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For I know the plans I have for you,declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jer 29:11 |
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| Archived Manna: | |
Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Thursday, November 25, 2021
Today's Passage : Today's Passage :Sermon on the Mount - Judging Others Bible Verse:Matthew 7:1-5 (ESV) "Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye." Message:
The great William Barclay, in The Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Matthew (Edinburgh, 1956), summed up this passage about as well as anyone could: “We have quite enough to do to rectify our own lives without seeking censoriously to rectify the lives of others. We would do well to concentrate on our own faults, and to leave the faults of others to God.”
The term “characteristic British understatement” comes to mind: where he says “we would do well”, one must remember: Minding our own faults, and ignoring the faults of others, has been commanded by God. The Bible does not entirely rule out the correction of faults in others — see Galatians 6:1, for example — but we err so heavily in our tendency to pass judgment on other people, quickly and frequently, that we do better not to judge others at all.
purity|St. Philomena
Most of Jesus’ parables and analogies are grounded in realism, but here, He creates a virtual cartoon; a person with a log or beam in his eye, utterly blind, trying to find a speck of dust in someone else’s eye so as to remove it. But this ludicrous example carries with it three reasons why criticizing the faults of others and trying to correct them is misguided.
First, just as a person with a log in his eye could not see, we can never really know all the facts about another person. History regales us with story after story of a person going off half-cocked, mocking another person, when the ignorant critic is utterly wrong. And we never know all the facts about another person; our judgments of other people are always wrong, because our evidence is always incomplete.
Second, the vision of a person with some huge object in his eye is distorted; and, indeed, we always see truth through the distortion of our personal prejudices and experiences. Truth exists independent of us and is not limited by our knowledge, but our judgment is. We see truth, as Paul so eloquently put it, dimly, as if in an ancient mirror made with uneven glass: “For now we see through a glass, darkly;” (1 Cor. 13:12 (KJV).)
But most of all, even more than the powerful forces of ignorance and prejudice that rule human judgment, is Christ’s ultimate point: Nobody is righteous enough to judge someone else. Judgment of others is always hypocritical. We come again to humility, but this time, the humility has teeth: Christ will judge us as we judge others.
Our glory, our worth, and our happiness is guaranteed by God; so learning not to judge others ultimately comes down to the strength of our faith. The more certain we are that God is going to bring us to a place of perfect joy, the less defensive we become about our value in comparison to other people in the fleeting moments of time. If we know that righteousness is ours only through Christ, we see clearly that self-righteousness is erroneous and unnecessary.
Meditation : Prayer : Walk with me, dear Lord, so that I may not be alone as I face this day, but always in your presence. Your joy is a lighthouse in a world often dark with sin, and I pray that I may reflect the light of your truth, to inspire others as I have been inspired. In the name of Christ, bless me this day, and all whom I may meet........Amen |
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