Way back in the day when I was just getting started out on YouTube, I did a series that I'm still very proud of called Matt Whitman Ruins Treasured Verses of the Bible. Yes, that is a little bit presumptuous, but I still did it. And I'd like to think that some good things were in there. What I was really looking at are these passages in the Bible that everybody knows. That was criteria number one. And then criteria number two was they're constantly tortured. Passages that get ripped out of context, used in weird ways, and particularly weaponized to often mean the exact opposite of what the text actually means. And one of my favorite from that series was the one on the passage that we're looking at today in Matthew chapter seven, the one about judging. And I talked about how this thing is used as the proverbial ping shield of childhood, where somebody shoots their invisible gun at you while you're playing guns in the backyard, and you're like, ping, what was that? I have a shield. Well, I shoot you again then. Ping ping. Yeah, I have a double shield though. It can't get through. I am beyond your mortal bullets, peon, nothing can affect me. And I think the whole don't judge passage in Matthew chapter seven often gets used the same way. Anybody wants to say anything to me in a religious context, all I have to be is like, don't judge. Ping ping. Didn't work, didn't affect me in any way. So Jesus here, he says the following thing. You're probably wondering what I'm talking about here. Let's actually read the passage. Matthew 7, 1, don't judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you'll be judged. And with the measure you use, it'll be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when all the time there's a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. And in that ridiculous Matt Whitman ruins treasured versus the Bible video that I did a while back, I was just pointing out that a lot of times this passage gets lifted out of context. We kind of latch onto the parts that we maybe like a little bit more, and we do the I cannot be criticized or pushed back on in any way, because any pushback or criticism on me would be judging, and Jesus says, don't judge, which I would argue really is the exact opposite of the meaning of the passage and of the teaching of everything else that Jesus is saying. So am I saying that the passage is pro-judge? No, I'm saying that it's really easy to read this and misunderstand how it's to be employed or what judging means. And to get to the bottom of that, we just got to step back and look at why Jesus would even be saying this. I mean, why do we go from here are the values of the kingdom is very difficult to enter, to here's what the fulfillment of the law looks like on these behavioral things? You know, you're not murdering anybody, congrats, you want a cookie, but maybe you should just not hate people. And then it moves from there into spiritual disciplines, religious drills, giving, prayer, fasting. And then it gets all the way down to the level of the heart. What do you really want? What are you worried about? What is the point of life to you? Is it the things that you fret about, or is it this truer, realer thing? And are you willing to really buy into this? That seems to be what Jesus, not me, Jesus, is throwing out in this passage. So it's kind of weird then that he does the whole don't worry, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and each day has enough trouble of its own that he goes right from that into also don't judge. Wait, what, huh? How is Matthew doing something here where he's taking a lot of teachings of Jesus and reassembling them? And this is just kind of a hodgepodge. Well, it might look like that on the surface, but I think as you and I have carefully gone through all of this, we've seen now each successive section seems to anticipate the question or the twisting of the previous section that the person on the hill might have cooking up in their brain. So in order to figure out what would be cooking up in people's brains here, all I have to do is imagine that I'm on that hill and that I have been a part of the version of Judaism that Jesus is pushing back on, the kind of cold external religiosity thing, and just think, well, what would I do? Well, okay, so we have this old system where we kind of judge everybody and we are very interested in outward appearances and how Christian or rather religious people look when they give and when they do things, and it's more important to not kill than to actually love people. Okay, I get it. So it's a very judgmental religious system. And now we've implemented a new religious system. And well, quite frankly, I feel like it might become my job in this new religious system to go around and make sure that people aren't holding hate in their hearts and to make sure that people aren't lusting after other people, because Jesus said, don't do that. And to make sure that people are loving their enemies and to make sure that people are going the extra mile and to make sure that people's right hands don't know what their left hand was doing. I'll just become the new enforcer of this new version of kingdom ethics, just like I was the enforcer of the old version of external, cold religious ethics. Gross! No! The temptation is just to latch onto this new thing and then behave the exact same way, but with just with a new set of ground rules. Again, Jesus knowing the human heart and how much we all like to keep an AP top 20 list in our brains of who ranks where with the rules and criteria that frankly only we know and get to know that are frankly completely gerrymandered to make us look the best and top the rankings every week. And he knows that even with this new beautiful set of altruistic kingdom values, we will play the same ranking game in our heads and judge others, which is the exact opposite of the kingdom values that are being described. So to keep us from sawing off the branch on which we sit, he follows all of this up with this teaching on judging. Don't judge, or you two will be judged. Ah, okay, we're recognizing a pattern here. That is that same reciprocal concept that we were seeing a little bit earlier in chapter six with the forgiveness thing. Remember? For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Reciprocal. But if you don't forgive men their sins, your father will not forgive your sins. Okay, so he's saying the same thing about judging. If you want to occupy the position of judge, you're going to get judged. In other words, if the currency you want to trade in is the currency of the grace of God and forgiveness, awesome. We can all trade in that, and you're gonna really like the results. But if the currency you want to trade in, going back to Matthew 6, is not forgiveness, okay. If the currency you want to trade in is judging everybody, then let's trade in that currency and let's see how you hold up under intense scrutiny from a perfect judge who knows all things. No, Jesus is pointing out that it should be so stinking obvious that you should want to pick the forgiveness grace route and that you should want to move as far away from the standards of God's judgment as you possibly could. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged. So if you want to play by these ground rules, you may, but just know that it'll all be played back toward you as well. Now, some people, maybe before they heard what Jesus had said, they might have been like, you know what? I'm pretty freaking good. I am gonna go with uh judge. I pick the judge rules because my behavior is exemplary. I say all the proper words, I say none of the improper words. I always have the best hot takes on Twitter. I always vote for the right things. I'm always offended by the things that are bad, and I always celebrate and cheer and do awareness hashtags for the things that are good. I virtue signal harder than anybody. I don't do naughty secret things, well, none that anybody would ever find out about. Therefore, I pick judging. But in light of what Jesus just did, especially in chapter five with this whole takedown on external obedience versus what real kingdom obedience to God looks like, theoretically, anyone who just listened to what he said should be like, wow, any illusion I had of my own moral excellence has been shattered. If I believe all the stuff Jesus just said is true, the only thing I can do coming out of this encounter with the fulfillment of the law in Jesus is not to despair at my own inability to get things right, but instead to cry out for the mercy of this God who is here literally to extend such mercy. So then why do you look at the speck of sodas in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your own eye when all the time there's a plank in your own eye? It's kind of cool that Jesus goes back to an illustration from his wheelhouse, you know, like I'm always going to movies and trout fishing and stuff. Jesus was a carpenter. He's like, Oh, yeah, here's a thing that happened. I don't know if he got speck-eyed or plank-eyed at some point in his work, but he could at least anticipate or picture this. So he goes with this carpentry example to just point out again what a bad look it is to do the hypocrisy thing. Here, let me solve your problems, but you have like unbelievable amounts of problems. I can see the problems literally hanging out of your eye. Another way to think about this, I guess, would be that it's not necessarily that your problems are much dirtier or nastier or worse than someone else's. In fact, they might actually be better problems than someone else's, but because of parallax relationship and how things look when they're up real, real close, your problems should seem much bigger to you than even big problems for someone else. Like if you take your thumb, you hold it out at arm's length, it doesn't look very impressive when you compare it to other things. But you take that thumb right up to your eye and you close one eye, you all are doing it, aren't you? You're wearing your unitard right now, you're running on the treadmill, and you're also trying to put a thumb up next to your eye. I respect that. Thanks for your commitment. If you put that thumb right up next to your eye, it blocks out everything. That's like the biggest thing in the world. Well, a little speck in your eye is a giant thing that needs attention. And a little speck in somebody else's eye is, well, just exactly that. A little speck. But this is where it gets interesting and it breaks down the ping shield mentality that I talked about earlier. You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you'll see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. Oh. So, in other words, there is an expectation that we kind of look out for each other. It's just that we don't do it like jerks. It's just the the motivation behind it is actual care and compassion and concern. And I guess if it's confusing and you want to know the difference between a judgy outlook on other people or an earnest desire to help, we could just use the same tests that Jesus laid out in Matthew chapter six for spiritual disciplines, right? If you're going out and you're doing all of this in public to be seen so everybody knows what you're up to and they'll know how good and awesome you are, then you're judging and you're getting it wrong. But if you go and you do this in such a way that nobody needs to know, if people have problems, it's okay. This doesn't need to be a big thing. Hey, I'm gonna throw this thing out. I had to think about my own stuff to even throw this thing out. And we're gonna forget about this as soon as this conversation has happened because uh the metaphorical right hand doesn't need to know what the metaphorical left hand is doing in this situation. Well then I don't know, maybe then you're not judging. And maybe then you are operating in a way that you show care for people who've invited you into their life and who you care about and invited into your life in a way that isn't judging and is constructive and that actually nurtures each other on this very difficult thing of leaning into these kingdom values. Doing it this way also allows us to put down the pink shield and use this passage or interact with this passage in keeping with the context. But some of them are going to be right. And if I reverse the polarity on this passage and weaponize it against anyone who would be bold enough or kind enough to speak into my life, I'm kind of depriving myself of all of the advantages of living in a kingdom with other kingdom citizens who are working on this thing with me. Bottom line is, I don't think the don't judge passage is actually all that tricky at all. It flows very naturally and logically out of the previous chunks of thought. It brings us toward a pretty logical capstone. You can see Jesus moving toward the question, so what do I do with this? How do I go out and live? What do I do when other people have problems or we get sideways? He's tackling that kind of stuff in a way that brings the guard down, the defenses down, that makes us receptive to pushback, but also forces the kingdom citizen to deal with their own crap every single time. It might even cross their mind to go and try to point out something weird that might be going on with somebody else. I think it's genius. I think it demonstrates an incredible understanding of the human proclivities toward judgy behavior and defensive behavior. And I think it's incredible how much depth Jesus packed into these five little verses. Tomorrow we're gonna tackle one little verse that is frankly enormously complex and hard to know what to do with. So it should be fun. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do it again soon.