People of God, we are going to look this morning into the final four sins that God despises. As we said last week, God is a God who views sins, and in particular, certain sins, as abominable. They are contrary to His nature and the nature of a redeemed people. Beyond that, Solomon speaks the words of the Spirit, and describes these sins in a unique way. He writes them to reflect the downward trend of sinful behavior. He is describing the anatomy of sin, and he describes sin beginning at the top with the eyes all the way down to the feet.
Arrogance, which is the sin of the haughty eyes is the top candidate for God’s hatred. Augustine defined pride as the creature’s refusal to submit to God. He also said that the first sin that overcame man will be the last sin he will overcome.[1] Next, he speaks of the lying tongue. One writer said that this refers to an “aggressive deceit intended to harm the other.”[2] This is the attempt to destroy someone’s reputation for the sake of feeling good about your own sins, or simply as a way of bringing down someone you despise.
Thirdly, Solomon says that God hates hands that shed innocent blood. There is a downward progression from the eyes to the hands. We can see that Solomon has creation and the fall of man in mind. The sin of the eyes and the sin of the tongue were sins that reflected the fall of man in the Garden. Adam and Eve did not submit to the authority of God, and their words proved their disloyalty to God. As a consequence, Cain kills Abel, which is the hands that shed innocent blood.[3] The first Adamic family established the model of unrighteousness. The final Adamic family, the family united to Jesus Christ, the Church, establishes the model of righteousness. This list does not represent us because we are not in Adam’s family, we are united to Jesus Christ, the final Adam. Continue reading “Sermon: Kingly Wisdom, Part IV, Proverbs 6:17-19”