Posted on 04/08/2020 6:51:09 AM PDT by Pilgrim's Progress
“The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate” (Proverbs 8:13 KJV).
“The fear of the LORD is to hate evil,” see, if you are afraid of God and judgment and the wages of sin, you’ll learn to “hate evil.” There is nothing wrong with hate. People cry all the time, “You Christians ought to be loving.” Yes sir, we ought to love God, love the Bible, love to go to church, love to be around God’s people, love your wife, love your children, love your country, love righteousness, love to win souls, and love all that you can. Love people that are in trouble, love people that are sick in the hospital—you ought to go visit them.
Liberals don’t love any of those things, but they sure hate Christians. They talk about love, love, love; well, they love revolution, they love riot, they love globalism and socialism, they love sending money to mercenaries that are working to overthrow governments. That’s what they love. They love sin, they love wickedness, they love their alcohol and drugs, they love to compromise. They love to justify themselves and excuse themselves.
“The fear of the LORD is to hate evil,” and God hates “pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate.” Pride, like the Devil had in Isaiah 14, and Ezekiel 28 which eventually brought him down—and would become the downfall of man. Arrogancy is a word that means “pride of practice,” and what that manifests—such as the so-called “self-made man” who thinks he can handle any situation. Well, he can’t handle death. You never see a man arrogant at death.
Then there is the “evil way, and the forward mouth,” that is the perverse or crooked tongue, lying lips. It is the thing that you cannot trust. God hates these things.
There are some things that God hates, and the Christian needs to get that in his mind. “For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee. The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity” (Psalms 5:4-5 KJV).
On the basis of a verse like this, can we really say that God loves sinners? Oh, He loves saints all right, and as soon as a sinner gets saved, God doesn’t hate him anymore. But in his lost condition, the sinner is “condemned already.”
“The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth” (Psalms 11:5 KJV).
There are some that draw this picture of a weeping God as He pushes the lost into the Lake of Fire, but Isaiah tells us of a God that will have them in derision, and One that will laugh at their calamity.
Oh, that people would “fear the Lord!”
The essence of fear.
You are flying and the plane drops 8,000 feet.
As you are driving a truck pulls out in front of you before you can react.
What are the common factors?
1) your life in on the balance
2) You are not in control.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
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We are taught to fear, not so much the unknown, but the known - God. It is He that can send a soul to an eternal, fiery hell or a Christian to an early grave. God would rather call a child of His home early then to allow him to continue to destroy his personal testimony before the world.
Fear God, and live long.
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