1. Haughty Eyes (verse 17)
2. A Lying Tongue (verse 17)
3. Injustice (verse 17)
4. Evil Plans (verse 18)
5. Evil Actions (verse 18)
6. A False Witness (verse 19)
7. Discord (verse 19)

Evagrius Ponticus was one of the early church fathers, known as a “Desert Father.”^[1] Desert Fathers were monks who lived in the deserts of Egypt around the third century AD. They spent much time in prayer, meditation, and writing. Of all the Desert Fathers, Evagrius Ponticus wrote more than anyone else, and he was one of the most influential theologians of his day. His most famous work was done in categorizing the root causes of temptation. He came up with what he called “eight terrible temptations from which all sinful behavior springs.”

Two centuries later, in 590 AD, Pope Gregory I, combined two of these temptations to create a list of seven. These seven temptations later came to be known as the “Seven Deadly Sins”: Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Greed, Gluttony, and Lust. Since the days of Pope Gregory, these seven sins have been used far and wide as a basis for categorizing sin. The Roman Catholic Church has used these sins as a guide in confessional practices.^[2]

These seven sins are found in literature. In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (c. 1400 AD), the Parson, in his tale, mentions these Seven Deadly Sins along with their opposite remedies: Humility, Contentment, Patience, Fortitude, Mercy, Moderation, and Chastity. In Dante’s Inferno, these sins are mentioned as well, forming the various terraces of purgatory.

Much artwork has been based on these seven sins. In one well-known drawing, each of the seven deadly sins is represented by an animal. The toad represents greed. The snake represents envy. The lion represents wrath. The snail represents sloth. The pig represents gluttony. The goat represents lust. The peacock represents pride.

Well, this morning, we are going to look at Seven Deadly Sins: not the historic categorization developed by theologians and made popular through writers and artists, but a biblical categorization compiled by Solomon in Proverbs, chapter 6. Let’s read our text.

Proverbs 6:12-19
A worthless person, a wicked man,
    goes about with crooked speech,
winks with his eyes, signals with his feet,
    points with his finger,
with perverted heart devises evil,
    continually sowing discord;
therefore calamity will come upon him suddenly;
    in a moment he will be broken beyond healing.

There are six things that the LORD hates,
    seven that are an abomination to him:
haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
    and hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked plans,
    feet that make haste to run to evil,
a false witness who breathes out lies,
    and one who sows discord among brothers.

In verse 16, we see the categorization of these seven sins: “There are six things that the LORD hates, seven that are an abomination to him.” In seeing these seven things, understand that this is poetry. You ought not to think that God hates only six sins, and the seventh is even worse than all of them. This is a common poetical style for introducing a list. In Proverbs 30, we see this style used often.

Proverbs 30:18-19
Three things are too wonderful for me;
    four I do not understand:
the way of an eagle in the sky,
    the way of a serpent on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
    and the way of a man with a virgin.

Proverbs 30:21-23
Under three things the earth trembles;
    under four it cannot bear up:
a slave when he becomes king,
    and a fool when he is filled with food;
an unloved woman when she gets a husband,
    and a maidservant when she displaces her mistress.

Proverbs 30:29-31
Three things are stately in their tread;
    four are stately in their stride:
the lion, which is mightiest among beasts
    and does not turn back before any;
the strutting rooster, the he-goat,
    and a king whose army is with him.

You will err if you try to figure out exactly what is different and distinct in the last item of the list, because there is no distinction. It is simply a list. In our text, we see a list of seven deadly sins, and the LORD hates all seven of them. But these are not the only sins that the LORD hates; there are others. The LORD hates hypocritical worship.

Isaiah 1:14
Your new moons and your appointed feasts
    my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me;
    I am weary of bearing them.

The LORD hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). The LORD hates devious people (Proverbs 3:32). But this morning, we will look at this list of seven things that God hates. When it comes to application, the simple question is this: Do you hate what God hates? This list is not merely here for us to know. It is here for us to develop a similar hatred in our own hearts. Not to point our fingers at the sins of others, but to expose our own sins, that we might turn from them and find the hope of forgiveness in Jesus Christ.

This is key to the book of Proverbs. When we began Proverbs, we looked at the foundation of all Proverbs.

Proverbs 1:7a
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge.

One way in which the fear of the LORD is fostered in our hearts is to hate what God hates. Proverbs 8:13 affirms this.

Proverbs 8:13
The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil.

The fear of the LORD will lead us to hate what God hates. So the question this morning is: Do you hate what God hates?

Now, in considering this question, it can lead us into darkness as we dwell upon our sin. It can lead to judgmentalism as we despise the sin in others. So by way of application, I plan on asking a second question as well: Do you love what God loves? Just as the categorization of “The Seven Deadly Sins” led others to think about the opposite virtues, so it would be good for us to consider the opposites of the sins that Solomon lays out. This is the true test of the gospel in our hearts: not merely to hate what God hates, but to love what God loves.

This doesn’t come naturally to any of us. We are born sinners, rebellious to God and his ways. But when we come to faith in Jesus, and God delivers us from the domain of darkness and transfers us to the kingdom of his beloved Son (Colossians 1:14), he changes us by giving us new desires. At the core of these new desires is a love for God, a love for his ways, and a love for his kingdom. That is why we pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” When God transforms us by his grace, we desire his ways to come upon the earth and into our hearts.

These two questions, “Do you hate what God hates? Do you love what God loves?” are windows into our souls. I suspect that many of us will see two things: first, a hatred that is not as deep as we want; and second, a love that is not as high as we want. May my message today turn your hearts to Jesus, to plead with him to work his transforming power in our hearts, so that we might love what God loves and hate what God hates, and be more and more conformed into the image of his Son.

Now, before we dig into these seven deadly sins, I want to mention how we will approach the text. Normally we begin at the beginning and work our way through verse by verse, giving approximately equal time to each section. But this morning, we will zoom through the first four verses and let verses 16-19 be our major focus, because you can easily argue that verses 12-15 are simply an illustration of the seven deadly sins in verses 16-19. You could outline this section under two heads: The Illustration (verses 12-15) and The Sins (verses 16-19).

In verse 12, we see a wicked man introduced and described. His primary characteristic is that he “goes about with crooked speech.” In the list of seven deadly sins, Solomon mentions the “lying tongue” in verse 17 and the “false witness” in verse 19. God hates crooked speech.

In verse 13, we see the wicked man winking with his eyes, signaling with his feet, and pointing with his finger, each action carrying a sinister purpose to carry out his evil plans, which are mentioned in verse 14: “with perverted heart devises evil, continually sowing discord.” These things appear in verse 18 (“a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil”) and in verse 19 (“one who sows discord among brothers”). The parallel is exact: verse 14 speaks about the wicked man “sowing discord,” and verse 19 speaks about “the one who sows discord” in the same Hebrew words. The first four verses are an illustration of the last four verses, and we will use them as such.

But there is one thing in the first four verses not mentioned in the last four: the end result of those who commit such sins.

Proverbs 6:15
therefore calamity will come upon him suddenly;
    in a moment he will be broken beyond healing.

That is death. Verse 15 gives more reason to embrace the title of my message, “Seven Deadly Sins,” because these sins will lead to your destruction and your death. That is why we must hate them in our hearts. So let’s spend some time looking at these Seven Deadly Sins. We begin with 

1. Haughty Eyes (verse 17)

This is talking about pride. In fact, this is how the King James translates it: “Proud eyes.” This is the proud look that says, “Look at me! Look at what I have done, all on my own!” This is the pride of King Nebuchadnezzar, who stepped out on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon and said.

Daniel 4:30
Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?

And if you know the story of Nebuchadnezzar, God humbled him for seven years, causing him to eat grass like an ox, until he acknowledged that the Most High rules the kingdom of men. This is also the pride of the Pharisees, who loved the places of honor at the feasts and the best seats in the synagogues (Matthew 23:6), sitting there with a smug look of pride: “Look at me!” Jesus condemned the Pharisees in Matthew 23 with seven woes: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” seven times over. God hates the proud and will bring them down.

Proverbs 16:18
Pride goes before destruction,
    and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Do you hate what God hates? Do you hate the pride that arises from your own heart? We all have pride. We all think much of ourselves, love ourselves, and prioritize our own ways. The opposite of pride is humility: that virtue that looks away from ourselves and looks to God in dependence upon him. God loves humility.

Isaiah 66:2b
This is the one to whom I will look:
    he who is humble and contrite in spirit
    and trembles at my word.

This is where we all begin our walk with God: with humility, looking to Jesus for forgiveness and hope, knowing that we cannot come to God on our own, but we need Jesus to come to God and give us the strength that we need. When Paul spoke about his own ministry he said, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble: grace not only to come to God, but to live with God. Do you hate pride? Do you love humility?

2. A Lying Tongue (verse 17)

This is talking about a lack of honesty, the one who deceives other people. This is the one who says “Over there” when in reality it is “Over here.” This is the one who speaks with “crooked speech” in verse 12. These are the false prophets who prophesied during the days of Hezekiah, when Babylon was on the verge of conquering the nation. Jeremiah stood up and told them to submit to the Babylonians, but the false prophets said “Peace, peace” (Jeremiah 6:14), when there was no peace. This is also Ananias and Sapphira, who attempted to deceive the apostles by claiming they had given all the proceeds of the sale of their field, when in fact they had not (Acts 5:1-11). They died for their deception. God hates liars and will bring them down.

Proverbs 19:9
A false witness will not go unpunished,
    and he who breathes out lies will perish.

The opposite of lying is truth, and God loves truth. When Jesus came to earth, he came “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). He said, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). He said that knowing the truth is what sets us free (John 8:32). Not only does God love truth, but God loves truth-tellers, those who are honest in all their dealings. People lie because they want to cover up their sin. You show me a lie, and I will probably be able to show you the sin it is seeking to cover up. But those who come to God don’t need to cover up their sin. The glory of Jesus is that he forgives us our sin when we are honest about it.

1 John 1:8-9
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Do you hate lies? Do you love truth?

3. Injustice (verse 17)

The exact words are “hands that shed innocent blood.” This is talking about betrayal and injustice. This is the way of Cain, who was jealous toward his brother Abel, who offered up a sacrifice acceptable to God. Cain rose up and shed his innocent blood upon the ground. Shedding innocent blood was the way of Judas, who struck a deal with the religious leaders to betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver (Matthew 26:15), and one night brought them to Jesus and betrayed him with a kiss (Matthew 26:49). God hates those who shed innocent blood and will bring them down.

Proverbs 14:11
The house of the wicked will be destroyed.

Proverbs 29:27
An unjust man is an abomination to the righteous.

Extending this beyond murder: God hates abortion, that terrible injustice, the shedding of innocent blood. I am not naive enough to think no one in this room has had an abortion. But know that God hates it. It is injustice. Yet know too that God can be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. There is hope. You can trust in Jesus who bore that sin in his body on the cross.

The opposite of injustice is justice: fairness and equity. God loves justice.

Proverbs 11:1
A false balance is an abomination to the LORD,
    but a just weight is his delight.

God is delighted when we are fair: when we do what we say, when we don’t overcharge a customer, when we pay the full amount, when we don’t favor our friends but give justice to all. This is especially true with the weak in society. God has a special heart for orphans, widows, and minorities, and when we care for them, protect them, and stand up for their rights, the Lord is especially pleased. James calls this “true religion.”

James 1:27
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

We are never more like God than when we care for the down and out. Truth be known, this is us. In 1 Corinthians 1:18ff, Paul says that God didn’t choose the wise or intelligent or great or strong; he chose the weak and the despised and the base. Knowing this ought to stir us to justice for all. Do you love justice? Do you hate injustice?

4. Evil Plans (verse 18)
5. Evil Actions (verse 18)

Let’s take these together, because they are practical synonyms. This is talking about those who plan their sin and carry out their sin. They think about the evil they intend to do. They design their plan like a bank robbery: where is the vault located, what time does the branch close, who will be there, what is the escape route? They plan the whole thing, and then they execute it willingly. Paul talks about these people in Romans 1:30 as those who are “inventors of evil.”

These are the Israelites who grumbled at Moses. When he delayed in returning from the mountain, they turned to Aaron.

Exodus 32:1, 2, 4
“Up, make us gods who shall go before us.”… So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.”… [Aaron] fashioned [the gold] with a graving tool and made a golden calf and said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”

Devising idolatry and walking in it. This is also the way of the Pharisees, who hated Jesus and schemed to have him killed.

Mark 3:6
The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

Of course, this came when they found a willing accomplice in Judas. They went out to arrest Jesus in the garden with clubs and spears, held a kangaroo court at night, bullied Pilate to have him executed, and persuaded the crowds to cry out, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” God hates those who devise wicked plans and will bring them down.

Proverbs 14:22a (NLT)
If you plan to do evil, you will be lost.

The opposite is those who love God’s will: they plan good and carry out the good. God loves those who make plans to serve others and then serve them. In our congregation we have seen this: Jon Underhill calling us to the jail ministry; Amanda Gieschel calling us to the Hike for Life; Troy calling us to the Rockford Rescue Mission; missionaries calling us to give and go and send. That is planning good, thinking good, and following through with the good. The Bible calls this “stirring up” others.

Hebrews 10:24-25
Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Do you love God’s will? Do you hate it? God’s will is not always easy. He calls us to difficult things, to standing up for righteousness, to saying the hard things, to standing alone. But it is the best thing.

6. A False Witness (verse 19)

In many ways this is identical to the lying tongue of verse 17. However, here the words are specifically directed toward false things said of others. That is what a “false witness” is: speaking falsely of others, or what we might call slander. David knew what this was about.

Psalm 27:12
Give me not up to the will of my adversaries;
    for false witnesses have risen against me,
    and they breathe out violence.

Jesus knew what this was about as well. When he was casting out demons and doing good for the people, the Pharisees slandered him.

Mark 3:22
“He is possessed by Beelzebul”… “by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.”

He was not possessed by Beelzebul. He was not casting out the demons by the prince of demons. He was God in the flesh. He was not Satan. God hates a false witness, and in the end the truth will prevail.

Proverbs 12:19
Truthful lips endure forever,
    but a lying tongue is but for a moment.

God loves truth and faithful friends. Proverbs speaks quite a bit about faithful friendship.

Proverbs 27:6
Faithful are the wounds of a friend.

The words may hurt, but they come in love and will bring healing for the better.

Proverbs 27:17
Iron sharpens iron,
    and one man sharpens another.

Faithful friends sharpen and help one another. In our days of the internet, false witnesses can say anything about anybody and slander in any direction. It is easy and it is cowardly. God hates it. Do you love being a faithful witness? Do you hate lies?

7. Discord (verse 19)

This is Absalom, who stood at the gate of Jerusalem and greeted those who entered. Those who had grievances he would embrace and kiss, promising prosperity while spreading his lies. In so doing, “he stole the hearts of the men of Israel” (2 Samuel 15:6). These are also the Jews who opposed the spread of the gospel. When Paul preached the gospel in Thessalonica and many were persuaded to follow Paul and Silas.

Acts 17:5
The Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar.

The same happened in Pisidian Antioch. When Paul preached there and many were persuaded.

Acts 13:50
The Jews incited the devout women of high standing and the leading men of the city, stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and drove them out of their district.

Sowing discord is the way of the wicked man of verse 14. The opposite of discord is peace, and God loves peace.

Psalm 133:1
Behold, how good and pleasant it is
    when brothers dwell in unity!

We have known this at Rock Valley Bible Church, the peace and pleasantness of what it means to dwell in unity. It is a gift to be treasured and protected. God calls all of us to peace and harmony in the church.

Ephesians 4:1-3
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

To walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called means seeking unity and peace in the congregation, not sowing discord. Problems and differences will come; the call is to deal with them in a way that does not divide or stir up strife, but goes on in the way of peace. Maintaining unity requires humility, gentleness, patience, and forbearance. This is how we live out the gospel. God loves peace. Jesus is known as “the Prince of Peace.” He has brought peace to us through his cross (Romans 5:1). We are to be at peace with others. Do you love peace? Do you sow discord?

Do you hate what God hates? Do you love what God loves?

This sermon was delivered to Rock Valley Bible Church on October 27, 2019 by Steve Brandon.
For more information see www.rockvalleybiblechurch.org.

[1] “Evagrius Ponticus,” Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evagrius_Ponticus.

[2] There is no need for any of us to confess our sins to a priest, by the way. There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.