A False Balance // Wisdom That Works, Part 13

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Every day, billions of financial transactions take place around the world. From buying a toilet role on the way home at the corner store, to buying and selling of global corporations. And a good percentage of those transactions involve deception and corruption. So - question is - how to avoid the bad ones.

Let me ask you something today. Have you ever been ripped off? You know, you go into a store and you buy something and you take it home and it doesn't work and then when you try and take it back and the store owner wants to have nothing to do with you.

It's a horrible feeling isn't it? I remember one time I knew someone who bought a brand new car. It was a reputable brand name, still a globally successful car maker today. And he took it home; it was a nice feeling for him buying a new car. And one thing after another started to go wrong.

Some things were small and niggly, other things like the brakes failing were serious. For one reason or another my friend had bought a lemon. Not sure if that terms familiar to you in your part of the world but here in Oz we call something that’s broken from the ground up, something that you really can't ever fix a lemon.

And this car, to be honest, was a lemon. Now any car purchase is a significant amount of money especially a brand new car. It was a lot of money this new car but the manufacturer refused to replace it. They fixed this, they fixed that, then the next thing would break and the car was never quite right.

My friend, needless to say, felt totally ripped off and whilst I'll keep the name of the manufacturer out of this program, if he was here right now he'd be only too pleased to tell you their name and he's told many, many people already and probably he'll tell many, many more for the rest of his life.

Now I don't know how many commercial transactions take place across the world each and every day but with global population heading pretty quickly now towards 7 billion you'd have to say each and every day there are many, many billions of transactions that go on.

From buying a toilet roll down at the corner store on the way home to corporate takeovers of large global companies and everything in between. I mean just imagine the number of purchase and sale transactions that happen on all the stock markets around the world.

So, many billions of transactions each and every day. Filling out a tax return is a financial transaction, most people have to do that once a year. How much did we earn less any legitimate deductions equals our income on which we have to pay tax. How easy is it to tell a few little lies in there?

We know that the tax office can't check every piece of information. People know their chance of getting caught or getting audited is pretty low. Throw a few receipts, things that didn't really relate to work, claim them as work deductions. Who's going to know? They can't prove anything.

And so countless people lie on their tax returns. A bit of extra money in their pocket, tax man already has so much, he won't miss it. Or you go to a cafe, have a few cups of coffee and some cake with some friends and when it comes to paying you notice they've forgotten to add the last piece of cake that someone ordered. Do you draw it to their attention or not?

Do you see how with all financial transactions we're involved in on a day to day basis, do you see how easy it is to be dishonest? I mean perhaps you and I wouldn't go into a supermarket and steal something off the shelf, that would be dishonest after all and you might get caught.

But if the young girl at the checkout gives us too much change do we point it out to her? Who's going to know? So we hate being ripped off, we hate it when we're on the receiving end of this but many, many a people are happy to rip others off.

In fact there's research that's been done by the American Jewellers Association in relation to employee theft because in the jewellery business the biggest problem isn't armed robbery, it's theft by staff and here are the results.

10% of people will always steal no matter what. 10% of people will never ever steal but 80% will steal if they're given the opportunity and if they think they won't get caught.

So, I was talking with a man who owns a large jewellery operation and he said it's sad but true. He has to build his business and systems and security and surveillance camera's on the basis that 90% of his employees are likely to steal from him. 90%!

Over these last few weeks we've been talking about Wisdom That Works. Just diving into God’s word in the Old Testament wisdom Book of Proverbs and plundering it for wisdom. The sort of wisdom that actually works. And so, what's God’s wisdom on this whole thing of financial honesty and dishonesty?

See this is a big issue. Billions of financial transactions going on around the world each and every day and a percentage of them, perhaps more than we'd like to imagine, are corrupt. Now you might think that word 'corrupt' is just a little bit harsh, a little bit direct but what else do you call lying on your tax return? What else do you call not telling the attendant that they've given you too much change? It's theft, its corruption.

What's Gods wisdom? Well here it is, Proverbs chapter 11, verse 1:

A false balance is an abomination to the Lord but an accurate weight is His delight.

Now that may not seem like a whole lot of wisdom on first glance. Well of course if there is a God He will see the deception that no one else sees and of course you'd expect Him to not like it. So what? Well here's the "so what". Just have a listen to what Jesus has to say. Luke chapter 12, verse 4. Jesus said:

I tell you my friends, don't fear those who kill the body and after that can do nothing more but I will warn you whom to fear. Fear Him who after he is killed has authority to cast you into hell. Yes I tell you, fear Him.

I know, look I know people don't much like it when I talk about the fear of the Lord but my friend, there are consequences. If a false weight, if a dishonesty in a financial transaction is indeed an abomination to the Lord and if one day you and I are going to give a reckoning to Him on that day of judgement, wouldn't you think that steering clear of false weights make an awful lot of sense? Do you think? Listen again:

A false balance is an abomination to the Lord but an accurate weight is His delight.

Maybe that's why Solomon later writes in Proverbs chapter 9, verse 10:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

See wisdom is about getting it right and whilst receiving eternal life has nothing to do with our works, what we do it's a free gift of grace from God. My friend, we can't profess to believe one thing, to believe Jesus is the Lord of our lives on the one hand and then to live our lives in completely the opposite direction.

Jesus put it this way. He said, 'look, not everyone who calls me Lord is going to enter the Kingdom of heaven but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven'. Because what we do is the true reflection of what we believe.

A false balance is an abomination to the Lord.

Friend, if you are involved in any deception, in any lying, in any financial transaction, any business that you know is a false balance, that you know doesn't honour God, that you know cheats the tax man, that you know cheats your customers or your business partners. Friend, today I want to encourage you to hear the word of God into your life and turn away from that:

A false balance is an abomination to the Lord.

But the opposite is also true.

An accurate weight is His delight.

That word "abomination" literally means that it is disgusting and wicked in God’s eyes. And so I guess the question is and this is the question of wisdom here. The question is, do we want to disgust God or do we want to delight Him? And that, that my friend is a question that each one of us needs to answer for ourselves.