The following message by Alistair Begg is made
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We're going to read from the Bible in
James and chapter 4, verse 11 of chapter
4.
Brothers, do not slander one another.
Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges
him, speaks against the law and judges it.
When you judge the law, you're not keeping
it, but sitting in judgment on it.
There is only one lawgiver and judge, the
one who is able to save and destroy.
But you, who are you to judge your
neighbor?
Father, we pray for your help as we
turn to the Scriptures.
Show us ourselves and show us our Savior.
For your name's sake.
Amen.
If you're visiting this evening, a word of
welcome to you.
We are trying to study our way through
James, and we dealt with just one sentence
this morning.
In verse 11, that's the first sentence.
Brothers, do not slander one another.
And so we come back to those verses
again this evening.
And I want to begin by pointing out
two things.
First of all, to point out how seriously
the New Testament takes the sin of slander.
When Paul writes a very straightforward epistle to
the Corinthians, especially concerning their misdemeanors and their
faults and so on.
He writes as follows in 1 Corinthians 5.
I've written to you in my letter not
to associate with sexually immoral people.
And then he quickly says, not at all
meaning the people of this world who are
immoral or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters.
In that case, you would have to leave
this world.
But now I'm writing to you that you
must not associate with anyone who calls himself
a brother or a sister.
But who is sexually immoral or greedy, an
idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a
swindler with such a man.
Do not even eat.
And right in the heart of it, a
slanderer.
And which of us evaded the challenge of
this morning's study.
The Bible takes this very seriously.
That's the first thing to notice.
Secondly, to note, and I want to say
this and get it out of the way
because it's almost inevitably a question that follows.
James, in what he now goes on to
say, is not calling for us to set
aside our critical faculties.
Nor is he forbidding his readers from forming
opinions about certain actions or ideas or people.
This is very, very important because it's not
uncommon to hear people use Jesus warning against
judging as a basis for accepting behavior, which
the Bible actually condemns.
All right.
So, for example, let's say we have something
that is clearly set out in Scripture as
being unacceptable, whatever it might be.
And then someone says, I notice that Mr.
X is involved in Y.
And someone says, well, judge not that you
be not judged.
That's not actually what James is on about
here.
He's not asking us to sacrifice the clear
mandate of Scripture to be able to exercise
and execute church discipline.
To be able to point out to one
another our faults in the experience of our
own Christian testimony.
Rather, what he is addressing is something rather
different.
Now, in order to help us execute this
study with a minimum of fuss and length,
let us just notice things under two headings.
First of all, the sad pattern that James
provides for us here and then the sole
prerogative of which James reminds us.
The sad pattern is in verse 11b and
following.
Anyone who speaks against his brother and judges
him or judges him speaks against the law
and judges it.
When you judge the law, you're not keeping
it, but sitting in judgment.
And the whole pattern of events, he says,
unfolds.
When we speak against our brother or our
sister, we are almost inevitably setting ourselves up
as judges.
Slander and judging are almost inseparable.
You will notice in the NIV it says
anyone who speaks against his brother or judges
him.
In the authorized version, it says anyone who
speaks against his brother and judges him.
And I think perhaps the AV points us
in the right direction.
In other words, this speaking against and judging
and entering into judgment are almost synonymous with
one another.
So when we speak against a brother or
a sister, what we're usually claiming is that
they have failed to do what they should
have done or that they've been doing something
that they shouldn't do.
In doing this, says Tasker, the slanderer is
going far beyond the bounds of what is
legitimate for ordinary human beings.
Because if you go to a court or
you observe the proceedings of a court, you
recognize that judgment is passed only when all
the facts have been heard.
But the problem with the one who speaks
evil against his brother or sister is that
we're quick to pronounce judgment before the facts
have been heard.
And sometimes we don't even want the facts
to be heard because it impinges upon our
ability to slander.
If all the facts were to get out,
then we wouldn't be able to say what
we say.
And so it's actually better for us to
get it out even without the facts of
the case.
And so the pattern is one of jumping
to conclusions, jumping to judgment without any attempt
to discover the truth.
Perhaps the classic illustration of this, as we
think of brothers at least, is to be
found in the Old Testament in 1 Samuel
chapter 17.
And if you would like to turn there,
if you have your Bible, you can just
see where this is so that you can
go back to it.
It's often helpful just to turn to it
because it anchors it in your mind and
it'll be easier to find later on.
1 Samuel 17, you will know if you
know your Bible, is the chapter that gives
to us the record of the great fight
between David and Goliath.
And you will remember that David, who was
the youngest of all of the brothers, had
been going back and forth to tend his
father's sheep.
And in verse 17, we read as follows.
Now Jesse said to his son David, take
this ephah of roasted grain and these ten
loaves of bread for your brothers and hurry
to their camp.
Take along these ten cheeses to the commander
of their unit.
See how your brothers are and bring back
some assurance from them.
They're all with Saul and all the men
of Israel in the valley of Elah fighting
against the Philistines.
Little did he know that they were in
the presence of the Philistines, but they sure
weren't fighting the Philistines, as David was about
to discover.
And now if you fast forward to verse
28, when Eliab, David's oldest brother, heard him
speaking.
And what David had been saying was, why
are you letting this big giant shout like
this every day?
Why doesn't it somebody go out there and
chop his head off?
That's a paraphrase.
Why do you let him defy the armies
of Israel in this way?
Which, of course, was a legitimate response.
Indeed, it was a response of clarity and
of bravery.
And when Eliab, David's oldest brother, heard him
speaking with the men, he burned with anger
at him and asked, why have you come
down here?
And with whom did you leave those few
sheep in the desert?
I know how conceited you are and how
wicked your heart is.
You came down only to watch the battle,
to which David should have said, what battle?
We ain't got no battle.
But you see, his brother jumps to judgment,
slanders him.
I know, he says, how conceited you are.
I know you have a wicked heart.
I know you only came down here to
watch.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
It's that kind of thing that James is
addressing in this story pattern of jumping to
judgment.
Why did Eliab address his brother in this
way?
Because he was absent the humility which recognizes
that this prerogative belongs solely to God.
Look at the text and see what James
says is happening.
The individual who speaks against his brother and
judges him, speaks against the law and judges
it.
When we enter into superficial, misguided, uninformed, cruel
judgments, we're actually speaking against the law and
expressing a judgment on the law.
We're really saying, this doesn't apply to me.
Now, when he says you speak against the
law, I wonder what he's referencing.
It could be that he's referencing the verse
from Leviticus 19 that we quoted this morning,
where the word of God to his people
is, you must not go up and down
as a tailbearer among my people.
Or perhaps more likely, in light of the
8th verse of chapter 2, he's referencing the
royal law found in Scripture, which is love
your neighbor as yourself.
And he says, if you speak against your
brother and judge him, you actually speak against
the law and you're executing judgment on it.
Instead of seeing how it applies to me
and keeping it, I end up sitting in
judgment on it and I begin to become
a law to myself.
Now, let's remind ourselves of verse 6 and
again of verse 10.
The Scripture says God opposes the proud, but
gives grace to the humble.
Verse 10, humble yourselves before the Lord and
he will lift you up.
You see, when we are honest enough with
ourselves to acknowledge what we know of our
own hearts and how wretched they are and
how justifiably we ought to find ourselves in
the dock, we will then be less prone
to assume a position on the bench.
But if we are deceitful about our own
hearts, if we lie to ourselves about our
position before God, if we refuse to humble
ourselves before him, then in exalting ourselves and
defaming others, we find ourselves right in the
heart of this pattern.
Derek Prime, in a helpful sentence or two,
puts it as follows.
The knowledge of our own failings makes us
more and more hesitant about expressing any form
of criticism of others.
The man who knows himself learns an increasing
silence before other people's faults.
That's a great sentence.
The man or the woman who knows themselves
learns an increasing silence before others' faults.
We ought not to misunderstand this.
This is not cowardice or softness, but rather
it is Christ-likeness and it is tenderness.
Christ-likeness and tenderness.
That's the pattern and now the prerogative in
verse 12.
There is only one lawgiver and judge, the
one who is able to save and to
destroy.
It is more than likely that James, with
his knowledge of the Old Testament, has in
mind a verse from Deuteronomy chapter 32 and
verse 39, which I will quote for you.
You needn't turn to it, although you might
like to turn just to verify that it's
there.
And God is speaking and he says, See
now that I myself am he.
There is no God besides me.
I put to death and I bring to
life.
I have wounded and I will heal and
no one can deliver out of my hand.
Now if you turn back to James and
he says, There is only one lawgiver and
judge, the one who is able to save
and to destroy.
You say that is good.
James obviously knows his Bible.
And what he's reminding the readers of and
reminding us of this evening is that there
is only one who issues laws that are
permanently valid.
One of the interesting things about civil jurisdiction
and jurisprudence in general is that new laws
are to be enacted all the time in
order to keep up with or catch up
with the changing, developing circumstances of life.
And there is a great distinction in the
laws that exist from state to state.
Scott's law in the United Kingdom is different
from law in England.
And there is a divergence and a discrepancy
between many of these things.
And what James is saying here is that
there is only one whose laws are permanently
valid.
And there is only one whose judgments are
of eternal significance.
Now, in saying this, he's also not suggesting
that there is no place for human legislation.
That would be a misinterpretation of the Bible,
wouldn't it?
Someone says it says in the Bible in
James 4.12, There is only one lawgiver
and one judge, the one who is able
to save and to destroy.
And so, your honor, I do not accept
your existence.
That would not be a smart move on
a number of fronts.
Because it would reveal that the individual has
not been reading the rest of the Bible,
where it makes very clear that God has
appointed civil jurisdiction for the punishment of those
who do wrong and for the praise of
those who do right.
No, what James is saying is this.
Not that there is no place for human
legislation, but rather that the foundation of all
such legislation is in the revealed law of
God.
What legal scholars refer to and many contemporary
scholars disdain now as being natural law, which
is actually supernatural law.
It is the oughtness of moral conscience.
It is the oughtness of human society, which
scholars wonder at.
Why does anybody say we ought to do
this or we ought to do that?
Where does oughtness come from?
And at the high levels of philosophical debate,
this notion is absolutely poo-pooed.
But, says James, there actually is only one
lawgiver and judge.
Human courts may get it right.
Human courts may get it wrong.
But ultimately, the judge of all the earth
will do right.
Because God is the only one who is
able to detect absolutely accurately, to convict with
absolute authority, and to punish with absolute fairness.
God alone.
And that, incidentally, and in passing, is why
the foundations of civil liberty in this nation,
and the fundamental place of the Ten Commandments,
is so vehemently opposed by those who reject
God and His authority.
Because such individuals understand the direct link between
this one lawgiver and judge who executes his
judgments with validity and with authority.
God alone, he says, is able to judge.
He's the one who is able to save
and to destroy.
And it is in light of that, that,
for example, we read the words of Jesus
when, in Luke chapter 12, He says to
His followers, You ought not to be concerned
about the people that can kill the body.
I tell you, my friends, don't be afraid
of those who kill the body, and after
that can do no more.
But I will show you whom you should
fear.
Fear Him who, after the killing of the
body, has the power to throw you into
hell.
That's the real judgment, He says, you ought
to fear.
And that, incidentally, and in passing, is where
everything will be brought to rights.
Is it possible that civil jurisdiction gets it
wrong?
Absolutely.
Is there human error?
Without question.
Does that mean that we should not do
what God says we should do in relationship
to the execution of justice?
Absolutely not.
Does that mean that things will be faltered
all the way through to the end?
Not at all.
All will be put to right on the
day when, before the bar of God's judgment,
things are settled.
And those who think that they got off
will find that they didn't.
And those who fear and feel that they
were punished unjustly will be vindicated at the
bar of God's assignance.
That's why it is so important that we
take seriously these exhortations, lest we seek to
remove God from His throne and put ourselves
there, and grow impatient of God to exercise
His judgments, thereby seeking to advance the case
by executing them ourselves.
It is absolutely wrong to bomb abortion clinics.
It is absolutely wrong to shoot people who
conduct abortions.
It is absolutely wrong to do abortions.
But God will deal with the issue in
His time.
He, the judge of all the earth, will
do right.
We are not in that position.
And incidentally, this is the same reason why,
in a different vein, when Paul addresses the
Corinthians, and he says, you know, we should
be regarded as servants of God, and those
who are the servants of God should prove
faithful, and then he says, I care very
little if I'm judged by you or by
any human court.
He's not being dismissive.
He's not being arrogant.
He's just saying, you're not the issue.
You know, you can scare me a wee
bit, but you don't scare me a lot.
I don't care if I'm judged by you
or by any human court.
He says, I do not even judge myself.
My conscience is clear.
But that doesn't make me innocent.
It is Yahweh who judges me.
Therefore, judge nothing before the appointed time.
Wait till the Lord comes.
He will bring to light what is hidden
in darkness, and will expose the motives of
men's hearts, and at that time, each will
receive his praise from God.
Now, that kind of expression is, I think,
grounded in what James is making clear here
in the twelfth verse.
The absurdity of taking upon ourselves a prerogative
which is God's alone should not be missed.
Hence the closing sentence.
But you?
Who are you to judge your neighbor?
Who are you?
Now, my family will just crawl under the
seat when I go to where I'm going
now.
But that's all right.
They'll get back up later.
I couldn't go to this question, but you?
Who are you?
Without going to one of my favorite court
scenes in one of my favorite old movies.
This dates me dreadfully.
The movie is What's Up, Doc?
Featuring Ryan O'Neill and Barbara Streisand and
Madeleine Kahn, who sadly died of cancer a
few years ago.
And if you remember the movie at all,
after the great fiasco and the chase down
the windy street of San Francisco and smashing
through plate glass windows and disrupting everything and
creating massive havoc in the city.
They are all eventually assembled before the judge
who comes out a wizened little man with
a black cloak.
And he sits and he looks out of
this vast company and he sees them all
there.
And he immediately goes underneath his desk and
gets out some Tylenol or whatever it is.
Takes a big thing of them and drinks
down the water.
And then he gets these these steel balls
that are the stress things that he begins
to move around in his hands.
And when he eventually got himself ready, he
says, you know, OK, you know what's going
on here.
And one person says one thing and one
says another.
And then eventually a fellow says, I demand
to be heard right out of the blue.
This is Madeleine Kahn's would be shooter.
And the judge says, who are you?
And remember, he says, I'm Hugh.
And the judge says, you're me.
He says, no, I'm Hugh.
The judge says, stop saying that.
And then he turns to his bailiff and
he says, tell him to stop saying that.
And the bailiff says, stop saying that.
And so the man says, I demand to
be heard.
I'm a doctor.
And the judge says, of what?
Of music.
Can you fix a stereo?
No.
Then shut up.
It's a great little piece of writing.
I demand to be heard.
Who are you?
I'm Hugh.
Oh, you are?
That's what James is saying here.
Who are you?
I'm Hugh.
Oh, you are?
Very good.
Good for you.
Sit down.
I'll call on you if I need you.
So far, the judgment of the universe is
in safe hands.
You can relax, Charlie.
You can relax, Mrs. We don't need you.
Indeed, it is an absurdity.
It is an utter futility.
It is a rash presumption.
It is infinitely pathetic.
That we should not only demand to be
heard, but that we should seek to assume
the judge's place and rush to judgments unfounded
and unwarranted and all on our own, as
if somehow or another we are able to
judge even the motives of one another's hearts.
Well, I think that's what these verses are
addressing.
And I want to conclude by turning to
two of my heroes, one from the 21st
century for some points of application and one
from the 19th century for some directives going
on from here.
From the 21st century, I'm referencing Jerry Bridges
and the work that he's done over the
years as a member of the Navigators and
I keenly look forward with others to him
coming here for our pastor's conference God willing
in May of 2008.
And in this little book called Respectable Sins,
which I referenced this morning, he has an
entire chapter on judgmentalism.
And in order that we might at least
have some kind of points of application, let
me just give you a couple of his
illustrations of what he has in his own
mind when he thinks about the danger of
judging one another.
You may be surprised by them.
And what I'm going to do is I'm
going to start to read them and then
I'll just trail it off.
It'll just go dot, dot, dot, dot, dot,
which is an incentive for you to go
and buy the book and to read it.
I grew up in the mid-20th century
when people dressed up to go to church.
Men wore jackets and ties, usually suits and
ties, and women wore dresses.
Sometime in the 1970s, men began to show
up at church wearing casual pants and open
-collar shirts.
Many women began to wear pants.
For several years, I judged them.
Didn't they have any reverence for God?
Would they dress so casually if they were
going to an audience with the president?
That sounded pretty convincing to me.
Only, I was wrong.
You see, there's nothing in the Bible that
tells us what we ought to wear in
church.
And as for dressing up to meet the
president, that's a cultural thing centered in Washington,
D.C. If you were invited to meet
the president while he's vacationing at his ranch,
you would probably show up in blue jeans.
Reverence for God, I finally concluded, is not
a matter of dress.
I also grew up in the era of
the grand old hymns, sons of the accompaniment
of piano and organ.
It was majestic.
To me, it was reverent worship of God.
Today, in many churches, the grand old hymns
have been replaced by contemporary music and the
piano and organ with guitars and drums.
Again, I was judgmental.
How could people worship God with those instruments?
But the New Testament churches had neither pianos
nor organs.
Yet they managed to worship God in psalms
and hymns and spiritual songs.
I still have a preference for church music,
sung as we did when I was younger.
But it's just that, a preference, not a
Bible-based conviction.
So let's avoid being judgmental.
I'll take it up, give you two more,
shall I?
Enjoying this?
Want to buy the book?
I wrote somewhere that I had finally come
to the conclusion that in most instances, the
Bible teaches temperance, not abstinence.
I had to work through that issue also
because, again, I found myself being judgmental when
I would see Christians having a glass of
wine at a restaurant.
However, after I wrote what I did about
temperance, I received a polite but firm letter
from a dear lady who really took me
to task.
She was convinced I was selling out a
foundation stone of Christian morals.
I understand her concern, but she did not
give me any evidence from Scripture.
It was her personal conviction.
Many of us know that doctrine is important,
and because we believe that's true, we can
easily fall into the sin of judgmentalism.
For example, the doctrine of Christ's substitutionary atonement
for our sins and the complementary doctrine of
justification by faith in Christ alone are to
me crucial doctrines.
These are the kind of doctrines where I,
so to speak, draw a line in the
sand and say, no compromise, none whatsoever, period.
However, some writers and teachers who consider themselves
evangelicals are denying Christ's substitutionary atonement.
To them, Christ did not die in our
place to pay for our sins.
Instead, he went to the cross solely as
an example for us to follow when we
suffer.
Others downplay the death of Christ on the
cross, saying we should focus not on the
cross of Christ, but rather on his life,
which we should follow as an example.
Whenever the subject of my teaching or speaking
warrants it, I take issue with these folks,
and I think I am right in doing
so.
But I confess, I have at times slipped
into the sin of judgmentalism.
I disagree so strongly with what they are
teaching that I have sometimes demonized them.
I don't think I'm alone in this sin.
And then back into the 19th century to
Charles Simeon, who was a vicar in Cambridge,
had a tremendous influence in the 19th century
amongst the intelligentsia of Oxbridge.
And in writing to a colleague in the
ministry, he gave him these directives.
He said, the longer I live, the more
I feel the importance of adhering to the
rules which I have laid down for myself,
which are as follows.
Number one, to hear as little as possible
what is to the prejudice of others.
Two, to believe nothing of the kind until
I am absolutely forced to it.
Three, never to drink into the spirit of
one who circulates an ill report.
Four, always to moderate as far as I
can the unkindness which is expressed towards others.
Five, always to believe that if the other
side were heard, a very different account would
be given of the matter.
And he used to say to his friends,
let us sit upon the seat of love
instead upon the seat of judgment.
Let us pray.
Lord God, you search us and you know
our hearts.
Cleanse us from our sins.
Put a right spirit within us.
Forgive us when we sin with such ease,
especially in these apparently respectable areas.
When we justify our unkindnesses simply because we
feel we're telling the truth.
But everything that is true doesn't need to
be stated.
And forgive us for using that as a
crutch for our own desire to do down
others and so exalt ourselves.
And it is with confidence that we come
to you, our God and King, because in
the Lord Jesus Christ we have discovered afresh
your amazing love for us.
And in Christ's name we pray.
Amen.
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