Truth From Bathroom Scales And God’s Scales

by Kevin Burton

   My bathroom scale is a talking scale. Many a time, I‘ve wished it would just shut up.

   It makes me want to flush the toilet and run the water faucet, maybe clear my throat once or twice to drown out the bad news. That way at least  maybe my wife won’t hear the number.

   I had to face a scale in my high school wrestling days. I had to make weight, slim down to a certain number to be qualified to compete.

   That wrestling scale was a kind of final exam, for that week anyway. My bathroom scale is kind of a pop quiz.

   A lot of people, once their school days have been put behind them, do away with pop quizzes of all kinds, including bathroom scales. They establish their own standards, live by their own measures as much as they can.

   But you can only do that for so long. For God has His scales, and in the end, His measure will rule the day. Even the mightiest of earthly kings are subject to this eternal truth.

   Belshazzar was the mighty king of Babylon, partying like it was 1999 BC, until suddenly the party ended.

   Don’t remember the name Belshazzar? Think of his daddy, King Nebuchadnezzar. That name should ring a bell. The acorn didn’t fall far from the tree in regard to these evil Babylonian kings.

   Belshazzar threw a party, as kings were accustomed to doing, “a great feast for a thousand of his nobles” (Daniel 5:1), but this time with a twist. This time the king had one of his people bring out the gold and silver vessels which were taken from God’s temple in Jerusalem at the time of the Babylonian conquest.

   They praised their false deities using our true God’s Holy vessels. The wine was flowing, until God put a stop to it.

    “Suddenly the fingers of a human hand emerged and began writing opposite the lampstand on the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace, and the king saw the back of the hand that did the writing.Then the king’s face became pale and his thoughts alarmed him, and his hip joints loosened and his knees began knocking together” (Daniel 5: 5-6 NASB).

   So now you know where that wonderful cliché “the handwriting was on the wall” comes from, the book of Daniel. But what did that disembodied hand write?

   Well the king and his people couldn’t figure it out, so they sent for Daniel, who interpreted God’s message.

    “Now this is the inscription that was written: ‘Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.’

    “This is the interpretation of the message: ‘Mene’—God has numbered your kingdom and put an end to it. ‘Tekel’—you have been weighed on the scales and found deficient. ^]Peres’—your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and Persians” (Daniel 5: 25-28).

   The passage goes on to say that king Belshazzar didn’t last the night. Talk about a buzz kill. The measure from God’s scales had been enforced.

   Each day you and I have the chance to weigh ourselves using God’s measures. Alistair Begg, speaker on the Truth For Life radio ministry, encourages us to do so.

   “It is good to regularly weigh ourselves on the scale of God’s Word,” Begg writes. “You will find it a holy exercise to read some Psalm of David and, as you meditate upon each verse, to ask yourself, ‘Can I say this? Have I felt as David felt? Has my heart ever been broken on account of sin, as his was when he penned his penitential psalms?’”

   “‘Has my soul been full of true confidence in the hour of difficulty as his was when he sang of God’s mercies in the cave of Adullam or in the holds of Engedi? Do I take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord?’”

   “Turn to the life of Christ, and as you read, ask yourself how far you are conformed to His likeness. Endeavor to discover whether you have the meekness, the humility, the lovely spirit that He constantly urged and displayed. Then take the epistles, and see whether you can go with the apostle in what he said of his experience. Have you ever cried out as he did, ‘Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death”?

   “If in this way we read God’s Word as a test of our spiritual condition, we will often have good reason to pause and say, ‘Lord, I feel I have never yet been here. O bring me here!” Begg writes. “Give me the true penitence about which I am reading. Give me real faith; give me warmer zeal; inflame me with more fervent love; grant me the grace of meekness; make me more like Jesus.”

   “Do not allow me to be ‘found wanting’ when weighed in the balances of the Bible, in case I be found wanting in the scales of judgment.”