Luke 6:38 Give, and it shall be given to you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom… I. AS TO TEMPORAL THINGS. 1. A good conscience. Sometimes the requital of a man's open-heartedness, and the readiness with which he has bestowed of what he has upon others, is furnished to him in the feelings of his own heart; and he herein gains a rich, abundant, and blessed recompense. Labour may have been sweet to him; he may have been willing to toil on, as he was gradually making progress to his object; success has been full of delight, as he gradually mastered difficulties, and looking back upon the way which he had passed, found how he had climbed to heights, to which his youthful ambition hardly dared to aspire. But neither is labour so sweet, nor its most successful results so delightful, as when a man whom God has prospered in his getting, has the heart readily and liberally to bestow. When he has gone to the habitations of the poor, when he has stood by the bedside of the sick, when he has ministered to those human necessities which fell within the compass of his ability to remove, then there has been in his own soul a far better requital for his expenditure, than if he had bestowed his money in any other possible way, 2. Gratitude of those benefited. The most prosperous man, the man to whom in God's providence there seems to be a larger than usual amount of success appointed, has no security; he cannot tell what a year, or even a day, may bring forth. His fortune may be laid in the dust; his riches may make themselves wings; he may be reduced lower even than he was at his starting-place. Be it so; God has not forgotten him. Then will come the very especial occasion on which he will prove, by his own individual instance, that the promise of the text is true. When he possessed much, he gave liberally; he was the friend of all who were in necessity; he turned no deaf ear to the supplications of the desolate; he was not inaccessible to the sons and daughters of sorrow; and in his own day of disaster, many a heart and many a hand are open to him. For whom is it, that a whole neighbourhood are anxious? For whose affliction is it that all are concerned? For whose renovated fortunes are all deeply anxious? Is it not the man who, when he was in other circumstances, held himself the steward of God, and because he possessed all things in charge, used them as one who had to give account. Perhaps it may be that even his temporal condition is restored; but, whether that be so or not, does he not gain a most blessed return for all his charges and all his labour, in that there are hearts which feel for him, and friends who sympathise deeply with him, and those in whose prayers he knows that he has a place? II. IN SPIRITUAL THINGS. Application to devoted preachers of the gospel, missionaries, &c. Also to parents who have brought up their children conscientiously. Our own portion in heaven will be all the more blessed, because of its being shared with those to whom on earth we were helpers. (S. Robins, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again. |
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