Our God is emphatically a God of justice. Wherever there is deceit in the world, wherever injury, wherever oppression, there is God's anger and loathing accompanying it.
I. The false balance, which is an abomination to the Lord, where do we not see it around us? Of every rank and class some, and far too many, are, and are allowed to be, and are tolerated as, men of fraud, men of mere shine workers and upholders of deceit.
II. It is obvious that we must not begin with mere practical details, if we would be right in this matter. The secret of all wrong is the false balance within the heart; the real cheating begins there. An unfair dealer has defrauded himself, before ever he defrauded another. And this is a most important consideration for all of us. Have we the balance right within? In other words, is our estimate of men and things, which guides our actions, the real and true one; or some artificial one altogether wrong, and leading us altogether wrong?
III. Were buyers honest sellers would by compulsion be honest too. If the Saviour whom we preach were really believed in by you, as having bought each of you with His own precious blood, you would be to the full as careful in this matter as any of Christ's ministers could wish you to be. The old want is still the pressing one; the old cry still the necessary one for this generation to raise in the ear of heaven, "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me."
H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons,vol. vii., p. 34.
References: Proverbs 11:1. W. Arnot, Laws from Heaven, 1st series, p. 279. Proverbs 11:1-9. R. Wardlaw, Lectures on Proverbs, vol. i., p. 268. Proverbs 11:2. W. Arnot, Laws from Heaven, 1st series, p. 285.Proverbs 11:3. Ibid., p. 288. Proverbs 11:4. Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 93.Proverbs 11:4; Proverbs 11:24-28. Sermons for Sundays, Festivals, and Fasts, 2nd series, vol. iii., p. 345.Proverbs 11:5. Clergyman's Magazine, vol. ix., p. 157. Proverbs 11:9. W. Arnot, Laws from Heaven, p. 290. Proverbs 11:10-17. R. Wardlaw, Lectures on Proverbs, vol. i., p. 277.