Episode Transcript
Alright, Proverbs chapter 12, verse 22, the title of the message tonight is "Poop in a Pitcher," which I know is a very unusual title, but it's a very fitting title.
I believe you'll see as we go through this.
God graciously provides His life-changing truth in every verse of Scripture that we encounter in the Bible.
Even when the Scripture seems so close to another Scripture that you may read, we've been learning a lot about truth and lies lately, you know, but Scripture is a lot like snowflakes.
They may appear to be the same, but when you look at them real closely, you'll see that each of them bear their own unique glory.
They give their own shade of a beautiful light and truth.
So we've learned a lot about truth and lies in the Proverbs already, but I never cease to be amazed and blessed by the fresh revelation of truth that each verse provides.
The Bible is not like the fig tree that Jesus went to.
Remember when He was hungry one morning, He went to the fig tree and there was nothing there.
Because every verse in the Bible is like a branch laden down with wonderful fruit.
For us to go to it anytime.
Tonight we learned about, look in your text, lying lips.
Lying lips.
The Hebrew word translated lying here means a sham.
S-H-A-M.
Sham.
And a sham is something that's not what it purports itself to be.
And occasionally I will see a commercial for St.
Jude's Hospital requesting for donations for the treatment of children with cancer.
And I have a soft spot for children who are suffering from that terrible disease.
So if I buy something at a store and it says, "Would you like to add a dollar for St.
Jude's?"
I always do.
Always do.
St.
Jude's purports itself.
That means they claim, they make themselves out to be a charitable organization that helps precious little children suffering from cancer.
But what if we found out one day?
Has any of you all ever rounded up or given a dollar to St.
Jude's or anything?
Yeah.
I'm not the only one.
What if you found out one day, what if you do that every time they have that little campaign?
And you found out one day that the money was not going to a hospital called St.
Jude's.
It was actually going to an overseas crime syndicate.
Man, that would bother me.
But if that was the case, then St.
Jude's would be a sham.
You see.
It would be something that's not what it purports itself to be.
And God hates shams of all kinds.
Whether it's a financial sham, a health sham.
There's a lot of health shams out there.
But God hates shams of all kinds.
But the worst kind of sham is a spiritual one.
Look with me tonight in Exodus chapter 5 verse 1 through 9.
Exodus chapter 5 verse 1 through 9.
And let's see how this same Hebrew word is used by Pharaoh after Moses told him to let God's people go.
In Exodus 5 verse 1 it says, "And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, 'Thus said the Lord God of Israel, 'Let my people go that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.'
And Pharaoh said, 'Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go?
I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go.'
And they said, 'The God of the Hebrews hath met with us.
Let us go, we pray thee, three days' journey into the desert and sacrifice unto the Lord our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with a sword.'
And the king of Egypt said unto them, 'Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, let the people from their works get you into your burdens?'
And Pharaoh said, 'Behold, the people of the land now are many, and ye make them rest from their burdens.'
And Pharaoh commanded the same day the taskmasters of the people and their officers, saying, 'Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick as heretofore.
Let them go and gather straw for themselves, and the tail of the bricks which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them, ye shall not diminish aught thereof, for they be idle.'
Therefore they cry, saying, 'Let us go and sacrifice to our God.
Let there more work be laid upon the men that they may labor therein, and let them not regard vain words.'"
Vain words.
That word translated vain, there's the same Hebrew word translated as lying in our text tonight, and it has again, it means a sham.
Pharaoh is accusing Moses and Aaron of taking part in a sham.
God had promised to deliver Israel from Pharaoh's bondage.
God promised to take them out of Israel and bring them to this wonderful land that flows with milk and honey, where there's going to be peace and rest and all these wonderful blessings.
And Pharaoh was saying, "That's all a sham."
The words were vain because the promise that God had given Abraham was a big lie.
That's what Pharaoh was saying.
In the book of Jeremiah, chapter 27, verse 9 and 10, false prophets were speaking in the name of God.
And timely enough in our studies of both 2 Kings and Daniel, they were speaking in the name of God and telling the Israelites that Babylon was not going to take them captive.
No matter what the other prophets are saying, that's not going to happen.
Everything's going to be just fine.
So God warned them saying, "Therefore hearken not ye to your prophets, nor to your diviners, nor to your dreamers, nor to your enchanters."
He never said, "Don't listen to my prophets."
He said, "Don't you listen to yours, nor to your sorcerers, which speak unto you saying, 'Ye shall not serve the king of Babylon.'
For they prophesy a lie unto you."
And that word "lie" is the same word translated "vain."
It's the same word in our text tonight.
"They prophesy a sham unto you to remove you far from your land, and that I should drive you out, and ye should perish."
God said, "They prophesy a lie unto you."
The prophets are just making a big sham here.
So Jeremiah exposed the danger, exposed the big sham of these false prophets in Jeremiah 28, 15.
The Bible says, "Then said the prophet Jeremiah unto Hananiah."
Now Hananiah was one of the ones that had the big sham going on.
"Then said the prophet Jeremiah," that's God's prophet, "and to Hananiah," that was the people's prophet, "Hananiah the prophet, 'Hear now Hananiah, the Lord hath not sent thee, but thou makest this people to trust in a lie.'"
Trust in a lie.
These prophets spoke elaborate tales that purported themselves to be God's Word to the people.
Promising them that in spite of their sin, in spite of their rebellion, everything was going to be just fine.
And by creating this big sham, these hireling prophets caused people to trust in a lie.
And that's why lying tongues, tongues that create a sham, look back in your text, are abomination to the Lord.
That's why.
They are an abomination to the Lord because they cause His people to trust in a lie that when trusted in, will rob them of their wealth, their health, and if it's a spiritual sham, their soul.
The word abomination means disgusting.
It says here that a lying tongue or lying tongues, it says it's an abomination to the Lord.
And that word means disgusting.
Shams are disgusting to the Lord.
Now to understand what the word abomination means, to really get a sense of it, because sometimes we say, "That's disgusting."
But we really don't understand God's view of disgusting, His understanding of disgusting.
And so to understand it, let's look now in Leviticus chapter 18.
Leviticus 18 verses 23 through 26, where God said, "Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith, neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto."
It is confusion.
You see that word confusion?
Keep that in your mind there.
So God is talking about sexual acts between people and animals.
And God says, "Don't do that."
That's confusion.
And then He goes on in the next verse and says, "Defile not," so confusion defiles, "Defile not you yourselves and any of these things, for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you."
See the words cast out?
Very important.
Confusion and cast out.
Keep those two ideas in mind.
Verse 25, "And the land is defiled, therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomited," keep that in mind, cast out, what are you doing when you vomit?
You're casting something out.
"The land itself vomited out her inhabitants, ye shall therefore keep my statutes and judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations."
Now, the Hebrew word that the word confusion comes from, it has the idea of something being mixed in with a foreign substance that it doesn't belong with.
Something being mixed in with a foreign substance that it doesn't belong with.
We have a chicken at home that has a medical issue, we believe it's bumblefoot.
And it's been requiring us to soak that chicken in hot Epsom salt water, to help relieve that foot.
And after soaking the chicken for 20 minutes in a plastic tub, this week Tammy asked me to, because I like when she soaks it in that Epsom salt, Epsom salt is good for your garden, it's not like table salt.
And so I'll take that Epsom salt water and I'll go pour it out in my raised bed, so it'll be there when I plant.
And Tammy asked me to pour some of that Epsom salt water on one of her plants outside.
So being the good husband I am, I went and I got me a pitcher.
You're wondering where that title for the message was coming from, weren't you?
I went and got me a pitcher and I dipped it down in that tub of Epsom salt water and I pulled it out and I went outside and I just poured it on her plant real nice.
It was really nice.
I came in because I was the hero taking good care of my wife's plant.
But when she found out that I used one of her tea pitchers to do it, it was disgusting to her.
Because the chicken, unbeknownst to me, while she was soaking it, had pooped in the water.
And now we had poop in a tea pitcher.
Now that's abominable.
That's confusion.
Let me tell you why.
Because tea belongs in the pitcher and poop belongs on the ground.
You getting the idea?
Tea belongs in the pitcher, poop belongs on the ground.
The reason poop doesn't belong in a pitcher is because poop is a substance that's not supposed to be mixed with our tea.
If we drink it with our tea, then the poop will go in our gut.
God said the confusion would cause the land to vomit, cast out her inhabitants.
When you see that now in Scripture about the land vomiting its inhabitants out or casting its inhabitants out, now you'll understand why.
It would cause the land to cast them out or spew them out, just like we would spew out tea that had chicken poop in it.
And if you're thinking, "Brother Richard, that's disgusting."
Then I've done my job tonight.
Because now you know how God views a lying tongue.
And now you know how God views other abominations.
It's confusion.
What is confusion?
Poop on the ground?
Not confusion.
That's where it belongs.
But you get that where it doesn't belong and it bleeds over into something else, it bleeds over into your tea?
That's confusion.
On the ground, it's order.
Here, it's confusion.
It's not where it's supposed to be.
It's chaos.
All right?
And so, that's what makes something abominable.
Why was the animal and the person, the people and the animal sexual relationships, why is that abominable?
Because it's not where they belong.
God put animals with animals.
As Brother Shepard was teaching about in Sunday school, he happened to mention how God told Noah to take two of every kind on the ark.
Two of every kind.
One kind doesn't belong with the other kind.
That's confusion.
That's against the order that God set.
It's confusion.
And because it's confusion, it's an abomination.
It's disgusting to God because it's not where it belongs and that makes it disgusting.
It's poop in a picture.
Poop is a foreign substance.
I think I've got Hannah tickled.
Poop is a foreign substance.
It doesn't belong in people's bellies.
Sham, a sham is a foreign substance.
It doesn't belong in people's hearts.
You see how that connects together?
Those lying prophets caused God's people to trust in a big sham.
By believing the prophets' words, they took a lie.
And the human heart was not made to house a lie.
They took a lie and put it where God's truth belonged.
It was poop in a picture.
Our heart was made to contain God's truth, God's Word.
And when we put a lie in there, we embrace that lie.
Or we embrace some thought that's confusion because it's against the order and design of God.
It contaminates our heart.
And that is disgusting to anybody with a right mind.
Moses, on the other hand, was dealing truly with God's people.
The Bible says, look back in your text, "But they that deal truly."
Now the Hebrew word translated "truly" has the idea of something being firm and established.
Firm and established.
To do truly is to be what you purport yourself to be.
And to speak on the basis of what is tangible and real, unlike a sham.
When people trust in a sham, you know what they're doing?
They're taking their hope and they're hanging their hope on a hook that isn't there.
It's all a big sham.
There's nothing real.
There's nothing tangible.
It's all just a big sham, just like the donating the money.
It's all going to some criminal organization rather than the hospital.
It's a front.
It's a big sham.
There's nothing to it.
And when people trust in a lie, like those people in the book of Jeremiah that were believing those false prophets, they're hanging their hope on a hook that doesn't exist.
When I was meditating on this wonderful reality, about how God hates it's an abomination to God a lying tongue is, a sham.
And as I was meditating on that wonderful reality that God was disgusted with shams, that I was so thankful for that because I have hung my hope for heaven on a promise that God made.
I stand up and I teach almost a whole year's time, on Sunday after Sunday after Sunday in that Genesis to Jesus, starting off with the book of Genesis and working my way through that Old Testament.
Man, the gospel is elaborate.
It's absolutely intricate and marvelously intertwined and brilliantly constructed in the mind of God and then revealed to God's people.
And could you imagine teaching that year after year after year after year after year and people hanging their hope on what they're learning and me myself hanging my hope on the truth that I'm teaching only to find out that it was a big sham.
I've hung my hope for heaven on the promise that God's made us in the gospel.
And because of the character of God that he hates shams, I have the assurance that I've hung my hope on something that's tangible and real, something that is firm and eternally established, which is what that word truly means.
Firm and established.
Oh man, as I was studying for this message, I couldn't help but think of some of the songs that we sing in our hymns, "On Christ the solid rock I stand."
I tell you, the gospel isn't wind pudding.
That's a sham.
The gospel is a solid rock that wise men build their houses upon.
Boy, Jesus described it well.
So I've hung my hope on something that's tangible and real, for in the gospel God is dealing truly with us.
Whether it is a pastor or a prophet or a person conducting a business transaction, they that deal truly, look back in your text, are his delight.
They're his delight.
The Hebrew word translated delight here, it has the idea of a debt being paid off.
And so it satisfies the person that's owed that debt.
So God's delighted, he's completely pleased with those that deal truly.
God is truth.
So he's naturally delighted in truth.
Therefore he delights in those who deal truly with other people.
God's word is not a sham.
I was talking to a man last week about his salvation.
He said, "Sometimes I think that salvation is something that people just make up, that Christians just imagine.
And I hope that God changes his mind.
But I thank God that it's not a sham.
He delights in those who deal truly with other people and his word's not a sham.
The gospel is the real deal that we can all hang our hope upon.
God hasn't concocted some elaborate story.
I like what the Bible says, "We have not followed cunningly devised fables."
It's not some elaborate story for us to build our hopes upon, so God can just let us down in the end and say, "Surprise!"
God has given us something firm and established in eternity that we can stand upon confidently forever.
And because of this, because that's the character of God, and that's how God has dealt with us, then we should deal truly like him in every aspect of our lives.
We should seek the truth, believe the truth, speak the truth, and obey the truth.
And those who deal truly, God is delighted in.
Brother Shepherd, I like being a truth dealer.
We get to peddle truth and I love it.
I absolutely love it.
Father, we thank you so much for your precious word tonight.
Thank you, Lord, for helping us to understand what an abomination is.
It's not something, Lord, that you just dislike because of your personal taste.
But it's something, Lord, that's out of order, it's out of place, dangerously, harmfully so.
And only someone with a fallen mind could possibly delight in confusion.
And we're glad, Lord, that our God doesn't delight in that which is out of place, in that which is false, in that which is a sham.
We thank you, Lord, that you delight in that which is true, that which is well-ordered, that which is right.
And we thank you, dear Father God, that because you delight in truth, we, Father God, can delight ourselves in you and hang our hope for heaven on your precious word.
In Jesus' wonderful name, Amen.
