Matthew 7: 1 - 6
Judging and Casting Pearls before Swine

I. THINK FOR A MOMENT ABOUT THE COMMAND TO NOT JUDGE.

1. "v.1"

2. In the Greek reporting of what Jesus actually said in the Aramaic language, Matthew uses a construction that is a little out of the ordinary. (If you know some Greek it is a present imperative where we might expect the normal, all-purpose, aorist imperative.) The command is not phrased like the 10 commandments as they are reported in the Greek Old Testament which are in this aorist imperative mood telling us flat-out, don't ever commit adultery or don't kill. Here in Matthew 7: 1 the construction carries the idea that, if it were put in southern colloquial English, would say, "Don't be going around judging people all the time." The construction carries the idea of forbidding a repeated action. The idea, rather than being "don't ever judge," is "don't be judgmental," "don't be continually going around and judging other people."

3. Clearly the passage cannot reasonably mean "never judge anyone or anything" because Jesus and the apostles frequently made judgments -- sometimes scathing judgments on living people. It means to go easy on making judgments of people and their motives. If you don't (v.2) people will make mincemeat of you because you've got a lot of things that you could be judged for. Show some mercy since you are an object of the mercy of God.

4. Give good attention to that second verse because it is often true that a judgmental person either has a lot of things that others might judge him for or even, in some cases, he is errant in the very things he judges others for. This is what the Lord means when he, humorously, contrasts the person with a log in his eye trying to get a speck out of his friend's eye. No doubt at this point the Lord's audience was very amused at the ridiculousness of a man with a log in his eye and not a few of them thought of the archetypical pharisee who was always doing this speck-picking in other people's eyes when he had a huge log in his own eye.

But this is not something that can be applied with ease of a command, for example, that you should not bomb airplanes. That command would have an unmistakable application. This one causes us not so much to search one anothers' lives but to search our own hearts before the Lord. May our gracious and loving God who has suspended judgment on us because he once-for-all put all of our judgement on Christ make us gracious and kind people who in some profound sense fulfill the statement in I Corinthians 13 "Love taketh not account of evil." ( I Corinthians 13: 5 American Standard Version, 1901) 

Do you have a problem with being judgmental? Are you doing something about it; asking God to give you grace to deal with it?

II. BUT THERE IS A BALANCE HERE. THE BALANCE OF THESE VERSES IS FOUND IN THE STATEMENTS IN VERSE 6.

"verse 6"

1. These statements are enigmatic but I believe they give us balance in applying this commandment. We are not to go around judging people, but there are circumstances where we better judge them and it is a great disaster if we fail to judge them. The Lord is commanding us to be kind, not naive. He wants us to be kind, generous and forgiving, not blind to the evil that may destroy us.

2. The two proverbs mentioned may well have been well-known proverbs. There are many applications of them even apart from the way in which the Lord uses them. For example, we ought not to share our intimate experience of Christ with scoffing agnostics and allow them to mock and demean the work of the Holy Spirit. We ought to be cautious in the way we speak of the virgin birth or the wounds of Christ or the blood of Christ around scoffing agnostics lest they take those holy concepts and trample them under their feet, so to speak, like wild hogs trampling priceless pearls. This, it seems to me, has an application to bumper stickers and the huge gospel sign on Broad Street during the Olympics that has caused so much vicious comment in the community. Be careful with holy words and holy concepts and do not throw them to the dogs or cast them before swine. Be careful about using metaphors that we in the faith understand but which, to those outside of Christ, sound ridiculous.

3. But the way the Lord uses the proverbs here is as a balance to his statement that we should not be judgmental. One side of the teaching here is that we should not be overly judgmental, always on the lookout for something to condemn and always seeing the worst in every situation and suspecting the worst in every hint of evil and imagining the worst possible motive behind every action.

But he is also saying, contrasted to that, that the world is filled with evil and evil people and you should not underestimate the evil or the harm that they might do to you. It is not politically correct to think of some people in this world as dogs and swine but it is a sobering fact for the Christian. 

The teaching is to avoid being so non-judgmental that you do not realize that there is real evil in this world and that it uniquely possesses some people. There are dogs and swine out there! They perhaps will do you great harm personally, -- bodily, or financially, or morally, or spiritually -- if you do not size up the situation correctly. They will perhaps do great harm to your testimony as a Christian if you do not guard yourself against them. They will perhaps do great harm to the Kingdom of Christ if you do not have discernment and you will be involved in that harm.

Don't be judgmental, but on the other hand don't be a patsy. Don't give what is holy to dogs and don't cast your pearls before swine.

I am afraid that I cannot make perfectly clear what is the balance between these two things: Judge not -- Don't be judgmental and frivolous and careless and hateful in your judgment, hurting and libeling people who you might be instead, helping. But on the other hand do not give unto dogs what is holy or cast your pearls before swine. You have to apply that to your own life by serious prayer and meditation and faith, by the consideration of the examples given throughout the N.T., and by the wholehearted desire to please the Lord in this matter.