TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles - Date: Jan. 27, 2026. Lesson: 17-2026. Title: The God of Eyes and Ears

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

Proverbs 20:10–12 reveals the Lord’s concern for justice, integrity, and spiritual awareness. Dishonest weights and measures are an abomination to God, exposing how corruption often hides behind everyday transactions. Yet the passage also reminds us that the Lord Himself fashioned the hearing ear and the seeing eye—nothing escapes His notice. In today’s Morning Manna, Rick Wiles and Doc Burkhart examine how God measures fairness, why integrity matters in both public and private life, and how living wisely begins with remembering that the God who gave us eyes and ears also sees and hears all. Lesson 17-2026 Teachers: Rick Wiles and Doc Burkhart You can partner with us by visiting MannaNation.com, calling 1-888-519-4935, or by mail at PO Box 399 Vero Beach, FL 32961. MEGA FIRE reveals the ancient recurring cycles of war and economic collapse that have shaped history for 600 years. These patterns predict America is now entering its most dangerous period since World War II. Get your copy today! www.megafire.world Get high-quality emergency preparedness food today from American Reserves! www.AmericanReserves.com It’s the Final Day! The day Jesus Christ bursts into our dimension of time, space, and matter. Now available in eBook and audio formats! Order Final Day from Amazon today! www.Amazon.com/Final-Day Apple users, you can download the audio version on Apple Books! www.books.apple.com/final-day Purchase the 4-part DVD set or start streaming Sacrificing Liberty today. www.Sacrificingliberty.com

Welcome to Morning Manor. Welcome to morning. Your spiritual nourishment. Your teachers, Reckwiles and Dr. Burka, get your bike before. Well, good morning. Welcome the morning, matter. We're delighted to have you here for a Bible study as we do a deep dive into the book of Proverbs. We're in the 20th chapter of Proverbs.

We started Proverbs in early 2025. We're taking her a good old time. We're no rush. Let's learn the Word of God, line by line. And let's see what's in the Word of God. That's how we do it here. And so if you're looking for a quick, easy scan of the Word of God, this isn't the Bible study for you.

It's a very serious, deep study of each word. I mean, we take it word for word, every single word. What does that word mean? So we're, we're studying Proverbs 20, chapter 20, and today we're looking at verses 10, 11, and 12. If you are watching of Faith TV, our lesson number is 17-2026. As we run out of time at the end of a half hour in Faith TV, you can go over to manna Nation.com and watch the rest of the lesson. Let's pray, invite the Holy Spirit. Then Dr. Raymond Burkhart is going to read the word. Then he and I are going to jump into this study.

Almighty God, our Father in heaven, we delight ourselves in you. Yes. We are blessed to be your sons and daughters. And we are blessed to be saved, to be forgiven, to have our names written in your book of life. Father, we're just blessed. And Father, we ask in the name of Jesus for the presence of God, your Holy Spirit to lead and guide this Bible study and to teach all of us the richest that are in your word in the name of your son, Jesus Christ. Amen. And as Rick mentioned, we are in chapter 20

of Proverbs and we're going to be focusing our efforts today on verses 10 through 12. So if you've got your Bible, you should always have your Bibles handy when you're at a Bible study and also have a pen and a notepad, or if you don't use that, some sort of way to take some notes, because you're going to learn something today. The first thing we're going to learn is learn what the word says. I honor the word, I love the word, and I love to read the word, and I love to read the word out loud. Let's do that right now, together. I'm reading from the King James Version of the Scriptures, Proverbs 20, verses 10 through 12.

diverse weights and diverse measures both of them alike abomination or like abomination to the Lord even a child is known by his doings whether his work be pure and whether it be right and then verse 12 the hearing ear and the seeing eye the Lord have made even both of them this is going to be a great study today as we dive into verse 10 first here and talk about diverse weights and measures, Rick. Amen. So, we'll start here with the verse 10. Divers' weights and divers measures, both of them were like abomination to the Lord.

The Septuagint translation says, a large and small weight in divers measures are even both of them unclean before the Lord, and so is he that makes them. Yes. The Tuagin adds a little, they put a little extra to it. Not only are the crooked measures an abomination, but the person that made them is crooked too. Yes. So we'll begin with the first part of this verse.

Divers weights and divers measures. What are we going to learn here? Well, the core message is that God abhors, hidden dishonesty that disguises injustice as normal practice, especially when systems and tools and customs are deliberately manipulated to exploit others while on the surface maintaining an appearance of fairness. The Hebrew phrase for weights and measures here,

stone and stone it actually refers to two different sets of weights used on a balance scale right divers measures okay

this refers to two different standards or volume or two standards of volume or length the picture is vivid one set is for buying and one set is for selling.

Yes. So one set is heavier, the stones. One stone is heavier. That's for the buying. That is so that the buyer receives more than what he's paying for. The other stone is lighter. It's for selling to give less product than what the customer is paying for.

So the crooked businessman is cheating when he buys and cheating when he sells. He's got two sets of stones for his scale. That's the old ancient system. Right, going back and forth on two sides of a scale. Right. But Wall Street in the city of London and many other financial capitals,

They have much more sophisticated ways to do it. Yes, they do. All right, so nothing has changed. So if Saddam were here today, he would be talking about unjust software, crooked software that's cheating people. We're talking about the ancient times here. Now, the subterogen clarifies the intent

by contrasting great and small weights and measures, showing a deliberate inequality embedded in the equipment itself. Now, what is important to know here is that this is not a measurement mistake, not an accident. Right. It has been injured. The deceit, the crookedness has been deliberately engineered into the the measuring system, the scales.

It was designed to be crooked on by intention. And this is why it's so abhorred to the Lord. Doc, it's premeditated. I mean, that's the bottom line. Right. And it's good that you point that out because it is premeditated. So what's happening is in this particular scenario here, they're carving stones.

They're modifying containers. They're adjusting the scales. They're doing this consciously, consciously, not by accident. So it's premeditated, it's calculated, it's pure fraud. It requires cunning and imagination to switch tools unnoticed. It represents an intentional inconsistency, Rick, and bending a truth to favor oneself. this dishonesty is quiet, it's technical, operates in the background, but it's repeatable, right?

Precisely the kind of sin that hides behind this routine. So King Solomon here is exposing how sin often cloaks itself beneath the way business gets done. So the scripture here is framing dishonesty like this, and this isn't the only place that Proverbs talks about just weights and measures, but it's making it very clear that this is an abomination to the Lord, that such dishonesty is not clever business, but it's moral rebellion, not just against a customer, but against God. Think about that. We don't think of it as a moral issue. We think, well, they just cheated me. Well, not only they cheat you, they cheated God, too. So to cheat a neighbor is to defy the covenant of God itself,

because God people are called to reflect his righteousness in every transaction. You know, Rick, in my small town of Brunswick, Missouri, you know, my grandma, there were two grocery stores in our town. She refused to go to the one grocery store. And the other grocery store that was there had a butcher that she used all the time.

The butcher was missing a thumb on his, right hand. He had lost it a long time ago. And I asked my grandma why she only went to the IGA store not to the other store. He said because he can't put his thumb on the scale. And obviously she had had a negative experience at the other store, but the fact that the butcher at the IGA didn't have a thumb, he could put it on the scale. And so my grandmother had some wisdom there, didn't she? your grandmother must have known my grandmother. My grandmother was in Maryland.

Yours was in Missouri. Now, they didn't know each other, Doc. But I've told this story before. As a child, I remember there was a country grocery store. We lived out in a country. We didn't live in a town. And, you know, back in those days, in late 50s, early 60s, children could walk along a road.

They weren't going to be kidnapped. It was okay. A child walked along a road. Right. And my grandmother would send me to the country store to buy some cheese and slice ham and things that she wanted. But there was a guy that worked there. His name was, he wasn't the owner. His name was Bob.

I still remember the guy. Nice man. But she would always tell me, now, Rick, you watch that, Bob. You keep your eyes on his thumb. And I was like, I don't understand. I'm a little kid, you know. Why? Why do I have to watch his thumb?

Because he'll put his thumb on that scale. Right. And tip the weights in his favor. Well, that didn't make sense to me as a kid. I never forgot that because it happened repeatedly. Obviously, Doc, like your grandmother, she had a bad experience with Bob. She was convinced he was, he was cheating.

in the way of food. Now, he didn't own the store, and I thought about it. I said, why, what game would he get out of it? Well, possibly he was keeping track of how much he was cheating. Right. And then taking that amount of food home

and the owner didn't know any difference. Right. Okay. But here's the point. God saw it. God saw it. He saw that he, cheated the customer and he cheated the owner.

And it's interesting here, Rick, as we mentioned before, that this concept of unjust weights and measures and everything mentioned several times in Proverbs, even though it's a, really, you know, you're cheating a person, but the way the scripture reads is you're cheating God. Yes. You know, before we went through this season of Proverbs, here. I never thought of it in that capacity before. I mean, maybe I knew it factually,

but now I understand the heart of God on this issue. You know, there's a sense of trust between people, you know, in exchange and commerce and everything. God is offended by that, by cheating and cunning in business. He's offended by it. He calls it an abomination. Doc, false weight, and this term false weights, this covers a lot of things, any kind of manipulation in a transaction, anything that weighs moves the transaction in favor of one person and against another person. Yes, in a cutting line. Any kind of false weight transaction exploit relational transactions. trust. It's not just an economic exchange. The sin violates love of neighbor. The commandments tell us that we must love our neighbor as ourselves. Yes. If you cheat your neighbor, you don't love your neighbor.

So you're violating the commandment. Dishonest transactions show contempt for the person who's being cheated. it reduces them to an object of financial gain. And God's hatred of this fraud flows from his love for those who are harmed by it. And most importantly, the poor and the powerless are the most vulnerable because the lack of financial and legal means to challenge to corruption.

Right. So economic injustice, is always a human sin before it is a financial crime. Throughout the Bible, from Genesis of Revelation, God always sides with the poor, the weak, the uneducated, the exploited. He's always on the side of those who are vulnerable to being hurt or cheated or, used by those who are strong. Right.

And that divided scale wreck really reveals a divided heart, doesn't it? Dishonest measures reveal that duplicity within the soul. Yes, you're smiling. Yes, you're a wonderful person, but you're manipulating the scale. So they have fairness outwardly, but deceit inwardly. And that duplicity, I'm telling you, God will call it out. I give you, you know, in Scripture in Acts 1034, it says God shows no partiality. True holiness demands consistency in our lives.

And the merchant, he may appear upright and honest in public, but in practice, he's pushing the scale. So the sin is settled enough to evade human courts, right? How do you prove it? How do you prove someone is, you know, manipulating the scale? But it's never subtle enough to escape the side of God. Think about that. So God's books are always balanced. He's always going to balance them out.

He's going to administer justice his way and in his timing. And Matthew Henry commented on this. He said that all forms of fraud fall under this condemnation. So whether it be in purchasing, you know, a vehicle, whether it be in managing dealing with your taxes, whatever it is. All forms of fraud, a manipulation are wrong, absolutely wrong. And John Gill also said that the injustice done is between man and man whenever standards are manipulated, but God says, yes, that may be true, but it is an abomination.

So this extends to every double standard, not just weights and measures, but any kind of double standard where there's one rule for me but another rule for thee, right? Now, that phrase, divers weights or diverse weights are not obsolete. They have simply become much more sophisticated, as you mentioned earlier. For instance, like let's take credit cards, you got hidden fees, you got fine print, you've got excessive usury that kicks in after a few months. You've got manipulated contracts with fine print. You've got cooked books or another set of books.

Inflated resumes. Hello. Hello out there. Inflated resumes. False advertising. Time theft. Think about it. Time theft.

misrepresentation of labor do you sign your time cards with a little extra time think about it do you pilfer things from the office am I talking to somebody today I don't know but I know I've dealt with all these situations in the past Rick every single one of them so Doc you know he living here in the state of Florida I don't know how it is in other states in the state of Florida

gasoline pumps at convenience stores and gasoline stations, the gasoline pumps are regulated by the commissioner of agriculture. Right. And on every gasoline pump in the state of Florida, there is a sticker that says that the commissioner of agriculture has verified that these pumps are accurate. Right. Why? Why do they have to put that sticker there, Doc? Because people were cheating on gas in the past. Yes.

And it's on every single gas pump. If it's not on a gas pump, don't get that gas. Because you don't know. The guarantee is the state of Florida is endorsing that this is a good pump. This is a good weight in measure. That if you are paying for one gallon of gasoline, you receive one gallon. on a gasoline. At that price, not another price. But the reason that that sticker is there is because in the past they caught gasoline station owners cheating people. Right. Now, I'm not picking

on gasoline station owners or can meet. This is in many, many markets, right? There are, there's always a bad apple in every basket. There's always somebody that makes it bad for everybody else. The point, what we're making here is this kind of cheating still goes on today. Yes. And it's still a sin. So ultimately, what the Bible calls divers, weights, and measures represents every system that profits from distortion rather than the truth. Now, in contrast, stands our Savior Jesus Christ.

Right. who did not shortchange redemption, but paid the full price for you and me to be saved. The gospel does not merely forgive dishonest hearts. It changes, it transforms hearts. Can we see an example of a dishonest merchant or business person or government official in the, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And the answer is yes. In the book of Luke chapter 19, verses 1 through 10, we're talking about a guy named Zekees. And Doc, who was Zakias?

Well, he was the chief tax collector in the city of Jericho. He was wealthy. He was well off. He worked for the Romans. He was a contractor with the Romans. So he was seen as

a despised figure. And he was viewed as a traitor and a cheater. And the reason why generally tax collectors collected more than they were required to. That was their spiff. That was how

they made extra profit, right? And so there was this encounter with Jesus. Jesus passing through Jericho. Zakias climbed a sycamore tree. learn about this story in Sunday school, right?

Climms a sycamore tree to see Jesus. Jesus calls him down out of the tree and says, hey, I'm going to stay at your house. And, of course, everybody's talking about that now. Oh, look at Jesus. He's staying over with a tax collector, that cheater. So, but in the conversation that Jesus had with Zekees, he said, this is Zekees speaking about,

this. Now, I says, look, Lord, here and now, I'm giving half my possessions to the poor. And if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I'll pay back four times the amount. By the way, in the Greek there, it's not if I've cheated. The Greek actually says those I have cheated, because I've heard people try to give Zekees a pass on this. No, Zekees was taking a cut. He was taking a spit. he needed to repent. Why would he repent if he was doing nothing wrong, right? So he was manipulating the tax bills. Yeah.

But in that repentance, Rick, Jesus affirmed his repentance and said, today salvation has come to this house, this day. And so that's why teaching the word is so important, ladies and gentlemen, teaching the word and exposing false weights and measures, or exposing any kind of sin gives the opportunity for repentance. All right?

And so that's why understanding the word, knowing the word, and teaching the word is so important here today because we want salvation to come to every house. But it can only come if they're aware that they have been exposed, that their sin has been laid out before God. So Zakeas came under conviction. He sure did. That he was achieved.

Peter, any made restitution. Yes. Doc, something else I observed over the years. I, you know, and all of us need to self-examine ourselves that we don't do the same thing as what I'm going to describe. You meet people who are very devout in their Christian faith, and they're very emphatic. emphatic about their, their righteousness, you know. Let's say somebody, somebody, another person is, you know, is in a sin, a serious sin. And that righteous person will say, I'll tell you what, I would never commit that sin.

God is my witness. I would never commit that sin. That is horrible. I would never do that. And yet I've seen, with my own eyes, I've seen those same kind of people be greedy. You put money in front of them, they'll knock their mother over to get that money.

And yet they'll say about other kind of sin, I would never do that sin. True, you wouldn't do that sin, but I'll tell you the sin you would do. You'll grab money so fast, it'll make somebody's headspin. You're so greedy for money. And notice that Jesus responded to Zekees' faith.

Zekees Klein, the sycamore tree, to see Jesus. He was searching. Maybe he was searching for an answer to the guilt that he had in his life. Maybe he was frustrated with himself and the hate that was thrown at him all the time because he was a traitor and a cheat. But notice that Jesus didn't condemn. publicly.

Didn't do anything. No, we went to his house. We didn't know what they talked about at dinner. But by the time dinner was over, Zekees was repenting, and Jesus was saying, salvation has arrived today here. And so there is hope.

For all we know, at Zekees' house, maybe Jesus did a Bible study on Proverbs 20 verse 10. That's right. Very well. Hey, Zekees, have you ever seen this verse? Okay.

So the second part of this verse says, both of them are like an abomination to the Lord. Both of them. Okay, so let's look at this. The expression, both of them refer to both the false weight and the false measure. You have two things, false weight, false measure. The scripture allows no distinction between degrees of deceit. every shade of dishonesty falls under equal condemnation.

Yes. The double reference, both of them, signals that God deals in justice in buying and selling alike. Remember, the dishonest weights and measures. One was for buying, one was for selling. Okay. What the scripture is telling us is that God hates dishonesty, in buying and in selling. Because some people cheat in buying

and other people cheat in selling. What's an example? You're in a department store. I'm not saying you would do it. Maybe somebody you know did it. Okay, maybe you've seen somebody do it. They take the label off of one item and they put it on another item that they want to buy

and they go up to the register and try to buy it. Yeah. Okay. Now, it's harder to do these days with the scans, okay, the bar coach. But it happens a lot at yard sales. Yeah. It happens a lot at yard sales because my wife Susan just told me a couple weeks ago, she watched, and she was at a yard sale, and she watched somebody doing it for a couple dollars.

I mean, what? Hold on your couple dollars. It's so crazy. The man was changing price tags at a yard sale. Right. And trying to cheat the woman who was selling her goods. Tried to cheat her out of a couple dollars. See, this is what it looks.

And felt good about it probably. And felt good about it. Yes. So God is watching this, whether you're cheating in selling or you're cheating in buying. It's the same. Okay. Yes. He despises both of them.

He has a perfectly balanced character. He is one standard for all people. Don't believe that God has one standard of favoritism for one nation on earth. And everybody else has another standard. I'm sorry, I don't buy that line. God has one standard for every human on earth. Yes. Okay.

Nobody gets a past. So whether this double emphasis, both of them, what it does, it reinforces the certainty of God's judgment. No partiality, no loopholes, no mitigation, no excuses. God doesn't accept any excuses from anybody when it comes to dishonesty. So whether large or small, frequent or occasional fraud and cheating in any form is detestable in the eyes of God. Again, I'm just saying, there are people who would judge another person's sins and say, I would never do that. And yet those same people cheat in the marketplace every day. They'll grab all the money that they can get.

You know, in the past I've told about the old business man, he's passed away. I'm not going to say his name or anything. Oh, man, he was a, he was a, claim to be a Christian. And I'd catch him cheating in business. And I'd call him out on it. And he'd say, well, Rick, that's business. That's business. I've heard that too.

That was his response. That's business. No, business not business. That's cheating. But he could go to church on Sunday and act self-righteous and on Monday cheat people. And then tell himself, that's just the way business is done. If you're not as smart as me, that's your fault. If you're not as slick as me, that's your problem.

Right. That's the way he thought. Hopefully he got that straightened out with the Lord. before he passed away. I hope so. Okay. You know, there are no excuses. You can't say, well, everybody does it.

It's just a little bit. I just fudged a little bit. None of those excuses were. The Lord is not interested in excuses for dishonesty. Integrity is not measured by percentage. You can't. say, well, I only fudge 5%. You can't measure purity that way.

It's either pure or it's not pure. You can't say it's almost pure. If it's almost, it's not pure. That's right. Even ivory soap isn't that pure. That's right. So God's holiness does not operate on a sliding scale. He's holy.

In the discussion. So the bottom line is that dishonest trading is a denial of God's character of holiness. This is why God finds cheating detestable because there's nothing in him that is dishonest. Right. You know, Proverbs here uses a very strong word. We've come back to it several times, the word abomination, how seriously God takes this. Let's do a little bit of a deep dive on that word abomination. In the Hebrew, it's Taaba.

Thaaba, it's translated abomination here. What it basically means, abomination isn't a word we use very often nowadays in the 21st century, but it's something that's detestable, disgusting. It's loathsome. I mean, it's often used in the Bible to describe God's abhorrence for things like idolatry and witchcraft. rebellion, sodomy.

So what it's doing here, it's revealing how seriously God regards economic dishonesty, even between, you know, individuals. God doesn't just disapprove of. He's like, doggone it, they did it again. No, he recoils from it. It's, you know, he looks at it and it's like disgusted by it. Think of the most disgusting thing you've ever looked at. That's the way God looks at this.

And so this isn't just divine, you know, just a disapproval. This is divine disgust. It's an offense to the moral nature of the God of truth. To falsify measures in any way is to challenge his own attribute of faithfulness. How would you feel about a God that brought out the fine print on you or the God that gave one group of people and it banned you over another group of people. That wouldn't be a fair God, would it?

That would be an unjust weight and measure. The same noun applies to idol worship. Why? Because it shows that false scales are a form, if you follow me here, they're a form of practical idolatry, right? Trusting deceit rather than trusting God to provide. Now in the Septuagint in the Greek, it has that word unclean there, and it links ethics and worship there.

The idea here is that the merchant with corrupt scales is defiling himself no less than if he, for instance, had touched a corpse, right? He'd be considered unclean. Alexander McLaren had this thought on this part of the verse that said a man cannot be clean in the temple if he is dirty in the market a man cannot be clean in the temple if he is dirty in the market you mean he can't go into the temple and say well that's business that's the way it is hasn't worked does it no this divers measures

okay buying and selling cheating and weighing. It violates two of the commandments of God. The Ten Commandments, it violates two. There are two major sins involved in the use of false weights. And here it is, theft and false witness. Right. Did you know the Ten Commandments that two of the Ten Commandments are in this verse? The Eighth Commandment, that prohibits us from stealing. Right. So theft.

Theft is in here. This is the sin of theft. That's the Eighth Commandment. The Ninth Commandment forbids false witness. When you swear that that is the honest measure, you've just committed a sin. So you've stolen. There's one sin. And then you swear that the measurement is accurate.

That's false witness. A cheater in business denies God's providence. evidence to meet their needs. Amen. The cheater is proclaiming, God cannot supply me honestly. So dishonest gain is unbelief disguised as prudent. You're absolutely right, Rick. Yes. It's, you know, that dishonest business practice is actually corrupting you. And it's corrupting even your ability to worship God because this this mentality gets down into your, I like to think, it's, down into your soul, into your heart, and it becomes part of your nature. Yes.

So, dishonest ledger, an accounting ledger, defiles the worshiper as surely as immoral behavior. Yes. This goes back to what I was saying earlier about people that say, I would never commit that but they commit the sin of cheating. They'll say, I would never cheat on my spouse, but they'll cheat on their customer. Right. And they'll see a problem with her.

Matthew Henry said that God will not bless unjust profits. He himself becomes the avenger of every economic wrong. Cheating in business is both hidden and exposed. Though it's unseen by most people, every false balance, every false measure, every false invoice opens before God's eyes. Yes. So the cheat in secret is to invite public judgment, public exposure later in time. At some point, God is going to expose your cheating. Yes.

Your crookedness is going to be brought out. Yes. And God hates these false measures because, why, Rick? Because he himself is truth and justice personified. And so those distorted balances contradict and attack the core of God's divine order. Once again, talking about divine order again. God himself is perfectly just, consistent and true. Therefore, dishonest trade is a practical denial of the character of God. And the second point on that is truth is foundational to creation. It's foundational to a covenant with God. It's foundational to a divine community. Dishonest measures undermine every feature of society, the moral architecture of society, is tainted by these dishonest measures. Leviticus chapter 19 commanded exact weights and measures.

If you want to look that up, Leviticus 19, verses 35 and 36, it's in the Old Testament law and had very explicit commands regarding exact weights and balances. So no one had any excuse that they didn't know. To violate these laws is to profane the name of God because God delivered that to Moses. And so this can encompass cheating's one neighbor in commerce, something like a garage sale or taking your neighbor's rake when it's not looking at anything.

It's a denial of God's sovereignty. It declares self-interest to be the ultimate authority. It put you in charge instead of God. So God's hatred of deceit flows from his love. for the oppressed. And those false measures rob the powerless and pervert the mercy of God. The Lord stands with the defrauded, not the clever one. And he identifies with the victimized laborer and the underpaid worker too. Now because God is immutable and impartial, his judgment on deceit never varies

with it doesn't matter how socially accepted it is or the economic necessity of it, he hates it. He hates it. He hates what is unjust at all times. I know this is a tough word for some people today. Maybe the Lord is convicted you on some things in your own heart that you hadn't considered before. But God hates it. He hates it. Doc, there are other ways an employer cheating in the payroll. Yes. Not paying the employee what the employee is supposed to be paid. Right.

Sometimes that is in the minimum wage. You may have an employer who will just decide, I'm not going to obey the law. I'm not going to pay the minimum wage. This employee isn't going to say anything about it. I'm going to pay this employee lower than the minimum wage. Well, you're cheating. You know that you're breaking a law, where you may withhold wages.

He may come up with an excuse to withhold someone's paycheck. Right. Crooked landlords do this with security deposits. The tenant moves out. There's nothing wrong with the apartment or the house, and the crooked landlord says, oh, I found a scratch on the wall. I've got to keep your entire security deposit.

Right. You're a cheat. You're a liar. You're a cheat. these are examples of real violations of this of this proverb look at the quotations from theologians and pastors of the past Doc you've got a good one from G. Campbell Morgan

yes it says that the man who has a heavy weight for buying and a light one for selling a thief he's stealing from his neighbor and he's lying to God. Terrell Spurgeon said, you cannot separate your business life from your spiritual life. If you are a rogue in the shop, you are a hypocrite in the pew.

Preach it. Okay, we'll move on to verse 11. The King James says, even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right. Now that Septuagint has a different reading. It says a youth went in company with the godly

will be restrained in his devices and then his way will be straight. Today we're going to teach this from the King James translation. So we'll begin with the first part. Even a child is known by his doings. Solomon begins by using this word even. Yes. It's to arrest our attention.

It's to get your attention. Even. Even what? Even a child. They're surprising force by using this word even. He's saying not only adults, but even a child is a morally noble being. Yes.

Now, we typically reserve judgment of character for adults because they have a track record. However, Solomon begins this proverb with the words, even a child. Now, Doc, there's an American Protestant doctrine, and we're not going to go into it, indeed. There's an American Protestant doctrine about the age of accountability.

Right. I'm not so sure Solomon bought into that doctrine. I don't think so either. It all depends on what you want to say about that word child. Is he talking about a toddler and an infant, or is he talking about something else there? Right. But we're not talking about an infant.

We're not talking about a little toddler, but the word child, usually denotes a youth and adolescent still under parental authority. Not an infant, not a toddler. The scripture assumes that moral activity is present, invisible, well before full adulthood. Right. So if I'm reading this right, this undercuts.

notions of automatic innocence and the idea that moral responsibility only begins at some later arbitrary age. That's 12 or 16 or 18.

That's not what Solomon is saying here. This is shattering the myth that childhood is a time of moral neutrality. Solomon is he's insisting that a human being does not suddenly become a moral agent at age, like I said, at 12 or 16 or 18 or 21. Whatever society says, this is when you're an adult.

Right. He's saying the seeds of a man are present in the boy. The seeds of the woman are present in the girl. Yes. So what's your thoughts on this, Doc? Well, I like to joke around and tell folks that I was a notorious cookie thief at a very early age. But the idea is that moral agency isn't an age. Moral agency is the ability to distinguish between right and wrong.

And that could be when a child is three. It could be when a child is much older. but there is some point in time where moral agency is aware, where our parents are aware, and the child, the youth, whatever definition you want to use there, is aware of it as well. Even a child is known by his doing. Even a child is known by his doing. And, you know, we've often been told that sin has learned.

Well, I knew people that were, great Christians and believers, moms and dads, and they would have a child that would do very wrong things, very bad things. So did they learn it from their parents? No, it's revealed. We're all going, it's all going to be revealed in us. And so this moral accountability, I believe, begins much earlier, it's certainly much earlier than 12. You know, that's, what I was taught in Bible college. 12 was generally the age of accountability. I said, no, I was doing wrong things at three.

I can guarantee you I was doing wrong things at three. And so a child is known by his doings. It's known. It suggests that the child recognizes what he's doing, he discerns what he's doing, and that others can recognize and discern it too. So it's not something that's hidden in their heart, Character is not hidden in the heart.

It's broadcast through behavior. So the reformed writers regarding this passage see here confirmation that that sinful nature manifests early. Pride, selfishness, disease, arise in the nursery, not first later on. So the doings of a child. What does that word doings actually mean? you know, they're not doing, they're not in the marketplace buying things, things like that. No, it's kind of inferring that it refers to their play. To the, what does a child do? A child plays, right?

Does a child play fairly? Is he cruel to his playmates? Is he cruel to animals? Does he hoard toys or share them? Is he truthful when his sons? in is pointed out to him. These little actions are a window into the soul. And Solomon here is suggesting that these actions that a child performs are prognostic. What that means is that the saffling is showing the bend of the tree, if you will. So parents, and most of our class, whether you're

watching or listening, most of you are either parents or your grandparents, appearance, this is a warning. Do not excuse bad behavior as just a phase. Don't do it. A phase left uncorrected becomes a trait. A trait becomes a character. Character becomes their destiny. And just like a young tree or a sapling,

it's bent under small breezes for telling, for telling the shape of the grown trunk. You know, Rick, I don't know if you've ever traveled out in western Kansas or eastern Colorado or not, but it's all flat out there, right? But what's interesting is if you notice the trees out in western Kansas and eastern Colorado, they all are bent at like at a 15-degree angle. Why? Because there's nothing to stop the wind from bending the trees,

like there are. And, you know, you don't have a lot of trees. all around and so these isolated trees and everything get bent by the wind constantly blowing. I mean it's fascinating to look at and see all these bent trees and everything but there's a lesson there that over time that tree's going to be bent and it's going to stay that way. You can't straighten the tree up, what are you going to do? You know, tilting back up you can't do it. You'd have to tear down the whole tree to do it.

And so, you know, the sapling identifies the tree, Rick. So when we see a child that has some behavior problems and the parents aren't dealing with it, privately we say to ourselves, that child's going to grow up to be a problem. When they get to junior high, when they get in a high school, when they become young adults, you can see the beginning of the behavior when they're five, six, seven, eight years, old. Right. And they've got rebellion or they've got a temper tantrum or they're selfish. These are things that parents cannot ignore and allow to continue in the child because you're forming the child's character is being formed. It says the doings of the child is known. That carries the idea of being

recognized, being broadcasts, it's distinguishable. That every, even a child himself is known by his deeds. The child is not creating identity by performance, but revealing a pre-existing inner bit and their conduct functions as disclosure. Amen. Okay. that's scary doc that's scary okay you look at a child and you see

you see something there you're thinking that's not good that behavior that trait in that child that's not good and it's so obvious isn't it Rick that's got to be brought under control and a lot of parents today are reluctant to deal with those kind of problems

so Scripture throughout the Bible consistently ties identity to fruit. A tree is known by its fruit. And when you see a child who consistently misbehaves in the same pattern, that's the fruit of the child. It's not the outward behavior that you need to be concerned about. It's the inward being. of that child that produces that behavior,

that's what you should be concerned about. It says whether his work be pure and whether it be right. Solomon now provides a rubric for evaluating the doings of the child and as the child grows up to be an adult. He covers both the inner motive in the outer

mechanic structure. He's got two terms, pure and right, whether his work be pure and whether it be right. Pure meaning clean, unmixed, morally innocent. Right,

meaning street, upright, conforming to proper standard, conformity to God's righteous order. So whether the child's work be pure, whether it be right. So you've got a double criteria. God weighs both why something is done, which is the purity of the intent, and what and how it is done, which is the rightness of the

action. Yes. What we see is this anticipates later biblical teaching that acceptable obedience requires both a sincere heart and obedient practice. just hold the laws of God, the ways of God. Well, you know, exploring this a little bit further here, Rick, let's look at what it's saying, whether his work be pure. So that Hebrew word for pure here, Hebrew word, Zach, refers to transparency, cleanliness, freedom from mixture.

So the test here is what's the motive? Is the child sincere? Is there guile? Is there manipulation? Is there hypocrisy in his actions? Does that action align with objective moral order? Raise this up a little bit. Is it honest, basically?

Is it obedient to authority? So true character requires both. It requires pureness and requires rightness. A right action done with an imperial motive is hypocrisy. A pure intention that violates the right stand. is misguided zeal. So what's the diagnosis here? Well, King Solomon spells that, and every child is known.

If we're honest, our own child that doings revealed our hearts that were selfish, that were foolish, that were straining away. There was only one child, only one whose doings were perfectly known, yet perfectly spotless, and that was Jesus of Nazareth. He was the only youth whose work was holy, whose work was wholly pure, that means without sin,

and holy right, that means fulfilling the law. And Ephesians 5-1 has an interesting take on this. The Lord takes record of our childish things. Our early rebellions, our lifelong habits, but here's the good news, right? They were nailed to the cross so that we might be adopted as dear children of God. praise God he takes us back to that purity and the rightness before that moral failure started kicking in those

negative moral choices started taking in he makes us dear children of god dear children of god are pure and they're right amen let's look at the quotations from church leaders from centuries ago doc you've got one from matthew henry yes matthew henderson The tree is known by its fruits. Early buds of grace or corruption or grounds for hope or fear. Gee Campbell Morgan said, if the doing is impure, the heart is impure. Yes. Adam Clark had this to say,

The boy is father to the man. We may easily predict the future care to the man from the prevailing habits of the child. Terrell Spurgeon said, A child is a bundle of habits in the making. do not say it is only a child's fault. A child's fault is a little snake. And if you do not kill it, it will grow into a big snake.

Amen, brother, Spurgeon. And William R. Knot had this insight on this. The first trickling of a stream indicates the direction of the river. There's wisdom to every parent. Yes. Notice the trickling. of the stream in your children is giving you an indication that the flow is going to be in their lives until they come to Christ. One of our verse, verse 12, the hearing ear and the seeing eye,

the Lord hath made even both of them. We'll start with the first half, the hearing ear, and the seeing eye. Solomon is highlighting two primary gateways of human understanding. understanding, hearing, and Z. These are not merely biological functions, but they are instruments of discernment. Hearing implies receptivity, openness to instruction, correction, understanding truth. Seeing implies recognition, the ability to perceive reality as it is. So the Bible often uses ear and I metaphorically to express the concept of spiritual responsiveness.

Jesus said, whoever has ears to hear, let him hear. Everybody had ears. What he was saying? You might have ears, but you're not listening to me. So a hearing ear is more than just receiving sound. A hearing ear means you have a team. speechable spirit. A seeing eye is more than vision. It is moral clarity. The hearing ear has the capacity to truly listen, to perceive audio sounds, but to understand what is heard, not just the

physical hearing, but the spiritual discernment. I mean, how many times have you said to children or grandchildren, are you listening to what I'm saying? I mean, they're standing there, but you're thinking it's going in one ear and out there. Are you listening? Are you hearing? Yes, they hear the audio noises, but are they perceiving? Are they understanding in their heart and mind what you are telling them? And so the seeing eye is the ability to observe, to perceive, to comprehend what is

scene. You have physical sight and you get spiritual insight. You can see something. You can watch something with your physical eyes. But your spiritual eyes is seeing what's happening. It goes with the ears too, that hearing ear. It's like my grandmother used to say, put your ears on, Ray. Put your ears on.

As if she said something, I didn't comprehend it. Put your ears on. And so Solomon here is showing these two different elements of perception here to show a balance. That truth that we encounter must be both heard and recognized. Heard and recognized. And the faculties of seeing and hearing are the means by which wisdom either enters or is rejected. Now, Proverbs 20, verse 12 here is preparing the reader for accountability in their life. What we hear and what we see shapes who we become.

What we hear and what we see shapes who we become and continues to shape us to our entire lives. So these two senses are not accidents of nature. They're intentional. They're purposeful. creations of God. God gave ears to hear his voice and eyes to behold his works. We're accountable to God for how we use them.

And hearing and seeing are, for the overwhelming majority of the population, 99% of the population are the primary gateways of knowledge. Through them we receive a truth, instruction, beauty, revelation. And it's interesting that Solomon repeats these things.

That repetition. Even the both of them. He emphasizes that God is the sole author in both senses. No part of our hearing, no part of our seeing is of us. They're both created by God. They're divine gifts bestowed by the crater for what purpose to reveal His glory and to reveal His good in our lives. And that leads us to the second part of verse 12, The Lord have made even both of them. Yes. Again, the hearing and the sea.

The Lord, the subtergent would be Yahweh, the covenant name of God, the sovereign creator of the universe. It says, the Lord, Yahweh has made. This is a, sovereign act of creation. God alone is the author of your senses. Your ability to see, to hear, taste, touch. It's God who made these senses for you. He's the author. He is the creator. Even both of them, hearing and seeing. Here's this repetition. It's underscoring that neither

sense is independent of one another. Both come from the same divine source. It's teaching absolute dependence. We did not create our ears and eyes. God gave them to us for his purposes. Boy, Doc, this drives home. Yes. Your ears,

your eyes are only for his purposes. Yes. Oh my. They're not for your purpose. They're not for my purpose. Your ears and eyes are for his purposes. They belong to him. Your eyeballs belong to the Lord. Your ears belong to the Lord. Your hands belong to the Lord. They're for his purpose. And this is wake-up call to everybody. What are you doing with your ears and eyes and your mouth, your hands? What?

What are you doing with them? They're made by the Lord for his purpose. They belong to him. And since God made our senses, he has authority over how they are used. Misusing hearing, misusing sight, misusing any of the senses that God has given us,

is rebellion against the Creator. When you use your eyes to look at pornography, you are rebelling against a creator. When you use your mouth to slander somebody, to lie about them, to slander, to defame them, you are rebelling against your creator. Your mouth was not designed to slander someone. And you don't have the right to do it.

You do not have the right to use your tongue and lips to do something that God says is a sin. Yes. Not your mouth, not your lips, not your tongue. You don't have the right to do it. You don't have the right to look at pornography. You're using your eyeballs given by God to do something that he says is wrong. When you start thinking about it this way, it's a wake-up call.

Yes. And people that have, go ahead, Doc. No, go ahead. No, I was just going to say that these, the second half of this verse here, as you mentioned, Rick, ties these faculties, these gifts that were given directly in God. He's the maker, not only of the organs. but of their power even to work. No one to this day really understands how eyes work

and why all of nature seems to have the same kind of eyes. They can't explain it. Evolution can't explain that. So they're gifts from God. He owns them. He claims them for his service. So if you can kind of imagine this, this is like a potter forming two vessels,

forming both ears and eyes. shaped by the same hand for the same divine intent here. So God gave senses to hear his law and sees works, were therefore accountable to him for how they're used. Fallen humans need God not only to give natural faculties, but to renew them so that they truly perceive spiritual truth. And as disciples of Christ, we need to be stewards of our hearing.

and we need to be stewards of our vision, our sight, as sacred trust from the Lord. What are you looking at? What are you listening to? Thank God daily for a hearing ear. Thank God daily for a seeing eye. Use them to listen to His Word, to read His Word, and to behold His glory. And so ultimately, the hearing ear and seeing eye point to Christ, the word we must hear and the light we must see. can throw another verse in here, Rick. Revelation 1-7. It says there,

behold, he is coming with clouds and every eye shall see him. Even those who pierced him and all the tribes of the earth were born because of him. Even so, amen. So even in the final day, Rick, God's going to resurrect us

with eyes and ears to behold God, whether in judgment or in eternal life. Amen. Every eye will see him. Every eye. It means every eye that has ever lived, going all the way back to Adam and Eve. Even those that pierced him, which means he has to bring him out of the grave and give even those who pierced him resurrection bodies to see. Yes. What a heck? Yeah.

Alexander McLaurin said, these gates of the soul are to be kept by the owner because God made them. We are not to let the enemy come. in like a flood through the eye or the ear. Yes. You're going to love this quote. William or not, Rick. It says, the Lord has made them, talking about ears and eyes. Let them be used for the Lord.

Listen to this. Open the gates that the king of glory may come in. Open the eye gate. Open the ear gate. Let the king of glory come in. Praise God. And Charles Bridges said, if he has made the ear, should we not hear him? If he has made the eye, should we not look to him?

Let the ear be open to receive his law. Let the eye be fixed on his works. Praise God. All right. That's it for today. Thank you so much. We are very grateful that you spent this time with us to study the Word of God. We will be back here tomorrow with more from the Book of Proverbs. God bless. God bless you. We love you. Thank you for watching Morning Manor. We hope your soul has been nourished today. We welcome and appreciate your prayers and financial support for our international Bible teaching ministry. Visit Manor Nation.com and kindly send a gift of appreciation and encouragement for our work for Christ and His kingdom.

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