Jeff Durbin: The Evil & Expression of Unequal Weights & Measures

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If you would open your Bibles to the book of Proverbs chapter 11. Proverbs chapter 11, we're in our series and expositional working through verse by verse through God's book of divine wisdom.

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We call this series Wisdom from Above because that's exactly what this is. These are the words of God.

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How do we live? How do we skillfully work out God's truth, God's knowledge, the knowledge that comes from God?

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And so Proverbs chapter 11, verse 1, hear now the word of the living and the true

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God. A false balance is an abomination to the

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Lord, but a just weight is his delight. Thus far as the reading of God's holy and inspired word, let's pray as God's people.

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Father, we come to you as your people that you loved with an everlasting love.

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You chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, and we'd be holy and blameless before you.

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And so Lord, we come before you. You've guided our steps. You're the sovereign. You sustain all things.

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You've put us into this place. You've given us your word. We're indwelt by your spirit.

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And God, I pray, please today, teach, convict by your spirit, renew our minds, allow us to be people that don't merely profess to love you, trust you, and desire to obey and walk in wisdom, but allow us to be a people,

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Lord, that stand on your truth, your law, your wisdom. So many of us,

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Father, have been in your Son for a long time, and yet we've never been transformed in this area.

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Lord, do the work that only you could do today in us for your glory, for your kingdom, that we would be light to the world, and that it would overcome darkness, and that this world would be filled with your justice, your knowledge, your truth, your wisdom.

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We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. This is God's wisdom, skillfully applying

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God's truth, God's knowledge, and it's interesting because before you get to the book of Proverbs, you should already be familiar.

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If you've done a through -the -Bible reading plan through the year, or you've opened the Bible and said, I'm gonna try to read all the way through it, you're familiar with this particular principle already.

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You've seen it in the law, you've seen it in the prophets, and you see it in this wisdom.

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Skillfully applied. How do we live out God's truth, the knowledge that God gives to us?

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And so this isn't unfamiliar to you, and as a matter of fact, later, just do a word search.

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You can even Google it, or if you have any Bible software, and you can find the amount of times that God speaks about unequal weights and measures.

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Look, it's throughout Scripture, you see it in terms of its emphasis falling into the area of partiality.

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This is something that God prizes. The latter part of the verse here, think of what it says here, but a just weight is his delight.

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God takes pleasure in an honest standard, in holding to the truth, in holding to an honest weight, an honest standard.

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He takes pleasure in it. Now I want to argue, I think, as a part of this, in terms of God's pleasure in a just weight, in an honest standard,

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I want to argue that if we were created to glorify God and to enjoy him forever, as our catechism says, right?

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What is man's primary purpose? What is man's chief end? What is it? To glorify

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God and to enjoy him forever. Part of that enjoying God is delighting in God, yes, and amen, because he is truly worthy of that pleasure and that delight, but it's also in delighting in the things that God himself is pleased in.

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And what God says is that he takes pleasure in, he delights in a just weight, an honest standard.

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Now, let's be honest, you walk into church on a Sunday, it's extraordinarily hot in here right now, and you think,

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OK, are we going to sit here for three hours and listen? Just kidding, OK. Are we going to sit here and listen to something about a weight, and that's really meaningful?

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Like, not many people today in modern evangelicalism would want to come to a message about honest weights and standards, and not many people would want to sit in the

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Arizona desert. Why do we live here, by the way? In a place that's hot like this, with an old air conditioning system, to listen to a sermon on an honest weight?

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Let's be honest, we have very little concern. Let's just have integrity about it. How much has this been on your minds?

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How much of your Christian experience and your walk with the Savior has this been a, a place of emphasis for you?

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For any of us? To think about the fact that we have very little concern for this particular principle or this truth.

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Equal weights that God delights in them, that God actually abominates and detests.

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He loathes unequal weights. That is to say, double standards.

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Double standards in business or commerce or in the marketplace. Double standards in law and justice.

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Unequal weights and measures in law and in justice. Unequal weights in the moral demands that we make upon others but we don't apply to ourselves.

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Unequal weights and measures, God abominates them, He detests them, He loathes them when it comes to showing partiality or personal favoritism.

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Unequal weights and measures, double standards even in argumentation and the arguments that we stand on, the things that we say in arguing for our position or our case.

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Just consider the fact that God detests when you are illogical, when you have double standards in your thinking, even if you think you're doing it for a righteous cause, that God detests it because God's not like that.

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See this particular verse, and it's, again, it's everywhere, law, prophets, wisdom, and the teaching of Jesus, this particular verse has extensions that go throughout our personal experiences out there in the civil realm, in the public square, in how we think, in how we reason, in how we interact with one another.

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This is a foundational thing and God says He detests it. God speaks from on high,

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He reveals Himself to us with certainty and He tells us the way that He's made the world, the way that He has actually made us, and more importantly, the way that He actually is.

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He's not double -minded. He doesn't show personal favoritism. He has a single standard, a righteous standard.

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He doesn't contradict Himself and He's showing us in His Word here that wisdom, divine wisdom, you want to look like me?

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You want to live in a way that I've made you to live? You want to live your life in a way that's glorifying to me?

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You want to find true delight and true pleasure? Here's how you walk this out. No false balances.

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No unequal weights and measures. Wisdom is God's truth or knowledge applied. And so you see in the law, the law speaks to this.

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We'll get to that in a little bit here. The law of God speaks explicitly to this. You see it in wisdom.

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It's throughout the book of Proverbs. And you see it in the teaching of the Lord Jesus and I'm going to show you an expression of this in the teaching of the

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Lord Jesus that we all understand, but this is the connection point. Go quickly to Matthew chapter 7,

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New Testament book, the first, if you're new to your Bibles, first New Testament book,

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Matthew chapter 7, something that everyone's familiar with in the teaching of the Lord Jesus, including secularists and unbelievers.

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This is a famous one. Matthew 7 verse 12, the

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Lord Jesus says, so whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets.

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Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. Jesus is saying this is a summary of the law and the prophets, the summary of the law and the prophets, including equal weights and measures that God detests, unequal weights and measures, a false weight.

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So you see it there in wisdom incarnate. He expresses this principle that is found throughout the

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Old Testament Scriptures. You see, here's the problem when we approach a text like this, Proverbs 11 verse 1.

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The problem is, if we're honest, you see we have our favorite hated sins, the sins that we jointly together detest and we abominate alongside

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God. These are the sins in Christian communities that you can anticipate Christians will, faithful Christians, solid biblical

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Christians will detest, hate, loathe, and heap scorn upon. We have our favorite hated sins and we also have, if we're honest, our respectable or our accepted sins.

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The sins that we actually tolerate in ourselves and maybe in our favorite group, our click in the body, the sins that we tolerate, whether it's the gossip or the slander or the backbiting or the bitterness or the lack of forgiveness, whatever it may be, we have the sins that are our tolerated or respectable sins and we have the sins that we generally agree with God on.

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We generally agree with God on. You see, unequal weights is one of our favorite sins.

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Unequal weights is one of our favorite sins. And oftentimes we're so committed to this being a respectable sin that we don't even consider it really sin or pay very much attention to it.

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When it comes to defrauding our neighbors in business transactions, over -promising things, under -delivering things, the double standards that we have in our thinking, the double standards we have in our relationships, the double standards that we have for ourselves versus the sins of another.

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And, of course, the sin that we respect in showing personal favoritism to our group or to our friend or to our favorite person, personal favoritism.

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Just think about this, what God abominates, loathes, and detests, and the sins that we actually agree with Him on, generally speaking, homosexuality, that perversion.

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We're quick to go to Leviticus 18, 22, or Leviticus 20, verse 13, where God condemns the sexual perversion of a man lying with a man, or a woman lying with a woman.

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God calling it detestable and saying that He actually is judging and driving out the nations surrounding

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Israel for their practicing those things. It's not a sin that He's just saying, just for you,

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Israel, I'm concerned. He's saying that this is my law, here's the order of creation, don't do these things,

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I find them loathsome, detestable, I abominate them, and I'm actually driving out those foreign nations for doing those very things.

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We generally agree with God, wouldn't you say so? If you're in the conservative Christian church anywhere in the

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West, a solid, at least moderately solid church, you're gonna have them saying, this is a sin, this is a perversion, and we abominate it just like God.

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There's other sins that we abominate, loathe, and detest just like God.

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We agree with God on this. In terms of the book that we're in, Proverbs, go back to Proverbs 6.

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We were here, but just reminding all of us, there are things that God does hate, and we generally agree with Him on these things.

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Seven things that God hates, Proverbs chapter 6, starting in verse 16, it says, there are six things that the

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Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to Him. There's that word, abomination. We agree with it again,

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Leviticus 18, Leviticus 20, we agree, but He says, here are other things that I detest,

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I loathe, I abominate. Haughty eyes, we say, agreed, God. Get those prideful people.

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A lying tongue, we certainly don't like when others lie about us. And hands that shed innocent blood, well, of course,

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God. We agree with you on the murderers. We don't want people shedding innocent blood.

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A heart that devises wicked plans, we agree, Lord. Feet that make haste to run to evil, we agree with you,

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God. A false witness who breathes out lies, we agree with you, God, and one who sows discord among brothers, sometimes, but generally will agree.

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We agree with God in Proverbs chapter 11, verse 20, where God again says, those of crooked hearts are an abomination to the

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Lord, but those of blameless ways are His delight. He's pleased in the blameless.

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But the crooked hearts are loathsome, detestable, and we say,

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God, we agree with you. The crooked -hearted people, abominate them, we loathe them alongside you.

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Proverbs 12, verse 22, another example of God detesting something.

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He says, lying lips are an abomination to the Lord. God detests. He loathes liars, people who lie, people who don't speak the truth to their neighbor, people who bear false witness, and we recognize, of course, the foundation of that is

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God cannot lie. That's what the scriptures say. God doesn't lie. He can't lie.

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He can't engage in logical contradiction. God doesn't defraud people. God doesn't have double standards. God tells the truth.

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He speaks the truth and only the truth, and so we say, God, we agree with you.

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Abominate those lying lips. And then we look at Proverbs 16, Proverbs 16, verse 5.

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The text says, everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the

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Lord. Be assured, he will not go unpunished. We look at that and we say,

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God, we agree with you. The prideful in heart, the arrogant in heart, yes, God, abominate them. That's loathsome.

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We can't accept that, God. We agree with you. Another example in the book of Proverbs of what

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God says he did to us is Proverbs 17, 15. You're familiar with this. We are as a church because we've had to speak to it often in terms of confronting out there what's going on around us.

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Proverbs 17, 15 says, he who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the

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Lord. So here's a list of a couple things, some things that we agree with God on, agreed?

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We look at those, we say, those are an abomination, God. We see that's against your holiness, against your character.

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You abominate those things. We loathe these things alongside you, God. But God speaks to something,

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I think, that if we're honest with ourselves, it's not something we've spent many of us a lot of time dwelling upon.

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God changed my heart in this area. Break me. Help me to put this to death, mortify this in my life and my thinking and my relationships.

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God says that he detests unequal weights and measures. You've seen Proverbs 11, verse 1.

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Now move to Proverbs 20. Same book of wisdom, Proverbs 20, verse 10 says this, unequal weights and unequal measures are both alike an abomination to the

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Lord. He detests them. Same chapter, verse 23.

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It says unequal weights are an abomination to the Lord and false scales are not good.

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Now to get into this, what exactly does this mean? It's difficult for us in a way because we're not doing a lot of this today like they did in the marketplace or in commerce then where it was commonplace.

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Everyone had to deal with this. You had scales. You had to weigh things out. You had to trade things whether it was silver, whether it was gold, money, it could have been flour, it could have been grain for some other product and you had to deal with the honesty of the marketplace and not defrauding the neighbor.

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You had to have honest scales and if you're going to a marketplace somewhere and you'd never met the guy or the girl before, you have to trust this person is going to have enough integrity to have an honest weight or an honest scale.

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In Proverbs 20, go to 10, look what it says here. I think it's the best way to address this.

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It says this, unequal weights and unequal measures are both alike an abomination to the

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Lord. The text literally is saying a stone and a stone, an effa and an effa.

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A stone and a stone. So that's what it says. Ready? Unequal weights. A stone and a stone.

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What does that mean? A stone and a stone? It doesn't mean a lot to us today because again, we're not doing a lot of our commerce and our trade with scales and having to depend upon the integrity of another person in front of us to weigh that out properly with the right stone.

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In this day, the way that you would handle this kind of trade is you had to do it with a stone.

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The stone would represent a certain weight. And what is happening here in the text is

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God is actually loathing and detesting the person that actually has two stones.

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They have a true weight, one that represents the actual weight, and then they've got what could be called a secret stone, a separate stone in their bag.

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The one weight is being used for their benefit. The person with the stone and the stone has a weight that's used for their benefit.

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They're defrauding their neighbor. They're lying about the transaction. They're weighting it heavily for themselves, and they've got another stone.

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Maybe it's a stone that looks exactly like it. They've worked at it. They found one that looked a lot like it, but it's lighter.

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Maybe they did something to the stone to shave off some weight, but they've got two stones.

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So the text says what is an abomination to God is to have two stones, one stone that's the true thing, it's the weight in your favor, and the other stone that's a fraudulent stone.

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It's a fiction. It's meant to defraud your neighbor. It's weighted to your side.

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You know the old saying, right? You've tipped the scales, what? In your favor.

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You've tipped the scale in your favor. You've got one standard for you that's going to benefit you or benefit somebody you're working with, somebody you're showing personal favoritism towards.

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You've got two people. You're using it for this person, your favorite. You're partial to this one. You regard their face more than the other, and you've got the other stone that's a lighter stone, and you're going to use that to defraud your neighbor.

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And so the text is about tipping the scales in your favor, a stone and a stone.

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And again, here we are in the book of Proverbs. It's God's wisdom. They've all heard this before.

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It's nothing new. But now God is saying further, I abominate that. I delight in a just weight.

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What's all this about rocks? All this stuff about rocks, and how does it apply to us today?

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Well, I want you to see it. Go to Leviticus 19. Leviticus, your favorite book,

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I'm sure. Leviticus 19 and verse 35.

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This is from the law of God. It says in verse 35, you shall do no wrong in judgment, in measures of length or weight or quantity.

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You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hen.

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And he reminds them why. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

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He's telling his people, you're to have the right standard, not double standards. You're to have a just weight.

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And let me remind you as to why. Because I'm the Lord your God. I redeemed you from your slavery.

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I brought you out of Egypt. You belong to me. This is how you will live. You will not defraud your neighbor.

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You will love your neighbor as you love yourself. You will not scheme and plot and try to injure somebody.

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You will not have one weight and standard for yourself and a different weight for somebody else.

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And so God in his law says, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

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Here's how you are to live. This is my law with your neighbor. This is, by the way, if you're in Leviticus 19, at the end of the chapter here, this is just another version of what's already been said in 19.

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Go to verse 11. He says this in verse 11. You shall not steal.

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You shall not deal falsely. You shall not lie to one another. You shall not swear by my name falsely until we're saying the name of your

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God. I am the Lord. Did you notice that this is just essentially another version of just weights and measures.

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God says you shall not steal. If you're using false weights, what are you doing? You're stealing from your neighbor.

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You should not lie to one another. What are you doing when you have one standard for yourself and another one for somebody else?

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You're lying to one another. You shall not deal falsely with one another.

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So you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. There's the standard. You should not lie. A false weight is to engage in lying to your neighbor, abusing your neighbor.

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This can be shown throughout the Bible, but another text you can write down for later as a reference to go look at is Micah chapter 6, verses 10 through 11.

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But here to begin unpacking this and to think through this as God's people. Double standards are sinful.

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Double standards are sinful. A stone and a stone. One weight for you, one weight for others.

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A stone and a stone is displeasing to God. A stone and a stone is something that God detests.

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Why? Because God is not like that. God doesn't have double standards. He doesn't lie.

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God shows no personal favoritism and no partiality, Romans chapter 2, verse 11. God doesn't have conflicting standards.

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God is the just God. God cannot lie. And so a stone and a stone is detestable to God, first and foremost, because that's not how

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God is. When God judges on the last day, he will use a single standard, the same standard.

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He will not be double -minded. He's going to show no personal favoritism. God's not like us with his pet sins and favorite sins.

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God's not like us with our purposeful blind spots. The things we say we hate in others, but we practice, if you're honest, you practice it all the time.

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We condemn others for gossip within the body of Christ, and then we turn our backs after condemning a sister or brother in Christ for gossiping, and we hold a different weight for ourselves.

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We have a different standard. We go off and slander them, ruin their reputation, talk bad about them, and we make excuses.

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This is only my small circle. It's just my family. And what is that? It's a double standard.

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It's a stone and a stone. You've got one weight for you and one weight for somebody else, and that's why

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God detests it. That's why it's loathsome. But if we think about this, how are unequal weights and measures expressed?

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Now I have to confess something. This was actually very difficult to do. This is very difficult to do to not turn this into six months on unequal weights and measures.

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Hard to do, and I resisted with all my might to put it into one message, okay?

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And I wanted to do this in a way that was clear in terms of, well, how does a stone and a stone and unequal weights and measures get expressed in our lives?

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And so let's start with the obvious, what we all understand, right? We were talking about the marketplace. We're talking about commerce.

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We're talking about trade. You've got the scale. You've got the stone and a stone. You've got the person who has the real weight, and they're making sure that it's a weight that's going to benefit them, and then they've got the other weight, the false weight that they're using to defraud their neighbor.

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You and I deal with this every day, and praise God for the Christian worldview, seriously.

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Thank God for the Christian worldview and Moses and God's law and God's wisdom. You better thank

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God for it every single day, because you don't live in a society living according to atheistic presuppositions when you and I go pump gas at the pump.

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Every single day, you and I engage with the just weights and measures, and you assume that the person

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I'm purchasing from right now is going to honor and glorify God in that when

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I stick this thing in the tank and I'm pumping, those numbers better match, right?

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You've made a deal. You advertised on the sign an obscene price for gasoline, right?

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And so we go, well, whatever, I've got to get around, and I certainly am not walking in Phoenix, and so I'm going to pump some gas.

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And you go and you say, okay, the deal is on the sign right now, it's this amount of money for this amount of gas.

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Per gallon is that much. And you go to the tank, you open it up, put your card in, you slip that into the car, and you are watching those numbers move.

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And what are you depending upon? Not atheism, not atheistic presuppositions.

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You're depending upon the good old fashioned Christian worldview, amen? That the person who is adjusting these has not weighted the scale to just get a little bit more.

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And you know, and I know, in history, just in this last generation, how many times people have been caught and fined and punished because they've tipped the scales in their favor and they defrauded their customers.

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And listen, this from Moses and from Solomon has so infected Western society that you and I just assume the goodness of God's law every day in commerce and in the marketplace that this person had better get the scale right.

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Why? Because Moses says. Because Solomon says.

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Because God says. So praise the Lord for this wisdom, amen? Yes? But you deal with it further every day.

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You're dealing with not just the gas pump. Ladies, all my bread makers, you're dealing with flour and poundage and ounces all the time.

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You know, you guys are all in these little bread making groups and you're like, use this precise amount.

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You have a standard. You use this precise amount to get this outcome and you'll see some woman in church that's like brand new at this and she's taking pictures of it and you're like, oh, that's cute.

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You know, sorry. You're learning, right, that there's a, I'm sorry ladies,

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I'm just joking, okay. You're learning there's a standard, a certain amount of salt, a certain amount of water, a certain amount of starter, a certain amount of flour and you're like working with this standard and you know that you have to hold to the standard, but then you know also in order to get that whole thing in motion, you had to trust a company that was telling you that in this bag for this amount of money,

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I'm giving you this much grain or I'm giving you this much flour.

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So all glory to God for Moses and Solomon, amen? That our society functions based upon a bedrock principle that's unmovable is that you say that you're giving me this amount for this much money.

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I expect you to have integrity and that you don't have two stones. Don't lie to me.

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And we recognize it every single day and all we do in every business transaction. Somebody saying

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I'll give you this for this amount of money and we expect that you will have a true weight.

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It will not be unequal weights and measures. You'll be honest. You have integrity. We demand that.

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Just think about it in terms of unequal weights and measures in false advertising, in false advertising.

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You know, it's interesting because today, this may be one area I was thinking, maybe one area that actually we let people be loose with today, false advertising, right?

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You're saying, I'm going to give you this for this amount of money.

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This is my product. Here's what my product will do for you, with you, or this is how it will bless your life, or fix your home, or whatever the case may be.

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You make a promise, but then oftentimes, people don't actually follow through with that or they're selling you something that's not actually good.

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It wasn't what was promised. Whether it was in your home, something to do with your roof, something to do with your house, something to do with your car, false advertising is a sin because it engages in the nature of unequal weights and measures.

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Two stones, two stones, one standard for you and a false standard for the other.

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You're not giving a proper exchange. You're lying in the transaction. And we recognize that we could even say today, that's false advertising.

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You're not giving what you've promised. You're lying in the transaction. You're not giving me the weight of what you actually promised.

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So false advertising is another area of unequal weights and measures. Christians shouldn't engage in it.

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If you have a business, no matter what it is, if it's food, if it's medical, if it's housing, if it's cars, if it's services, whatever it is, don't lie to your neighbor.

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Don't defraud your neighbor. Unequal weights and measures are an abomination to God, not two stones, one standard, an honest standard.

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You give people what they're paying for. Amen? No false advertising from Christians.

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I had an experience with this myself when I was owning karate schools and teaching karate.

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I had such a strong commitment. So many of you guys are just like this in your businesses. I talk to you guys.

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You want to have the highest quality, the best standards. You want to give people the best thing to bless their life.

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And that's how we should live as Christians, right? Whatever you do, in word or in deed, do all what? For the glory of God.

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Give people the very best. Bless people's lives. Give people what you want done for you and your product and your service.

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Well, that's how I was for martial arts. I was raised with some of the best teachers on the planet.

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I was raised with a rigorous commitment to quality. I was raised with an honor and a respect for the arts.

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And that you're actually teaching people things that will bless their life and help them and you're giving them something and you're making promises in a way.

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You're saying, here's a technique. Here's how you're supposed to use it so you can protect yourself and your family.

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That's how this technique is done. It needs to be done in this way. This is the best way for it to be done. And I worked so hard to develop a school where we had the highest quality martial artists in my school.

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As I raised my school from zero to the first time I brought my students to the biggest national tournament in the world, in our area of the martial arts.

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I brought 20 students, every one of them came home with a first place trophy at that first national they ever went to, all of them.

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I had such a pride about we need to do our very best with this and honor this arts.

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And so one day I have a guy come in and he says, hey, this seems like you're doing really well, very successful.

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He said, would you be willing to think about franchising? I said, franchising like another martial arts school, like my name and my school?

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He said, yeah. And he offered to pay me tens of thousands of dollars to use my name, the name of my school, which had a great name in this area, high quality, well known.

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Very respected. He said, if I can buy your name and you can teach me how to do this martial arts school thing,

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I will pay you and I'll pay you kickbacks as well in perpetuity. And I said to him,

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I said, who would teach? Cuz I'm the only guy here now doing all the teaching.

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So who would teach at this new school that you're talking about? He said, well, I would.

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And I looked at this guy up and down from toe to forehead. And I thought to myself, this guy is a bit over the hill, not in shape.

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And I said to him, I said, I wasn't aware you had done martial arts before. He said,

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I haven't. I said, so what would happen with this school where you take my name and you open a business and you take money from people to teach them martial arts?

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Who would teach? Well, I would. And I said, you would teach classes? You've never done martial arts?

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He said, well, you could teach me some and then as we're moving along, I could be teaching them what you're teaching me.

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And I said, I would never, ever defraud people like that. I would never do it.

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I said, I find that offensive that you would even suggest such a thing, that you're gonna take hundreds of dollars a month from families to give them something that you don't even know how to do.

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And he got very offended and I had actually called the police to have him removed from my school, so that's another part of the story.

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But I told him it was offensive to me that he would defraud neighbor by giving them something, promising something he wasn't actually gonna deliver.

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And months later, about six months later, I was driving down the road miles away from my school, and I saw a new karate school popped up.

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And I drove by, I said, I wonder who this is. And lo and behold, as I drove by, guess who was inside teaching on the mat?

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That guy, that guy, with a karate uniform on and a black belt on.

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And I found out that he had gone to another local martial arts franchise near me, offered the guy tens of thousands of dollars.

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The guy said, yep, I'll take that. And he taught him how to open his own karate school, and he ran a martial arts program, stealing money from his neighbor.

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There's an example of false weights. There's an example of lying in the transaction, false advertising.

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Bonson was speaking about this particular thing, and this is something most older people are familiar with in here. You're familiar with the phrase,

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Bonson reminded me, of the buyer beware, right? What's that mean, buyer beware?

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The assumption is, is that you, the buyer, are the one that's supposed to be aware of the fact that you could be defrauded and all the rest.

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You sort of accept the fact that buyer beware, you could be being lied to. And the answer is yes, you could be being lied to, but we should really change that to not, in God's eyes, buyer beware, but this, according to God, seller beware.

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Seller beware, because there is a judge at the end of human history that will face you down for all your lying in business and trade and commerce and transactions.

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Seller beware, God is a just God, and he doesn't have dueling standards or double standards, he will answer everybody who defrauds their neighbor in commerce and in transactions, so don't over -promise and under -deliver.

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Don't lie to your neighbor. Don't have two stones. But unequal weights and measures also finds an expression, and most of us understand this,

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I think, instinctively, in law and in justice. Like, just consider this. You don't have to do a lot of convincing to your neighbor around you today because of William Wilberforce, because of the

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Christian abolitionists in the 19th century and all the hard work that they did, because of the work behind us, gospel work behind us, today you don't have to do a lot of convincing to people in the

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West that slavery is reprehensible, that slavery is a moral evil and an abomination, right?

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Slavery is evil. What was taking place in slavery, fundamentally, that was so evil?

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Two stones. Injustice. That black man, that black woman, is my brother and sister in Christ.

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They are made in the Imago Dei. They are human like me. We come from the same parents.

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That's what people were supposed to believe and teach and practice. And yet, in this nation,

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God forgive us, there were people who even professed the name of Christ who looked at our black brothers and sisters and said, one weight for me and one weight for you.

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In relationship, in law, and in justice, the perverse ways that unequal weights and measures made it way into our system of law and government are astonishing in terms of looking at our black brothers and sisters and saying,

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I have one weight, they have one weight. Two stones, one for me, one for them.

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God says detestable, it's an abomination. So we recognize, because of the work of the abolitionists,

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Christians, the preachers, Christians who spoke against that evil, we recognize slavery is an abomination, it's detestable, because what is it?

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It's unequal weights and measures, it's a false balance. You should have justice.

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What? What? Justice is blind. You know the statues, you know the portrayals of justice with the scales.

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What are the scales supposed to signify? Equal weights, a true balance, no false weights.

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Justice is supposed to be blind. But we look back at slavery and say, how did we ever get to such an abominable situation that people treated our black brothers and sisters in this way?

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But further today, you can move into today, the abortion issue, it's the same problem.

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Why is it detestable? Because it's a false weight, it's a false measure, it's unequal scales.

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And how so? For the pro -choicer, what do they say? The pro -choicer says what?

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Here's the argument. My body, what? My choice. So here's my weight.

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This is my argument. My body, my choice. I'm a woman who is a human being.

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I have autonomy over my own body and my own future. You can't do things to my body against my will.

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You must have my permission. As a human being, I have rights. I'm to be respected.

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Nobody can take my life in an unjustified manner. That's the weight they're holding for themselves.

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And then they look at the image bearer of God in the womb. The developing woman in the womb.

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And they say, a different stone for you, sweetheart. One weight for me, one weight for you.

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My body, my choice applies to me, but it will not apply to you. I can do to your body whatever

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I please. I can infringe on your rights however I like. I can perpetrate any injustice upon you to even the degree of decapitating, disemboweling you.

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Because my body, my choice is my weight. You get the lesser weight.

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There's the unequal weights and measures in law and justice. Now here's another example of how we all experience this and you felt so much like this is so obviously not right.

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You're so foolish and it's just astonishing that it happens. And I pray to God that as God allowed us to walk through this, it'll never, ever happen again.

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During the pandemic, when that thing first came down, we almost got stuck in Scotland.

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We were raising up churches in Scotland for end abortion now. We almost got stuck there. We came back just in time for the lockdowns and they were telling churches, you need to stop meeting.

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They were telling all these other places, you need to stop meeting. And we met as pastors. We worked through all of God's law and God's wisdom and God's commands and the data that was in front of us.

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And we looked at it and we said, we're not closing. Not even once. We will not close.

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We will not bow. We will not yield because you are violating God's law and we reject it.

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Now we knew at the time there could be consequences. There may not be consequences, but we said we will not close down the worship of God's, with God's people.

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We won't do it. Now, other men who took a stand, even not closed,

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God commands us to worship. We're worshiping, we're gathering. We reject what you're trying to do. And we have brothers who went to jail, prison, people who were fined and threatened by their government.

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And even recently the film that's come out with Dr. John MacArthur, what's the name of that film? Essential Church.

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Essential Church talks about what took place. Now watch, why was that so loathsome and detestable?

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Because all of us recognize that during the lockdowns, people were permitted by mayors and state governments to riot all they pleased, to burn things down, destroy their neighbor, to fight in the streets, to gather unmasked in the streets, to protest side by side, to chant and sing their anthems in the streets.

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People recognized, wait a minute, how come they're allowed to riot? How come they're allowed to protest?

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How come the weed shops are open? How come the strip clubs are allowed to be open?

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And how come Planned Parenthood is an essential service, but not the gathering of God's people?

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We all recognize how that's detestable and abominable in God's sight and to us when we walk through a government that had one stone for their favorites and another stone for the church.

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Unequal weights and measures are an abomination in God's eyes and all of us just experienced it.

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Some people are still feeling the weight of it and dealing with the consequences. Now, here's another example of the expression of the evil of unequal weights and measures, a stone for me and a different stone for you.

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In moral demands, unequal weights and measures in our moral demands, you indict others, as I said, for gossip.

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You wouldn't want them doing it about you. If you caught them, you'd confront them. If you caught them, you'd run and tell somebody.

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If you caught them, you'd bring a brother or sister alongside you to go confront them if they wouldn't repent.

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That's how you feel about it in moral standards. One weight for you, but the truth is you gossip.

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You indict others for slander. If they were to do it to you, you'd indict them, you'd confront them, you'd challenge them.

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You've got one weight, here's the standard. But let's be honest, behind closed doors and in the right company, you make it an art.

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You indict others for homosexuality. You call it a perversion. You act horrified by it, but you watch porn.

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You decry transgenderism and sexual perversion, but maybe you're the professing

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Christian who lives with your girlfriends or your boyfriends. So you can talk all you want about all the drag show story hours and transgenderism and gender bending and all the sexual evil out there, but if you are living a sexually promiscuous lifestyle, you are living with unequal weights and measures morally.

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You've got one stone and another stone, a stone and a stone. God addresses this, go here quickly, in terms of this moral problem of unequal weights and measures in Romans chapter two.

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You're familiar with this. Most of us are already knowing what

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I'm gonna point out here in Romans chapter two, how this is applied. These double standards are applied in Romans.

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As Paul indicts the entire human race, he specifically zeroes in upon the

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Jew who has access to the oracles of God. They have God's word. They got the Bible, right?

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They believe the Bible, they got the Bible, they preach the Bible, they go to synagogue, they unroll that scroll, they hear the

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Bible, and Paul addresses them for their double standards.

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He says, verse one of Romans two, he says, therefore you have no excuse, oh man.

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Every one of you who judges for impassing judgment on another, you condemn yourself because you, the judge, practice the very same things.

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We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, oh man, you who judge those who practice such things, and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God?

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Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and the forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

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But because of your heart and impendence in heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.

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He will render to each one according to his works. So here's a particular text where the

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Apostle Paul is speaking about this standard, but he's showing its expression in how people will actually be religious, they'll profess faith in God, they'll be holding on to the scriptures, and they'll be condemning the practices of others when they are doing the very same things.

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And what's the answer from Paul? God doesn't have shifting standards. He doesn't have double standards. He's got a single standard, and he will judge accordingly.

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The law is not gonna save you. Being in the mere possession of it isn't gonna save you. Paul's whole point here is you're gonna need

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Jesus, you're gonna need a foreign righteousness, the gift of righteousness, but you're not gonna get here like this.

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We're all hypocrites. We're liars. We have two stones.

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We've got a stone for us and how it'll benefit us or benefit our favorite person or the team we're on, and we've got a different stone for someone else, and God says it's detestable.

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God takes pleasure in a true weight, a just weight. He delights in that.

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We should delight in that as God's people as well. Next, another expression of unequal weights.

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Two stones. It's expressed in partiality. I think partiality in personal relationship is one of the very best ways to get across the point of the equal weights and measures, a just weight.

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When two people are in conflict, we tend to pick our favorite one.

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We pick our team. Let's be honest, in the body of Christ, we do this. This is sin.

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We show partiality. We've got a body of believers that we all love together.

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We're all walking together with Christ, but you hear about two people that are in conflict with each other, and our first instinct is to firm up our commitments to our favorite face.

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We show partiality. We're not willing to give the benefit of innocence to both people until we have appropriate evidence.

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We pick our favorite team. Partiality literally is to regard the face.

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Showing partiality is to regard the face. James addresses it. You're familiar with this, right? James addresses it with the rich and the poor in church, right?

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You show partiality. It's wicked and sinful. You show partiality in the early church. You got these rich people treated like somehow they're more special and better than the poor people,

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James is saying this isn't from God. This is sinful. This is evil. You can't regard the face of the rich over the poor.

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That's two stones. That's dueling standards. That's double standards.

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That's partiality. You don't regard the face of your favorite person. What we tend to do with partiality is we give the weight to our favorite face.

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And let's talk about this. With unequal weights and measures, this is attestable to God. Can we be honest?

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We don't obey Proverbs 18, 17. Go there.

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I want you to see it. We don't obey Proverbs 18, 17, where the text says the one who states his case first seems right until the other comes and examines him.

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It's a foundation for cross -examination. It's a foundation for hearing both sides.

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And the truth is because of unequal weights and measures, because of false scales, we regard the face of our favorite person.

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We give them the weight. And we don't listen to Proverbs 18, 17 because let's be honest, we don't even need to.

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We already have our favorite face. This is my friend. This is the person I like the most.

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This is the person I'll side with. This is my team. It's partiality.

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It's unequal weights. So we don't need to obey Proverbs 18, 17 and hear both sides and hear the full story because we already have our favorite face.

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Let's be honest. We don't obey Proverbs 18, 13, where the text says if one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.

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It's shameful and foolish to give an answer before you've heard all that you need to hear, the full story, coming to conclusions before hearing, having a commitment before hearing the whole thing.

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We don't really obey Proverbs 18, 13 because let's be honest, we've already weighted the scales.

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I've already chosen the favorite face. I've already got the stone for this one and the stone for you.

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I'm already committed to partiality. So the answer, the true answer to our own hearts and minds when we behave like this is we have double standards, one stone for them and one stone for you or your friend or your favorite face.

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That's partiality and God says it's detestable. We should be of all people,

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God's people, with the law of God and God's wisdom, the people who have the most rigorous commitment to truth and justice and patience and putting to death partiality in our midst in every way.

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But finally, how does this unequal weights and measures and a stone and a stone work out in our thinking and how we argue?

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Double standards, it's a logical fallacy in argumentation. Double standards is a logical fallacy you'll learn about in any formal course on logic, on informal fallacies or formal logical fallacies, you'll learn about double standards.

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And don't you love it that in logical consistency, you must have consistency.

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You have to have a single standard and you can't contradict, you can't have two stones. So we need to be consistent in our thinking as Christians.

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We should be the ones most committed to the preservation of logic and consistency in our thinking.

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Why? Because God is logical, he cannot lie. God isn't double -minded.

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God doesn't have two stones and dueling standards in his thinking. So for example, can

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I just flesh this out in an easy way that probably, you know, fun for us because this is what we're engaged in a lot.

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When we are engaging with our Mormon friends and neighbors, the one we're all aware of, when you're talking to them and you say, how do you know with assurance, with certainty that Joseph Smith's a prophet of God and the

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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints is the one true church on earth, that it's the restoration? How do you know?

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What will they say to you every time? What? I prayed about it.

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I got a what in my bosom? Burning in my bosom. Okay, so let's take your standard, that's your weight.

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There's your argument. I know and I have certainty Joseph Smith's a prophet of God, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day

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Saints is the one true church on earth. I know it's true because I prayed about it. Great, there's your standard.

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Now, I'll try. Well, I prayed about Joseph Smith as a prophet of God and God revealed to me that he was a charlatan and a false prophet and a false teacher.

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He couldn't translate Reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics. He had false prophecies. He lied about God, he's a false prophet and the

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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints is a false church, a non -Christian cult that will lead you to hell. And I prayed about that and let me tell you what, it felt good.

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What will they say in response to my prayer? What will they say? Well, you probably weren't praying right or you probably didn't have like the real honest and tense, right?

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What do you have in that discussion in terms of standards of thinking and standards of reasoning?

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What are they saying? One stone for me and one stone for you.

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It's double standards and to God, that's loathsome to think like that.

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Christians, when we defend the Christian faith, we cannot stand on suspicious forms of argumentation.

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As Christians, we need to be the most committed to rigorous standards of consistency.

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One of the things that I've appreciated growing up, you've heard me say this before, growing up in the faith was

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Pastor James, watching him defend the Christian faith against all of the most difficult the world has to offer, whether it comes from Rome, whether it comes from atheism, whether it comes from the

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Watchtower or Mormonism. The one thing that I love so much is Pastor James taught me from a very young man that you must be consistent.

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You're not allowed to have double standards. You can't stand on suspicious forms of argumentation.

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You can't use one form of argumentation and reasoning for yourself and then not allow someone else to do it.

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If you get a chance, if you get a chance, if you have time this week, listen to, and there's a number of them,

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I'm not sure how many debates Pastor James has done with Muslims. Do you know the number of, stop, go ahead.

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About 40 debates with the world's leading Muslims, scholars and apologists. If you listen, one of the things that's a common theme in those debates where he's debating somebody on whether or not

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Paul was a prophet or whether or not you can trust the biblical transmitted texts in the

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New Testament. One of the things that comes up almost each and every single time is the double standard in argumentation with the

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Muslim. They will attack Paul. They will attack the New Testament. They will attack the transmission of the manuscript evidence, the free transmission of the text.

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They'll attack it with arguments that would actually turn around and destroy their position if they held to the same standard with the

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Quran. So what you see is even in argumentation, Christians are not supposed to be detestable in how they reason and how they think.

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We should not have double standards, be double -minded. We need to stand on the truth.

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Or I'll give you another one, just in terms of like how's this flesh out with double standards and unequal weights and measures, loathsome ways to reason.

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How about the atheists? Don't you love when you argue or debate with the atheists, you have a conversation and they start decrying all the evil done by Christians in history.

01:00:00

They start saying, oh, what about the Crusades? And what about the Salem witch trials?

01:00:06

And how about this failure of Christians in history, right? And they start piling on, look at this evil and oppressing other human beings and doing this.

01:00:14

And then you come to them and you say, is there actually objective morality?

01:00:22

And they go, no. Is anything actually true in your position?

01:00:28

No, it's just a social construct. So you're having one weight for yourself to argue against the gospel and God's word that all these

01:00:35

Christians have just broken some objective moral standard. They're so evil, they're so wrong. They've failed so terribly.

01:00:41

But when I challenge you as an atheist, you then go, well, I got a different stone for me. There's actually no such thing as morality.

01:00:48

It's all a social construct and anything goes. Do you see? The double -minded, the inconsistency, unequal weights and measures goes beyond law and justice.

01:00:59

It goes to every area of our lives. We should, when we read

01:01:05

God's promises, go there, let's finish the verse. 11, one, Proverbs 11, one.

01:01:11

We should read a false balance is an abomination to the Lord but a just weight is his delight.

01:01:20

As God calls us as his people to live like him, to live before his face like him, to live in such a way that we deal honestly with one another.

01:01:31

We don't lie to our neighbors. That we're consistent in the way that we think.

01:01:39

We're not double -minded. We don't have two stones, one for our benefit and a separate stone to defraud you.

01:01:49

We should in justice always and every time stand on equal weights and measures.

01:01:59

A just balance for every image bearer of God. There must be a single standard, not two stones.

01:02:09

We must put to death in ourselves and in our body partiality regarding the face of another, showing personal favoritism, picking our favorites and siding with them.

01:02:29

We should be willing when there's conflict within the body to stand in the middle and point to the sins and the failures of both parties.

01:02:42

Even if one of the parties is our favorites. We must have just standards, a single stone.

01:02:50

We must not be the kind of people that when our favorite person is sinning, we say nothing.

01:02:56

Why? Because it's our favorites. We don't confront our favorite person. Why? For precisely that reason.

01:03:02

They're our favorite person. We allow them to sin. We allow sin say maybe even in our marriages or in our homes.

01:03:12

We will tell others out there, stop gossiping, stop belittling, stop slandering. But in our own families, we give each other freedom to talk trash about others, to belittle others, to take down their dignity.

01:03:27

We've got one standard for the church, one standard for our family. And the only answer, brothers and sisters, is what?

01:03:33

Repentance and trusting in Christ. Thanking God for his forgiveness and walking in a new way by his spirit.

01:03:41

So in the end, when you think about the expression, the expression of unequal weights and measures and a just balance,

01:03:49

God delights in us not being hypocrites.

01:03:56

Not having two stones, two faces. So brothers and sisters, may

01:04:01

God grant to us the grace to throw away that second stone. May God grant to us the grace as a body to detest what he detests, to loathe what he loathes, to live like him.

01:04:16

One of the most glorious things about our savior is this. He's holy, he's just, he doesn't lie.

01:04:27

And when he saved you in Jesus Christ, when he saved me in Jesus Christ, he saved us with the purpose to conform us to the image of Jesus Christ.

01:04:37

And what is Jesus like? He's just, he's wise, he's not double -minded, he doesn't have two sets of standards, he doesn't placate, he doesn't show partiality.

01:04:52

And if we're gonna be made into the image of Christ with all my heart, I believe each and every one of us needs to be transformed into the image of Christ, conformed to his image in this area of just scales.

01:05:07

May God help us. Let's pray. Lord, I pray that you would heal, heal, strengthen your people in this area.

01:05:23

Lord, you know how much we fail in this area, each and every one of us.

01:05:33

The hypocrisy that we have where we condemn others for the very same things that we do, where we show partiality, we have two sets of standards, we're walking around constantly with two stones.

01:05:52

So Lord, I pray with all my heart that you would allow your word to do its perfect work and not return void.

01:06:01

Heal us as individuals, as couples, as families, as a church body, to the end that you are glorified and praised through the work that you do to lay down this foundation of righteousness that you delight in.

01:06:18

Do it, Lord, in us. We praise you in Jesus' name, amen. So now we come to the table.