A Thought for the Day – 070 – Splinters and Planks
Reasoning under the sun would add up to: “It is very costly to live on
this earth!” like it cost you a birth and a death and all the rest in-between,
so human reasoning is expensive and dull. However God provides faith in Him;
where else could one live and travel around the sun once every year for free? Consciousness
of God and His love will open the eyes of blind and reveal four beautiful
seasons throughout all the seasons of life and death. Ecclesiastes 4:13-16
Comments and challenges
Isn’t
this the way it is… we notice readily the faults in other people, but when it
comes to our own faults we do not see these walls of darkness at all. Jesus
reminds us of this sort of vision by saying that our brothers or sisters may
have a splinter in their eye and we being a good and better person than they
seek to help them by removing the splinter, yet our condition is worse since we
have the whole plank of wood, minus the splinter in our eye. Matthew 7:1-6
Now
this is important to notice that the splinter in one person’s eye is of the
same plank of wood found in our eye. (the chip off the same block of wood) This
is what I mean; only those who practice the same sinful fault, know the sin
well enough to judge the other, in other words; it is impossible for us to wear
the mask of a hypocrite if we do not know why we put on the mask in the first
place.
Solomon
says much the same in Ecclesiastes 5:1-7; he reminds us to be prudent in
church, the spiritual antennas of the plank owners are all tuned and ready to
pounce on the splinters. This is the sacrifice of the foolish in church and
they do not even know the evil that is forming by their actions. Verse 2
explains that our rashness of mouth is rewarded by God who evaluates our
earthly words from His heavenly view.
You say,
well Solomon is talking about vows here in these passages and not running the
mouth in judgment. Okay, but what we say has as much value to the hearers as
the vow. Like; “brother let me help you out with your sin problem!” If you have
not first removed the plank from your own eye then how can you vow to help
anyone?
The promise
of helping or vowing to help comes from your mouth so as Solomon says, be
careful… do not let your mouth be the cause for your flesh to sin, nor say
before the messenger (Holy Spirit) of God that it was an error, why should God
be angry at your voice when your flesh had no intention of following through
with the work of your unwilling hands.
It is
just a dream that we are better than the next person; think about it, if we
were not dreaming or desiring about the thoughts of how much better we are than
they, then our voice in the matter would be no voice at all. Ecclesiastes 5:5.
It is then better to practice first what we preach. Then we will not be like
the televangelist who does not practice, but loves to preach!
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