There were scales on the counter at the store when I was young, and everybody knew they were about a quarter pound out.
Not on purpose. They had been dropped, years before, and after that they read light on Tuesdays and heavy when the weather turned, and the man who ran the place would put a thing on them and look at the needle and then tell you what it actually weighed out of his own head. Everybody accepted this. You do not throw out a set of scales for a quarter pound in a place where everyone knows the man.
Now, if a stranger had come in and weighed something on those scales and gone away believing the number, they would have gone away wrong, and nobody would have been at fault except the scales.
I want to talk to you about the scale you have been weighing yourself on.
It goes like this. She sits down of an evening and puts her own motive on the scale. On Monday the reading comes back that she is sorry for the right reasons, and she feels steadier for about a day. By Wednesday she has had a poor night and she weighs it again, and the reading comes back that she is only sorry about the mess, and she believes that one too, and she is down about it for a week.
Same woman. Same motive. Same scale. Two readings.
And she has never once concluded what any sensible person at that store would have concluded in a minute, which is that the instrument is the problem. She keeps thinking a further weighing will settle it. But a scale that gives two answers about one object is not going to give you a third answer you can trust; it is going to give you a third answer.
Four years of weighing.
That is you at the counter.
You've been putting your own heart on a set of scales that reads differently depending on how you slept, and taking whichever number comes up as the verdict for the week. And it has never occurred to you that a person can be perfectly honest and still be using a broken instrument.
The proverb names your instrument and then names the right one
Solomon says something in one line that took me most of my life to actually use, and the first half is a description of exactly your problem.
All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the LORD weigheth the spirits.Proverbs 16:2
Clean in his own eyes. That is the first half, and it is usually read as a warning against smugness, and it is that. But read it as an engineering statement and it says something else too: a person's own assessment of a person's own motive is not reliable equipment. That is not an accusation about your character. It is a fact about the instrument, and it applies to the careful just as much as to the careless.
Then the second half, which is where the relief is. But the LORD weigheth the spirits. Weighing is a job, and this line says whose job it is. Not yours. His.
You are not the one appointed to weigh your own spirit, and the proverb hands that job to God in the same breath as it names the fault in yours, and I am not making this easy on you: Proverbs 16:2 says the Lord weigheth, in writing, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than my saying so who can get a woman off a broken set of scales.
Now, I have heard that verse used as a stick, and I want to take it out of that hand. Used as a stick it means: you think you are fine, but God knows better, so worry. Read plainly it means something far kinder. It means the weighing is being done properly, by Somebody with a true instrument, and the result does not depend on how you slept.
You have a weighing going on that is accurate, and it has been accurate on the Mondays and the Wednesdays alike, which is written into the second half of that line rather than into my fondness for you, with the Spirit of God able to settle it where four years of re-weighing has not.
Here is the plainest way I can put it, and it is the way that man at the store would have put it. If the scales are out, you do not weigh the thing again. You take it to somebody who knows.
And there is one more thing worth having. God is not weighing your spirit in order to publish a number. Nowhere in Scripture does He hand a person a figure. He weighs in order to act rightly toward you, which is what a good weigher does, and the whole reason the job is His is that He is the only one who will not be off by a quarter pound in either direction.
This has been weighed properly all along, and the reading you keep taking off your own face was never the reading that counts, because Scripture puts the weighing in God's hands, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that onto a porch on a warm afternoon.
Set your scale aside.
It has given you two different readings about one motive in the same week, and a person can be entirely honest and still be reading a broken instrument. That is not a failure of your integrity. It is a description of what human beings are, and Solomon put it in writing so that nobody would have to work it out alone.
The weighing belongs to God. He is doing it, He is doing it accurately, and He is not doing it to publish a number about you. He is doing it so that He can act rightly toward you, which He has been doing all four years while you have been at that counter.
You are weighed by the only accurate instrument there is, and the readings that shook your week were never the ones that counted, because Proverbs 16:2 hands the weighing to the Lord, and the Holy Spirit is the one making that a place to rest rather than a line to underline.
Take it to Somebody who knows. That is what people do at a counter with a bad set of scales.
Declare this over yourself
Say them out loud, in whatever voice this afternoon has left you, and a plain one is right. The standing to say them is not something a person works up to and it is not on loan from a good reading: Christ is in you, and the authority in these words belongs to Him and has been given to you in Scripture, made living by the Holy Spirit rather than by what your own scale says this evening. Jesus put the faith required at a mustard seed, which is His way of setting it under the line where anybody would trouble to measure, and then He said the part that carries: speak to the mountain. The mountain here is not the motive. It is the weighing. Speak to that. What He does with the rest of it He does in His own way, and the opening of the hands is yours to do this afternoon.
- Scale I keep using, you are not trustworthy, and in the name of Jesus I set you aside. Scripture says all the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes, so my instrument was named as unreliable long before I noticed it was out.
- Fear that a wrong reading on a Wednesday is the truth about me, you have had four years of my evenings and given me a different number every time. Scripture says the Lord weigheth the spirits, so the job was assigned to Somebody else and you have been reading a broken needle to me.
- Lord God, You do the weighing and You do it to act rightly toward me rather than to hand me a figure, and I am sitting here with both hands open and nothing on the scale. I thank You, because Your Holy Spirit did the drawing and Your word gave the weighing to You, and I am received under a true instrument and not at the end of a reading I could never trust.
Proverbs 16:2
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