RIGHTEOUS MEASUREMENT by John Nevins Andrews

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 31, 1881

RIGHTEOUS MEASUREMENT.

By John Nevins Andrews

"With what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again." Matt. 7:2.

THESE words were uttered by our Lord as a warning to his people. He wished them to understand that wrong doing should bring calamity and sorrow upon the wrong doer. Now he even declares that the very kind of evil which we cause others shall come back upon ourselves. We have many notable instances of this in the Bible.

Jacob acted an extremely unbrotherly part toward Esau, and an inexcusable and wicked deception toward his father. He had to flee for his life. He fell into the hands of Laban, who, though his own uncle, acted toward him in the same deceitful and cruel manner that he had acted toward Esau. In fact, the deception of Laban was the cause of lasting misery in the family relations of Jacob, till it finally brought about the sale of Joseph as a slave to be carried into Egypt. For some twenty-two years, Jacob supposed his son torn in pieces of a wild beast. For Joseph was 17 years old when his brethren sold him, and was 30 years of age when he stood before Pharaoh. Shortly after this the seven years of plenty came on, and in the second year of the famine Jacob came into Egypt.

The sorrows of Jacob's life, and some of them were very serious, cover a period of more than fifty years, and are distinctly traceable to his own wrong acts. His sorrows seemed to have ended when he found Joseph in Egypt. But how long a period it was before his captivity was turned! What a man sows, that he shall reap. It can never pay to do wrong.

David is another example of receiving back in kind for the wrongs committed. Read his wicked conduct toward Uriah. Then read the retribution that followed through all the rest of his life, and principally in his own family, too. See the sad history of Amnon and Tamar, of the rebellion and unnatural crimes of Absalom. See 2 Sam. 11-19. Even Adonijah's rebellion and death may be considered a part of this retribution. Sin never pays only in its own kind. J. N. A.