Wisdom - Business Dealings
But an accurate scale is His delight."
Proverbs 11:1 AMP
[This is the 11th message in this series]
In this series we are highlighting two-liner verses from the Book of Proverbs.
Business Practices
In the previous lesson from this series, we mentioned something about opening a business venture which sometimes can be a blessing and sometimes it may not be.
Speaking of businesses, back in the Old Testament days, people who engaged in business transactions normally used scales or balances with their trading.
Examples are buying and selling gems and precious metals or bartering items. Scrupulous or shrewd business people would use dishonest scales or balances or weights. They would use a lighter weight to buy items, making items they buy appear lighter in weight, hence lower in value. Or they would use a heavier weight to measure their payment, so it would appear more valuable than what they actually are.
Smart business people still use similar business techniques today, such as paying workers unfairly, utilizing unsafe processes and working conditions, and using the cheapest materials to make products and pass them off as something more valuable than what they really are.
Scrupulous
When Jesus cleared out the temple of people who were buying and selling items, He did so not only because they turned the House of God into a house of business. He did so because people doing business there were taking advantage of and exploiting people.
They were selling sacrificial offerings at a premium price because of the high demand and buying them cheap from lowly people who had no where else to go. They were short changing people, giving them lower exchange rates for their foreign coins and also tricking people in several other ways they can think of and they can get away with it because people had to choice or say in the matter.
Literally
Jesus was quoted to have said it is "easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God".
If I may say so, it looks like He was literally saying it was impossible for a rich man to do so. Rich people in those day and time more often than not, were engaged in some sort of business, the same is still true today.
Shrewd
It is not uncommon for businessmen to be doing similar things today, taking undue advantage of seasons and situations or loopholes. This is just business sense.
Many rich businessmen have attorneys and accountants to get them off of trouble or from paying taxes. Rich people do not pay taxes or if they do, they pay hardly anything or they pay in terms and years in the future, after they have already used the money to make more money. While workers get taxed religiously even before they get their paychecks.
A few business ventures are not even businesses, such as drug or people trafficking. Sure they make a whole lot of money. But they aren't businesses.
Busyness
Certain businesses are easily not a blessing from God as they may make people a lot of money but it can and will also take them away from the Lord. Ultimately, the goal of any business is to make money and most who engage in them would do anything to reach this goal.
This is precisely why Jesus asked
"what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, but lose his soul?"
Wisdom
Doing business by itself is not bad. But doing business practices that take unfair advantage of people, using, abusing or treating them poorly and them overly working to the point of pushing God out or having no time for the more important things in life, should make people rethink their whole business concept.
Jesus said "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away."
God's Word is eternal. It is spirit and it is life. Let us read it.
Literally
Jesus was quoted to have said it is "easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God".
If I may say so, it looks like He was literally saying it was impossible for a rich man to do so. Rich people in those day and time more often than not, were engaged in some sort of business, the same is still true today.
Shrewd
It is not uncommon for businessmen to be doing similar things today, taking undue advantage of seasons and situations or loopholes. This is just business sense.
Many rich businessmen have attorneys and accountants to get them off of trouble or from paying taxes. Rich people do not pay taxes or if they do, they pay hardly anything or they pay in terms and years in the future, after they have already used the money to make more money. While workers get taxed religiously even before they get their paychecks.
A few business ventures are not even businesses, such as drug or people trafficking. Sure they make a whole lot of money. But they aren't businesses.
Busyness
Certain businesses are easily not a blessing from God as they may make people a lot of money but it can and will also take them away from the Lord. Ultimately, the goal of any business is to make money and most who engage in them would do anything to reach this goal.
This is precisely why Jesus asked
"what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, but lose his soul?"
Wisdom
Doing business by itself is not bad. But doing business practices that take unfair advantage of people, using, abusing or treating them poorly and them overly working to the point of pushing God out or having no time for the more important things in life, should make people rethink their whole business concept.
Jesus said "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away."
God's Word is eternal. It is spirit and it is life. Let us read it.
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