Posted on 03/13/2020 6:21:41 AM PDT by Pilgrim's Progress
“A righteous man hateth lying: but a wicked man is loathsome, and cometh to shame” (Proverbs 13:5).
“A righteous man hateth lying,” it is disgusting to him.
“. . . but a wicked man is loathsome, and cometh to shame,” the word “loathsome” is an old English word for “repulsive.” The final shame for a liar is that he ends up in hell, according to Revelation 21:8 because his chief lie is that he can find some other way into heaven other than through the Lord Jesus Christ: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber” (John 10:1).
There is nothing more repulsive than a man that wears clerical garb and teaches his congregation that human works are a worthy substitute for the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Even far worse is it that that preacher is calling the Lord a liar: “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). Paul added to this thought when he wrote: “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Titus 3:5).
It’s hard to preach on shame anymore because it’s hard to get anyone to feel ashamed. You look on just about any crowd of people gathered whether it be out on a beach or at a sports stadium or music concert—one of the things you’ll find missing in any degree is shame. This country is so jaded with sin that it is just hard to shame anybody anymore. When was the last time any of us ever saw a woman blush? We are exposed to so much wickedness and so much ungodliness that nothing shocks us anymore. Americans have become desensitized to sin.
We live in a country today where people believe that only a large screen plasma TV, and a big computer, and all that kind of stuff will satisfy them. What we have learned is that nobody's ever satisfied with those things. Somewhere along the way, real satisfaction has to come from what a man is doing from spiritual things. From what a man is and less from material things. If the Lord gives you a plasma TV, well and good and dandy. If the Lord gives you an Escalade, well good for you; but that thing is never going to satisfy you. In the end, if there is one thing that's been proven in life, it is just like sin; things can’t satisfy. Men just think they will.
Whether we are talking about love, or companionship, or anything else; more is not better and the likelihood is that when someone start thinking, “If I can just get a little more of something; you know, my next wife will satisfy me more than this one, the next church will satisfy me better than the one I go to now. What is more likely to happen is that he will wind up in this vortex where he just keeps feeding on some empty hope that just a little more and more and more will make him happy, but it never satisfies.
We need to learn to be satisfied with the simple things in life, which is what the Lord intended anyway. Adam and Eve were not born into a four-bedroom house with a three-car garage and all that kind of stuff. They were created naked and they were put in the garden with a bunch of trees and fruit and animals. That was a pretty simple life
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