2008-08-22
Good Morning Dear Ones,
When I was finished with last week’s devotion, the Holy Spirit left me asking: “When should we judge?” If we read over MT 7: 1-2 from the Sermon on the Mount one more time, we can see from where this question might come. “Do not judge others, so that God will not judge you, for God will judge you in the same way you judge others, and He will apply to you the same rules you apply to others.” We must look at the whole sentence, not just one phrase in it. If we stopped at the first phrase, it would look like we were never to make judgments. But, that would miss the spirit of what Christ is saying here. Christ understands that there are times when we must make judgments in the course of our lives, and we already know there are times, which He makes clear, when we are not to judge. The prime example is when granting or taking away of life is concerned. Remember God’s bargain with the devil in JOB 1: 12, in which God gives the devil permission to do anything to Job that he wants, except take away his life. The other support for my assertion is that there are times when we are allowed to make compassionate and wise judgments, doing so with His help. God would have created us unable to make decisions regarding others, if he had meant to stop at the first phrase of MT 7:1.
As with anything else which we might do impacting another person, Christ reminds us that God has given us ground rules to follow in making judgments. 1) Believers in Christ aren’t perfect, just forgiven. Had we been born perfect, God would have had no need to forgive us. But the fact is that the original sin did happen [GN 3: 1-6], and we did inherit sin through the first Adam. RO 5: 14b-15, “Adam was a figure of the One Who was to come. But the two are not the same, because God’s free gift is not like Adam’s sin. It is true that many people died because of the sin of one man. But God’s grace is much greater, and so it is His free gift to so many people through the grace of one man, Jesus Christ.” [Here, the Lord Jesus is referred to as the second Adam]. Who else but God could utter, in 2: CH 7:19, “If My people who are called to My name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear them from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land”? In view of the criticisms of some people who study the OT that it’s too harsh, one can find God’s love, concern, and offer of forgiveness to His people in it. At one point, in LK 6: 37, 39, Christ says, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven…One blind man cannot lead another; if he does, both will fall into a ditch.” Since we are forgiven, we must learn to be forgiving. One of the least constructive motivations mankind has is grudge-holding. The idea here is that if we are going to make any judgments, they need to be in line with God’s will and with godly motivations.
There is a saying we should all remember, 2) “Please be patient. God is not finished with me yet.” Jumping to quick and often wrong judgments is the source of a lot of trouble in our society. Remember the story of wise Solomon who was presented with two ladies claiming to be the mother of the same baby, in 1 K 3: 16-38? I’m sure that the first lady, who said, in (20-21) that the other accidently rolled over and killed her baby smothering it, was quite believable. The second lady denied this, in (22). The king asserted in (23-24), “Each of you claims that the living baby is hers and that the dead child belongs to the other one. And he sent for his sword and said, “cut the child in half!” “The real mother, her heart full of love for her son said to the king, ‘Please, Your Majesty, do not kill the child! Give it to her’” (26). The other lady indicated the kind should go ahead and cut the child in two. That gives us a picture of the ugly heart of the woman who would be given the baby had Solomon rushed to a quick judgment of this difficult case. It’s the same with our experiences in judging others. We need to take our time to really get to know the person in question. You have read my account in past devotions of a lady I met when I first came to our congregation. She appeared to be a snob, totally disinterested in getting acquainted with me at first- rather haughty and self-satisfied. But I decided to invite her to lunch, something for which she was amazingly grateful. In the course of our conversation, I did a lot of listening. She related her trials, and a new, soon to be long-term friendship was established. Few people had given her this opportunity to unload her troubles to that point. Had I rushed to judgment, I would have missed out on a lovely friendship.
One more point should be remembered: 3) Some people are EGR folks, and the EGR stands for Extra Grace Required. Can we imagine how unpleasant it was for the Lord Jesus, in LK 8: 26-39, to come across the man at Gerasa [across the lake from Galilee] inhabited by many demons? Because He took the time to care and decide carefully what to do, He knew He could cause the demons to come out and inhabit the pigs that ran to their deaths into the lake (33). Had he not been patient in sizing up the situation and left, we wouldn’t have this remarkable demonstration of the power given Him by God to exorcise demons, power that helps us to understand both is divine and human natures. Since we are asked to model our lives after the example given to us by the Lord, then surely we should take the time to show care before rushing to judgment on people in our own lives that require extra grace.
PRAYER: O Lord, we are all sinners, some of us more sinful than others. For all we know, we, ourselves, may be extra grace required people. Each day, we meditate on the enormous sacrifice of Your Son that You decided to make on the cross, so that those of us who would listen to the truth and believe in Him might enjoy salvation, justification, and blissful eternal life with You. His life given for us opened us to eternal forgiveness and even, Your willingness to forget the sins we have committed [JN 3: 16; RO 3: 24-25; HE 8: 12]. We will spend the rest of our lives thanking and praising You for that great opportunity to be salvaged from certain spiritual death. His physical death was the price paid for buying our freedom from the marketplace of slavery to sin [RO 6: 16, 18; RO 7: 23-24; HE 10:10]. You have given us enough intelligence that we can make mundane normal judgments which allow us to go on with our lives. But You have given us ground rules to follow, ones that can only come from Your superior wisdom. These rules are made clear by Your Son, Jesus Christ, in His Sermon on the Mount and in other places in the NT. We also can understand them from Your wisdom given in the OT. Your word is amazing in its consistency throughout, certainly superior to anything written by a human being. We are told we should trust in You. When You give us faith in Jesus and willingness to repent, You give us our salvation. We should believe it! When You give us advice on when and how to make judgments and when not to do this, we should believe that too! You are the all-sufficient and only God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God Who gave us the greatest gifts of all-salvation, justification, and the gift of Your Spirit. We praise and thank You for Your direction, involvement in our daily lives, and most of all, Your love. We pray to You in the mighty and holy name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Next week, the Holy Spirit leads me to write about the other side of the coin-what makes a judgment wrong. Just as the Lord has given us guidelines to good judgments that are appropriate, He also tells us what to look for in the making of a wrongful judgment. People who are deeply faithful and willing to surrender control of their lives to the Lord Jesus, are people who will find themselves hungering for God’s word, active in prayer, and longing for communication with God. PS 42: 1-2, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so I long for You, O God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I come and stand before Him?” We know from RO 8: 19 the feeling of longing for God expressed. “All of creation waits with eager longing for God to reveal His sons.” This is normal, but it also involves submission to God’s right to decide when the time will be when He calls an individual home. We can be so comforted by the protection built into this kind of submission, found in 1 COR 10: 13, “Every test that you have experience is the kind that normally comes to people. But God keeps His promise, and He will not allow you to be tested beyond your power to remain firm; at the time you are put to the test, He will give you the strength to endure it, and so provide you with a way out.” The patient, compassionate, and forgiving person is the one who trusts in God. I have a Messianic Jewish acquaintance who lives in Israel, Leah Oritz. Leah’s son, Ami (15), was seriously injured when a hateful person placed a bomb made to look like a Purim box [food gift given at the Jewish festival of Purim in the spring] at their door. It was a heinous act of persecution, which injured Ami physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And yet, Leah and her family urged all of us to be forgiving, to pray for the perpetrator, and for justice to be done. We must remember that Christ taught us to do this in MT 5: 44-45a. She models our need to refrain from rushing to judgment and to take this kind of matter in our own inappropriate hands. Now, that’s modeling the love of Christ! Ami is on the mend at an amazing rate, one which only can be attributed to the God Who loves us. Praise be to Him!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn