Luke 6:41

The Right Kind Of Eyes

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Luke 6:41.

I am going to speak today about the right kind of eyes.

You know there are a great many people in the world who have some defect in their eyes, and who cannot see properly. Some of these people are sensible and wear eyeglasses or spectacles which help them to see things in the right way; but many of them do not know that there is anything wrong with their eyes, and they imagine that it is the other people who are seeing wrong. Some people are color-blind and will tell you that a thing is blue when it is green; some see things larger or smaller than they are; and I once knew an old lady who saw things double! If one boy walked down the street past her window she declared that two boys had gone past, and she got quite cross if anybody contradicted her!

Jesus once preached a sermon about bad eyesight.

He said that some people went about trying to pick little motes out of their brother's eye, and all the time they did not seem to know that there was a beam blurring their own vision. Now what are motes and beams?

A mote is just a little speck of dust, so tiny that you can hardly see it; a beam is a log of wood some inches thick and several feet long, the kind of log that would be used for supporting a floor or the center of a roof.

Perhaps someone will say, “How could a great big log of wood get into anyone's eye?” Well, that was just a way of speaking in the East. The Rabbis had a saying about a mote and a beam, and so, when Jesus wanted to draw a contrast, He used a picture or parable, as we say, that the people could understand. On another occasion, you remember, He spoke about swallowing a camel, but of course it would be quite impossible to swallow a camel wholesale.

What did Jesus mean when He spoke that parable about motes and beams? He meant that there were many people going about the world picking faults in others, and all the time they were quite unconscious of their own much greater faults. The very fact that they were looking out for other people's faults made them blind to their own.

There are many reasons why we should not pick faults in others. Let me give you three.

1. We are not perfect ourselves. The Indians have a proverb “Said the sieve to the needle, ‘ You have a hole in you.'” Just fancy the sieve, riddled with holes, having the impertinence to criticize the needle! Let us make sure that we are not the sieve and the other boy or girl the needle. It's just a case of the mote and the beam over again, or the pot calling the kettle black.

2. We do not know enough to judge. Once, among a great crowd of people in a French town, a man named La Motte trod upon the foot of another. The man who had been hurt turned round quickly, and aimed a violent blow at La Motte's head. But La Motte said quietly, “Sir, you will surely be sorry for what you have done when you know that I am blind.” The man reddened with shame. He had taken La Motte to be a rough and rude fellow. He had judged without knowing, and his judgment had led him to do a mean act.

We may be making just the same kind of mistake about other people. We may be seeing in them faults that they haven't got at all. It is very, very easy to do so. You know how often you are blamed for things you never even thought of doing.

3. Fault-finding does an infinite amount of harm it does an infinite amount of harm to others, and it does an infinite amount of harm to ourselves.

It does an infinite amount of harm to others. How many of you like to make a snow man in winter-time? One of the best ways to form the body of the man is to make a little snowball with your hands, and then lay it down on the ground and roll it over and over in the snow. You know what happens. The little snowball grows bigger and bigger until it is big enough to form the body of the man. Now that is just the way with another's faults when we begin to notice them and speak about them. They grow bigger and bigger in our imagination, until at last they are so big no one would recognize them as the original faults.

And fault-finding does an infinite amount of harm to ourselves. It leaves stains on our own character. We cannot criticize others without becoming a little harder, a little more unkind. It twists our nature until we grow crooked and deformed. It spoils our eyesight until we are able to see only the ugly things about people.

Do you know the story of the man who lived in a room with two windows? One window looked out on a bright flower garden and, beyond that, to a splendid view of moor and river; the other window looked on to an ugly backyard. One day this man invited a friend to see his beautiful view. The friend went to one of the windows and said he did not see anything that he could admire. Can you guess the reason? He was looking out at the wrong window.

If we want to get a beautiful view of things we must look out at the right window, we must look out for the good points in our friends, and not for their failings. It is told of Peter the Great of Russia that when he heard anyone badly spoken of he would say, “Tell me, has he not a bright side?”

“But how,” you ask, “am I to see the beam in my own eye? How am I to know that it is there? It is impossible for a person to see his own eye.” Just think a minute. If you wish to see your own eye what do you do? You look in a mirror. And that is just how we are to discover the beam in our eye. We are to look in the mirror of Christ's perfect life. If we look long enough into that mirror we shall see ourselves so black that we shall never again wish to pick faults in others. (The texts of the other sermons in this series are Exodus 23:9; 1 Samuel 3:10; Psalms 24:4 (2), Psalms 34:13; Proverbs 6:13; Malachi 1:13; 1Pe 3:4; 1 Peter 5:5