Well, it is the last Sunday of the first month of 2022. And as we've been talking about for the last few weeks, firsts are really important. A first date is a very important date if you hope to have a second date. First impressions matter. Your first day on the job, that's an important day. In fact, I'll never forget my first day at a job that I had coming right out of college. I worked in sales for this company, and I got there, and it was one of those jobs where it was like, you know, tie, dress shirt tucked in, and I was so nervous, you know, right out of college. I immediately got to the office building. It was like a 45-minute commute, downtown Kansas City, Missouri. And I went to the restroom. I just checked my tie. I just made sure everything was all tucked in. I walk in, and uh, this wonderful woman who had worked there for like 20 years, she introduces myself. I say, Hi, I'm Justin. She says, Hi, I'm Catherine. Your fly is unzipped. And I was like, oh, well, one second, you know, and that was my first impression. First day on the job. That's the I only worked there for like two months, but it's all good. Couldn't escape that, you know. It's just, if it had been the third, fourth, fifth day, it would have been fine. But day one, you can't do that, day one. First matter, and it's the first month of our year. So we want to get things going in the right direction for 2022, each of us individually, in our lives, whatever's going on, and that means we've got to put the first things first. And thankfully, Jesus actually helps us do that. There's many times where Jesus told people to put something first. He tells us what to prioritize. And look, if you're a Jesus follower, then his words should matter a lot to you. They should rank number one. Even if you're someone, by the way, who isn't sure where you stand with the whole Jesus thing, at least recognize the fact that this is a man whose words have carried weight for a few thousand years now. And billions of people have built their lives around them, there's something there. That's just something to consider if you're not quite sure where you stand with Jesus. At least listen to what he has to say. And in Matthew chapter 7, Jesus says this: Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged. And why worry about a speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend, let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye when you can't see past the log in your own eye, hypocrite, and that word in his language meant actor, pretender. First, get rid of the log in your own eye, and then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend's eye. Jesus says, before you worry about other people and all the junk in their lives and all the stuff they do wrong and all their issues and all their problems, first deal with what you've got going on. Now, this is actually one of the strongest statements that Jesus makes. Anytime you read Jesus and the word hypocrite shows up, which happens every once in a while, Jesus liked to use that word. He acknowledged the fact that a lot of people live their lives just pretending. And so when you see Jesus say hypocrite, that's like Jesus at his most intense. This is a really, I mean, it's a strong statement. Jesus says that the standard that we use in judging others will be the standard that we are judged by. Like, I don't like that at all. Like if I think about my life and like, have I been a judgmental person? Well, only to people who really deserved it, you know? Like, to people who are wrong, yeah, obviously. But like, seriously, that the standard that I use to judge others will be the standard that I'm I'm judged by. This is not the only time Jesus says this. In fact, there's a very famous prayer called the Lord's Prayer very often, where Jesus says that we we should pray, Father, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. There's this connection there. And Jesus tells us to not be judgmental, to not worry so much about what's going on in other people's lives. And man, if only if only Jesus' followers throughout history would have taken Jesus really seriously when he said this, because at some point in time, for many people, the the church, Christianity got a reputation for being filled with judgmental people. And you know, sometimes that's a little bit exaggerated because sometimes if if because of your faith you're unwilling to go along with something in society that is wrong because of what God has said, that's not being judgmental, to just say I don't agree, or or I don't believe this is right. But but many Christians have definitely gone way beyond that to the point where it's like we exist to point out the flaws of other people. There's a condemnation thing, and and that's something clearly that Jesus did not have in mind. That we're not we're not meant to live our lives looking around at other people judging them. And we're gonna talk about that a little bit this morning because it's hard to not, it's hard not to do that, right? It's hard not to judge people. Some people beg to be judged. Like our whole society is kind of built on it. Like, think about social media, right? There's there's like a button that you can just push. It's like a judge button. You know, someone posts a photo or a video. I judge it. Like, there's dislikes, there's emojis. There's so many emojis. There's happy emojis, like excited emojis, angry emojis. You can judge with one click of a button. Like, any of us in the room old enough to remember when TV shows like American Idol were new, like the talent competition shows before they were just so overdone that you're over them. Man, let's be honest. Those of us that remember, like I was in high school when American Idol came out, and uh I didn't watch it because there were talented people that I got to see sing. I watched it because of the crazy people who were horrible. And it was just I mean, I'm just being honest, it wasn't like, oh wow, that's so cool, they're really good. It was like, that guy's terrible, and and the judges are about to lay into him, and it was fun to watch someone be humiliated on national television as they were judged by three people that I was joining in with. Like, yeah, you are terrible. I'm terrible at singing too, but I'm not on American Idol, right? It's fun to judge people. It's fun to be judgmental because when you're judgmental, you often feel superior. Right? That's the temptation of judgment. You feel superior, you're more moral, you're more noble. You can judge anybody in our culture. You can judge people less successful than you. With this attitude of like, you know, man, maybe if you would have just worked a little bit harder. Maybe if you would do the things that I do, maybe then you would you would be better off. You can also judge people who are more successful than you. That's a lot of fun, I think. Where you're like, oh, well, yeah, you you just have your priorities all out of whack. It can't possibly be that you're just more talented or that you work way harder than me. Like, that's not possible, right? You just must be greedy or or you don't care about your family as much. It's so easy to judge anyone and everyone around you. It's a temptation that is constant. And if I ask myself the question, am I a judgmental person? Outwardly, no. Inwardly, oh my goodness. Like it's it's it's kind of frightening how often I just automatically judge people. And so what we're gonna talk about for the next few minutes is is why it's so vital that we don't, and why ultimately it benefits us greatly to avoid that temptation at all costs. Now, a few things I want to say on the front end, some nuances, because there's always nuances. We don't live in a culture that likes nuances. But but I want to say this really important. There is a difference between judging a human being and practicing wise judgment as you interact with other people. Okay, so something we have to be aware of is that is that our enemy very often twists the words of God to have us do foolish and stupid things. Right? So if you know the story of the very first temptation and sin, it's the story of the Garden of Eden. God says, hey, don't eat the fruit from this one tree, but you can eat all the other fruit. And and the serpent shows up and begins by twisting God's words. Hey, did God really say that you're not allowed to eat any of these fruits? The fruit from any of these trees? And it's like a trap. We see another example of this in Matthew chapter 4. Jesus is being tempted. Right after he's baptized, he gets tempted. And it says, this is like temptation number two of three. Then the devil took him to the holy city Jerusalem, to the highest point of the temple, and said, If you are the Son of God, jump off. For the scriptures say he will order his angels to protect you, and they will hold you up with their hands, so that you won't even hurt your foot on a stone. Now, Satan is actually quoting scripture here. He's quoting Psalm 91, verses 5 through 7 in Psalm 91, a little bit different, but they say this Do not be afraid of the terrors of the night, nor the arrow that flies in the day. Do not dread the disease that stalks in darkness, nor the disaster that strikes at midday. Though a thousand fall at your side, though ten thousand are dying around you, those evils will never touch you. Okay, that's another excerpt from Psalm 91. I've seen many Jesus followers do really dumb things in the name of faith. And look, sometimes faith seems like it's foolishness to everyone else. That is true. But we have to recognize that Satan will even take scripture and twist it to get people to do foolish things, to get people to trip up. That's what he's doing with Jesus. He's taking Psalm 91, which is about God promising to protect us, and he's trying to use that to basically tempt Jesus to do something really dumb. And Jesus doesn't fall for it. So I say that because I have seen people take this idea of Jesus saying, do not judge others, and what they do with it is use it as some type of justification for just not making judgment calls, for not practicing wise judgment. Okay? You have to have discernment. You have to have the ability to say, you know, oh man, this is a person that, you know, let's take a relationship. You know, if you have big red flags in a relationship, you're dating someone, and you notice things that are concerning. I've seen people go, yeah, but I don't want to, like, I don't want to, who am I to judge them? Well, you're gonna, if you're gonna partner with them in life and you have a bunch of red flags, listen to those. This is not God saying that we're not supposed to practice wise discernment. What this is really about, this idea of judgment, is about it's like it's like placing a finality on our our judgment of someone. It's basically saying, this person is this. Period, end of story. I have I have seen all I need to see, I know all that I need to know, this person is whatever, evil, wrong, manipulative, whatever it might be. And saying it not with like, I think this is how they are now, and I'm praying for their growth, but it's like, I have declared that they are this. There's a finality to it. And that's what Jesus is telling us never to do. It might be a person, it might be a whole group of people. It's one thing to have wise judgment. We're meant to have that, but we're not meant to judge people with any finality for a number of reasons. Let's look at a few. Number one, we're wrong a lot. Have have any of you, show of hands, how many of you have been wrong? All right, good. Some of you, wow, amazing. By not raising your hands, you just raise your hands, which is cool. Because you're wrong about that. No, I get it, you don't have to raise your hands, but look, I I've been wrong about so many things in life. Little things, big things. I'm not gonna ask for a show of hands because this is too painful for many of us, but like, we can be wrong on major things. Like, there might have been relationships in the past where you were like, this person's amazing, and I love them, and they love me, and I want to spend the rest of my life with them, and they're just gonna be like the best person for my life. And then years later, you're like, how did I not see it? How did I not recognize that they were so selfish and so whatever, and and it it was it was disastrous and ruinous because you know, you yeah, you can blame them maybe for the things they did wrong, but at some point you clearly misjudged something. You were wrong about who you thought they were, and it was disastrous, right? Like we've all been wrong about all kinds of things. History is is littered with with people who are just wrong. And there's like comical ones. I mean, I say comical, I was gonna mention the Titanic. That's not really comical at all, but it's been long enough now that I don't know, it doesn't seem real. Uh, but you know, famously the Titanic was deemed an unsinkable ship. First voyage, it sank. It turns out it was sinkable. And the people who were wrong about that were smart people. They were like engineers. They they built this thing like there's nothing can take this thing down. Nothing. Not true. Thomas Watson uh used to be the president of IBM, and in the 1940s, IBM was a company, uh business machines is what they made. The computers were like a brand new thing, but a computer was something that like filled up a room, a building. You know, they made uh like when you would have punch cards and you would clock in and out with a punch card, they made the machines that would tabulate all of that. And Thomas Watson said that this is the the CEO of IBM, that he saw a world market for maybe five computers. He's like, I can envision a world where there's five computers. President of IBM. There's more than five, right? Like he was clearly, he couldn't see that. There's so many examples in history of people who are wrong, and we have to recognize how wrong we can be. And that should be this major, major uh word of caution for us when it comes to judging other people. Listen to how Jesus describes it in a parable that he gives in Matthew chapter 13. He says, The kingdom of heaven is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field. But that night, as the worker slept, his enemy came and planted weeds among the wheat, then slipped away. When the crop began to grow and produce grain, the weeds also grew. The farmer's workers went to him and said, Sir, the field where you planted that good seed is full of weeds. Where do they come from? An enemy has done this, the farmer exclaimed. Well, should we pull out the weeds? They asked. No, he replied, You'll uproot the wheat if you do. Let both grow together until the harvest, then I will tell the harvesters to sort out the weeds, tie them into bundles, and burn them, and put the wheat in the barn. So this is a story that Jesus is telling, and he's trying to help his disciples understand that they're not the ones, they're not the ones who are going to sort all that stuff out when it comes to people and who's what and who belongs where. Because they'd just be wrong. They just mess it all up. Like, our job is to be the people who sort of uh sow seeds. Tell the world about Jesus. Tell people what Jesus has done in our lives, tell people about all the good things that God has done for us. But if we ever start going, yeah, well, do you also want me to be the one who like says, Well, yeah, that person good, that person bad? No, Jesus is like, no, not at all. You'll you'll mess it up. We see this happen a lot in the story of Jesus. Two of his disciples one day see someone that offends them on behalf of Jesus, they're offended. Never be offended on behalf of someone, by the way. And they say to Jesus, hey, do you want us to call fire down from the sky and like burn them up? You know, teach them a lesson. And Jesus is like, no, I do not. Because we, if we had that kind of judgment, if we had that kind of power, we would just, we would get it wrong. We are wrong very often. So we cannot make any type of judgment on people or whole groups of people, people we disagree with, people who think differently than us, whatever. We can't do that with any sense of finality ever because we're just we're really good at being wrong. There's other reasons. You can talk about we one is we don't have the authority to. I'll say this. Um, as a father, one of the biggest pet peeves that I have with my children is when they try to parent their siblings. Like those of you who have multiple children have experienced this. It's just it's just not helpful. You know, there'll be times where like one of my younger kids is having a meltdown, and one of my older kids will decide to like, I got this, you know, and they they step in to like tell the younger sibling what to do, and it never, I've never once seen like my five-year-old be like, thank you, seven-year-old sister, for setting me straight. You have shown me the error of my ways. I'm wiser because of you, and I will now change my behavior. All it does is like intensify. It just becomes like, and I'm just like, hey, raise your hand if you're a parent. This I have a lot of conversations through a rearview mirror in the back of my car, you know, with four kids in the car. I'm like looking in the mirror, half looking at the road, more looking at the mirror, going, stop it! Hey, hey, hey, you're not a parent. Stop parenting. I don't need your help. Okay? Like it's just, it doesn't help. Because they don't have the authority. And so when they try to step into that place of authority that isn't theirs, it just makes everything worse. We have to understand the authority that we have and the authority that we don't. Jesus has been given the authority to judge the world. There will be a day. There will be a day. Jesus talks about this where he will come and he will judge the world. And to some that's a really scary idea. And I'll be honest, sometimes it's a scary idea to me, except that I remember the character of Jesus, how good and how loving he is, and I'm like, who else would you rather have judge everything? But he has that authority, he's earned it. I don't. So I can't judge the world around me because I don't have the authority to. Even if I said, hey, I deem it this way, God, what do you think? He's like, no. I never asked you to do that. We we can't judge. Not with any sense of finality, because we're wrong, we don't have the authority. We also just don't know enough. I don't know if you guys know this, but I have a son who plays basketball. And uh, you know, oh, by the way, update five games this week, didn't get thrown out of any of them. So progress, progress. I had two dads last week come up to me and say, I got thrown out of a game this week, too. So uh clearly a support group is needed for fathers in our church, fathers of athletes. How do you not like we'll just practice? Don't say anything, just don't say anything, don't talk. That'll be what we work on. Um, but uh that that's good. But you know, a few years ago, I had one of my low points as a dad, and that's you know, I've had many, but this was a pretty bad one. Um I I told my son was in the third grade at this point in time, and we had driven a couple of hours to a tournament, and he was playing on a really good team, and I told him, hey, look, man, I'm never gonna like come at you hard if you have a bad game, if you miss a shot. I don't care. But all I do ask is that you play really hard, you hustle, and you have a good attitude. So I'll never I'll never like get on you about anything other than those things. In this one game, uh, he was just slow, letharically, like there was nothing, he wasn't, it was like he was in slow motion, and I'm sitting there going, what are you doing? Like this is a championship game, and your team depends on you, and you're just out there, you're giving it half effort. And so we got in the car and I did that rear view mirror thing with him, and uh, and I'm just I mean, I'm really like, I'm fired up, and I'm going, I'm going at him. Like, you can't do that, and it's it's pretty intense, and he gets tears in his eyes. And we get home and he has a 103-degree fever. Um, I know. Now, don't go talk to him about this, okay? He's forgotten about it by now, or at the very least, it's not on the front of his mind. I don't need him having ammunition, right? He's a preteen now, so he thinks I'm wrong all the time, so don't feed that, right? But between us, I mean, here I am going, oh, maybe, maybe that's why he was a little slow out there. Maybe it was the 103-degree fever. It broke my heart. Because even he didn't know he had a 103-degree fever, right? And we have to realize when when we judge people, we that's what we're doing. You know, it's it's so easy for us to forget the fact that maybe if we were in the exact same situation as someone else, we would actually fare worse. You know, you look at someone maybe who struggles with addiction, and you never you've never struggled with that. And so in your mind, it's like, just quit it. Stop. And that makes sense. But maybe you've never been tempted anything like that in your life. And maybe one day you will. And if you've never experienced that level of temptation, well, don't judge someone who has. And maybe you you were raised in such a different way and you were set up to succeed in a way that someone else never was. And if you had grown up in their circumstance, in their situation, maybe you would be doing even worse than they are. But it's so hard for us to see that because we just we just don't know. We're not aware of things, and so it's easy for us to make snap judgments being like, I don't have the full picture. What we definitely don't know is like what's gonna happen in the future with that person. You know, we we we have to remember that every person's life is on some type of trajectory. And we would all like to pretend with our own lives that it's just it's just like this. I'm just gonna get better and better and better and better. Like cheese, like wine. I just get better with age, right? Not so much. It's it's it's more like this. And sometimes we encounter people, and we encounter them, they're like soaring. And it's so easy in that moment to even say, wow, you're just you're amazing. And yeah, they're amazing, but maybe they're about to have a a tumble. Life's about to hit them hard and they're gonna do this, and that might shock us. What often happens in life is we meet people when they're they're headed down and they're in a rough spot and they've had a rough go. And it's very easy in those moments for us to look at them and make a judgment about who they are as a person, not understanding that they're not done yet. And they might be just a few months, days, years, or whatever away from some massive turn, and they're going to be someone that we can't even imagine. You know, this is the challenge we have, by the way, like when we read scripture, those of you who are passionate about that, you know how the story ends most of the time. You know, so you can read the Old Testament about King Saul. He's the king before David. And if you don't know how his story ends, there's several moments in his story where he just knocks it out of the park, and you're like, yeah, this guy, he's awesome. But because you know how his story ends, which is not well, even those victories in his life, you read them and go, yeah, you just kind of skip over them because you know it's not gonna last. But on the flip side, you could read the story of someone like Peter, Jesus' disciple, who uh I adore because he just talks too much, and I have a soft spot in my heart. Any any talkers in the room, any people who just like my mouth goes at the same speed as my brain and it gets me in lots of trouble? Yeah, there we go. I love it. You spoke, thank you. You proved it. Um yeah, like that's how I've always been. Peter's definitely like that. Like, he just he just talks too much, and he opens his mouth at times no one should, and there's moments where Peter fails miserably. Like, guys, Peter denied that he even knew Jesus. At Jesus' lowest point, when Jesus was about to be crucified, his closest friend, one of his closest friends, says, I don't even know this guy. Like that, the betrayal level of that. But when we read that story about Peter, because we know how his story ends and how he's redeemed and restored and ends up being a great leader in the church, we just kind of skip past that part like it's no big deal because we already know how it ends. When we interact with people, we don't know how it ends. And so we might be having a lot of frustration with someone or some group of people that we just don't understand and we think they're completely and totally in the wrong. And we have to remember like God's not done with that person. So we're in no place to judge it because we don't know what's going on. We don't know what's about to happen. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10 says that we are God's masterpiece. He created us anew in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things that he planned for us long ago. We're God's masterpiece. But we're not finished yet. Like we're masterpieces in the making. It'd be like going and criticizing an artist who's halfway done with a painting. And being like, I don't think it's not very good. Like, I'm not done with it yet. And we have to recognize when we when we go so far as to judge a person with any degree of finality, again, this is not a judgment call where we say, hey, right now, this person's behavior, I think I might just need to steer clear or set some boundaries up or whatever. But I'm saying when we say like, you are this, we place our stamp of approval or disapproval on it, we have to remember God's not done. And especially when we're frustrated with someone, especially when we're ready to just be done with a person, God's not done with them. So we have to remember, we can't judge because we just we just don't know. Here's a here's a big one. It just doesn't do us any good. Judging people, judging other people, ranting about this group of people, that group of people, this person, that person, whatever, it doesn't benefit us at all. Let's go back and read what Jesus actually said in Matthew chapter 7. He says, Do not judge others and you will not be judged, for you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged. And why worry about a speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend, let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye when you can't see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite. First get rid of the log in your own eye, and then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend's eye. Now, one of the biggest challenges to this scripture, this requires a tremendous amount of humility, is the ability to admit that you have a log in your eye. That's hard to do. It is hard to actually say, I believe I have serious issues. But that's what Jesus is saying. I mean, another way to look at it, he would be saying, like, you don't have time to waste telling other people what they should be doing, shouldn't be doing, whatever, because you got stuff to work on. And what if, what if every single person in this room, what if what if every single Jesus follower in the world took all the time and energy that they typically spend judging other people and put all of that energy and focus into dealing with whatever's going on with them? Like, how much better off would we be? Imagine going to a gym. And for some of you are like, no, I'm not going to, I don't want to imagine this. So, but it but imagine if you did. And you're there, and it's like you have a choice. I can either exercise, I can work out, I can I can get stronger, I can, I can lose weight, whatever it might be. Or I can just criticize all the people who are in here. Like, I'll be honest, I've learned that you can actually do both at the same time. But never mind. Right? Because a gym is an interesting place. Like the self-control it takes to not. I mean, it's hard to be in a gym sometimes where it's like there's different groups of people, and some of you might be these people, I'm I mean, like, there's the flexors, you know, where it's like, hey, you look great. You know you look great. We all know you look great. With what you're wearing, clearly you know you look great. Because it's practically paint. And so just stop flexing in the mirror, you know? I actually I so being the talker, I sometimes find myself in awkward situations because I just say things you shouldn't say in the gym. And so there was a young guy, he was like 18, and he was just like holding up his shirt just with his abs. And then again and again, he did it like 10 times, and I was right next to him. I've never seen my abs, I have no idea what they look like. I imagine, I'm being honest, I've never seen them. They're they're they're there. I've even as a kid, I've always just been like a little extra. Um, you know, that's why I've always joked about my marriage. My wife, we're like salsa. She's hot, I'm chunky, and it works. It just works. All right? Put those things together. But like, I mean, he had like lots of abs, tons. And but after about 10 flexes, I just I looked at him, and I shouldn't have done this, but I was like, has any is it has does it look different than it did 30 seconds ago? He's looked at me as somebody he's never met, and I was like, I'm sorry. I just my bad. I'm old, I'm an old guy now, you know. But I was basically saying, stop it. Or or maybe you're someone who like you're you you know your way around a gym, and so you see people doing it wrong, right? They're like doing like you're not doing that right. You could judge that. But imagine going to a gym, and instead of spending that hour working on whatever you need to work on, so that maybe one day you can see your abs. Like, I'm I've kind of given up on it, but like other, you know, you just criticize everybody else. Like it would do you no good. That's this is my point. There had I had a point, I promise. It would do you no good. But but people live their lives that way. And they spend all the energy and time that they could be spending on exploring their own heart and their own issues and actually working on those things and actually making improvement and growing. Instead, it's just easier to look at other people who are doing it wrong, in whatever way they're doing it wrong, and put your focus and energy there. And you know what? You might be exactly right when you do that. You might get it, you might nail it, you might be correct that they're that they're doing it wrong, they're off, they don't know what they're talking about, and that's fine, but it does you no good. It doesn't do you any good because that's energy and time you could be spending dealing with the log in your life. And so what we have to do is retrain the way we think. This is tough. I have found that when I am in a really judgmental place, and other people are just bothering me more than they ought to be. Almost always, if I stop and pause, there is something major going on within me. And it's like everything within me in my flesh is like, don't do, don't pay attention to that. No, no, no, no, no. Look at them. They're terrible. They're what's wrong with the world. When if I would just stop and let God retrain my thinking to recognize, man, when I'm being judgmental, that's like an alarm bell. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you need to work on? What do you need to deal with? I mean, this is Jesus saying, hey, look, you don't have time to waste. You don't have the energy to waste judging people because you got you got your own stuff. And so so here's here's the first. First, deal with your stuff. Let the Holy Spirit work with you first. Every single time you're tempted to judge, every single time you're tempted to just let your mind go off on how wrong these people are, stop. And go inward and say, Lord, what do you want to deal with me? What do you want me to work on? What do I need to change? And Jesus is saying that, like, we'll have plenty to work on. We'll have plenty. And it's not about shame and guilt, it's not about God going, like, yeah, you're terrible. No, no, no. He's he looks at us, he comes alongside us, and he says, Hey, I want to help you with this. I want to bring healing to this, I want to have you grow beyond this same thing that keeps tripping you up. Let's work on that. But if you spend all your time and energy focused on other people, it'll never happen. First, deal with me. And so, look, I'm saying this for a few specific reasons. Number one, is it's something practical for me, like, man, I have so much to work on. I have two eyes, which means I have two logs, and I have plenty in my own life to sink my teeth into. I've got a wife, I've got four kids, I mess up all the time. I have a lot to work on, and I just want to make sure that personally this year, I take the opportunity that God's given me to work on my stuff, which means I just don't have time to get all hot and bothered about everybody else's stuff because I got my own. But I also think we've got to recognize the climate that we're living in, the time that we're living in. You know, I said this a few weeks ago, um, man, it's about to be an election year, and it's gonna get crazy. And you know, what's interesting is Georgia has kind of become like a focal point of that. I mean, there's there's gonna be so many like political ads. It's and and and social media and all the opinions, and man, I'm just there's something about the last three or four years. As a pastor, I I've never seen anything like it. The politics, like it's it's like politics has become a religion, and there's so many opinions about so many different things, you know, and it's like, I mean, we all know what it's like the last couple years, you're in a grocery store, and either you have a mask on or you don't, you pass someone who's the opposite, and you just look at each other, and it's like, you know, whatever thought runs through your mind. But it's like, there's just so many opportunities to judge people. And man, we just can't get sucked into that this year. It's a waste of time. I'm not saying, by the way, if you're passionate about politics or certain issues, that you you can't be passionate about that, not at all. I mean, that's great. I'm not even saying you can't talk to other people about it and have intelligent conversations and share your thoughts and opinions. That's fine. But I am saying that in many ways, this year could be a massive distraction for all of us. It could be a year that we spend looking at all the problems in the world and all the issues and all the people who disagree with us and focusing all of our attention and time on their issues and how they're wrong, and not spend any time actually giving God the opportunity to take us to a place we've never been before in our lives. And so, what if we took all that energy, all that time, all that focus that we would typically be tempted to spend on judgment and went inward and said, Lord, what do you want me to work on? You know, so that's that's that's what I'm gonna do this year. Because I don't want to get thrown out of any more basketball games. You know? And I don't want to make my kids cry because I get all angry about something that doesn't matter. And I want to understand my my spouse better and and have the ability to have more compassion in my conversations with her, and I want to be able to be a gentle father when my uh five-year-old wakes me up at five in the morning on a Saturday to play video games. Um which is hard because on one hand I'm like offended at that, because on the days that he goes to school, I can't get him up. But on Saturday, he gets up and he wants me to play video games because he can't pass a certain level, and so I'm gonna be like, no, but on the other hand, as someone who was born in the 80s, I'm like, I've trained my whole life for this, and I can, yes, I can help you. I'm ready to answer the call, you know? It's tough. I'm just saying I want to be patient. I want, but I'm I'm recognizing that for me to be the man I've been created to be, I got a lot of work to do. So this needs to be a year where when it comes to judgment, it's a me first attitude. First, deal with the log in your own eye. And when that's gone, then you can worry about the speck in someone else's. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for caring enough about us to tell us hard truths. Like, Jesus, I you love us so much, you think so highly of us, but you're not afraid to tell us the truth about what we need to focus on and what we don't need to focus on. And your words are so clear. We're not supposed to be people obsessed with the issues, the struggles, the wrongs, even the sins of the world around us. You'll deal with that. That's your territory. You're the judge. We've got plenty to work on in our own lives. Each of and every one of us has some area that needs to change. And that's okay. That's not that's not a statement that should bring us any shame or guilt. That's just the reality, and you love us so much you want desperately to partner with us and work on those things. I don't want to spend 2022 offended, angry, self-righteous. Lord, I want to spend this year open to you, humble enough to receive whatever it is you would have me to do differently. And I want to finish this year in a better place personally than I am right now. So, Lord, help all of us have a me first attitude when it comes to any type of judgment. And before we even dare to judge another, that we would come to you and we would say, Lord, what do you want me to work on? And Father, I'm just reminded of this as I'm praying. I know that there are many of us in this room, many of us watching from home, who have had other people judge us very harshly. We've had other people tell us that we are something far less than who you would say we are. And maybe that judgment that they spoke over us, that judgment that they placed on us, has it stuck with us for years, God. It's it's affected us. And I pray, Lord, that you would remind us that they had no authority to do that, that they did, they don't know our hearts like you do. They don't know what you're gonna be worth, they don't know the masterpiece that you're creating us into. And I pray, Lord, that for some of us today that need it, that those judgments would just fall off of us. Because many have judged us unfairly, and we don't need to live our lives allowing what they say to hold any weight. So help us, help us drop that if that's a struggle we have today, Lord. I pray that you bless us this week. Help us work on our stuff. We've got plenty. We trust you with it, Lord. We pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen.