Proverbs chapter six. Tonight
we're gonna look at things God hates. Here we find six of them
and seven is an abomination unto him. We're gonna look at things
that God hates. I heard somebody recently talking
that God hates this sin more than that sin, or he sees sin
like we do. He doesn't. The wages of sin
is death, period. Whether it's a white lie or if
it's the most meanest, ugliest, nastiest lie that's ever been,
the wages of sin is death. That's just the truth of it.
Men don't want to accept the truth. They like to think God
as themselves, like he's likened to them. That's what the Lord
said. You thought I was one like you. It's all together like I
was one as you are, that I'm not. He's other than we are,
isn't he? God hates more There's no big
or little sin. God doesn't hate more or less
based on that. It's just not true. God hates
with a perfect hatred and he loves with a perfect love. He's
holy. He's sovereign. The eternal consequence,
the eternal consequence for the sin does not change based upon
the sin. The eternal consequence for sin
is eternal death and separation. Just like the reward, For if
you're in Christ, what the reward is, it doesn't change whether
you've been the most faithful believer or you've been like
doubting Thomas or Peter, who even denied the Lord. The reward
is Christ. The reward is Christ. So the
consequence for sin is death. And the reward for being in Christ,
that's the gift of God. It's Christ himself. Unless we're
made to see how God views things, we will deceive ourself. And
tonight I wanna see how God views this sin that's found in Proverbs
6. Let's read this text, chapter 6, verses 16 through 19. These
six things doth the Lord hate, yea, seven are abomination unto
him, a proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood,
and heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift
in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies, and
he that soweth discord among the brethren." Now in religion,
we would immediately look at those. I remember and say, well,
I'm not guilty of any of that. I'm not guilty of any of that.
But I want you to notice things is in italics. Verse 16 again,
six things. You see that's in italics. That
means it was added by the translators. It's not part of the original
script. That word would be more fitting if it said these sins
doth God hate. They're just not things. They're
transgressions of God's law. They're transgression against
God. They're sin. God hates all sin. We can't keep
God's law, can we? No, but that's what men do. I was guilty of it in false religion. I'm a pastor of a church for
a while, and you'd preach on particular sins, and you're never
guilty of the ones you preached on, but it didn't do anybody
any good. Didn't do anybody any good. Men preach on particular
sins to make themselves look better, to make themselves look
justified. Well, I don't do what so-and-so does, and I don't do
what so-and-so does. God looks at the sinner and sees the sin.
He looks at the heart that's deceitful of all things and desperately
wicked. We're born in sin, shapen into iniquity. It's not that
we're, it's not that we sin a little bit and there's a little bit
of good in everybody. You've heard that foolishness before. It's not
true. We're corrupt from the top of our head to the bottom
of our feet. And now these seven things, this is what God hates.
And I hope the Lord will be our teacher tonight. Because he says,
if you look at that word, in verse 16, and these six things
that the Lord hate, yea, seven, are abomination unto him. That
word abomination means disgusting. Disgusting. So I hope the Lord's
our teacher tonight, help us understand this. And my hope
is that we see Christ. Because I could give you a bunch
of facts, but that ain't gonna do anybody any good. My hope
is that we see the Lord tonight. What he's saying is that if we
are not in Christ, we are disgusting creatures. That's what he's saying.
If you're not in Christ, we are disgusting creatures. Somebody
said, well, I don't like that very much. Well, this is the
truth of the scripture. That's what a sinner is, is it's disgusting.
It's not something that's a good thing. Only God is good. That's why the gospel is such
good news. The gospel tells us that he was made to be sin, who
knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God
in him. He took me being as disgusting
as I am and you being as disgusting as you are, and he nailed it
to the tree and gave us his righteousness. That's the beauty of it. That's
the beauty of the gospel. When did he do this? Well, when
we were without strength. In due time, Christ died for
the ungodly, when we were without strength. Matter of fact, we
were dead in trespasses and in sins. Yet sinners Christ died
for his people, didn't he? The only way God can love me,
here we're talking about God hating, but the only way God
can love me is if I am found in the Lord Jesus Christ. God
does not love, this is something a lot of people say that's not
true. God does not love the sinner and hate the sin. God hates the
sinner. You understand that? A sinner is someone that has
no, that's not found in Christ. Now we talk about being sinners
because truly the Lord made sinners. The Lord reveals that we are
sinners and that's what we talk about with each other. I'm just
a sinner saved by grace. We say those things. But at no time
did God love that sinner. His son in that center was placed
in Christ Jesus, and therefore he loves that individual. Do
you see that? No time was that individual out of Christ, is
what I'm trying to say. No time. Always been seen in
the Lord Jesus Christ, meaning being seen one with him. This
is where the love of God, that's the only place that the love
of God can abide with one like me or you, is in Christ Jesus
alone. God loves righteousness. God
loves holiness. This is why we so desperately
need the Lord Jesus Christ. He's righteous, he's holy. No,
we're not. We're not. He loves me now, he's
always loved me, and it's all because of what Christ did and
not what we did. Now let's look at these seven things one at
a time, and I pray the Lord be our teacher tonight. First one
is a proud look, verse 17. look, haughty look. It's a look that's not focused
on Christ. It's a look that focuses on self. It's a look that says, look at
me. Don't look at Christ. Look at
me. It's a look that justifies oneself. That's what the proud
look represents here. It's the same as the Pharisee,
the pharisaical look. It's the self-worthiness look.
It's a self-righteousness look. And did you know the Lord's people
don't do that? They look to Christ. They don't
have the proud look described here because Christ is their
focal point. Faith looks to Christ. Faith
doesn't look to self. So a proud look looking to self
is not what the Lord's people are made to do. Our new nature
causes us to seek Christ's face, find our rest in him alone, not
in us. We don't have pride in what we do as far as for righteousness
sake. We don't have pride in, well,
I've been attending that church for 35 years. You ever heard
that before? That's righteousness. That's
what that is. That's their righteousness. It doesn't matter how long you've
been attending. I've been hearing the gospel for a long time. That's
good news. He's still letting me hear it,
but it's all about him. It's all about him. Pride. There's
no place for pride in the And the believer just because of
the when it comes to salvation, when it comes to salvation. You
remember the Pharisee prayed within himself. That's what self
righteous. That's what the root of it is. That's the root of
self righteousness. He prayed within himself. Lord, I thank
you that I'm not like him. Meaning I'm thankful that I've
cleaned up my life that I'm living a better life that I've done
this and I'm doing this right and all that. That's a proud
look, isn't it? That's a proud look. That's what
the Lord's talking about. The Lord says, I hate that. That's disgusting
to me. I hate that. You know why? Because
we're not looking at the one God is pleased with. That's why.
We're not looking to the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the one that's
righteous, not us. He's the one that's holy. He's
the one that's set apart, not us. We have to be in him. And that's what he did for his
people on the cross. Pride points to self. And you know,
self, truly self is the root of Antichrist. Self is the root
of Antichrist. Go back to Cain and Abel in the
scripture. What did Cain do? He slew his brother because God
wouldn't accept him. It was all about self. It was all about pride.
No, you should accept what I've done. That's the issue. This
is a pride look, a proud look. But pride is the offspring of
self. Pride points to self. So if self
is the root of Antichrist, then pride would be the offspring
thereby. That's just how it is. No man can serve two masters,
the Lord said. Either you will love the one
and hate the other, or you'll cleave to the one and despise
the other. What does that mean? It means
a believer doesn't love themselves anymore. You've been made to
loathe yourself. It's still an L word, it's just
a totally different L word. Who do you love? Oh, I love him.
Because we first loved me for what he's done, not for what
I do. There's nobody that, well, I won't say nobody. The person
that feels like the biggest hypocrite is the one that stands in the
pulpit. You know your sin, you know your faults, you know your
failures, you know your thoughts, they betray you. And I need a
substitute. I need a savior to save me. I
need the one to take that pride out of me. That's why the Lord
called it a stony heart. It's a stubborn heart, isn't
it? It can't be moved, can't be touched. It's stone. Oh Lord,
give me a heart of flesh, not a proud look. Cause me to have
only pride in the Lord Jesus Christ and his righteousness,
not myself. Well, that's exactly what God
does when he first comes to an elected center. He abases them.
He abases them, puts them in the dirt. That's what he did
to Saul. You could see it over and over again. That's what he did to
Nebuchadnezzar. That's what he did to so many, so many, to Joseph. Joseph had to go down to prison
for three years. Everyone that the Lord loves, he chastens.
In the beginning of chastening, he abases them. He takes us off
our high horse and he causes us to confess, Lord. We confess
who he is, Lord. He takes that pride out of us.
I know we still get prideful. Maybe we're not, you know, I
use driving down the road a lot in my scenarios, but we get prideful
and somebody cuts you off maybe or something. I'm not talking
about that kind of pride. I'm talking about the pride where we look and say, I am good
enough. for God in and of myself. That's a proud look. That's what
I'm talking about. No believer will have that mentality
because they've been made to see that they are utterly sinful. And then the second part of that
is the Lord gives them faith to look to Christ and see that
he's gloriously beautiful and we need him. We need him. God must choose to do this. He
must reveal his son as the only remedy or we will be left to
our pride. Now I'm going to try to get through
all seven of these. So if I have to cut it short,
I will. But the second one is a lying
tongue. Look at it again. Verse 17, a
proud look, a lying tongue. We are liars by nature. Did you
know this? Scripture tells us, David said,
we come forth from the womb speaking lies. That's what we do. But
it's not so much that we tell lies to deceive one another.
No, no, no. It's that we tell the lie in thinking that we are
deceiving God. Maybe I'm not as bad as some
people are. I'm not as bad as so-and-so is.
That's a lie. That's the lie. Our heart is
deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. The lying
tongue here is referring to what think ye of Christ? That's what
the Lord asks. So what think ye of Christ? Whose
son is he? If you have the answer to that, then you have the truth.
If the Lord's revealed it and you can have the answer that
he's the son of God, but to believe it with through the eyes of faith,
that's something that entirely comes through and by him alone.
The lying tongue says, well, he's baby Jesus. The lying tongue
says that he loves everybody and tried to save everybody,
but he didn't, he can't. If we don't let him, that's the
lying tongue. That's the lying tongue. You
won't hear a believer's tongue say that. Believers know that he is God,
the Lord Jesus Christ is God, and he successfully redeemed
his people. He successfully saved everyone that he died for. The
believers say truth. Don't have a lying tongue. We've been given faith and repentance. If not given faith and repentance,
we'll believe the imaginary God. You know, there's an imaginary
God that's in people's minds and each of you had one and I
had one too. Maybe two or three. It's mostly
ourself. We worship ourself. We're idol
factories though. What was the first thing God
did whenever he came into your life? Did he not kick that imaginary
God out of there? That strong man came in and took
him and threw him out. What happened? The Lord took
up residence in there. The Lord took up, he sat down on the throne.
He showed that he's God and you're not. So we no longer lie about
who God is and what he's done. We no longer lie about We don't lie on God anymore. We don't lie on God anymore.
Only the elect are made to be truthful about self and about
God. Now the third thing, if you look
at verse 17 again, is hands that shed innocent blood. Anyone that
hates this gospel is one that would shed innocent blood. You
remember the time of Christ when he was standing on trial with
Pilate. Pilate said, I find no fault with this man. And they
said, away with him. Crucify him. He said, okay, well,
it's the time of the feast where they can send forth a prisoner.
Who would you like to have? And they chose the murderer and the thief
over the Lord Jesus Christ. Give us Barabbas. Well, what
of this man? Crucify him. Let his blood be upon us and
on our children. Everyone that hates this gospel
has that still yet in their heart. Same thing. They hate Christ.
That's the shedding of innocent blood. It doesn't have to be
a literal thing. This is spiritual matter. No,
we don't say away with this man. We say, Lord, save me, have mercy
upon me. That's what this is representing.
This was the spotless lamb. He was innocent. He was made
to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the
righteousness of God in him. Without his blood, we will be
as Judas. Without his blood, we'll be as
Pharaoh. Without his blood, we'll be lifted up in pride. And we
will shed innocent blood. We'll say crucify him, we'd be
no different. We'd say away with him. But thanks
be to God, we are kept by the power of God through faith unto
salvation, ready to be revealed at the last time. The Lord keeps
his people. Lord not only saves us and washes us in his blood,
but he shuts us up to Christ where we don't ever have the
thought away with this man. We always are constantly praying,
Lord, have mercy on me. I'm not away with you. Lord,
come to me. I can't get to you. Come to me,
save me. That's the prayer. That's the
difference, isn't it? Fourth thing is found in verse
18, a heart that devises wicked imaginations. There is nothing
more wicked than a man or a woman deciding that they're going to
be God. And that's what men and women do. They say, I'm going
to be my own God. I have the power to control my
own destiny. That's what it started with in
the garden. That's what Satan, before the garden, it started
in glory with what it's Lucifer say, I'll ascend above the throne
of God. I'll make my throne above his. I'll be like the most high. That
was his words. I'll ascend above the heavens. I'll ascend above
his throne. I'll become the most high. That's what he said. He's going
to be God, wasn't he? No. The Lord wasn't going to
have that. There's only one God and one
mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. There's
no substitute for that. That's them. That's who he is. Now you and I have been made
to know that we're not our own God. We're not our own God. Think about what Satan tell Eve. You shall not surely die. He
lied. There's that lying tongue again. There's something God
hates, that's that lying tongue. Changing God's words, that's
the lying tongue. That's the lying tongue. That's
what men do all the time. But in the same aspect of this, this
imagination devises wicked imaginations. What's more wicked than declaring,
I'm my own God. I have the power, I have the
right, I have the ability, I am sovereign. And it's just foolishness,
isn't it? And it's to their demise. It's
sad, but until the Lord reveals himself. This is the
words of everyone that has not come to Christ. Everyone that
has not chosen of God into grace. But we could say Jesus loved
everybody. You don't find that in the Bible.
You won't find that in scripture. You'll find that he loved the
world. You know what the world is to Nicodemus? Not just the
Jews, it's the Gentiles also. It's every race. It's every gender,
it's every creed, it's every nation, it's every country. That's
who God loves. The ones that he chose out of
all of that. The ones that he elected into salvation. You and
I know that this right here would be us and we would have no hope
of eternal life if God doesn't do the work. We know that to
be true. The wicked say, let God have
his way. That's what wicked imagination is. Let God, God's gonna have
his way. I can't let him do anything.
You ever heard that before, let God have his way? This is only the thoughts of
the wicked. But it's not only that, it's
trying to dethrone God. By definition, that's insanity,
isn't it? Trying to dethrone God, that's
just insane. God must do everything in salvation or none will be
saved. None will be saved. Fifthly is,
found in 18, feet that are swift To running to mischief. Now that
word mischief means evil. Evil, feet that are swift to
running to evil. Boy, we run to sin all the time, don't we?
Don't even mean to in the flesh. Our nature runs to evil. Remember
during the time of Noah, that every imagination on everyone
was only on evil in that continually. In that, we're in that time again.
We're heading to that time pretty quick if we're not there already.
Unless we find grace in the sight of God like Noah did, we have
no hope. We will run to evil. Our flesh
desires it. Our flesh loves it. Our flesh
loves sin. I'm thankful the Lord was the
one that declared the elder shall serve the younger. No, he gave
us a new nature. We're constrained by his love.
We're constrained by his love. And he keeps us by his power.
He said, I'll never leave you nor forsake you. I'm not gonna
leave you to yourself. My rod and my staff will comfort you
all the way to the end. Unless we find grace in his sight,
just like Noah. You know, it says every imagination.
Well, Noah had an imagination, didn't he? Yeah. Every single
imagination? Okay, Noah's too then. You got
to throw him in there also. What changed? What made Noah
special? Nothing but the grace of God,
that's it. Noah found, was he looking for grace? No, no. His feet were running to evil
just like the rest of them. And the Lord said, you're mine. That's what he did. He arrested
him. And he called him out of darkness into his light. And
he says, I'm going to, You're gonna build an ark. It's gonna
rain. And Noah said, I don't know what rain is, but truth,
Lord. Never seen rain before, but truth, Lord. He believed.
Why? Because of faith. That's what the Lord does. Unless
we find grace in his sight, we'll never come to Christ. We'll never
need God. We will always trust self. We'll
always run to the law for righteousness. We'll always run to our own ways
to evil continually. But running to the law for righteousness,
that's running from God. That's not running to God. That's
running from God. That's going the opposite direction.
He said, come unto me. Come unto me, all you that are
labored and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. Don't go
to the law. Come to him. Sixth thing. In that verse 19, a false witness
that speaketh lies. We've kind of already covered
this already with the other ones, but Mankind's always spoken lies
about God and about his Christ from the beginning. There's always
been someone speaking lies about it. Even with Cain, you can see
he said, no, my sacrifice is just as good as his. Well, that's
not true, is it? No, that's a lie. Well, why was
that? Well, because he wanted to be
justified based upon Cain, not based upon looking to Christ
like Abel with the blood. Man's always lied about who saves
who. I can't save myself. But yet
men act like that they got saved one time whenever they did this
and they did this and they did this. It didn't happen. It didn't
happen. God must save me completely or
I will not be saved. As a matter of fact, if God doesn't
save me completely, I cannot be saved. I cannot be saved. Men lie on God because they love
darkness. They love the praise of man more than the praise of
God. We by nature cannot come to the knowledge of truth on
our own. And when we're told that, we say, we'll not have
this man right over us. Men will shake their fists at
God, not even realizing that's what they're doing, hopefully.
Some of them do, I suppose. See how we need the Lord to come
to where we are and save us. Otherwise, we're just gonna be
having that false witness. We're gonna speak lies. Speak
lies about who God is, about what he's done in salvation,
about who he saved. We'll speak lies. So what do
men do? Well, they bear false witness
and speak lies on God. Men say what they must do to look good.
Men set standards and say, well, if you want to look good before
God, I'm his witness. I'm his pastor. You want to do
what looks good before God, you need to dress this way. You need
to talk this way. You need to not do this. You need to go here
and not there. And men start doing it. They're lying on God.
God didn't say that. Man said that. That's man's traditions.
It's man's opinions. What does God say? God said,
this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. That's what
God said. We look to him and the Lord teaches us. Somebody said, what kind of,
this guy asked me at work, what kind of laws do you have at your,
I think it's what it said, laws or rules, something like that
for our church. And I said, the Bible. He said,
that's it? And I said, yeah, it's plenty.
That's all we need. I guess he would have been telling
me we have a constitution. I don't know what he wanted from
it, but he probably won't be coming. But it is what it is.
I speak lightly about that, but it's sad. People hold on to those
things. They've heard these lies so much from these false prophets,
from these false preachers, and they believed them. They believed
the lie. And oh, were we not like that
not too long ago? We were in the chains of darkness
as well, and God's the one that turned the light on. He's the
one that came to where we were and broke the chains by his grace
alone. He alone must bring his truth.
Truth is there's none good, but God. And there's what the Lord
said, you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you
free. You're going to know it. You're
going, his people are going to know the truth. And I like capitalizing
that because I believe that's him. It's the Lord Jesus Christ.
You're going to know the truth about the truth, but the truth
himself, you're going to know him also Lord Jesus Christ. This
is his promise to his elect. All right, the last one is found
in verse 19. He that soweth discord among
brethren. There are some that never truly
believe the gospel, but yet they still go to a gospel church.
There's some. We don't know who the Lord's
called and who he hasn't. There's some that do it because of tradition.
There's some that do it because of obligation. There's some that
do it because it was mommy and daddy's church. I know somebody
like that. The hope is that the Lord would
Bring them to the knowledge of the truth. There's a difference
between knowing the truth and believing it by faith. Yeah,
I can know Everything there is to know about the gospel, but
unless the Lord shows me shows me Christ There's plenty, let
me say this very clearly. There's plenty of Calvinists
that are not in heaven. They're holding to a doctrine.
They're holding to a certain amount of points that are, and we hold to Christ alone. He is our salvation, alone. His
finished work, alone. What he did, alone. And we preach
the full doctrines of scripture, but we preach Christ and him
crucified as our only hope. Our only hope before God. These men that attend the Lord's
Church, they're like wolves in sheep's clothing. And I've seen
this before. They like to stir up trouble. They like to stir
up trouble. And somebody asked me, how's the church doing? And I've
said this before, and I'll say it again. I said, we have peace. I love that. I have three daughters,
and peace is so underrated. Peace is wonderful. When there's
peace in my house, I love it. It's peaceful right now. We have
peace in our church, peace to be able to worship God, peace
to not be bothered from the outside world, but peace with each other,
love with each other. No one's trying to sow discord
at this time. No one's trying to do these things, but there
is snakes that come in. There is wolves that try to sneak
in, and the Lord warned about this, and so did the apostles.
They try to sneak in unaware, and when they do, the Lord will
take care of them His way. The Lord will take care of them
His way. But it's something that the Lord hates, is discord. It's
conflict, it's unnecessary among the brethren. We can know this,
if something does happen, it'll be the Lord. It'll be the Lord. So what do you do? Well, just
like anything else, it's coming up on gardening season, so we
get the plow out and we plow up the ground. We get all the
plants and put them in the ground. We prepare for rain, that's what
we do. And the Lord has to send the rain. What do we do? We preach
the word. We preach the word and the Lord gives the increase.
We preach the word. That's it. That's it. Did you know that there is no
damage that's ever happened on the Lord's church as far as the
church being damaged? Now I understand there's martyrs.
I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the church
has always been in Christ untouchable. I'm talking about spiritually.
Nothing can damage the church. Nothing can harm the church.
It's in Christ, seated in the heavenlies already. Take heart
in that. Great comfort in that, knowing
that nothing can touch you unless God purposes it to do so. And if it does, you can mark
it down. If you're his, it's for your good and his glory,
no matter the unpleasantries of it. It's for your good and
his glories. The church was redeemed by the blood of Christ. All of
God's people are sealed forever. We're saved by the blood. We're kept by his grace. We're
redeemed by the power of God. He's not going to let anything
happen to his church that he hasn't purposed. Therefore, all these other individuals,
as they're called, these sins, these abominations, They're no
longer what we produce, but by faith we look to Christ. We're
looking to Christ now. We're not looking to self. We're
not lying on God. We're not, we don't have a proud
look anymore thinking that we're good enough for God. Every one
of these, the Lord's people don't have this. There was a time where
we did every one of them, but now we don't. We don't because
we have Christ. We're in him. We are in him.
And when he sees us, he sees the blood. We rest in Christ
alone. You know what he says? I know
the thoughts I have towards you. He said, thoughts of peace, not
of evil. Now, how is he gonna say that
to somebody he hates? He wouldn't. He's talking to
his children. He says, I know my thoughts I
have towards you, thoughts of peace, not evil, to bring about
your expected end, your expected end. There's great hope in this
gospel. He started it. He completed it.
He's going to finish it. It already is finished. We just
got to go through the process of it. Because we are in Christ, he
loves us as his chosen people. The truth is he hates everyone
else. If they're not in Christ, you can't love somebody that's
not in Christ. It would be against his nature. But he loves his
people with an everlasting love. It's good news. It's good news. Let's pray. Father, we ask that
you would take these words and bless it to our understanding
for your glory. In Christ's name, amen.