Love & Hate, part III

March 29, 2017 (Completed on April 1^st -no fooling 😊)

Worship: Man of Sorrows by Hillsong

Man of sorrows Lamb of God
By His own betrayed
The sin of man and wrath of God
Has been on Jesus laid

Silent as He stood accused
Beaten mocked and scorned
Bowing to the Father's will
He took a crown of thorns

On that rugged cross
My salvation
Where Your love poured out over me
Now my soul cries out
Hallelujah
Praise and honor unto Thee

Sent of heaven God's own Son
To purchase and redeem
And reconcile the very ones
Who nailed Him to that tree

Now my debt is paid
It is paid in full
By the precious blood
That my Jesus spilled

Now the curse of sin
Has no hold on me
Whom the Son sets free
Oh is free indeed

See the stone is rolled away
Behold the empty tomb
Hallelujah God be praised
He's risen from the grave

Read more: Hillsong Live - Man Of Sorrows Lyrics | MetroLyrics 

Video: https://youtu.be/8pXqf5TH8po

Witness:

“He chastens and hastens His will to make known” is a line from a well-known hymn written anonymously by a saint of God in 1597. I remember growing up singing this song at the dining room table at Thanksgiving. That seems to be the traditional time to sing this song. The background of this song is interesting, and one can Google it and find a plethora of brief articles and websites containing the lyrics and/or history of the hymn. I quote one source summarizing the theme of the song based on its origin.

In many hymnals, “We gather together” appears as a Thanksgiving hymn. Perhaps this is because of the opening line and the general idea that God is with us regardless of our circumstances. However, the hymn speaks more about God’s providence throughout the trials of life. The story behind this hymn clarifies its text. ( https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-we-gather-together1 - see also this site if you want to know the history behind the song)

That is all I am going to say about this song. In fact, I would rather not dwell on its history but sing it in the larger context of our asking for the divine blessings and praise for our Lord’s providential care and protection and sovereignty.

However, I did not start off with these lines from this hymn in order to discuss its meaning and background. I began with these words because it perfectly describes my experience last night as I left for work. I had sent a message Monday to my wife in response to hers about an upcoming surgery she was telling me about. I began my message first by referencing the cost of the surgery and the need for her to come home because the cost would be vastly less than having it done where she lived. She needs a knee replacement. I then went on and spoke of how important getting a knee replacement was, but in the end, it had only temporary blessings attached to it. Honoring God in marriage has eternal consequences. I asked her to come home and work on reconciliation. When I left for work on Tuesday night she had not responded to me (It’s Wednesday night, and she still hasn’t). I was fretting about having to go to work and then receiving a negative response to my message. However, up until that time, I had been praying for her to respond positively and had other friends involved in prayer to this same end. Yet, instead of trusting I worried and doubted that she would. That is where the song’s words come into play. The Lord immediately chastened me and reminded that he was in control. Therefore, I need not be anxious about it. I felt release and joy and went to work in gladness because my faithful heavenly Father had chastened me in Love. I cannot say that every time my phone pings I won’t react first with fear, but that will be quickly quelled if I remind myself of what God has told me of Himself.

He Weaves His Plan

God is sovereign

I need not fear,

Nor be disheartened

For He is near.

He’s in control

Of all my ways.

And on a scroll

He’s written my days.

In good or ill

He weaves His plan.

His sovereign will

None can withstand.

When sorrow besets me

And I can’t see His hand,

Let me trust His sovereignty

Even if I don’t understand.

Ps 139:16-18

Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there were none of them.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

If I would count them, they are more than the sand.

I awake, and I am still with you.

ESV

WORD:

Ps 26:4-8 4 I do not sit with deceitful men, nor do I consort with hypocrites; 5 I abhor the assembly of evildoers and refuse to sit with the wicked. 6 I wash my hands in innocence, and go about your altar, O Lord, 7 proclaiming aloud your praise and telling of all your wonderful deeds. NIV (’84) Ps 26:4-8 4 I do not spend time with liars or go along with hypocrites. 5 I hate the gatherings of those who do evil, and I refuse to join in with the wicked. 6 I wash my hands to declare my innocence. I come to your altar, O Lord, 7 singing a song of thanksgiving and telling of all your wonders. Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved. Ps 26:4-8 4 I have not sat with vain persons, neither will I go in with dissemblers. 5 I have hated the congregation of evil doers; and will not sit with the wicked. 6 I will wash mine hands in innocency: so will I compass thine altar, O Lord: 7 That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all thy wondrous works. KJV Ps 26:4-7 4 I do not sit with men of falsehood, nor do I consort with hypocrites. 5 I hate the assembly of evildoers, and I will not sit with the wicked. 6 I wash my hands in innocence and go around your altar, O Lord, 7 proclaiming thanksgiving aloud, and telling all your wondrous deeds. ESV I have examined the use of the word hate in Scripture. It is by no means exhaustive nor have I dealt with other words used in Scripture that can be translated as hate or its synonyms. Yet, from what I have studied, it is clear that the word has several meanings and covers a broad range of emotions.  I think it would be wrong to try to minimize the emotional sense of the word hate here in this passage by saying that David was just saying he preferred God’s presence to these people. Applying passages where Jesus spoke about hating mother and father or Jacob “loving” Rachel and “hating” Leah would not fit here and would rob the passage of its separating and purifying power. David was not just saying he didn’t like to hang out with these people, he abhorred it.  Neither would it be appropriate to read into this word outright hatred to the point of bringing harm or acts of violence against these people. Both errors have been perpetrated by individuals in the name of God. Cults have used passages of Scripture to keep their victims from having any contact with parents and have actually taught them to hate them in the more intense sense of the word. Religious fanatics have killed in the name of God by misusing this word as well. Therefore, balance is called for.   John Piper has an excellent discussion of the saying, “We hate the sin but love the sinner.” I found it online at http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/god-loves-the-sinner-but-hates-the-sin. Usually, it has an audio transcript include with it so I could just copy and paste it. However, this one did not come with one, so I had to open a blank page in Word and use the microphone on my computer to record it. I had also tried to do this on my phone, but it would stop recording every so often, and some of the message was missed. This happened on my computer too. So, I had to go over it and redact it by listening to the audio file. What follows is the transcript pretty much word for word with few corrections and my own guess at punctuation and paragraph division.

God Loves the Sinner, But Hates the Sin? Marco Redding, PA writes in to ask this question, “Pastor John, what do you make of the saying God loves The Sinner but hates the sin?” The problem with the statement God loves the Sinner but hates the sin is that it’s misleading. It’s not a false statement. And what’s misleading about it is the word “but.” “But hates the sin.” Because “but” should be “and.” “God hates the sinner and hates the sin” because “but” implies that He doesn’t hate the sinner and that’s not true. God does hate sinners. Psalm 5:4-5 says, 4 For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you. 5 The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. ESV or Psalm 11: The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence. ESV

So, it's just not true to give the impression that God doesn’t hate sinners by saying “He loves the sinner but hates the sin.” He does hate sinners. His wrath is real. It’s not something He pours out on people He approves of. This infinite disapproval is what the Bible means when it says God hates sinners. He infinitely disapproves of them. Sin is not sinful except as committed by sinful hearts. Sin is an expression of anti-god human corruption of human hearts. Sinful volitions are owing to sinful hearts. Sin just doesn’t hang out there with its own existence. It is in hearts, or it’s nothing. Sins do not suffer in Hell, sinners suffer in hell. I wonder what people, who say that, believe about hell because He’s not punishing sin in hell. He’s punishing sinners in hell. He hates- and here’s the paradox- and He loves at the same time. For God so loved the world - that He hates. Hate and love are simultaneous as God looks upon hateful, rebellious, corrupt, loathsome, wicked God-dishonoring sinners. Now here are the distinctions we need to make. This is just so crucial. I hope people will listen carefully. Hate and love both have two meanings each. Hate can be an intense loathing of a quality, or hate can be, beyond that, the intense intentionality to destroy. Love, similarly, can be intense delighting in a quality and it can be an intense intentionality to bless even in spite of the presence of some unsavory quality. So, in any given text in the Bible, we have to ask, “is the hatred being spoken of here only an intense loathing of a quality of a person or is it also the intent to destroy?” And it’s different. If you went over to Malachi 1, you’d find the latter, and I think some of those texts in the Psalms refer to the former. It’s the same with God’s love. God’s love moves Him to save millions of people who in and of themselves are loathsome to him. But here’s why this matter. If we don’t understand that God finds us hateful and loathsome in our ugly sin, we won’t be as stunned by what God’s love is for us. God saves millions of people who in and of themselves are loathsome to Him until He saves them and makes them the apple of His eye. Which makes salvation stunningly more. Stunningly more- if you get that. That God comes to us not in our attractiveness, like, “Oh I really love this person but just hate their sin.” No, He finds me reprehensible because of my rebellion, just like we find certain wicked people reprehensible because of their sin. And He’s coming to us, and He’s dying for us in order that He might make us into the apple of His eye. So, God can love us with the intent to save us even while He’s hating God despising rebels like us. And then when He saves us He transforms us so that now He not only loves us with the intent to bless us forever but He loves us with an ever-increasing delight, I think, in helping us make much of him. http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/god-loves-the-sinner-but-hates-the-sin

I also found this article helpful. It also comes from the Desiring God website.

Article by
Jonathan Parnell
Pastor, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Jesus said to love our enemies.

That is what he said, as Matthew recounts his words from the Sermon on the Mount:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’” (Matthew 5:43–44, emphasis added)
And when Jesus said “love,” we should be clear that he didn’t mean hollow good will, or some bland benevolence, or a flakey niceness that hopes our enemies stop being so cruel. Jesus never talks about love that way. A category for love like that — the anything-goes, pat-on-the-head, can’t-we-all-just-get-along kind of love — is a phenomenon peculiar to our own day. When Jesus says to love our enemies, he means that we love them with a lay-your-life-down type of love — the type that comes from the heart and desires the other’s good, and sacrifices for it, when no one else but God is watching.
And it’s the type of love that includes hate.

The Hate of Love

In fact, if the love is real, it must include hate. We’ve seen or experienced something like this before, though it might be more complex than we first thought. Love that rightfully includes hate needs to navigate between the two ditches of unhelpful generality and selfishness in disguise.

In other words, to only say that we must “love the sinner but hate their sin” oversimplifies things, glossing over the inseparable connection at work in the evildoer and his evil. At the same time, to only hate the sin because of how it affects us is actually superficial virtue, not love. But real love, and therefore rightful hate, sails beyond these docks to drop anchor an extra mile down.

On one hand, righteous hatred is expected because evil acts are morally repugnant and offensive to God (Psalm 97:10). Evil belittles God’s holiness and evidences that his name is not hallowed. We hate evil because it is wrong. But on the other hand, if this hatred is part of loving our enemies, we must hate the evil of our enemies because of what the evil means for them.

With Them in View

Expounding Jesus’s love command, John Piper writes that we cannot claim to truly love someone while being indifferent toward what destroys them. If we love our enemies, then we must hate the evil of our enemies that makes them so. That evil — the evil for which they are culpable and liable for eternal punishment — is therefore at odds with love’s interest in their eternal good. “We do not hate God’s judgment. That is just and wise. But we do hate the evil that leads a person to oppose God and incur his judgment” (What Jesus Demands from the World, 224).
To be sure, our enemies aren’t mere victims of evil’s tyrannical force, and we don’t parse individuals away from their actions. ISIS does evil and is evil — and our love for them means we hate both. We hate that they are blinded by darkness, that they are trapped by Satan’s schemes, that they are following the course of this world and ignorant of it all (Ephesians 2:2; 4:18).
But that hate, if we are obeying Jesus, means that we hate them not only because of their disgusting injustice, but for what that injustice means for their souls. Piper explains, “There is a kind of hate for the sinner (viewed as morally corrupt and hostile to God) that may coexist with pity and even a desire for his salvation” (222).

Love for our enemies means, fundamentally, that we hate our enemies for wholeheartedly joining in the evil that will ultimately cause their damnation (John 5:29). That is the kind of hate — the kind of love — that might look on them and say, in the spirit of our Savior, Father, forgive them for being so oblivious to what they’re doing. Open their eyes.http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/do-you-love-your-enemies-enough-to-hate-them

 As always, the Bible stretches our mind to include categories which our feeble and fallen minds don’t have by nature. God opens us to see deeper and wider than our limited vision can see. Apparent paradoxes are reconciled and seeming contradictions are proven to be just opposite sides of the same coin. We begin to think deeper and beyond our trite little sayings in which we try to package truth.

Let me finish with an excerpt from a sermon by Jonathan Edwards:

Sermon 5: The Nature and End of Excommunication (1 Corinthians 5:11)Do I not hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? And am I not grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred."

  Not that he hated them with a hatred of malice or ill-will, but with displacency and abhorrence of their wickedness. In this respect we ought to be the children of our Father who is in heaven, who, though he loves many wicked men with a love of benevolence, yet cannot love them with a love of complacency.
(from Works of Jonathan Edwards, volume 2, PC Study Bible formatted electronic database Copyright © 2004, 2006 by Biblesoft, Inc. and Ages Software, Inc. All rights reserved.)