Episode Transcript
Title of the message tonight is "The Odious Lie."
And Proverbs 13, 5 begins by saying, "A righteous man is one who does right according to God's Word."
And in order to do right, you must first think right.
You must think biblically before you can act biblically.
Now, the Bible tells us that by lying to our parents, the devil helped bring death and destruction to the world.
The Bible tells us that by lying to the angels, the devil helped bring death and destruction to the angelic world.
Everything that's bad came about by lying.
Therefore, righteous man, look back in your text, hateth lying.
That just kind of makes sense, doesn't it?
It hateth, he hates lying.
He hates lying in the sense that lying is repulsive to him.
Lying is repulsive to a righteous man because a righteous man sees Lying the way God sees it, the way the Bible describes lying to be.
Through God's Word, we learn that a lie is the beginning of all corruption.
It's the original component of all corruption.
Every sin begins with a lie.
Have you ever thought about that?
Every single sin begins with a lie.
In fact, it is impossible to sin without believing a lie.
It's impossible to sin without believing a lie.
When a person sins, they're thinking, "This will be worth it."
That's a lie.
"This is okay for me to do."
That's a lie.
"I will get away with it."
That's a lie.
"God wants me to be happy so I can do this."
That's a lie.
Satan told himself.
He lied to himself.
He said, "I will be like the Most High."
That's a lie.
He's still not like the Most High.
Satan told Eve, "You won't die."
That's a lie.
"If you do it this way instead of God's way, this will be better."
That's a lie.
"This will make you more happy if you go against God's Word."
That's a lie.
All righteousness is based on faith in God's Word.
And all unrighteousness is based on unbelief in God's Word.
A person cannot commit a sin apart from unbelief.
And that's why lying is so terrible.
Lying robs us of the truth that is necessary for us to live as God intended.
And again, to hate lying is to view it as something that's repulsive, something that's disgusting.
To hate lying is to have a disdain for it.
A righteous man hates lying, look back in your text, but a wicked man is loathsome.
Now that doesn't really seem to go together when you first look at it.
You would think that the scripture would say a righteous man hates lying, but a wicked man loves lying.
But that's not what it says.
A wicked man is a man who is wrong according to God's Word.
And that's as a man who thinks contrary to God's Word, and someone who thinks contrary to God's Word, that wicked person is a loathsome person.
And so you think, well, what does it say, "A righteous man hates lying, but a wicked person's loathsome."
Well, in the Hebrew, the word translated "loathsome" here literally means "to smell bad."
In Exodus chapter 7 verse 21, you'll remember when God plagued Egypt and was telling Pharaoh, "Let my people go."
He turned the water into blood.
Remember?
And the Bible says in Exodus 7, 21, "And the fish that was in the river died, and the river stank."
Same Hebrew word.
Loathsome.
"And the Egyptians could not drink of the water of the river, and there was a there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt."
Wickedness stinks to a righteous God.
And wickedness stinks to a righteous man.
Just as those dead fish stink in Egypt.
The problem is a wicked man can't smell its own sinful odor.
That's the problem.
That's how come the Scriptures worded this way.
A righteous man hates lying.
It's odious to him.
It's offensive to him.
That stinks.
Can I tell you all something personal?
I have always loved the smell of a skunk.
Does anyone else like the smell of a skunk besides me?
Am I the only one?
I'm the only one.
Everyone else hates it.
Well, there you go.
You're sublime to this.
You're thinking of me as an odious fella, I guess.
I smell the smell of a skunk.
Boy, that smells good.
Now, I like roses too, but there's just something about the smell of skunk I've always enjoyed.
But to everybody else, they smell it and they go, "Whew, a skunk, yuck."
Well, that's the way sin is to God.
But a wicked man, when he smells sin, it's like me smelling a skunk.
"Ah, smells pretty good.
I like that.
Mmm-mmm.
And so, that's how a righteous man disdains the lie.
A righteous man doesn't like the smell of the lie, but a wicked man doesn't mind it at all.
A saved person, which is a righteous person, sees things differently than a lost person.
Because a safe person believes God's Word to be true.
That affects how he thinks, that affects his judgment, that affects his opinion on certain things, including lies.
If you believe God's Word to be true, it's going to change how you think about things.
The more we come to believe God's Word as a Christian, the more we come to realize that our old, former, ungodly lifestyle was wicked.
When we begin to see things the way they really are in the Bible, we can finally smell the odor of our former lifestyle.
You ever gone through that before?
You look back on what you did when you were young and dumb, and it was ungodly, and you just plum embarrassed.
You think, "Oh God, I'm sorry."
Now listen to what God told Israel.
In Ezekiel chapter 36, I tell you, I had a good study.
I enjoyed my study.
Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 28 through 31.
Now this is God changing the hearts of unsaved Israelites, so they quit believing in the false gods, and they begin to believe in the one true God, and they embrace His Word as truth.
God tells them when that happens, Ezekiel 36, 28-31, "And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave your fathers, and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God."
Look at that.
You've got inheritance of the earth.
You've got God belonging to the people and the people belonging to God.
You've got this covenant relationship restored all based on faith in God's Word.
Verse 29 says, "I will also save you from all your uncleanness."
That's going to happen.
There'll be no sin in the kingdom of God.
"And I will call for the corn and will increase it."
This is this blessing, showers of blessing that are spoken of, right sugar?
Showers of blessing.
He says, "I will call for the corn, it will increase it, and lay no famine upon you, and I will multiply the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field, that ye shall receive no more reproach of famine among the heathen."
Watch this now, watch what takes place in verse 31.
"Then shall ye remember your own evil ways."
When all this takes place, and you're in this covenant relationship with God, when all this blessing takes place, and I've washed you clean from your filthiness, you're going to stop, and you're going to look back, and you're going to remember your old lifestyle.
He says, "Then shall you remember your own evil ways, in your doings that were not good, and shall loathe yourselves."
Our text in Proverbs tonight says that a righteous man hates lying, but a wicked person is loathsome.
You shall loathe yourselves in your own sight, for your iniquities and for your abominations.
So the attitude changes and now what smelled good to them is foul to them.
A man who believes Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world cannot love a lie that's telling people otherwise.
You just can't.
On the contrary, he will loathe that lie.
I tell you, I hate lies.
The Bible says a righteous man hates lying.
I hate it.
I listen to people tell people a false way to go to heaven.
I listen to people giving people wrong instructions out of God's Word and misleading people.
I listen to people in government lying.
I'm telling you, I hate it.
A man who believes Jesus is the Savior of the world cannot love a lie On the contrary, he will loathe a lie.
He'll be loathsome to them like Proverbs says.
Now figuratively speaking, sin causes the sinner to stink.
He's loathsome.
Remember, that's what it means, like the fish stank.
Same Hebrew word.
So you got a man that's covered in sin, and he smells bad.
Now you've got a righteous God and a man covered in sin, and that man is going to stink to God.
And when a righteous man takes the righteousness of God and begins to think like God, then sin's gonna start smelling bad to him too.
And that helps us understand why in the Old Testament God had burnt offerings.
Starting to come together to you now?
A righteous man loathes a lie, he hates it, he sees it as something morally offensive, a smell in his nostrils that stinks like the dead fish in the river in Egypt.
A wicked man on the other hand, he's just as stinky as that fish.
He stinks in the nostrils, God.
The Bible says he's loathsome.
The Bible says, literally in the book of Proverbs chapter 13, 5, we're studying tonight, but a wicked man smells bad.
If you got a pen and you've got some space in your notes where it says a wicked man is loathsome right out there he smells bad.
Because that's literally what the Hebrew is saying.
So God instituted in the Old Testament burn offerings.
And a burnt offering symbolizes, because in that burnt offering they reduced that sacrifice to ash, which through the heat of the flame ascended up to God in smoke.
And the idea behind that is that as that odor or that smell rises from that sacrifice, it comes up to God and God smells it.
Now remember that sacrifice is given as a substitute for the sinner.
Without that sacrifice, what does God smell?
He smells the sinner.
When He smells the sinner, He smells the sin.
When He smells the sin, He says, "Oh, a skunk."
Right?
A loathsome sinner.
But then, God says, "Here's what you do.
You loathe some sinners, you take you an offering.
You put your sin on that offering.
We'll have a priest put the sin on the offering, depends on what stage of the Old Testament you're in at the time.
And you put that sin on the offering.
And that offering dies in your place.
And you're you're gonna burn it.
And I want to smell it.
And the idea is, I was smelling the sinner, but now I smell the sacrifice.
See how that works?
That's what a burnt offering is all about.
And that's what Proverbs is trying to explain to us tonight about what a lie is.
A sinner, an unbeliever...
See, believers go to heaven, unbelievers go to hell.
It's that simple.
There's some that teach contrary to that today and it's sad, but it's true.
Believers go to heaven, unbelievers go to hell.
And so, unbelievers base their life on a lie.
They don't believe the truth, therefore they accept a lie.
Therefore, they are odious to God.
They are basing their life on an odious lie, therefore they stink.
But when I believe the truth of Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for me on the cross, and I make that my hope for eternal life, then I'm sending the smell of Jesus and His sacrifice for me to God.
And now God no longer smells me, He smells Jesus.
And so when you look here, let's go to Exodus chapter 29 please, Exodus chapter 29.
And read with me now, starting in verse 16, it says, "Listen to what God said, 'And thou shalt slay the ram, and thou shalt take his blood, there's that blood, the blood that atones for sin, and sprinkle it round about upon the altar.
And thou shalt cut the ram in pieces, this is my body which is broken for you, and wash the inwards of him and his legs and put them unto his pieces and unto his head.
It's going to be clean inside and out.
Spotless on the outside, clean on the inside.
Because it's representing Jesus who died for dirty sinners.
"And thou shalt burn the whole ram upon the altar."
The whole ram, because Jesus Christ gave Himself for all and He gave His all when He did it.
Thou shalt burn the whole ram upon the altar, it is a burnt offering to the Lord, it is a, say it with me, sweet savor.
That means a good smelling aroma, a pleasant smell, an offering made by fire unto the Lord.
So when an odious sinner offered a clean, spotless, substitutionary lamb, he was odious no more.
God now looked at him, nice and clean, no more foul odor, no more disdain in the eyes of God.
Now he can look at us and say, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."
Today I went out to check the mail, as I do every evening when I get home.
And we have some beautiful red roses in the front yard.
And I love to pause on my way back in and stop and literally smell the roses.
Oh, that smells so good.
It's so pleasing.
When I leave, I just have such a nice thought of those roses.
And you know what?
God is with us all because of Jesus.
A wicked man is not a sweet smell to God.
A wicked man is loathsome, look back in your text, and thus he, what, cometh to shame.
The loathsome man comes to shame.
The loathsome man is the unbelieving man and that's why loathsome.
God smells him and his sin rather than Jesus and his sacrifice.
So the loathsome man does not have the sacrifice of Christ.
He smells rotten to God and he shall come to shame.
And the Hebrew word here, where it says come to shame?
It has the idea, it's fascinating, of prying eyes.
Prying eyes.
Y'all like investigative reporters?
If you know there's somebody doing something wrong, don't you want someone to pry into that?
Oh boy, me too.
I want them to pry into it, I want them to find it, I want to get rid of it, get that bad guy out of here.
So this Hebrew word has the idea of prying eyes that peer into somebody's conduct and they catch him in the act and when they catch him in the act that person sees that they're caught in the act and now they blush, they're embarrassed, they're ashamed because they're caught in the act.
Do you see what Solomon is describing for us tonight here?
The person who does hate the lie, the person who embraces the lie of this world, and thus rejects the truth of Jesus Christ.
That person remains in a loathsome state, a stinky, smelly state, absence of the sweet smelling savor of God, and thus that person will come to shame.
That is, they will stand before God one day and all the sins they thought they'd hidden, all the things they had hidden from the world, they thought they got away with.
God's going to probe their life.
He's going to pry into it.
And when He does, oh!
Bible says that God gave the law that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God.
And in that day, God's going to take His law, He's going to apply it to their life.
And they're going to just be brought to shame.
Absolutely no excuse, no justification.
All they have to look for is fiery wrath and indignation, which shall devour God's adversaries.
When God pries into me, He'll see me trusting in His Son.
He sees Jesus.
And so that wicked man, that smelly man, he comes to shame.
He gets his life pried into, and he becomes ashamed in the eyes of God.
Now, if a foul smelling man comes to shame, that means a good smelling man, through Jesus who has become a sweet smell to God, shall not come to shame.
And that's why the Apostle Paul said in Romans 9.33, "As it is written, 'Behold, I lay in Sion a stumbling stone and rock of all fence.'"
That's talking about Jesus.
The stone and the rock. that the world stumbles over.
Why do they stumble over it?
Because they believe a lie.
The rock is the truth and they stumble over it.
The rock is the truth and it's offensive to them.
And God says, "I lay in Sion that is in the capital of my kingdom," is what God's saying.
"A stumbling stone, I lay a rock of offense, and whoever believes on him shall," what?
"not be ashamed."
There's the promise from God that all who believe on the burnt sacrifice of Jesus Christ, that all who believe that when Jesus died, it sent a pleasure to God, and God is pleased with us on account of Jesus.
He said, "Whoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed."
They'll never be ashamed.
The Bible says, "The wicked man's loathsome and shall be ashamed."
But God says, "The one who believes on Jesus shall not be ashamed."
Don't you just love how the Bible fits together?
There's a group of people today, becoming very popular, and I've mentioned them before, who falsely use the term "free grace."
Now, I'm all about free grace, but it better be biblical grace, Because the Catholics use the word faith.
The Catholics use the word grace.
I was driving by on just before Easter, driving by the Mormon Church that's right outside my neighborhood.
And it says, "He is risen!"
Exclamation point.
I told my wife, "So that means something entirely different to them than it does to me."
Entirely different to them.
And so there's a group of people that are going around they're calling themselves free grace and there are a lot of free grace people who go by the name of...
I don't go by anything but the Bible.
Don't call me free grace, don't call me Baptist, just call me a Bible believer.
But they call themselves free grace and they teach that apostates... an apostate is someone who claim to be a Christian, like Judas Iscariot, But then they turn from the faith and deny that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
Now, these "free grace" teachers are teaching that these people do believe, and then they apostatize from the faith, and now they are no longer believers.
Now they are unbelievers who reject Jesus as their sacrifice. no longer believe in Him as their sacrifice, and they say they're still going to heaven.
Because at one time they believed in the past.
Folks, I'm telling you, and I've seen some of our church members share posts on Facebook with that garbage in it.
Make sure, and I love you, please, make sure that when you share something, that it's true.
Because that's a lie, and it stinks in the of God.
I'm telling you on the authority of God's Word.
That's a lie and I hate it.
And you should hate it too.
The Apostle Peter said in 1 Peter 1.5 that Christians, that is believers, you can't be a Christian without being a believer.
And when you're a believer, you're born again, you're saved.
And when you're saved, the Apostle Peter said in 1 Peter 1.5 that Christians are "kept by the power of God through what?
Through faith.
Now how can God keep a saved person in unbelief?
God can't keep anybody in unbelief.
The fact that you could tell somebody that as an unbeliever you can stand justified in the sight of God as a a denier of Jesus Christ as your Savior and still go to heaven is an outright lie from hell.
Jesus said, "He that believeth not shall be damned."
The greatest lie that can be told is that Jesus Christ is not the Savior.
Would you all agree with that?
There is no greater lie that can be told than the lie that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God who atoned for the sin of the world.
And an unbeliever professing that yes, I once believed that Jesus was the Christ, he's a liar, he doesn't.
Judas also professed to believe and Jesus said he never did.
And so I'm telling you on authority of God's Word, nobody ever believed once and now does not believe.
If they believe once, they are then kept by the power of God through faith.
They'll always believe.
And the Bible says in the book of Revelation chapter 21 verse 8 that all liars, how many liars?
All liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.
Say anybody, teaching anybody that Jesus Christ is not the way, truth and lie, that person is not going to heaven.
Anybody who denies the truth, which is Jesus Christ, the truth of God, they're going to have their part in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone.
All liars are going to be there.
That doesn't mean someone who slips up and tells a lie, doesn't make you a liar.
But someone who embraces the lie.
The Bible says that the people, when Jesus comes back, that they'll be damned because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
And you know how God's going to damn them?
He'll send them strong delusion, they'll believe what?
A lie!
God doesn't send strong delusions so that Christians will believe a lie and say, "Well, we'll just take them on in anyway.
They're just unbelieving Christians."
That's a lie from hell.
A righteous man hates lies.
And you're going to tell me that here's a man who loves the lie, that Jesus Christ is not the way, truth, and the life, and that no man comes to the Father but by Him.
He loves that lie, but yet he's righteous and justifying the sight of God.
That's a lie.
That's a lie.
A righteous man hates lying.
He hates a lie.
And that means a righteous man loves the truth.
And that means all righteous men love Jesus.
Love Jesus.
With that, we'll go ahead and pause tonight.
Praise God!
I'm glad I have a Bible.
And listen, if you got caught up in that somehow, listen, God loves you.
God loves you.
But just because somebody's trying to make you feel easy, because anything you do, you happen to believe, and you'll always be saved, and no matter even if you quit believing, and they're We're trying to make things easy for everybody.
Listen, I could believe 99% of what those people teach.
But listen, that's a big one that God will not tolerate us compromising on.
Don't compromise with the truth that they who do not believe shall be damned.
If that's the case, we might as well keep preaching. quit preaching and hang it up.
Father, we thank you so much for your precious Word.
We love you so much.
I thank you for our church members, each and every one of them.
I thank you for their zealousness for the truth, their zealousness for the Gospel.
And Lord, I pray, Father, I pray, Lord God, you'll let this message sink in tonight.
We're so thankful You have given us the truth of Jesus Christ.
You have turned the odious sinner into a sweet Savior in your nose through Jesus' sacrifice.
But, oh God, help us to always remember that they who love the lie love death. and you have no part in saving people with a lie.
In Jesus' precious name we pray, Amen.
