View of God
Good morning,
Most religious people have a warped view of God. The common religious person pictures a god that matches their own views, not the God of the Bible. Often, I have heard someone say that a God of love could not send someone to Hell, or that a loving God could not burn up Sodom. The people who make Jesus out to be a passive, tender man forget that He threw over the money changers’ tables and called religious leaders “snakes.”
Religious men have twisted the image of God in many ways, but for the moment, allow me to simply address the topic of hatred. Let us see what the Bible says about God and His feelings toward certain things.
Psalm 53:5 “...thou hast put them to shame, because God hath despised them.”
Well, that is certainly not the same God the world talks about, David writes that there are some whom God despises.
Lamentations 2:5 “The Lord was as an enemy…"
vs. 6 .”.. and hath despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the priest.”
It is necessary for us to have a better grasp on the holiness of God if we hope to understand how much God hates wrong. Over thirty times, the Bible speaks of God and man properly hating wrong. God is so holy that He cannot tolerate sin; consider how He treated His own Son when He became sin.
Psalms 119 gives us several clear instructions
vs. 104 “... I hate every false way.”
vs. 113 “I hate vain thoughts…"
vs. 163 “I hate and abhor lying…"
There is a serious emphasis on feelings toward those who hate God. Even to the point of defining his feelings as "perfect hatred."
Psalm 139:21 “Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?”
vs. 22 “I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.”
God holds religious hypocrisy in special contempt, as is shown in the book of Isaiah.
Isaiah 1:14 “Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.”
There are many areas in which we fail to have a biblical perspective of God. Mankind is constantly trying to bring God down to man, trying to make Him more and more like man so that man will appear good. In reality, when God became man, man hated Him and could not stand in His Divine presence.
When God curses a nation, allows sinners to be forgiven, or mocks other religious ideas, may we not filter the Bible through human reason but rather use the Bible to create a filter on the foolish ideas of man.
"Let God be true and every man a liar."
Pastor