Matthew 7:3-5 - The Real Value of Being Able to Laugh at Ourselves

Daily Devo w/ Pastor Eric September 9, 2021

The Real Value at Being Able to Laugh at Yourself

 

Matthew 7:3-5  “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

 

Who says Jesus doesn’t have a sense of humor?  He’s just finished being confrontational about the consequences of judging others (see yesterday’s devo), so he lightens things up with a humorous image of us with a plank in our eye (maybe the around 11-inch plank from two days ago!) trying to do speck surgery on our neighbor’s eye.  It’s a light-hearted image, but the message is clear.  We need to focus on our own blindness before we try to “help” others with theirs.  But it’s sooo much more satisfying to try and fix someone else, right?  Fixing ourselves is hard work, it’s uncomfortable, and doggone it, other people NEED to be fixed more than us.  Jesus, I know it was supposed to be funny, but we’re not laughing. 

Jesus is using humor because he knows it’s hard for us to look at ourselves, especially the not-so-good stuff like planks in our eye.  The humor is used to try and get us to let down our defenses and laugh at ourselves enough so that we can see the ridiculousness of our projects to fix others.  Having a sense of humor about ourselves is essential.   Humility is made more possible by humor; maybe that’s why they both start with “hum.”  😊

 

I have a real admiration for people who are able to maintain a healthy weight, probably because I have struggled with that my whole adult life.  I wouldn’t dream of telling someone else how to do it, because by and large, I don’t really know.  However, about seven years ago, I lost 125 pounds in little over a year (I’ve gained most of it back, so it’s not really that impressive).  After I lost the weight, I would get someone at least a few times to ask me unsolicited, “how did you do it?”  I got asked that so many times, I got tired of giving the answer. You know what’s really crazy?  One of my friends took my answer, did the same thing I did, and to this day is maintaining a healthy weight.  He actually gives me credit for helping him do something I’m still working on.  He’s not my friend anymore (I’m kidding…I love the guy).  That experience was humbling but it showed me what Jesus was talking about in the teaching in the above scripture.

Focus on addressing your planks.  To the extent that you achieve tangible results, you won’t have to go looking for someone to help with their “speck.”  The speck-sufferers will come to you.  And you’ll actually be able to help them not only because of your own plank removal, but because you’ll be a lot more humble in your efforts to help them.  That’s because without humility, specks become planks. 

 

Prayer:  Jesus, help us be aware of our planks.  Teach us how and help us to remove them.  Then and only then, send us speck-sufferers to help.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for your church today

 

Song: Is There A Plank In Your Eye?  This song made me laugh really hard, so it goes well with Jesus attempt to get us to laugh at ourselves.  Warning:  this song will stay in your head!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O5mpF1Ljsk

 

Matthew 7:2-5 The Problem with People and Their Behavior

 

Daily Devo w/ Pastor Eric September 8

The Problem with People and Their Behavior

 

Matthew 7:2-5 “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. ”

 

A commentary on this passage on the internet said this: 

“The world has largely closed its ears to the message of the Gospel because Christians can’t seem to get their own house in order before telling everyone else how to clean up theirs. That’s pride. And God hates pride more than just about any other sin.”

The link between judgement is the key to what Jesus is talking about here.  As soon as I judge, I consciously or unconsciously make a decision that someone is more and someone is less.  That is pride and pride is sin. 

Jesus is not saying that we can’t make judgements about behavior.  We have to make decisions about helpful and unhelpful behavior.  But often, we equate the value of the behavior with the value of the person.  As soon as I do that, I violate an important Christian principle – the principle that all persons have infinite worth.  If we all have the same value and I devalue you, I, by definition devalue myself.  This is why Jesus says that judging others brings judgement on yourself.  He isn’t being punitive. He doesn’t want me to bring judgement on myself by judging others. 

All of that makes sense to me intellectually, but in reality, it’s really hard to keep the value of people and their behavior separate. It’s even to hard to do it for ourselves.  Our culture constantly puts different values on people for many different reasons (wealth, fame, race, age, job, etc). Our culture also tends to equate people with their behavior.  People guilty of bad behavior are put in jail and then are treated like caged animals. Perhaps not as dramatic but also unhelpful is when I decide that someone is “not worth my time.”  That decision hurts me as well as the person I judged. 

One thing that helps me keep people and their behavior separate is reminding myself, when I’m tempted to judge, that given a certain set of circumstances, I could display the same behavior.  This requires brutal self-honesty, but it is the dose of reality I need to keep me out of judgement.  It actually does more than that. It clears the way for a much better alternative – compassion.

 

Question:  What helps you stay out of judgement?

 

Prayer: Jesus, thank you for your warning about how judgement can hurt others and ourselves. Teach us how to move from judgement toward compassion.

 

Prayer Focus: Spend some time praying for your own deepest needs today.

 

Song: Sly and the Family Stone – Everyday People

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmooIolK0mY

Matthew 7: 1 How Do I Judge Myself When I Judge Others?

 

Daily Devo w/ Pastor Eric September 7, 2021

How Do I Judge Myself by Judging Others?

 

Matthew 7:1 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

 

It took me most of my lifetime to feel like I really got what Jesus was saying here.  I get the core message, “don’t judge.”  After all, I don’t like to be judged, so it makes sense that I shouldn’t do that to others.  It’s a Golden Rule sort of thing.  But how is it that I am judged when I judge others.  That’s what I couldn’t get through my thick skull.  I heard lots and lots of explanations, but it took personal experience to break through my ignorance.  It wasn’t just one experience.  But over time, I began to see something that I had never seen before.  My explanatory abilities often fail me when I try to describe it, but I’ll try once again.

Whenever, I make a judgement about something, I, consciously or unconsciously, am using some kind of measure or standard.  When I want to make a judgement about how long something is, I use a tape measure or ruler.  I might, using my ruler, make a judgement that the plank I am measuring is 11 inches long.  I double check my measurement and yes, it is indeed an 11-inch long plank. 

I made a subtle shift in that last sentence.  I went from taking one single measurement to labeling something based on that measurement.  The plank might protest:

“Sure, I am around 11 inches long, but have you considered my width, my height, my density, my color,  the kind of wood I’m made of, the fact that I float, and about a dozen other things that I am other than being 11 inches long?  I am way more than an 11-inch long plank!  See me! Don’t judge me!”

It’s an absurd example, but we do this to each other when we make judgements.  We reduce others to labels taken with incomplete measurements.  It gets worse. There’s something else.  What about my ruler?  Is it perfectly precise? My ruler only shows measures down to an 1/8 of an inch.  So when I made my measurement, was the plank exactly 11 inches long?  If the truth was that the plank was that it was 10 and 31/32 inches long, how could I know with my imperfect measuring device?  Here’s the sad truth; they’re all imperfect measuring devices.  You may protest at this point.  You might say, “but 11 inches is close enough.”  But how do you like being defined by others using a “close enough” measurement?  Sometimes I really don’t care, but sometimes that imprecise definition really hurts. 

I want you to notice something else.  By trusting my imprecise ruler to make a judgement about the poor unsuspecting plank, I have already consented to having that same imprecise implement being used to make judgements about me. I might have already done it.  I’m 6’2 and a half, but is it really a half, or is it nine-sixteenths?  I’ve said that it is an adequate tool for making judgements.  If it’s adequate for making judgements about the plank, then it’s adequate for making judgements about me. 

Every judgement I’ve ever made about someone, I’ve done so with imprecise “measuring tools.”  I also have made those judgements based on an incomplete number of measuring tools.  I could never take enough different “measurements” of someone to say, “okay, now I can judge with certainty who you are.”  All my measuring implements are imperfect and I can never have enough of them.  I have to conclude that I will never be equipped to judge someone.  I’m going to have to leave that to God who does indeed has all the perfect tools to do the judging.  The good news in that is that when I admit that I am unqualified to judge others, I am also admitting that I am unqualified to judge myself.  I guess I’ll trust that to God as well.

 

Questions:  Is there someone to whom you’ve assigned a label that does not describe who they really are?  Have you done the same thing to yourself?

 

Prayer:  God, I surrender to you my tendency to judge others or even myself.  Only you are qualified for the job.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for victims of mass-shootings across our country and across the globe.

 

Song:  Judge Not (1992) - Bob Marley & The Wailers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEOyaZl9kR0