The words hate and God do not seem to go together. Yet, the writer of Proverbs clearly declares that God hates something. What is it? Our initial instinct would be to suggest the terrible two: murder and adultery. Others would suggest drunkenness or debauchery. Not so, according to the writer of Proverbs. What God hates is the misuse of the parts of the body God intended to be blessings.
No part of God’s creation is any more remarkable than the creature called man. Packed under the skin of man are some 263 bones tied together with more than 500 muscles. All of this is temperature controlled with the most wonderful air-conditioning system in the world. The body is operated by one central muscle 6 inches by 4 inches which beats nearly 2 ½ billion times in 70 years, and pumps more than 7 tons of blood daily through more than 100,000 miles of blood vessels. This heart is the energy center for the body. The intellectual and motivational center of the body is a remarkable computer the size of a soft, squishy grapefruit that we call the brain. Imagine a computer with ten billion transistors and ten trillion wires which can add up grocery bills and write songs and appreciate art and dream of dragons and fall in love! It is no wonder the psalmist cried, “I will give thanks to Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:14).
Why did God give us this remarkable body?
He gave us our eyes to see His light, our tongue to proclaim His truth, our heart to feel His compassion, our hands to hold out His blessings, our feet to follow His way. But the writer of Proverbs tells us that God hates our misuse of these essential tools.
This familiar list of “seven deadly sins” may well be a commentary on the previous paragraph since the climax of each line of each is “sows discord” (vv. 14, 19). Certainly that catch phrase accounts for the back-to-back positioning of the passages in this wisdom speech. In the prior text, the emphasis was on the dangers of perversity and the disastrous fate of its perpetrator. Here the evil conduct is evaluated from God’s viewpoint, as the words “hates” and “abomination” declare. These are favorite words in Proverbs and Deuteronomy to describe what is utterly outrageous to God in its insolence and evil.
The numerical pattern “six ... seven” plays several roles:
• it aides memory by numbering the items in a list;
• it encourages recitation or repetition of the items by making a game, almost a riddle, of the text;
• it thrusts into bold relief the final item, here the seventh, as the climax and center of the list.
If we are right in seeing “discord” as the heart of the passage and in finding frivolous or malicious litigation as a chief expression of that discord, then we may see a contentious note in each of the first six rungs in the ladder by which we ascend to the climax of the final clause.
Misuse of Our Eyes
What does God hate? He hates “haughty eyes” (literally “raised eyes” v. 17). It may be a general reference to the haughtiness that God detests as an intrusion on His sovereignty (see Isa. 2:11-19); it may also refer specifically to the claim to being “one up” that the perverse person wants to sustain in court. Sort of “I got you back last.”
The eyes are the windows which determines what comes into the brain, for 300,000 telephone lines connect the eyes to the brain and immediately communicate images to the brain. The eyes can flood the soul with light, or they can contaminate the soul with darkness. That’s what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “The lamp of the body is the eye; if therefore your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matt. 6:22-23, NASB).
Misuse of Our Tongues
What does God hate? He hates “a lying tongue” (v. 17) and “a false witness who utters lies” (v.19). This reference to “a lying tongue” may be a general inclination to play loose with the truth; it may also point to falsehood in setting up to testifying in a legal encounter. “A false witness who utters lies” helps to clinch the point that unlawful, wrongful legal action is in view. The discord, then, sown on soil plowed or devised in wicked plans is not unspecified divisiveness. It is an attempt to drive wedges into the solidarity of the community, clan or church.
The Bible repeatedly declares that our tongue is to be used to speak the truth.
We are to
• walk before God in truth (1 Kings 2:4),
• love truth (Zech. 8:19),
• rejoice in the truth (1 Cor. 13:6),
• meditate upon the truth (Phil. 4:8), and
• speak to one another in truth (Eph. 4:25).
Honesty is always the best policy for the Christian, not only because God commands it
but also because dishonesty has a way of backfiring. A stingy soul needed to send a birthday present to a friend. He noticed in the store a broken vase that the owner was about to throw away. He bought it for almost nothing and asked the store to mail it to his friend. Of course, he knew that the friend would thing the expensive gift had been broken by the postal service en route. A week later the stingy giver received a brief note: “Many thanks for the lovely vase. It was nice of you to have each broken piece wrapped separately!”
Misuse of Our Hands
What does God hate? He hates “hands that shed innocent blood” (v. 17). This may describe violence of many kinds including the violence that a verdict against an innocent person produces.
A noted hand analyst from New York asserts that the secrets of our personality are revealed by our fingernails. The size and shape of each fingernail reveals something about the personality of a person. I am not sure about that. However, this much is certain. We reveal our personality by what we do with our hands.
Several years ago a sixteen-year-old girl was critically ill in one of the charity hospitals of London. She was the eldest child of a large and extremely poor family. Because her mother died while giving birth to the last baby, this girl had become the mother of the home. She had literally worked herself to death.
A visitor from one of the churches entered her room and began to quiz her:
• Are you a member of the church?
• Have you been baptized?
• Did you ever go to Sunday School?
• Do you know the Ten Commandments?
On and on the lady went, and to each question the girl answered no. Finally, the woman asked, “What will you do when you die and have to tell God that?” The young lady, who had early in her life made her commitment to God and who had lived out that commitment to God in service to her family, laid two thin, work-stained hands on the bedspread and looked at the woman with dark eyes too full of peace to be disturbed.
Then she very quietly said, “I shall show him my hands.”
Praying, busy, compassionate, pure hands dedicated in service to God are a blessing to Him. Hands which “shed innocent blood” God hates.
Misuse of Our Hearts
What does God hate? He hates “a heart that devises wicked plans” (v. 18). Literally translated, “plows to prepare the soil for wicked plans.” It speaks of scheming against the innocent in a rigged trial.
In biblical anatomy, the heart was the center of emotions. It was the emoting, thinking, deliberating center of the personality. It held the place in biblical anatomy that the mind holds in our anatomical understanding today.
The most neglected part of the body today is the brain, the mental center of our being.
Experts suggest that most people in their lifetime use only about 10 to 20 percent of their brain power. Neglect of our brain power is not nearly as tragic as directing our mental powers to perpetrate evil rather than good.
What is the solution? Paul suggests a workable mental hygiene program in his letter to the Philippian Christians (Phil 4:8). “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things.”
By concentrating our attention
• on the truth as opposed to falsehood,
• on the serious as opposed to the frivolous,
• on the right as opposed to the convenient,
• on the clean as opposed to the dirty,
• on the loving as opposed to the discordant,
• on the positive as opposed to the negative,
then we too can have the mind of Christ.
Misuse of Our Feet
What does God hate? He hates “feet that run rapidly to evil” (v. 18). This catches the note of urgency involved in the crime ... no step spared, no second wasted, no base left uncovered in the execution of the plot.
The average person takes 18,000 steps a day and walks about 65,000 miles during a lifetime. More important than how far we travel is where we travel.
Two admonitions are given in the Scriptures concerning our feet.
With our feet,
• we are to follow Christ (Matt. 8:22); and
• we are to flee from evil (1 Cor. 6:18)
The man who “does not walk in the counsel of the wicked” is considered to be blessed before God (Ps. 1:1, NASB). When we run to evil, God hates it.
There is an observation to be made concerning this passage, and the one immediately preceding it. The focus of parts of the body demonstrates the total involvement of the wicked people in their scheme.
They epitomize, with this consuming engagement of their whole selves in plotting harm to others, the kind of life against which God sharply warned in Proverbs 4:20-27.
Look at that passage with me. READ Proverbs 4:20-27
What this statement is saying as well as the passages in Proverbs is that as Christians, we are to live ethically. There is a right way and a wrong way to act and react. Too many people today are living their lives based on how things feel. If it feels right we feel justified by whatever action we in dealing with other people. God says that our feelings are not to be the basis of our ethics. Simply because our feelings lie.
God’s word is saying, you cross over the line when you involve yourself in the slanderous, malicious misuse of your body to seek and reek vengeance upon someone. You misuse your body when you try to bring discord and disunity to the body of Christ because you don’t like what’s going on. You literally take on God’s role, you arrogantly shove God to one side, because He has said, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay!”
William Arthur Ward has said, “We were created to expand our consciousness through prayer, to extend our hands in service, to express our thanks with joy, to expend our energies with wisdom, and to exemplify our love by deeds.” When we do, we are a blessing to God. What God hates is the misuse of this remarkable body which he has given us.
