Latest / The Daily Word / April 20 – Check Your Own Heart First
Transcript
- Cory Barnes: Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good wee hours of the night, whatever time you are joining us. Welcome to the Daily Word podcast from Lakeshore Christian Fellowship. My name is Cory Barnes. It's my privilege to pastor our Catawba campus, and I'm excited to be sitting down for another devotion with you today based on the New Testament portion of our church Bible reading plan. If you don't know where to find that reading plan, you can go to lakeshorecf.com. You can click on the journaling tab down at the very bottom. You can access the plan there. Or if you just keep following along with us on the Daily Word, every episode in the description of the episode, we're putting that reading plan in there and you can follow along that way as well. But for today, April 20th, the New Testament portion of our reading came from Matthew chapter seven, which is smack dab in the middle of Jesus' sermon on the Mount. And what stood out to me today is coming from the very beginning, jumping right in with one of Jesus's most well-known sayings from that sermon, verses one through five in the New King James Version today. Judge not that you be not judged, for with what judgment you judge, you will be judged. And with the measure you use it, will be measured back to you. And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me remove the speck from your eye? And look, a plank is in your own eye. Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. Now, there's a lot in here to unpack. Jesus said a lot in just those few little verses. So our first reminder, first thing that I want to observe with you is the fact that we judge not that we be not judged. The word judge there in the original Greek, was a judicial term. was the word that would be used when you sat in front of a judge who examined the evidence, weighed everything, and then made a determination of guilt or innocence based on the evidence that was presented to them. and we are told judge not. And I think that's a really good reminder that we are not the judge. Anytime we see something in someone else's life and we think we know what's going on, we see a behavior pattern, something like that, and we presume that we think... And we would presume to declare guiltiness over that person. The truth is we never have the full picture. Remember that word judge is about a judge who has weighed all of the evidence. And for you and I, the evidence, we don't have access to all that. All we get to see is a tiny little portion of what is going on. We never get to see everything and weigh it all out. Only the Lord gets to do that because he truly is the judge. So we judge not lest we be judged. And the other thing that I wanted to point out is that Jesus connects that with that next passage, that famous passage about having a plank in your eye. How do you plan to get the speck out of the neighbor's eye while you have a plank sticking out of your own? Now, of course, this is high perbally. Jesus is not literally suggesting that someone's walking around with a 2x4 sticking out of their head. If they did, they would be seeing a doctor, not being worried about the speck in someone else's eye. But he draws this image, he overstates what is going on in a rhetoric form hyperbole so that it really paints a vivid picture in our mind of what that really looks like when we're judging another person. We are walking around and we're presuming to be able to help or instruct or cash judgment on someone else. All the while we ourselves are walking around with our own issue, well on display for others to see. And it's a really powerful there of not judging others we ourselves are with issues. ⁓ The apostle Paul speaks to this ⁓ in Romans 2, 1 as well. Therefore, you are O man, whoever you are who for what and whatever you judge another, you condemn yourself. For you who judge, practice the same thing. See, we all have issues in our own life. We all have sin and problems that we need to go to Jesus and have his help with to be able to rectify and deal with. So we can't walk around judging the speck in someone else's eye while we ourselves are carrying issues. So, but where does that leave us who want to help? one another that it's not self-righteously that we want to point out the speck in someone else's eye. What about those of us who want to love someone, who want to help them to deal with the issue that you can see that maybe they don't see? How do we handle that? Well, Jesus speaks to that as well. First, remove the plank from your own eye. Then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. See? Once the plank, our sin, is removed from our own eye, when we see that speck, some of that same thing in someone else's life, once our plank is gone, we can actually see clearly to be able to help them, because we've already walked that road, right? Like we've already dealt with our plank. We can help somebody at that point lovingly with a tender, gentle heart to help walk someone out of whatever speck. is holding them back and clouding their vision, keeping them from being able to see. But we have to first deal with our own stuff ⁓ before we would presume to help ⁓ one another. ⁓ observation, ⁓ don't judge. ⁓ call out other people's issues ⁓ we ourselves dealt our own And if we're going to lovingly help somebody, we need to be able to clearly see how to help them by removing the plank from our own eyes. And that's our application for today. What is it that we're seeing in other people's lives? Like when we think of someone else and their sin comes to mind, something about them that really wrinkles us. Do we ever take the time to examine that and say, hmm, is that bothering me because that's actually in my own life. ⁓ I the person crying, foul and condemning and getting up on a pulpit and screaming about a sin while I'm secretly practicing it in my own life? Am I dealing with a plank in my own eye so that I can actually be equipped to lovingly help other people with their specs? It's a lot to think about. And it's a lot of self-examination. But I think if we all sit here and genuinely ask the Lord about this, he'll start bringing it to mind. He'll start helping us because he is the judge. He rightly divides and he knows all the issues, all the details. He sees all the evidence in our lives as well as the lives of others. And he will help us to overcome any sin that is in our life. It's the grace that he made available to us that empowering grace to overcome sinfulness in our lives. So let's walk away with an application to start doing some self-examination. I feel like most of my daily words in that way, but hey, whatever. Got to get introspective. Got to get looking at what's going on in the dusty corners of our hearts before we start calling out what's on other people's lives. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we just thank you that every time we come to your word, you speak to us, you bring it alive. When we come and we sit down with our Bibles, you're sitting at the table with us. You're walking with us, talking with us, you're showing us things. It's so beautiful. And I pray that you would help each and every one of us to recognize the planks that are in our own eyes, that we would be able to see our sin, especially those that we see demonstrated in other people. And it gets us ready to fight and be upset, Lord. Help us to recognize that when someone else's spec bothers us, it might be pointing to the fact that we have a plank in our own eye. And then I'll ask Lord that you would just help us to overcome these things. We thank you for your grace. We thank you for your blood, Jesus. It's by the blood of Jesus that all of our sins are atoned for and that you have wiped away our record. You are the judge and you have declared us innocent based on what Jesus did. We get to experience the benefits of his innocence and I pray that you would help all of us to walk an abundant, supernatural, fulfilled life free from sin and without planks sticking out of our eyes. We love you Jesus. We really do. Thank you for coming and joining us today. Amen.