THE PLUMBLINE TEST

“Thus, he shewed me: and, behold, the Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumbline, with a plumbline in his hand.   And the Lord said unto me, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A plumbline. Then said the Lord, Behold, I will set a plumbline in the midst of my people Israel: I will not again pass by them any more…Amos 7:7-8.”

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God is the perfect standard for all things.  He is love, He is mercy, He is grace. He isn’t just loving or merciful or gracious. A plumbline is a measurement of how straight something like a wall is, and God has a plumbline and it comes in two ways.   Firstly, God’s perfect plumbline is Jesus.   He is the perfect one, you think you are someone, you think you are good, but when you measure yourself against Jesus, your life looks like a broken-down wall.   Your righteousness is all dirty rags.

Every time we consider and look at Jesus, our actions are judged by his plumbline of complete truth. Let me give you an example.   Do you get angry?   I know I do.   Jesus got angry at the moneylenders in the temple.   Now to do that wasn’t wrong. What about us, when we get angry?  We need to be angry about what God is angry about; anything else fails the plumbline test.

The second plumbline is the word of God.   Hebrews 4 12 says, For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective]; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the [g]breath of life (soul) and [the immortal] spirit, and of joints and marrow [of the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart.

Everything we do is to be aligned to the Word of God.  The word of God cuts everything down to the bone; it searches out the hidden things, we try to hide. Have you ever done something and thought well no one has seen that, but then you read in your daily bible reading something and the Holy Spirit has taken it and convicted you?  That is God’s plumbline.   You have come below God’s perfect plumbline.  

God has a plumbline, and our lives are judged by that plumbline.   How level is your life in light of the plumblines of the Living Word and Written Word?

God bless you, 

Keith