CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 13:5. Lying, rather “deceit.” Stuart renders it “a false report.” Zöckler translates the latter clause of this verse, “the ungodly acteth basely and shamefully.” The translations of Stuart and Delitzsch are nearly the same. Miller reads the whole verse, “A deceiving business hates the righteous man, but also shames and disgraces the wicked.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 13:5
A LAWFUL HATRED
I. A righteous man hates lying.
1. Because it is contrary to his ruling disposition. His own righteous character has been created by believing the truth. His spiritual life is constantly renewed and sustained by believing the truth, and reducing his belief to practice. He is a child of the truth, and, therefore, apart from all the consequences of lying he instinctively abhors it.
2. He hates it also because of its evil influence upon men. Confidence in a lie ruined our first parents, and confidence in a lie has ruined whole nations and mighty empires in the past. In proportion as men “believe a lie” (2 Thessalonians 2:11) in the same proportion will be their ruin. The righteous man knows that the kingdom of God is a kingdom of truth (John 18:37), and as his great desire is to see that kingdom spread he must hate all that opposes it, and thus mars the happiness of the human race.
II. Wicked men are untruthful men. As the righteous man’s character is built by truth and upon truth, so that of an ungodly man is built upon false hood. All such men are the children of him who was a liar from the beginning, and although they may not be liars in the common acceptation of the word, there is a lack of truthfulness in the character of the most outwardly moral. In some shape or other he is a liar—he is a subject of him whose kingdom is built upon lying, and who could not retain under his influence a man who “hated lying” in every form and under every disguise. Such a man must come to shame. What would be the fate of a cripple if he were to challenge a man with sound limbs to run a race? Must he not be worsted in the end? Not more surely than will every subject of the kingdom whose foundation was laid in a lie. There is an Italian proverb which says, “A liar is sooner caught than a cripple.” If “lying lips are an abomination to the Lord,” he who owns the lips must be an abomination also (see Homiletics on chap. Proverbs 12:22).
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Clear and round dealing is the honour of man’s nature; and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold or silver, which may make the metal work the better but embaseth it. For these winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious; and, therefore, Montaigne sayeth prettily, when he inquired the reason why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace and such an odious charge, “If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much as to say that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards men. For a lie faces God and shrinks from man.”—Lord Bacon.
The natural man shuns lying and deceit on account of the outward shame and reproach; the pious abhors them with all his heart for God’s sake.—Starke, in Langes Commentary.
The allegiance of the soul to truth is tested by small things, rather than by those which are more important. There is many a man who would lose his life rather than perjnre himself in a court of justice, whose life is yet a tissue of small insincerities. We think that we are hating falsehood when we are only hating the consequences of falsehood. We resent hypocrisy and treachery, and calumny, not because they are untrue, but because they harm us. We hate the false calumny, but are half-pleased by the false praise. It is evidently not the element of untruth here that is displeasing, but the element of harmfulness. Now he is a man of integrity who hates untruth as untruth; who resents the smooth and polished falsehood of society, which does no harm; who turns in indignation from the glittering whitened lie of sepulchral Pharisaism which injures no one. Integrity recoils from deception, which men would almost smile to hear called deception. To a moral pure mind the artifices in every department of life are painful. The stained wood which passes for a more firm and costly material in a building, and deceives the eye by passing for what it is not—marble. The painting which is intended to be taken for reality; the gilding which is meant to pass for gold; and the glass which is worn to look like jewels; for there is a moral feeling and a truthfulness in architecture, in painting, and in dress, as well as in the market-place and in the senate, and in the judgment hall. “These are trifles.” Yes, these are trifles; but it is just these trifles which go to the formation of character. He that is habituated to deceptions and artificialities in trifles will try in vain to be true in matters of importance; for truth is a thing of habit rather than of will.… And it is a fearful question, and a difficult one, how all these things, the atmosphere of which we breathe in our daily life, may sap the very foundation of the power of becoming a servant of the truth.—F. W. Robertson.
It is not said that a righteous man never lies. David lied more than once, and yet he could say with truth that he abhorred lying. Though he lied to Abimelech the priest, and to the king of the Philistines, yet his fixed hatred of sin was an evidence of piety, to which those can lay no claim who never spoke a lie in their lives, if their abstinence from this sin was caused by some other motive than hatred.… God and men agree in almost nothing but this, that a liar is detestable to both, and therefore he must, sooner or later, come to disgrace.—Lawson.
The affections are of as great force in the service of God as the words and actions, and the heart hath no less place than the members of the body. It must be one and the principal agent in love, where they have calling; and it must deal alone with detestation of those abominations which they are discharged to intermeddle with.… Here we have instruction to inform our hearts against all manner of wickedness, that they may be the more incensed against it. The less we like sin the more righteous we are, and the better the Lord will love us. And the more agreement there is between sin and our souls, the less peace there is between our souls and God. All the hurts and miseries that have ever come upon us, or on Christ for our sakes, do give us just occasion to fall out with sinfulness, that hath been the cause thereof.—Dod.
Where grace reigns, sin is loathsome, where sin reigns the man is loathsome. Henry.