The Speck In Your Eye

Introduction

Let’s open to Matthew 7. I uh actually got myself into a little trouble about that Texas, Arkansas thing. Um I just made a joke. Uh I was in a meeting back in Texas a couple of uh months ago, and I said, you know, I’m originally from Texas, and I’ve only recently moved to Arkansas a few months ago. And uh I said, you know, we all do things that we regret. Just kind of joking, and there happened to be a lady there who was from Arkansas and who knew the brethren back in uh Little Rock, and so I’m gonna be careful about that. I’m not gonna joke about any of that. No, uh, I am I am a native Texan, and uh I hope that you listen to me anyway.

I uh I want to I want us to look at Matthew 7. We’re gonna look at a section here, and as we do this, I want you to think about this section and try to look at it with new eyes. Uh Matthew chapter 7, because this is a section that I know you’ve read before, I know you’ve studied before, I know you’ve heard before. Maybe maybe you haven’t even been to this congregation before, or maybe you haven’t even done a real study of this part of the Bible. But I guarantee you some of the things in this section you’ve heard because they are so well known. So we’re gonna try to just empty our heads of all those preconceptions as we look at it. Matthew 7 and verse 1 says, Judge not that you be not judged.

For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite. First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. Some Bible passages become such a source of controversy that they lose their intended meaning. The fight around the passage obscures the real meaning. I could give as an example of that, Ephesians 2.9, talking about the grace of God and how God’s salvation is God’s responsibility and not man’s.

God has done it. It’s not of works, lest anyone should boast. And that has become such a battleground that it’s lost its meaning. I could talk about the Good Samaritan and how when we talk about the Good Samaritan, always we just seem to end up talking about whether or not we help people who have broken down on the side of the road. When I think Jesus had a lot more in mind than that. I could reference the entire book of Revelation, which has become such a source of controversy that I think we’ve completely lost the real sense of what it was intended to communicate. But I’m not sure any of those can rival this one. Matthew 7 and verse 1, judge not that you be not judged.

Because on the one hand, you have people who are going around quoting this verse who have no interest in Jesus whatsoever. They’re just there to say, Ha ha, I got you. See, you’re judging me, but Jesus said, Don’t judge. And then on the other hand, there are Christians who, at least in my perception, almost seem excited to judge people. Okay, so they’re eager to defend their right to judge. I get to judge you, yeah. And in all of that controversy, I’m not sure we’ve hit the point yet. I think that sometimes it can be lost and obscured by the debate about it. And that’s tragic because it’s a message that we need, it’s a message that I need really badly. Don’t you find other people’s problems easier to solve than your own.

I got a call a couple of weeks ago about a brother who is having a problem in another congregation. And you know, in about five minutes, got that solved. I got no trouble with that. Somebody, another brother was telling me about an argument he had with his wife, and they were having a problem in their marriage. Boy, I got that one solved real quick. That was easy. But my problems, not so much. Those are different. And uh they are a lot more difficult. That’s what this text is about. How we have a trouble being honest and humble when we deal with other people, and when we look at a speck in the eyes of others. The way that we tend to think that we’re right because we’re us, and that others are wrong because they’re them.

1. Judge Not That You Be Not Judged

That’s what Jesus is talking about. So I want us to think about a speck in your eye. I mean the speck in your eye because that’s where Jesus says it is. Meanwhile, it’s me who’s got the beam. And how Jesus teaches us to think about that. Let’s read Matthew 7, beginning in verse. Well, we read verses 1 to 5. I want to read verse 1 through 2 really quickly here. Verse 1, judge not that you be not judged, for with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. So, what that is is a threat. Verse 2 in particular. However you judge, you will be judged. Jesus is saying, there’s care that you need to take in this because it’s going to come back to you.

But I want you to notice that the same kind of idea is in verse 12. In verse 12, he says, so whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets. Do you notice how this section is bookended by the idea that we need to be thinking about how our treatment of others reflects on us and has a part to do with what we would want. He is saying you need to think about yourself when dealing with other people. Please hear me rightly about that. I don’t mean that we need to be thinking selfishly. What Jesus is saying is that this begins with a proper estimation of how I would want to be treated. And if I don’t want to be judged the way I’m judging you, then I need to stop.

And if I wouldn’t want you to treat me the way I am treating you, then I need to stop. Do you see how Jesus has that in mind throughout this whole section? He begins with a threat. The idea, in verse 2 in particular, is that the standard that we use in judging other people is a standard we don’t want applied to us. So while I might feel that when somebody else does something dumb that I should laugh at them and belittle them and always bring it up, I don’t really like people doing that to me. And Jesus is saying, well, that’s a double standard. And whatever you do to others, you will be judged by that same standard. There is actually a term, psychologists have for this problem.

It’s called sometimes attribution error or observer bias. The idea is that when we see a problem in somebody else, like let’s just say, for example, there’s somebody who is late. Okay? Well, what we say about them when it’s somebody else is we say, man, that person is always late. They’re just, they’re just late. They’re bad. Okay? And we assume that what their lateness is is a character flaw. But when I’m late, do you know why I was late? Well, I caught that light. And then, and you know, it just took my wife so long to get ready this morning. And there are all these excuses that we say, in my case, you need to consider all of these things. It’s not a character flaw, it was just the situation.

2. Why Do You See the Speck?

In other words, psychologists have identified Matthew 7 and verse 2. The idea that we judge other people by standards we don’t want to be judged by. And Jesus is saying, we’ve got to think more deeply about that. Verse 3 then. In verse 3, he says, Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Now remember, we talked about how Jesus uses the idea of vision in this section of scripture to talk about the mental or spiritual focus that we have. So he says, why do you see or notice everybody else’s speck when you have a beam in your eye? I don’t think we take Jesus’ question very seriously normally. If you look at it again in verse 3, it’s a question.

Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye? Why? I think we take that as rhetorical. When in reality, I’m not so sure it’s rhetorical. I think maybe Jesus is asking us think about why you do this. Why? Why do I feel like I have to look down on others and find their flaws? Why do I feel like it’s easier to solve other people’s problems than my own? Why do I judge people without looking at myself first? Why do I do this? And I don’t know about you, you may have your own answers to that question, but I do know about me. That the answer to that question in all its different forms boils down to pride. It boils down to the idea that if I can find somebody else who has a struggle or a flaw, then I feel a little bit better about me.

And if I can cut them down, then I feel a little higher. If I can condescend to someone, it relieves a little bit of my own anxiety. Jesus says, Think about why. You need to think about the speck in their eye versus the beam in your eye. My criticism often comes from a place of insecurity. And because of that, when I see it that way, it makes me a lot less eager to criticize other people. And what happens when we begin to jump on the specks in other people’s eyes? You know what happens, right? It makes it easier to jump on the next person’s specs and the next person’s specs. We become professional eye inspectors, right? We do this. And I’ve been there where we become critical of everyone, and we think we have the solution to all their problems, but we haven’t ever actually got around to our own.

Just busy with others’ flaws. But I think what’s really powerful about verse 3 is that Jesus actually does give the answer to the why question. Essentially, what he is saying is, it is a distraction tactic. Look again at verse 3. He says, Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? We look at other people’s flaws because we don’t want to face our own. That’s what he says. It’s a lot easier and it’s a lot more comfortable, and I don’t want to face my own issues. That’s what Jesus says is the real problem. It’s a distraction tactic. See, fixing my own flaws and my own weaknesses is a painful and gut-wrenching process.

3. You Hypocrite, First Take the Log Out

So it’s a lot easier to look at others. Verse 4 then. How can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there is the log in your own eye? How can you say that? I’ll help you when I can’t help myself. Can you just take a moment, humor me for a second? Have you ever thought about how many times we have expressions in English for this same problem? Like we have the expression, well, you’re one to talk. What does that mean? Don’t criticize me when you haven’t straightened up your own life. Or we say, look who’s talking. Or we say, well, that’s the pot calling the kettle black. What are we saying? Same thing. We say, hey, those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

What do we say? Same thing. Isn’t that interesting? It is so galling. Doesn’t it irritate you when people come criticize you? And you know they’ve got big problems of their own? Doesn’t it make you say, now wait just a minute? That’s what Jesus is talking about. If you feel that way when other people do it to you, how does it feel when you do it to them? Verse 4 again. How can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there is the log in your own eye? It’s ridiculous for us to notice the smaller flaw rather than our own. But it is even more ridiculous to offer to help somebody with a smaller flaw when we’ve got the big one.

That’s what Jesus is teaching. And so he says there in verse 5, you hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. Do you see how he calls it hypocrisy? You hypocrite. Can I explain that? Hypocrisy is not if I have a beam in my eye. Hypocrisy is not if I see the beam and I try to work on the beam, and I’m upset about the beam. Hypocrisy is when I ignore the beam, pretend it’s not there, and try to correct your speck. That’s hypocrisy. So please don’t think that what Jesus is saying here is, well, nobody can help anybody else unless they’re perfect. That’s not the teaching. Okay? Because then nobody would be helped, right?

Okay? The teaching is we’ve got to acknowledge and work on our flaws. The pressing question of verse 5 becomes what am I doing about my own spiritual problems? How am I addressing what I’ve got? And then, then I can be better equipped to help other people. Paul makes this statement, and I think it relates very well to what we’re reading here in Romans chapter 2 and verse 21, you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? And he goes on in the context there. But doesn’t it bother you? When you see hypocrisy in somebody who’s preaching something and then they do it, wouldn’t that just be a scandal? Jesus is saying, that’s exactly what we’re doing. That’s the nature of the hypocrisy.

Don’t you teach yourself. Don’t you apply this to yourself first? So Jesus is teaching us then. This is where the work begins before we ever start to look around and think about others. And what this will produce in us is a spirit of humility and honesty. Isn’t there a difference? If I were to approach you and say, you know, brother, I’ve noticed that this is an issue for you. Let me tell you, I have had a lot of issues in my own life. And by the grace of God, I’ve grown past some of them. I’m still working on some of them. I want to share with you some of what God has done for me, and I hope it’ll help you. Here are some things that worked for me.

Isn’t there a difference in that approach and saying, you know what your problem is? Isn’t there a difference? You need to get that straightened out. Isn’t there a difference? One is about humility and honesty. Yes, I sin, and not just in that vague way where we say, yes, all have sinned. I have done specific things that are abhorrent in the sight of God, and I have done things that I have had to have God help me work out of. Now I can help you. Not because I’m perfect, not because I’m better. Because we’re in this together. You see the difference in tone? That’s what Jesus is after in verse 5. In verse 5, he is saying specifically, once you have gotten your problem at the very least under control, then you can help others with their problems.

4. Pearls Before Pigs; Ask, Seek, Knock

Verse 6 now. Let’s move forward in the text. In verse 6, he says, do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. I think Jesus is doing here a favor for us, reminding us that not everybody is the kind of person that we would call brother in the first section. Not everybody is eager to have our help. Not everybody wants us to help them move past spiritual problems. Some people, the closer you get to them with the gospel, the more damage they’re going to do. They are dogs or they are pigs, and they are aggressive in their rejection of the gospel. And so not everybody wants to be helped. Not everybody cares about the speck in their own eye.

And some people will hurt us. So we need to know that even our sincere and authentic efforts at changing and helping others to change will not always be well received. Verse 7 now. Verse 7, we’re going to read this section through 11. Verse 7, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks, receives. And the one who seeks finds. And the one who knocks, to the one who knocks, it will be open. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, we’ll give him a stone. Or if he asks for a fish, we’ll give him a serpent. If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him?

I’m intrigued by the placement of these verses. Why these are here, sandwiched in my view, between 1 to 5 and verse 12. I think, and I may be wrong about this, but I think that perhaps what Jesus is doing here is saying that there is a kind of sincere seeking aspect that God wants us to have. He says that in verse 7 ask and it will be given, seek, and you’ll find knock, and it will be open to you. And that God rewards that passionate seeking. That God rewards people who are looking for his blessings. That God gives people credit for being with their heart in the right place, with their passion where it should be, like we talked about in the last hour. And so if we expect God to see the best in us, to reward what’s good in us, then maybe what Jesus is saying is shouldn’t we offer the same to other people?

Shouldn’t we offer the same in terms of their weaknesses? And then in verse 12, with regards to what they want. I don’t know if that’s true, but I think that that might help put all this context together. What this section, verse 7 to 11, is about, though, it’s not really so much about prayer, in my view, as it is about seeking God. And that those who seek God are going to find him. That those who seek with all their heart and ask and knock, God’s going to bless. And I love the picture of God in verse 11. In verse 11, it says, if you that are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?

5. Whatever You Wish That Others Would Do

God is a God who is itching to bless his children. And I love that picture of God as a father. Verse 12 now. So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets. I know that what Jesus states is sort of as a broad rule, but I again have come to see it as connected to the speck and the beam section that we’ve been working in. That we’ve come back to what verse 1 and 2 said. If you want to judge people harshly, God will judge you harshly. But you should treat others the way you wish you would be treated.

Can I caution you about something about verse 12?

Sometimes we think verse 12, which we call a golden rule, means that it’s really a substitute for us inserting our personality into the discussion. So if you if you meet somebody who’s very blunt, then they’ll go and be really blunt to somebody and offensive. And then if you say, why did you do that? They’ll say, Well, I would want them to be blunt with me. I don’t think what Jesus is saying here is be ugly to people if that’s your personality type. Or if you like people being ugly to you, go be ugly to them. I think we know that, but I think we need to say that to make sure we’re clear. What Jesus is saying here is you need to think about in every situation, what would be good treatment in your eyes?

What would be something that would be a blessing in your eyes? Think about your heart and what you would want. And let that be a guide. When you’re not so sure what’s the best thing to do, what would you want to do? What would you want done to you? And a tremendous guide that is. Because it helps us be aware of what we want, and it helps us act in a way that’s consistent with what we want. And if someone were to question us, why did you do it that way? We can always answer, I just really genuinely thought that that’s how I would want it done to me. It’s hard to fault that. And I think that’s why it’s such a great standard that Jesus offers.

So when we talk about criticism, how would we want people to treat us? Will we want people to whisper about our problems behind our back? Spread around what they learned about us. Will we want people to come down with a hammer every time we made a mistake? Would we want that? I don’t think so. So then how can we treat others that way? How can we be consistent when we’re always focused on the speck in their eyes? I want to spend the rest of our time in this hour, thinking about where we can apply this. Because I think that all preach is, well, not easy, but relatively easy. But we need to think about where this goes. And some specific situations where we’re going to have to think about this.

6. Apply This: Bible Study, Forgiveness, Morality, Denominations

Before we get into this, though, I want to emphasize again. I don’t feel like I’ve said this clearly enough, so let me try again. Jesus teaches us that in all matters spiritual, we think first about ourselves and our own relationship with God. That I have no right to criticize you and point at you and condemn you when I’m not thinking first about myself. That is a paradigm Christians must learn that I cannot criticize until I have first looked in the mirror. So I want to strongly emphasize that. And then I want to give you some areas where this happens with regularity. First of all, we can apply this in Bible study.

Has this ever happened to you? Okay, you’re reading a Bible verse and you say, you know, so-and-so really needs to hear that. Has this ever happened to you? Preacher gets up and starts talking about something, and you do one of these. Wonder if they’re listening. Has it ever happened to you that you read a passage? And the only thing you can think about is what the Jehovah’s Witnesses might say about that. Or how that might be used in your debate that you’re having with somebody at work. What’s the problem? The problem is when we study our Bibles, the first application of Bible teaching is always to me. The first application of preaching. When you hear preaching, it’s not preaching to everybody else. It’s preaching to me.

It’s preaching to you. And it is so easy for us to miss the message of the Bible because we’re thinking about other people. And we’re thinking about other situations where we might use it. Instead of thinking, what does God want from me? Very often we become like David. Do you remember the story of David? After David had had his sin with Bathsheba. Nathan comes to David. And Nathan preaches this sermon to David. Well, more of a story. A story about a man who stole a lamb. And you remember what David did? David doesn’t say, oh, I’m guilty. David says, This man will die. And then Nathan says, You are the man.

So often we are like David, where we read the Word of God. And we can we can figure out everything it means, and we can go through our exegesis, and we got it all lined out, but we never think about what God’s saying to me. Jesus teaches us to think first about ourselves. And then we can apply to others. There is a place to help other people. There is a place to send somebody a sermon and say, hey, I thought this might help you. There is a place to say we need to do battle with denominational error. That’s not the first place, though. The first application of Bible teaching is to me. So can I say a special warning in that? First, to preachers. Because it’s very easy for us who preach the word to stand beside it instead of under it as we preach it.

And to people in any position of spiritual authority. To think that it’s about applying this to them and not to myself. Can I say a special word of caution to parents?

Who sometimes we seem to think that the rules are for them and not for us? That when we study the Bible, when we try to live rightly, I am the first one under the microscope. And it shouldn’t surprise us at all if when we don’t do this, when we Bible study for others, it shouldn’t surprise us at all when we challenge people to say, hey, think about your life. Maybe you need to make a big change in your life. And they look at us and say, you know, you haven’t done that. And turn and walk away. How can we apply this? Another place I find application of this is in terms of forgiveness. Forgiveness. You know, when I talk about forgiveness here, I mean particularly the idea of being emotionally ready to forgive, to forgive from the heart.

That’s hard. We’ve been hurt. When people do us wrong, we don’t want to forgive. But there is a dynamic at play in forgiveness situations. And the dynamic is this. The dynamic is they did wrong, so I’m up here and they’re down here.

And maybe if they grovel enough, I could find a way.

What Jesus’ teaching does, though, is show us that this paradigm is wrong. That when others have sinned, I have to. And that when other people have hurt me, it’s easy to forget that I’ve hurt other people too. That I’ve been exactly where they are. And how did I want people to treat me in that moment? When I had done wrong to somebody else and I was in their debt and I was below. Did I want them to hold that against me for the rest of my life? To always bring it up, to spread it around? When I was so desperate that I would have done anything to make it right, but I knew I couldn’t make it right because that’s not the way life works. All I needed, all I could beg for was forgiveness.

And so now when I’m in the opposite position, where someone has wronged me, doesn’t it change things to think first about my sin? To think first about my mistakes? Doesn’t it soften our hearts a little bit? Say, maybe this person isn’t that bad.

At worst they’re a lot like me. In fact, I’ve had experiences where when I felt particularly hurt and disappointed, the realization has slowly, or on one occasion rather quickly, dawned on me that that person’s just like me, and I’ve done things just like that. Doesn’t that change the game? I think in forgiveness, if we look and focus on the beam in our eye first, it’ll help us to move toward an ability to forgive. I think we can apply this in terms of morality. Let me explain what I mean by that. There are some moral lines in the New Testament that are not really spelled out to the degree that they are in the Old Testament. For example, what constitutes a corrupt word? Well, lots of different ideas and definitions that could go along with that.

What exactly is modest dress? What exactly constitutes lewdness? You see, we don’t have all the specifics of all of that, do we?

Just because somebody sees something differently than we do, doesn’t mean that they’re terrible and that they want to sin. But it is much easier to criticize and condemn other people who were doing things that we might think we disagree with than to deal with our spiritual house first.

Because I have a particular experience in this.

And all the way I thought I was better than they were. I can’t help but see that in Matthew 7, 1 to 5. The idea that I could look at them with criticism for the beam and the speck in their eye and not see the huge beam in my eye. That one way or another, no matter what somebody else says about morality, at the end of the day, I’m either going to be pure or impure. Me. Okay? You may think this and you may do this and you may like this, but at the end of the day, I have my choices I must make. And if I don’t keep my spiritual house clean, I’m not even sure I have a seat at the table in that discussion.

That’s what Jesus is saying. Get the beam out of your eye. And then you can actually see clearly to help others with the spec. Now I know it can work the other way too. I know that for some people it seems to be that their vigor about moral issues comes from their own moral failings. Because they’re hiding tremendous sins. And so they seem to get more and more animated the worse their sin gets. But all of it is resolved by Jesus’ teaching, isn’t it? You just go back to that. Clean your house up first, and then the rest of it we can work through. And the last thing I want to talk about is about denominational people. Maybe some people here this morning who are members of a denomination.

I want you to know exactly what I’m talking about here. The idea here is I am convicted that the New Testament doesn’t have anything to say about denominations. And so I don’t want to be a part of a group that is outside of the New Testament’s purview of what we should be. But I believe it’s very easy for us to condescend to denominational people. In the same way Jesus describes. Let me help. I spent a lot of my life looking down on denominational people because of that belief. Shaking my head at them, making fun of them, ridiculing their faith. And in fact, there was so much self-righteousness and condescension in me that I felt a sense of superiority, somehow knowing God was right, somehow transferred to me always being right, even in that attitude.

And you know what happened? I look back on that time, and again, this isn’t meant to be confession hour, but I’m not proud of it. Because what I look back on, I see that my attitude, my critical and condescending spirit cost me so many opportunities to talk frankly about that issue. Because people knew, knew where I was coming from. They could hear it in my voice. I know that. Looking back, I couldn’t even see their faith. I couldn’t even see any good in them. So all I could see was that one error. And the worst part is that in all that condemnation, I wasn’t living right. I became this verse. Brethren, can I just say this? If we’re going to encourage denominational people to reconsider their position, and we should.

And if we’re going to urge denominational people to open the Bible and honestly look at what’s there. And if we’re going to urge denominational people to be willing to change, even if they’ve been doing something their whole lives. Don’t we have to do the same thing? Don’t I have to be humble enough to really consider that? Don’t I have to really change? Don’t I have to be humble enough to open my Bible and see that when I am convicted, I am just as wrong as anyone else. People can smell a rat. And when people see that there is inconsistency in that message, it turns them off. And rightly so. Now the answer to that goes back to Jesus’ teaching. First, take the beam out of your eye.

Conclusion

And then you’ll see clearly to remove a speck from your brother’s eye. I think you know we could go on and on with applications. I hope you do. I hope you think about situations in your life that are particularly pertinent. But don’t lose the paradigm. I fix and I work on myself first. I think of myself first, and then I’ll be equipped to help others. I hope you see that the controversy about all of this really has blurred the point, hasn’t it? So it’s not about do I have the right to judge other people and all of that? This is about simply do I have the guts to look in the mirror and not just to criticize others. So I hope you’ll take that message and let it be a blessing in your life.

Thanks so much for your attention.