The first issue is the one of lying. Of course some immediately say well that's not me, I tell the truth. So I'd like you just to remain open to the possibility that this might include you, and these six things the Lord hates, a-ha, so God hates things. Now it's interesting when you hate something, you define what you love; what you hate, you move away from, what you love, you move towards. So to hate certain things is really good. You hate certain things, you then move away from them, you stand against them, you shift them out of your world, so one of the things that God hates is a lying tongue. These are the six things that the Lord hates; seven are an abomination; a proud look, a lying tongue. He hates a lying tongue, how about that?
Verse - we might as well pick it up while we're there - Verse 19, a false witness who speaks lies, and someone who sows discord among the brethren. Well we could just stop at that point, but the Lord hates a lying tongue. David said, I hate lying tongues. The Bible tells us, David hated what God hated, so he hated liars, anyone who lied. Now of course to lie, you can lie in a couple of ways - many ways you could lie I guess, but let me give you two things. To lie means literally you alter the facts, so you deliberately misrepresent the situation. That's the most common form of lying, you just tell something that isn't the truth. But there's another form of lying which is very much more subtle, which is far more common, so after you've been a believer for a while, we would hope that we're all moved away from lying. The Holy Spirit's a spirit of truth you know, kind of wants us to tell the truth. The moment you tell something that's not right, He convicts you; that wasn't right!
But the most common form of lying is when we withhold information to create an impression that isn't quite true - give a bit of the truth,, but not the whole truth, given just enough to keep the situation nice, but not enough to really explain what was happening. That's the most common, in other words, where we give partial truth. Partial truth is a lie, because it creates an impression in the other person that is not true. They believe something that's now not true. The most common place you'll find that, is when someone sells something. They tell you all the great points, and they ignore the things that may not be right, then you go and buy it and you've driven around the corner and next thing the gearbox drops out. Well how did I not notice that before? Or you're rubbing it down one day and suddenly your hand goes through the side; there was all this rust had been painted over, just neglect - and that's why the guy says, let the buyer beware of course.
But when we deliberately in our relationships with others, try to create an impression, or to misrepresent what's really happening, that is a lie. That is a lie, and God hates lying. It grieves the spirit of God, and so your words can hardly be empowered with the Holy Ghost if you practice doing that. Of course, this is the one that's most common, where people misrepresent. Young kids will do it, teenagers will do it, adults do it, where they don't quite tell the truth. Where are you going tonight? Oh, I'm going to so-and-so's - which is partly true, but actually from there we're going to somewhere else. So the parent says oh, that's good, good Christian family from Bay City, wonderful. What they didn't know is, you've got something else planned on the way, and so this is one of the most common areas of course where people misrepresent the truth. They only tell you half the truth, and we'll get on to this next year too; a lot of people who buy stuff, you only get half the truth it seems, when you buy the object, about the cost of the finance. They don't always come up front, in fact, would you realise this: they'd have to legislate so that people come up front with the real true cost of the finance, because the tendency is to misrepresent.
Misrepresentation is a lie. Okay then, so God hates the lie, and so that's one of the issues we've got to deal with. Now there's a great example of it, because there's examples all through the Bible of it. A great example is found in Genesis, Chapter 20, and we find it with Abraham. Abraham has got a lovely, beautiful wife. She's been magnificently restored by the Lord, been on one of Lyn's retreats and really come alive now, but she's not only got healed on her soul. She's actually become quite a stunner, and so here's this 90 year old woman, and now she's looking a stunner after God's done a miracle work on her, and Abraham gets a bit nervous. You know, if this king that we're going to be staying with, he'll just kill me to get the wife. That tells you she must have looked good! No man is going to be chasing after a very old 90 year old woman whose teeth have fallen out, and everything's not there you know? You don't want to be chasing after that - and he was really scared, because he thought, the king was going to kill him to get his wife, so she must have really had a massive restoration job, true total make-over by the Holy Ghost! [Laughter]