Seven Things God Hates - Part 7

Our God is a God of love, but when you love that which is right, you hate that which is wrong. "Ye that love the Lord, hate iniquity," says the scripture in Psalm 97:10. And this is why in Proverbs 6:16, we have a list of seven specific things that God hates. "These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: and here they are: a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that are swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren." 

Now, it’s that sixth thing on the list we’re going to look at right now, "a false witness that speaketh lies." The Hebrew word translated "speaketh" means to pour out. Here’s a false witness who pours out lies the way a river comes pouring out of the mountainside. God hates a false witness that speaketh lies.

You’ll notice that lying is mentioned twice in this list. In Proverbs 6:17, God talks about a lying tongue. In Proverbs 6:19, a false witness. In Proverbs 6:17, we have personal lying, that is, the everyday lies of life. But in Proverbs 6:19, we have official lying. Not just a liar, but a false witness. Here is someone who is giving an official statement of some kind and he lies, and God says, "I hate that."

I think that there are two particular sins that are involved in this statement, "a false witness that speaketh lies": slander and perjury. Slander means false witness about others; perjury means false witness about myself. Perjury means you are under oath. What you are signing or what you are saying is official. And yet, if what we say or write is a lie, we are saying something about ourselves. Slander: false witness about others. Perjury: false witness about ourselves.

Let’s talk about slander. Slander means I tear down somebody else’s name, somebody’s reputation. I might not be able to kill an enemy, but I can kill his reputation. And by the way, today it doesn’t take very much, does it? Get on the telephone and just—just drop a few innuendos. Don’t make any direct statements, just a few half-truths or raise a few questions. Somebody calls up and says, "Well, did you hear about so-and-so?" "No, I didn’t hear anything." "Well, it’s better if I don’t tell you." And then your imagination goes to work and you think up all sorts of things about that person. Slander means I am bearing false witness about others.

You know, in the Ten Commandments, God is concerned about names. For example, the third commandment: "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." Now, that would be perjury. They would take an oath under the name of God and then lie. Don’t you take the name of the Lord God in vain, either in swearing or in taking an oath. Don’t do it. God is concerned about the glory and the honor of His name. 

But God is also concerned about your name. This is why in the ninth commandment it says, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." That’s slander. Don’t bear false witness against your neighbor. God is concerned about protecting your name. Just stop to think about your name. Your name means something to the people you do business with, to the banker who looks at the signature on your check, to the folks whose contracts you have signed. Your name means something. No one wants his name to be degraded. We hear someone say, "Well, now don’t hire him, he’s got a bad name." "Well, don’t do business with him, he’s got a bad name." God doesn’t want to have a bad name, and God doesn’t want us to have a bad name, and that’s why He says, "I hate those who slander."

Now, there are a lot of people in the Bible who suffered under slander. Joseph did; Potiphar’s wife lied about Joseph, and Joseph suffered because of it. Of course, God overruled it, but Joseph still suffered. David—so often in the Psalms you read something like this, Psalm 27:12. David says, "Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies: for false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty." There was a group of people lying about David, lying to King Saul. And one reason why Saul persecuted David and tried to kill him is because Saul believed this false witness. In Psalm 35:11, David writes, "False witnesses did rise up; they laid to my charge things that I knew not." And unfortunately, people believed those things and David suffered. Jeremiah the prophet was slandered. They called him a traitor. They said he was a spy for the Babylonian army. 

Jesus and John both suffered from slander. John the Baptist—Matthew 11:18-19 talks about this. Jesus says in verse 18, "For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a demon. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners." It’s neither feast nor famine, neither funeral nor wedding. You can’t please them either way. They slandered the Lord Jesus Christ—called Him a drunkard.

The Apostle Paul was slandered. In Romans 3:8, he talks about those who accuse him. "And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just." People said, "Well, Paul goes around telling people to sin because he’s preaching this doctrine of grace." People in the Bible were slandered, and Christians today are being slandered.

Now, when you practice slander, you are hurting three different people. It’s interesting to see what Proverbs 25:18 has to say about this. I want you to turn there in your Bible and mark this verse. Proverbs 25:18: "A man that beareth false witness against his neighbor is a maul, and a sword, and a sharp arrow." Now, notice those three images: a maul—that means a club, a club with which you beat somebody. A maul, a sword, a sharp arrow.

Here are three ways that we slander our neighbor. I can get up real close and beat him with a club—my tongue. Or I can get farther back and stab at him with a sword. Or I can hide behind a tree somewhere and shoot at him with the arrows of my words. "A man that beareth false witness against his neighbor is a maul, and a sword, and a sharp arrow." There are some people who slander from a distance; they shoot their fiery arrows out. There are others who come right up to you and let you have it. And it’s a dangerous thing to do. 

In the first place, when you slander somebody, you’re hurting yourself. You’re telling a lie and that affects your character, and character is the important thing in life, not reputation. If I tear down my character in my attempt to tear down somebody else’s reputation, I’m only hurting myself. And so when we slander, we’re hurting ourselves. We’re hurting those who listen to us. There are people who believe us. There are people who say, "Well, yes, I think he’s telling the truth." They may not investigate, but they’ll—they’ll trust us. And so we’re hurting the listener. That listener accepts what we say as true and goes by that, and then creates some problems.

We’re also hurting the person we’re slandering. We can’t hurt their character; we can hurt their reputation. And it may be that somebody will hear some of these things that we slanderously report, and it might do some real damage to that person and to his family. Slander is a sin that God hates. And slander goes along with gossip and backbiting and malice. The works of the flesh go to work in our lives when we are not walking in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Now let me turn the page just a little bit and say: what do you do when you are slandered? Suppose someone is slandering you. Well, Jesus talks about this in Matthew 5:10-12. These are great verses for us to meditate on. Matthew 5:10: "Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." 

Our Lord says, first of all, be sure that when you’re slandered, what they are saying is false. That’s very important. Be sure it is false. Be sure it is for Jesus' sake. Be sure that it is something that is a part of testimony and ministry. Don’t confuse the offense of the cross with being an offensive Christian. Make sure that what they say is false. Secondly, rejoice. Don’t get bitter, don’t try to retaliate, just rejoice. Leave it with the Lord. Walk by faith. And don’t retaliate. Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. The Lord is well able to take care of your reputation and is well able to protect your name.

There’s an interesting statement in Proverbs 24:28-29. Let me read it to you. Proverbs 24:28: "Be not a witness against thy neighbor without cause; and deceive not with thy lips. Say not, I will do so to him as he hath done to me: I will render to the man according to his work." Now don’t do that. Don’t pay them back that way because let God be the judge, and let God be the jury, and let God be the executioner. He can take care of your name if you’ll take care of His name.

Well, so much for the sin of slander. Secondly, He’s also talking about the sin of perjury. He’s saying that a false witness that speaketh lies is somebody who officially lies. Perjury. You’ll notice in the Old Testament a number of times God warns that there must be witnesses for every case. Numbers 35:30, Deuteronomy 17:6, Deuteronomy 19:15. In the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word shall be established. This is repeated four times in the New Testament. God says the mouth of one witness shall not do it; there must be at least two or three witnesses because God wants to establish the truth. 

Somebody came to a judge and said, "Well, my neighbor did thus and so." "Do you have witnesses?" "Well, no, I don’t." "Well, then let’s just wait and look into it." So often in a church situation or a family situation, somebody comes along and says, "Oh, did you hear what he said?" "No." "Well, he said this." "Do you have witnesses that he said that?" "Well, no, I don’t, but I heard it." Well, until we have witnesses, we’re not going to worry about it. This is especially true when you make an accusation against one of God’s servants. Be sure in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word is established. 

I recall one evening at a church I was pastoring, a man stopped me and just began to berate me and—and take me apart. I said, "Wait just a minute." I saw two of the elders walking by and I said, "Gentlemen, come over here. I want you to listen to what this man is saying." And he stopped. He said, "Well, I’m not going to talk with them here." I said, "Wait a minute. Scripture says in the mouth of two or three witnesses." That would stop a lot of backbiting and gossip and malicious criticism if we realized we’re supposed to have some witnesses there.

God hates those who tell lies under oath. In the word of God, it makes it very, very clear that God wants everything to be legal and aboveboard. In the book of Zechariah 8:16-17, we read: "These are the things that ye shall do; Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbor; execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates: And let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbor; and love no false oath: for all these are things that I hate, saith the Lord." 

Now, what does he mean by a false oath? Well, this is where we take an oath and—and we lie. We lie under oath—perjury. Now, it doesn’t have to be in a court of law. It can be at your desk at home signing an income tax statement. You sign your name saying that this is a true and factual statement to the best of your knowledge, and it isn’t. Then you’re doing the thing that God hates. God says, "I hate false witnesses that speak lies." 

In order to practice the word of God, we must have the word of God before us and we must have the word of God within us, and we must be very sure that we obey what God has to say. In fact, under the old covenant law, false witnesses were given the same punishment as the person they accused. If a couple of men stood up and said, "We saw him do thus and so," and it was proved that these two men were lying, those two men were punished with the punishment the accused would have received. My, if we had that kind of a law today, I wonder how we would enforce it.

Well, what does this mean to me—that I should not be a false witness? Well, let’s talk about contracts. Contracts, which are promises—legal promises. We sign a contract, perhaps to purchase something, and we agree perhaps to pay a certain amount every month, and we don’t do it. That’s false witness. The word of God says if you deliberately know that you are not going to fulfill that contract and you go ahead and sign it, you are a false witness. You are doing what you are not supposed to do. 

Proverbs 19:5 says, "A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall not escape." It’s repeated in Proverbs 19:9: "A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall perish." These are drastic statements, aren’t they? Proverbs 21:28: "A false witness shall perish: but the man that heareth speaketh constantly." God says, "I’m going to deal with people who lie."

Let’s talk about promises. How about marriage promises? Here’s a man and a woman who stood before a preacher and they made promises to love each other, to honor each other, to care for each other. They made promises to obey the word of God in their home and turn right around and divorce each other for no cause whatsoever. Now, God holds these marriage vows sacred. The marriage vow is not just a religious ceremony; this is a promise, a legal promise, a binding promise before God. Now, I’m not going to go into all the ramifications of marriage, divorce, and remarriage in scripture. I’m simply talking about when you make a promise, keep it. 

Now, there are times when it’s awfully hard to keep some promises. I’ve promised to get books written at a certain time and it was awfully difficult to get them done, but I sure tried. Marriage vows, contracts, taxes. What a tragedy it is when professing Christians will deliberately lie when it comes to taxes. And the word of God commands us to give honor to whom honor is due and to pay taxes to whom these taxes are due. 

How about the church covenant? I don’t know if your church has a covenant or not, but in the churches we pastored, we used to regularly read the church covenant publicly, just to remind us of what we have promised to one another. We promised to walk in love, we promised to care for one another, we promised to live a life that is clean before the Lord. Do we intend to do this? I can recall occasions when we have interviewed people for church membership and they had no intention of being good church members. They had no intention of obeying the church covenant. They simply wanted some place for their children to have marriages. That’s all they were interested in. They were not at all interested in obeying the word of God. 

What about the commitments we make in our local church? We promise to be a good Sunday School teacher, we promise to be at the choir rehearsals, we promise to be there early enough to be able to usher, and we don’t keep these commitments. Now, this is serious. God is saying to us, "I don’t want you to make any promises you have no intentions of keeping. Better you shouldn’t make those promises at all."

Here then are two very serious sins that we must avoid: slander—that’s tearing down the name of somebody else; and perjury—that is tearing down our own name because we lie under oath when we ought to be telling the truth. And God hates this. God hates it when we tear apart the very cement of society by not keeping our word. And therefore, it is important for us to speak the truth and to love the truth and to live the truth and to hide the truth in our hearts that we might not sin against the Lord.