Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the Spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight.

Speaker 2: 0:17

Let's sharpen up All right, guys, welcome to a new week. For those of you that have listened to my show, the Undaunted Life Podcast, you've heard me talk about being raised in Oklahoma and kind of getting some of that country music theology, right. So you know grandmama went to church and you get baptized when you're a kid and you know your parents occasionally vote Republican and you listen to 90s country and you know God's pro, all those things. So you end up getting to go to heaven, right. So I got to hear some Bible passages, like kinda, as I was growing up, but then, at the age of 15, I became a Christian and I began to study Scripture for the first time on my own. So I go to the Salt Cellar in Lawton, oklahoma, which is right next door to Hastings, and I'm going to go in there. I'm going to get me my own Bible this teenage you know extreme Bible or whatever and then there's a bunch of t-shirts and coffee mugs and you know bumper and bumper stickers with Scripture on it, okay, and so I guess you get a little bit of bumper sticker theology, right. The problem, though, is bumper sticker theology can be just as bad as country music theology, because people will use certain passages of Scripture. They'll take them completely out of context just to make a point, and they're just doing it to sell a T-shirt or to make a piffy statement, but they're not using it in exegeting the scripture properly.

Speaker 2: 1:24

So this week we're going to be doing a series called yeah, that's not what that means, okay. So I'm going to be going over five of the most common misapplied and misunderstood scriptures in all of the biblical canon, and today we're starting out with the words of our Lord Jesus, as recorded in Matthew 7, verses 1 through 3. So I'll read it now in the Christian Standard Bible Do not judge so that you won't be judged, for you will be judged by the same standard with which you judge others, and you will be measured by the same measure you use. Why do you look at the splinter in your brother's eye but don't notice the beam of wood in your own eye? Now, of all the most common misapplied and misunderstood sections of scripture that we will cover this week, this one is the most popular, by a sizable margin, because part of the reason is that it's misapplied and misunderstood by people that claim to be Christians, but it is, at the same time, misapplied and misunderstood by people that are not Christians?

Speaker 2: 2:16

Because we hear people quote this all the time, like wait a minute, I didn't think you were allowed to judge. Hey, just let those people live their own lives. They were born that way. Why are you being so judgy, mr Judgy Pants? Right, that's kind of what we hear from inside and outside of Christendom.

Speaker 2: 2:28

But again, if the scripture just says what it says, and if you only read this one little snippet of scripture, you could surmise that it's not our place to judge, regardless of the circumstances. Right, but therein lies the problem. When you pluck a single verse out of its context and neglect to consider to whom the message was being given to, and forget the overarching and overarching, rather narrative, of the entire Bible, you start running into some major problems. So, in a nutshell, the fundamental misunderstanding of these words from Jesus is the claim that Christians shouldn't make any moral judgments or pronouncements. And yeah, that's not what that means, because in its correct context, jesus is warning us against hypocritical judgment. And how do we know that so rapid fire time?

Speaker 2: 3:11

Jesus' comments during this teaching don't start in Matthew 7. They start all the way back in Matthew 5. So God tells us through his word, via the apostle Matthew, that Jesus began teaching to a large group of people on the mountainside. So he starts out with the Beatitudes you know blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, so on and so forth. And then he continues, as recorded in Matthew 5 and 6, by talking about how Christians should be salt and might, how he came to fulfill the law, that we should turn the other cheek more on that later this week how we should love our enemies, so on and so forth. Then he gets to this statement on judgment. But in context, we are to judge, not self-righteous judgment.

Speaker 2: 3:49

Even just a few verses later, in verse 16, we see an encouragement to be judgmentally discerning. So verse 16, this is Jesus. Still, you'll recognize them by their fruit Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? And we see several other areas of scripture that encourage us to be judgmental and discerning. So here's Jesus in John 7,. This is verse 24, stop judging according to outward appearances, rather judge according to righteous judgment.

Speaker 2: 4:15

Then in Hebrews 5, 14, but solid food is for the mature, for those whose senses have been trained to distinguish between good and evil. And then Paul, in his first letter to the church in Corinth, said this this is 1 Corinthians 5, verses 12 and 13,. For what business is it of mine to judge outsiders? Don't you judge those who are inside? God judges outsiders. So Paul's not only defending the practice of being judgmental, but he's teaching us precisely the people we are supposed to judge. So, as Christians, are we to judge, not lest we be judged In context? No, we are to judge, but we have to make sure we're not judging hypocritically and with the express purpose of putting others down to glorify ourselves and puff ourselves up right. So hopefully that's helpful. Guys, come back here tomorrow where we will set the record straight on an often used verse about a millstone.

Speaker 1: 5:11

Thank you for listening to today's episode on an often used verse about a millstone.