Well, tonight we're going to be jumping into the book of Proverbs, Proverbs chapter number 6 tonight, and we're going to read verse number 16 down to verse number 19. We're looking at seven things the Lord hates. It's kind of a strong word, but it's a Bible word here as we'll find, but Proverbs chapter number 6 verse 16 down to verse number 19. The Bible tells us here in verse 16, these six things doth the Lord hate, yea, seven are an abomination unto Him, and the first one in verse 17 is a proud look, a lying tongue and hands that shed innocent blood.
Verse 18, a heart that devises wicked imaginations, feet that are swift to running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren. Father, we are so blessed beyond words to have the Word of God in our hands, and I pray that it would not simply be in our hands, but it would be in our hearts. I pray that our lives would be affected by tonight, that not only we would receive the Word of God, but it would do a change in us. You prayed, Lord, in John 17, sanctify them through Thy truth. Thy word is truth, and we believe the Word of God is the very Word of the living God. It is the truth, and let it be a sanctifier of our hearts tonight. Let it set us apart that we would be different from the world, that we would be lights in this world. You have called us out of darkness into Your marvelous light, and I pray in all things that Jesus Christ would be revealed through the text, that Your truth would be revealed and that we might be sanctified, that in all things You would be glorified. We ask it in Christ's name, and God's people said, Amen.
You may be seated tonight. So we are working through the book of Proverbs. We're not going to go through all 31 chapters, but we are going to walk through a certain portion of those as we are navigating the book of Proverbs. And Proverbs was written for the purpose of giving people wisdom, and really it's giving wisdom to people who want it. You can't give wisdom to people who don't want it. So Proverbs 1 starts out by saying this, the Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, to know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding.
Wisdom comes from a Hebrew word that means skill or expertise in living. I grew up doing some masonry work, but I never laid the brick and block. I did some of that later in life, but I was a hod carrier. Anybody else do a hod carrying work?
Man, that'll put hair on your chest or take it off, one. It was a tough, tough work, and it was good for me as a young guy learning to do that through school. And then I got into doing construction work, and I've really enjoyed that through the years. But you can know information about what's needed. I knew how to mix mortar. I knew how to put the blocks. I knew how to cut them.
I knew how to do a lot of different things. But I didn't know how to lay. I couldn't have laid a wall effectively.
It would have been a mess. I remember years ago we were in my first house, me and my wife, and I had never really laid brick before, but I thought, I'm going to put a brick around this chimney, and I'm going to beautify this thing. So when I did that, my precious wife set up a chair right behind me, and I work all day, and I'd come home and I'd do that brick work, and she set that chair right behind me, and she watched me the whole time I did it, and she had a precious, sweet voice that gave me an opinion on every way I could have improved that process.
You know, honey, I think that you might put that brick a little bit, you know, that's a little off right there, and you know, there's still some mortar on top there, and you know, you clean that up. And I, you know, I wish I could tell you that I said thank you. I was hoping you would guide me through this.
Could you continue this process? I was not as mature back then. I'm not quite sure I'm so mature now to be able to handle that, but that process did not go well. I think she was going to actually help me a lot through the process maybe, but I was not in the mood to listen to how I was to lay all the brick.
But our marriage lasted. We got through that. The brick got put on, and it turned out pretty nice. But you know, it's one thing to know about something, to know some construction. It's another thing to know how to build a wall. It's one thing to know that you put a key in your car and turn it forward and it'll start up.
It's another thing to know when your transmission's having problems and how to fix your transmission or to change your brakes and to work on things. It's one thing to have the knowledge. It's another thing to have the skillset to be able to apply what you know. It's like the guy who graduates college and shows up on the job because he's got his degree. He's going to tell the guy who's been working there for 35 years how to do his job.
The new guy with the degree doesn't have anything more than a piece of paper and information. When you put your hands to it, that's wisdom. And that's what Proverbs really is. Knowledge is having information.
Wisdom is application of that. The Bible, among the Jews and in Scripture, they would not say that you really learned it until you could actually do it. Like, learning is not knowing it. That's the difference between the Hellenistic model of learning and the Jewish model of learning. Among our Hellenistic, we got from Romans, Greeks, and so forth, where we just say, if you can regurgitate the information, you've learned it.
The Jews would say, no, you haven't. You've learned it when you can actually live that out and do that. And so it was more of an apprenticeship. It was more of like, if you were going to be a carpenter, you didn't just know the information. You were carving that out. You were cutting that.
You were building that. And that's how it is to be in life, isn't it? It really is the skill or expertise of living. That's what wisdom is.
And so he opens up. He says, son, I want to give you the skill and understanding of how to live effectively. How are you to live in a way that not only do you know what to do, but you have the ability to do it and you can apply that truth. And so he says, to know wisdom and instruction, back in Proverbs 1, verse 2, and instruction can be translated as discipline, moral discipline.
It's one thing to know what you're supposed to do. It's another thing to be able to harness your passions to carry it out. I was telling someone this last week, a young man who said, you know, I'm just so empty from all the stuff the world said would satisfy and I just don't want it anymore and I want to live for God.
And it was just such a rich conversation. And I told him, I said, you know, freedom is not being able to do what you want to do. Freedom is being able to do what you know you're supposed to do. It's unshackling yourself from the lies and temptations, covetousness, lust and passions that the world offers. So that's freedom. So the Bible offers us, through the book of Proverbs, the skill at living, the discipline, not only the understanding of it, but the ability to do it and to harness our passions to carry it out.
So that's the purpose here, that you would be able to know the truth, apply the truth, and keep yourself locked into that. Now last week we looked at three warnings from wisdom. We only got the two of them. Say, we haven't forgot that. We looked at the warning against co-signing. My wife said, oh man, you know, that's going to be the most boring thing. She said, she heard me say that, and then last week she's like, that really turned out to be very interesting.
So if you missed that last Wednesday, you can go back and listen to it. But warning against co-signing. And then we looked at also the warning against laziness, and that's in verse 6 through 11. And so we see here where he's telling him bad financial decisions can ruin your life, bad work ethic can ruin your life. And thirdly, in verse 12 through 15, which really carries us into verse 16, he was telling them that evil company can ruin their life.
And we'll just read those verses, and I'll mention some of those as it rolls into verse 16. He says a naughty person, that really is the idea of a person that's not, like they're not worth anything. It's kind of a strong statement.
Like a naughty person doesn't mean like, hey, you're naughty. It's like that they're worthless. They don't have any, you'd be like, it's a strong statement when somebody says, you know, you're not worth anything. But that's kind of the idea, really what he's saying, a worthless person, a wicked man. This also is the idea of men of Belial, men who are of the enemy. They are wicked people. They walk, first of all, with a foreword that could be translated as a perverse mouth.
They're known by their language. They are just filthy mouthed. Verse 13, they're also known by their intentions.
Verse 13, he winks with his eyes, speaks with his feet, he teaches with his fingers. They're always doing some kind of mischief. They have evil intentions at heart. Verse 14, forwardness or wickedness is in their heart. They devise mischief continually.
They sow discord. We'll get into that in the next time we get around to the later portion of some of these sins that God hates. Verse 15, therefore shall his calamity come suddenly. Suddenly shall he be broken without remedy. And so this again ties into the section that we're going to be looking at tonight.
But this is a warning against not only foolishness financially, foolishness in how your work ethic is that you're lazy, but also be aware that wicked company can really bring ruin to your life. Now he transitions in verse 16 through 19 into what we would call seven things that God hates. And so the medieval church would refer to what you may have known as seven deadly sins.
This is not that list. The seven deadly sins were seven deadly sins the medieval church brought out. They extract it from Scripture. It's not listed categorically like that in the Bible, but they were pride, anger, envy, impurity, gluttony, slothfulness, and covetousness.
So some of them are in that list, but not all. This could be considered as Israel's or the Jewish proverbial seven deadly sins in some sense. The first five things the Lord hates, you'll notice as he lists them in verse 16 through 19, have to do with body parts, and they're kind of sequential. They start from the head and kind of work themselves down. He starts with the eyes and then the tongue, hands, heart, and then feet, and the last two have specific types of people, false witnesses and troublemakers. So we're just going to actually look at two of them tonight as we fly through this. Seven things that God hates.
Nobody laughs, so that's probably good. You didn't even pick that up. So the first one here is pride. So he says in verse number 16, these six things that the Lord hate ye, seven are abomination, and the first that he lists here is a proud look. It could also be translated, probably more accurate in a literal sense would be haughty. It is proud, but it's the idea of eyes of loftiness, haughty eyes, feelings of superiority. The position of the eyes really describe the attitude of the heart.
They're lifted up. And the result of pride, the Bible tells us, according to Psalms 10 verse 4, the wicked through the pride of their countenance will not seek after God. Prideful people are not people who would turn to God because they don't believe they need Him. God will resist prideful people. First Peter 5, 5 says, God resisteth the proud. Proverbs 16, 18 tells us that pride goes before destruction.
Pride will bring ruin to a person. We know that the reason that Lucifer fell was because of pride, and that really, really would be seen as the first sin that we know of in history, that Satan lifted himself up. It's in Isaiah 14 verse 12 through 15. Satan was the anointed cherub, as Ezekiel 28 talks about. He was a beautified creation of God, speaks of him as having the ability to make music within himself. He was in the garden of God. He would have been the highest tier, the most glorious being outside of God. And it seems that the jealousy that he must have had toward God's affection for Adam and Eve caused him to obviously seek to bring ruin to them, but he began to exalt himself, and Isaiah tells us that he said, I will be exalted above the throne of God.
I will be like the most high. And the Bible says, you will be brought down to hell to the sides of the pit, and so it is just important to know, as a side note, Satan is not in hell right now. He's not a red dragon with a pitchfork down there. The Bible tells us he is on earth. He's roaming the earth, as 1 Peter 5, 8 says, be sober, be vigilant, you're adversary of the devil like a roaring lion walketh about. He's seeking whom he may devour. One day he will be cast into hell, to the bottomless pit forever, according to Revelation chapter 20, verses 10.
But at this time he is roaming the earth. We know that he tempted Jesus right in Matthew chapter 4. So Satan is brought down because of his pride. We know Adam and Eve, that one of the temptations that Eve fell into was pride. When Satan was tempting her, he said, you shall be like God.
And that was provoking the desire for self-elevation. God does know that when you eat thereof, that your eyes will be open and you will be as God's knowing good and evil, playing into that. And one of the reasons she ate the fruit and gave to her husband was she saw the tree was good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and then it says this, and a tree to be desired to make one wise. But the wisdom that would come from that kind of thing would produce great destruction. There is two kinds of wisdom. There is a wisdom to know what is true and right and good, and then there is a wisdom of knowing what is evil in the world. Paul says in Romans chapter number 16, verse 18, he says, that you would be wise concerning that which is good and simple concerning that which is evil. That you would be wise concerning what was good and simple concerning evil. You should be ignorant about evil. Lessen your understanding about what is evil in the world.
That's a good thing. Now, we see Peter was brought down and destroyed by pride. He said, I'll never deny you, even if everyone else denies you, I will not. And so pride is that which brings destruction, it will bring ruin to a person. Sometimes people ask me, is there such a thing as good pride, such as telling someone I am proud of you?
I believe personally there is. God hates self-righteous pride and arrogance that focuses on lifting up and inflating one's self. But when we use the phrase, I am proud of you, I'm really proud of what you were able to accomplish, you're not being haughty about that, you're not self-righteous in that. It's a kind gesture. You personally also may feel a sense of pride about something you were able to accomplish.
We use that terminology. I was proud of a job well done. Galatians 6, 4 says, let every man prove his own work, then he shall have rejoicing in himself. Some sense of a pride in himself or rejoicing in himself is the idea in Galatians 6, 4.
And then there is somewhat of a pride that you're glad of somebody else's accomplishments that can be good. 2 Corinthians 7, 4 says, great is my boldness and speech toward you, great is my glorying of you, Paul says. So the Bible says only glory in the Lord, but he's glorying in them. And because it's not a worship of them, he's proud of them, he's excited for them, he's thankful for what has been accomplished in their lives. So this again is not a self-righteous, but a rightful happiness in something that's good. And so again, it's not wrong to tell your grandson, hey, I'm proud that you got all A's, or I'm proud that you did your best effort on that job out there, I'm proud of the way you played, or I'm very proud of the man that you've become.
Those are statements that are not unbiblical and wrong to say. Now self-righteous pride, you know, if you were to say, oh, you know, everything you learned you got from me, now I'm so proud of what I was able to do and accomplish. If it becomes a self-righteous thing, then that obviously is wrong. A lot of times admitting pride is a struggle for people. Sometimes people will say casually, you know, I know everybody struggles with pride, but you start asking specific questions, well, I don't know if I really do, and my question is, do you believe you struggle with it? There's a test you can take, according to Oswald Sanders, he says pride is a sin of whose presence its victim is least conscience. There are, however, three tests by means of which that can be discovered. The first test is this test of precedence. How do we react when another is selected for the assignment that we were expected to receive, or the office we desired, when another is promoted and we're overlooked, when another outshines us in their gifts and accomplishments, how do we respond? That's the test of precedence.
The second is the test of sincerity. In our moments of honest self-criticism, we will say things about ourselves and really mean them, but how do we respond when others, especially our rivals, say the exact same things about us? You know, I really could do better at that. What happens when those that we are opposed to, or somebody that maybe has agitated us, would say the same thing? Do we say, yeah, you're right? Or do we get defensive? That's pride. The test of criticism. Does criticism arouse hostility and resentment in our hearts and cause us to fly into immediate self-justification? I don't know about you, but when you walk through those tests, we struggle with pride. We struggle with pride because our natural tendency is not to accept criticism. It's to get defensive, isn't it?
Just wait till the next bout that you have with your spouse, or with a co-worker, or with somebody else. Do you believe you struggle with pride? William Barkley said that pride is the ground in which all other sins grow. Here's some truths about pride. Pride does not admit it's wrong. You know why pride doesn't admit it's wrong? It doesn't believe it could ever be wrong. Pride is known for saying, it's not my fault. Do you admit you're wrong? Secondly, pride will not ask for help, advice, and counsel. It doesn't need it. It doesn't need a mentor.
When's the last time you asked someone for advice, counsel, and guidance? Thirdly, pride is unteachable. That's the one thing that is so sad about pride, one of the many. When someone tries to tell a prideful person something, they just don't listen. The Bible tells us in Proverbs 26, 12, do you see a man wise in his own eyes?
Some translate that as, you see a man who is unteachable, there is more hope of a fool than for him. Pride is, and sometimes people waste their conversation with a prideful person. If you ever sense somebody's being prideful and not listening, and you know it because there's this glaze that comes over their face, they're like, they're just waiting for you to be done saying whatever you say, and it means nothing to them.
It's better to stop and just say, and just start asking some questions, and letting them open up, because I've always found that, like if I witness to an atheist who's antagonistic against the Bible, I just constantly use questions. You know, what brought you to atheism? You believe if you were wrong, would you want to know? What brought you to that conclusion?
What was the situation? When did you come to that situation and why did you do that? How would you validate your subjective feelings on that? Is there anything above yourself that you would feel like would be a more valid foundation?
And if you were wrong, what do you think the consequences would be? And then I would begin to walk through when, because if they're open-minded at all, then they would say, yeah, if I was wrong, I would want to know. I'm like, well good, let's talk about this. And then I take them to the Scriptures and you told me you want to know, so you have to ask questions. Pride is very opinionated. Pride has a high view of its own words.
It always wants other people to hear what it has to say. Pride, and it makes another thing, prideful people are often bad listeners. Prideful people are always waiting for you to get done talking so they can really let the important person talk. They usually interrupt people. Prideful people are usually interrupting others because they're like, you know, they just cut them off, what you're saying is not important, it just needs to be brought to an end. Number six, pride will not accept losing an argument. It always has to be right. It never believes it's wrong. When's the last time you were willing to lose an argument? A lot of marriages fail because they're never willing to lose.
Winners are losers and losers are winners. Number seven, pride will not build others up because pride wants to focus on itself. It doesn't give compliments.
And if it does, it's veiled. I'll give you a compliment, but you better double it up on me. When's the last time you built someone else up? When's the last time you encouraged somebody? Pride will gossip. Pride will run others down. It puts people down. You know, the Pharisees were prideful, weren't they?
I mean, they were prideful against the Holy Christ, the most humble Christ, and they just gossip, slander, and pride always exposes itself that way. It always gossips, it always slanders, it's always speaking evil, it always has somebody it's putting down. And pride is known for being critical.
It always becomes critical. It has a critical spirit. It always has something bad to say about someone else. That's why you go into the workplace, what happens? You go to the workplace, you find a lot of people who say bad stuff about people.
Negative, critical, pessimistic. Pride doesn't need God. It distances itself from God.
It says, I don't need God, I know what's best. Pride sees faith in God as weakness. Why? Because it doesn't need that kind of fiction.
I can do this on my own. You Christians are weak. You have to create what Sigmund Freud said like this fatherly figure so that you can lean on, I don't need that weakness. That's interesting, Sigmund Freud. Because when I search all the realms of the world for a God, all of them are horrifying. That they're trying to appease this cosmic entity, and they would sacrifice everything in their life, and in India they'll throw their children into the Ganges River to sacrifice to appease some Indian God, and they'll blow themselves up trying to appease their Muslim God, and they will all these crazy things.
They'll slap themselves and whip themselves and bleed and suffer and all these kind of things. In Christianity alone do you find a loving father? Show me a loving father anywhere else.
Show me. You think Zeus was? What kind of sick guy image that was. Zeus is the image of Zeus and Thor are the image of the Greek and Roman perverts. That's who they are.
Maybe you haven't, I'm sure some of you know what I'm talking about, but I need to run down that road. But pride causes you also not only to reject the idea of God, but it causes you to be insensitive to the needs of those around you. Prideful people are very insensitive. Remember when Jesus was in the upper room the day before He dies, He institutes the Lord's Supper and He is just getting done talking about, my body will be broken for you, my blood shed for you, and one of you will betray me. And His heart is broken. And the disciples immediately engage in a conversation where they're arguing over which one of them is the greatest.
Jesus is going to be crucified, He just institutes the Lord's Supper, He's the one getting betrayed and you're arguing over who's the greatest. That's what pride does, it makes people very insensitive. It's a husband and wife that get in an argument and the other person's heart's broken and they're as cold as ice. I don't care, get over it. That's pride, that's selfish pride. Pride quickly forgets the needs of others because it's so focused on itself. Are you sensitive to the needs of those around you? Do you know the hurts and pains of others?
That's why I say when you come to church you should always go around and shake people's hands and get to know people, care enough about your fellow Christian and care about the neighbors in your neighborhood, care about your co-worker enough to talk to them. A couple things pride never says. Pride never says, I'm sorry. Why do you think pride would never apologize? Ask yourself this, if I talk to your spouse would they ever say you apologize?
Am I being too clear tonight? You know what else pride never does? It never says thank you.
You know why? Because it expects it. You better do that for me, wife. I expect that. They're not like, hey honey, thank you for that wonderful meal.
I just really appreciate, you know, you do this and this, thank you so much. It's a wife who says, you better get them flowers for me on my anniversary. You better get this.
You better open the door for me. They may not say that, but if they're not thankful I can tell you it's because they just, it's expectations. I expect it. I expect to be served like that. You take a humble person, they're like, I can't believe you did that for me.
It's totally different. How does God feel about pride? Well, verse 16 is pretty clear, isn't it? He's like, these six things that the Lord hates. God, which one's the first on your list? He's like a proud look, that haughty eyed look. Proverbs 8 13, the fear of the Lord is to hate evil. What's the first thing? Pride and arrogance.
I mean, it's just on the top of the list. First Peter 5, 5 and 6 says, likewise ye younger, submit yourselves to the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, for God resists the proud.
He like stiff arms them. Humility is teachable. Humility apologizes. Humility is thankful. It is appreciative of others. It is sensitive to the needs of others. It recognizes its dependence upon God. It celebrates the success of others.
It does not get jealous of other people. There's a big difference between humble people and prideful people. Every Christian should be the most humble person.
You know why? Because we have the truth, and the truth is that we were so low, we were so low in the mire of sin. Our sin is so wretched.
It is so evil. It is so horrific that it would destroy the whole world, just our sin alone. One sin cast all of mankind into separation from God forever. We have done so much sin, the only thing that could pay the price is the eternal Son of God living a sinless life, dying on the cross.
That's the only thing that could appease it. And God was willing to sacrifice His own Son, Jesus, to die on the cross for our life. It should produce such a humility in us. Christians should have—there should be no room for boasting, there should be no room for self-elevation, contentions should go away. That's why the closer you walk to Christ, you should find yourself like going from a 20-grit sandpaper to 200-grit sandpaper. When people rub up against you, you're like, man, they're really, they're easy to be around, they're not like, you know, 20-grit sandpaper will cut you, but 200-grit is like, ooh, that feels kind of good, you can hit your arm with it.
It's nice and smooth, soft, and God uses humble people. You know, William Carey is often referred to as the father of modern traditions. He was a brilliant linguist.
He was responsible for translating parts of the Bible in no fewer than 34 different languages and dialects. He had been raised in a simple home in England, and in his early manhood he worked as a cobbler. In India, he often was ridiculed for his low birth and former occupation. Once he was at a dinner party, one evening a snob said to him, I understand, Mr. Carey, that you once worked as a shoemaker. He said, oh no, Your Lordship.
He said, I was not a shoemaker, I was only a shoe repairman. They that are down fear need no fall. When you've already put yourself down, other people can't take you down.
Say, what do you mean by that? I mean, Christianity is not a fight for the top, it's a fight for the bottom, and when you've willingly sat in the lowest chair and humbled yourself like Christ to wash the feet of others in your heart and mind, no one can cast you down because you willingly followed Christ there. So when somebody says something bad about you, you would say, praise God, they don't know the rest. Praise God they don't know all that Jesus knows.
Well, what if they lie about you? Well, I think it's important to make sure that truth is out there and people understand the truth. But what's interesting about Jesus's life, He never went to His own defense, did He? They ridiculed Him, they lied about, just slandered Him, and He was in total silence. Unbelievable. It was so much so that when Jesus in His life, I would encourage you sometime, do a study on the word amazed in the New Testament. Like, where does the word amazed come up?
Connected to Jesus. And what you'll find is, like, or marveled, amazed, marveled. Pilot, there were people that marveled at the things Jesus said, they marveled at His miracles, there were so many things, they just, people were just, they said, we've never heard a man speak like this, we've never seen anything like this.
His words, His works were so incredible that you know what made Pilot marvel? It was his utter silence. To be accused like that and to say nothing back, Pilot was like, wow, just amazed at his silence. You know silence is a powerful thing. Like, believe me, I'm married to somebody who lets me know their silence is very deadly.
Well, there is a silent treatment that's not good either, right? So don't do that, but we need to learn to be humble. God hates pride.
If you want God to use your life, learn to be humble. If you were to ask your spouse tonight, am I a humble person? What would they say? What would your spouse say? That kind of, like, quit asking stuff so personal. I don't want it to be so, like, what if he asked or she asked tonight? You know, but that's, those are important things to think about, aren't they?
Because guess who knows? It's usually the husband or wife. Secondly, what else does God hate? On the list here, you're like, thank you for moving on, a proud look. Secondly, a lying tongue. Well, since we've never dealt with lying, we can just move on. And then hands it shed in us, no, we're gonna stop on lying there for a moment. Now we live in a world where truth is, it's hard to come by.
This is a, this is a high-priced commodity these days. To find somebody to tell the truth. Today people downplay the seriousness of lies, they'll minimize it, it's not a big deal, everybody does it.
I heard one time where there was this, it was literally on TV, about how you can lie and be successful in, like, the business world and, like, why you should do it at times, and they were going into all this stuff and I thought, this is insane. Lying may have been a part of our past when we were lost, but it cannot be the part of the future of a Christian. The Bible teaches that God is a God who is a, will not and cannot lie, Titus 1 to, says, in hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie. God is a God of truth, according to Deuteronomy 32 4, it calls Him that, a God of truth.
Jesus said, I am truth, in John 14 6. Now what is a lie? It is an intentional violation of the truth to deceive, it's a falsehood, it's deception. It's a statement that is contrary to known facts, spoken with the intent to deceive.
Like, did you have to talk about this right after April 1st? A lie is a statement that is spoken with the intent to deceive. Now, for example, if I tell you that it is noon and then discover that my watch battery had died and it was actually 2 o'clock, did I lie to you?
No, no I did not. To communicate misinformation in itself is not a lie if the misinformation was given unintentional, that happens at times. But if I gave you the wrong time and made you late to a meeting so I could benefit from it, that would be a lie. Lying is an intentional violation of the truth, it is to deceive someone, to tell someone something that is false, and you do it intentionally.
Now lying doesn't just include some direct falsehood, it also can be statements that can be completely false, which include intentional exaggerations and fabrications of things that are not true, or things that are true but they're exaggerated. Fish stories. I mean, this fish that I caught, I'm telling you right now, and I have learned through the years, if you catch a fish and you hold it closer to the camera, it increases the size of the fish. Is this true, Carl, you got it?
Yeah, you do not hold that fish like this, you hold it like this, right? Yeah, there's all kinds of things you can do with your phone these days. Now, people can exaggerate things, things that are true can be exaggerated, people take things they hear over time, what they thought they heard becomes a whole new story that never even happened. That's how a lot of times gossip can come into play. Gossip misinformation happens, time has a way of changing what really happened in the past. People have played phone before, I remember as an elementary kid and we did that in our class one time, and I was like, who messed this up? I mean, it became like a whole new story by the 30th kid that it got to.
You know, people play phone with time. Time is a player in the game, and it changes stories, it'll twist the truth at times. It is important to understand that in every situation, if there's two people involved, there's usually three sides to the story. The man, the other individual, and the truth. It just gets bent a little bit. What happens when someone who doesn't like another individual hears them say something that isn't quite clear, how do they take it?
It can be changed. Every person has preconceived ideas about things. Lying can be exaggeration and fabrication of the truth. It can also be cheating on tests, making foolish promises even to God that you don't keep, making false excuses.
Kids who are supposed to clean their room, make up some false excuse, that's a lie. Missing school, lying about sickness. Let me ask you, if you know you're supposed to be at work and you're like, I got five sick days, you come call in and say I'm sick and you're not sick, what is that? It's a lie. You know, I've never called my boss and done that. Lord, I don't know if I'm gonna make it in today.
He's like, you're not sick, Josh. Missing homework, excuses that aren't true, workers calling in, lying on taxes, lying to a boss, being deceitful, twisting the truth. Well, it's just a white lie. Are there white lies?
We like to make the black sins a little gray, don't we? Christians should have no part in lying. How does God feel about it?
Well, the Bible is just as clear here. It says God hates lying. He hates when false witnesses speak lies. He says a proud look and a lying tongue.
And what is the result? Proverbs 19, 9 says, a false witness shall not be unpunished. He that speaketh lies shall perish. What happened to the Old Testament prophets who spoke a lie? I mean, Deuteronomy 18, 20 says that they were put to death. Pretty serious.
How serious is lying? Well, the last judgment of the Bible, Revelation 21 verse 8 says it like this, but the fearful, you know who the fearful are? The fearful are the people who say they believed in God, but when difficulties in life came, they bailed on Him. It's translated in some translations as the cowardly. They didn't have courage. The fearful, the unbelieving, those who reject the truth, the abominable, murderers. We know what murderers do. Hormongers do sexually wrong, sorcerers into witchcraft, and idolaters.
What's the only one that uses the superlative? Is that interesting? It doesn't say all murderers, all unbelieving, but it does say all liars. Is that interesting? You think that's significant? And I can tell you this, we may not all have murdered somebody physically, but we've all lied.
Right? And so, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death. If you think that's the only isolated place, Revelation 21, 15. For without are dogs and sorcerers and hormongers and murderers and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.
Wow. Seven verses later, he's already talking about liars being out of the kingdom of God. Revelation 21, verse 27, same chapter, last book of the Bible. And there shall no wise enter into it, talking about God's kingdom, anything that defiles neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie, but they that are written in the Lamb's book of life. Is that interesting? You think it'd be like murderers and child molesters and people that did some horrible thing. No, he makes pretty apparent lies a big deal to God.
Puts it on the second thing that he hates. Should we be a little bit more careful about how we talk? Is that true? Is what I said true? You know, the Bible has a lot of lies in it, examples of people lying. Not the Bible itself, the Bible's all true.
That didn't come out right. That would have been a lie. There's a lot of examples of people lying in the Bible. The first one is in Genesis 3.
You remember the story, right? The serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field, as the Lord God had made, and the serpent said to the woman, do you not eat of all the trees of the garden? She says, all the trees, except the one in the midst of the garden, but if we eat of it, we will die. And Satan said, you shall not surely die. That's a lie.
He lied to her. Today people do the same thing as Satan did, and in that case they lied to call someone to sin. People downplay sin, that's not that bad, there's nothing wrong with it, we're just having a little bit of fun, it's not a big deal. People have said this, I've heard them say to me multiple times in the years, God understands we're human. I don't think He's, He doesn't expect us to be perfect. I'm like, yeah, I know, He doesn't.
Does He? Does the Bible say, like, be holy as He is holy? And I am so thankful it does, because what if God was like, I'm okay with you doing some sin, then God would not be righteous, right?
He says, be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect in Matthew 5 48. Another way lies found is lying to receive a blessing. Do you remember when Genesis 27 and Rebecca put together a lie in order for her son Jacob to receive the family blessing?
Manipulative mama. Jacob put on Esau's garments, she made the food, Isaac was deceived, the result, Isaac was greatly upset, Esau was going to murder his brother if he could have. Lying to cover up his sin. What did Cain say?
Am I my brother's keeper? It wasn't me. Lying to make someone look bad. Remember Potiphar's wife? She lied about Joseph. Poor Joseph, right? But sovereignty had its way that day.
God would elevate him through that. Have you ever told a lie on someone to tell something that was untrue of them and to bring them down? That's a dark thing to do, isn't it? That's a dark thing to do. Also lying for self preservation. I would think most of us, this is probably the thing that we fall into, all of us at some point.
For sure. Peter fell into this. I will not deny you Christ.
And then the girl's like, didn't I see you? He's like, no. Weren't you with Jesus?
I don't even know the man. What is that? Self-preservation. I'm going to lie to preserve myself. We did this when our mom's like, did you eat those cookies I told you not to eat up?
You're like, no. I'll never forget. I tell that, like use that example of eating chocolate chip cookies. I'll never forget when my, it was like my third or fourth daughter, they they were literally still chewing it. Like the chocolate was still all over their teeth. I was like, we told you we're not eating any dessert.
We, involved in it, like we're not eating it. If I'm holding off, you know, and did you eat that chocolate? She's like, no. I was like, are you sure?
Yeah. I mean, it's just all over. And I think God made chocolate like you can't get it down without milk or something. Like you're just, you're, you're guilty. There's chocolate all over you. Self-preservation.
And we do, we have to be very careful about that in our lives that people won't even think about it, but they'll, if I can kind of get out of that, we got to teach our kids, we got to teach our families, we got to teach our lives. Lying for the purpose of looking good. You know who did that? Acts 5?
Ananias and Sapphira? Yeah, we did sell that property for that amount. What did God do to the first people who lied in the church? Think He was making a statement? It's a pretty big deal to Him.
Pretty big deal. Is telling a lie ever the right thing to do? Is it ever okay to lie? Well, the Bible is clear that lying is wrong, but could there ever be a time when it would be the right thing to do to tell someone something that's not true? I get asked this sometimes, and so I'm going to answer it next week.
No, I'm going to answer it now. There are two specific biblical illustrations that give us clues regarding this unique situation that could potentially happen in life. The Egyptian midwives in Exodus 1. Pharaoh was killing all of the children born, all the males born.
Very, very wicked. And he commanded the Egyptian midwives who oversaw the Jewish births to kill the male children, but they didn't do it. Rather, the Bible says in Exodus 1 17, but the midwives feared God and did not, as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men child alive. Pharaoh then questioned them why they didn't kill the male children, and this is what they said. The midwives said unto Pharaoh, because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women, for they're lively and they're delivered ere the midwives come unto them. They just give birth so fast. I mean just so fast we couldn't do it.
That's not the reason. They didn't kill the children, the Bible says, because they feared God, not because of the speed of the delivery. How did God feel about that? Exodus 1 20 and 21, therefore God dealt severely with the midwives because they lied so that they could save the children's lives.
Is that what it says? It says, therefore God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and waxed very mighty, and it came to pass because the midwives feared God. He made them houses. He blessed them.
It's interesting, isn't it? What about Rahab the harlot? You remember that story? Joshua 2 leads the armies of Israel into Jericho, two spies go into the city to check it out. When they're discovered, they fled to the house on the wall belonging to Rahab. She hides the men when the men who are searching for them come looking. She said, oh they fled. She knew they didn't flee.
She was hiding them. As a result, Rahab and her family were spared from death. How did God feel about it? Hebrews 11 31, by faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not when she had received the spies with peace. The Bible declares that her actions were the right choice. The Bible doesn't specifically condone either of these lies, but each decision led to a good result. In these cases, why does the Bible seemingly approve of these two lies, but elsewhere it condemns them? Well in both cases, a lie was told not to cover up sin, but to preserve life. For the purpose of not preserving their own personal life, but the life of others. While not explicitly stated, it appears that God would honor someone still today who would be in a similar situation. This is in no way making lying acceptable ever in our normal life, but there were people during the days of Nazis, Hitler's reign in Germany, and Elon Musk is not Hitler, but during Hitler's reign in Germany there were many Germans who hid Jews and they lied to the Nazis about it. If you were to ask me, should they have told them we have 20 Jews hiding in our basement so they could go down and kill them?
Do you have any Jews here? If they came to my home I would say no. You would have to stand before God and make the decision for yourself, I'm just telling you what I would do. I would do what I needed to do to preserve their life. I would I would long to, now if they said are you a Christian?
Yes I'm a Christian, I'm not gonna lie about that, I'll die for that. During America's sad time of slavery there were many who hid slaves from the pursuing and they smuggled those slaves, they were facing death. Again I believe that they did the right thing by not pointing out, yeah we have some slaves hidden down there, you can go down and butcher them. In both cases lies were told for the purpose of preserving life. It's a unique thing in life, sometimes two wrongs are there.
It's almost as if two wrongs were there and you begin to choose the one that's the lesser of the evil, if that makes sense. So again these are unique situations, that's not the same of saying like well you know my wife says is this dress look good on her, I better lie to make her feel good. We need to be honest, but you don't need to be unkind, right?
Beauty's in the eye of the beholder. Now instead of lying, Christians must be truthful. Ephesians 4 25 as we wrap this up. Wherefore put away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor, we're members one of another. Truth is the opposite of lies, the world is filled with lies, we need to be those who speak the truth. Being truthful is evident that you're born of God and are saved.
First John 3 18, my little children let us not love in word neither in tongue but indeed and in truth and hereby we know that we're of the truth shall assure our hearts before him. Would your co-workers say that you tell the truth? Would your spouse consider you trustworthy? Would your closest friends consider you to be honest?
Would those around you consider you to be a man or woman of great integrity? Tonight we looked at two truths, pride and lying. And the Bible teaches we need to replace pride with humility. I think humility is one of the most beautified qualities in all the Bible, and we need to replace lying and dishonesty with truth. If we could leave here tonight to be humble truth tellers, it's an amazing what God's going to do in our lives. Amen. Let's all stand this evening.
