No Judgment Gospel

 

Introduction:

• This past summer a well touted women’s soccer player named Jaelene Hinkle was not included on the Women’s National Team that won the World Cup. People have speculated over whether that was a decision based on her talent or because she earlier refused to play in a game in which the team was required to wear rainbow jerseys to support Gay Pride month. Now, I don’t know which it was… but a backup goalie for the Women’s Team later put a tweet out that made her personal views clear… “Hinkle, our team is about inclusion. Your religion was never the problem. The problem is your intolerance and you are homophobic. You don’t belong in a sport that aims to unite and bring people together. You would never fit into our pack or what this team stands for.”
• This provides a good summary of the no-judgment gospel… that to judge someone else means that you are intolerant and, in this case, homophopic.
• But we want to ask, is that really true? And how does that line up with what the Bible says about judgment… particularly God’s judgment.

Belief #1 – No one should judge someone else.

• In other words, you should never proclaim that someone else is wrong or sinful… because that would be to judge that person and to judge someone is always wrong.
• We may even point to the Bible and say, “Take the plank out of your own eye before you take the speck out of someone else’s eye.”
• Or we may look at Romans 2:1-5
• Didn’t Paul just say, “you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself.”
  • But in other places in the Bible, Paul will tell us to make judgments about other people.
• What Paul is talking about here is a certain type of judgment. He’s talking about a hypocritical judgment or a judgmental attitude.
  • In the previous verses before this, Paul has given a long list of sins that God will judge people for… things like murder, envy, homosexuality, gossip, disobedience to parents, and more.
• And Paul can imagine that some who might read this letter, read those verses nodding their heads in approval and saying, “Amen… thank goodness God will judge those people, and thank goodness I’m not one of them.
• So Paul turns the tables on that person and says, “Hey you… the one whose nodding your head in judgment. Don’t you do some of the same things? Do you proudly think that you will escape God’s judgment by looking down on other people?
• This is like the older person who rails against how bad the young people are for texting and driving, and then pulls out their own phone to text while they are driving while justifying it in their mind that this is a really important text.

Bible – No one should hypocritically judge someone else. (Romans 2:1-5, 12-16; Matthew 7:1-5)

• There is a difference between being judgmental, and making a judgment.
• Everybody, including those who speak of not judging other people, make judgments.
• Think about it… even to say, “No one should judge anyone else,” is making a judgment. It’s saying people who don’t judge are good and people who do judge are bad and should be condemned.
  • Did you catch that in the quote I mentioned at the beginning of the lesson… “Hinkle our team is about inclusion… you don’t belong.”
• This is the flaw at the heart of so much of our tolerance culture. People make loud calls for tolerance while not tolerating the people who don’t go along with them.
• What Paul and Jesus are opposed to is a type of hypocritical judgmentalism that makes us believe we are better than other people.
  • Like the wealthy kid at who thinks he is better than the poor kid, when the only thing that separates them is Daddy’s bank account.
  • Like the teenage boy who makes fun of a gay or transgender student only to go home and watch pornography on his phone.
  • Like the teenage girl who trashes another girl for how she dressed or who she had sex with by gossiping about her.
  • Like the youth pastor who is critical of students for being fake and then turns around and is just as fake sometimes.
• Paul’s point is that we should be very careful about judging someone else before we have looked at our own lives.

Belief #2 – All Judgment is bad.

• The no-judgment gospel tends to portray all judgment as bad… whether that is the judgment of other people or God’s judgment.
• When the idea of God’s judgment is brought up, we cringe or say, “God is a God of love.”
• But to believe that God’s judgment is bad is to make a big mistake.
• We all crave for justice.
  • It’s why if you have been hurt by a family member or friend or someone else, you might be really angry. I
  • It’s why some of you may fight against cases of injustice… whether that be sex trafficking, gun violence, racism, abortion, or many more.
• But if we say judgment is bad, it completely undercuts that. We no longer have a reason to be upset at these things
• And what we need is a God who does say these things are wrong and who will ultimately make every wrong right.
• This is why it is foolish to say “God is a God of love,” in an effort to dismiss his judgment.
• “The problem isn’t that the judgmentless God is too loving; it’s that he’s not loving enough.” -Trevin Wax
• Do you hear what he’s saying, “A God without judgment isn’t loving enough.” He doesn’t really care about people or this world.
  • Let me demonstrate this from a scene in a movie you might be familiar with.
  • Taken (Show video Clip). That’s a movie where the Father’s daughter is kidnapped by people involved in the sex trafficking trade. The father hunts down his daughter’s kidnappers, kills them, and “spoiler alert” ultimately rescued her. It was an extremely popular movie and spawned two sequels and a TV show. Why? Because Liam Neeson was in it? No. Because people identified with a Father who fights back against injustice and wins. Imagine if that phone call went different. And instead of saying, “I will look for you, I will find you, and I will give you a hug.” And the entire Movie was about Liam Neeson hunting down his Daughter’s kidnappers just to give them a hug.
  • We laugh at that… just as we should laugh and cringe at the notion of a loving God who doesn’t do anything to make the wrongs of this world right.
• Let’s look at what Paul says about God’s judgment in Romans 2:6-11
• What Paul says here is that God will judge everyone with no partiality. Every single wrong will be addressed.
• While the no-judgment gospel would say, “Judgment is bad.” The Bible would say, “God’s judgment is always good.

Bible – God’s judgment is always good.

• Now… while God’s judgment is good and can bring us comfort, it is also unsettling.
• Because when we read, “God will render each according to his works” I must include my own name under that each.
• This leads us to the last belief of the no-judgment gospel. 

Belief #3 – “Only God can judge me.”

• This is a common statement of the no-judgment gospel.
• Miley Cyrus – “It’s our party we can do what we want, It’s our party we can say what we want, It’s our party we can love who we want, we can kiss who we want, we can screw who we want.” And then goes on to say, “Remember only God can judge ya.” (We Can’t stop)
• Essentially what it means is, “Your opinion doesn’t matter to me. Only God can judge me… and why would he ever do that?”
• And yet to say this is like closing your eyes and walking across a 4-lane highway while yelling loudly, “Only a tractor trailer can hit me… but I don’t think they will because I think they will swerve out of the way.”
• Look at how Paul continues… Read Romans 2:12-16
• Paul is saying that everyone, everywhere will face God’s judgment.
• He is saying the God who knows everything about us, everything we try to hide or paint over, will judge us without any favoritism.
• And if that doesn’t cause us to gasp, it’s because we have not seen our sin clearly and probably are still believing the do-good gospel.

Bible – The biggest problem facing everyone is that God will judge us.

• The bible makes it clear that no one will avoid God’s judgment… and that God’s judgment is far more fearful then anything we could conjure up on this earth.
• Whenever a thunderstorm comes near our house, my dog runs for cover and starts to visibly shake because of how terrifying the thunderstorm is to her.
• Revelation says in the day of God’s judgment, people will be so terrified that they will call out for mountains and rocks to fall on them to hide them from God’s sight.”
• God’s judgment on sin, including my sin, is terrifying. It is the biggest problem that every person faces.
  • Cancer, disease, death, and anything else we face in this life are minor compared to God’s judgment.
• We need to fill the weight of this, if we are to feel the weight of the gospel.

 

Gospel – Jesus steps into our place to take the full weight of God’s judgment.

• Romans 3:23-25
• The incredible beauty of the gospel, is not that we don’t deserve God’s judgment, but that God has taken the judgment that we deserve and put it on himself.
• Here’s another way to think about it…
• When I was younger, my family used to often go up to the mountains for a weekend. And sometimes we would go with our cousins. I can very vividly remember one particular time. My cousins and I were out playing with a ball, when someone hit the ball into the woods. One of my cousins proceeded to walk into the woods to grab the ball. As she did, she stepped on a bee hive that was on the ground. All we heard was the shriek of a scream as she yelled bees and then took off running. It was awful, she was stung over 50 times and needed to be taken to the hospital. She faced the fierce anger of those bees for stepping on their hive.
• Now, I’m a little embarrassed to say this, but do you know what I did when I heard her shriek and heard the sound of bees? I took off running for the house to ensure my own safety.
• The gospel tells us that Jesus saw us deliberately stepping on something far worse than a beehive, we stepped on God himself and tried to take his place. And instead of running for cover, or standing there and letting us get what we deserve, He ran in pushed us out of the way, and jumped on the beehive until every last sting was inflicted.
• I don’t know about you, but that’s a God I want to know and love for the rest of my life. That’s a God I want to worship.
• See God will judge everyone… and either our judgment will be placed on Jesus, because we have trusted in him and seen him taking our place… or our judgment will be placed on us when we meet God face-to-face.
• Now there are some really important so-what’s out of this…

 So What??

• 1) Be slow and careful to jump to judgment… especially if you don’t know the situation.
  • When you are tempted to judge someone else, gossip about them, or speak into a situation you don’t truly understand… be very careful.
• 2) Defend those who are unfairly judged.
  • If you here others, especially other people who claim to be Christians, speaking with only judgment about other people, speak up and defend them.
• 3) Those who know grace show grace.
  • This is one way the gospel should shape our lives here: If we understand the grace we have been shown… we should be the quickest people to show grace to others. That does not mean never confronting someone else or addressing someone else’s sin.
  • But it does mean we should be some of the most gracious people there are. And if we are quick to judge and slow to show grace, that’s a problem. It should be the other way around.
• 4) If we really believe in God’s judgment, then we have the good news that people need to hear.
  • If we take seriously the idea that God will judge the world, then we should take seriously the idea that we have the message people need to hear. Are we doing anything to communicate that message to other people?