The Weight of a Good Measure
Pumping gasoline is something that has probably become so routine in most of our lives that we do not really think about it much. But have you ever wondered what exactly you are paying for?
A few years ago the NY Times reported that millions of people across Americans were not getting what they expected when they pulled up to the pump.[1] A study had been done which found that in 9% of the gas stations across our nation the octane levels of a gallon of regular gasoline were below the national standards.
Now, you know that when you pull up ot the pump you have three choices: Regular grade, medium, and then the premium grade. Each of those has to do with the amount of octane in the gasoline. And the higher the grade, the better the gasoline—and more expensive too.
What this study found is that at some of these pumps the regular grade was as much as two points lower in its level of octane. And two points is the difference between the regular and medium grade.
Two points might not seem like much, but when you factor in hundreds and thousands of gallons of gasoline, it amounts to millions of dollars in revenue each year. These companies were exploiting their customers and making a mint in the process.
A study like this reminds us just how necessary it is to have accurate measurements and honesty in all our business dealings.
My guess is that when you woke up this morning you were not overly worried about how much your box of Rice Krispies weighed or if your multivitamin really had so many milligrams of this or that nutrient. But this morning I want us to take a few moments and consider how important it is to have standards when it comes to weights and measurements. And not just to have that bar formally set, but to be strict in applying it.
The passage before us this morning deals with just this type of thing. It seeks to dispel any kind of fraud and show us how detrimental it is to cheat the system when it comes to weights and measures. It wants us to realize how important fixed standards are for a society and that any attempts to fudge these standards is a great evil in the sight of God.
In order to do this it begins by declaring the fact that God is the Standard when it comes to all standards.
I. The standards belong to God
Look at the verse again. Note what the Spirit says in verse 11. It says, “A just balance and scales are the LORD's.”
What’s this talking about? Well, back in ancient times they used weights and scales when they purchased things. When you went to check out at the grocery store, instead of a cash register there would be a scale. And they would say you owe so many shekels, which was a unit of weight. So the seller would put on the weight of that many shekels and you would put your gold or silver on the other side. When it balanced out, you were done. That was your payment.
This passage is saying that that scale—as long as there was nothing funny going on—as long as they were just weights and the scale wasn’t rigged —this verse says that it belongs to God. God owns it. He is the Lord and master of it.
The second half of the verse says that the weights that are used on the scale, those are a product of God’s work. God created it and therefore it is God’s measurement.
So this verse is declaring that the standards that we use in measurements are supposed to be God’s standards. He is the one who is supposed to set those standards and they are to be respected. Any attempt to deviate from that standard would be determined to be a gross error.
What we find here is that there is to be a certain rigidity when it comes to values. What God has declared is to govern all things.
The problem is that instead of standing upon God’s standard, man comes along and seeks to make his own standard. He seeks to take advantage of the system and make it work for him. So instead of making a yard 36 inches, he makes it 34 inches. You look at the yardstick and it still says 36 inches. You can count the little notches up and you come up with 36. But what has happened is that the notches have been placed just a touch closer together so as to take off two full inches.
So when the lady comes to the store to buy a couple yards of material to make a new dress, she gets home and she finds out it has to be a miniskirt because she’s missing 6 or so inches of material off of the height and the width.
But what have you done there? You’ve just cheated that person by creating a sliding scale. You’ve taken it upon yourself to make a new standard.
That’s what humanism is. It is making man the measure of all things rather than God. When you take it upon yourself to declaring what the standard is, what you make yourself out to be God. You say that God’s standards are not good and should be ignored.
Or think of it this way. Young people, let’s say you are supposed to take a test. You know what a test is? A test—whether it is for your math class or a spelling test, that is a kind of measurement. An exam measures how much knowledge you’ve accumulated. It shows the weight of your learning and tells the teacher how much of the material you’ve come to know. Now suppose you cheat on that test. What have you done? You’ve just messed with the measurement, haven’t you? You’ve cheated and what you’ve done is say I know more than I really do. The measurement is going to be off, just like those weights on a scale would be off.
What did you do? You have defied the standard that God said. You’ve basically said that God’s standard for measuring knowledge doesn’t matter and it is okay for me to say that I have more learning and education than I really do.
Now you realize how bad that is. Imagine going to a doctor who cheated on his medical exams. Is that the kind of thing you want to do?
You see, we have to recognize that when it comes to the world we operate, we need absolute standards. If we do not see measurements as something that is in the hands of God, we end up ruining society. If we think that we can arbitrarily play with weights and measurements, what we do is we say that we are god and society begins to fall apart.
Now in ancient Israel their unit of measurement was the shekel. It was a form of weight. And they kept a shekel in the tabernacle. When you read the Old Testament you will come across passages of scripture that say that so much needs to be paid, “according to the shekel of the sanctuary.” They had a shekel in the tabernacle. And that shekel was the standard for all other shekels. All shekels had to be defined by that one in the sanctuary. By putting it in the tabernacle they were saying, “This is God’s standard. God owns the shekel and you need to respect it.”
That was a symbolic way of saying what this verse is saying: that the just weights belong to God.
But even though these are God's weights (and not ours to play with), He does entrust these weights to us. And in particular, he entrusts them to those who are rulers.
II. The Standards have been entrusted to Kings
Last time we were together I said that this section of the proverbs deals with leadership. Verses 10-15 are all united by the word king. Well, this verse doesn’t have the work king in it, but it is still very much connected to the role of a ruler in society.
You see, God owns the standard. The standards of measurement belong to God, but God entrusts these standards to men—to kings and rulers. They are to be the ones who keep these standards and rightly enforce them. And this context reminds us how important these just weights and measures are for those in positions of authority.
One of the great temptations of a nation is the debasement of its currency. Kings wage war and rack up debt. And they have to find ways to pay for these expenses. And one of the ways they do is to create more money by fiddling with the money units.
For instance, the Roman Empire began by minting good money. The coins were made of 90% pure silver. But over time they began to lower the amount of silver in their coins. When coins would circulate back they would melt them down and make new coins—ones that looked virtually the same. Except when they remade them they would be mixed with other metals. They could make more coins, but there was less silver in each one coin. Towards the end of the Roman Empire many of the coins did not even have 50% silver content. That’s like taking one of those very first coins that were made and cutting it in half.
Now what can you buy with a coin that has lost much of its worth? If one of the original coins which was made with real silver could by you a lollipop. How much would you have to pay to get that lollipop with a coin that had lost half of its silver? It would take at least two coins now, wouldn’t it?
I point this out because this is exactly what is happening in America today. It used to be that our money was backed by gold. As a matter of fact the word dollar is a unit of measurement. It was an indication of a certain amount of gold. But that is no longer the case. We do not have a gold standard anymore. What we have essentially done is taken all the gold out of our dollars. We’ve gone beyond the what the Roman Empire has done because their coins at least had some silver in it. It was at least backed by some precious metal. So it had some objective worth. Our money doesn’t have any backing by any precious metal. Its value is only found in what value we give it.
But we also have this thing called the Federal Reserve. And part of what the Fed does is print money. They inject more coins (so to speak) into the market. Thousands and thousands of dollars without any gold backing are flushed into the system.
What do you think is going to happen to your lollipop that you want to buy? The price is going to continue to climb higher and higher.
This is what we call inflation. It is the modern day’s way of having a false balance and scales because it makes you have to pay more for the things you want.
The point of all this is that the kings of the earth are to follow God’s standards. Last week we said rulers are given power by God, but here it is saying that those rulers have limits to their power. They are not in a position where they can play God and exert their power to create money or create a their own shifting standards. They are not to manufacture their own arbitrary standards to suit their convenience.
The Bible speaks to this issues quite a bit. There are a number of places where it talks about judgment coming on the nation because their money had become worthless. It was all a way of saying, “You destroyed God’s standard, now you yourselves will be destroyed.”
We Are Kings
Last time we were together I pointed out that the idea of kings doesn’t just apply to the world of the civil government. There are all kinds of kings. We talked about elders and we basically said that they are ecclesiastical kings. We also talked about parents and said they are the kings who rule their homes.
We could apply this passage in those different categories too. Elders have a standard for measuring Christians. It is God’s law. They are not allowed to make their own standards and make admittance to the church based on their own opinions. For instance, you can’t bar someone from the church because they don’t do courtship.
The same could be said for parents. Parents are not allowed to change the standards on their kids.
But I want to talk about how we are all rulers to some degree. Every time we make a judgment, we are acting like an authority. And the decisions we make in life have to be made on the basis of a standard. If we don’t, the whole of society becomes defunct. Society is ruined if we think that we can begin to fudge the lines that God has drawn.
Think about this when it comes to the whole gender issue today. People are starting to say you can determine your own gender or create your own pronouns. What they are doing is exactly the same as a nation who creates their own money without any respect to the standards God has set. They are playing god with the whole idea of sexuality.
We’ve come up with this whole LGBTQ. The Q is key. It means questioning. They are questioning their gender. They have no clue what it is. You know why? It is because they are completely confused. The standard has been thrown out. Everyone now says you can define your own and some people just don’t know who they are or what they should be because they have no means of measuring themselves. This is why Romans 1 says they traded the truth of God for a lie. And our nation is spiraling out of control when it comes to sexuality. People’s lives are being wrecked. It is sexual dross—the debasing of sexuality. The beauty of femininity and the dignity of masculinity are being completely destroyed because we have thrown out the gold standard of Genesis 1:27: “male and female he created them.”
The Scales of Justice will Tip
It is important to remember that a just scale is God’s. The weights are His work. This is important because it reminds us that we’ll all one day be measured in the balance of God.
Why is this verse put here? It is to remind us that God is fair when it comes to measuring. He is the most precise in His measurements. And he will not allow the scale to be anything but balanced. When he demands payment—when the wages of our work come due, he requires payment in full.
In the book of Lamentations Jeremiah talks about how the “gold had become dim.” It was a reference to how a gold coin was debauched—the money system—the gold coins, were no longer bright because of all the other metals in it. But Jeremiah was talking about the people. They were created as gold. They were supposed to shine with brilliance as God’s pure and spotless people. But their apostasy had made them a defiled people. The gold had become dim. They as a people were now worthless.
What is the worth of a nation who’s money has the same value as a few sheets of toilet paper? God’s going to weight those kings and they will find that they themselves have are worthless people.
And God will do the same to every other person in this world. When Christ come again he is going to weigh them in the balance. And everyone who has cheated the system of his standards will be weighed in the balance, and they will be found wanting.
But this is the good news of the gospel. Jesus Christ provided the full payment to God. The life of Christ was perfect. He didn’t defile God’s standard. And that’s why he is the perfect payment for sin. He balances the scales in God’s eyes. And that’s why we say that there is life and salvation through Him. When we repent of our sins and look to Christ, the weight of his life is put in the balance for us. He stands in our place on those scales and God accepts us because of the full measure of His righteousness.
But you know what repentance is. It is the admission that I’m not going to play God anymore. It is admitting that you have cheated the system and have not lived by the right standards. It is saying that I’m no longer going to do that. I’m going to live by God’s rule now; I’m going to respect his standards.
And when a person does that, God grants them grace—the riches of his grace.
_____________________________
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/27/us/study-finds-frequent-cheating-at-the-gas-pump.html
A few years ago the NY Times reported that millions of people across Americans were not getting what they expected when they pulled up to the pump.[1] A study had been done which found that in 9% of the gas stations across our nation the octane levels of a gallon of regular gasoline were below the national standards.
Now, you know that when you pull up ot the pump you have three choices: Regular grade, medium, and then the premium grade. Each of those has to do with the amount of octane in the gasoline. And the higher the grade, the better the gasoline—and more expensive too.
What this study found is that at some of these pumps the regular grade was as much as two points lower in its level of octane. And two points is the difference between the regular and medium grade.
Two points might not seem like much, but when you factor in hundreds and thousands of gallons of gasoline, it amounts to millions of dollars in revenue each year. These companies were exploiting their customers and making a mint in the process.
A study like this reminds us just how necessary it is to have accurate measurements and honesty in all our business dealings.
My guess is that when you woke up this morning you were not overly worried about how much your box of Rice Krispies weighed or if your multivitamin really had so many milligrams of this or that nutrient. But this morning I want us to take a few moments and consider how important it is to have standards when it comes to weights and measurements. And not just to have that bar formally set, but to be strict in applying it.
The passage before us this morning deals with just this type of thing. It seeks to dispel any kind of fraud and show us how detrimental it is to cheat the system when it comes to weights and measures. It wants us to realize how important fixed standards are for a society and that any attempts to fudge these standards is a great evil in the sight of God.
In order to do this it begins by declaring the fact that God is the Standard when it comes to all standards.
I. The standards belong to God
Look at the verse again. Note what the Spirit says in verse 11. It says, “A just balance and scales are the LORD's.”
What’s this talking about? Well, back in ancient times they used weights and scales when they purchased things. When you went to check out at the grocery store, instead of a cash register there would be a scale. And they would say you owe so many shekels, which was a unit of weight. So the seller would put on the weight of that many shekels and you would put your gold or silver on the other side. When it balanced out, you were done. That was your payment.
This passage is saying that that scale—as long as there was nothing funny going on—as long as they were just weights and the scale wasn’t rigged —this verse says that it belongs to God. God owns it. He is the Lord and master of it.
The second half of the verse says that the weights that are used on the scale, those are a product of God’s work. God created it and therefore it is God’s measurement.
So this verse is declaring that the standards that we use in measurements are supposed to be God’s standards. He is the one who is supposed to set those standards and they are to be respected. Any attempt to deviate from that standard would be determined to be a gross error.
What we find here is that there is to be a certain rigidity when it comes to values. What God has declared is to govern all things.
The problem is that instead of standing upon God’s standard, man comes along and seeks to make his own standard. He seeks to take advantage of the system and make it work for him. So instead of making a yard 36 inches, he makes it 34 inches. You look at the yardstick and it still says 36 inches. You can count the little notches up and you come up with 36. But what has happened is that the notches have been placed just a touch closer together so as to take off two full inches.
So when the lady comes to the store to buy a couple yards of material to make a new dress, she gets home and she finds out it has to be a miniskirt because she’s missing 6 or so inches of material off of the height and the width.
But what have you done there? You’ve just cheated that person by creating a sliding scale. You’ve taken it upon yourself to make a new standard.
That’s what humanism is. It is making man the measure of all things rather than God. When you take it upon yourself to declaring what the standard is, what you make yourself out to be God. You say that God’s standards are not good and should be ignored.
Or think of it this way. Young people, let’s say you are supposed to take a test. You know what a test is? A test—whether it is for your math class or a spelling test, that is a kind of measurement. An exam measures how much knowledge you’ve accumulated. It shows the weight of your learning and tells the teacher how much of the material you’ve come to know. Now suppose you cheat on that test. What have you done? You’ve just messed with the measurement, haven’t you? You’ve cheated and what you’ve done is say I know more than I really do. The measurement is going to be off, just like those weights on a scale would be off.
What did you do? You have defied the standard that God said. You’ve basically said that God’s standard for measuring knowledge doesn’t matter and it is okay for me to say that I have more learning and education than I really do.
Now you realize how bad that is. Imagine going to a doctor who cheated on his medical exams. Is that the kind of thing you want to do?
You see, we have to recognize that when it comes to the world we operate, we need absolute standards. If we do not see measurements as something that is in the hands of God, we end up ruining society. If we think that we can arbitrarily play with weights and measurements, what we do is we say that we are god and society begins to fall apart.
Now in ancient Israel their unit of measurement was the shekel. It was a form of weight. And they kept a shekel in the tabernacle. When you read the Old Testament you will come across passages of scripture that say that so much needs to be paid, “according to the shekel of the sanctuary.” They had a shekel in the tabernacle. And that shekel was the standard for all other shekels. All shekels had to be defined by that one in the sanctuary. By putting it in the tabernacle they were saying, “This is God’s standard. God owns the shekel and you need to respect it.”
That was a symbolic way of saying what this verse is saying: that the just weights belong to God.
But even though these are God's weights (and not ours to play with), He does entrust these weights to us. And in particular, he entrusts them to those who are rulers.
II. The Standards have been entrusted to Kings
Last time we were together I said that this section of the proverbs deals with leadership. Verses 10-15 are all united by the word king. Well, this verse doesn’t have the work king in it, but it is still very much connected to the role of a ruler in society.
You see, God owns the standard. The standards of measurement belong to God, but God entrusts these standards to men—to kings and rulers. They are to be the ones who keep these standards and rightly enforce them. And this context reminds us how important these just weights and measures are for those in positions of authority.
One of the great temptations of a nation is the debasement of its currency. Kings wage war and rack up debt. And they have to find ways to pay for these expenses. And one of the ways they do is to create more money by fiddling with the money units.
For instance, the Roman Empire began by minting good money. The coins were made of 90% pure silver. But over time they began to lower the amount of silver in their coins. When coins would circulate back they would melt them down and make new coins—ones that looked virtually the same. Except when they remade them they would be mixed with other metals. They could make more coins, but there was less silver in each one coin. Towards the end of the Roman Empire many of the coins did not even have 50% silver content. That’s like taking one of those very first coins that were made and cutting it in half.
Now what can you buy with a coin that has lost much of its worth? If one of the original coins which was made with real silver could by you a lollipop. How much would you have to pay to get that lollipop with a coin that had lost half of its silver? It would take at least two coins now, wouldn’t it?
I point this out because this is exactly what is happening in America today. It used to be that our money was backed by gold. As a matter of fact the word dollar is a unit of measurement. It was an indication of a certain amount of gold. But that is no longer the case. We do not have a gold standard anymore. What we have essentially done is taken all the gold out of our dollars. We’ve gone beyond the what the Roman Empire has done because their coins at least had some silver in it. It was at least backed by some precious metal. So it had some objective worth. Our money doesn’t have any backing by any precious metal. Its value is only found in what value we give it.
But we also have this thing called the Federal Reserve. And part of what the Fed does is print money. They inject more coins (so to speak) into the market. Thousands and thousands of dollars without any gold backing are flushed into the system.
What do you think is going to happen to your lollipop that you want to buy? The price is going to continue to climb higher and higher.
This is what we call inflation. It is the modern day’s way of having a false balance and scales because it makes you have to pay more for the things you want.
The point of all this is that the kings of the earth are to follow God’s standards. Last week we said rulers are given power by God, but here it is saying that those rulers have limits to their power. They are not in a position where they can play God and exert their power to create money or create a their own shifting standards. They are not to manufacture their own arbitrary standards to suit their convenience.
The Bible speaks to this issues quite a bit. There are a number of places where it talks about judgment coming on the nation because their money had become worthless. It was all a way of saying, “You destroyed God’s standard, now you yourselves will be destroyed.”
We Are Kings
Last time we were together I pointed out that the idea of kings doesn’t just apply to the world of the civil government. There are all kinds of kings. We talked about elders and we basically said that they are ecclesiastical kings. We also talked about parents and said they are the kings who rule their homes.
We could apply this passage in those different categories too. Elders have a standard for measuring Christians. It is God’s law. They are not allowed to make their own standards and make admittance to the church based on their own opinions. For instance, you can’t bar someone from the church because they don’t do courtship.
The same could be said for parents. Parents are not allowed to change the standards on their kids.
But I want to talk about how we are all rulers to some degree. Every time we make a judgment, we are acting like an authority. And the decisions we make in life have to be made on the basis of a standard. If we don’t, the whole of society becomes defunct. Society is ruined if we think that we can begin to fudge the lines that God has drawn.
Think about this when it comes to the whole gender issue today. People are starting to say you can determine your own gender or create your own pronouns. What they are doing is exactly the same as a nation who creates their own money without any respect to the standards God has set. They are playing god with the whole idea of sexuality.
We’ve come up with this whole LGBTQ. The Q is key. It means questioning. They are questioning their gender. They have no clue what it is. You know why? It is because they are completely confused. The standard has been thrown out. Everyone now says you can define your own and some people just don’t know who they are or what they should be because they have no means of measuring themselves. This is why Romans 1 says they traded the truth of God for a lie. And our nation is spiraling out of control when it comes to sexuality. People’s lives are being wrecked. It is sexual dross—the debasing of sexuality. The beauty of femininity and the dignity of masculinity are being completely destroyed because we have thrown out the gold standard of Genesis 1:27: “male and female he created them.”
The Scales of Justice will Tip
It is important to remember that a just scale is God’s. The weights are His work. This is important because it reminds us that we’ll all one day be measured in the balance of God.
Why is this verse put here? It is to remind us that God is fair when it comes to measuring. He is the most precise in His measurements. And he will not allow the scale to be anything but balanced. When he demands payment—when the wages of our work come due, he requires payment in full.
In the book of Lamentations Jeremiah talks about how the “gold had become dim.” It was a reference to how a gold coin was debauched—the money system—the gold coins, were no longer bright because of all the other metals in it. But Jeremiah was talking about the people. They were created as gold. They were supposed to shine with brilliance as God’s pure and spotless people. But their apostasy had made them a defiled people. The gold had become dim. They as a people were now worthless.
What is the worth of a nation who’s money has the same value as a few sheets of toilet paper? God’s going to weight those kings and they will find that they themselves have are worthless people.
And God will do the same to every other person in this world. When Christ come again he is going to weigh them in the balance. And everyone who has cheated the system of his standards will be weighed in the balance, and they will be found wanting.
But this is the good news of the gospel. Jesus Christ provided the full payment to God. The life of Christ was perfect. He didn’t defile God’s standard. And that’s why he is the perfect payment for sin. He balances the scales in God’s eyes. And that’s why we say that there is life and salvation through Him. When we repent of our sins and look to Christ, the weight of his life is put in the balance for us. He stands in our place on those scales and God accepts us because of the full measure of His righteousness.
But you know what repentance is. It is the admission that I’m not going to play God anymore. It is admitting that you have cheated the system and have not lived by the right standards. It is saying that I’m no longer going to do that. I’m going to live by God’s rule now; I’m going to respect his standards.
And when a person does that, God grants them grace—the riches of his grace.
_____________________________
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/27/us/study-finds-frequent-cheating-at-the-gas-pump.html