Friday, November 15, 2013
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Most days of my life I have to assess the damage from the day before - on a scale. When you have a history of being sort of "blimpy" when you were young and a slow metabolism as I do, it's very good to weigh yourself every day. One summer we spent the night with our son who was staying in a mobile home. He was unusually enthusiastic about the scale he had. He really wanted us to weigh ourselves on it. See, he's a scale watcher too.
My wife got on first, and she said, "Yes!" I got on and I weighed 15 pounds less than I had weighed only a few days before. I was ecstatic! But only briefly. The three of us compared notes. See, everyone had experienced a miraculous weight loss of 15-20 pounds the moment we stepped on that scale. Of course, we also weighed something wildly different every time we got on that scale. Oh, it told us what we wanted to believe was true, but alas that scale was loco!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Scale That Never Lies."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from 2 Timothy chapter 3. I'll begin reading at verse 14. It's really about how to live in a time of confusing ideas and relativism. It talks about a time when people will experience "deceiving and being deceived" and people trying to suit their own desires. And it says, "gathering around a great number of teachers that say what their itching ears want to hear." Well, I think we just might be living in a time like that, huh?
Verse 14, "As for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of because you know those from whom you learned it." Verse 16, "All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." Now, God is saying here in a whirlwind of confusing ideas, there's one scale that never lies to you. It is the God-authored Word of God, the Bible.
If you want to base your life on what's really true and what will always work, you will weigh everything by the only book God ever wrote. What the Bible says, that's reality.
Not what the culture says; what the Bible says. It sits above every idea of man and it judges it true or false, worthy or worthless. Otherwise, it's just easy to go on information that seems right; that you'd like to believe like that flattering scale. But you end up with wrong information on a dead-end street. There are a lot of scales that lie to you.
Maybe you're making your choices based on what's culturally okay. "Well, most people in my school are _____." "Well, you have to when you're in my business." "Most scholars in our field believe this is correct." "Most of my friends say I should leave my mate." Be careful! The cultural scale is lying more and more, and it frequently changes its mind.
Some people are weighing things on a scale marked Politically Correct. A lot that is politically correct is biblically wrong. So which scale are you going to go by? You can weigh your choices based on what pleases certain people or the response you're getting or the applause you get. You can weigh things based on how you feel, but your feelings are so easily manipulated; they will lie to you most of the time.
If you want the truth that will stand the test of time, submit every feeling, every decision, every idea to God's inerrant scale - the Word of God. Your life is going to be confusing; a perennial shopping trip without knowing what to buy until you settle what your final word is going to be, what your bottom line will be, what your life authority is going to be. God has spoken and He has written it down. Let His Word be the final word.
I've found a scale that told me what I wanted to believe, but it was a lie. Don't make that mistake with the things that can make or break your life. God's scale will not always tell you what you want to hear, but He will always tell you the truth.