Posted on 10/08/2021 12:15:50 AM PDT by Pilgrim's Progress
“I wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions. The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate” (Proverbs 8:12-13).
In verse 13, we run into that old thing, “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil,” and we are told there that there are things that we are to hate. Now, there are no people on that list. I don't believe that you can find justification in the Bible for hating anybody. I’m not trying to be soft or anything; and some of you might like to have the latitude to hate somebody, but I don't find any Christian justification for it. Now, I’ll tell what I do believe that God does hate some people according to the scriptures, alright? But we are not allowed to hate people. We are commended and commanded to hate some things, and it is a long list; but in verse 13 you find a specific.
“The fear of the Lord is to hate evil,” so you could argue that if somebody doesn't hate evil, then they also really don't fear the Lord. Some of these things go hand in hand. These days, Paul would call them these “last days,” groups of Christians are now tending to be more and more accepting of more and more, and it just doesn't seem that anything is so terribly abominable to Christians anymore. There are some things that gross them out; but fewer and fewer things as you go along.
One begins to wonder then, and there's really no wonderment to it, and where is your fear of God? I know where it went. It went out with the Greek and Hebrew people; because they've been teaching us for years that we're not supposed to fear him, we're just supposed to “reverence Him,” and you've never been robbed of a greater treasure than the fear God because in the end you're sinful enough that what you're going to need to do is to fear God, or else you're going to do wrong.
I know that there are better motives. I know that there we're supposed to be illuminated by higher motives and that at times hopefully you will be. Hopefully, that is most of the time; but everybody's weak at times, and the fact is if you didn't have hanging over your head that God is angry with the wicked every day, and if you do that he's going to get you and “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap, you just might go do some stuff that maybe you won't if you fear God. Amen?
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Return, o Lord – Обратись, Господи
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46josiZ0onI
Note on the music video from the artist:
” . . . Our wasted days filled with God’s anger and wrath suddenly change to mercy and grace, after we repent and turn towards the Lord and acknowledge that he is the giver and taker of our life.”
Simon Khorolskiy
Bump.
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