Proverbs 16:11

A just weight and balance are the Lord’s.

A just balance

It is a part of the Lord’s watchful activity and direct connection with all the affairs of human life that He is interested in our business and trade. The Israelite was encouraged to think that all the work in which he was engaged was ordained by, and therefore under the observation of, his God. The commercial fraud of the primitive times took a comparatively simple form. The merchant used inadequate measures, and so nibbled a little from every article which he sold to a customer. It requires many generations for a civilised society to elaborate commercial fraud on the large scale.

1. We are all of us tempted to think that a considerable proportion of our life is too insignificant to attract the particular attention of God. We think He marks what business we enter, but when we are in it lets us alone. Or He marks a large business transaction in which there is room for a really gigantic fraud, but cannot pay any attention to a minute sale over the counter, the trivial adulteration of a common article, the ingenious subterfuge for disposing of a damaged or useless stock. But could anything be more illogical? Great and small are relative terms, and have no significance with God. If He knows us at all, He knows all about us. The whole life, with every detail from birth to death, is accurately photographed in the light of His omniscience.

2. In this exhaustive and detailed knowledge of the way in which you are conducting your business His warm approval follows everything that is honest and just; His vehement censure lights on all that is dishonest and unjust. We have no reason for thinking that the unjust balance has become any less abominable to the Lord because the eager and relentless competition of modern industrial life has multiplied, while it has refined the methods of fraud and has created a condition of things in which, as so many people urge, questionable practices have become actually necessary for one who would keep his head above water. Double-dealing, no matter what may be the plea, is abominable in the sight of the Lord.

3. All should order their business ways as in the sight of God, and concern themselves chiefly with the thought how they may be in conformity with His holy will. Do not be content with estimating your conduct by the judgment which other men would pass upon it. Do not be content even with estimating your conduct by the standard of your own unaided conscience. Unless you realise that God sees and knows, and unless you humbly submit everything to His judgment, you are sure to go wrong; your standard will insensibly fall, and you will insensibly fall away even from the fallen standard. You will not alter His judgment of your conduct by attempting to ignore it. But by seeking to understand it, and by laying your heart open to be influenced by it, you will find that your conduct is perceptibly altered, and apparent impossibilities are overcome, because “by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil.” (R. F. Horton, D.D.)

Weighed in the balances

A man once declared that he wished he had a window in his breast, that all men might see his heart and motives. How many of us would like to look into our own hearts and discover our motives? Because we fear to be face to face with ourselves self-examination is so greatly neglected. God looks into our hearts and weighs our motives in His just and unchanging balance. Our daily work is being weighed in God’s balances, and it is a weighing for eternity. People make a great mistake about their preparations for eternity. It is the duty of a Christian man to prepare for eternity every day he lives by trying to do his duty in the place where God puts him. Temptations and trials are weights and scales by which God tries our hearts. Perhaps you are vexed by a spiteful tongue that speaks cruelly and unjustly. That is a balance in which you are weighed to see whether your heart is right with God, whether you bear your trials meekly, giving back the soft answer, not rendering evil for evil. So every other trial or sorrow is a test, a weighing, to prove whether you are the true gold or base alloy. Prosperity and success are God’s balances. Every religious rite and service are means by which God weighs us. There are yet two more weighings to come. At our death we shall be weighed and placed in our proper waiting-place till the last judgment. Then will come the final weighing and the eternal sentence. (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M.A.)