Dr Greg Bahnsen - Proverbs: Proverbs 11:1 (The Abomination of Unjust Standards) (Part 37)

Please turn in your Bibles this morning to the Book of Proverbs, chapter 11, and we'll take as our reading verse one, Proverbs 11, the first verse. Hear now, God's word, a false balance, is an abomination to Jehovah, but a just weight is his delight. And thus far, the reading of God's word, the Book of Proverbs, brings before our attention any number of areas of life that if we were to write the Word of God, I think we would probably leave out. I think if we were to make a list of those things that are most important from a theological standpoint, if we were to make a list of those things which are most important in the eyes of God and about our relationship with him, we would mention a lot of things which the Book of Proverbs. I mean, we wouldn't mention a lot of things that the Book of Proverbs has included. When we come to chapter 11, verse one, we see just one such illustration of that. The Book of Proverbs tells us very simply here that God is concerned about just standards, those mundane things about whether the gas station pump is telling you the honest number of gallons you've pumped out. God cares about that. But you see, the Book of Proverbs tells us more than that God cares about that. It tells us that it is one of the leading indicators of justice in the eyes of God, that we have such just standards. And in fact, it's an abomination to God. It is absolutely detestable to God when we don't have them or care about them. And so there are at least two applications of our lesson today that we're going to have to pay attention to. One has to do with that issue of just standards, and the other has to do with whether we care enough about just standards to see that as in the category of detesting or detestable to God when they are not just. That is, it may be that our own standards about the question of standards is unjust as well, because we take it far too lightly. You know, there's a crucial place for standards in our life. All of social life, communication and commerce would be virtually impossible without shared standards by which we can define things and by which we can measure things. If we do not share standards, then we can't live together, talk with one another. We can't do business with one another. For example, you want to put up a fence. Seems like a mundane thing, but you see, God finds it a crucial matter that you put up your fence on your property and not Six inches into your neighbors. If you don't know how to mark out boundaries, then you can't be fair with people. How about baking a cake? I mean, what a mundane thing, right? I can't do it. It's an important thing. I like to eat cake, but I know that when you bake a cake, you can't do it without measuring things properly. You measure out a cup of flour or 2 cups, maybe you don't put flour in cakes. I don't know how you make cakes anyway. When you measure these things out, you've not to know what a cup is. If the instructions say a cup of flour and you put in a gallon of flour, then you're obviously going to have problems. And so you can't even bake a cake without proper standards or put gas into your car. As I mentioned a little while ago, when is it that you have pumped a gallon into your car? Or 10 gallons, or 15? Whatever it is you're playing, planning to purchase or if you will. Some of us don't buy per gallon. We buy by what we can afford. Maybe you're going to put $10 worth into the tank, but you see the meter there on the pump is telling you when you have that much money's worth or that much volume pumped in. We just can't live our lives without some definition of what a cup is and where a boundary line is and what we mean by a gallon or a dollar. It's the relationship between them. If you stop and think about it, just reflect on how pervasive the daily use of standards is. It is so common that I don't think we reflect on it, we just take it for granted. We don't even think, I'm using standards, I'm using measurements here. Every commercial transaction you involve yourself in involves payment according to a financial standard. You go to the store and buy something, or you go to the show and buy a ticket or whatever it may be. People ask for dollars and cents from you, but you see, when you pay them, then you must know what a dollar is and what a cent is. We are using a standard of measurement, a financial standard of measurement. And since we spend money almost every day of our lives, then we're always involved in the use of standards. Many of the most mundane activities that we involve ourselves in involve measuring things. You weigh yourself on your bathroom scale, don't you? Some of us should more often. But the fact is when we do that, we're using a standard. And I'll bet you've been tempted from time to time to reach down there and adjust the little knob on the scale so that though you really weigh the same as what you did the day before, it's going to look better. And so there's the question of mundane standards and whether we are just about them or putting the right amount of ground coffee in the coffee maker. You know, some of us, you know, wake up so groggy and so forth that we may stumble into the kitchen and do that almost by matter of habit. We're so used to scooping it out and having the right amount. But the fact is, the coffee wouldn't be coffee, or at least it wouldn't be coffee that you want to drink if you didn't measure things out properly or the schedule of events in your day. It's run by a standard, isn't it? The standard of the clock, and we hate that. When are you due at work? How long will it take to get through traffic? Our whole day is run by the clock. When will the kids need to be picked up from school? So forth and so on. And we govern our activities in a way that employs standards of measurement all the time. How long should you work out in the morning? How far should you jog? How far can you drive in your car with this amount of gas in the tank? I mean, we're always thinking about things like this day in and day out, standards of measurement. And what Proverbs tells us is this is very important to God. God says that a false balance, a deceitful standard, is an abomination to him. But a just weight, a way of measuring things which is honest and fair, is his delight. Again, if you were to make a list of the things that delighted God, would you put that down? Would you have thought of that? God's delighted when I call a gallon a gallon, and when the cup that I use is really a cup and the dollar I spend is really a dollar. God's delighted by just standards. Proverbs 11:1, along with other passages of God's Word, should make it very clear to us that a common maxim that is heard in the propagation of what's sometimes called capitalism, although I don't believe that's a fair way to designate it, some people often think of capitalism as including this maxim, Let the buyer beware. That's what capitalism is all about, right? It's up to you to make sure you don't get taken. Well, that isn't biblical capitalism. That isn't the biblical understanding of private property and the free market. The free market does not mean free to take advantage of people. Proverbs tells us that God doesn't expect that the buyer is the only one who has to worry about whether the standards are just. The seller should make sure that what he or she is selling is exactly what they portray it to be. A deceitful balance and an unjust weight is one that is used to defraud others. And the way in which we usually do this is by making use of diverse standards. Turn to Proverbs 20, verses 10 and 23. In that chapter, we have a similar exhortation about the abomination of unjust weights. And it's made a little clearer how it is people use unjust weights. Proverbs 20:10. Diverse weights and diverse measures, both of them alike, are an abomination to Jehovah. If I could. Literally, in Hebrew it says, a stone and a stone, an epheth and an epheth both alike are an abomination. If you've got a stone and a stone, God is very unhappy with you. Verse 23. Diverse weights are an abomination to Jehovah, and a false or deceitful balance is not good. What is it to use? A standard and a standard, a stone and a stone. Well, in the ancient world, of course, things were bought and purchased as they are today, according to some volume or some measurement. Let's say in this particular case that the measure is going to be weight. If you wish to trade corn for wheat, let's say pound for pound, that probably is not a good illustration, but let's say you make that deal, you'll trade for every pound of wheat that you receive. You'll give a pound of corn to the buyer. Of course, in this transaction, you're going to get more than you deserve. If you use a heavy pound weight when weighing your neighbor's wheat, and you use a light pound weight when you weigh out the corn to pay him. Isn't that right? If we call a pound something that's very heavy when he's weighing out what he's going to give you, but we call a pound something that's lighter than that. When I pay him in corn, then obviously I'm going to be getting more wheat for my corn than what I bartered for. And so how could I do that? Well, I have to have a stone and a stone in my bag. I have to have two stones, although the man that I'm doing this transaction with will not be able to know this if I'm going to pull it off. But I have two stones in my bag. They both are marked one pound, but I know either by the shape or the color or some other device, I know which one's the heavy pound and which one is the light pound. So I know which one to use when we're weighing his stuff, and I know which one to use when we're weighing my stuff. And so by having a stone and a stone or diverse weights, I'm able to defraud him out of his goods or out of his money. Imagine that you loan a truck to someone and you agree to charge him per mile. Let's say he's going to give you a dollar per mile. Making an easy illustration that seems fine with him. But you want really more than a dollar per mile. You realize you'll never get him to agree to it. So what you do is before he borrows the truck, you tamper with the odometer. And so every mile traveled in road distance turns the odometer a mile and a tenth. And so it doesn't take long to figure out every 10 miles he goes, you're getting an extra dollar according to the deal. But he doesn't realize that he's being defrauded out of that money because you're not using the same standard. You're using one standard for mile actually traveled and another standard for what mile is when you pay for the mile. And this is what Proverbs condemns. False balances, diverse weights, using standards or a double standard in such a way as to defraud people. And in Proverbs 11, 1, it is noteworthy that it is primarily for God's sake that dishonesty is condemned. I could preach to you a long time about the social ill effects of having a double standard. We could go on and on about how terrible it is, how bad neighbors we are, how if you do that, it may happen to you. There's all these bad circumstances are going to come about because of it. But in Proverbs it's interesting that we read a false balance is an abomination to Jehovah. Dishonesty is detestable to him. It's not simply because of the ill effects. It's not just because it is contrary to utilitarian consequences that we should be honest. It's because if we aren't honest, we should. We are deplorable in God's eyes. He abhors what we do when we don't have just standards. And so we have that word abomination, one of the strongest in Hebrew toy vah. It means something that God finds absolutely abhorrent God finds it detestable. Now, elsewhere in Proverbs, we find lists of things that God abominates. You may remember some if you've read through the book. God abominates a crooked and a perverse man. We read in chapters three and 11, in chapter six of Proverbs, we read there are six things God hates, yes, seven, which are an abomination to him. And they include such things as violent hands and feet that are swift to participate in evil, and spreading strife and having a lying tongue. These are all abominable to God. In Proverbs 15 and 21, we read that the sacrifice and the prayers of the wicked are an abomination to God. He detests it when wicked people pray or go through religious exercises. In Proverbs 15:26, God finds wicked plans when we scheme to do things which are not right, he finds that abominable. In Proverbs 16, those who are proud in heart abominable. In Proverbs 17, those who justify the wicked, those who condemn the righteous, are alike an abomination to God. And so there are a number of things we find in the Book of Proverbs condemned as an abomination to God. But I'll tell you, there's very few that are as often mentioned as the one we're talking about here. In Proverbs 11:1 and in Proverbs 16:11 and Proverbs 20, verses 10, 10, and 23, we read the same basic point over and over again. God detests it when you don't use just standards. The condemnation of unjust standards is especially detestable to Jehovah because it's repeated at least three times in this book. And all three verses make conspicuous use of that extremely condemned word to abomination. Not only do we find it repeated many times in Proverbs, it turns out that the theme of God's hatred for cheating, the theme of God's hatred of unjust business practices and defrauding others is uniformly preached throughout the Word of God. It's not just in the Book of Proverbs, it's not just in the wisdom writings that we find this condemnation of dishonest standards, but we see it also in the law. And the prophets of the Old Testament turn in the law of God to Leviticus, the 19th chapter, verses 35 and 36, Leviticus 19. Again, this is the chapter where we read that you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus summarizes the law and the prophets by not only citing Deuteronomy that we should love God above all else, and secondly, our neighbor as ourselves. Leviticus 19. But let's read at verse 35. Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in measures of length, of weight, or of quantity, just balances, just weights, a just Epheth, and a just hen shall ye have. I am Jehovah, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And you shall observe all my statutes and all my ordinances, and do them. I am Jehovah. You see how God ties so closely together the question of whether we have just weights with whether we observe all of his law. You see, God's interested in standards. God's interested in absolute values. God's interested in honesty, in the way we communicate things with one another. So he says, you shall do no unrighteousness in measuring things, whether it be length, weight, or quantity. You must have just balances and weights. Why? Because I'm Jehovah and I brought you up out of the land of Egypt. If you are a people that understand your redemption, if you are a people who understand the character of your God, if you are a people willing to keep my law, then you will not fudge when it comes to standards. You will not take a little off here and a little off there, but you will observe what I tell you and exactly your obedience will be precise. And you will not think it a light matter that you obey me completely. You know, it's amazing how the Pharisees who prided themselves in a meticulous observance of the law, really missed the whole point of the law. Jesus says, in the New Testament, you're quite concerned to tithe on your garden vegetables, but you've missed the weightier matters of the law, such as mercy and justice. Now, these things you ought to have done, Jesus says, but now listen to the rest without leaving the other undone. Jesus does not suggest. What we should do is go to the Old Testament and define some kind of generalized idea of what morality is. Just some vague notion of what love is and a vague notion of what fairness is, and not pay attention to the piddly details. No, that isn't the teaching of Jesus. Jesus says, in approaching the details of God's law, you must not miss what it's all about. You must not use the law in some shallow and externalistic and hypocritical way so that you end up not doing mercy and justice when you obey. But of course, you will not do mercy and justice unless the details are important to you. And so God says, make sure that you are very just when it comes to your weights and your measures. And then immediately he says, for you shall keep all of my law. Because his law isn't to be shaved off to the right or to the left either. And so the law tells us that it's important that we have just standards, that we avoid dishonesty in the way we communicate our definitions and our measurements and so forth with people. And God parallels that to salvation. If we act in that way, we realize we're a saved people. Well, I've said this is found in the law. It's found in the wisdom writings, it's also found in the prophets. Turn to Micah, the sixth chapter, verses 10 and 11, Micah 6, 10, 11. The prophet Micah says, are there yet treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked? And a scant measure that is abominable shall I be pure with wicked balances and with a bag of deceitful weights. The prophet here is condemning the merchants of Samaria and Micah denounces them for making the volume measure small. A scant measure, it says. Actually the Hebrew word is an epheth that was used for measuring a volume of something. And on the other hand, Micah says, you make the shekel large, that's what the customer pays. And so the merchant's volume is scant, but the purchaser's measure is large. You want more than a shekel really when it comes to payment, but you want less than an epheth when it comes to giving the goods. So Micah condemns the merchants here because they often had more than one set of weights in their bags. As I already explained, a set which matched a common standard and a set which, though marked the same as the common standard, would actually be heavier or lighter than the common standard to be used. I wonder, is that equivalent in our day to day elaborate packaging techniques to deceive people as to how much they're getting for the same amount of money? I wonder about that. When I buy potato chips sometimes, you know, I go into the market and it looks like such a big bag, you know, and you're paying about the same as something else. And when you get home, you know, you open it, you couldn't see through it to find out. And you open it up and you know, there isn't that much there. Of course there are steps being taken so that we don't get caught off guard that way. You know, those little devices in the supermarket telling you how much you're getting per ounce or pound or what have you. But why is it we need that. If it weren't for the greediness of men's hearts to try to get more for what it appears that they're selling. It's not just potato chips, obviously. Just about all packaging in our day does that. Or if you ever read the Sunday paper, it's a great amusement if you're not willing to get sucked into it. But it's a terrible scandal for. For the sake of all those people, and there must be many, because people are paying these advertisers. Have you read the ads for things you can get, you know, something made out of gold sent to New York, some post office box, always right. And you're going to get this wonderful. Whatever it is. Let's say it's a ring, golden ring. But of course, what you don't realize is the size of the ring or the quality of the gold or whatever is not being accurately portrayed to you. Well, you go home today, pick up your Sunday paper and see how many ads like that are there. Some amazing deal, you know, like, why should people share their goodness with us in this way? It's just too good to be true. But of course, we have too much volume and we've got to, you know, get our inventory down. Or there's always some amazing excuse for why this deal is being given. Well, you find out after you send your money in that it's not a deal after all. What it appeared in the picture is not what you get. In actual fact, this is a false weight. It's to have two stones in your bag. One stone for advertising and one stone for actual paying out. I think what Proverbs is talking about certainly corresponds to the practice of keeping two sets of books in our business establishments. A lot of people do that. We use that expression, don't we? You know, he's keeping two books. There's one book for the tax collector or one book for maybe the corporate bursar who's going to look into your work. It doesn't make too much difference who it's for. The fact is there's one book so that you can keep track of what you actually are doing in terms of your buying and selling. There's another book for the showing to somebody else who's going to be looking into it either to make you look better, if it's your boss, or to make you look worse. Of course, if it's the tax agent who wants to tax you on all of your profit. Keeping two sets of books is an unjust. It's having a stone and a stone it's having diverse weights and measures. And of course, those of you who are not accountants, who don't keep two sets of books in a business establishment may nevertheless know what I'm talking about, because the way in which you account your income and deductions is quite diverse from the way in which you tell it to the irs, isn't it? We have two ways of counting our money. We have two ways of counting our cost and our expenses sometimes. And you see, the IRS is especially a sensitive subject because I think just about anybody in this room today would be really down on the idea of income tax and the way it's being run in our country. And we think it's so unjust. And so then we piously figure that it's all the more acceptable or to be condoned if we take advantage of the IRS because we don't like what they're doing anyway. We may think it's unbiblical what they're doing, but the fact is that God has put people in authority in our country and they are taxing us in a way which we should see changed if we had our way, but they are taxing us. And Jesus says to pay our taxes, but he doesn't say pay your taxes with diverse weights and measures. And so we see many applications of this, there are more ways than I could count, whereby men cleverly cheat others out of a fraction of a cent here and a fraction of a cent there. And I think often what we do is we reason that such a little bit from hundreds of people, rather than a great deal taken from one person, like a thief might do breaking into your home, this little bit taken from all sorts of people is really not so morally abhorrent. But to think that way is to reason in a detestable and fallacious fashion. God abhors that kind of deceit. God abhors that kind of stealing just as much as he abhors the man who mugs you on the street. To just budge a little here and fudge a little there, to get a little bit more than what you actually have coming is as unjust as to go into a man's home and rob him of his furniture or his goods. We have to remember that this passage also applies to dishonest weights. And in the Hebrew, of course, a weight was a measure of money. People paid in shekels, which was weighed in terms of its what we call poundage or ounces, whatever. But when the Bible condemns unjust weights, it's condemning unjust money. Now, how do we have unjust money. You have unjust money when something is called this and it really only mounts up or stacks up to that. For instance, there used to be a time where a dollar bill was worth something in silver or gold, and you knew that that was redeemable for that amount. And there was no way you could fudge on. There are ways you could cheat on the weighing of the silver or the gold, to be sure, but you knew that that piece of paper meant that amount of value. But then the day came where the government began to debase the currency. Think of the way in which a quarter once made out of silver was then made out of silver and copper. You debased the currency, and though it's still called a quarter. So if you compare a quarter in the year 1900 to a quarter in the year 1980, they might both say they're worth a quarter of a dollar. The fact is, only the former one was really worth a quarter of a dollar as it was objectively established. But in our day and age, there is no objective standard because the government decides how much money will be printed and what will be made of the money that we have. You do not have a common understanding of what is a dollar or a quarter or a 50 cent piece anymore. You only have the understanding of that particular day between two buyers. It will be different next week, it will be different somewhere else in the country. And all of this will be due to the fluctuating standards and the whim and will of the state. That is unjust because it's unreliable, it's unpredictable. You don't know what is to be called a quarter, what is to be called a dollar anymore. Prophet Isaiah condemns the unrighteousness of Jerusalem because the money has been debased. He says, you've watered down your wine and you've debased your currency, and that's a sign that you are debased in your approach to my commandments. If you're willing to shave standards and to fudge on boundaries, then it's clear you don't care about my law. God says, let's turn in Proverbs now to Proverbs 16:11. On the other side of the coin, if you will. Not only do we read that God abominates unjust standards, but it's his delight when we follow after fair play. Proverbs 16:11. A just balance and scales are Jehovah's, all the weights of the bag are his work. In Israel, sometimes royal authority would be used to standardize weights and measures. So that in a passage like 2 Samuel 14:26, we read of something weighing so much according to the king's weight. The royal standard, you see, would be stamped on certain weights. So you know, this is standardized. This is what the king recognizes as a shekel, or a pound, an ounce, whatever it may be. But here Proverbs takes it a step further back, and we find out that a just weight is not simply the king's weight. A just weight is the Lord's delight. It comes from God when there is fair play in commerce, when our business transactions promote honesty rather than deceit. Whatever promotes fair dealing, such as honest standards of measurement, belongs to God. And so equity and fairness in trade not only comes from God, but it's authorized, and it has his approval. We've already looked at Proverbs 20:10, 23, but let's just read them again, and then I'd like to show you what the law says by way of background to these verses. Proverbs 20:10 says, Divers weights and divers measures, both of them alike, are an abomination to jehovah. And verse 23 says, Diverse weights are an abomination to Jehovah. A false balance is not good. We get the idea here that not only God abominates dishonesty, but God promises that he will take delight in and will bless honesty in our transactions. In Deuteronomy 25:13 15, we certainly find the substantiation of that suggestion. Deuteronomy 25: at the 13th verse. Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small Thou shalt not have in thy house divers measures, a great and a small, a perfect and just weight shalt thou have. A perfect and just measure shalt thou have that thy days may be long in the land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee. For all that do such things, even all that do unrighteously, are an abomination unto Jehovah thy God. Again, this close connection between the blessing of long life and prosperity in the land is tied to whether we keep just standards. And whether we keep just standards is tied to whether we do righteously before God or not, whether we'll take his law seriously. You see, if we won't deal with one another in terms of honesty of standard, we won't deal with God in terms of honesty of standard either. This applies not simply to the way we weigh and measure things, such as corn or wheat or gasoline. It applies to land fraud as well. Two more verses we should look at. Proverbs 22:28, first of all, deals with landmarks. Proverbs 22:28, Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set. You see, nudging a boundary marker is a convenient way for a farmer to increase his acreage over the years without ever having to pay for new real estate. If he goes out to the edge of his property and he moves it out another 10 yards, and then the next season moves it another 10 yards, and the next season another 10 yards, over the years and decades, he's going to have a much bigger piece of property, but no one will ever notice because he's only taken a little bit of a time. The boundary's moved over, it's been nudged. As we say, such evil conduct is undoubtedly condemned for its dishonesty, undoubtedly condemned for its greed, but I think probably in this passage all the more it's condemned for its high handedness. Tampering with the ancient landmarks is to disregard both property rights and a person's heritage. It's a betrayal of the past, if you will. And so it says, remove not the ancient landmark which your fathers have set. It's a violation against one's heritage or the heritage of your neighbor when you go pushing the landmarks and nudging them so that you'll get more ground. And this was especially offensive in ancient Israel, because remember, the Promised Land was given by God to the Jews and was apportioned into family lots by God. And those family parcels were inalienable if you had to sell one because of poverty for a period of time. Nevertheless, in the jubilee year it was to be brought back into your family's possession. And so notice what the law says in Deuteronomy 19:14 about boundaries and landmarks. Deuteronomy 19, verse 14. Thou shalt not remove thy neighbor's landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that Jehovah thy God gives thee to possess it. God's given them the land. God has set the boundaries and parceled out the property. And you shall not move those landmarks which the men of old set down. It's a violation not only of honesty, violation not only of God's commandments regarding greed, but it's a violation, a high handed violation of the traditional standards that God originated in Israel. Of course, when integrity is lacking, no law can protect a person's property lines. We know that. We read about Ahab in 1st Kings 21, how he wanted Naboth's family vineyard, and when Naboth wouldn't sell It Ahab just at his wife Jezebel suggestion trumped up false charges against Naboth, had him executed and took his property anyway. And so in a sense, the recognition of property lines in a story like Ahab and Naboth's Vineyard, the recognition of property lines is in itself a reflection of whether we recognize God's property lines. If you will not respect honesty and integrity as God's law requires, then of course with your neighbor, you're not going to respect property lines and boundaries either. One more passage and then we'll be done with this today. Proverbs 23:10, 11. Remove not the ancient landmark and enter not into the fields of the fatherless. Why? For their Redeemer is strong, and he will plead their cause against thee. You'd better not be messing around with your neighbors property line. Don't move the landmark. Don't try to take advantage of him. If he's fatherless, you see, if he's fatherless, you figure there's no one to go to court against you, right? You can take advantage of this underprivileged individual. But the Bible assures us that the poor nevertheless have a Redeemer. The Hebrew word here is a goel. It means a kinsman Redeemer, someone who stands up for the legal rights of the family. The near kinsman who comes to the rescue of someone who falls on hard times, as we read of in the Book of Ruth, or the person who must avenge his relative's murder, as in numbers 35 19. The amazing thing is that throughout Scripture, God is called our kinsman Redeemer. We see that in Genesis 48:16, he's called the kinsman Redeemer of His people. In Exodus 6, verse 6, Job 19:25, Job says, I know my Redeemer lives. He means my kinsman Redeemer, God. And Throughout Isaiah, chapters 41 through 63, God is repeatedly called the kinsman Redeemer of His people. And so now Proverbs tells us, don't you mess around with the poor. Don't you go after the underprivileged. Don't you start going to the fields of the fatherless and moving their landmarks. And because their Redeemer will stand up and he will plead their cause against you, God takes the side of the poor who are unjustly treated. He is their defender. He will provide all the legal aid that they need. And it incenses him when the underprivileged are taken advantage of, since he is a strong Redeemer, and since he the strong Redeemer will plead their cause against you. What the book is telling us is that you are assured justice will be done and the wicked will be punished, for God will bring punishment upon them. So what do we learn from the Book of Proverbs? This morning we learned very simply, you had better not tamper with standards. When God sets standards, when we understand one another in our social commerce, according to certain standards, you are not to tamper with them. Whether you are the government or. Or a businessman or a neighbor. Don't nudge the boundaries. Don't have a heavy weight and a light weight. Don't use deceitful standards. Now, of course, this applies to our financial and our commercial transactions. I've said enough about that already this morning. But even more broadly, I want to say it applies to our general honesty, our general reliability. You know, when you look at your bathroom scale, you ask quite literally, can I count on it? Can I count the pounds on this scale? Well, I want to ask, can you be counted on in terms of your honesty and the way you deal with people? Can you be counted on to show fair play even when it's to your disadvantage? Are you fair in your approach to standards? Are you honest and reliable in your transactions? This goes even further. I think it goes to the very heart of our basic morality. For according to the Bible, the most fundamental sin of all, by which we will be condemned in God's eyes, the most fundamental sin of all is that we use a double standard of evaluating behavior. One standard for others and another one for ourselves. And you know what I'm referring to, don't you? Romans, the second chapter, where Paul tells us that the universal indictment of mankind is found in this. Wherefore thou art without excuse, O man. Whosoever thou art that judgest for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself. For thou that judgest dost practise the same things. And we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against them that practise such things. And reckonest thou this, O man, who judgest them that practise such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God, or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads thee to repentance. But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up for thyself wrath in the day of wrath, and the revelation of righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his works, to them that by patience and well doing seek for glory and honor, and in corruption, eternal life. But unto them that are factious and obey not the truth, but obey unrighteousness shall be wrath and indignation, tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that works evil of the Jew first and also of the Greek. But glory and honor and peace through every man that works good to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For there is no respect of persons with God. What a passage summarizes the wisdom of Proverbs and makes a very deep application of it. What Paul says is, when you have one standard set for others, but then you live contrary to that standard as though you have a different standard for yourself, then the judgment of God is against you. And the most threatening thing about that is God doesn't have a double standard. He will judge you for your double standard, and he doesn't have one. Because there's no respect of persons with God, whether it's the Jew or the Greek. All men will be judged, and all men will be judged by absolutely, precisely and thoroughly by the one common standard of God's law. God will render to every man according to his works, and he will show no respect of persons. God will not nudge the boundaries. God will not have one stone for you and another stone for another. He will not have differing standards, weights, and measures. But he's going to judge by that absolute platinum standard of his holy law. And so, if we've tampered with God's standards, we fully deserve to be judged and to be judged forever because of it. Because God can't budge on his standards. That's bad news, isn't it? See, the good news is, though God cannot budge on his standards, he will send a substitute to pay the price for our dishonest and our duplicity and our double standards. And so God cannot say that what you have done is all right. God cannot say that your sins can just be overlooked. God cannot shave a little here and shave a little there and say, maybe my law hasn't been so completely broken by you. No, he says, you are guilty, you are unclean, and you have absolutely no hope in this world apart from Jesus Christ. You see, there's only one person who came into this world and lived up to God's standards without budging and nudging and shaving and having diverse standards or a double standard. And that was our Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus lived according to that law perfectly so that he might be our sacrificial substitute, so that he might be our Kinsman Redeemer. It's amazing. Those of us who have cheated others, either in our moral evaluation or the way we've spoken with them or the way we've treated them financially, those of us who have cheated others should have the kinsman Redeemer stand up and plead the cause against us. And instead, God has sent a kinsman Redeemer into this world to stand up and plead the cause against himself. Because he takes our injustice and our double standards and all of our duplicity and unrighteousness upon himself. We praise God today that he is not a God who has a double standard. And yet he's a God who can save and redeem. A God who can forgive us not by pretending we didn't sin, but by sending his own son in the place of sinners to die. Let's pray. Father, teach us today to take much more seriously than we might have the importance of just standards. And, Father, rebuke our hearts when we catch ourselves using a double standard, especially when we see one person doing something that we don't like and yet we're blind to the fact that we do it as well. Help us, Father, to be honest in all of our transactions. Help us not to cheat people. Help us not to cheat your law by making excuses for our disobedience. Father, train us to be precise and to see how important it is to you, indeed, how delightful it is to you when there are just and unchanging standards in all areas of life. And yet, Father, we know that if that delights you, it also is abominable to you that we have broken those standards. And we've so often been unfair, we've so often been unwilling to be precise in the truth and honest in our evaluations and consistent in the use of our standards. So we find ourselves standing before you in your unbending justice, but praising you that though that justice would condemn us, that same justice is what sent your son to the cross and made it impossible that you should redeem us apart from the shedding of blood. So today we want to thank you that though your standards are unchanging, your love is unchanging as well. That because you are an immutable God, your promises are good to your people forever. And as you have promised, you have sent one who would take the place of sinners, who would take your wrath and curse upon himself so that would not fall upon us. Indeed, you sent one whose holiness and righteousness and perfect integrity is now imputed to us who do not deserve it, but who receive it by faith and according to your promise. And so this morning, we praise you for the grace that we see that accompanies your unbending law and your holy standards. We thank you for a grace that changes our hearts, makes us new people, and helps us to stand right in your sight. We ask that that same grace would empower us by the Holy Spirit, to show forth integrity now in our dealings, not to earn your favor, but to demonstrate that we have your favor, to demonstrate that we want a character that is like unto your own. We wish to be holy, even as our Father is holy. So we ask that you would not only change us and forgive us, but you would send us down a new path of obedience now that we might demonstrate the importance of just standards in the way that we live. And give honor and praise to our Savior, our Redeemer, for it's in his name we pray. Amen.