Matthew 7:1-12 - Judge Not and the Golden Rule

Tom Shrader examines Jesus' teaching on judgment from Matthew 7, clarifying that while believers must not judge motives or play God, they are called to exercise discernment regarding sin and false teaching. He emphasizes the need for self-examination and humility before confronting others, and concludes with Jesus' golden rule as the foundation for all interpersonal relationships.

“When you and I begin to judge other people's motives, we start to play God.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Sermon on the Mount

Recorded: May 23, 2002

Duration: 43 min

Themes: judgment, discernment, humility, relationships, confrontation, self-examination, golden rule, forgiveness, struggling with criticism, confronting sin, church conflict, parent disciplining, mentor relationship, new believer, feeling judged, pastor counseling

Scripture: Matthew 7:1-12, 1 Corinthians 4, 1 Corinthians 5, 1 Peter, Matthew 18, Matthew 11:25, Matthew 13, 1 John 3:22, James 4:3, 1 John 5:14, 1 Thessalonians 4, Ephesians 1

Theological Themes: biblical discernment, christian judgment, sanctification, becoming holy, biblical relationships, christian ethics, spiritual maturity, gospel living

Full Transcript

Matthew chapter 7 strikes me, and I don't know why because I'm slow I guess, but I'm struck by how familiar so many of these passages in this short three chapters are to us. You have the Beatitudes, be the salt and light of the earth with all that comes with it, which we looked at in just the last couple of weeks. Don't lay up your treasures on earth, but lay up your treasures in heaven, where your treasure is there your heart will be, no one can serve two masters. This is the stuff that we're just so familiar with.

Now be anxious really for nothing in your life, and here's where we ended: therefore do not be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself, each day has enough trouble of its own. These are passages we're very familiar with and ought to be after we hang around a while, because the assumption would be that if Jesus is speaking—I think this certainly rivals any of the sermons in terms of length, other than maybe what John has at the close of Jesus' life in terms of length—and so we're familiar with these, we come back to these passages again and again.

The Most Familiar Verse in Scripture

There is no verse probably in scripture that is more familiar to people than the verse we look at to begin today: "Do not judge, lest you be judged."

The other day on KTAR they were having a discussion, and Tony Fomino was throwing out the question. The question was there's a Christian school over in California where a kindergartner was just dismissed because his mother was an exotic dancer. So he said, "I want to hear from you, is that what Christians do, is that the Christian thing to do?" The interesting thing, the Christian thing wasn't to say, does a Christian dance? That would have been an interesting conversation, but no, they throw him out of school, so there might be something there.

But the first caller called in and said, "Do not judge, lest you be judged." And Fomino says, "That's good, that's good, where is that?" And he said, "Well, I don't know, it's in the Bible somewhere."

The Great Get Out of Jail Free Card

Everybody knows this verse, because it's this great get out of jail free card. Whenever we're doing something and we don't want anybody to have any input in our life, we just hold this up and say, "Do not judge, lest you be judged." The Bible said it—not just the Bible, Jesus said it.

What does Jesus mean? Does it indeed mean what it looks like on the surface, where He says you never make any judgments on any people, no matter what the circumstances might be?

When we look at Matthew chapter 7, verses 1 through 12, Jesus shifts from our behavior and how, especially in the private areas of giving and praying and fasting, and now He talks about human relationships. This is about how you and I get along with one another. This is how we're supposed to treat one another.

Understanding True Judgment

Jesus says, "Don't you be judged, lest you be judged, for in the way you judge, you will be judged, and by your standard of measure, you will be measured."

Well, the word judge simply means this: to separate, to choose, select, to determine—has a dozen little shaded meanings of that. What Jesus is looking at here is when we play God and we begin to judge somebody else's motives. You cannot, and we've talked about this at length in here, you cannot look into the heart of the person and understand their motives.

One author writes this: "Unrighteous and unmerciful judgment is forbidden, first of all, because it manifests a wrong view of God. The phrase, 'lest you be judged,' Jesus reminds the scribes and the Pharisees that they're not the final court." To judge another person's motives is to play God. That's what Jesus is saying. Don't you begin to be judging everybody's motives. Don't you be judged, and don't you be going out running after everybody's motives, because they're going to run through your motives.

Paul writes this in 1 Corinthians 4: "I'm conscious of nothing against myself." And he said, "I'm conscious of nothing that I've done. I don't think I've done anything. Yet I'm not acquitted by this. That doesn't make me innocent. But the one who examines me is the Lord." When you and I begin to judge other people's motives, we start to play God. Don't you judge, why? Because you're going to be judged by that standard.

When We Are Called to Judge

I need to spend a second on it because I want to make certain you understand that there are times when you are to judge. There are times when you're supposed to look in the life of the person that's in contact with you, and you are to judge. Now it's very dangerous business to be sure.

In 1 Corinthians chapter 5, and it's just one example in the scripture, Paul's writing to a church that's all messed up. And he writes this: "It's actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not even exist among the Gentiles—that someone has his father's wife." In other words, he's saying there's somebody in your church who's sleeping with his mom, probably his step-mom, and you aren't doing anything about it. The Gentiles don't even allow that.

He said this: "You've become arrogant and you haven't mourned instead in order that the one who's done this deed might be removed from your midst. You've become so arrogant that you don't even judge sin."

Here's what Paul says: "For I on my part though absent in body but present in spirit have already judged him who committed this as though I were present." Now wait a minute, is Paul contradicting Jesus? Well we know that the scripture cannot contradict itself. Is Jesus right or is Paul right? So it's unfair to pit them against one another because they're talking about two different things.

Jesus is saying don't you be judging everybody's heart. Paul's saying listen, if you've got a co-worker, and this co-worker's involved in adultery, and you have some relationship with this co-worker, and in the course of that conversation they're a Christian...

and a church-goer, you have every right to say to them, knock it off. In fact, Paul's pretty strong here. He says this: "I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people. I did not mean all immoral people of the world, the covetous, the swindlers, the idolaters. If that were the case, you'd have to move out of the world. I actually wrote you not to associate with any so-called brother if he should be an immoral person."

Are you to judge? You bet you're to judge. And he lists them. Most often, it's going to be those sexual sins because it's very hard to judge some of these other things. It's really hard to say, "You're a covetous person" - how do you know? But when there's sin, that sin needs to be dealt with. In 1 Peter, Peter sees that there is a problem in the church, and he recognizes that it's sin, and he sees that the sin is impacting the body. So Peter writes this: "For it is time for judgment to begin in the household of God."

Judging False Doctrine

You and I as believers are supposed to be discerning. We're supposed to be on the lookout and judging false doctrine. When somebody comes in to you and they say, "All gods are the same, all religions are the same, it doesn't really matter," and they begin to - listen, you're to judge away with that. You're supposed to have discernment.

If you're in a church and they're just telling you something and it's contrary to Scripture, you're to judge away on that - boy, have at it: judge, judge, judge, judge, judge. But as you do it, you do it with a very gentle heart and spirit, always for the purpose of not just confronting the sin, but of restoring and of correcting.

But if you're just trying to judge people's motives, here's what He said: don't be playing God.

The Standard of Judgment

Verse 2: "For the way you judge, you will be judged, and by your standard of measure, it'll be measured to you." Here's what He's saying: listen, God's already got His standards - He's not getting in there. He's saying, once you start this game, you're going to open up a door where now people are going to judge you by that standard. And you know what your tendency is? Your tendency is to judge others to a higher standard than the standard you have for yourself.

I do that. I give you a bunch of ways, but one of them is: I don't like a mess around me, and yet I'm a very messy person. I have lived with the charge of hypocrite for a long time in this area. When I'll say to the girls, "Great, clean this up," and they'll say, "Well, Dad" - when they were little they'd just do it. I'll say, "Dad, how's your office looking, Dad?" It's that standard, and that's the way we do it.

I used to say, they'd get these report cards, and I'd say, "Listen, why don't you study? You've got to study and get A's and B's," and you've got to do this. And you know, they'd just go and they'd do it, until one day they were talking to Grandma, and they'd say, "Grandma, was Dad a good student?" "Well, there was this one time when he took his report card and changed a D to a B and he got caught. It was very bad." That's all He's saying. When you're judging somebody's motives, it's very dangerous.

The Word Picture: Speck and Log

Now He gives us a word picture, and they're always great. And if you can close your eyes and get a picture of this in your mind's eye, this is really helpful. He said, "Why do you look at the speck that's in your brother's eye and don't notice the log that's in your own?" If you want a word picture, just kind of close your eyes and see that. Here's this person and they've got just a big log coming out of their eye, and they're looking to and fro for somebody to judge, and they spot somebody who has a speck.

Now the word "speck" doesn't mean dust. We kind of think of that. I came into the office last night late and one of the gals was in there and I said, "Hey, how you doing?" She said, "Oh, I didn't know you were here." She turned around, she had a little tear and I said, "What's wrong?" She said, "Oh, I got something in my eye." Well, that's what we typically think of when we hear speck. You think of like a dust or something.

The word "speck" here is more the idea of a twig or a splinter. Now here's why I like that. The splinter is part of the log. As we're looking to and fro to judge, what we typically spot to judge is a little piece of our own problem. If you're a prideful, arrogant person, you tend to hate prideful, arrogant people. If you're a manipulative type of person, you can spot a manipulator 400 miles away and you can't stand them. Whatever your besetting sin really is seems to be the besetting sin that you hate most. And that's what He's saying.

Self-Examination First

If you're going to get into this judging game, here's what you need to do. Forget the speck for now and notice. The word "notice" conveys the idea of a serious, continuous meditation. In a sense, He's saying, will you not stop and think about your own sin? Until you've done that, you're not in a position to go picking specks out of a guy's eyes. You got this log in your eye. Stop and take an inventory. Look at yourself. Self-examination.

And come to all of this - and this is what kind of has the tendency to balance out this judgmental side - with a spirit of humility. We go back to the very first week of our study in the Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are the poor in spirit." When Jesus is talking to these scribes and Pharisees, in Matthew 23, verse 16, He says, "You blind guides." You're blind to all of this. It's very dangerous for us to start in this whole judging thing.

And we certainly ought not begin judging until we've taken the log out of our own eye. And at that point, the implication is we can see things clearly. And even as we begin to deal with sin in people's life, we have to be conscientious of how we're going to deal with that.

Let me say it to you again: you got to deal with it. At our church, we're in the process right now. We've got two or three cases right now. But what will happen, we've got a guy -

I won't give you any names, but we got a guy and he's getting ready to divorce his wife. He's got no biblical reason for it. We've met with him. We've met with him. We met with him. We met with him. We met with him. Here's the spot we're at now. We're going to write him a letter. We'll send him a registered letter.

We'll say, "Listen, Biff, you've got no reason to leave this gal. She may be awful. She may be hard to get along with. She may be a witch. She may be all those things. Got no problem. Put me down for amen, maybe. But that's not a biblical reason to leave her." So what you need to understand is you leave us no recourse, but to begin to deal with this publicly. Somebody's gone to him. Now two guys have gone to him in our state, in our condition, we'll go again to him.

This letter will say to him that he needs to meet with us and respond. We expect him to respond. If he doesn't respond, he'll get a registered letter from us. The registered letter will say, "Biff, on June 6th at all six services, we are going to tell the entire church what you're doing. We'll give them your name. We'll tell them to have nothing to do with you until you repent. So you need to understand that. Just need to know that it's going to happen. Don't want you to hear it through the grapevine. Want you to know this is going to happen."

Church Discipline in Action

Let me tell you what happens when we do that. So now that Sunday comes and at communion I'll say, "Listen, if you're with us for the first time, we'd love to have you take communion. If you know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, if you're here and you're not a Christian, then communion's not for you. Now we got a little business to take care of. We got Biff here. Biff's divorced his wife. He has no biblical grounds for that. We've gone through Matthew 18. We've been through all these steps and we are now publicly telling you this and telling you as a loving, caring body have nothing to do with him."

Well, that gives the visitors a new notice when they walk in the door. This isn't what they're used to. Now we laugh about it and we joke about it and I got all that, but that's not the point. Let me just tell you what we just did there. We just did the most loving thing a body could do. That is to call him to repentance. There will be a great celebration if he comes back to her. If not, he will be out of our body forever. We just won't mess around with him anymore. We'll track him down like a dog and we will tell every church he goes to, "This is what you're dealing with."

Now that, by the way, if that's a foreign concept to you, that's what First Corinthians 5 was we just read. That's Matthew 18. Well, you better make sure you got your act together when you start sending letters out like that. All of a sudden, you know what the body does? That's just like a choke chain on the body that jerks him and says, "This sin is serious stuff." So He says, judge away, but be very careful. Judge in a way where you're protecting the body.

Don't Cast Your Pearls Before Swine

Verse six: I will tell you up front that one commentator writes this. Matthew chapter 7 verse 6 is one of the hard sayings of Jesus. We must take the command seriously and do our best to obey it because it is the Lord's will. Here's Matthew chapter 7, verse 6: "Do not give what is holy to dogs. Do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces."

He's obviously talking using illustration of dogs and swine. In our culture, we would not see them as similar. They'd be very similar in that culture. In that day and age, dogs were not domesticated by and large. They just kind of roamed in packs. You would see them used in herding, but generally they were just dirty, snarling, dangerous, vicious, often diseased and despised.

They're not like the dog I got up yesterday morning. I just wasn't sleeping very well. So I got up at about 4:45 or something. I'm doing my reading and about 5:30, I hear Haley is up. So I'm going to go down and say good morning to her. I'm walking. I come around the corner. There, just having to catch it just right, I just kind of slide into the dog. So I know it's the dog. So I turn the light on. There's the dog.

Well, the dog sees me. The dog sees me and her little tail goes. The tail's going like this. She just rolls over. I just rub her belly. This is what the dog and I have in common. We both love to have you go like this. And we do it. That's what we do in common. That's what the dog and I have. Well, that's not that dog they're talking about here. This dog here, if you went to take its food, if you went to grab its food, it would just tear you apart. See what He says? They'll trample you under, tear you apart.

Understanding Holy Things

The same would be with a swine or a pig. It was the epitome of uncleanliness to the Jew. It was the same thing. They would roam around. They would devour. They were vicious. They would attack. Jesus' point here is talking about holy things, sacred things. I think it deals primarily with us as we begin to share biblical truths.

Jesus offers this strange prayer in Matthew 11. Matthew 11, verse 25. Jesus says this: "I praise Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou dost hide these things, talking about these things He's teaching, from the wise and the intelligent and reveals them to the babes."

On another occasion, Jesus is speaking to His disciples, this time in Matthew 13. He says this: "To you it's been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. But to them," and He speaks to another group, "it hasn't been granted. Therefore, I speak them in parables, because while they are seeing, they do not see, while they're hearing, they do not hear, nor do they understand."

It was interesting. After Jesus rose from the dead, there is no record that He appeared to anyone who wasn't a believer. Isn't that interesting? There's no record that He came back to Pontius Pilate and said, "Hey, Pilate, take a look. What do you think?" There's no record.

I don't know how you figure this out, and I think the author's right - we have to be very careful in this area. And yet, Jesus, as He sends His disciples out, says that there's a certain town, and if they don't receive you, shake off your boots and head to the next town. How do you know that?

John MacArthur writes this: "When people not only reject the gospel but insist on mocking and reviling it, we're not to waste God's holy word and precious pearls of truth in a futile, frustrating attempt to win them. We're to leave them to the Lord, trusting somehow His Spirit can penetrate their hearts." There's what he's saying, and you have to believe it's true, and you have to believe you're called to do it: "Do not give what is holy to dogs and do not throw your pearls before swine, because they'll just trample it under their feet and they'll turn and they'll tear you to pieces." I guess He's saying maybe be careful there as well.

And I have to say, don't come up and ask me afterwards how you figure out who to do this with and not to do this with. This is just very, very hard.

The Challenge of Discerning Receptiveness

I find, personally, that the biggest wasters of time are people who are receptive and sometimes even responsive to what you're saying. They're the ones that say, "I want to hear more, I want to hear more, what about this?" And they always have a question, but it's always a question behind a question behind a question behind a question and another question.

When the girls were small they had several obnoxious toys that no parent would ever give, but I will save them to buy my grandkids. And one of them was a little thing with a hammer and had these pegs, and you would pound these pegs and then you'd flip it over and there were all the pegs. Remember that? This is just an awful, awful thing.

Well sometimes you're talking to somebody and that's what you do. They've got all these questions and you pound all the questions down, and then they flip it over and there's a whole other set of questions and then another set of questions, and they're never really looking for answers. They're just looking to ask more and more and more questions.

See, I'm pretty quick and maybe I'm too quick sometimes to pull the trigger and say you're just wasting my time. We're just messing around here, we're just going through some sort of a dance here because your questions aren't really legitimate questions. Somehow, I don't know, but I think I can do it. You spend time with a person and you can understand somebody who's genuinely struggling with something and somebody who just wants to jerk you around. Jesus said don't waste time with him.

Ask, Seek, Knock - The Promise and Its Context

Now the second half of this, Matthew chapter 7 verses 7 through 12, again a passage that's familiar. "Ask and it'll be given to you, seek and you find, knock and it'll be opened. For everyone who asks receives and he who seeks finds and he who knocks, to him it is opened."

Well that looks like a pretty strong couple of verses that I would want to remember, laminate, stick in my back pocket for special occasions. Because if I read it right, I know how else to read it: ask and it's given, seek and it's found, knock and it's opened, everybody receives.

See, dealing seriously with the study of God's Word takes some work. Can't I just pick it up and read it and get it? Yeah, a lot of it. But can I fully understand some of this? No, I mean I've got to spend some time.

I observe that among people who are serious about studying God's Word, that the biggest problem they fall into is they take a passage and don't understand context and don't weigh it against the balance of Scripture. Just like I said, "Judge not lest you be judged." And Paul's saying judging here. We know there's no contradiction. Let's work these things out.

Testing the Promise Against Reality

Listen, we know that if everybody asks, they don't get it. Do they? Let's do it right now. We'll just do a little exercise. Let's just go through this exercise right now. Because we have another little verse that they love to pull out: "If two or more agree." How many times you've been in a room where they say, "Alright Bill, you pray. Father, you tell us if two or more agree, it'll be done." So apparently if I'm all alone praying, I'm really screwed here, but if two or more are here, it'll be alright.

Well look, when He says two or more agree, what's He talking about? He's talking about Matthew 18 and discipline. Two or more agreeing as they're dealing with that person.

Listen, let's agree. Let's do this. Let's agree right now that when I'm done here and I go out to get into my car, it's a brand new Lexus. I'll receive that. You'll receive that. Now, you and I know that isn't going to be a Lexus when we get out there.

Well, that's because it's selfish. Alright, let's pray a good thing. Let's all agree that by one o'clock every person on the planet would know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. That's a good thing, isn't it? That's got to be a great thing. I suspect that isn't going to happen.

Understanding the True Context

So when I get a verse like this, I better get some context on it. And there's some qualifiers here. First of all, the word "everyone" doesn't speak to every person that's ever lived. The Scripture is filled with phrases like "the household of God." In this Gospel of Matthew and in this Sermon on the Mount, we see frequently the phrase, "your heavenly Father." That's what we see last week. How do the birds get fed? Well, your Father feeds them. How do the flowers get clothed? Your Father clothes them. Pray to your Father in heaven. Pray this way, "Our Father." Then He talks about the familial relationship we have as brother and sister.

First of all, this promise is to those of us who are believers. Secondly,

Prayer Requires Right Conditions

It's to those of us who are obedient. First John chapter 3 verse 22 says, "Whatever we ask, we receive from Him." Pretty close to what we just saw. Here's a little more information: "Because we keep His commands and do the things that are pleasing to Him." So it seems to be that as we ask of the Father, the condition of our life becomes a factor in this.

There's a third qualifier. The motive has to be right. James chapter 4 verse 3 says, "You ask and you don't receive." I'd want to know that. If I'm praying and praying and praying and nothing's happened, if I'm going to God all this time and nothing's happening, I'd want to know why. Here's a possibility: "You ask and do not receive because you ask with the wrong motive so you might spend it on your own pleasure."

See, we got there just naturally in that illustration. There's no way that we're going to agree and God's just going to drop that new Lexus out there on me. It isn't going to happen. Why? That's kind of a selfish prayer. That's just something that isn't going to help me anything.

Submitting to God's Will

There's a fourth qualifier here. I have to be submissive to the will of God. We can't serve money and God. We just saw that. John writes this in First John 5:14: "This is the confidence we have before Him if we ask anything." See how this pattern? "If we ask anything according to His will, He'll hear us." Now by the way, it doesn't say He'll hear us and it'll be done. The qualifier is it's according to His will.

I've been in a similar situation before. We had a guy in one of the studies, and he wanted to get together one time. So we get together and he comes and he's got all of his stuff and he's talking to me about his girlfriend, his girlfriend, his girlfriend. He and his girlfriend are going to Vegas. I'm thinking that's possible, but what are the sleeping arrangements here? What's going on? My girlfriend cooked dinner and was doing the dishes. Well she's starting to sound more and more like a live-in girlfriend.

So I let it go and we're sitting down and I said, "What is it you're looking for from me?" He said, "I want you to help me find God's will for my life." I said okay. I said, "Talk to me about your girlfriend. What kind of a relationship do you have with her?" "We have a great relationship. We pray together. We go to church together. We study together." I said, "I'm not talking about that. What's the living reality? Well she lives with me. "Are you sexually active?" "Oh yeah we're sexually active."

God's Will Must Come First

I said, "Well I can really help you find God's will for your life. Move her out or leave." I mean that isn't hard. "Oh I'd never do that." See how stupid this is? You're sitting there saying "God give me your will" and He says in First Thessalonians chapter 4, "It's my will that you be sanctified with purity." If you're not going to do something as basic as that, why has He got to reveal anything? Why are you looking for the deep things of God when you aren't dealing with the shallow things of God? Well why would that be? He isn't going to answer that. I'm not going to deal with that.

Now I'm going to confess to you this to me gets very murky. I don't know exactly what He means when He says ask and it's given. I don't think it means necessarily ask for A and A happens. I think it's the motive of what we're asking for. Why do I want this? Well I want this blessing.

The Progression of Prayer

Here you go and there's a progression here. Ask, seek, knock. The language has the idea of continuing in this. The idea is there's a persistency here. I keep on asking and keep on seeking and keep on knocking. It also says that I'm not passive in this process. As I ask I seek.

Absolutely true story. Guy comes up after one of the studies and says "I lost my job" and that's a soft spot. I'm a sucker for that one. "That's terrible." And he said, "That's all right, God will take care of something." I said, "Yeah, hang in there." So I saw him two weeks later and I said, "How's the job coming?" And he said, "I don't know." I said, "You got a job?" "No, no job yet."

I see him a month later. I said, "You got a job?" And he said, "No, not yet." I said, "Well, what's the job market like?" And he said, "What do you mean?" I said, "Well, what's it out of? Jobs?" And he said, "Well, I don't really know." I said, "Well, what do you hear when you go out?" He said, "Well, I don't really go out." And I said, "Well, what are you doing?" He said, "Well, I believe God's going to provide. So I believe that the phone will ring and God will have a job."

I said, and he said, "Don't you believe that?" I said, "Well, I believe God will provide through a more traditional means like resume, interview, network." See that to me is what He's saying here. If you need something, you ask and you seek and you knock and you pursue. It's not a passive thing.

God's Generous Nature

What I've got to come back to, though, is that God will bless us with every spiritual blessing. Ephesians chapter 1 says, "The riches of His grace are lavished upon us." What strikes me is this, is that He's going to bless us in ways that perhaps we don't associate as the answer to prayer. Let me try to illustrate it.

Jesus uses a couple practical illustrations here. He said, "What man is there among you when his son asked him for a loaf would give him a stone?" There's not a guy out here who's got a kid who says, "Dad, I have a material need. I need something to eat" and you give him a rock. Or "I need shoes" and you give him a twig. That isn't going to happen.

He said, "Or if he should ask for a fish, he'd give him a snake." Now this is one of those examples where study helps. Because what the commentators agree, and it's helpful to understand the background, is that this is not just some poisonous alive snake. To the Jew, it's a piece of snake that's cut up and cooked.

They're asking for fish. You wouldn't give him a snake. A snake is considered unclean. No loving father would deceive and defile and dishonor his son and trick him in some spiritual area. Some of you make one of the dumbest mistakes you can make, which is to take your teenager or your adolescent and say, "Oh, you know, there's a lot of truth out there and I'm just going to let them find their own way." How dumb is that, spiritually? How silly is that? And He said He wouldn't do that.

Now He asks a question. "If then, being evil, you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who's in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him?" So He said, "Listen, if your earthly father would meet a need, wouldn't your heavenly Father even more? Wouldn't He pour out His blessings even more? Wouldn't He open the doors even wider?" He does.

God's True Blessings

But here's what I think so often is we miss it. Can you imagine when we think of blessings and asking, our flinch is to think material. Our flinch is to think 3,000 foot house, $150,000 a year job. That's our flinch.

I might have shared this last week, but Tyler and Haley were having a discussion a month ago. The question was, "What's the worst thing you've ever done?" And Haley's answer was, "I think I was in the third grade and my parents told me not to chew gum when I chewed gum." My mom would put me up for citizen of the year if at the end of one day that was the worst thing I ever did. And she's not making up—you all don't know Haley, but that's her. I caught her that day chewing gum. I said, "What are you doing with this gum?" And she was so filled with remorse, just broken and weeping.

We're asking God all the time for blessing. How could Susan and I have a greater blessing than a daughter like Haley? I'm partial, but you just aren't going to find anybody better than Haley. That wasn't passed down from her daddy's side of the family. And her mom's not exactly a queen here. She got it from God's grace. What a blessing.

Now oftentimes, I hesitate to use illustrations like that, because some of you, your kids—the worst thing they ever did is on police videos. And that opens up wounds and that brings hurt. And I don't want to do that. I'm just trying to share with you, I think that's what He's talking about here. Is He going to take care of those material things? Sure He is. But it's stuff—those are promises we have. I think sometimes we've got this whole treasure chest of blessings that God's given us and we don't ever stop to take an inventory to understand how much He's blessed us.

The Golden Rule

And there's the last verse: "Therefore, however you want people to treat you, so treat them, for this is the law and the prophets." It's what we call the golden rule.

Interestingly, this study is helpful here. Virtually every religion has a version of the golden rule, but let me read you some of them and see if you see the pattern. One of the Jewish rabbis said this: "What is hateful to yourself, do not to someone else do." Confucius taught: "What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others." One of the ancient Greek kings taught: "Do not do to others the things that make you angry when you experience them at the hands of other people." One of the Greek philosophers: "What you avoid suffering yourself, do not inflict on others." One of the Stoic principles was this: "What you do not want to be done to you, do not do to anyone else."

Do you see there the difference? It's always stated—and this is a subtle thing—but every one of those is stated in the negative. Jesus comes along with this very simple truth, but it's stated in a wholly different way. "However you want people to treat you, you treat them that way." In other words, the way we treat other people is not how we expect them to treat us or think they should treat us, but how do you want to be treated? By the way, that's a gigantic task.

Our Need for Divine Help

One author writes this: "There is no capacity within an unbeliever to love the way Jesus commands here. Unbelievers can do many ethical things and every once in a while might even approach a level of the highest ethical standards, but they cannot sustain such selfish selflessness because they do not have the divine resource necessary to live on that planet"—that would be the Holy Spirit.

Man's basic problem—and this is interesting, because we're now summarizing all of this interaction—man's basic problem is our endless preoccupation with ourselves. We view everything through that. I'm hearing more talk about terrorism now, maybe than I did on September 12th, and it's always couched in, "What's it going to mean to me?" There's a plane delay. It's not, "Boy, how about those mechanics—they caught a screw that was loose," it's, "How late are we going to be?"

It's Not About You

Same way we view things. We're laying in bed last night, Susan and me, and we're just talking, and I said, "How are you doing with the wedding?" She said, "Great, we're ready to go, ready to roll it out. I wanted to have it done two weeks ahead of time, we're done, there's not much left to do." I said, "Well, how are you feeling about it?" She said, "It's great, Tyler's terrific, couldn't be better. How are you doing?" I said, "I'm really struggling with this, I'm just struggling emotionally."

She reached over and she said to me, "I'm sick of hearing that. I don't want to hear that anymore. This isn't about you. This isn't about how you feel, and your feelings, and whether you're heard, and how emotional it is, and how tough it is to give up your little girl. Back it up, walk her down the aisle, smile, and do your thing. Tom, this is not about you. This is about them. This is not about how you're doing, and how much of a struggle it is going to be, and how hard it's going to be for you to give your little girl away. I don't care. It's not about you. It's about them."

That's when I said, "Well you're lucky, because

The Question of What About Me

I wasn't in the mood anyway. Well, I rolled over and I've got a certain way that I can lay and when I lay my wrist will just crack all night so I made sure I had my wrist out where it would crack all night. But when I was driving this morning, I thought there may be some truth to this. You know what? She's right. I mean, I'm looking at this and I don't think it's at a point where it would distract from the day.

I mean, here's this. I could not have asked for more than Tyler. Somebody the other day said, did you pick the song that you're going to dance to? I said, I picked the guy. I picked the guy. I set him up. I did the thing. I got the guy. I got everything. And he said, Tom, you got to be so happy. But you know what my flinch is? What about me?

And that's our flinch in every circumstance. Why are interpersonal relationships hard? Because your flinch is, what about me? And the person over here, the co-worker, the boss, the manager, the spouse, the kid, is saying, what about me? And you got two adults going, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. What about me? And then we say, why doesn't it work?

The Simple Solution We Can't Achieve

If all of a sudden I implement the very simple thing that Jesus taught, which is to treat others the way you want to be treated, if I do that, all of a sudden my frustration level is going to go from here to here. I'm never going to get it to zero because it's a sinful world and I'm a sinful person. But we're exactly right. You can't do that. You might be able to do it for a season. You might clean up your act for a month. But you're not going to do it long-term. You can't. You don't have the power.

The Fruit of the Spirit and Our Fundamental Problem

This is very important. We got to close, which is sad, but it's very important. The fruit of the Spirit. In other words, the things that the Holy Spirit produces in a person's life is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.

If that's true, then by God's definition, an unbeliever could never love. You get two unbelievers and they're going to say, I love you, and I love you more than anything else, and I care for you more than anything else, but they don't have the power to pull the trigger forever. And even if they keep doing it on the outside, what Jesus is getting at is, they don't have the power to feel that on the inside.

Why? Because your basic fundamental problem and mine is that we are selfish, narcissistic, prideful people, and that always gets in the way. It gets in the way of our relationship with others, and most importantly, it gets in our way of our relationship with God.