Bible Commentaries

Isaiah 28:17

"I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plumb line; hail will sweep away your refuge, the lie, and water will overflow your hiding place." Isaiah 28:17

Wherever God the Holy Spirit begins and carries on a work of grace in the heart, he will weigh up, and mete out, from time to time, all a man's religion and test every inch of the way whether it lies straight and level with the word and will of God. Depend upon it the Lord who "weighs the spirits" ( Proverbs 16:2), and by whom "actions are weighed" ( 1 Samuel 2:3), will put into his righteous and unerring scales both nature and grace, both human and divine teaching, and make us know which is full weight in heaven's court. The religion of the present day is too much to confuse everything of an experimental nature; to cover and obscure the work of grace in the heart.

But there can be no question that God will never allow our religion, if, indeed, he has mercifully taken us in hand, to be huddled up in this confused way; but he will measure it all by his standard, and refine it in his crucible. It is in this way that we learn the reality and genuineness of his work. Thus, if he gives faith, he will bring that faith to the touchstone, and prove it with heavy trials. It is in grace as in nature. When we would ascertain the exact weight of a thing, we put it into one scale, and a standard weight into the other, until the scales are even. So when the Lord puts faith in one scale, he puts a burden in the other to try whether it is standard weight.

And the greater the faith the heavier the trial. The father of the faithful had to slay his own son. If God communicates a measure of hope, there will be many things that cause despondency to be put into the opposite scale, that despondency and hope may be well balanced. If the love of God be shed abroad in the soul, there will be trials and temptations to prove it. Thus the child of God learns the meaning of the words—"The work of faith, and labor of love, and patience of hope" ( 1 Thessalonians 1:3).

Every token for good, every sip of mercy, every manifestation of love is examined and searched into, weighed up and balanced in the court of conscience, to know whether it is full weight or not. And in this delicate and accurate scrutiny not only is religion weighed up, but also that which is not religion. Sins, open and secret, backslidings, idolatrous affections, covetous desires, presumptuous confidences, rotten hopes, and vain props—all are weighed up in the balances of the sanctuary. And as that which is received from God, when put into the balances, will be found sterling and genuine; so all that did not come from God, all that sprang from nature and the flesh, all vain confidence, bold claims, and presumptuous notions, when put into the scales, will have tekel stamped upon them—"Weighed in the balances, and found lacking."