“The Lord detests the use of dishonest scales, but he delights in accurate weights” (Proverbs 11:1)
Weights and measures. They are the uniform standards ascribed to the quantity, capacity, volume, or dimensions of anything. We use them every day. Inches, feet, yards, miles, pounds, pints, quarts, gallons. They help us to know how many pounds of roast we need to feed four people. They help us balance our checkbooks. They tell us how much further our car will run on a near empty gas tank. They show us how many pounds that piece of chocolate cake added to our mass.
Weights and measures have been around for centuries. The Hebrews regularly used them, calling them avanim. They would carry around small stones in bags and place them on one side of a scale to determine the values, weights, and quantities of what they were buying. Sadly however, it did not take long for false measurements and altered weights to show up on the scene. These counterfeit values were used by corrupt merchants to make an item appear to be heavier or greater than it was.
Altered weights not only corrupt people; they also corrupt civilizations. When a civilization redefines its values away from God and His created order; as well as alters its measures of morality in order to conform to its own will and desires – it is dealing in false weights and measures.
Altered weights and measures in a society will modify every standard of that society. The society will end up twisting good into evil, life into death, male into female, sacred into profane. Left to their evil devices, the distortion will even affect the standards of those who once embraced the truth of Scripture. This, my friends, is what we are seeing and have been seeing happen to America. God’s standards being set aside. Honest weights and measures being distorted into evil practices and standards.
So, the question we must each ask ourselves is this – How do we as followers of Jesus Christ escape the corruption of altered weights and measurements? And our answer is simple: Never change the truth to fit your will. Change your will to fit the truth. Never bend the Word of God to fit your life. Bend your life to fit the Word of God. And lastly, beware of false standards. Stay far away from them. Weigh your life and your values by the One who is absolute Truth.
Let us not forget King Belshazzar’s banquet in Daniel chapter 5. With thousands of dignitaries present, one uninvited guest showed up. That party crasher was God. And he had a message for the King and his society. So, he inscribed these words of judgment on the wall – “You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.” Corrupt weights and measures ultimately produce divine judgment.
Darlene