Sermon On The Mount

Judging

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 16-25

Genre:

Track: 16

Dictation Name: Sermon on the Mount – 16

Location/Venue:

Year: 1980

Almighty God our Heavenly Father we thank Thee for Thy grace, Thy providential care and the certainty of Thy triumph in Jesus Christ. We thank Thee that we can come to Thee and cast our every care upon Thee who carest for us. We pray our Father for those of our number who are absent this day remembering especially Ken and Helen and praying that Thou wouldst bless them and the work there and give them traveling mercies as they journey homeward. Bless us now as we give ourselves to the study of Thy word and grant that we may behold wondrous things out of Thy law. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Our scripture this morning is Matthew 7:1-6. Continuing our studies in the Sermon on the Mount our subject is Judging, judging.

“Judge not, that ye be not judged.

2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

6 Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”

The church as it has over the generations faced this particular passage has wavered and waffled between two possible interpretations. The tendency has been to take the first verse and apply that as a general principle without reference to verses two through six. Judge not that ye be not judged. And thus if you open your mouth to say anything in the way of a judgment however righteous it may be you are likely by some people to be criticized.

On the other hand very, very obviously verse six requires us to make some apparently drastic judgments.

“6 Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”

That’s a sharp and a harsh statement. It means that we are going to have to assess some people as dogs and others as swine. Well now how are you going to reconcile these two apparent contraries? No judgment. Some say you must call a murderer a murderer, you must refrain from judgment. But here we have very definitely our Lord himself speaking of some people as dogs and swine. A rather dramatic contrast and yet our Lord obviously felt there was no contradiction between the two statements. Judge not that you be not judged and give not that which is holy unto the dogs neither cast ye your pearls before swine. What is the meaning? Now our Lord does not forbid judgment , all we have to do is to look at John 7:24, the clearest statement:

“24 Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.”

So our Lord tells us we are not to judge according to appearance but we are to judge righteous judgment. Why is it that we do not hear this verse quoted as often as we do hear Matthew 7:1? Obviously the same Lord states both. Moreover, judge not that ye be not judged is qualified.

“2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”

In other words, what is the measure, the standard, the yardstick of your judgment?

“3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?”

Now a mote can be a speck of dust very definitely but here it means something a little different. Our Lord grew up as a carpenter, he was a carpenter’s son, his illustration here is from woodworking, a carpenter’s work. Flying sawdust, a speck of sawdust, that’s the mote. The beam is a large splinter that has jumped into his eye. Such things can happen, as a matter of fact I believe it was last Monday morning when I was out and doing some weeding and a large foxtail point first was flipped right into my eye by my action in weeding and it took some effort on Dorothy’s part to get it out. Now, our Lord is talking about some such episode, a man who has a splinter in his eye and is being critical of someone who has a mote, a small piece of sawdust. Now if you have a little speck like that it will make your eye water and it will come out immediately or within a very short time, normally. But if you have a splinter you have a problem. You’re going to have to have help getting that out and it can be serious. And so our Lord is illustrating what He means by judgment. The man who is critical of someone who has a speck of sawdust in his eye when he himself has a splinter is obviously a fool and any man who has a serious fault in his own life and is hyper critical of a speck of dust in somebody else’s life, a minor failing or fault, is a Pharisee. He is a hypocrite.

5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.”

In other words, our Lord here is talking about two kinds of judgment. One is in terms of God’s righteousness, God’s justice, God’s law. Judge righteous judgment. We have a right, we have a duty to judge righteous judgment. We have all too many people today who are coping out on the necessity to make righteous judgment. When abortion began to be legalized in the various states and then the Supreme Court sustained abortion one of the most common things that I was hearing across country from a variety of doctors who were waffling on the issue was this: well I personally will never, never perform an abortion but who am I to sit in judgment on other men. Let that be a matter of their own conscience to decide. Now is it a matter of the conscience of either doctor to decide? Or is it a matter of God’s righteous judgment? So that every doctor who said let it be a matter for that doctor’s conscience to determine what he should do was saying there is no righteous God given standard, let every man be his own god determining for himself what constitutes good and evil. Those doctors were as guilty as the abortionists before God because they had not merely performed an abortion which is murder but they had set aside the whole law of God and it said there is no standard, let every man do that which is right in his own eyes. So our Lord is contrasting righteous judgment, judgment in terms of God’s justice and righteousness as against unrighteous judgment in terms of man’s self-righteousness, man as his own god, man as his own judge. We shall be judged as we ourselves do judge, with what judgment we judge we shall be judged and with what measure you meet it shall be measured to you again. We dishonor God when we place our standards above His.

But people do that all the time and very often in the Lord. In fact it is ironic but we have in the United States regional holiness, regional holiness. Certain things you do are holy in some areas and others are terrible sins. Now this was a great many years ago when I was very new in the ministry but in one of my travels I encountered a pastor who was a very lovable man, something of a character, very, very strict, felt very strongly that anyone who danced or went to movies was a lost soul but you did not dare criticize chewing tobacco around him. Now that’s regional holiness. Where he came from you didn’t criticize tobacco, that kind of thing is extremely commonplace even today. About ten years or less later I think about six or seven years later I encountered a man who said this with a little bit of humor but I found out subsequently he meant it and he said that people who smoked cigarettes were modernists, they were nervous people but he said a cigar, now that’s a good Calvinist smoke, it’s for a man who has faith and is relaxed and can sit back with a holy contentment after dinner and can light up a good cigar. Now that’s regional holiness and we have much of that today but it is the Lord who saves us and it is the Lord’s word that must rule us and our Lord says no holy things to dogs and no pearls before swine. The focus of the text is on that which is holy. Now, it can be translated as the holy thing, it has reference to the food that was brought, the meat that was brought and placed upon the altar. We can understand what it means today in terms of the communion elements. The communion elements. Because to every Jew who heard Him when He said give not the holy thing, that was placed before the altar, to dogs and to swine, that’s what he was talking about.

So He was illustrating a principle by taking that which to every listener was a particularly sacred thing, the offerings to God that were upon the altar and we could say the communion elements to understand what He meant. Give them not to dogs nor to swine. Now who is He talking about there, it could be, He’s illustrating this, by talking about homosexuals because the bible does refer to Deuteronomy 23:18, Deuteronomy 23:18 to homosexuals as dogs and again in Revelation 22:15, Revelation 22:15. I think that meaning does apply clearly today, now I don’t believe He was limiting to that meaning but very definitely we do have that problem today when some people are ready to say that homosexuals should be allowed at the church, they are sinners but we are all sinners and why bar them from the Lord’s Table or from membership? And dogs were unclean animals, unfit to eat and the idea of taking the holy thing from the altar and giving it to a dog outside was unthinkable. How then should we regard allowing sinners to prevail in the church who are unclean because they choose to be and there is no repentance in them? The early church, for example, understood the text in these terms, we know that in the early church they felt so seriously about the holy thing, the communion elements, that they closed even the service to non-believers when it was time for communion every unbeliever and every person although a believer not yet a member was asked to leave the service, and anyone who was a sinner without repenting of their sins was warned against partaking of the elements. Now, as I indicated here is a simple illustration of its meaning but it cannot be limited to this. We have to recognize it goes beyond it.

D.D. Wheaten [sp?], an American commentator of a century and a half or more ago commented on this text in these words and I quote:

“Now we must discern these characters. We must not entrust a holy thing to a dog, apostles and bishops must not commit the office of the ministry to a wicked man, no sacred deposit nor responsibility nor even principle symbolized by pearls must be imparted to an unfit man. No doctrines or religious experiences must be brought before an incapable sensualist. In imparting the official trusts and the truths of the gospel we must discern men’s moral qualities and deal with them accordingly.” Unquote.

We are therefore to speak , to witness, to work with those who will hear and if they will not hear our Lord says shake off the dust of your feet and move on. Do not waste your breath, the holy things of God, upon those who reject it. Make your witness, and if they will not hear, move on. The church has wrestled with this problem over the generations periodically. To give an example when the puritans and the pilgrims came to America they had a deep concern about church membership. They were very distressed over the membership of the Church of England because in England everyone who was a English citizen was also a member of the Church of England. Everyone was a member. The puritans were called puritans because they wanted to purify the church and they said no, no one just because he is a citizen is therefore a member of the Church of England. We must purge, purify, the church of these ungodly men and limit it to believers and by believers we mean those who believe and obey the word of God, who give them marks of regeneration in the totality of their lives.

They had been sickened by what they had seen in England. As a result, membership was very limited. At one time in one settlement of all the people there only seven were qualified to be members because they felt a member was a potential office bearer and therefore had to be a person who was of seasoned faith and character. This kind of restrictive membership continued into the early eighteen hundreds to 1815 to about 1820. This is why any statistics about church membership in the colonial and early American period will be meaningless because the membership will be very low whereas virtually everyone went to church. Today the membership is very high and not many of the members go to church. Now we can say that perhaps the puritan view of church membership was too restricted but we’ve gone to the opposite extreme and opened it up to make it meaningless. Well at least they were aware of the problem. The church today does not give heed to the Lord’s words, judgment is necessary but we must neither trust in man nor in democracy but in the Lord’s words and be careful that we do not give holy things, holy offices, holy status to dogs or to swine. Now this presents us with a problem, we have to do some judging. When people come forward to be church members we have to examine them. We have to prepare them for membership. People don’t like that kind of thing. We are spoiled more than ever in our day because we do have computers, you push a button you get a result and we want life to be that way so as we face the problems that are required of us in the form of judgment we want a computer like answer.

That is not possible in the religious sphere. Hence our Lord says do not judge in terms of self-righteous humanistic standards but judge righteous judgment. This therefore puts the responsibility upon us. And men do not want responsibility in our day and age. Over and over again I have encountered the fact once or twice first hand at the mouth of someone in a particular position of importance where hiring and firing men is involved, this fact: that executives today do not like to fire. It means passing judgment. They may know that the person is incompetent but they want one way or another to get rid of him without firing him. And as I said I heard one or two say that they like having the unions control things because at that point it relieves them of the responsibility of judgment. The union has taken away their right to fire. You see, men who do not want to judge righteous judgment will be incapable of making a good judgment in any area of life and thought. We must therefore know the whole word of God and in terms of it judge righteous judgment. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes, I do, but let me qualify this. I think one of the weaknesses of many churches is that they organize and institutionalize at once when it would be far better to take people as a whole through a period of study, a period of training and of knowledge because the church will have the character that is set at the time it begins to institutionalize itself.

Too quick an institutionalization tends to get in the way of growth. Every time a group of people come together they immediately want to write every kind of document imaginable, everywhere I go across the country maybe it’s a group of people who’ve broken away from a Baptist church or a Presbyterian church or whatever and they work out rules and regulations and documents just a mountain of them which have a strangling effect and really cannot cope with problems, whereas if they first of all insure growth in terms of the whole word of God then the institutional element really is not very complex, you see. But growth is the key and a lot of bylaws and constitutions and that sort of thing can never replace growth. So we put our trust too much in paper documents, today as a result every church body virtually in the United States that meets, whether its once a year or several times a year, deals with every problem with reports so that out of every presbytery or conference or classis meeting or whatever it may be you have a pile of papers like this that come out and they are no closer to the solution of any problem then when they started. We want that kind of answer in our day, that’s why we have the kind of federal and state governments we do and the bureaucracy we do, we create machinery, we don’t deal with problems directly, we don’t create growth. So we do have a problem as a result, we evade necessity of growth, necessity of a reliance on the Holy Spirit.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes, I think it’s a mistake to move to quickly into institutionalism, then we’re putting our primary trust in the forms as though that’s the answer, yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] No. I would not. A simple creedal statement if you started a fellowship, if you say use the Apostle’s, Nicene or Athanasius Creed you would be making clear who you are and why you have come together. I’m talking about the form of government. Most churches have almost nothing in creed and the majority have nothing at all and everything in terms of rules and regulations as though that were most important. And we have a large number of churches in this country of various denominations that boast no creed but Christ and will say you can believe anything and be whatever they are, but don’t you dare depart one jot or tittle from the regulations and bylaws. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] they are saying…

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. No, that is sin.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] They are still sinners, a Christian can sin. [Laughter]. No that is very commonpolace, there are horrible examples of it, a girl raped and the father and mother saying it was a horrible thing but we forgive him. They have no right to because it wasn’t their law that was violated, it was Gods. And before that girl was their girl that girl was God’s, how dare they forgive where God has not forgiven. And forgiving someone does not mean that the consequences of their act can be removed. God can forgive a murderer and make him a new creation in Jesus Christ but He still requires that murderer be executed.

Any other questions or comments? Well if not let us bow our heads in prayer.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee for the sufficiency of Thy word. Thy word speaks to our every need, our every problem, our every condition. Give us hearing ears and a believing heart that we may take heed unto Thy word that it may always be a lamp unto our feet. We thank Thee for Thy grace, we thank Thee for Thy so great salvation and for one another. Bless us this day and always in Thy service, in Jesus’ name, Amen.