Week 12 (07.12.08)

This week we looked at the passage where Jesus tells us not to judge other people.

In this passage (Matthew 7:1-6), Jesus tells us that if we judge others, we too will be judged and that the more harshly we judge them, the more harshly we ourselves will be judged by God; he will judge us as much as we judge others (and we don't have the right to judge because we are as wrong as other people, whereas God is always right and completely good and therefore is the only one with the right to judge). Jesus then uses the image of us seeing a tiny speck of sawdust in somebody else's eye (the sawdust represents a fault in that person), and offering to remove the speck from their eye even though we ourselves have a log in our own eye, obstructing our vision. He says that we ought to remove our own log first so that we can see clearly to help the other person take out their speck. We said that often, when we see faults in other people, what we really find is that, in examining ourselves, the fault really lies within ourselves and if we were to give it over to God and sort it out, we would realise that the other person did not have the fault in the first place. Or, if they did, it would be so much easier for us to help them if we understand how to work through the problem ourselves. If we go around pointing out everyone elses' faults and never seeing them in ourselves, we are hypocrites (people who like to pretend to be holy and good so that other people respect them; but who, inside, are just like the people they pretend not to be, and worse because they don't see this). Jesus wants us to ask God to search our own hearts (which is a way of asking him to show our hearts to us, because he already knows what we are like inside and out and doesn't really need to search us!) before we look at others: he says that once we have removed the log from our own eyes, we can see clearly to remove the speck from the other person's eye (verse 5), so he does want us to be aware of other people and seek to help them too, but only once we know our own hearts and therefore know we are acting out of love and not hypocrisy. The final verse in this passage reads: "Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces." This was a bit harder to understand, but we thought that Jesus was saying that he didn't want us to be ignorant and blind: he was telling us not to be judgemental in that he wants us to know we are all equal in his eyes and have all sinned, but that he does want us to have discernment. This is an ability given by God which helps us see the truth in situations. When he says "Do not throw your pearls to pigs," he does not mean 'Don't share the gospel with those that don't yet know Christ,' because that would mean no one would ever come to know the Lord. Rather, he is saying that if we have persistently have tried to show someone the truth about God and they continually reject this and have decided they are not going to accept it, we should not waste our energy with them forever but move on and find new people who still need this message. We should know, when this is right and when we need to commit a person to God and trust that, if God is calling them, he will open their eyes by the power of his Spirit.

Lois and Eleanor