets difficult. Jesus ends this teaching by actually encouraging us to move towards each other, but only after we've done some serious self-reflection and self-examination. He knows it's messy, and it is messy, because we're all judgmental. If you don't think you're judgmental, just ask yourself how you think about and perceive people who you do think are judgmental. And you judge them, right? You're like, I hate bigots.

You're like, wait a minute, don't you get that? Right? We're all like this. We go into a room, and what Jesus is getting at here, and we'll explore this more, he's not just talking about judging in the sense of looking at someone's behavior, weighing that decision in light of your own moral compass and saying,

like, yeah, I think that's a wrong decision. I don't think that's the right thing to do. He's not talking about that. He's talking about something more, something that we do or think towards others in the way that infects our relationships. It's corrosive. It's destructive. And it's that something more that he's getting at here. And we all do it. We all do it, right? We observe someone's behavior. We observe their appearance, and somehow we dehumanize them, which is so much

of what Jesus is criticizing in the Sermon on the Mount, is the ways that we don't love our neighbor in charitable ways in how we relate to each other. And so we see someone's behavior or appearance, and instead of recognizing their complexity as a human, instead of seeing their dignity, whether you like them or not, their dignity as a divine image-bearing human being, we strip all that complexity away and we define them by the choice or the behavior that we disagree with. And then they're that person.

And we're like, oh, I know who they are. And we've kind of sized them up, and then we've assigned them to a category. They're this kind of person. And then we even go a next step, and we're like, and surely God agrees with me about my opinion of this person. And that's what Jesus is getting at here. He just says, not in the kingdom of my disciples. That's not how they operate towards each other. And so what does he mean exactly? What does he mean? What does he not mean? And what are the implications for us? And that's what I want us to explore. But this is crucial. What we're talking about is the

day-to-day of our relationships with each other, and how is it that we invite people into our lives to point out character flaws in areas where we're making stupid decisions and we need to grow? But the moment you invite someone in to do that, it just gets very complex. So Jesus gives us wisdom. He gives us guidance on how to do that. And it's profound. Probably like many of Jesus' teachings are familiar to us, but when you stop and you reflect, you see how much wisdom and brilliance there really is here. So let's first just look at the words that he used. Look at the first line here. Do not judge, or you too will be judged. I'm going to do my thing that I often do, you know, teach you words from a dead ancient language, right? In the Bible. The Greek word used in Matthew's gospel for judge is a very standard word. It's a lot like our English

word judge, but it has a pretty wide range of meaning, just like our English word judge does. It's the word krino. Krino. Class? Crino. Yes. Very simple. So at its base, it just means to decide. To look at two options, two or more, right? You have more than one thing in front of you, and you survey, you evaluate, and you decide, this one is whatever, superior, it's the right thing for whatever reason. Chocolate or vanilla? Clearly vanilla. Like where? Clearly vanilla. And I don't know what kind of vanilla

you've had. But so, all right. So that involves that. That's a decision. It's a decision that I've made based off of experience. I can survey, you know, the evidence is on vanilla is far superior, at least certain kinds of vanilla. All right. So you decide. It's just talking about that mental decision. You survey, you distinguish between things and you say this, this one. And so what that's connected to then is another way that we use this concept or this word. And in English, if you have a panel of people, and their job is to survey a whole bunch of things like pies, you know, or dancers or singers or whatever, and they make this decision and it's like their official role, what do we call that group of people? We call them judges. Now, we know, you know, that this is not somebody who went to law school or something like that. It's

just someone who's being called for, they have expertise or not, whatever they have, but they're being called on to survey many pies or dancers or whatever, and then they all agree and say it's, this one's the best or whatever. So it's judge. And then, of course, you can get someone who's educated in the field of law and justice and interpretation of law and so on, and then it's their job to have very complex decisions brought to them about people's decisions and behaviors in criminal cases or whatever, and then they make decisions, they offer a judgment. If you, in our country, it's illegal to operate a motor vehicle if you're under the influence of alcohol or drugs because we say it impairs your judgment. So many of us, when we hear the word judge or judgment, we think of something negative.

What we think of is superiority complex, something like that. And we'll talk about that in a second. But that's not actually the way we use this word in other cases. It's just a simple word describing multiple options. I choose one. I think this is the best. I'm going to go with this one. Does Jesus, does Jesus, is what he is saying here, don't judge. Is Jesus saying, like, ditch your moral compass. is Jesus saying, like, ditch your moral compass. Don't use any, like, critical thinking in significant moral decisions in your life. Is that what he's saying? Clearly not, right? That's absurd. That's absurd. If you just read chapters five and six, I mean, is there any way that you can deal with anger and lust and truthfulness and integrity and know how to love your neighbor

if you aren't growing in your abilities to do this. Becoming a disciple of Jesus means growing in your ability to make moral judgments and to discern between what is good and what is wrong and then even between what is good and what is best. That requires a judgment. And Jesus expects us to grow in that. But it's clear he's getting at a certain kind of judgment or a certain way of doing this. Because look at verse 2. He's talking about a way that you judge, because he says, in the same way that you judge others, you will be judged.

And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. So apparently there are some ways that you could make a decision and have a conviction that someone is doing something and you think it's wrong. You make a judgment, you think it's right, you think their behavior is wrong. There's a way to do that in which like that's fair and you can have that judgment. And if somebody judged you with that kind of way, you would say, yeah, that's fair. Okay, that's cool. But then there are other ways that you can do this to someone. And if it was done to you, you would be like, no, like, no, that's not what I meant. That's not like you're making assumptions, you're feeling in gaps, you're assuming motives to me that I don't actually have. Have you guys ever been judged unfairly? Have you ever had

people make assumptions about your character based off of something that you did? And you didn't mean that, but that's how people perceive. You guys know what I'm talking about here. It is lame when people misunderstand you and attribute ill motives to you. That's what Jesus is talking about here. And I think to really clarify what Jesus means when he says, don't judge, we have a helpful, helpful commentary within the New Testament itself. And that commentary is called the letter of James, which most likely, there's some disagreement, but most likely is written by Jesus's brother, James. It's the James that's in the New Testament. And a whole, I mean, 75% of what the letter of James is, is it's James reflecting on the Sermon on the Mount and thinking about how

it applies to yet another generation of Christians after him. And James actually, I think, alludes to and explains and clarifies what Jesus means here in James chapter 4. I'll just throw it up here on the screen. James says, law and judges it. There is only one lawgiver and judge, the one who's able to save and destroy. But you, who are you to judge your neighbor? Now notice, again, what James is saying and what he's not saying. He's not saying anything about this other person and whether what they're doing is right or whether it's wrong. That's actually irrelevant, right? They may be doing something that is wrong. That's not the point. The point is how you perceive that and then what you do in response to that. That's his focus here. And notice when he uses the word judge, he uses the same exact

word that Jesus uses, but then he uses all these other words to clarify what Jesus is getting at here. And did you pick them up there? What else? What kind of behavior is he talking about here? You're judging them. What are you also doing? You're slandering, or you're speaking against. So he's talking about, you observe someone's behavior, and you make a judgment about it. You make a moral judgment about their behavior, but then you do something more. You begin to fill in assumptions about why they're doing that. You have assumptions about their character and you begin to categorize them as like this kind of person that does that.

And then you go even a step further because you advertise what you think about this person, right? You're talking poorly about them. You look down on them. And when you talk about them, there's this slant that could be, you know, it could be described as slander speaking against them. And then there's even a step further, you know, as Christians, is that we assume that God agrees with us about this person. So, I mean, it's really, we would never think of ourselves as doing this, but really, we observe people and what they're doing,

we observe their behavior, and then in our minds, there's some extra step that we take, observe their behavior, and then in our minds there's some extra step that we take. And then we think we know them. And we think we know why they're doing that behavior or whatever. And then we imagine Jesus standing next to us, and we're like, Jesus, that guy. And we actually think Jesus is standing there going, I know, I know. They're so lame, you know? You're so right about that person. We do, you guys. We do. There's some sense of, like, moral uprightness and, like, I understand how Jesus feels about everybody. And then we treat people accordingly.

Don't act like you don't do this. Even if it's just totally internally, we all do this to people, especially to other Christians. And James is just like, there's so many things wrong with that. First of all, it's not our role. When I do that, I'm assuming a posture towards that other person that is just, it's totally inappropriate. I'm assuming the posture of God, that somehow it's me and Jesus over against this person. And it's a posture of

distance, right? It's a posture that it's about me and Jesus, and then it's them, and there's this line, and that line is like, I know how Jesus thinks that person ought to behave, and I might even think of myself as God's appointed committee to help make that known to them. And it's this posture of distance. And what James is saying right here, clearly, is just like, this posture fills us with delusions about our own character, and it's not reality. In reality, when I'm in this scenario right here, and the reality is I'm on the wrong side of that line, because this is not reality. What's reality is that I'm over here. I'm over here with this person, and we're looking at Jesus look at us. This is reality. It's putting ourselves in the posture of God. And what this person may be doing is right. It may be wrong. That's irrelevant. What James is focusing on is

the inappropriateness of me and Jesus against this person. And that's exactly what Jesus moves towards in this famous parable here. And he gives us wisdom for how to make sure we're not assuming this posture. And it's the brilliance of Jesus. He does it in a way that gets you to laugh as he punches you in the gut at the same time, right? So it's a famous image. Verse three, why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye? Pay no attention to the plank in your own eye. Now when he says brother, you can fill in, it's a gender neutral term for another disciple in the community of disciples. And so in some translations, they translate it brother or sister. So why do you look in another disciple's eye and

pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? So he's going for the laugh here. He's totally going for the laugh. So he's talking about this little tiny. He's totally going for the laugh. So he's talking about this little tiny speck, which many of us often get or whatever in your eye. It happens to me when I ride my bike everywhere. And the worst is like in summer, you know, and there's not that many bugs in Portland, but to get the bug in your eye, it's lame when that happens, and it really hurts.

So he's talking about the little thing in your eye, and's lame when that happens, and it really hurts. So he's talking about the little thing in your eye, and then he paints this ridiculous, this utterly ridiculous picture of a beam, like a telephone pole. You know what I mean? That's the image he wants you to conjure up in your head here. The whole point is that it's as big as your head, and you imagine it in your eye. It's ridiculous.

You're supposed to laugh, right? And so what, he clearly gets you on his side to just see, here's reality. And it's a brilliant image that has a number of implications. I just think it's worth a cup of tea to just sit and think about all of the different implications of this metaphor that Jesus uses. So his whole point is that this is a posture of delusion. It's inappropriate. That's not the reality. And if I'm going to move towards another disciple,

notice, does the other disciple actually have a speck in their eye? Does he say it's just a figment of your imagination? Is it there in their eye? Yes. Yeah, totally. So he's saying like, yeah, they've got an issue, you know, character flaw. They're doing something stupid or selfish. Like that's really happening. But before you even think about addressing it or bringing it up, you need to have done a whole bunch of work or get yourself in some kind of mindset so that that encounter becomes healing and helpful

and not destructive and counterproductive. And it's all packed into this metaphor here. So the first implication, I think, of having a huge blog, it's great, a huge telephone pole in your eye, is with what part of your body do you perceive this other person's speck in their eye? What part of your body do you use to look at their speck? You're using eye. Where is the beam? It's in your eye. This is intentional on Jesus' part. What does that mean? What it means is that if I'm a disciple, I'm seeing someone else and their behavior, and I decide or I make a judgment,

like I think that's destructive. I think that's against the teachings of Jesus. That's not going to go well for themselves or the other. The first thing Jesus wants us to assume is that your vision is impaired. You've got your own issues. You've got your own sin and stuff going on. And what that affects, first and foremost, is your ability to see. And so this is very interesting. He says, assume, first off, that your own vision is impaired, in which case you need to evaluate yourself. Like, okay, am I actually seeing correctly? I need to assume that I don't have the whole story. I can just see someone's behavior, right? We all walk around bumping into each other, and we're watching what each other says and does. But human beings are extremely complex, right?

And our motives, our deep motives and rationale for why we do and say the things that we do, it's extremely complex. It's very complex. And what Jesus is saying is, first of all, just assume that you don't have 100% vision of why and what this is all about. Assume that you don't have a hundred percent vision of why and what this is all about. Assume that you don't actually know all of their motives.

Assume that you don't know their story and what's behind. It doesn't mean that their behavior is all of a sudden right. It might actually be wrong. But just assume that you don't know the whole complex sea of factors that go into why this person is behaving the way that they're behaving. How can you not imply that by saying that you see a speck through a huge beam? How do you know you're not actually just looking at one of the tree rings, you know, of the beam that's in your eye? You don't know. You need to do serious reflection. That seems to me as the first implication.

And then the second implication, I think, really takes us to the heart of the gospel and the heart of the message of the kingdom. And it's that I assume that I can't see everything clearly about this person, and that humbles me. That gives me a perspective to be more careful and hesitant about how I approach this person. And then the second, of course, is they actually have a speck. Let's say they do actually have a speck. I should just always assume that my own sin and pride and self-worth issues and insecurity, you should just assume that my own issues and sin are more serious and more grievous than the person that I'm noticing or that I'm observing.

We have this tendency to combine arrogance towards others and ignorance towards ourselves, to exonerate ourselves because we know kind of our motives for doing things, kind of. We kind of have self-awareness and understanding of why we do the things that we do. We have none of the other person, or maybe a little bit. And so Jesus says, just assume that you've got your own issues that are just way more serious. And he's not encouraging us, I don't think, to just self-loathing, right? Or self-hatred. I think he's pushing us to do what all disciples of Jesus should do.

And it's taking on this commitment to self-reflection, to honest self-evaluation. And instead of assuming that we're in a position, I think our proper English word to describe what James is describing, what Jesus is saying is about condemning. It's about assuming that we know what this person is about and why they do the things that they do. And Jesus is saying just assume that this is an inappropriate posture for you

and assume that you've got issues to deal with that are way more serious than this other person. Which doesn't mean that you never have the conversation. What it means is that it forces you to go into the heart of the gospel yourself and walk away changed from that experience. Because if reality is not me and Jesus and then this person with a line between us, it means that the reality is this. Like, I'm on this side of the line, and Jesus is there. And how do I, before Jesus, deal with this log, this telephone pole that's in my eye?

How on earth do I get this thing out of my head? It's heavier than my whole body. Like, how do I get it out? How do I get this thing out of my head? It's heavier than my whole body. How do I get it out? How do I get it out of there? And Jesus just assumes, in the light of all of his teachings and in everything that's about to happen, that we know what that entails. How do you do this?

And it's very simple. It takes you to the heart of the gospel, that I come to Jesus. I'm not over here. I'm here before Jesus. And I'm a disciple of Jesus with a whole community of people. And by definition,

to become a disciple of Jesus means acknowledging something about myself. It means making a confession and an acknowledgement. I am a kind of person who's in desperate need of God's grace that comes to me through Jesus. I have serious issues. I've got a stinking telephone pole in my eye, you know?

I have serious issues. And I come before Jesus, and I listen to him talk, and I read the stories about how he treats people who have telephone poles in their eyes. And I look at how he lived his life for me, and he died for me, and he was raised for me, and by his spirit he's present and real for me. And this is precisely what Jesus does not do to me.

I mean, it's real. Jesus is actually the only one qualified to do this. And this is exactly what Jesus does not do to you or to me. And it's that experience of being a disciple of Jesus and coming to that realization that like Jesus doesn't condemn me for this massive issue that I have that just compromises my motives, it compromises my sight and my ability to even see other people for who they really are. He doesn't condemn me. He loves

me and he gave his life, he gave his death, and he gives his resurrection life for me. And when I go there first, that experience has the capacity to utterly change a human being, to utterly change a human being. And you guys, when we gather, every Sunday, right now, in this moment, when we gather, we actually are telling that story together. So just, so imagine with me, imagine a scenario where it's a Sunday gathering and we're, imagine you're at church. And imagine that for many of us would be like your nightmare scenario coming true.

And that is that our secrets, right? We're all coming in here with logs in our eyes, specks logs and everything in between. And some of them are known to other people. Probably the most significant ones that we're most ashamed of or that we most regret aren't known to anybody or are known to very few number of people. And just imagine a scenario where somehow, in some way,

your secret becomes known to everybody in the room. Just like that. And for some of us, to even envision that, we start to sweat. It's so uncomfortable to think of a scenario where these things that I guard because my self-worth would be at stake, I would be exposed, the true parts of my character that I'm not proud of, they would go public, and everybody would know who I really am and what I really do. And that would be a nightmare, right? I would run as fast as I possibly could if that were to happen. But here's the reality, and this is the reality that Jesus invites us to, based off of what he said, happens when we gather here.

We believe that Jesus is real. We're a community of Jesus' disciples. We believe that he's real. And that if actually what he said was true, is that he's present in a unique way, in a significant, unique way when his disciples gather. There's something that happens. in a significant, unique way when his disciples gather. There's something that happens. And Jesus drew attention to that in his teachings. Wherever there's more than three of us together, he's here in a unique and significant way.

And the reality is that when we gather, when we're gathered at this very moment, when we walk in here and we're together, our secrets are actually known. Your nightmare's true. Your secrets are known. You read the stories about Jesus and people would come up to him with a question or a petition, a request. People came up trying to challenge him or they're just in crisis. And you guys, if you know the stories, they're so powerful. Jesus, he just read their mail. He just knew them. He could say things.

He just knew them. He knew everything about them. That's the Jesus that we encounter. That's the Jesus who we believe is present here. And so, call it a nightmare, call it a dream. I'm not sure. But the reality, if I really believe in Jesus, and we're disciples and we're gathered here, my secrets are known. They're known every single time that we gather to Jesus. Not necessarily the people sitting next to you, but to Jesus. They're known. And we come around this confession and this hope that it's precisely the Jesus whom all of that is totally transparent and totally known to. And he actually is the one who's qualified to do this about us and our behavior. And this is exactly what Jesus does not do.

He does not do this. Jesus never treated people. The only people that Jesus actually leaned into were extremely judgmental religious people. That's who he did this to, right? But the people who are coming to him and just open-handed with their crisis, with their need, with not knowing what to do, absolute grace and compassion.

And that is good news for people like you and like me. Amen? And so here we are. We're at a Sunday gathering. And so let me just enact what's going to happen in the next half an hour here, right? Is that we're here, and we have these things called the tables that are around the room.

And so we're down here, and we come over, let's say you're going to come to this table, and right here, the moment you step right here, this is a big advertisement that you're making to everybody in the room. And so no one's going to come up here after this one. I'll go to the back tables, right? But this, like we're not just, you're not just attending an event here. We are participating in an announcement and a reality when we gather. To stand up here is to say I'm a disciple of Jesus and I'm moving towards Jesus

and what he did for me in his body, his life that was lived for me, in his broken body and shed blood, his death that was for me, and in the hope of his resurrection life that's given as a gift to me. And to just to stand up and come to the table is to make an announcement to everybody from the back of my head or something to say, I need this. Hey, everybody. I have a huge beam in my eye.

I need this. I actually, my life is so shot, I actually need someone else's life to count for mine. Because I've blown this one. And I've got serious issues. And my hope is this man who is God become human to be the kind of human that I've been called and created to be but have failed to be. And out of utter mercy and grace, Jesus offers his life, his death, his resurrection to me. And to go to the tables is to make an announcement to everybody. I've got a beam in my eye.

I need to deal with it. And I'm actually incapable of dealing with it, but Jesus is capable. And all of us announce this truth when we get up to take the bread and the cup every single week. And to announce that truth to each other every single week, that before Jesus, who knows our secrets, we don't face this, we face utter grace and forgiveness and a gift in exchange. That reality denies me the right to ever think that I am on this side of the line, and it's me of Jesus against some other person, right? But instead, this is the posture that the gospel puts us in. It's me and you

as disciples of Jesus, and we look to Jesus as the one who meets us in our most dark place of brokenness and shame and regret. And with his life-giving love and power, he meets us there and promises to make us new. And when I allow Jesus to deal with the telephone pole in my eye that changes a human being, pole in my eye that changes a human being. The presence and the power of the gospel of Jesus' grace can utterly change a human being if you let it. And it utterly changes the dynamic in a community of Jesus' disciples because all of a sudden it creates an environment where we're not like over against each other. We're with each other. And notice that this parable of Jesus doesn't end with both people like walking away, never having a difficult conversation, but rather in this changed environment of a community of the gospel, it creates the space

for us to have difficult conversations with each other. Because the most difficult word has already been said. So I've already just acknowledged that I have secrets and things that I'm ashamed of, and they're all known to Jesus. We're all going to say it in a little bit when we get up and go to those tables. The most difficult thing has already been said. And so there's nothing that somebody can say to me, another disciple, that hasn't already been said by the fact that I needed Jesus to die for me. And it creates the space for grace. It's messy. It's terribly messy. Oh my gosh, it's so messy, you guys.

It's so complex. But that's the way forward. And if your neighbor needs you to deal with their speck, who do you need to deal with your log in your eye? He doesn't say it, but it's surely implied. He assumes that your neighbor needs you to deal with their speck. Who do you need to deal with the telephone pole in your eye? You need Jesus, first and foremost, and then you need your neighbor.

We need each other. And this is how we move forward, which leads us to what Jesus says next that has puzzled interpreters for 2,000 years now, right? Verse 6. Don't give dogs what is sacred. Don't throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, the pigs may trample you under feet and then turn, assume the dog's here, and tear you to pieces. Savage pigs tearing you to pieces. I guess there's boars, wild boars.

That could be what he's referring to. So what? Okay, I thought Jesus said don't judge people. And now he's calling people pigs and dogs. What's that all about? I think, so there's about eight different views on what Jesus means here, whatever. And so I'll share with you the one that I think most, I think is right. I could be wrong. I don't

think I am, but I could be wrong about it. So this is a little parable that I think is similar in meaning to the first parable about the speck and the log and so on. And then the problem is that we want to read it as like an allegory where everything has a symbol that represents someone else or whatever. And Jesus sometimes teaches in allegories. Most often he teaches in parables. And parables are little short stories that have a main point. And then it's the point that you take away. And actually I think we get ourselves into trouble

when we treat them like allegories. And we're like, what does the pig represent? And what's the pearl? And so I think, no, the point is just get the point of the story. You've got somebody who has something of great value to them. And they're so stoked on what this beautiful, this sacred, beautiful thing that's of value to them. And they want to share it with anybody and everybody. And there will arise situations where they're before someone or something that doesn't value what they value. So you have a pig. What does a pig value?

Pearls? Pearls, right? So no, it will end up in the mud. What does a dog, dog owners, what will make your dog happy no matter what? No matter what you've done to it, instantly you make it happy. Treats, right? Food, food. What does your dog not care about?

Pearls? What on earth, right? So it's about this disconnect between what you value and what these beings value. And it's about, it's very similar. Just like I can misjudge a situation and go barge in and giving what I think about what they're doing when that's totally not appropriate yet.

Here's another little parable about something that I value that's precious to me but it's not at all perceived as valuable by the other. And so to barge in and be like, hey, here's this, you know, you not only are not respecting the beauty of the thing that you hold so precious, but even more, like you might actually provoke the opposite reaction of what you're trying to get, right? What does a dog value?

Food. What should you give it? Something appropriate to what it values, you know? That's what I think is the idea. I could be wrong about that, but I don't think I am, right? Verse 6, which means this. What it means is that Jesus is encouraging wisdom for how we go about engaging each other, wisdom for where it's loving your neighbor as yourself. engaging each other, wisdom for where the, it's loving your neighbor as yourself. How would I want to be addressed in this situation? And it might be, like, some people come out guns blazing, just ready, like, with the truth about Jesus' teachings or whatever, and that's just not, like, that's just not going to accomplish what you want it to accomplish. So take a different

tactic, you know? Like, change how you address the situation. Otherwise, you risk provoking hostility when that's exactly the opposite thing of what you want to accomplish. And so in which case, it lands us both at the same place. How do you actually do this? How do you do this, you guys? I think for Door of Hope, I don't think our problem, for the most part, is that we are having these kinds of conversations too much.

I think our problem is the opposite. Is that we crawl under the shade of verse 1. I guess Jesus said, don't judge, and so I'm never going to say anything to anybody at all. And who am I, after all? And we actually misunderstand what Jesus is saying. Because when I become someone who's being healed by the gospel, I actually can become a vehicle of Jesus' grace meeting someone else. But that's very complicated. How do you do that? And I'm not sure how you do that, but let me conclude with a story of how someone did that that utterly changed my life and at least given me one kind of compass point of a

true north for how to go about these conversations. Let me show you a picture of a Wendy's restaurant on 82nd and Gleason. 82nd, Northeast Gleason. You know the Wendy's? You know it? Okay, most of you probably never noticed it before, and that's fine. That's fine. When I drive by this Wendy's, it's Google Street View, by the way. When I drive by this Wendy's, I always notice it. It's utterly significant to me.

And that's because in that very Wendy's, August 1995, I had a conversation in there over a dollar value menu burger, whatever, if it was actually a burger. I'm not sure what it was. But I had a conversation over a value menu deal that totally changed the trajectory of my life. And I was 19, and my parents are amazing followers of Jesus. I had said no thank you early on in my teens, and out of high school, no aspirations, low-paying job, loved it that way, living in parents' basement, skateboarding with all my time. There you go. That's Tim Mackey. However, when I was 16 years old, I had started attending a skate park one night a week. It's called Skate Church. We

talk about it a lot around here. And it's a skate park hosted by a number of Christians. They, you know, shut down the park always midway through the evening, talk about Jesus, and then start the park up again. And it's rad. It's awesome. It's still going today. And I had been going because it was a dry place, you know, for $2.50 to go skate every week. And so I had made a number of friends with a number of the guys who kind of helped run it and so on.

So there's this one guy, Mike. He was about five years older than me. And I actually don't know why. We just became friends. And he was a really good skateboarder. I looked up to him a lot. And so we, you know, over the course of those three years, we would hang out, we'd go skateboarding, same group of friends or whatever. And he got to know me. And because I had grown up with Christian parents, I kind of knew the way to give off this vibe of

like, I'm kind of like a Christian or whatever, you know, and kind of knew the way to give off this vibe of like, I'm kind of like a Christian or whatever, you know, and kind of say certain things and give those clue words or whatever, but I, whatever, I was doing whatever I wanted to do. And he got to know a number of my friends. And so he would, he knew like how I was actually living and he knew the kinds of decisions that I was making. And at that point I was was 19, and I had two very close friends of mine just go way off the rails into hardcore drug and alcohol abuse. And that was my community. You know, those were the people that I was around. And so he would catch wind of this through my friends, and he knew the kinds of decisions that I was starting to make. And so God bless him.

decisions that I was starting to make. And so, God bless him. He took me out one night before, you know, the skate park opened, and he bought me a 99-cent burger or whatever. And in a loving, caring way, he totally got in my face. He totally got in my face. And it was both uncomfortable, because he knew stuff about me that I didn't know that he knew, you know, but at the same way, not for one minute did I ever feel this. I never felt condemned by him. And he was just very clear. He was just like, dude, like, I know, I know you've gotten to know your heart. I know who you are. This is not you. You're making decisions. You're going to ruin your life, Tim. You're going to make some making decisions. You're going to ruin your life, Tim. You're going to make some stupid decisions.

You're going to ruin your life. You've been dilly-dallying around it for years now. You need to make a decision about Jesus, whether you're going to follow him or not. You know what that involves. You need to make a decision, right? You need to make a decision now, or else you're never going to make it.

And I don't know what to tell you. Why that conversation over the course of three years of hanging out with those guys, but that conversation, it clicked. And that August afternoon, it totally changed the trajectory of my entire life. And why did I listen to Mike? Why did I listen to him? And it's a very simple principle. And we've talked about it in leadership circles

around Door of Hope for a couple years now. It's a very simple little principle that truth requires a bridge. So you have this very profound truth of who Jesus is and his teachings and how that addresses a very specific part of my life. That's heavy. That's a heavy load for anyone to take. And what that requires is a relational bridge that's strong enough to carry it so that I can hear that and I trust this person's credibility and their intentions and

their motives in doing that. Truth requires a bridge. The heavier the load, the stronger the bridge that's required. And the problem is that we want to take these truckloads of Jesus' truth and drive it over a little rope footbridge or something like that. And it's just collusion and mess all over the place. And I'm a Christian today. Maybe I would have become one through some other means. I don't know how to play that out. But I am a Christian today

because he pointed out the speck in my eye. Actually, it was quite a log. I don't know what size his was then in comparison to that. But that's, there you go. And I think for many of us, it's actually the most difficult conversations with people that we know, love, and care about us, it's actually the most difficult conversations with people that we know, love, and care about us that end up making the most significant differences in our lives.

And so here's just, I want to just close and just encourage you. First of all, we're going to all advertise our need for Jesus by going to the tables, but I would encourage you in the time that lay ahead, like, do you, who, what other disciples of Jesus have you intentionally invited into your life to point out stuff to you? And as you do that and make that invitation, then all of a sudden it creates bridges through which you're speaking into their lives

isn't about crossing some line, it's just part of how we're growing together and building bridges into each other's lives. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of wisdom and grace, which is why Jesus talked about it. But we absolutely need each other.

Absolutely, we need each other. It's precisely the blind spots in our lives that we cannot see was why we need each other so desperately. And so I'm going to close in prayer and I just encourage you both to come to the table with a renewed sense of meaning and significance

and also to think about who the people in your lives are that you are doing this with. And if you don't have those people, to begin to pray that you would find those people, to begin to pray that you would find those people and take initiative. All right, you guys, thank you for listening to Exploring My Strange Bible. We're going to continue on in the Gospel of Matthew and

exploring the Sermon on the Mount in the next episode. See you next time.