Thought for the Week - 16th July 2023

Dear Friends, 

As a child growing up in Sunday School, I learned a song about not judging others. ‘Do not judge others and God will not judge you’, and it had a fantastically memorable chorus, ‘Speck, speck, speck, in your brother’s eye. Log, log, log in your own eye, eye, eye, eye, eye. Take the log out of your own eye, eye, to see the speck, speck, speck in your brother’s eye’. It is based on the words of Jesus that we find in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel, ‘Do not judge others, or you too will be judged’ (Matthew 7:1), and which he gives a very amusing but deadly serious tale of someone looking at the speck of sawdust in someone’s eye but paying no attention to the plank of wood in their own eye. ‘Hypocrites’ Jesus says. Deal with the plank of wood in your own eye before you deal with the speck of dust in someone else’s eye. What does Jesus mean here? That as disciples of Christ we should be very careful before we even think about passing judgement on anyone else and that we should deal with the sin in our own lives first. Why is it so very easy to see the faults in others and not recognise our own shortcomings? The apostle Paul, writing to the church in Rome, declares, after listing a number of sins and vices that ‘you, therefore have no excuse, you who pass judgement on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgement do the same things’ (Romans 2:1). And why should we not judge others? Because God is the only true and wise Judge. ‘There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you – who are you to judge your neighbour?’ (James 4:12). Earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy’ (Matthew 5:7). Rather than fixating on another’s faults, lets concentrate on showing mercy and love, just as Jesus himself did.

Grace and peace,

Neil

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thought for the Week - 28th January 2024

Dear Friends, In 1985 the Congregational minister and hymn writer Fred Kaan reflected on ‘For the healing of the nations’ saying, ‘Of all the hymns that I have written, this is the text that has been more widely reprinted and incorporated in major hymnbooks than any other’. It was first used in 1965 and it expresses something of the deep longing and desire for peace and reconciliation, for God’s justice to be known, and for an end to all conflict and violence. Fred Kaan was a committed pacifist and, in an obituary, following his death in 2009 at the age of 80, it read, ‘His theology reflected a God committed to and immersed in a world crying out to be set free from every form of injustice. Fred’s poetry centred on a Jesus who embraced the whole of creation and excluded no one and nothing from his love. In Fred, the Christian peace movement found its voice.’                      ...
Read more

Thought for the Week - 29th October 2023

Dear Friends,  Today we are celebrating two things, firstly it is the Bible Society’s Bible Sunday, a day when we can give thanks to God for the scriptures and echo the apostle Paul’s words, ‘All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that all God’s people may be thoroughly equipped for every good work’ (2 Timohty 3:16-17). And secondly, as a church we are celebrating the 140 th Church Anniversary of Beckenham Baptist Church, founded in 1883 as Elm Road Chapel, the opening services took place on Wednesday 31st October – 9.30am Prayer Meeting, 2.45pm Public Service, 4.45pm a Meeting in the Chapel, and at 6.30pm another Public Service – with various Baptist luminaries of the day in attendance. The public reading of the Scriptures has always been at the heart of all we do as a Christian community, for it is there that we can hear the stories of the Bible and reflect upon our own place in God’s never-ending story ...
Read more

Thought for the Week - 4th December 2022

Dear Friends,  ‘Census 2021 will probably be remembered as the one in which Christianity became a minority religion in England and Wales’, so read the article in a leading UK newspaper. It went onto say that ‘the number of people identifying as Christian dropped 5.5 million in the past decade’ ( The Guardian , 29/11/2022). Responding to the findings the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, said that the country has ‘left behind the era when many people almost automatically identified as Christian’, and that the Christian church would continue its work in the face of both ‘revival and decline’ ( Sky News , 29/11/2022). He went on to say in an interview for BBC News, ‘ It's not a great surprise that the census shows fewer people in this country identifying as Christian than in the past, but it still throws down a challenge to us not only to trust that God will build his kingdom on Earth but also to play our part in making Christ known’. The Bible Society says that the findings of...
Read more