Law & Grace - Matthew 7:1-12 Judges, logs, dogs, swine, fish, snakes & gold

contain some fairly graphic points of spiritual and moral instruction. He uses some word pictures and illustrations that are pretty powerful. He continues to tell the Israelites, as he's speaking to Israelites in the land of Israel, about the law of Moses in view of the coming kingdom. That's his perspective as he speaks this to the Israelites there.

As he does so, he'll tell them not to judge, as Wayne just read for us. And then he'll use logs and dogs and swine. I could have gone with logs and dogs and hogs, but enough's enough, right? And then he'll also mention the loaves and the stone, but then fish and snakes as illustrations. And then he'll finish off with gold is not actually mentioned, but what's typically called the golden rule.

And so this passage has sort of an assortment of spiritual lessons and moral lessons. As we go through and study this passage, we're going to find that while Jesus is speaking to those who are under the law of Moses, And while we're under the principle of grace, there will in fact be quite a bit to learn from this passage that we can directly apply. Maybe not all of it, but a good deal of it. And the reason for that is because God does not change. What it says about God continues to be true for all people of all time. And we certainly have needs in common with the Israelites, and so there are things there to be found as well. Things about human nature that continue on.

The law, by contrast, and when we say that, the law of Moses, by contrast, helps us understand what grace is. It's one of the reasons why I see the Lord had the law of Moses introduced, not that we adopt it as a way of doing things. It's a good thing you don't have to remember all 613 laws, right? But that we learn from it by contrast.

That's very important. So here is Matthew 7, first couple of verses. Do not judge so you'll not be judged, for in the way you judge you will be judged, for by your standard of measure it will be measured to you. So to judge or not to judge? That is the question, to borrow from Shakespeare, right? To judge or not to judge? Should we judge?

Jesus tells his listeners that they are, he just says it flat out, you are not to judge. Now, he says that to the extent that they do judge, to the extent that you carry it out, and the way or manner that you carry it out, that that same judgment will be carried out to you. Now, we have here a really big problem in what Jesus just said. The big problem is this. Well, the first big problem. The law of Moses actually required that they judge. I'll give a couple of examples. So the law required them to judge.

Why would he tell them not to? The next things that Jesus will tell them, as we'll see as we continue, will instruct them on how to judge. Now, I can't tell you how many times I've heard this, do not judge, lest you be judged, as a way of somebody saying, don't catch me doing wrong what I'm doing wrong, right? They want to use that as a, you know, I'm doing something wrong, please don't look at me, kind of thing. Don't watch me doing it and don't point it out. That's not what Jesus is saying, as we'll soon see.

Human beings can certainly tend to embrace things that are in conflict, I think one of the things that is brought out in this passage is when we see what appears to be conflict in the Word of God, it should call us to look more carefully. If we see something that looks like a conflict, it should call us to look more carefully. One of the ways we've already done that is we look at the Sermon on the Mount, chapter 6, right after what has been called the Lord's Prayer. It says, you must forgive or you will not be forgiven. That's what Jesus said.

And then in Ephesians 4.32, forgive because you've been forgiven. Now that to me sounds like a contradiction. The Bible has contradictions, right? It is a call to look more carefully. This is no different. Now, The Law of Moses commanded that the Israelites judge.

And here's an example, Leviticus 19.15. You are to judge your neighbor.

And Numbers 35.24. The congregation shall judge. That means everybody. Right? Now, does that not sound in conflict with do not judge? Yes, it does. All right? Even later on in the Gospels, John 7 24, Jesus said, and he used an imperative in the Greek language, and he said, you must judge. So what does he mean by this? Jesus must have a particular quality of judging in mind when he said this, not a flat out statement, do not ever under any circumstances with anybody judge.

So, John 7.24. Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.

Which, interesting, that term, judge with righteous judgment, sounds very similar to Deuteronomy 16.18. Judge the people with righteous judgment. Sounds like he's drawing that out of Deuteronomy, doesn't it?

Here's the next chapter, John 8.15-18.

And I would also reference John 5.30. It says, you judge according to the flesh. Jesus is speaking to the Jewish leaders. You judge according to the flesh. I'm not judging anyone, at least not right now.

Right? But even if I do judge, my judgment is true. My judgment is true, that implies your judgment is false. Right? Okay. So what's the problem with judging? The judging that Jesus is warning about is a judgment that is superficial. It's on the surface. And it is also based on human bias. Because I've gotten a fair amount of drachma in my hand five minutes before this judgment, I'm going to look at things a little differently. He says you have false judging. Judging where you have taken the law and distorted it, as we'll see here shortly. You've taken the law and distorted it, and Jesus says it must be true.

It must be absolute. It must be righteous. It can't be twisted. It can't be biased. Instead, judging is to be just. That's the other John passage, John chapter 5 that we referenced there. It must be righteous. It must be true. There must be an authority basis for judging.

When I go into the grocery store and I see a mother correcting her child, I don't run up and say, ah, you shouldn't do that. You should do it this way and then give her a five minute lesson and hand her a book on how to do it. Right? No, I have no basis of authority for doing that.

There must be a responsibility and an authority for a person to carry out a judgment. Under both law and grace, and this is the principle we're going to see next, we're to judge ourselves first. Judge ourselves first. Now, here's where it comes to Judging yourself first, Matthew 7, 3-5.

Why do you look at that speck, that little piece of sawdust, in your brother's eye, but did not notice the log that's in your own eye? One of the things you may have noticed is that there are various translations for this word. Log, beam, plank. The reality is that the word is not specific. It just means a big piece of wood. That's why you get it translated in different ways. But no matter which way you translate it, having a large piece of wood in your eye, that gets the point across. It's also very memorable, isn't it? Having this large piece of wood in your eye.

Basically Jesus talks about this huge piece of wood in your eye as you judge another person with a little tiny speck. And one of the perspectives that this brings out, ultimately my sin is priority. My sin is priority, that's what it brings out. Jesus continues on, or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye and behold the log is in your own eye. You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye and then you will see clearly that you take the speck out of your brother's eye. Let's hope so, right? So let's talk about logs and specks.

In the first place, the priority in dealing with sin here. It's the first priority is myself. The difficulty that Jesus was pointing out with judging that the Jewish leaders were doing is they themselves would have great fault, but they were very quick to judge the sin of others. That was a big problem. The one to judge and deal with first is oneself. In John chapter 8 is the account of the woman caught in adultery. Now here is the big problem.

It wasn't that Jesus was soft on adultery. But the law required, if you're going to bring someone up for adultery, you bring the man and the woman. By New Testament times, the men had talked themselves out of being included in that. And so it had become the custom, we let the man go, we catch the woman. And Jesus basically said, ah, ah, ah, don't do that. We don't know what he wrote on the ground. I could speculate. Maybe even bring the man and the woman.

He says, and you're failing to do that is sin. But he said, He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw the stone at her. Is this not the same lesson as deal with the beam in your own eye first and then you'll be able to take care of the speck? They had violated the law of Moses by making this new custom that only the woman gets nailed for the problem.

The same principle under law is also valid under grace. Yes, under law you're worried about stoning somebody, and under grace, as we'll see, you're concerned not with stoning somebody, but restoring. Under law, it's you carry out the death penalty if that's what's called for. Under grace, the goal of love is restoration.

Galatians 6.1, he's written to the believers there, he's in the beginning of chapter 6, the last chapter, he says, Even if anyone is caught in any trespass, and that word trespass means to fall alongside the path. You're not on the path, you've fallen alongside it. If anyone's caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, and he just told them what spiritual meant in the previous chapter, you who are walking by means of the Spirit.

Okay? Restore such a one, not pick up stones, but restore such a one in the spirit of gentleness. Each one looking to yourself so that you too will not be tempted. Doesn't that tell you, make sure you deal with yourself? You're not there just to point out their problem. Deal with yourself as well. Deal with yourself first.

Here's Matthew 7.6.

Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under feet, and turn and tear you in pieces. There are two words for dog in the Greek. One is this little pet dog. That's what I hope you have in your house. The other kind is one I hope you don't have in your house, if you have a dog.

That one was for a vicious, roaming, mangy dog that ate scraps and rotten whatever and often went around in packs. Wild, vicious dog that if you happened to come close to its undesirable food, it would attack and defend its food. In addition to that, they would eat things that the Jews were forbidden to eat or touch. That's the word that Jesus used here. Don't take what is holy and put it before, don't put it in front of this wild, mangy, vicious pack dog.

And then he goes and moves on to the swine. The swine, of course, not only unclean, the Jews couldn't eat it, But when he described them as vicious, I can tell you personally they can be. We don't have time for the story other than to say that a vicious swine once made me jump up on the barn roof. I could no way even close do that now. But it's amazing what you can do when you're trying to save your leg, right? So he's not kidding about the swine being vicious. So why all this?

The Jews would call the Gentiles dogs and swine, both of which the Law of Moses called unclean. They were unclean animals by what they ate and what they were. It's likely, however, that he was not referring to the Gentiles, but rather to the Jewish leaders who were rejected and would not listen to the truth. Why would I say such a thing? We'll see in a minute here, Jesus himself said of these Jewish leaders that they strain out gnats but swallow camels. Paul wrote later on and used this word for dog and that's that word he applied, that wild, mangy, vicious pack dog he applied to the Jewish leaders. The Jewish leaders would not recognize holiness When they saw it, they had no value. Not pearls, right? They had no value for truth. Even if God himself, spoken through Jesus, said it.

Jesus said these were the ones that strain out the gnat and swallow the camel. And by the way, the camel was an unclean animal too. Make sure you get the gnat out, but swallow the whole camel. The whole unclean animal. There was a similar kind of thing that was done among the Jews, and that was to shake the dust off of one's feet. Going along dusty, dirty roads would frequently result in a lot of dust on the sandals and dust on the feet. And if someone rejected the message, what the Jews would do, as a part of their custom, is they would take their sandals off and clap them together and say, you know, you're responsible for rejecting the message. You take responsibility for it.

I'm not even taking your dust with me. And so we see an example of that, as we'll see in just a few chapters in the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew 10, 14. And as we studied at our home study last Thursday night, Acts 13, they shook the dust off their feet in protest against them and went to Iconium. Now, Matthew 7, 7 through 11. That's not an advertisement. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father, who is in heaven, give what is good to those who ask him? So Jesus tells his listeners to ask, to seek, and to knock.

Why does he do that? Well, God does desire of the Jews then and of us now that we ask him and that we seek him. Make our requests made known to God. This is true. Why? Because we have a common need and because God himself does not change. How about this word knocking? How does that fit?

Well, in New Testament times when a person knocked at the door, we have doorbells and we have sometimes little knockers, mechanical knockers on the front of the door or sometimes people actually just knock on the door. But usually that's all we do. But the custom in New Testament times was you knocked on the door and said who you were. You would do something like, hello, this is Vern. I'm here to visit you. Can you have the afternoon off if I come and spend some time with you while you're knocking? And that would be the custom. So to knock implied looking for fellowship.

And this is why in Revelation chapter 3, Picture is turned the other way. Jesus says, and by the way, this verse is often applied to salvation, but it is in fact a verse written to a church where people were saved. And Jesus says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. And notice what it says, I stand at the door and knock if anyone hear my voice. Why? Because they had the custom of talking and announcing who they were as they knocked. If anyone hear my voice, And so that custom is now turned in reverse for the book of Revelation.

But the idea is the same here. We come to the Lord and knock. It implies we're looking for fellowship from Him. We're talking to Him, saying, this is me, this is who I am, I'm coming to fellowship with you and to spend time with you. Asking and seeking and knocking has to do with God's character. It has to do with who God is. God's intent when we come to him in faith is benevolent.

I've told the story before how On my folks' ranch, we used to have ants during the summertime. There was some ants and not too far away was another colony of ants. And I used to enjoy picking up the colony of ants in one place and dumping them on the other colony of ants and watching them fight for quite a while. And it was a lot of fun.

But God's not playing those kinds of games with us, right? God knows what we need. We're not just informing Him when we pray. God, I know you don't know this, but I really need something to eat or something to wear. God knows all those things. We're not informing Him. We're coming to Him with those things, not to let Him know as if He had no idea that we needed something, but as a matter of fellowship and as a matter of who He is and who we are. God is not playing games with us, okay? God's not playing games with us. He is not saying, well, how about if we play this little game and you ask and I'll give it to you, okay? It's about relationship. It's about the relationship that we have.

The other point here is God is personal. In Hinduism, there are hundreds of gods, but in Hinduism, the ultimate God is impersonal. Yeah, the ultimate God is impersonal. As a matter of fact, a conversation I had with Dr. Banu Dave years ago, who was a professor of religion, he said, yeah, he says, basically in Hinduism, we're a dream of God. And when God gets through dreaming, it'll all be over. No. God is personal. Here's another one. In Islam, God is unknowable. And yet, that is not the case.

In Biblical faith, is it? We are in fact to know Him. We are in fact to know Him more. To grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. God is personal. He wants and desires that we interact with Him. As a matter of fact, He made us that way. We were made in His image. I won't go through the details on it, but I have included it from our Genesis study. There are three respects in which we have been made in the image of God that have to do with why God wants us to come to Him. He made us for relationship with Him.

He is personal, we are personal. He made us interpersonally and He made us spiritually. More than that, We are beings that have a physical aspect and we're beings that have a spiritual aspect. We have needs in both of those areas. God can provide for the needs that we have. And he made it that way. And it is a part of the fellowship and relationship that he desires for us to have with him.

Ask, seek, and knock are really focusing also about prayer. This is really how we approach God. It's personal communication with God himself, the creator of the universe. Asking is making requests of God. We ask God for this or that thing, or maybe even about a situation or a resolution of a situation. He is the one who is able to provide for us, who are people of need.

What's interesting, I've shown this big picture of a golden bowl, and there's a reason for that. In the book of Revelation, it says that our prayers are kept in heaven in golden bowls. Golden bowls. It means God values them. Interesting. You might think, heaven's sake, there's billions of people on earth, and a whole bunch of them have already died and passed. How does God care about what I pray? And what this is telling you is He values them. He keeps them in golden bowls in heaven. He values what we say to Him. He considers it valuable and precious.

Seeking is just approaching God. He is the one who created everything, but He created us in a specific way. He created us to have a particular character created in his image for a particular reason, and he wants us to have relationship with him. We have privileged access to God.

Isn't that cool? We have privileged access. And knocking also speaks of a personal approach, especially the way they used to knock. in those days. Hello, I'm here to visit with you. Can you spend some time this afternoon? It's personal. It's personal. God wants to spend personal time with you and He wants you to spend personal time with Him.

As a matter of fact, it was so important, He said, I'll have Jesus pay for the sins of the whole world. But I want you to have personal time with me. And I'm not here to load on you some guilt about you got to pray more. If you want to be guilty or you want to feel guilty, you have to go somewhere else. That's not my point. Right? The point being, God desires relationship and fellowship with you. Personal relationship.

Here's verse 12. In everything, therefore, treat people the same as you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets." Now, I have to tell you, there are some things about this verse that I've had to learn and to refine my understanding of it. Yeah, I have. This is oftentimes called the Golden Rule. Treat others as you would have them treat you. But there are refinements to this.

Let me give you a for instance. I love salsa and hot sauce, but I've learned that not everybody likes it. So that just because I love it doesn't mean that I should put hot salsa and hot sauce on everybody else's food, right? Okay. So certainly not. I happen to like a very firm massage, but I've found out that not everybody likes that, right? So there are refinements that we have to have here.

This golden rule is rooted this way. The law of Moses said that the Jew was to love his neighbor as himself. So what Jesus said here was actually a restating of that, a rewording of it, that same principle of loving the neighbor. One way to express that love is to say, what would I like, and then to do that for them as I would like it. So loving one's neighbor, however, applies to the body of Christ as well.

It's just not under law. Under the law of Moses, you had better love your neighbor or else you'll be studying rocks up close. Right? But under grace, there is also a call to love one's neighbor. But not in order to be blessed and not in order to avoid cursing. We love because he first loved us. It's a grace response to love because we're loved. It's a grace response to forgive because we're forgiven.

The Law and the Prophets was an expression here at the very end of the passage. For the entire set of books we have come to call the Old Testament. 39 books as it's counted now. The Law of Moses was the beginning of those books the first five books are written by Moses and the prophets were at the end all the way down to Malachi so this expression meant from beginning to end of the Old Testament right similar expressions in Hebrew that the rabbis would use would to say the whole thing would be the aleph and the tav and they're backwards here because you read backwards in Hebrew right okay And then in Greek, because you read the same way we do, Alpha and the Omega. We would say in English, A to Z. Right? That's the idea. So the Law and the Prophets was, here's the beginning set of books, the Law of Moses, verse 5, and the Prophets, the ones at the end, all the way to Malachi. So from Genesis to Malachi is the whole thing. The Law and the Prophets.

Most of what this passage is, about is the same or similar for us who are under grace as those who are under law. We've been going along contrasting things and saying well that's not for us or this is and right now what we've seen mostly in this passage is that things compare for those under law and us who are under grace.

Why would that be? The reason is that God does not change, and much of what Jesus is bringing out here has to do with morality, because God is a God of morality, and we, even under grace, are responding to God's righteous character. God does not change, and He has created us all in His image, whether you are under law, as the Jews were, or whether you are under grace, as we are. That morality is based on the character of God.

Our needs in the church body, the body of Christ, are the same or similar to those of the Jews. And so there will in fact be things in common. Passages like this, where almost everything applies fairly directly. And it's because the Lord has made us to be people after His own image. It's because the Lord has made us to be people as initially created of a character like His. It's because we have needs just like they did. And because the Lord cares for us in every detail.

And He wants relationship and fellowship with Him. He wants us to come to Him in prayer not because It's time to pray, not because we've got to fulfill our required number of minutes, but because He wants relationship and fellowship with Him. Let's pray right now, okay?

Lord, we thank You that You have made us to be people who can have fellowship with You in various ways, where You provide for us, where we can bring everything to You that's on our heart. We thank You that You value those prayers greatly. that they are not just bouncing off the floorboards of heaven, but in fact kept there in golden bowls. We thank you for the value that you place in them. And we thank you for the marvelous relationship and the fellowship that we can enjoy with you. We just pray and pray for the rest of our time in Jesus' name. Amen.