Proverbs 6:16-19
Amen. Turn in your scriptures
to Proverbs 6. We just have a couple of verses
tonight, 16 through 19. We saved this little section
out of last week’s study. And so make your way to Proverbs
6, 16 through 19. Let’s hear God’s word together. There are six things that the
Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him, haughty eyes,
a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart
that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil,
a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord
among brothers. Amen. This is the word of the
living God. for us. I wanna start by having
us think about two big things, big themes or big topics. The
first is this, does God have displeasure towards those who
are saved? Does God have displeasure towards
those who are justified? You might get two different answers
to that question if you ask different sorts of people. Does God have
displeasure towards the justified? Well, first of all, what does
it mean to be justified? Well, we speak of justification,
right? It’s our standing before God.
He sees us in Christ just as if we’ve never sinned and just
as if we’ve always obeyed. So does God ever take displeasure? against those who are saved or
justified? Well, I hope that for you, the
answer is yes. And I hope you know that to be
true biblically. The Bible says it to be true. Just take example
of King David. Did he get off the hook for his
sin against Bathsheba? Or for the sin against Bathsheba’s
husband, Uriah the Hittite? Or for his sin against Joab,
whom he told to make sure that Bathsheba’s husband fell in battle? Or did he get away with his actions
as king over Israel when he sent his people out to war, but he
himself stayed back and played the playboy, as it were? Did
God take pleasure in that or did David completely get away
with it? I know God was displeased, but
I hope you experienced it in your own life as well. The word
is true that when we sin, God treats us as children. Yes, he’ll
forgive us. Yes, he’ll wipe away our sins.
But there are effects, right, to our sins in our lives. That
leads me to the second question. I’m a Christian, you say. We’re
making our way through Proverbs. And everything we’ve looked at
so far in six chapters of Proverbs, that’s not me. Right, that could
be a very easy statement to make. I’m no murderer, I’m no adulterer,
I’m no fool, right? We can become complacent and
so after six chapters of Proverbs, we could say, I don’t know what
all this Proverbs business is, I’ve grown up, right? I’ve got
life figured out. I’m not gonna do much stupid. I’ve passed the test. And besides,
all these proverbs are warning against big sins, right? Big sins like adultery, big sins
like running with the wrong people. Well, let me encourage you in
light of these two questions, does God take, is God, I’m gonna
get this wrong, is God ever displeased with the righteous? Is God ever
displeased with the justified? Is God ever pleased or displeased
with the safe center? I probably said that wrong every
time, so you know what I’m trying to say, right? And then, oh,
I’m a Christian. Would I ever do any of the stupid
stuff, the foolish stuff, the wrong stuff, the folly that’s
listed in Proverbs? Well, let me encourage you tonight,
as we look at chapter six, verses 16 through 19, let the word do
its work. Let the word which is sharper
than any two-edged sword, let it get into your life as God
promises that it will, and let it reveal to you where you may
be guilty of things that you think, oh, not me, never do that,
too old, too grown up, I’m a good Christian, I’m a reformed Christian,
I’m a associate reformed Presbyterian Christian, whatever you have,
in your mind, but let the word of God work in you. These couple
of verses tonight are very interesting. And I think a good way to preface
them is this. If these things are at work in
your life, If these things are at work in your life and in your
family or in your church, these are a really good way to bust
up unity, to bust up civility, to break apart the bonds that
should unite us together in church, in a family, or in maybe the
workplace or some sort of other fellowship. And so I want us
to think of these very hard and not just say, well, That’s, this
is for the fool. Think of these much like you
would Jesus’ Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit,
and so on. But also after the Beatitudes,
he gave the Sermon on the Mount, and remember he said something
like this. You may have never murdered someone, but you’ve
been so angry that you would have murdered them if you, weren’t
restrained, right? You’ve murdered in your heart.
Or you’ve never committed adultery, but you’ve looked at someone
of the opposite sex with great lust. So think of these verses
in that way, and let it give you a checkup. Well, since it’s four verses,
a four-point inspection. Or since it’s seven things the
Lord hates, a seven-point inspection. So it says at the beginning,
verse 16, there are six things the Lord hates, seven that are
an abomination to him. What do you think it means when
the Lord hates something? It means he hates it. And his
hatred is far greater, far stronger than we can ever imagine. We
use the words love and hate very loosely. I love ice cream, right? I love the Tar Heels, I love
the Blue Devils, I love the Panthers, I love the Steelers, you know,
I love lasagna or whatever it is, we love it. And then what’s
the first words a two-year-old learns when they’re eating out
of the jar? You know, they get the broccoli
or they say yuck, right? And that’s a form of I hate,
right? But our use of love and hate
are very weak. So what do we believe about God’s
view of these seven things? Well, it’s plain and simple,
isn’t it? He hates it. He doesn’t half hate it or half
love it or he doesn’t, well, it’s okay. You’re my beloved,
so I’ll let you get by with it because when I see you, I see
the sun. There are people that answer that first question the
other way, you know. They say that once you become a Christian,
God can never, ever, ever, ever be displeased with you. Well,
how about those passages where it says, do not grow weary under
the discipline and the heavy hand of the Lord. For as an earthly
father disciplines his son, so also does our heavenly father
discipline us. Who has an earthly father who
hates him and does not discipline? How much more do we have a heavenly
father who chastens us? And so you’ll hear people say
from time to time, you’ll hear them say this, you are more loved
and you could never displease God. That is really false assurance,
isn’t it? Now we can never fall away from
God’s justifying love. We can never fall out of fellowship
with him. We can never lose our salvation.
His blood has been shed for us. And if our faith is strong, we’re
saved, right? We persevere to the end by his
grace. But there are six things that
the Lord hates. and seven that are an abomination
to him. So we want to look at each of
these one by one. The first is haughty eyes. These literally
mean eyes that are lifted up. I’m proud. We’ve been watching
all these political candidates lately. I was commenting to somebody
the other day, we need to go back to the language that we
use or that was used in Britain. It still is. Their government
is broken up into ministries. the ministry of defense, the
ministry of this or that. And what does that word ministry
mean? It simply means servant. And
so an elected official, a government worker, ought to be a servant
of the state, a servant to the people. But you watch these elections
and you can tell who’s into politics. Their eyes are lifted up. They
have the haughty eyes. They are hot stuff and they know
it and they want you to know it. They look down on contempt. You know, you bunch of chumps,
right? You basket full of deplorables.
I mean, we understand what politicians really think of us because it
eventually leaks out. But they have a high view of
self and a low view of others. And this isn’t just in politics.
I think back to the wonderful days of middle school. I went
from a quiet little Christian school with probably a dozen
students to what’s probably the first level of hell, the middle
school just up the road. And it was tough, right? You
have the haves and the have-nots. Or as mentioned in Sunday school
today, you have the cool table. and then the rest of us. Well,
I was lumped in there with the rest of us. But haughty eyes
is something we see all the time. And isn’t that completely opposite
of what Jesus calls us to be as Christians? He calls us to
be poor in spirit. He calls us to serve others.
He calls us not to think too highly of ourselves, but to think
highly of others and to be like Christ, the son of man who came
not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom
for many. And so God hates haughty eyes. He also hates lying tongues. We have a little saying in, well,
just in our daily parlance, you speak with forked tongue. Where
do we get that from? We get that from the lies of
Satan. He came in the form of a serpent. right, and the serpent
hisses, lies into the ears of Eve and to Adam. And so when
a person speaks with forked tongue, that’s really not an exaggeration.
Who is the father of lies? It’s Satan. And so when we lie,
who are we following? I don’t know if y’all were paying
attention in Sunday school, but I think one of the most perceptive
questions was asked today by Freeman. He said, why would anyone
follow Satan? It’s a pretty good question,
isn’t it? I mean, you usually say, why wouldn’t anybody follow
Christ? That’s an easy one. But why would
anybody follow Satan? One of the easiest ways to identify
yourself with Satan is to tell a lie. It really is. Let that sink in. One of the
easiest ways to be a Satan follower is to tell a lie. You speak.
with forked tongue. In fact, this is going to come
up again. The very last or the next to the last is a false witness
in verse 19. But a lying tongue makes less
of others. A lying tongue elevates the self. A lying tongue works against
justice and equity and fairness to get the outcome that the lying
tongue speaker desires. Our kids have played in a little
tennis league through the fall and it’s been amazing. Now, don’t
hear this as the dad from the team that he likes and all the
other teams are cheaters, but all the other teams, their kids
lie like crazy. You sit there and watch a tennis
match and the ball is clearly out. And so you’re on the honor
system in this little league, and so you’re supposed to call
another player’s ball out. So you call it out. They come
storming up to the net. It is not. Well, you were 40
feet away. We’re supposed to be on the honor
system. The person that was right there, I mean, this isn’t John
McEnroe. This is chalk flying everywhere. This is just, was
it in or was it out? And these kids, they just lie
like crazy. And it’s not just our family
that noticed it. We began to talk to other parents, many of
them who aren’t Christians. Are you noticing a lot of these
kids are cheating? A lot of these kids are lying. And it’s amazing to see. This comes out very often, too,
in the household. Maybe some of y’all read Family
Circus, you know, with Dolly. I forget who all the characters
were. We had the little books from Mandy’s childhood and the
kids read through them when they were little and had things like
a little cartoon. Dolly comes in and whatever,
her brother PJ. PJ hit me back, right? Which is a self-confession. I
hit him first. He hit me back. But in the household,
there can be these little lies. And what do we call a lie that
we don’t think matters? It’s a little lie or a white
lie. Yeah, we cheated a card game or we cheated a tennis match. What happens when you grow up
doing that? Well, it used to be you went to work for Enron,
right? Y’all remember Enron? Had the
infamous accounting department, right? They cooked the books. But God hates a lying tongue.
One of the ways to break down society, one of the ways to break
down a household, one of the ways to break down really a church
fellowship or a workplace is to allow a lying tongue. And let me reiterate what I said
just a moment ago. God hates these things. And why do you think he hates
a lying tongue? Well, you read through the scriptures, that’s
the main trait of Satan. He is a liar. He is the father
of all lies. And so when you lie, you are
following him right into battle. Well, the third thing he hates
is shedding innocent blood. And you say, okay, finally something.
I have never killed anybody. There are no dead bodies in my
trunk. Never buried anybody in the back cornfield. Oh, but you’ve
hated, haven’t you? You’ve had anger. You’ve done
what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount. You may not have
shed innocent blood, but you have been cruel. You have caused
another pain. And if, well, nothing were to
stop you, you probably would have shed innocent blood as well. But we’ve just gotten through
politics, and I’m not supposed to say a whole lot as a minister
about politics. I’m not supposed to tell you
who to vote for and all the rest. But this is just too easy. Think
about the previous Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh. They literally
tried to destroy him. They launched a character assassination
on his good name. And maybe he wasn’t a stellar
young kid. Maybe he did drink a few too
many beers or whatever. But I don’t think anybody deserved
what he got. but they attempted to shed innocent
blood. And they would have done it this
go round, I do believe, except God’s grace and maybe the fact
that this woman displayed as the scripture says, live a quiet
and godly life so that pagans will have nothing evil to say
against you. But we see examples of shedding
innocent blood. You’ve seen on the news with
the rise of social media, The rise of teenagers shaming each
other on social media. We’ve seen the teen suicide rates
go up because we say something nasty, we say something mean,
we say something foul about another. I remember several years ago,
we were embroiled in a church situation that was pretty nasty. In our house, we watched all
the Rocky movies. We figured, you know, we figured
that would get us through it. But one of the movies that we
watched was Mean Girls. Good old teenage movie from 15
years ago or whatever. It’s rather uncanny that sometimes
in our homes, sometimes in our schools, sometimes even in our
church, we have what we might describe as the mean girls, and
they shed innocent blood. They’re cruel, they cause pain.
and they even kill. And God hates this. It’s an abomination
to him. Well, the fourth thing is the
heart that devises evil. And I think it goes without saying
a lot of these are interconnected. You have haughty eyes and a lying
tongue. You shed innocent blood. You are a well, you have a heart
that devises evil. There’s an interesting play on
words in the Hebrew scriptures here. It’s a heart that plows
and prepares the soil and makes things ready to see their schemes
worked out, their heart and their mind works against others. What’s the one thing that we
don’t like in another person? We don’t like them to be manipulative,
right? You know a manipulative person.
They come in all kinds of forms. They flatter you. They threaten
you. They set you up, as it were.
There’s all sorts of ways this takes place. And you work back
through this list. A person who devises evil is
going to have haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and most likely shed
innocent blood, even if it’s not physical death. But God hates. It’s an abomination. to him,
to one that’s an evil schemer. Then notice the fifth, their
feet run to evil. In fact, they run with haste
to evil. Your feet, or now you might say
your car, right? We don’t walk places like they
did in the ancient Near East, but you get the idea. Their feet
run to evil. Contrast that with this morning,
we considered Enoch. What was said of Enoch? Enoch
walked with God. Enoch was not because God took him. And then
who came after him? Noah. Noah was a righteous man. He
was righteous before his generation. He walked with God. Or what does
Paul say? Walk in a manner worthy of the
gospel. And so as our feet move through
life, Do the feet go to church? Do the feet go to scripture?
Do the feet go to the neighbor to serve them? Or as we see in
the Proverbs, do our feet run to evil? Do our feet walk into
the adulterous house? We’ll see much more of that next
week as we finish chapter six and even all of chapter seven,
all in one lump. Where your feet take you. determine
the course of your life and really the end of it. So God hates feet
that run to evil. Well, the sixth thing, this goes
back to our lips. He hates a false witness or he
hates one who breathes out lies. Now this isn’t the same as what
we talked about earlier, you know, the little white lies,
the cheating at tennis or the cheating at card games or no,
I didn’t do it. He did it. Or, you know, all
these things. This really has to do with perjury.
This really has to do with bearing false witness. This really has
to do more with gossip and slander and destruction of another person’s
Good name. I mean, here we go. We just ended
the political season, or we thought we did. But the television commercials. We have these television commercials
and they put a picture of somebody that’s not their best look. They’re
caught red-handed and so their hand is lighting up. We’re supposed to believe so-and-so
took out a VA loan for a rental house. What kind of guy can you
trust? That’s politics, right? No, it’s
actually something God hates. It’s actually something that
God despises. We need to be careful not to
breathe out lies. How quickly do we hear a person’s
name and we say a little sentence about what we believe? We can
play a little game right now. We won’t because I don’t want
you to get in trouble and we don’t need to go back into having prayer
and confession. But I could name a person and say, what’s the
first thing that comes to mind? And probably in some cases, not
every case and not in most cases, but in some cases we might say
something out loud that was injurious to their name. Or how about this? Somebody in the community gets
accused of something and what do all the people start saying?
Well, I know he’s guilty, right? I’m sure she’s guilty. Oh yeah,
I know they did it. Right. Well, aren’t we entitled?
How does it go in law? We’re entitled innocent until
proven guilty. And then we’re entitled to a
trial by a jury of our peers with the evidence presented.
But how quickly do we say things? Oh, so and so. And really, when
you get the lean in, right, you know, the whisper. That’s when
you know it’s really juicy. What’s the old saying from Weezer,
from Steel Magnolias, if you don’t have anything nice to say
about anybody, come and sit down beside me. We love that. We love the juice. We love the talk about others. But God hates it when we are
false witnesses or when we breathe out lies. Well, the final thing
that he hates, the seventh thing, is one who sows discord among
brothers. And if we think about the fifth thing, I believe it
was, let me count, one, two, three, four, that is the fourth
thing, the heart that devises evil. What did we say? They plow
the ground. They make ready the soil to devise
evil. And then what do they do? They
sow their seed. They sow their discord. And if
you look back through the anatomy of a controversy, I can do it
through serving in three different churches. You can go back through
the anatomy of a little dust-up in the church. And the dust-up
began. Somebody had haughty eyes. They
thought too much of themselves. Somebody had a lying tongue.
Someone wanted to inflict pain on others. Someone’s heart devised
evil. They plowed the ground. They
made ready for the lies and for the things that would be said.
And then they sowed discord. I think I’ve told you before
about the fellow in my first ministry. He came up to me and
very seriously said, I believe that I have the gift of, it was
something like the gift of complaining. He literally, he really said
this to me. He says, God has given me a gift to see what’s
wrong with people or churches or things and to name it. And I said, I don’t think God
has given you that gift. I think Satan has. That’s one thing to
see where things are broken or bent or in need of work and to
biblically fix it. And that’s often done in private.
That’s often done in quiet. But this person was a sower of
discord. And what he did is he used biblical
language. Actually, that’s not biblical
language. That’s really charismatic language, isn’t it? God told
me. And so therefore, I’m going to
tell you. And so this person who, their
heart devises evil, their feet run to evil, they breathe out
lies, they sow discord. They spread their seeds, they
build their loyalties, they let the disloyalties be known. amongst the brethren. And Satan
is sitting on his beach chair with his feet crossed in the
Corona. And he’s saying, I hadn’t got to do a thing, right? I just
let the people of God do it. And so these are things that
we ought to examine about our own lives, about our families.
and even about our church. You’ve heard the phrase toxic,
right? This is a toxic work environment,
or this is a toxic relationship. You know, maybe you watch afternoon
television, you listen to Dr. Laura on the radio, you listen
to, oh, Dr. Phil, he’s the best, isn’t he?
And what does he say, or what do they say in all these situations?
Get out. Put a stop to it. No more. And that’s the reality in our
families and in our churches. where we need to call something
God hates what it really is. And this is especially something
as we’re thinking about wisdom for children and raising children. You know, very early in life,
I think kids begin to learn the pecking order. Kids begin to
learn how to walk in a room and see who’s in charge, who’s not,
who’s easy to win over, who’s not, who can I poke at to make
myself look bigger. And if you’ve gone to elementary
school, to the playground, or middle school and suffered through
that social nightmare, you’ve experienced it. But we grow up
and it carries with us in the workplace. I mean, some of you
who have workplace politics, you don’t now because it’s just
you and the dog and your laptop, right? That’s a good thing, probably.
There’s no water cooler. But you’ve seen it in workplace
politics. It can be very toxic. And so
we ought to look at this list and say, not in my house, not
in my church, and not in my life, and see God’s blessing as the
fruit of the spirit bears a great blessing into these relationships
that we have. Please pause and pray with me. Lord, we pray that we would never
approach your scripture and say, oh, these things are about others.
These things don’t speak to me. I’ve overcome them. I’ve passed
the test. They’re beyond me. But let us
see that in little ways and even in big ways, our eyes are lifted
up. Our tongues speak evil and breathe
out lies. In reality, we do shed innocent
blood. Our hearts plow up the soil to
devise evil. Our feet run to it with great
haste, and we sow discord. Lord, we do not want the chaos
of Satan and the toxicity of this cursed world in our lives,
in our homes, or in our church. And so by your spirit, by your
word, root it out, and may we be people and places of peace
where Christ reigns at the center. and people are ministered to
and not harmed. We pray this in Christ’s name.
Amen.