Matthew 7:1-5 Matthew 7:1-5
[1]“Judge not, that you be not judged.
[2]For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.
[3]And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?
[4]Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye?
[5]Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Recently, I took a short online course in trauma. Onw of the most gruesome pictures showed a patient with a huge piece of wood sticking out of the left eye. Blessedly, the patient only suffered minor cosmetic damage, but it looked horrible! Perhaps something like that happened and Jesus was making use of it in his parable.
The obvious moral of this story is that we must not judge, for our faults may be far more glaring than the miniscule failings of others. It would be like some grossly obese person lecturing a mildly plump person on weight control.
What’s Jesus’ point? Once more, Jesus is hammering home the idea that the measure of anything we give out is the measure we’ll receive.
One of the popular toys when I was a kid was a paddle with a bouncy ball attached by an elastic cord. But you had to watch carefully or the ball would return from a direction you werent expecting. Thats what happens when we judge.
PRAYER: Father God, thank You for loving us and caring for us. Lord, help us to stop judging others and love them instead. In the mighty and precious Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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