Proverbs 11:1,  A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight.

If you have been born again it is your destiny to head toward conformance with your Savior and your brother, the Lord Jesus Christ.

God made man in his image but Satan’s goal is to destroy the image of God in man.

Satan’s goal is to make robotic like creatures who are programmed to follow his direction en masse, to think alike, to act alike, to conform to an image which Satan constructs, an image alien to what God desires for his creation.

So if man does not know the image of God he will fall for a false image created by God’s adversary.

And these creatures will in the future see this image of Satan perfected in the form of the antichrist and will act together in calling him God.

But we who are saved are not to be ignorant for God gave us Jesus Christ to show us what his image would be in man if it were not for sin.

Jesus said, He that hath seen me hath seen the father.

God desires for his creation to be conformed to His Son, who is truth and life.

The more you know Jesus Christ the more you will be able to identify the false image that Satan presents.

The more you know Jesus Christ the more you will be able to discern right from wrong.

Today one of the marks of this false image is the reversal of that which is good and that which is evil.

Isaiah said in Isaiah 5:20,  Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

Today we are bombarded with ideas that formerly were considered evil but today they are being called good.

Marriage was cut and dried, one man one woman was good.

Today that absolutism is evil.

Abortion was always considered evil until the Supreme Court called it good.

Men with men and women with women was not even discussed in public for it was an evil that must remain in the closet.

Most everyone accepted the idea of a Creator until Satan brought along the theory of Evolution which denies God.

So Satan is busy at work destroying what God has built, while constructing counterfeits calling that which is good, evil.

We are not to be conformed to the world for the world is doomed and Satan is doomed.

Our hope is in God’s destiny for his children to be conformed to His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And in this conformance God desires for men and women, boys and girls to love what He loves, but it does not stop with love for he also desires that his creation hate what he hates.

And as God works to brings his children into conformance with his Son, God gives us a clear picture of what he hates and that picture is expressed in this word "abomination" used in our Proverb.

Of 69 uses of the word abomination in the King James version of the Bible, 19 of these usage’s are in the book of Proverbs.

All nineteen are translations of the Hebrew word:

which means something disgusting, an abhorrence which means to hate extremely.

It is from the root word in Hebrew, taw-ab' which means to loathe, or to detest.

Abomination in Webster’s 1828 Dictionary is defined as:  Extreme hatred, detestation, defilement, pollution.

Satan is also interested in the removal of these words, instead promoting positive words, nice words, loving words, soft words, words of inclusion.

Satan’s world is one of acceptance of all without hate, without hate of that which God hates.

We even now have crimes that are described with the word hate.

But God is interested in truth and He tells us that there are things that He loathes, things that He detests, things that He hates.

And we find what those things are as we read those proverbs which contain the word "abomination."

Proverbs 3:32,  For the froward is abomination to the LORD:

Froward means to turn from. It is the opposite of forward. God loathes the froward.

Proverbs 6:16-19,  These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: ¹⁷A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, ¹⁸An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, ¹⁹A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.

In Proverbs 8:7 Wisdom is speaking here, For my mouth shall speak truth; and wickedness is an abomination to my lips.

Proverbs 11:20,  They that are of a froward heart are abomination to the LORD: but such as are upright in their way are his delight.

Proverbs 12:22,  Lying lips are abomination to the LORD: but they that deal truly are his delight.

Proverbs 15:8,9  The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD: but the prayer of the upright is his delight. The way of the wicked is an abomination unto the LORD: but he loveth him that followeth after righteousness.

Proverbs 15:26,  The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the LORD: but the words of the pure are pleasant words.

Proverbs 16:5,  Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD: though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished.

Proverbs 17:15,  He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the LORD.

Proverbs 20:10,  Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to the LORD.

Proverbs 28:9,  He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination.

So God loathes, God detests the froward, He loathes a proud look, He hates lying lips and hands that shed innocent blood.

He hates a heart that deviseth wicked imaginations.

He detests feet that be swift to mischief, a false witness, one who sows discord among brethren,

He abhors the sacrifice, the prayer the thoughts of the wicked, and those who justify the wicked.

And lastly our proverb for this lesson tells us that God hates a false balance:

Proverbs 11:1,  A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight.

It is interesting to see what God hates and compare it to some who love a false balance especially if the false balance gives good news.

How many bathroom scales have been cursed by those who choose to get on such a device in order to be told what is happening to them in the weight department.

I think that some would even pay big money to buy a bathroom scale which would always lie to them and show a five or ten pound decrease in weight.

If you were truly 120 pounds this scale would always show 110 pounds and it would show it to the delight of many who wish not to know the truth.

My father in his later years was a butcher when butchers in butcher shops and grocery stores were closer to real butchering.

He was past the time when the butcher did indeed kill the animal for their meat but he was a butcher at the time when whole carcasses were delivered from the Chicago Stock Yards to the store where they were cut up to meet the customer’s needs.

Those were the days when the shops had sawdust on the floors to soak up the blood and grease from the meatcutting.

Those were the days when a lady would shop for her daily meat that was uncut until she told the butcher what kind and size of a cut she desired.

Those were the days when the meat was wrapped in white paper and sealed with brown tape with the price marked with black pencil.

No bar codes, no fancy labels no dietary or preparation instructions.

I don’t know how we all survived without all the protections we have today.

But one of the important duties of the butcher was accurate measurement of the weight of the meat sold.

In every butcher shop you would find a large scale usually cream colored with green pin stripes mounted on a high counter, so located in order for the customer to see the weighing process and the final weight of the meat.

But smart and alert ladies, while looking at the display on the scale, always kept an eye on the butcher’s thumb which at times was used to add a few ounces to the weight by pressing on the scale just a bit, perhaps to add a small percentage to the weight.

Now this of course was not true of all butchers but enough used this practice or were rumored to have done so to bring the lady to keep him honest because of her scrutiny.

Today we must believe that butchers have repented and changed their ways because we simply pick up a pre-weighed package without really knowing if what is on the label truly reflects the contents or perhaps someone’s thumb also got into the act.

Is there anyone here who checks, at least once in a while?

I recently bought a 5 pound bag of shock treatment for our pool and subdivided it into 1 pound packages.

I was indeed delighted to come out with five one pound packages, nothing lacking or nothing gained.

According to our proverb God also was delighted for there was a just weight used in the packaging process for that shock treatment.

But God hates and loathes the thumb that is added to the balance in order to cheat another.

Our God believes in fairness.

So here we have in the Book of books God’s mind regarding commerce.

God does not exit himself from our day to day social relationships and think that the little thing of a correct balance is beneath Him.

Genesis 16:13,  Thou God seest me. He sees me all the time.

The eye of God notices all of our common dealings and he categorizes them as either abominations or delights.

We are in the world and balances, scales, weights, and money are part of our everyday existence and God delights when we use these things with honesty and integrity.

Double dealings, hard bargains where we take advantage of other’s lack of knowledge, withholding information that would affect a sale fits in the idea of false balances.

Think about the mortgage mess we are in.

It used to be that a bank was careful about lending and would only lend to responsible parties.

And that loan would stay in the local bank where those responsible would be held accountable for that loan.

But mortgage bundling came into the picture and mortgages were bundled and sold to bigger banks taking the need for accountability out of the equation.

Local banks could now loan money to any Tom, Dick, Susie or Harry and they did not need to be as careful with their approvals because they would get rid of the loan to another larger bank or financial institution.

In essence they withheld information about many risky loans.

If you do not consider the sin nature of man in every business procedure you will eventually get into trouble.

Selling merchandise like used automobiles, knowing weaknesses in that merchandise but withholding that knowledge from the buyer is like putting the thumb on the scale, giving yourself advantage at the cost to the buyer for you are misrepresenting the product.

Bring this into modern times with the power of computers there now is a scam which is known as salami slicing.

Salami slicing is a series of many minor actions, often performed by stealthy underhanded means, that together results in a larger action that would be difficult or illegal to perform at once.

The idea of salami slicing is what takes place in a delicatessen where every order of salami includes the extraction of one slice from the order and putting it aside along with other stolen slices and in a day having quite a hoard of salami in order to sell that same salami again.

In the world of finances this is called penny shaving.

This is a practice of stealing money repeatedly in extremely small quantities, usually by taking advantage of rounding to the nearest cent in financial transactions.

It would be done by always rounding down, and putting the fractions of a cent into another account.

The idea is to make the change small enough so that any single transaction will go undetected.

Computers are ideally suited to automating this type of attack and with millions of transactions this practice can result in thousands of dollars stolen.

God keeps up with the times and knows every in and out of computers and knows when a false balance is introduced.

It is an abomination to Him, He hates every false way, he loathes such deception and those of us who are being conformed to the image of Christ ought to hate and loathe them likewise.

God wants us to love but he also wants us to hate.

Psalm 11:7,  For the righteous LORD loveth righteousness; his countenance doth behold the upright.

Every dishonest act creates victims.

This proverb brings God into the market place and he declares loudly that dishonest scales are an abomination to Him.

The pressing of the thumb on the scale doesn’t usually result in riches and may only result in the taking of a few cents per transaction but God hates any amount of dishonesty.

He will not be convinced of your argument.

Our honesty is always on trial.

It is tested when we make out work reports, when we file our income tax returns, and when we describe something we wish to sell.

Help me, dear Lord, to be honest and true
In all that I say and all that I do;
Give me the courage to do what is right,
And bring to the world a glimpse of Your light.