Luke 6:37-38
INTRODUCTION
In Luke 6, Luke’s version of
the Sermon on the Mount Jesus names two attitudes to avoid and two behaviors to
cultivate. He says,
Judge not, and you will not
be judged;
condemn not, and you will
not be condemned;
forgive, and you will be
forgiven;
give, and it will be given
to you;
good measure, pressed down,
shaken together, running over, will
be put into your lap.
For the measure you give
will be the measure you get back.”
I. “Judge not..condemn not…”
A. First of all I want to
deal with a common misunderstanding of what Jesus means when he says, “Judge
not…”
Sometimes this is called
“the unbeliever’s favorite verse.”
Some people say, whenever
anyone expresses an opinion about right or wrong, “You know, we’re not to judge.”
As if it is our duty to be
stupid, to be oblivious to evil, to pretend that everything people do or think
is okay—if they think it’s okay.
Jesus makes it clear that
this is not his meaning. When we read these words in Matthew, he follows with
this: “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw pearls before swine”
(Matthew 7:6). Clearly Jesus expects us to discriminate between right and
wrong, good and bad, truth and error.
We need to have firm ideas
of truth and righteousness—not so we can criticize others, but so that we can
live according to the truth.
St. Paul writes in
Philippians: “This is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help
you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and
blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through
Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God” (Philippians 1:9-10).
B. In his command, “Judge
not” Jesus is warning us against that censorious,
faultfinding spirit that thinks it is obliged to play God by evaluating
others’ actions so that we can feel superior.
The trouble with
fault-finding is that the more we find fault with others, the more blind we are
to our own sins.
Have you ever listened to
someone waxing eloquent about the faults of another and thought: “But you do
the same thing; you just don’t know it.”
“Judge not, that ye be not
judged” works even on a human level.
Censorious people draw
attention to themselves.
I remember a Peanuts comic
strip in which Lucy tells Charlie Brown: “You have a tendency to talk loudly
when you get excited, don’t you Charlie Brown? Why do you do this?”
In the third frame Charlie
Brown says, “I don’t know. No one has ever been rude enough to tell me about
this before.”
In the last frame Lucy is
musing to herself: “We critical people are always being criticized.”
Once I had a fellow teacher
criticize my grammar. Ever after that I always noticed whenever she made a
mistake in grammar.
Whenever we criticize
people, we make them especially sensitive to our faults.
C. But there’s a more
serious issue here.
When we take delight in the
faults of others—whether we are right in our judgment or not—we sin and expose
ourselves to the judgment of God.
It’s as if we get up on our
little throne right beside the Lord to help him judge the world.
Jesus says, a few sentences
later, “Why do you see the speck in your neighbors’ eye but don’t notice the
plank in your own eye…You hypocrite. First take out the plank from your own
eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s or
sister’s eye.”
There are many proverbs on
this point:
“Forget others’ faults by
remembering your own.”
Here are some proverbs from
various nations:
“Everyone has enough to do
in weeding his own garden” (Belgian).
“For others’ sins we have
the eyes of a lynx, for our own, the eyes of a mole” (Bohemian).
“He who sees his own faults
is too much occupied to see the faults of others” (Arabic).
If we focus on the sins of
others, we become sour, disagreeable, miserable people.
If we focus on the good we
see around us, we become gracious, encouraging, affirming, cheerful people.
People like to be around us and we help spread goodness around in the world.
II. “Forgive, and you will
be forgiven.”
A. This works on a human
level.
If you are gracious with
other people’s faults, they are more likely to overlook yours.
If you cut other people some
slack they are more likely to return the favor.
B. As Christians we have no
option. If we are unforgiving we can’t be forgiven. If we can’t pass on the
grace we’ve received from God, we can’t claim to have received forgiveness for
ourselves.
Jesus gave us a prayer that
includes: “Forgive us our trespasses as
we forgive those who trespass against us.” And then he added, “If you do not forgive others, neither will
your Father forgive your trespasses.”
III. Last of all, Jesus
adds, “Give and it will be given to you,
good measure, pressed down shaken together, running over will be put in your
lap.”
A When we give, we receive
more than we gave—not money, but the satisfaction of knowing we are doing God’s
work, that we are fulfilling our purpose on earth.
Do you notice that we can
sum up each of these commands—judge not, condemn not, forgive, and give—with
two words: Be generous—generous in our judgment, generous in our
forgiveness, and generous with what we have.
It could be money, or time, or compliments, or
encouragement, or just paying attention to others.
I once read a book entitled:
“How to Get People to Do Things.”
As I remember, the theme of
the book is that if you want to get other people to please you, you must please
them. If you want others to meet your needs, you must meet theirs. If you want
to be loved, you must show love for them.
B. Some psychologists
devised a clever experiment to determine whether generosity really does make
people happier than stinginess.
They devised a questionnaire
to determine how happy each participant in their study was.
Then they gave each of their
subjects a sum of money—it may have been 10 or 20 dollars—and told them that
they could do whatever they wanted with the money—spend it, save it, or give it
away.
After each participant had
disposed of the money, they gave the happiness questionnaire again.
They found that the ones who
had given the money away ended up being more happy than the ones who had spent
it or saved it.
Their conclusion: the
cheapest way to “buy” happiness is to give money away, not to keep it or spend
it.
I once read of a tombstone
that had engraved on it these words: “What I spent, I had. What I saved, I
lost. What I gave, I have.” This is what Jesus meant when he said that we can
give away our treasure on earth to reap a treasure in heaven.”
So when churches urge
tithing, it’s not just because they need money to pay the bills. It’s because
they know that giving promotes spiritual maturity.
When St. Paul wrote his
thank you letter to the Philippian Christians to thank them for the gift he
sent them, he added, “Not that I seek
the gift, but I seek the profit that accumulates to your account…a fragrant
offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God. And my God will fully
satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus”
(Philippians 4:11-19).
CONCLUSION
A church treasurer once
addressed a letter to a wealthy businessman requesting a contribution to a
service project sponsored by the church. She received a curt refusal which
closed with: “As far as I can see, this
Christianity business is just one continual ‘give, give, give.’”
Nothing daunted, the
treasurer wrote back as following: “Thank
you for the best definition of the Christian life I’ve every heard.”
This story was posted on the
website HelpOthers.org in August 2006:
The writer wrote about something she had seen while
shopping.
She was shopping in a toy store and decided to look at
Barbie dolls for her nieces.
She noticed a little girl who was excitedly looking
through the Barbie dolls as well. The little girl had a wad of money clasped in
her hand. She would pick up one Barbie after another and ask her father, “Do I
have enough?” He usually said “yes,” but she would keep looking and asking, “Do
I have enough?”
As she was looking, a little boy wandered in across
the aisle and started sorting through the Pokemon toys. He also had money in
his hand, although it didn’t look like very much. He was with his father as
well, and kept picking up the Pokemon video toys. Each time he picked one up
and looked at his father, with the same question—“Do I have enough? Each time, his
father would shake his head
The little girl had chosen her Barbie. But then she
stopped and was watching the boy and his father. Rather dejectedly, the boy had
given up on the video games and had chosen what looked like a book of stickers
instead. He and his father then started walking through another aisle of the
store.
The little girl put her Barbie back on the shelf, and
ran over to the Pokemon games. She picked up the last one the boy had picked
up, whispered something to her father, and hurried to the checkout.
The woman who tells the story got in line after the
girl and her father. And the boy and his father got in line after her.
When the clerk had taken the girl’s money and put it
into a bag, the little girl whispered something to the clerk. The clerk smiled
and put the bag under the counter.
The woman telling the story lingered after making her
purchase to see what was going to happen.
When the boy and his father reached the cashier, she
rang up their purchases and then said, “Congratulations, you are my hundredth
customer today and you win the prize!” With that, she handed the little boy the
Pokemon game. He stared in disbelief and then said, “Wow! Just what I wanted!”
The little girl and the shopper who tells the story
were standing in the front of the store, the girl with a big grin on her face.
As they walked to their car, the father asked his
daughter, “Why did you do that?”
She said, “Daddy, didn’t Nana and PawPaw want me to
buy something that would make me happy? Well, I did.”
She had decided on the answer to her question: “Do I
have enough?”
Let me leave you with these questions: Are you
generous—with your judgments? With your forgiveness? With your giving?
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