Proverbs 6 (Pt 2)

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Would you take your Bibles and turn to the 6th chapter of Proverbs, Proverbs chapter 6.
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If you were here last week or you remember or heard last week's message, I had said to you that if I had a title chapter 6 it would be, might sound like a new Netflix series because I said it would be titled Promises, Sluggards, Worthless, and Thieves.
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Again, I think that's what is laid out in this chapter.
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And again, nothing new under the sun.
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And even as the writer says, what has been shall, shall always be.
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So what I'd like to do tonight, and if you remember again, we broke this chapter in half.
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I dealt with the first 11 verses last week and now tonight to finish the remainder of the chapter, but if you would, let's just read the chapter in its entirety and then we'll focus on verse 12 through verse 35.
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My son, if you become surety for your friend, if you, if you are shaking hands in a pledge for a stranger, you are snared by the words of your own mouth.
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You are taken by the words of your own mouth.
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So do this, my son, and deliver yourself, for you have come into the hand of your friend.
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Go and humble yourself.
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Plead with your friend.
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Give no sleep to your eyes nor slumber to your eyelids.
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Deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter and like a bird from the hand of the fowler.
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Go to the aunt, you sluggard, and consider her ways and be wise, which having no captain, overseer, or ruler, provides her supplies in summer and gathers her food in harvest.
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How long will you slumber, old sluggard? When will you rise from your sleep, a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep? And so shall your poverty come on you like a robber and your need like an armed man.
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A worthless person, a wicked man, walks with a perverse mouth.
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He winks with his eyes, shuffles with his feet, he points with his fingers.
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Perversity is in his heart.
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He devises evil continually.
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He sows discord.
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Therefore, his calamity shall come suddenly.
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Suddenly, he shall be broken without remedy.
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These six things the Lord hates, yea, seven are an abomination to him.
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A proud look, lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift in running to evil, a false witness who speaks lies, and one who sows discord among brethren.
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My son, keep your father's command.
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Do not forsake the law of your mother.
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Buy them continually on your heart.
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Tie them around your neck.
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When you roam, they will lead you.
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When you sleep, they will keep you.
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When you awake, they will speak to you.
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The commandment is a lamp and the law is a light.
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Reproofs of instruction are the way of life to keep you from the evil woman from the flattering tongue of a seductress.
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Do not lust after her beauty in your heart, nor let her allure you with her eyelids.
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For by means of a harlot, a man is reduced to a crust of bread, and an adulteress will prey upon his precious life.
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Can a man take fire to his bosom and his clothes not be burned? Can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be seared? So is he who goes into his neighbor's wife.
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Whoever touches her shall not be innocent.
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People do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy himself when he is starving, yet when he is found, he must restore sevenfold.
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He may have to give up all the substance of his house.
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Whoever commits adultery with a woman lacks understanding.
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He who does so destroys his own soul.
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Wounds and dishonors he will get, and his reproach will not be wiped away, for jealousy is a husband's fury.
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Therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance.
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He will accept no recompense, nor will he be appeased, though you give many gifts." Let's just ask God's blessing.
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Father, again now we come before you in Jesus' name.
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We come before your word and we ask you Lord now to bring truth to our hearts, our minds, and our lives.
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Lord God, without you we can do nothing.
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Help us to realize that and help us to realize that you through our Lord Jesus Christ and through your word have given us wisdom and understanding on how we ought to live and conduct ourselves even as was prayed in this short life that we have.
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For we are truly like the grass that is here today and tomorrow is gone.
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So bless us Lord only as you can in Christ's name.
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Amen.
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So tonight again, and I remind you I am not going to deal with those verses that specifically talk about adultery as Brother Keith had in in chapter 5, spent three messages on that, and it's going to come up again in the seventh chapter and continually through the book of Proverbs.
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So I'm going to avoid those verses, but I do think there's enough to keep us thinking tonight as far as the last two points that I made in the titling of the message, and so we'll begin with the worthless.
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But let me just say this before we start, and I think this is important for us to think about.
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There is such a movement, a desire on the part of so many to dilute God's Word.
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And what I mean by that is in particular we seek men, women, children, even in the churches, but certainly out in the wider world, there is this desire to dilute and to remove the sting of God's Word.
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We seek to have the words with different meanings than the meanings that God gives.
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And so as we go through this tonight, I want us to think about that.
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I want us to try to focus our minds on the very words that God uses because those are the words that count, regardless of what men might think and what men might say is acceptable in a social environment.
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Brothers and sisters, I assure you God's Word is the most acceptable word in a social environment.
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But again, as we go through this, think about it and think about how God terms both the worthless, and as we work through this, and then as we'll close with some discussions around verse 30 dealing with a thief.
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But I think that's important, and I say that especially in light of today where, again, we all know about that great tragedy in Texas and how horrible it is, and and yet as I have been listening to to the pundits and the news people and opinionists and all these others, it's almost man-for-man that the reason behind this all is health issues, mental health issues.
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And I don't know, I don't have a version where God says that things are only the result of mental health issues, that there is the issues of the heart, and those issues are the very issues that cause men, women, all to do what they do.
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It's not just, I mean, how much more are we going to drug up our society with opioids and downers and uppers and somewheres in the middles, and try to control and say that that's the answer when that's not the answer.
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So again, as we look at these words tonight, it's important for us to say, and it's important for us to speak in a way that we don't just join in with the world and make it sound as if if we can only use nicer words, if we can only put things in a better atmosphere, if we can only solve health issues, if we can only educate, if we can only do this, on and on and on.
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And yet when we come to the Word of God and we come to these verses tonight, God is very clear about how he considers and how he judges based on his definitions, not ours.
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So I think that's important for us.
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Okay, having said that, look at verse, just to start, we'll just walk through some of these verses and some I'll just make points, but some we'll look at.
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In verse 12, it says a worthless person and a wicked man.
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A worthless person, a wicked man walks with a perverse mouth.
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You see, that's my whole point.
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That's what I just said.
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This is the definition that God gives, and it's interesting to me that there, as I understand, there's no distinction between a worthless man and a wicked man.
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They both speak with a perverse mouth.
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Now, it's not the same word, that word worthless really is the word that that was used many times to to show forth the son of Belial.
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If you remember that, there was those that were of the wicked one, and that's again a term we would associate with Belial, would be the evil one.
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But that word worthless really means that they are of no profit, and they're actually sons of Belial, and so it's a different word from wicked, but the point is from God's standpoint, a worthless man and a wicked man is the very same person.
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Again, we have problems with that in our day where we try to separate, and we try to put in buckets and compartments at what point someone is just, well, he's just worthless, and he's wicked.
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In God's mind, is there that greater distinction? I say there isn't because they both walk with a perverse mouth, and again, I want us to think about it in the sense that this is not, it's not an issue, it's a way of life.
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A worthless person, his whole life is worthless.
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Now again, I'm not trying to say he doesn't work, or this, that, or the other.
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What I'm trying to say before God, this worthless person, this wicked person who speaks with a perverse mouth, is of no use in relationship to God, and that's really, and again, remember, the chapter 6 is not disconnected from any chapter that went before because it continually talks about relationships, right? Whether they be vertical in a relationship with the Lord or horizontal relationship with other men, and so you'll see as we walk through this that in this detail of this worthless and wicked person that it has a great effect even out in horizontal relationships.
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Again, you could take it from the standpoint of this great tragedy, one man's sin in many ways have decimated all those lives and all those families.
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Again, because sin is sin is in many ways an evil seed or an evil poison that spreads its roots and its tentacles out, and so again, that's why I believe it God sets it forth to us in this very way that a worthless man, a wicked man, he walks with a perverse mouth.
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And again, it's not an isolated action, and I'll show it to you.
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Look at it.
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It's right there, right? A worthless person, a wicked man, he walks with a perverse mouth, and look what he does.
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He winks with his eye.
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He shuffles with his feet, points with his finger.
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Perversity is in his heart.
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He devises evil continually.
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Devises evil continually.
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He sows discord.
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Well, if he sows discord, where does that discord go? It goes outward, right? It permeates everything.
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Sin is like a cancer.
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It spreads.
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It affects others.
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But this is a continual characteristic.
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He devises evil continually.
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He sows discord, and if you and I were just to think about that, it's really the way of his life.
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Remember what the prophet said? He said, can the Ethiopian change his skin? Can the leopard change his spot? So how can you, who are accustomed to evil, do good? And when you begin to think about that, and again, that's why I say in our day, we want to not say that people are worthless.
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We definitely don't want to say too often that people are wicked unless we do, they do extreme things.
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But is that the way God views it? Is that the way the Holy One looks upon it? We have to ask ourselves these questions, because again, we are, we live in a day, and it's not any different than any other day there's ever been, nor do I believe it's any other day that will yet be, because men will continually seek to dethrone God's Word, thereby dethrone God, or seek to do that, and yet God's Word is forever settled in heaven.
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And so when God says someone is worthless, and when God says someone is wicked, then they are worthless and wicked.
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It's interesting, again, and I don't want to hop on that, and there's some other points I'm going to make, but as I listen to these people, and all these people talk about the real answer of mental health issues, and yet no one ever defines what that means.
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It's just like this big bucket.
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Everything is mental health, and if we could solve that, but no one ever tells what they really mean by mental health.
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And then they start breaking it out into social issues.
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Well, it's education, it's housing, it's opportunity, it's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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You think we'll ever hear anybody come out during this tragedy and say that it was a result of sin and evil? Or we tried to just, oh, maybe we'll just blame the guns.
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So as we think about this, and as we think about this character, this person, you just see it, and it kind of oozes out of everything that he does, or she does, again.
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Speaking of men, generically.
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And not only that, it affects, listen, and I've been thinking about this, what we are in our soul will definitely come out in our life, won't it? Isn't it interesting how when you're emotionally, and I'll use that term emotionally, when you're emotionally upset in your inner being, does it not affect you physically? When you're pressed, when you're, if you will, pressed down, or even many other times, overwhelmed, it affects us physically.
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So as you look at this worthless person and this wicked man, it seeps out, and look at the things it does.
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It affects his eyes, it affects his feet, it affects, he points with his finger, he, it affects the things that he does, and that he continually seeks to spread his worthlessness and his wickedness, and he sows discord.
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Interesting that we try to, in our day, detach issues of the heart from issues in life.
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Again, because we are unwilling to honor God and say that a wicked man is a wicked man.
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Again, unless we are in the, the Adolf Hitler, unless you make it to that level, you're not really wicked, you're just, you got mental health issues.
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That man who shot those kids, he was a wicked man.
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He was a worthless man.
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You ever meet somebody like this, who winks with his eyes, and, you know what I'm talking about, right? And, and he points with his fingers, and he shuffles with his, he's slick.
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He's slick, and the reason why he's slick is because, what it says in verse 14, he's continually devising evil.
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He's continually seeking his own gain at any and all of his cost.
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And, and it's not always that noticeable, but yet, I say to you, you watch somebody long enough, and you're gonna see what's in their heart, because it's going to spill out in their life.
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Now, I'm not dismissing, because we all have so many sinful tendencies that still need to be cleansed.
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But if you watch the course of someone's life, over even a short period of time, you begin to see the characteristics, and you begin to see whether they are a righteous person, not self-righteous, not righteous because of anything that they've done, but they have the righteousness of Christ, and you can begin to see a worthless and a wicked person.
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And he sows discord.
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And again, I say, he, he's almost like a farmer spreading seed.
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And, and, and all he wants to do is see his, his seed prosper.
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Again, at anyone else's expense.
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And so he devises this continually.
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He uses, he uses great subtlety.
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In Proverbs chapter 10, it says, he who winks with the eye causes trouble.
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Tell me you're not careful when somebody does one of those.
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I know I only got one good eye to size, like a flounder, but you don't want to talk about when somebody gives you that, right? They'll say something, and they'll say it in a mixed crowd, and then they'll give you the wink, like, we got this, right? Well, those are, those are of signs of what's going on in people's hearts.
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Proverbs 16, it says, an ungodly man digs up evil.
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It's on his lips like a burning fire.
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A perverse man sows strife, and a whisperer separates the best of friends.
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A violent man entices his neighbor and leads him in a way that is not good.
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He winks his eye to devise perverse things.
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He pursues, he purses his lips and brings about evil.
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Again, brothers and sisters, we ought to be distinct.
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We ought not to be the ones that are winking with our eyes and pointing with our fingers.
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We are not to be the ones that are continually devising how we can come out on top while everybody else comes out on the bottom.
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Look at verse 15.
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Therefore, his calamity shall come suddenly.
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Suddenly, he shall be broken without remedy.
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What a dead end.
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What a dead end.
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In Proverbs 29, 1, he that being often reproved and hardens his neck shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy.
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The end of this, this worthless person, the end of the wicked man, and perhaps that's one of the reasons why we don't want to call people wicked and worthless as God defines it because there's an end to it and nobody wants to face that end.
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We just continually want what Israel have all wanted the prophets to do.
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Just speak to us smooth things, sing to us sweet songs.
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It's exactly what they told Jeremiah and others.
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Just prophesy unto us good things, sweet things, things that will not disturb our conscience, things that will allow us to cover up our evil and our evil activity in sowing discord.
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So, look at the next couple of verses, verses 16 through 19, and don't think of these as, at least in my understanding, don't think of them as detached from what he has just said.
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So in other words, he's a worthless person, a wicked man, walks with a perverse mouth.
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He winks with his eyes.
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He shuffles with his feet.
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He points with his fingers.
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Perversity is in his heart.
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He devises evil continually.
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He sows discord.
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Therefore, his calamity shall come suddenly.
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Suddenly, he shall be broken without remedy.
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And now he gives even further understanding by saying that these six things the Lord hates.
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And if you look at them and compare them, they're almost identical.
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So don't detach what he has just said from these verses.
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These six things the Lord hates, yea, seven are an abomination to him, a proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, even as, verse 14, he devises evil continually, a false witness who speaks lies, and one who sows discord among brethren.
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Same way he said it up further where this evil person who devises evil continually, he sows discord.
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So this is how God views it, and God hates it.
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We don't like that.
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We want to know what God loves.
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We want God to be a God of love.
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We want God to be a merciful God, and thank God he is a merciful God, and gracious, and forgiving, and we want God just to be considerate of our mental health issues.
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God says he hates it.
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It's an abomination to him.
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You know what that word, you know what abomination means? It's disgusting.
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It's disturbing.
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Tell me which one of us were not disturbed when we saw that news of all those kids being massacred.
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It disturbed us, right? It disrupted our souls.
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God views the worthless and the wicked man in that way.
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It's disgusting and distasteful, and the reason for it is because God is of a pure-eyed end to behold evil, and he cannot look on iniquity with any sort of approval.
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There's no pleasure derived from it.
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Men might derive pleasure from their sin, but not God.
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Even as he told the children of Israel through Isaiah, I hate your sacrifices.
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They are a burden to me.
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Bring me no more vain oblations and sacrifices.
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My soul hates it.
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My friends, God hates sin, and so as we look at these things, and we consider these things, verse 17, a proud look.
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Perhaps that's the root of it all, right? Perhaps that's the root of all sin.
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Was that not what took place in the garden? Eve, you should be like God.
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You could be like God.
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Who's God to tell you what you can and can't do? Proud look.
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Is that not why, if you would agree with me in Isaiah and Ezekiel, where it describes the covering cherubim who was there in the beginning, who many make allusion to the devil when he fell, and what was his, what was the statement that was made? That that cherubim said, I will ascend to the throne of God.
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I will be God.
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Pride had lifted him up, and God cast him down.
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And so a proud look.
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What's interesting, if you look at, in verse 17, where it says a proud look and a lying tongue, and then you look at verse 19, it says a false witness who speaks lies.
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And as I thought about this, I think he's talking about two different kinds of liars.
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The one who speaks in verse 17, a lying tongue, is to me someone who withholds truth, right? For whatever, for a whole gamut of reasons.
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And in verse 19, a false witness, he's one who speaks falsehoods.
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They're both a rebellious act against the commandment, right? And again, these are the characteristics of this person.
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Hands that shed innocent blood.
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Well, that certainly fits what we have just been discussing.
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But it's not just with bullets and guns, is it? It's the abuses that this world dishes out in gigantic proportions.
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Because they think, and maybe even some have the power as they think, to do these very things.
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Again, I am not trying to cause us to be overwhelmed with sorrow, but I want us to be overwhelmed by truth.
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We need not only to know the truth, we need to speak the truth.
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Which one of us are going to have a conversation with whoever we have a conversation, and the conversation could come up and people will be gathered around in a group in some sort of setting, and some people will be talking about this most recent event.
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It's not going to be the last one, but this most recent event, and some will say, well, it's mental health, and some will say, well, he just had personal issues.
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Which one of us are going to say, no, he was a worthless and wicked man? And if we do that, we know the reaction, don't we? Hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift in running to evil.
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Not just evil, running to evil.
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Running with energy, running with desire, running with purpose.
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And let me add this to our thoughts.
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Isn't it interesting how the world has even taken this area of lying, and we've kind of diluted it, right? Because now we have, we have classifications for lies, don't we? Well, there's the white lie, right? And I don't know, who invented that? Probably somebody had lied.
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There's the white lie, and then there's the big lie.
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Well, here's God's definition.
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All liars go to hell.
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Oh, no, God can't be right.
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Oh, yes, he is.
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Well, if that be true, all liars go to hell, then we're all going to go to hell, yeah, unless we repent.
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Right? Lying tongue, a bad heart.
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And even Brother Matt brought it up, even with being founded on the rock.
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Those that are founded on a rock are founded on a rock, and they're going to live a life that is based on the rock.
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And those that build a house on the sand are going to live their life based on the sand, and that sand is ultimately going to come out from underneath them, and they're going to fall, and great is their fall.
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He designs destruction.
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And I thought about that where it says that he, heart that devises wicked plans.
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Just think about this.
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Has it not been that case from the beginning when Cain killed Abraham? Men have devised.
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If you go through church history, there are countless accounts of how men devised to seek to destroy God's people, thinking that if they could destroy God's people, they could destroy God.
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Fed them to lions.
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Boiled them in hot oil.
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Crucified them.
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Fed them to beasts.
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Even within the confines of Christianity, one of the greatest persecutors of God's people was the Roman Catholic Church for such a long time.
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Did not men by wicked hands kill the Lord of glory? Do we not read through the Gospels all their plots, all their plans, all their schemes, all their false witnesses, all their lies, all their desire because of the arrogance of their own hearts? Until they thought that they had rid themselves.
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Praise God.
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You can't get rid of Jesus.
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You cannot dethrone the Lord of glory.
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But it doesn't mean men will not continually do it.
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Where it says his heart devises to do evil, you know, I looked up the root word because I wanted to see what devise really means.
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It means to engrave, to cut in, to almost tattoo themselves with this desire, and then they're not happy until they carry it out.
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Again, I'm just trying to portray what God says.
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You might not think that I'm doing it in a way that's acceptable.
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Well, then you need to come and show me where I'm wrong from the Word of God, not from what you think and not from what I think.
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And again, that's another issue, isn't it? We define terms in this world based on what we think with no regard of what God thinks.
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And then we get the audacity and our pride and our arrogance to think that God has to conform to us rather than us conform to him.
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In verse 19, it's to me one of one of the most terrible words, those terrible statements in all the Bible.
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And what I mean is the second half of verse 19.
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It says, a false witness speaks lies, and it says, one who sows discord.
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I've been a Christian 45 years.
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I've been a minister 30 years.
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And I would honestly say from the very beginning one of the scariest things that I ever considered was doing harm to God's people.
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Being the cause of damaging those for whom Christ died.
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We live in a day in many ways where churches are full of people who don't care about sowing discord.
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Matter of fact, they enjoy sowing discord.
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Being the devil's advocate, a ridiculous statement.
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Psalm 133, behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.
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That's what God desires.
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That men and women, that they would dwell in unity.
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Particularly his people.
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Christ died for the church.
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Not for this church, nor that church, nor this one, nor that one.
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For the church, the true church.
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That's a whole nother discussion how you define church.
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So let me put it this way, Christ died for his people and we better be very careful how we treat God's people.
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Again, my friends, these are these are heavy words tonight.
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And I'm just gonna run right through until we get down to verse 30 because I just want to read it this way.
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It has to do mainly with adultery.
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But listen, my son keep you, here's the opposite.
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Keep your father's commands.
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Don't forsake the law of your mother.
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Bind them continually on your heart.
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Tie them around your neck.
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When, look, when you roam, verse 22, they'll lead you.
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When you sleep, they will keep you.
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When you wake, they will speak with you.
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For the commandment is a lamp and the law is light and reproofs are instructions of the way of life to keep you from the evil woman.
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My whole point in this is there is a way that seems right to a man but the end thereof is the way of what? Death.
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And there is a way that that we ought to walk and there's blessings in the way that we ought to walk and it doesn't mean we're not gonna have trials and tribulations.
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Doesn't mean we're not going to be pressed down by worthless and wicked people and schemes of men and evil and all these other things.
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Doesn't mean we're gonna live in the clouds 24-7.
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What it means is that God will keep us safe.
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He will shadow us with his such glorious truth.
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Let me just, we only have a minute.
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I want you to take, I want to take up the second point because I just want to mention this.
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Like I said, it was promises, sluggards, worthless and thieves.
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I want you to read verse 30 and 31 with me.
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People do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy himself when he's starving.
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Yet when he is found, he must restore sevenfold.
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He may have to give up all the substance of his house.
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Now, let me say this concerning this.
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I do not believe that Solomon is saying that in and of itself to teach on stealing and thievery.
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I'm not saying he doesn't instruct us.
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What I am saying is that he uses, I believe he uses these verses to contrast what he has just talked about with adultery and and sin and what he will continually say as far as vengeance.
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That verse 30 and verse 31 need to be understood in context.
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Again, there is a great truth within these verses, but they are not to be detached and removed from what comes before and what comes after.
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And by the way, that's one of the best ways to interpret, right? Scripture.
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You interpret Scripture in its context, in its setting, in its historical way.
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You need to see it as it's cushioned.
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God didn't make a mistake.
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But I want us to just, just a thought or two about this.
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Because I don't believe that Solomon is condoning stealing, do you? Well, he says this.
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He says people don't despise a thief if he steals to satisfy himself when he's hungry.
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I don't believe he's condoning stealing because then he would be breaking God's Word.
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I don't believe he's just being pragmatic and saying well, you know, the ends justify the means.
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If the guy is really hungry, I mean, come on, he needs to eat.
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And yet, I wonder how many people have used this verse to justify smashing grab in a jewelry store or stealing a something from a drugstore or stealing food.
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Well, you know, I was hungry.
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I mean, God doesn't care whether I steal if I'm hungry.
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Oh no? Does God care? I say most assuredly he does.
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For you know another group that's in hell today? Thieves.
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We cannot be those who just justify ourselves because of the situation.
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God's Word is God's Word whether the situation is good, bad, or different.
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It's not, thus says the Lord, except when, or except here, or except there.
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Now, think about it.
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Which one of us would not be empathetic, perhaps even sympathetic, if a man was seeking to steal bread to feed his starving children? Which one of us in our own lives would be the ones that want to cast the first stone? Does that mean that we should not stand for the truth still? I think it was Charles Spurgeon who said, you give me two, if I have two choices, one evil or another evil, I choose none.
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People do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy himself when he's starving.
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Look at verse 31.
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Yet, yet when he is found, he must restore sevenfold.
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You know, there was all the legislature in the Old Testament, wasn't there, about thieves and stealing? And, and sometimes the restoration was, was this amount, and sometimes the restoration was that amount, and sometimes if you did it ignorantly, you still had to pay back, and if you, if you did it purposely, you had to pay even more.
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There was, there was, there was measures, but there was always to be repentance and restoration.
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Because here's the thing, the law has no mercy in it.
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The law is, is either black or it's white.
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Now, that doesn't mean that, that we don't find ourselves many times not understanding things, but the law in and of itself, look, you run a red light, you're wrong.
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Can't be, well, I, you know, everybody else did it.
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Can't be I was in a rush.
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Can't be I'm sorry, I, I didn't realize.
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It can't be anything.
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Doesn't mean, does it mean you always get a ticket? No.
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Does it mean if you try to be nice to the cop, he might let you off? Well, he might.
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You're still guilty! If you steal, if we steal, we're guilty.
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And then you can think about what stealing really is, and that's a whole other discussion.
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But certainly, as I said to you, I wouldn't want to be the one to cast the first stone about someone who truly steals because they're in great need.
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But look, it even takes us to extreme.
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It says in verse 31, he may have, he, he may have to give up all the substance of his house.
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Again, law is black, law is white.
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Here's what I thought about.
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I thought about the Lord Jesus Christ in the wilderness.
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I thought about the temptation of the evil one.
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If you are the Son of God, command the souls to be turned into bread.
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Remember, he was hungry.
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I don't know about you.
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I go four hours without food, and I'm hungry.
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Forty days, forty nights.
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And it says he was hungry.
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He was at the extremity of his life from a human standpoint.
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What did Jesus say? Well, I'll just this once.
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I'm just gonna make one rock, one loaf of bread, just a little bit.
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What did Jesus do? He used the very Word of God.
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Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
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So as you think about this, as we think about this whole idea of thieving, and isn't that, isn't it interesting as we, we close, isn't it interesting how this, this whole social, whatever it is that we're going through, that we seek to justify people for stealing because they have needs, or they're upset, or they're trying to make their point, or they're trying to do this, or they're trying to do that.
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And yet you go into third-world countries where they worship all manner of evil and all manner of false gods, and if you steal, they got a simple answer for that, right? They just cut your hand off.
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I'll guarantee you there's less thieves in those countries, or there's less people on a keyboard.
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I mean, we need to think about this, but nevertheless, I do think he, he sets this forth in light of what he has said before and after, but it is a point worth making, and, and you and I have to, let me close it by this, saying this.
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We always need to choose, and we need to choose.
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We need to make that decision, not, not, I'm not saying that it's all up to us, and God has, you know, God can only do so much, and it's all up to us, that's not what I'm saying, but we have to make a decision.
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Am I going to follow and live according to God's Word, or am I going to seek to dilute it, embellish it, twist it, rearrange it? May it not be so amongst us.
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May we be those who, um, no matter what, no turning back.
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No turning back.
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We're going to press on.
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We're going to climb up the rough side of the mountain.
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We're going to make it, and we're going to make it because we desire to glorify God.
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May that be our heart's desire.
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Let's pray.
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Father, thank you for who you are.
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Thank you, Lord, for sending your Son into the world to die for sinners like us, Lord.
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Thank you, Lord Jesus, for your great care for us, your love, your concern, your substitutionary work, because you paid a price, you paid a debt that you did not owe, because we owed a debt that we could not and would not pay.
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Bless us tonight.
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May your Word penetrate our hearts, and may it be watered by the Spirit of God, and may it manifest itself in our lives more and more until that day.