Here we read the Lord Jesus says, "Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. 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 a 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."
And here the Lord Jesus gives us some very important teaching regarding our relationship in the church to one another. Last week we saw about the relationship of every Christian with God. And today the Lord Jesus turns our attention, because these two are immediately related, to our relationship with one another. What is the true relationship that two Christians, or all Christians, should have in relation to one another? Here He gives us a warning and an encouragement. First, the warning is that we should not judge.
Speaking of judging, it immediately makes me think of a certain story which shows us the nature of judging. There was this elderly art critic. He was quite an expert in examining and criticizing pictures. He had spent so many years studying and examining closely pictures and reading books that he became very short-sighted. He had spent many years studying, learning and learning. And so he went one day to this great art exhibition. And having got there, he found he hadn't taken his glasses with him. So of course he had to get very near to the pictures as he examined each one of them. He looked at this picture and he immediately started criticizing — this was wrong and that was out of proportion and this style was no good — and he was going on from picture to picture like this.
The funny thing about art critics is often that they themselves have probably never painted a picture in their lives. But they know how to criticize other people's paintings. Finally he came to one great golden frame. He put his face very close to it and looked and studied very quietly for some time. And after quietly studying this picture for some time, he turned around and said, "That portrait is really terrible. How is it possible to exhibit a picture like this in such a distinguished gallery? This portrait is completely out of proportion and all the features are exceedingly ugly." And he was very annoyed and criticized the art gallery for exhibiting such ridiculous pictures in such a gallery.
I think by now some of you have already guessed what he was looking at. It happened, of course, that he was looking in a mirror, and all the time he was quietly studying that mirror, he was looking at himself. And so after he had been going on for some time, his wife said, "Jerry, look, you better cool down now, because what you were looking at right now was a mirror." So when he had been thinking he was criticizing somebody else's painting, he ended up criticizing himself and making a complete fool of himself. And this is the lesson in this passage: that as you are judging somebody else, you are actually ending up judging yourself.
And also there is a comical element in this aspect of the Lord's teaching here. The Lord Jesus says, "How is it that you can see a speck in somebody else's eye?" A speck is very, very tiny. And you seem to be so capable of seeing that speck in somebody else's eye. But you are not able — and here the Lord Jesus uses the humorous picture — of seeing this great beam sticking out of your own eye. This beam, of course, as the Chinese translates, is a beam that goes over the top of the ceiling. These great logs which have been cut into squares — they are actually a whole tree where the edges have been smoothed off, cut into squares and put across the beam of the building to support the roof. The Lord Jesus loves to use these hyperboles, these contrasts, that really make the whole picture stand out. The kind of pictures that the cartoonists like, because it really drives home a lesson.
So let us then look more carefully into the Lord's teaching here. First, the Lord Jesus says, "Do not judge, that you yourself will not be judged." You see, the work of a judge, to judge, was the prerogative — that is, the power — of a ruler. The judge always represents those people who are in authority over you. If you do anything wrong, the government calls you or takes you to court, or else if there are two people who quarrel, then they take the matter to the higher authority. The judge always represents the higher authority.
So the Lord Jesus, in saying "do not judge," is telling us, each one in our relation to the other, not to put ourselves above somebody else. Now this is the fundamental problem in the relationship between people: that one likes to think himself better than the other person, and therefore in a position to pass judgment on the other person. For example, if you say that somebody is proud, you are implying that you are not proud, that you are in a position to declare somebody else to be proud. If you declare somebody else to be wrong, you are really saying that you are better than he, because he doesn't know what is wrong, but you know what is wrong.
And the Bible teaches us that this kind of attitude among Christians is the cause of trouble in the church. And the Lord Jesus is dealing here with an attitude — this attitude of superiority to others. The Bible teaches us that we must learn to be subject to one another, not to behave as though we were superior to the other person. That's why in John 13, the Lord Jesus washed His disciples' feet and said, "What I have done to you, you must do to one another. Serve one another." To wash another person's feet is to be his slave, because that was the work that slaves did for their master — they washed their master's feet. That's why in Philippians chapter 2 and verse 3, Ephesians 5 and verse 21, in both these places Paul says, "Be subject to one another." Don't try to be the other guy's boss. Be the other person's servant. That's what we have been called to do.
I ask you to think: if in a church we could really live in this way, believe in this way, of being truly humble in relation to one another, how the attitude in the church would change. If we don't always have to look at the other person and see, "Oh, I am at least as good as he." Why are we not content to say, "Whether I am as good as this person or not is up to God to judge"? But this attitude of alleged superiority is something that we need to boost up our failing ego, that is, to make us feel that we are still something in this world.
The spiritual man doesn't care what he thinks of himself or what other people think of him. He is concerned only with what God thinks of him. That's what matters for eternity. The most important thing is what God thinks of us.
You know, there is a lesson that the Lord is teaching me more and more. It is this: the Lord Jesus said, if you want to be the greatest of all, you become the least of everybody. You become the servant of all. If you want to be great in God's eyes, then you must become little and the least among the brethren. The more you are something in your own eyes, the more you are something in other people's eyes, the less significant you are in God's eyes.
Remember how we saw at the Christmas message, when we gathered together in that happy time we had? I pointed out at that time the amazing fact that the Lord Jesus, if you study His ministry, was always interested in the nobodies and was never interested in the somebodies of this world. He spent a whole afternoon, perhaps, talking with those outcast Samaritans and with that Samaritan woman by the well. But He would not dignify Herod the king with one single word. And how He spoke with severity to those Bible scholars who thought themselves very learned. He spoke to them, for example, in Matthew 23, "Woe to you, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites!" The scribes were the Bible scholars. But how gentle and kind He was to the sick, the weary, the downtrodden, the nobody.
So we must learn this attitude of the Lord Jesus. It always, I must say frankly, disgusts me when a church honors people who are important in this world. I remember a certain pastor that I met in England. I came into this church and I met this pastor. He greeted me and I greeted him. That was fine as it went. And then he heard who my father was. From the moment he knew who my father was, his attitude towards me changed completely. Oh, he was full, not only of friendliness, it was almost reverence that he had towards me. And that, I must say, disgusted me completely. It made me feel that he thought I was spiritually something because of what my father is. It makes not the slightest difference to me. As far as my status in the church or in the eyes of God is concerned, who my father is — if he were the emperor, it wouldn't make any difference.
Here we see an attitude of so many Christians that look up to people in the world. And when they come into the church, they are something special because they are something in the world. We don't ask what does God think of them. We look at people who are impressed by — and by "doctor," I refer especially to medical doctors, since I found that in Hong Kong, medical doctors, as I've said before, seem to have some kind of special status, for what reason I haven't yet discovered. Maybe because they make more money than anybody else. So we see that all of us have been affected by the attitude of the world, even pastors who have not learned to think in the way that Jesus thinks. And therefore, we judge people according to what they are in the world. And brothers and sisters, this poisons the life of the church. We must learn to honor those especially who are the humble ones in our midst. Those other people get enough honor from the world. You don't have to blow their heads any bigger than they already are.
We must come then with this basic attitude — a change in attitude the Lord Jesus is teaching us — that we do not always try to feel superior to other people, or those whom we cannot feel superior to, then we worship them, we reverence them.
So here we must then, for the sake of accurate understanding of the Lord's teaching, ask: when the Lord Jesus says "do not judge," apart from the question of attitude, what exactly does He mean? First, we must understand — again, I must emphasize — it's an attitude that He is speaking about, rather than individual actions. Because if you got your attitude right, you will not do the wrong action. But even if you got your actions right, your attitude can still be wrong when you do the right action.
So when the Lord Jesus says "do not judge," is He saying to us, for example, that we should turn a blind eye to sin in the world, in the church? So when there is sin in the church, when some serious thing that is done wrong in the church — for example, honoring those people who are something in the world, or even something worse than that — should we then just turn a blind eye and say, "Well, I'm not here to judge, so he can sin, everybody can sin, that's not my business"? Or maybe a false teacher comes into the church who teaches heresies. So we say, "Oh, I'm not here to judge, so let him teach whatever he likes." Or a wolf in sheepskin comes into the church to devour the sheep, and we say, "Oh, we shouldn't judge him. We say he's a wolf in sheepskin — I've already judged him, so I better keep my mouth shut."
Of course, the Lord Jesus is telling us not to be like that at all. He tells us to watch out, that is, to discern those wolves that come in sheepskin. The church leaders especially have heavy responsibility in this direction. And so the Lord Jesus also says, if somebody offends against you, if somebody has sinned against you, what should you do? You should say, "Well, never mind, I don't judge him." Is that the right attitude? Are you helping him when he is committing sin against you by turning a blind eye to that sin? Not at all.
Matthew chapter 18, verse 15 onwards, the Lord Jesus says, "If your brother sins against you, then you go and speak to him and say, 'Dear brother, you have sinned. What you have done is not right.'" And if he doesn't listen to you, then the Lord Jesus says, go and get two or three witnesses and speak to him. And if he still doesn't listen, then you take the case to the whole church. If he doesn't listen to the church, then the church will excommunicate him, that is, he will be treated as a non-believer. And so we find that the Lord Jesus, in saying "do not judge," is not saying we should turn a blind eye to sin.
What is more, it is the responsibility of the preacher in particular to speak out against sin — to speak out against sin in the church as a whole. I remember I was speaking out against sin in the church, and some brother said to me, "It seems to me you are very proud to judge the church." These dear brothers have not yet studied the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, we find the prophets, the servants of God, thundered against the whole of Israel, condemning Israel for its sins. Of course, Israel didn't love the prophets because of that. Jeremiah was thrown into a pit and left to die there if somebody hadn't rescued him. They hated the prophets because they thundered against sin.
The strangest thing of all is that those who criticize you for speaking against sin in the church are themselves the most critical people I have ever yet met. Because you see, the difference between two people is the difference not in what they do, but in the attitude in which they do it. One person is speaking out against sin because of his deep, loving concern for the church. But unfortunately, within the church there are many people who suffer from what the psychologists call an inferiority complex. And these are the most critical people, because they have to try and put themselves up to support their inferiority by trying to prove some superiority. And it is this kind of people in the church who in fact not only love to criticize other people, they have one particular target they love to criticize because it makes them feel the best of all. This kind of people in the church specialize in criticizing the elders, the leaders, and the pastor himself. They can show the others, "Look at me, I even criticized the pastor. You don't dare to do that."
It is the question, brothers and sisters, of the attitude. The question is: what is your motive for saying the things that you say? And often you don't tell other people what is the real motive of why you said those things. When we criticize somebody else, we all like to say that it is for his good. But here the Lord Jesus tells us and warns us to watch for our attitude. So when the Lord Jesus says "do not judge," He is not saying that we must turn a blind eye to sin, but that we must attack sin with the right kind of attitude.
More than this, the Apostle Paul tells us that it is the responsibility of the leaders in the church to judge. Do we then have a contradiction where Paul says that he judges, but the Lord Jesus says you shall not judge? In 1 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 3, the Apostle Paul says, "I have passed judgment upon the sinner in the church." That was a person in 1 Corinthians 5, you remember, who committed the great sin of incest, a sexual relationship with his relative. There he pronounces judgment and sentences this sinner in the church who did this terrible thing.
Then you say, "How is it that Paul is judging when the Lord Jesus says you shall not judge?" This is why it's so important to understand the first point that we have made: that the Lord Jesus is speaking about attitude. Secondly, as we continue to study the teaching of the Lord, we have to study its entire context. He says to all the disciples as such, "You shall not judge." But within the church there are some people who have been committed with the heavy responsibility to judge. So "not to judge" is a general rule. But there are some people — and I say it again — such as the elders of the church and the leaders of the church, who have the responsibility to judge, as, for example, in 1 Timothy 5 and verse 17.
But you may say, "Oh, that's fine, the elders can judge me and I can't judge the elders. That's not fair." That's right. Let us remember, coming back to the Lord's teaching, that as you judge, you are going to be judged by God. The elders and those whom God has entrusted with that responsibility, I tell you, are the last people who would like to exercise the power of judgment unless they have to. Any person or a pastor or an elder who does not love and care for his church is not fit to be a leader in the church.
To condemn, to sentence, to pass sentence upon somebody — to judge, actually. So we find, for example, that this judging, this condemning, is exactly the opposite of saving. In Matthew chapter 7, we read that the Lord Jesus came not to judge, but to save. Here we find the difference between judging and saving, between condemning and saving, between acquitting a person and forgiving his sins. So we find then that when we are judging, condemning a person, we are not concerned to be saving him. If we are judging, we are not concerned to be saving him.
So all this now shows us that our attitude towards our brothers and sisters must never be one in which we are superior to the other person. If a pastor feels superior to the other people in the church, he is not fit to be a pastor. So in the sense of condemning, nobody is given the power to condemn in the church. But in the sense of pronouncing judgment according to God's word, that authority is committed to the servants of God. But even then, it is never in the sense to condemn, but in the sense to save. So in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, for example, when Paul sentences this man to the destruction of the flesh, the whole object was that his soul might be saved, as Paul goes on to explain. No one, no human being, is ever given the authority to condemn any other person finally and ultimately.
This takes us now, when we study this question of the attitude, to the next point. Why is it that some people so love to condemn other people? Here the Lord Jesus asks a question which I find very interesting in verse 3. And the Lord Jesus asked this question: "Why do you see the speck in your brother's eye, but you do not see the log that is in your own eye?" That's an interesting question. Why? What is your answer to that question? Why is it that we are so good at seeing other people's faults, but we can't see our own? And what is your answer to this question that Jesus asked?
I find that if you search for the answer to this question, you will find that you yourself are being spiritually X-rayed right into the depth of your heart. It makes me think of a certain woman in Liverpool. These are the hypocritical people in the church, and in every church you will soon get used to meeting these people. She came to me one day and said to me, "You have one of the leaders in your church, and I saw him on the street walking hand in hand with his girlfriend." She said, "Really? Where was this?" He was down one of those shopping streets. "Imagine a leader of the church walking hand in hand with his girlfriend! Can you imagine that? How can a person like this be a leader in the church?" This is quite remarkable. I have not discovered that there is anything sinful about holding hands yet, especially as they were just about to get engaged. And yet she was creating an uproar about this, presumably suggesting that I would dismiss him.
And yet, this woman herself, if you examine her life, the question would be much more serious than holding hands. She herself was divorced from her own husband and living with a person with whom I am not sure whether she was married or not. According to some reports, they have not been married. She was divorced and living with another man. And she has the nerve to come and criticize somebody for holding hands in the street. Can you imagine that?
So brothers and sisters, if you think the Lord Jesus is exaggerating about the splinter and the beam, then think about it. Here is an actual case of somebody with a beam sticking out of her own eye who is actually trying to criticize someone else.
# Judge Not, That You Be Not Judged (Part 2)
I believe that these two brothers and sisters have already confessed their sins to the Lord. They are now married and serving the Lord very faithfully. But what happened to that woman who did the criticizing? She has not even been seen in any church. She turns up in church only to give out criticism. Or else, when she makes an offering, she makes sure that everybody in the church can see it. She waves her five-pound notes over her head and says, "Look, I have something to offer to the church." Such is why the Lord Jesus says, "You hypocrite." You don't see the beam sticking in your eye and you want to help somebody else.
We still have not answered the question, then: why is it that we are so good at seeing the weaknesses in other people but not the great faults in ourselves? I tell you something, brothers and sisters. If you hear anybody criticizing, the first thing to do is take a good look at that person's life. From my experience, I have learned that the most critical people are the people with the most spiritual problems in their own life. It is these kind of people who haven't got what we were studying in Matthew 6 right. Their relation with the Lord — there is something seriously wrong with it.
Where there is not love, there is going to be criticism. When there is no genuine love, there will definitely be criticism. Never believe a person who says to you, "I love you, therefore I criticize you." That is absolute hypocrisy. Don't believe a word of it. The person who is concerned about you will come to you lovingly and say, "Look, brother, you have this thing — I am not fit to share with you, but I would like..." And he never talks to anybody else about his disagreement with you or his criticism. He never mentions it to anybody else. Only you are the only one to know it. That is love.
There are people who say, "I don't agree with you," but they never tell you why, in what point they haven't agreed with you. They leave you completely in the dark. Everybody else knows that they don't agree with you, but you don't know why. That is not love. That is hypocrisy.
So you see, where there is not love, then this critical attitude will certainly come up. Take a husband and wife. When they first get married, oh, it's sweetness, isn't it? Heaven on earth. They are holding hands all the time. They are gazing in each other's eyes. It's really beautiful. Wait till two years pass. Some people don't even have to wait two years. And then what happens? The small arguments start. "So why do you always do things in this way?" And the other one says, "Why should you do it in that way?" And so the argument begins, and then you'll find the argument gets louder and louder. You see what happened? That is because the foundations of love were very weak to begin with. I wish that before two people got married, they really knew that they loved each other and just didn't fancy each other for a while. Because when the love disappears — and all of us who have been children, or you have seen other people's marriages, you have seen what happens between your father or mother, or uncles, or friends of yours, their fathers and mothers — you have seen all the terrible conflict that begins. Love dies, and then there is only criticism, criticism all the time.
Now you see the original commitment to one another, the love for one another, has disappeared. Now it's only commitment to myself. So I'm going to insist on my way. "That's the way to do it." And when two people are going to insist on their own way, then that's the end of the marriage. That's why in 1 Corinthians 13 it says, "Love does not insist on its own way." It says, "What would you like?"
So coming back to this question: why do you see the speck in the other person's eye? The answer is now clear. The answer is: because you have never really loved that person at all. And why is it when you have a beam in your own eye you don't know it? Because you love yourself. That's the reason. Have you ever noticed that when a mother loves a son, that son can never do anything wrong? He smashes other people's cars up. He does everything bad. And the mother just says, "Oh no, he's just a good boy. It's just an accident." She never sees his fault. When you love a person that much, you never see their faults.
Love is blind in this sense: because you love your own child, you don't see their faults. But because you don't love the other person, you can see all their faults. You love your own child — your child has no faults. Other people's children are badly behaved, uneducated, their parents don't know how to bring them up. Everybody is bad — just look at my child, he's the finest in the world. Because you love your own child, you say he is good. But other people, you can see all their faults.
We see then why the Lord Jesus says this. The reason for judging, the reason why we must not judge, is precisely because it expresses this attitude of condemnation, which no disciple should have in relation to another. We are here to love one another, not to be the superiors of other people.
But somebody may say, "Ah, but you already said the Lord Jesus didn't mean that we should turn a blind eye to sin." And nobody is sinless, so therefore you have plenty of ammunition. If you argue like this, it just shows again you have not got the attitude right. Doesn't it mean that I can look at everybody here and say, "Ah, this guy has sinned, so I'm going to criticize him"? Jesus didn't say I should turn a blind eye to sin. So what about your sin? Now, if you argue like this, it just shows again you have not got the attitude right. The attitude must be the starting point. If we truly love a person, we shall not use any kind of excuses to get at the other person.
And so it is notable, for those of us, for example, who study theology — it is very interesting. The liberal scholars are the most critical scholars. They are always ready to criticize everybody. Those of us who went into theology are trained to criticize. If you don't criticize, then you are no good theologian. And so what do they do? They criticize Paul. They criticize John. They say Paul was mixed up here and there, and so on, and all this they feel is the height of scholarship. They criticize Paul, they criticize John, they say Paul is in error here and there. For the liberal scholar, there is nobody sacrosanct. Everybody is criticized, all the way from all the prophets right through all the apostles of the New Testament. Everyone is criticized. The liberal scholar has the right to criticize everyone.
And frankly, I tell you, although I read all their books, all the important books that are written by them, I sometimes feel a sense of disgust. Really, I put down in my marginal notes in those books sometimes: these guys are the only ones who think that they know more than Paul and more than John and more than Isaiah. The great pity about people like Paul and John was that they never had the privilege to sit at the feet of these great theologians of the twentieth century.
You see, there is no limit. Once you take that attitude, where do you stop? And so I say to you, brothers and sisters, take careful notice of the words of Jesus and the right attitude. Never think, because I am a theologian, I am a scholar, my job is to criticize everybody else. God has never given you that job. So you can just as well consider yourself dismissed.
In Galatians chapter 5, verse 15, the apostle Paul warns the Galatians in these words. He says this: "If you bite and devour one another, take heed that you are not consumed by one another." It shows that the Galatian Christians had fallen into the error of not listening to Jesus' teaching here. They felt that we can all criticize one another, that's okay, and that's our job. And Paul says, "Take heed that if you bite and devour — that is, eat one another — you are going to be eaten up by one another. There will be nothing left at the end of it." If you bite, like a lot of animals in the arena, each biting the other, one or the other is going to eat the other up.
You think, when people come into a church like this, what kind of witness, brothers and sisters, what kind of witness is it to other young Christians or to non-Christians? If we love God, if we love His people, we love His church, do we come into His church and say, "Well, I don't agree with you, and I don't agree with you, I don't agree with you"? What kind of witness is this? If you don't agree with him, go and talk it over with him. Solve the problem with him. You don't have to broadcast to everybody else that you don't agree with him. Are we not concerned for the welfare of other Christians and the young and the non-believers? Did not the Lord Jesus say, "By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, that you love one another"? And we have seen that where there is criticism, there is not love.
And we must come now to our concluding point. Here the Lord Jesus gives us both the warning and the incentive. The warning is this. He says here in this very passage in Matthew 7: "By what measure you judge others, that's the measure you will be judged." What measure you give is the measure you get. Now I want to say that this is a fundamentally important principle for each one of us to understand. Here is a secret of the Christian life that you must grasp carefully. What is the secret? It is that what you do is the way God is going to deal with you. How you deal with others is going to be the measure by which God is going to deal with you. You apply that principle and you will see that it covers everything in the Christian life. It is the most important principle for every Christian to understand. If you don't forgive a brother, you won't be forgiven. You judge your brother and God is going to judge you. The more severely you condemn your brother, the more severely God is going to condemn you. That is a terrifying thing. That is the warning of the Lord's teaching.
And we find this principle applied in Scripture absolutely literally, down to the last detail. Let me give you an example of this. David committed a very serious sin when he took another man's wife. Now in terms of law, strangely enough, he could get away with it. The reason he could get away with it was because he was king. He was commander-in-chief of the army. And this woman's husband was an officer in his army — not only an officer, but a very dedicated and very fine officer. So what he did in order to get his wife, David did an evil thing. He sent this man to the front line with orders to the commander at the front line to put this woman's husband in the most dangerous spot in the battle. And he was killed in action. Did David do anything illegal? No, he was within his rights. Under human law, he had done nothing wrong. And then, of course, since the woman's husband was dead, he was free to marry her. Again, nothing illegal. It's perfectly alright for a man to marry a woman whose husband is dead. But God's eyes were upon his heart. Although he was not guilty under human law, God's eyes saw David's heart. And what was the real reason he did all this?
And the servant of God, Nathan, of whom we know absolutely nothing about — he was not the famous prophet at all — he came to speak to David. And Nathan said, "I want to tell you, Your Majesty, I want to tell you about a certain case." And he explained this case to David. And David, the king, of course — you see, the king was a judge as well — David passed judgment upon this case. Here was the story. Nathan said, "You see, there was a man who had one ewe lamb, a very young lamb. This ewe lamb was very precious, and he carried this ewe lamb in his bosom. It was very dear to him, because that's the only one he had. And there came this wealthy man with many sheep, but he wanted this ewe lamb from the poor man. So he took by force this ewe lamb from this poor man."
And David was very angry. He said — you see, he can see the speck, but he can't see the beam. He was angry. What an injustice for this man with so many sheep to take this poor man's one lamb. He said, "I pronounce that he shall pay back fourfold." In other words, he's taken one lamb, he's going to give the poor man fourfold. And Nathan looked at David and said, "You are the man."
What had happened? David had pronounced judgment on himself. He pronounced judgment, and Nathan said, "You are the man." The lamb that David had taken was that lamb — that officer was his. That was his wife, of course, that was pictured by this lamb. And the Lord carried out the sentence exactly as David had pronounced it. David lost four sons. Consequently, it's amazing — the word of God, the history of it is exact. David was required to pay according to his own judgment, out of his own mouth. He was judged. In 2 Samuel 12, verses 5 and 6, you can read those words. And we find that by verse 14, his first son has been sentenced to die. And later on we find that another son was killed by the hand of another of David's sons — a very tragedy in which, in a fit of temper, one son killed another son. And so on until David had paid with four sons.
So, you see, your brother is your mirror, your sister is your mirror. The moment you criticize your brother and your sister, you have pronounced judgment on yourself. So this is the negative side — the warning, that what measure you measure out to somebody else, God measured out fourfold and he got back exactly what he had measured.
But there is also the encouragement side. And in what way you love and care for your brother and sister, in that same measure will God love and care for you. And here is the connection with last week's chapter. When your brother and sister is in need, and you help that brother and sister in his need, you can be sure that God — if you do it with the right attitude, of course — you can be sure that God will care for you in the same measure. So you find that the more you give to God, the more you get back from Him in terms of His love and His care and His spiritual blessings.
And you can be sure also of this: that this brother or sister who helps other brothers and sisters in their financial needs will never themselves be in financial need. And the amazing thing you will find is that the more you help your brothers and sisters, even to the point of putting yourself, seemingly, in financial difficulty, you will find that God never lets you down. He sees to it that you will not be in want or in difficulty when you need it.
There was a brother once who was in need. And another brother gave this brother some money to help him in his need. And having got this money, he went out and he ran into somebody who was in even greater need than himself. So, not thinking of his own need, he gave it to the other person who had more need. And then God just supplied him again with what he needed. The result was this: you see, there is never any shortage. The more you give, the more you have.
This then is a principle that you find you can test in everyday life, if you have the faith and the courage to test it, because faith and courage go together. Many people are cowards because they haven't got faith. Many people want to know: how do I know that God is true? God gives you a principle right here for you to prove it. It's easy for you to test it. Isn't it wonderful that in the Bible, God doesn't challenge us to a blind faith? He takes us on and says, "The more you give, the more you get. The measure you give, that's the measure you get." Well, you can prove that. That's very easy to prove. But don't prove it on the judgment side, as David did. He pronounced the fourfold judgment and he got it. Don't try that side of it.
Apply it, prove it, taste and see that God is good. That is required to fall before God in prayer.