The Blog Behind the Preaching: Do Not Judge

(Victory Fort, 10 & 12 PM Services)

I’m trying something new where I blog about a preaching I did. This is something like DVD extra features of the preaching, including a Behind the Scenes, Deleted Scenes, and Director’s Commentary. It’s also a great place to link some of the content I featured in the message for those who want to revisit it.

Listen to the preaching here.

Behind the Scenes

This preaching was a little easy to prepare because I was already convicted by the verses. As I mentioned, I tried to count the number of times I would make hasty judgments in the week. There were so many that I lost count. That made the preparation easier. As someone once said, “You preach best the messages that you need to hear the most.”

Deleted Scenes

Here are some great points that I didn’t get to say because of time or were feedback given by other people who were reflecting on the message.

• • One other bad tendency is hasty judgments. We don’t bother to get to know the person. We don’t bother to build a relationship. And we don’t bother to help restore the person. Shooting from the hip rarely produces an accurate shot.
  • The guys at the discipleship group had some great insights. We discussed the two extremes: being harsh and judgmental or being uncaring and apathetic. A number of them said they can pingpong between the two. When they try to correct, they tend to do it harshly and when it’s met with resistance they become apathetic. I think we all swing from one extreme to the other often.
  • Mark Muleta gave a great analogy in our discipleship group today. He said, “I think I need to work on being Restorative. I tend to go in to operate on a person and it’s like I open them up and remove the problematic part, but I don’t help put them back together. So the person is still vulnerable, lying there on the operating table.” Christian judgment and correction mustn’t just point out what’s wrong, but also help put the person back together.

Director’s Commentary

That point in the 12NN service about removing the speck and not just pointing it out wasn’t in the notes. It just came out while speaking. That’s totally the Holy Spirit. (Well, everything is possible because of Him. You know what I mean.)

It would be hilarious if someone complained about me spoiling The Lord of the Rings. I think there were more problematic things I said than that, especially in the 10 AM.

Related Media

Here’s my blog on the Jeff Bethke and Kevin De Young conversation. There are links to all the relevant media at the bottom.

Here’s the link to the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.

Here’s the link to the YouTube video of the conversation between Frodo and Gandalf.