Luke 6:41-42

The book of Luke, chapter 6, verses 41 and 42. And why beholdest thou the moat that is in thy brother’s eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Either how canst thou say to thy brother, brother, let me pull out the moat that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye. Thou hypocrite cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then thou shalt thou see clearly to pull out the moat that is in thy brother’s eye. May God bless to us the reading of his sacred. And holy word this morning. Many of us have various eye problems and often see an ophthalmologist. The eye doctor, you know, carefully examines your eye, and he’s got the light in there, and he’s got the magnifying glass, and then he has you read the eye charts, and puts different lenses in this machine that he has to look through. through it, and if necessary, he prescribes to you eye glasses to correct a vision defect. Now for a very serious eye problem, eye surgery may be required to fix the defect. For a serious eye problem, eye surgery may be required to fix the defect. For a serious eye problem, eye surgery often has to take place to fix the vision that you have. It needs to be repaired. Now, similar to last week, why would you go to someone who was an eye blind specialist? Wouldn’t that be rather ridiculous? It’s difficult to imagine a blind doctor helping someone who has better vision than he does. But let’s go to a step further. Would you allow a blind eye doctor to actually operate on your eye? No, certainly not. You would never let that have. Eye surgery is a very delicate procedure. It takes a very precise hand and eye coordination to do that procedure. And a blind person doesn’t possess that. Now, on a spiritual level, our Lord speaks of the same absurd situation. It’s ridiculous for you to pretend to be a spiritual eye doctor when you yourself have a huge defect that’s affecting your eyesight. How can you possibly help someone else overcome a sin in your life when you are blinded by a beam of sin in your own eye? If you don’t have clear vision, and you can’t possibly help someone else. The repeated use of the word brother in these two verses of scripture before us indicate that Christ is speaking about judging our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ in this passage of Scripture. In other words, it is one Christian judging another, not just you judging your neighbor per se. You want to understand Christ’s words that as specifically instructing the household of faith. Jesus is using figurative language here in order to speak of sin in a believer’s life. You could have a beam or you could have a moat. Now a beam, is a heavy piece of timber that’s used for a rafter or a joist in a building whereas a moat is really a small piece of wood, a tiny chip, a splinter, even a twig or even down to a speck of sawdust, if you would. Now Jesus is indicating by moats and peams the various degrees of sin. Some people’s sins are small and some people’s sins are great. Obviously, no one can have a literal beam in their eye. The Lord uses an earthly thing, a beam here, to portray something spiritual. A great sin. That’s the idea that we have before us in this text of scripture. Now with this in mind, these preliminary thoughts in mind, let us go to the text here. Let us go to the text here. and notice this. You must be willing to judge yourself before condemning your brother. You’ll notice verse 41, he says, and why beholdest thou the moat in thy brother’s eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye? You don’t begin by putting your brother under the microscope. The word, behold, here carries the idea of staring to gaze intently to study earnestly your brother. Christ is saying that you’re searching for. You’re fixing your concentration on your brother and you’re looking for a fault. That’s not a good thing. He’s asking, why are you doing this? You’re solely concentrating on detecting moats. In your brother’s eye after very careful inspection. Sort of like the presidents and princes in Daniel’s Day who were searching through his life trying to find some area in which they could condemn him. Or look at chapter 6 here in verse 7. The scribes and the Pharisees watched him, speaking of Jesus, whether he would heal on the Sabbath day that they might find an accusation against him. This is the kind of idea that’s connected with this beholding the moat in your brother’s eye. You’re watching closely your brother or sister. It’s an unfriendly gaze. Let me see what I can find. This is not where you start judging, Jesus says. You’re not to be a nitpicker. A sin searcher in the life of your brother. covers a multitude of sin and love doesn’t survey someone’s life just to find fault with them. Aha! Ah, there, I caught you doing something wrong. There are those who go so far as to overlook any good they find in a brother or sister, but emphasize the smallest fault or flaw that they can find in their life and condemn them for it. Jesus condemns this as a wicked practice. It’s unloving toward your brother or sister in Christ to do that. So you don’t begin by putting your brother under the microscope. Notice what Jesus says here. You are to be the first subject of judgment here. You don’t perceive. You don’t look at your own eye first. You don’t take note of or consider carefully or open wide your eyes with regard to yourself. The problem we have is sin sort of has a blinding influence on us and we don’t see sometimes the sin in our own life. We find it very easily in somebody else’s. We’ve got a blind spot. Jesus take your time, open your eyes, look carefully and put yourself under the microscope. You remember what the psalmist has searched me and try me. See if there’d be any wicked way with me. He’s asking God to do it. Knowing that he himself may not even do a great job of that. But he’s willing to search, you know, to have the Lord search him. See what’s wrong. I need to get this out of my life. Now if you’re really interested in truth and righteousness, you’ll be just as critical of yourself as you would anybody else. You must, in honest manner, compare yourself to the objective standard of the Word of God. Lamentations 340 says, let us search and try our ways and turn again to the Lord. Search and try our own ways. It’s interesting. Psalm 51, we know, is the great Psalm of repentance for David and his sin with Bashiba and how he starts out confessing his own transgressions and his own wickedness. And then he asks for the Lord’s forgiveness and being made clean and given a new right heart and right spirit again. And then what does he say? Then I will teach sinners your way. In other words, you don’t go out and start teaching sinners God’s way when you’ve got all this problem in your own life to get straight and out. He says, forgive me first. Let me get this straightened out. Then I’ll turn my attention to someone else. I’ve got plenty of take care of my own life. That’s a good standard for us. to use. That’s exactly what Jesus is telling us here in this text of Scripture. If only you and I would be as unflinchingly faithful in judging ourselves as we are in judging others, we’d go a long way in producing a better holiness of life and our own life and assisting our own brother or sister in Christ. So you must be willing to judge yourself before condemning your brother. That’s the first thing. Second. Second, You must not assume you are in a position to judge your brother. You are not qualified to judge your brother where you are a greater offender yourself. You have a beam in your eye, Jesus says. You have this heavy piece of lumber. You got a great sin in your life. Your brother has a mere moat. You got the beam. He’s got the beam. He’s got the small sin. You’ve got the the great sin. Don’t you have an obligation to address the more grievous offense first in your own life? Before you go around trying to pull moats out of somebody else’s I. You know, after hearing the story of Nathan but the rich man man and his poor neighbor, David was very quick you recall to condemn the rich man because he took his poor neighbor’s little U. Lamb and killed it and ate it for dinner with his guest. You read David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man. Boy, this guy ought to be put the death for this kind of behavior and so forth. He at least returned the matter fourfold and so forth. Now, when you look at David’s judgment, it sounds righteous, doesn’t it? I mean, the guy shouldn’t have done something like this in the story that was told what the truth is. And this is what Nathan points out. out to him. David, your sin is greater. Your sin is greater. You stole not a mere lamb from a neighbor. Your neighbor’s wife. The rich man killed only a lamb. An animal. You killed the husband of your neighbor. He had the beam. The rich man in the story had to moat. In comparison. Some churches have a church gossip. This person is always searching for dirt in other people’s lives. Never satisfied. It seems unless they find something to stir up or some fault to point out in somebody’s life. Suppose Sally has committed adultery in her pre-converted state and led to the breakup of her marriage. But later on in life, perhaps she’s saved. Then she starts attending a Bible-believing church. However, the moat-seeking gossip digs up her past. finds out what happened in Sally’s life begins to spread it around the congregation of her past life and, you know, her adultery’s affair and so forth and how the cause the breakup of her marriage. But the gossip has failed to see the beam of sin in her own eye that God hates the one that shows discord among the brethren. She, look at her past. She’s bad. Look at your present. You’re not so good either. why the moat-searching gossip is in a far worse spiritual condition than Sally is who’s repented and found forgiveness. So you’re not qualified to judge your brother while being a greater offender of yourself. That’s what Jesus says here. You’re not qualified to judge your brother until you’ve cast out your own sin. Notice what he says here in the last part of verse 42. the middle part of verse 42. He says here in verse 42, either, how canst thou say to thy brother, brother, let me pull out the moat that is in thine eye. When thou behold is not the beam that is in thine own eye, thou hypocrite cast out first the beam out of thine own eye. Then you’ll see clearly to pull out the moat that is like brothers. Brother, and if any man be overtaken with a fault, you which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness. Who was qualified to help a brother with sin in his life? The spiritual man, right? Not just someone who has the spirit, because we would say that your brother, who has the fault, has the spirit, too. One who is guided and his life is directed by the Spirit of God. This doesn’t mean some kind of super saint, but it certainly means someone about any beams hanging out of their eye. Someone who was obeying God’s commands in general, being governed by the power of the spirit, you’re only qualified the judge and restore others if there are no glaring sins protruding from your own life. Clear vision is needed to locate and to remove a from the eye of someone else. You remember the woman taking an adultery that was brought before Jesus? One day the scribes and the Pharisees bring this woman to Jesus and she’s been caught in the very act of adultery and of course their motive was to find fault with Christ. Not to hold the law. They really weren’t concerned about the law so much at this point. This they said to tempt him that they might have to accuse him is what the scripture says. They quoted the law of Moses which stated the adulterous woman should be stoned to death. Our Lord’s reply to the scribes and the Pharisees is actually the same principle that’s found in our text here. He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone. The Bible says they being convicted of their own conscience went out one by one and left. Before you go casting stones of condemnation of others, you have to consider your own spiritual life first. You’re not qualified to judge your brother until you have cast out your own sin. Notice this also. You need to consider your own hypocritical attitude. He calls you a hypocrite here. If you fail to judge yourself first, if you fail to deal with your own sin first, before you judge another, you’re a hypocrite. That’s what he says. You’re pretending to be zealous about holiness of life. You’re missing your whole life’s holiness. If you really want to help others, you really want to help them with their faults, with all the imperfections they have, well, you can’t ignore your own sins. Hypocrats are quick to condemn others but never seem to be able to judge themselves and see the same sin in their own life. I read a a story about a woman. She was at the airport. She bought a book. She bought a package of cookies to munch on while she was waiting for her flight to arrive. So she sat down in the waiting area and she started reading her book and she got absorbed in her book and she noticed that the man took a seat, two seats away from her, and she kind of noticed him. She saw that he was fumbling to open a package of cookies that was on the seat between them. She was so shocked that a stranger would open her package of cookies and start eating one. He opened her the package of cookies and started eating cookies. So she just reached over and said, I’m going to get one of those cookies myself, and grabbed one. The man didn’t say anything, but he soon reached over and took another cookie out of the package. The woman says, well, I’m not going to let him eat all my cookies, and so she reaches over and picks another cookie. And on and on it went. When the man got down to the last cookie, he broke it in half, ate the half cookie, and walked off. She looked at that and thought, he left me a half cookie, huh? That’s it. She got up in a huff, her plane had come. She couldn’t believe this man’s nerve. Soon came the announcement. to board the plane. Once she got aboard, she’s still angry at this man’s audacity that he could do this, puzzled about the whole incident. She reached into her purse for tissues that suddenly dawned on her. She shouldn’t judge people too harshly for there in her purse or her unopened package of cookies. She wasn’t eating her, he wasn’t eating her cookies. He was eating his own cookies, and she had reached over and took his cookies. The very thing that she was accusing him of doing, she had done. She didn’t see it that way at first. We started analyzing all the statements we make about other people, you may just find how hypocritical you’ve actually been. So you must not assume you are in a position to judge your brother. Thirdly, you must carefully consider Christ hints here about removing your brother’s moats. And the first is this. You must be experienced. Cast out first the beam out of thine own eye. You want to help someone else? You want to help them get the moat out of their eye? How experienced are you? Have you learned how to get the moats out of your own eye? Have you practiced on yourself? As you remove the moats and beams in your own eye, then you get your experience and you say, oh, okay, now I know how to deal with in my life. I can help somebody else. Unless you have performed eye surgery on your own eye, you can’t possibly help someone else. That’s the point. How are you ever going to teach someone to control their anger if you can’t control your own anger? You must be experienced. You must be gentle. We’re talking about an eye here. Notice how he phrases this. There is no organ that’s more sensitive than the eye in great care. In general, this is called for… I don’t know if you’ve ever had stuff taken. out of your eye or not. You know, when you’re kids, you get dirt and junk in your eye and mom and dad have to get the wet handkerchief or something and try to get it out. I remember one time, we had these swings in the basement. These had metal hooks in the rafters. And my dad just put a chain on it, but he didn’t have any, like, thing to keep the metals from rubbing. While you’re going, I’m looking up in the air and stuff’s dropping. got my eye. I had to go to the eye doctor he had to get these little slivers of metal out of my eye. And believe me, it wasn’t pleasant when I was a little kid to have that, you know, dug out of my eye. The eye’s very sensitive. It’s hard to keep it open. I mean, the doctor’s holding it open and you’re trying to close it because he’s sticking this little scapul in there and he’s, you know, working on the eye. But if you ever removed a speck of dirt from your child’s eye, you have an eye, you have an idea how sensitive that eye is, how delicate it is. If you ever get a piece of dirt in your eye, you know your eyes water and it gets red. It doesn’t take much to irritate it. It’s sensitive. In dealing with a person’s soul, oh, you’re touching one of the most sensitive areas you could possibly touch. How are you going to get that little moat out of a sensitive eye in the spirit of meekness? A meek person is humble. He’s gentle. He’s self-controlled. He’s aware of his own faults. He’s aware of how hard it is to remove it and how delicate this matter is. You know, a proud, self-asserting, arrogant person who forces his will on others is the very opposite of a meek person. We want to be gentle with our brother. As you would as if you were removing a speck of dirt from his life. He has a pastor that said, the attitude of his dentist reminded him of this passage of scripture. He said he’s one of those people that when he was given Novacane, it took a long time to get it to circulate into his system and numb it up. So that even when he got novacane, he could still feel pain when the dentist started drilling and so forth. And so he, you know, he would be reacting somewhat in pain. He told the dentist that he could tolerate it, but it disturbed the dentist. And he said, no, we’re going to wait. He said, the dentist said, I don’t want you to still feel pain. The man says, well, it does bother me a bit, but I can stand it. But it bothers me, the dentist, says, so I’m not going to do that. So he says, wait under five or six minutes. And then I’ll get back to working on your teeth. Now, in a similar manner, you should be concerned about removing the moat as painlessly as possible. from your brother or sister in Christ. Now, it’s not always easy to remove something painless, completely painlessly. But we should do it with the least amount of irritation and trouble and pain as possible. We don’t want to add agony to the spirit of the person. You must be gentle. Thirdly, lastly, you must be trustworthy. You need to be a brother. Need to be a brother. A complete stranger is not going to allow someone to do spiritual eye surgery. You know, they’re not going to allow you to do spiritual eye surgery on them. They don’t know you. They don’t know who you are. You’re dealing with a brother in Christ, a fellow member of the household of God. And the idea is we should be able to trust our brother that he’s really looking out for our best interest here. This gives you an opportunity to help. opportunity to get close enough to remove the moat from your brother’s eye. It’s more likely he’s going to let you help him if he knows that you love the brother. That you have a love for him. You’re concerned about his best interest. He knows the kind of person you are. You deserve what’s best for his soul. Then you have opportunity, you see. Let me close. No one would go to a blind. the eye doctor. It’s not a good idea to receive help. If you have serious eye defects, you cannot be useful to a brother in removing the sin from his own life when you’ve got the beam in yours. You have to be willing to judge yourself before you start condemning other people. And you must not assume that you are in a position to judge your brother. Maybe you’re a greater offender than your brother is. Maybe you have not learned to cast out your own sin. Maybe you are hypocritical. Lastly, you must consider Christ’s hints here about removing your brother’s moats. Get experience on yourself. Be gentle. It’s an eye. And be someone that’s trustworthy. You’re a brother and sister or sister in Christ. Therefore, you have the best interest at heart here and deal with your brother. Well, let’s close.