Judge Righteous Judgment | Clip 1

• All right. Now, we’re speaking uh at this time on the theme of judging and ruling. This is the second message. I spoke this time on this theme last week. As uh Jim indicated, it’s not an easy subject, but it’s a very important subject and it’s one on which I feel there’s tremendous ignorance amongst Christians at large and also tremendous disobedience and it costs us all dearly.
• I’ll review as quickly as I can what I said last week and then go on. There’s an apparent parad paradox primarily in the New Testament about whether we are to judge or not to judge. I won’t quote the scriptures I quoted last week, but there are a number of scriptures that say don’t judge.
• And there are just about as many scriptures that say do judge. So which are we to do? To judge or not to judge. Now my explanation is that there’s a principle and we have to understand the principle in order to understand in any given situation whether we should or should not judge. The principle very simply stated is this.
• Judging is a function of ruling descending downward from God himself. In the Old Testament, first of all, judges were Israel’s rulers and later Israel’s rulers were their judges. But judging and ruling were never separated in the Old Testament. In human society, in various areas, on various levels, God has appointed men as judges. In the Old Testament, these men were actually called gods.
• They had the sacred name or title Elohim, which is plural. Why were they called gods? Because their function as judges was to take God’s place and represent God to his people. That’s a measure of the importance that God attaches to the position of a judge. Four things go together. responsibility, authority, judging and being judged.
• Wherever we have responsibility in any area of life, we must have authority. Otherwise, responsibility is ineffective and unfair. And wherever we have authority, we are obligated to judge. But wherever we are obligated to judge, we have to bear in mind that we shall also be judged by God. We shall answer to God for our judgment. So these four things go together.
• Responsibility, authority, judging and being judged. Now this leads to the question where are we responsible to judge? Whom are we responsible to judge? and for what? And all those three questions go together. You can’t adequately answer without taking into account in what area whom and for what.
• It’s not enough to say I have the right to judge or even to say I have the right to judge you people. I also have to specify in what matters I have the right to judge and who the people are and why I have the right to judge those people and not other people. So we we’re answering three questions. Where, whom, and for what? And the first thing I said was, let’s look at what we are never responsible to judge.