---

It is a part of the Lord's watchful activity and direct connection with all the affairs of human life that He is interested in our business and trade. The Israelite was encouraged to think that all the work in which he was engaged was ordained by, and therefore under the observation of, his God. The commercial fraud of the primitive times took a comparatively simple form. The merchant used inadequate measures, and so nibbled a little from every article which he sold to a customer. It requires many generations for a civilised society to elaborate commercial fraud on the large scale.

1. We are all of us tempted to think that a considerable proportion of our life is too insignificant to attract the particular attention of God. We think He marks what business we enter, but when we are in it lets us alone. Or He marks a large business transaction in which there is room for a really gigantic fraud, but cannot pay any attention to a minute sale over the counter, the trivial adulteration of a common article, the ingenious subterfuge for disposing of a damaged or useless stock. But could anything be more illogical? Great and small are relative terms, and have no significance with God. If He knows us at all, He knows all about us. The whole life, with every detail from birth to death, is accurately photographed in the light of His omniscience.

2. In this exhaustive and detailed knowledge of the way in which you are conducting your business His warm approval follows everything that is honest and just; His vehement censure lights on all that is dishonest and unjust. We have no reason for thinking that the unjust balance has become any less abominable to the Lord because the eager and relentless competition of modern industrial life has multiplied, while it has refined the methods of fraud and has created a condition of things in which, as so many people urge, questionable practices have become actually necessary for one who would keep his head above water. Double-dealing, no matter what may be the plea, is abominable in the sight of the Lord.

3. All should order their business ways as in the sight of God, and concern themselves chiefly with the thought how they may be in conformity with His holy will. Do not be content with estimating your conduct by the judgment which other men would pass upon it. Do not be content even with estimating your conduct by the standard of your own unaided conscience. Unless you realise that God sees and knows, and unless you humbly submit everything to His judgment, you are sure to go wrong; your standard will insensibly fall, and you will insensibly fall away even from the fallen standard. You will not alter His judgment of your conduct by attempting to ignore it. But by seeking to understand it, and by laying your heart open to be influenced by it, you will find that your conduct is perceptibly altered, and apparent impossibilities are overcome, because "by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil."

(R. F. Horton, D.D.)

---

---

KJV: A just weight and balance are the LORD'S: all the weights of the bag are his work.

WEB: Honest balances and scales are Yahweh's; all the weights in the bag are his work.