Tuesday 8/12/14 Judging Others 1

Dear Father in Heaven:  I love You.  Please forgive me of my sins and sinful thinking.  Thanks for watching over us and keeping us safe, all honor and glory to You, dear Lord.  Please heal Gina, who has cancer.  Please be with the Ward family and also Tony Stewart.  Please be with our dear flock at The Bridges, and please be with our online flock.  Watch over Patsy and Burt, Vicki and her mother, Dolores and me.  Please be with the family and friends of Robin Williams.  Thanks for a great sing-along with our ministry team at The Bridges.  Now, dear Lord, please bless me with a message and help me stay alert, then please help me to dispatch it.  In Jesus' Name, I pray.  Amen.

Good afternoon, my dear brothers and sisters.  It is a beautiful day here at the Southern Location of the North Pole.  Yes, it is raining, and it has been off and on all day.  Our ministry team went to The Bridges today for a sing-along, then we went out to lunch together, then we went to the Christian bookstore and to Sears.  It rained hard all day, but each time we went in or out of a building, it either went to a drizzle or stopped raining altogether.  God is good, all the time.  All the time, God is good.  Please add Gina to your prayer list for healing from cancer.  Once again yesterday I was trying to push the Lord for a subject I wanted to write about, but He said no.  So today I start with a new series, Judging Others, so let me get started.

Tuesday:  August 12, 2014, Judging Others (Day One)

Matthew 7:1 - "Do not judge, or you too will be judged.  2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."  (NIV)

Romans 2:1 - You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.  (NIV)

So often we hear that we are not to be judging others.  So let's first look at some things that involve judging that are okay.  If you have an antique Pontiac "Judge" you do not need to run out and sell it.  But trust me, if that old car is really nice, a lot of people will be "judging it."  Would that be called "judging the judge?"  There are a lot of television shows that have judges on them.  Judge Alex, Judy, and a few others.  Those folks are retired judges now making money for their work.  Most of those shows, while they might be fun to watch, are really pretty much "trash"!  Did I just judge those judges?  Then we have those judges who have been elected and/or appointed to the job, or bench, as they refer to it.  All kinds of levels from the district judge level right on up to the United States Supreme Court.  These people have jobs to do and are paid to do them, and that for sure is not what the Bible is talking about.

So now that brings it down to you and me.  What about our judging of others?  The Bible tells us, and in the words of Jesus, this, and I will repeat the verses in full:

Matthew 7:1 - "Do not judge, or you too will be judged."  (NIV)

As you and I know, according to the Bible, and right here in the words of Jesus, we will be judged.  And we talk a lot about judgment and the warning is out for us not to judge, even if we never judged another person we would be judged.  But Jesus, knowing full well we indeed will judge others, wrote it this way.  All of us at one time or another have judged someone.  So what is Jesus telling us?  Not to judge others at all?  No, not really.  Let's look at ...

Matthew 7:2 - "For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."  (NIV)

I did it this way to show you how easy it is to pull something out of context and how it changes everything. When we look at others and talk about them to others and make statements about them, in that same manner we will also be judged.  What this means is we are not to judge hypocritically or self-righteously.  There comes a time in life when we must judge others, and you are going t say, what am I talking about?  Going back to the days of my childhood, I was told not to play with certain people, because they would always get in trouble and if I were with them, then I would maybe follow what they did and get into trouble.  This, what my parents did, would be called "being a good parent."  We also need to be looking out for false prophets and people coming and saying they are Jesus.

We are not to be "self-righteous" about how we judge others.  I look at this as we are looking at others and judging them thinking maybe we are better than they are, when indeed we just might not be stacking up anywhere near what they are  Let me put myself in the hot seat a minute.  It would be like me saying Old Joe is not going to get into heaven but I am.  And maybe I am saying that because "Old Joe" never goes to church and I never miss.  Yet while Old Joe, who never gets to church, has found Jesus and loves Him dearly.  I pray that helps you.  I will be picking up again on this subject tomorrow.

Now go forth and share your blessings.  Love ya.  Please pass on my love to others.

Pastor Dan