Matthew 7:1-6 Archives | Bad Days Better

Well here we are with part 4 of our series on Who are you to judge?  Once again this is all coming from Matthew 7:1-6.  This stemmed from a conversation I had with a friend when he said that Matthew 7:1 was the most popular verse among teens (according to him).  So I wondered why and decided to launch this study on the verses found in Matthew.  If you want to use anything I have written be my guest.

What we are going to see today is that the judgmental critical person is actually deceived about themselves.  This is seen in verse 4 when it states ”Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye?”  

It is quite clear that the critical judgmental person has not given any thought to what they are doing.  How can we say this?  Well a person that actually puts thought into it realizes that they are just as human and just as sinful as anyone else.  This person has just as many motes in their eye as anyone else, and because of  this they have lost their right to criticize and be judgmental.

This person that is judgmental and critical is deceived on some many different levels here are a few.

This person is overlooking, denying, or ignoring that they also have sin.

1.  When we judge others we exalt ourselves as gods.  It is God’s right and who are we to take that right from Him.  We are not worthy nor do we have the right to judge another (Romans 14:4; James 4:11-12)

2.  Our judgment of others only pushes a brother down and tears him to pieces.  It does not embrace him in compassion nor does it build him up.

3.  When we judge others it becomes the beam in our eye.  All sin is great including the judging and criticizing of a brother that has failed.

We also must take careful notice that the criticizer is not fit to judge.

The person that judges and criticizes is just as sinful as the next person but does not consider their own life.  However, it is interesting that this same person feels free to be critical of other who come short and fail, but refuses to look inward.  They spend a great deal of time condemning others, and then justify their own actions.

We also should not that the person doing the judging and criticizing is the weaker of the two.  The person that is weak is the one who judges and criticizes the most, they do this because of their need to boost themselves over others all to feel good about themselves.

The critical judgmental person does not take time to examine themselves and this is for one primary reason.  It hurts.  It hurts to look deep within yourself and to see if their is anything that God needs to deel with and that is why so few people do it yet look at what God says “But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged” (1 Corinthians 11:31)

Many people are deceiving their own consciences when they judge and criticize others.  Let me give you a few things people do when being judgmental and critical they do these things because they think it makes it ok to judge and be critical (deceiving their conscience).

1.  When they are judgmental and critical they try to be nice, and soft spoken, using soft words thinking this must make it ok to judge.  

2.  They will give some commendable strengths as well as passing along the other person failings. Somehow thinking this makes it ok as long as we pass something good along with the judgmental spirit.

3.  By prefacing the criticism with a statement that is it “constructive” we have all heard it.  Can you take “constructive criticism”?  Somehow we take what we have to say and twist and ad the words constructive to it and think that makes it ok.

I want this to be the last verse I leave with

There is a kind who is pure in his own eyes, Yet is not washed from his filthiness. (Proverbs 30:20)

Come back tomorrow as we see that this person that is being judgmental and critical is really a hypocrite.

Well here we are with part 3 of the series “Who are you to Judge?  It was questionable whether or not I should take the few minutes and right this out.  Right now my wife is in the hospital with the possibility of our second child coming early.  Our first Sarai was born at 30 weeks and now Micah just over 30 weeks seems to want to come out.  But I have a quick break and thought I would do part 3.  Once again this is all coming from  Matthew 7:1-6

We have covered alot of ground but today I want to look at verse 3 which clearly tells us that the judgmental critical person fails to look at themselves.  This person is very inconsistent in how they criticize and judge others as they refuse to look within first.  Here is the problem all too often we continue to look at everyone else’s failures and shortcomings, and we criticize, and backbite, and love to engage in the bad news.

You see when we do this we show that we have a very serious problem and that problem is this there is a giant beam in our own eye.  We are blind to the truth that we are no better than anyone else.  We too fail and fall short and we do it often.  

In Matthew 7:5 we are call hypocrites for not taking the beam out of our own eye

In Romans 3:10 we are told no one is righteous so why do we think we can judge?

In 1 Corinthians 11:28 we are told to examine ourselves not examine others first.

In Isaiah 53:6 we are told that every last one of us has gone astray. Yet we want to judge others that have gone astray?

If “Christians” would stop looking at everyone elses faults and stop making feeble attempts to judge their motives and their thoughts and why maybe they did a certain thing and we just focussed on show the world that we are the disciples of Jesus Christ by our love for one another (John 13:35) then maybe we could make progress.  Until then it will be much more of the same. 

Come tomorrow when we hopefully have part 4.  We will see how the critical, judgmental person is deceived about themselves.