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Self-Justification and the Divine Scale (Proverbs 21:2) · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome back to the deep dive on reformed thinking.
• 0:03
  I have to be honest, the stack of research you sent over for
• 0:05
  this one was pretty intense. I usually like to ease into
• 0:09
  things, maybe crack a joke, but the imagery right at the start
• 0:13
  of these articles, it literally made my palm sweat.
• 0:17
  It is intense. We're definitely not starting
• 0:19
  with a warm fuzzy story today. We are starting with, well, a
• 0:23
  life or death scenario. Yeah, let's just get right into
• 0:25
  it then. The source material opens with
• 0:27
  this aviation concept called the graveyard spiral.
• 0:31
  Now, I'm not a pilot. I get nervous just hitting
• 0:33
  turbulence in a commercial jet, so walking through the mechanics
• 0:37
  of this was genuinely terrifying.
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  It's. The pilot's worst nightmare, and
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  it happens because of something called spatial disorientation.
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  Right. So paint the picture for us.
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  You're in a small plane, maybe it's night or you're stuck in
• 0:49
  this thick soupy cloud cover. You can't see the ground.
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  Can't see the stars? Nothing.
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  There's absolutely no horizon line.
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  You are, for all intents and purposes, flying blind.
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  And this is where your own biology portrays you.
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  See on the ground your inner ear.
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  That's the stabular system. It's great at telling you which
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  way is up. It relies on fluid moving around
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  in these little canals, but in the air, without any visual
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  reference, that whole system can be hacked.
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  That's the crazy part. The articles explain that if you
• 1:19
  enter a gradual turn, a really, really smooth bank, the fluid in
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  your ear just stabilizes. It stops moving.
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  Yep. So your brain stops getting the
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  signal that you're even turning. Exactly.
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  You are banking, the plane is spiraling downwards, but you
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  feel, you physically feel like you're flying perfectly straight
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  and level. And as the spiral gets tighter
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  and tighter, the G force starts to push you down into the seat.
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  Your brain, it just interprets that pressure as normal gravity.
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  So in your head, you're sitting there, wings level, just
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  cruising along, but in reality you're dropping like a stone,
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  spinning right toward the ground.
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  Here's the moment of truth. The pilot looks down at his
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  instrument panel. He sees the artificial horizon.
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  It's tilted. It shows a steep bank.
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  The altimeter is just unwinding, spinning down, showing a huge
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  loss of altitude. But, and this is the key part,
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  his body, every sense he has is screaming that the instruments
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  are wrong. He feels level, he feels safe,
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  so he has the split second choice.
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  Does he trust the gadget on the dashboard?
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  Or does he trust his own gut, his own senses?
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  If he trusts his senses, he pulls back on the stick to try
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  and climb, which actually just tightens the spiral.
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  It drives him into the ground even faster.
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  That's the graveyard spiral. That's it.
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  If he trusts his feelings, he dies.
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  If he trusts the instruments even though they feel completely
• 2:37
  wrong, he lives. Man, that is a heavy, heavy way
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  to start a show. But the reason we're talking
• 2:42
  about plane crashes is because we're doing a deep dive into a
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  single sentence from the Bible that claims we are all stuck in
• 2:48
  that very cockpit. That's right, we're looking at
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  Proverbs 20 1.2 and I would argue this verse is basically
• 2:55
  the spiritual diagnosis of that exact condition.
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  Let me read it out so we have it in our heads.
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  Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord
• 3:03
  weighs the heart. It's short, but it is
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  devastating. Solomon is telling us that human
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  beings are born with a broken internal gyroscope.
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  We're all flying in the clouds, totally convinced we're level
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  while we are in fact spiraling. Which brings the term I see in
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  the notes here, Total Depravity. Now you know, in our circles we
• 3:22
  hear that term a lot. But reading this description of
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  the pilot, it kind of hits different.
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  It's not just that we're bad people, is it?
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  It's that our actual equipment is faulty.
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  That's a really helpful way to think about it.
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  Total depravity doesn't mean you're as evil as you could
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  possibly be. It doesn't mean everyone is a
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  serial killer. It means the corruption of sin
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  has affected every single part of us, including our ability to
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  judge ourselves correctly, our reason, our conscience, our
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  spiritual inner ear. It's all giving us false data.
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  So the mission for this deep dive is pretty clear.
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  We need to figure out why we can't trust our own sense of
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  rightness, because if this text is true, my feeling that I'm a
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  good person might be just as deadly as that pilot's feeling
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  that his wings are level. It is a rescue mission.
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  We have to learn to ignore the inner ear and instead learn to
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  read the instrument panel of God's Word.
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  OK, so let's break down the verse itself.
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  The research you sent points out that this is structured like a
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  courtroom drama. It is.
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  Hebrew poetry often uses this device called antithetic
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  parallelism. Sounds like a fancy term, but it
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  just means you have two lines that are opposites and they
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  clash against each other. Like two different attorneys
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  arguing a case. Precisely in the first half of
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  the verse, you get the 1st court, that is the court of self
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  opinion. The defendant is you, the judge
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  also you, and the defense attorney is, you guessed it,
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  also you. Convenience.
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  Very Then you have this pivot point and you enter the 2nd
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  court, the Supreme Court of reality, where God is the sole
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  judge. OK, let's stick in that first
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  court for a minute. Every way of a man is right in
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  his own eyes. There's a Hebrew word there for
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  way, Derek. Is that talking about a specific
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  choice? Like I chose to buy this car.
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  It includes that, but Derek is much bigger.
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  He's a road, a journey, a manner of life, your whole trajectory.
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  So the pattern of your habits. Yes, it's the pattern.
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  So Solomon isn't just saying we rationalize 1 little lie, he's
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  saying when we look at the whole movie of our lives, the general
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  direction we're headed, we give it a big thumbs up.
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  And the text says every way. That feels pretty aggressive.
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  I mean, surely there are people out there who know they're on
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  the wrong path. What about, I don't know, a
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  cartel boss or someone who's visibly destroying their own
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  life? Well, even there, the psychology
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  is fascinating. I mean, very few people wake up,
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  look in the mirror and say I am a villain, I am the bad guy, the
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  cartel boss tells himself. He's a provider, he's loyal to
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  his family, He's a man of respect in a world that
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  disrespects him. He.
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  Frames it as a virtue. Always.
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  And that is what the Hebrew word for right implies.
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  Here the word is yashar. Yashar OK, unpack that for.
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  Us it literally means straight level smooth.
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  You have to picture the ancient world.
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  Roads were terrible as you know, rocks and potholes everywhere.
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  A Yashar Rd. was a dream. It was flat and easy to travel
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  on. So when the proverb says a man's
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  way is right in his own eyes, it means when he looks at his life,
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  he sees a smooth highway. Exactly.
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  He doesn't see the stumbling blocks.
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  He doesn't see the crooked turns.
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  That is so true. I catch myself doing this with
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  that internal defense attorney you mentioned.
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  If someone cuts me off in traffic and I just lay on the
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  horn, I don't think I have an anger problem.
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  Think I'm teaching them a lesson for public safety?
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  Right. Or think about gossip.
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  We never say I'm destroying this person's reputation because I'm
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  bored and malicious. No, of course not.
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  We say I'm just venting or the classic I'm sharing a prayer
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  request prayer. Request.
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  That is the all time church move.
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  It is the ultimate spin. We take our sin and we dress it
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  up in a tuxedo so it looks respectable.
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  We are absolute experts at securing a not guilty verdict in
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  the court of our own minds. But the text pinpoints the
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  problem with that little phrase in his own eyes.
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  That is the fatal flaw. It's solipsism.
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  The standard of measurement is curved inward on itself.
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  I'm measuring my behavior by, well, by me, or maybe by my
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  intentions. I didn't mean to hurt them, so
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  I'm innocent. Or we measure ourselves against
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  other people who we think are worse.
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  I might be grumpy, but at least I'm not like that guy.
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  Exactly. But the text just cuts right
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  through all of that. It reminds us of Jeremiah 17.9.
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  The heart is deceitful above all things.
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  It's not just that we make mistakes, it's that the very
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  organ we use to evaluate the mistakes, our heart, our mind,
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  is actively trying to trick us. It goes right back to the pilot.
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  The instrument he is relying on, his inner ear, is feeding him a
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  convincing lie. So the court of self says I'm
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  good, I'm Yashar, I'm straight. Case closed.
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  Verdict not guilty. But then I hit the pivot.
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  The adversative Wah, bless you. It's just the Hebrew letter Wah
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  that functions as butt and is the hinge of the whole door.
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  We step out of the hallucination and into reality, but the Lord
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  weighs the heart. This is where the source
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  material completely blew my mind.
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  I need you to walk us through this Egyptian connection, the
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  note said. This was a massive cultural aha
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  moment for the original readers, but I want to understand why.
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  It really is incredible. So to appreciate this, you have
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  to put yourself in Solomon's world.
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  Egypt was the superpower to the South.
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  Their culture, their art, their theology, it was everywhere.
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  And the central image of Egyptian religion was the Book
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  of the Dead. I've seen pictures of this.
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  It's the judgement scene right? With the scales.
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  Yes, the Hall of Judgement. The Egyptians believe that when
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  you died, you were led into this hall by Anubis the Jackal headed
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  God. And right in the center of the
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  room, there was a giant set of scales.
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  A literal balance. Scale right, And on one side of
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  the scale they would place your heart.
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  They believe the heart contained all your deeds, your memories,
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  your entire moral character. OK, so your heart's on one side,
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  what was on the other? The feather of Mott Mott was the
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  goddess of truce, order, cosmic balance.
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  That single feather represented the perfect standard.
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  So your heart had to balance against a feather.
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  That seems, well, impossible. It was terrifying.
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  If your heart was heavy with sin or guilt or just chaos, it would
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  tip the scale down. And standing right there,
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  waiting, was this monster called Amit, part lion, part hippo,
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  part crocodile. Oh wow.
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  If you failed the weigh in, Amit ate your heart, you cease to
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  exist. Total annihilation.
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  So that is the cultural backdrop.
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  Solomon's original readers would have immediately visualized that
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  whole scene when they heard Weighs the Heart.
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  Immediately. But Solomon does something
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  completely radical here. He co-ops the imagery, but he
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  strips out all the Pagan gods in Proverbs 21.2.
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  There's no Anubis. There is no Feather of Mont, who
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  was doing the weighing. Yahweh the Lord.
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  Yahweh himself. He is the scale, He is the
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  standard. He isn't just watching the
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  process, He's the auditor. The Hebrew word is takan, which
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  means to measure, to regulate. It's a jeweler's term, like for
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  weighing gold. So God is taking our lives and
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  putting them on these, these precision scales.
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  And notice the shift. We judge our ways, our external
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  path, but God weighs the heart. That is the really scary part.
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  The way is what people see is your church attendance, your
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  charitable giving, your polite language.
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  The outside. The outside, but the heart.
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  The Hebrew Libet. That's the engine room.
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  It's your motives, your secret affections, what you actually
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  love and what you actually hate when nobody's looking.
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  So theoretically, you can have a perfectly straight way and a
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  completely heavy crooked heart. Oh absolutely.
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  This is the Pharisee problem in a nutshell.
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  You can do the right thing for the absolute wrong reason.
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  Give me an example of that. What does that look like today
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  in 2024? OK, well imagine a guy who is a
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  model employee. He works late, he helps his
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  colleagues, he hits every deadline.
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  His way is Yashar. It's straight.
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  Looks great on his performance. Review Totally.
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  But why is he doing it? Maybe he's doing it because he's
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  consumed by ambition and he wants to crush his rival for a
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  promotion. Or maybe he's doing it because
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  his whole identity is wrapped up in people telling him he's smart
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  and capable. So on the outside it looks like
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  diligence, but on the scale of God, it weighs his pride.
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  Or take a more religious example.
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  You can preach A sermon that is biblically accurate, pure truth,
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  word for word, But if you're preaching it because you love
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  the sound of your own voice or because you want power over the
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  congregation, the sermon is right in your own eyes, but the
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  heart behind it is rejected by God.
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  Man, that is terrifying. Because I can fool my boss, I
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  can probably fool my spouse sometimes, I can definitely fool
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  my pastor, and I can even fool myself.
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  That's the whole point of the first half of the verse, right?
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  But I can't fool the scale. You cannot fool the auditor.
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  He doesn't look at the packaging.
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  He opens the box and inspects the contents.
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  So we have the two courts. Court One says innocent.
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  Court 2 says let's check the scales.
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  What happens when the verdict actually comes in?
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  Because the Bible has some pretty rough examples of this
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  weigh. In it does it gives us case
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  studies. The classic one is King David.
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  Remember when Samuel the prophet went to anoint the new king of
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  Israel? Yeah, he goes to Jesse's house
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  and he sees the oldest brother, Eliab.
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  Right. And Samuel totally falls for the
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  way he looks at Eliab and thinks.
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  This guy is tall, he's strong, he looks like a leader.
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  Surely this is the guy Samuel is judging by his eyes.
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  And God shuts that down. Fast.
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  It's one of the most famous lines in Scripture.
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  Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature,
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  for the Lord sees not as man sees.
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  Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks
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  on the heart. That's comforting in one sense
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  that God chose the scrawny shepherd kid David, but it's
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  also pretty disturbing that even a prophet like Samuel could be
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  totally tricked by optics. True, but there's a much darker
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  example, the story of Belshazzar in the book of Daniel A.
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  Handwriting on the wall. This is the ultimate the Lord
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  ways, the heart moment. Belshazzar is having this huge
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  arrogant party. He thinks he's on top of the
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  world. He's drinking wine out of the
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  Storm Temple vessels. He feels right.
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  He's flying level in his own mind.
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  Totally. And then a disembodied hand
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  appears and writes 4 words on the plaster.
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  Minet Manet tickle the Parson. And Daniel comes in to interpret
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  it. What does tickle mean?
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  It comes from the very same root word as in our proverb Tekken.
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  It means you have been weighed in the balances and found
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  wanting. Found wanting.
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  That's such a polite translation for a a devastating reality.
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  It basically means lightweight. You're hollow.
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  You don't have enough moral mass to tip the scale.
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  And if we're honest, if we're applying reformed theology here,
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  Belshazzar isn't just some historical bad guy.
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  He is well, he's us. That's the crisis.
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  Yeah. This is where the deep dive gets
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  really uncomfortable. If God is using a perfect scale,
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  if the standard is absolute holiness and we are born with
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  broken internal scales and hearts that are deceitful above
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  all things, then we're all Belshazzar.
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  Yeah, every single one of us is found wanting.
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  This is the second use of the law, right?
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  The idea that the law functions as a mirror, yes.
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  The law exists to show us our dirt.
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  We try to pile our good works on the scale to balance it.
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  Outlook. God, I volunteered at the soup
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  kitchen. I didn't cheat on my taxes this
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  year. We try to add weight.
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  We try, but Isaiah 64 says that even our most righteous deeds
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  are like filthy rags. Because they're stained with all
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  those mixed motives we were just talking.
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  About exactly. So you're throwing dirty laundry
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  on the scale hoping it will weigh as gold.
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  It doesn't work. If the proverb just ended here,
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  we would be the pilot spiraling into the ground.
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  It would be a death sentence. Wade, John wanting end of
• 14:39
  episode. Thanks for listening.
• 14:40
  A pretty grim sign off Why? We're reformed thinking.
• 14:43
  We don't stop at the diagnosis, we have to talk about the cure
• 14:46
  and the outline calls this the great exchange.
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  This is where everything changes.
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  We've established that no human being can pass the way in.
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  We're all too light. But the Gospel introduces a new
• 14:58
  character into the courtroom, the upright man Jesus, the only
• 15:03
  man who is truly Yashar. His way was actually objectively
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  straight. But more than that, God weighed
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  his heart. Think about it.
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  God weighed Jesus in the wilderness temptation.
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  He weighed him in the Garden of Gethsemane.
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  He weighed him while he was being tortured on the cross.
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  And the verdict was different than Belshazzar's.
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  The verdict was always this is my beloved son, in whom I am
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  well pleased. Every time the scale tipped, it
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  hit the bottom with a thud. Infinite moral weight, pure
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  gold. No mixed motives, no pride, just
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  perfect love and obedience. OK, so Jesus is heavy on the
• 15:38
  scale, I get that. But I'm still light.
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  How does his heaviness help my lightness?
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  This is the doctrine of imputation.
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  It is the absolute heart of the gospel.
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  Think of the scale again. On one side you have the
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  standard of God's perfect holiness.
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  On the other side, you have you and you're floating up in the
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  air because you have no way. Right found wanting.
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  So the great exchange. Jesus steps onto the scale, but
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  he doesn't just stand next to you.
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  He takes your place. He takes your wanting status.
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  He takes your sin, your lightness, your filthy rags.
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  He takes all of that upon himself on the cross.
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  He becomes the lightweight so that we don't have to be.
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  Exactly for our sake, He made him to be sin.
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  Who knew no sin. He takes the verdict of
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  Belshazzar. He is rejected so we can be
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  accepted, and in return we get His weight, we get His
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  righteousness. So now when God looks at the
• 16:26
  scale with me on it. He doesn't see your mixed
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  motives or yourself deception. He sees the infinite merit of
• 16:34
  Christ. The scale slams down on the side
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  of righteousness, not because you fixed your internal
• 16:39
  gyroscope, but because you have been credited with the perfect
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  record of the one pilot who knows how to fly.
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  That is justification. That is justification.
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  It's being declared right in the Supreme Court, even though you
• 16:52
  know and God knows that in yourself you were completely
• 16:56
  wrong. That breathes a lot of air back
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  into the room. I was holding my breath there
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  for a minute. It's the.
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  Only way to breathe, otherwise you're just suffocating under
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  the pressure to try and be perfect.
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  So OK, we're justified, the verdict is secured, but we still
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  have to wake up tomorrow and go to work.
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  We still have to raise our kids. We still have to make decisions.
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  This proverb is still in the Bible for a reason.
• 17:16
  How do we live under these scales practically?
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  Well, we have to recalibrate our instruments.
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  If we know for a fact that our inner ear is broken, we have to
• 17:24
  stop flying by feel. Which means we have to stop
• 17:27
  listening to the culture's favorite commandment.
• 17:29
  Follow your heart. Oh that is the worst advice in
• 17:33
  the history of the world. It sounds like a Disney movie,
• 17:36
  but if Jeremiah 17 is true, Follow Your Heart is literally a
• 17:40
  suicide mission. It's saying trust the broken
• 17:43
  compass. So if my heart says I really,
• 17:45
  really want to do this, but the Bible, the external instrument
• 17:49
  panel says do not do this, I have a conflict.
• 17:53
  And you have to assume the instrument is right and your
• 17:57
  feelings are a hallucination. That's what faith looks like in
• 18:00
  the cockpit. It's saying I feel like I'm
• 18:01
  flying level but the Bible says I'm banking hard to the left.
• 18:04
  So I'm going to correct my course based on the Bible.
• 18:07
  That is so hard to do in the moment, especially when the
• 18:09
  emotion is strong. The outline mentions something
• 18:12
  called hot certainty. I love that phrase.
• 18:15
  It's. A great diagnostic tool.
• 18:16
  You know that feeling when you're in an argument, maybe
• 18:18
  with your scouts or a Co worker and you feel this rush of heat,
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  this indignation, You're thinking, I cannot believe they
• 18:25
  did that. I'm so right about this.
• 18:26
  Oh yeah, the righteous anger. Beware of hot certainty.
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  Anger is very often the bodyguard of a delusion.
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  When you feel that heat, that is the red light flashing on the
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  dashboard. That is usually the moment your
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  internal defense attorney is working overtime to suppress the
• 18:43
  truth. So when I feel super angry and
• 18:46
  super right, that is exactly when I should stop and check the
• 18:50
  instruments. Exactly.
• 18:51
  Ask yourself the hard questions. What do I really want right now?
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  Am I defending God's truth or am I just defending my bruised ego?
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  Would I do this if no one was watching?
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  That's another one. The notes suggest that's the.
• 19:04
  Auditor's question. It strips away the performance,
• 19:06
  the posturing. Let's bring this into the Church
• 19:08
  for a second. You mentioned earlier that we
• 19:10
  need to recalibrate weekly. Is this why Reformed liturgy is
• 19:14
  often structured the way it is? Yes, absolutely.
• 19:17
  If you go to a solid Reformed Church, you'll notice we usually
• 19:20
  do a confession of sin right near the beginning of the
• 19:23
  service. Which, you know, to an outsider
• 19:25
  can seem kind of clear. The room depressing.
• 19:27
  Hi, welcome to church. Let's start by talking about how
• 19:29
  bad we all are. I get that, I do, but think
• 19:33
  about the pilot again. If your gyroscope is drifting,
• 19:36
  you need to reset it. The confession of sin is us as a
• 19:41
  community saying God. We drifted this week.
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  We trusted our own eyes. We thought we were right, but we
• 19:47
  were wrong. Recalibrate us.
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  And then immediately following that is the assurance of pardon.
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  Right. We don't leave you in the guilt.
• 19:53
  We point you back to the scale. We say, But Christ has died,
• 19:56
  Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
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  We remind you that despite your drift, the verdict is still
• 20:02
  righteous because of Jesus. It's a weekly reality check that
• 20:06
  keeps us from spiraling out of control.
• 20:08
  It also has to change how we deal with people.
• 20:10
  I mean, if I really believe Proverbs 21.2 that I'm capable
• 20:14
  of being totally convinced I'm right while being totally wrong,
• 20:17
  that has to kill arrogance. Kills a dead.
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  It makes you humble in a conflict.
• 20:21
  You can actually say, look, I think I'm right here, I really
• 20:23
  do. But I know my heart is tricky.
• 20:26
  I could be missing something. Help me see what I'm missing.
• 20:28
  Imagine if we actually talked like that on social.
• 20:30
  Media, it will be a different world, but it also makes
• 20:33
  apologies possible if my identity is built on me being
• 20:37
  right, that admitting I'm wrong feels like it destroys me.
• 20:40
  It's a death blow. It is, but if my identity is
• 20:43
  built on Christ being right for me, then I can afford to be
• 20:46
  wrong. I can say I'm sorry.
• 20:49
  I was flying by my feelings. I crashed into you.
• 20:51
  Please forgive me. That's true freedom.
• 20:53
  You don't have to be the defense attorney anymore.
• 20:55
  You can fire him. You can fire him.
• 20:57
  The case has already been settled in the Supreme Court.
• 20:59
  I want to circle back just for a moment to the image we started
• 21:02
  with the pilot in the clouds. It's a haunting image, but it's
• 21:06
  also a hopeful one if you know how to fly.
• 21:08
  The warning is crystal clear. Don't be the guy who smiles at
• 21:12
  the fluffy clouds and ignores the blaring alarms.
• 21:15
  A way that seems right ends in death.
• 21:17
  But the hope is that we are not flying alone and we are not
• 21:20
  flying without instruments. I was thinking about this during
• 21:24
  my prep, and I wanted to run this by you.
• 21:26
  We often think the goal of the Christian life, you know,
• 21:29
  sanctification, is to finally get our own scales to balance,
• 21:33
  to finally become people who are heavy enough on our own.
• 21:36
  And that is a huge trap. It is, isn't it?
• 21:39
  Because the goal isn't to fix our side of the scale.
• 21:42
  The goal is to realize the scale is broken, or rather that we are
• 21:46
  broken on the scale. The goal is to stop trying to
• 21:49
  manipulate the weights and measures.
• 21:51
  The goal is to throw your entire weight, your whole life, your
• 21:54
  failures, your straight ways, and your crooked heart onto the
• 21:57
  side of the scale that's already occupied by Jesus.
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  Because he is the only counterweight that.
• 22:02
  Matters that man. He's the anchor, he's the
• 22:04
  ballast. If you were in him, you will
• 22:06
  never ever be found wanting. That is a great place to land
• 22:09
  the plane. Thank you for walking us through
• 22:11
  this. It was a lot to take in, but
• 22:14
  good. My privilege.
• 22:16
  And to you listening, check your instruments, open the word don't
• 22:20
  trust the inner ear, and we will see you next time on reformed
• 22:24
  thinking.