Hate What God Hates

Hate What God Hates                                                                        Kelly Durant 2-29-17

Psalm 34:21 Evil shall slay the wicked: and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate. Psalm 5:5 The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity.

2. In Catholic South America when you go out talking about the gospel you always run into people who instead of wanting to debate deeply the Bible and how one is living close to God or not, people prefer to tell jokes about the faith. Jokes, after all, allow people to laugh about faults. Laughter after all is a way to avoid confronting in yourself how you really don’t like certain people or certain situations with people. Here’s a joke just for fun.   

A priest was driving and gets stopped for speeding. The policeman smells alcohol on the priest’s breath and then sees an empty wine bottle on the floor of the car. He says, “Father, have you been drinking?” “Just water,” says the priest, fingers crossed. The policeman says, “Then why do I smell wine?” The priest looks at the bottle and says, “Praise be to God! He’s done it again!”

If you want to know the nature of a person, just look at what incites their laughter! People seem to love political or religious jokes because within the dark human nature most people love to see people in authority mocked. Humans are rebellious! But within the making fun of others we often observe the cruel nature of others who deep inside harbor a hate and disdain. Often people who mock and poke fun of others are the same ones who claim to be so sensitive and so caring for other certain groups of people. But a stream of water is either fresh or salty, not both! People who protest with hate something cannot have goodness and love as well.

What you and I see is a serious outbreak of cruel hypocrisy in society in which one group gets to bully and mock another. Christians, for example get mocked and persecuted with impunity around the world while other groups, if they get mocked, go into an outrage and violent fury beating up others, burning down neighborhoods, and demanding legal crucifixion of the ones who opened their mouths against them! The haters today, in our Godless society, are pure evil.

3. Today I am focusing on how in line with God you are with your ways, be they with laughter, anger, love, or hate, yes hate! Did you know God hates? Proverbs 8:13 “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil: pride, and arrogance, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate”. If you are a Christian with the discernment of the Holy Spirit you can immediately recognize a person that is totally opposite you in their values because most everything they reveal in conversation, in laughter, in love, and in hate is in opposition to the laws and values of God and the fruits of the Spirit. Our world is in such a divided state because a majority of people are carnal and simpletons and have all their wires crossed by misleading information!

A Christian obeys God’s commands worshipping Him, loving Him and others, and he or she loves all life no matter the sinful condition of the person. A true Christian can forgive insults, and seeks to walk in peace with others, even if they disagree with their sins. A Christian studies the Bible and knows what practices are of God’s nature, distinguishing between what is healthy and what is perverse. Within our practice of not hating, we still have the freedom of discretion! We must choose what God’s word says at any cost or we deceive our own selves.

A true Christian is one who lives a holy life, who reveals they love God and others by what they say and do. They defend the cause of the righteous and the persecuted, and seek to serve, heal, and pray for the well-being of everyone, even for the ones who hate and persecute them.

4. You are familiar with Jesus teachings, “Love God and others as yourself”; “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, and “love your enemies”. These things are familiar to you, but can you tell me about the last time that you actually got to practice them? We know to love, but are we to hate? Does indignation and hate have a purpose with God’s people? Yes!

A Christian will seek to be like Jesus imitating Jesus in all things, and notice how it was not often, but Jesus did hate and get angry at and the hypocrisy of the wicked deceitful oppressors in his day. Jesus hated hypocrisy, and attacked back those who hated Him and wanted to kill Him.  John 8:39 They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham. 40 But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham.

So Jesus makes it clear, God’s children, those who claim Abraham must live as Abraham, and Jesus was not like these men hating and seeking to kill God’s own! So what brings out the rage and hate in people who reject God’s truth which comes through Jesus? It is in their hearing of the truth of how evil they are that makes them go berserk! Just what Jesus said being, “a man that hath told you the truth”, was all it took for them to hate, and plan to kill Him and his followers. Today people of ‘truth’ get mocked as fake, but we know the truth from God.

5. Psalm 34:21 Evil shall slay the wicked: and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate Basically after Jesus was killed, those that hated Him were all massacred and crucified by the Romans when Jerusalem was invaded and destroyed in 70 A.D. The whole city, even the famous Temple of Herod was burnt totally to the ground with everyone in the city killed as a punishment for rebelling against Roman rule. Read what the historian Josephus says about this massacre to know how horrible and complete the destruction was! The stench of rotting bodies travelled for miles away! This was absolute desolation! You cannot hate God’s own, murder and then expect to escape His wrath!

Those that hate Christians, those that persecute and mock the righteous, those that adopt the values of the perverted sick world will pay a price for their wickedness. The price is desolation! That of legacy and that of spirit! All societies when corrupted, after losing their respect for God and His statues, get conquered and overtaken by cruel enemies. Enemies within provoke this self-destruction. The Greeks conquered the cruel Persians, then the Romans dominated the educated Greeks, and then Rome fell to murderous invaders, and on and on. Powerful nations rise and fall in accordance to God’s blessings, or the withdrawal of them, if they are practicing His laws and ways or not.

Considering causes, riots, and uprisings, question, what is the stance? Nobel or just hateful? How sad it is to see people so proud and vocal in their mockery and hate against those who are not as evil as what they are! To see violent haters in action, when watching mindless ravenous beasts corralled in city streets as in cages, one feels despaired for them over the desolation they will reap in their personal lives for being sewers of hate! Violent mobsters, who repeat slogans like a broken toy, are destined to be by punished by the authorities. There is no fame and glory in doing destruction over anger but that has been Satan’s game since Cain murdered Abel. These rebellious haters around the world condemn their selves as bigots and fools in their outcries to attack anyone not on their bigoted side. They are blind and in denial of God’s judgments to come on them for choosing the side of evil.

6. Here is a verse that might make you reflect deep. Psalm 7:11 “God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.” So if God is angry with evil doers, shouldn’t we be angry as well? Even you, doing good, will come under judgment in the final judgment. I believe we should be bothered and vexed in our spirit over evil, so vexed we try do something to resolve it. Violence, human trafficking, illegal drugs, all evils are abounding as a fish rots from the head down. The solution always is Jesus! It is His salvation that we want for others as Jesus brings love, peace, and truth within the soul and grants eternal life. Haters must learn to hate their own selves enough to want to change into something more noble and loving.

Here is a verse that answers well how we are to respond, Ephesians 4:26 “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath” Christians must control their hate and anger. It is human to get angry, but to live for hatred and making trouble, to soak one’s self in this poison is to become like an obsessed mental psycho who acts out but is ineffective to do any good and to effectively provide solutions where help is needed.

Psalm 5:5 The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity. The reality is too many people are allowing their selves to be fools, to be puppets to the imputed hate and anger of those inspired by Satan. I have seen young people as blank sheets of paper go to liberal colleges only to come out stained with all the bias and hate taught them. They got diseased with lies! Only God can open their eyes to the fact that Satan is using them to be working his iniquity. They must confront their own demons and ask their selves, “Is it really worth it?” Is the risk of losing my soul and freedom if arrested for going along with my stupid friends and defending evil and defying authority worth it?

7. Speaking of hate, did you know God expects you to hate yourself and anyone preventing you from serving Him? Luke 14:26 If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

Does this seem harsh to you? Jesus makes it clear that all your love, all your emotions, all your world must be to be tied up in doing God’s will and you have to hate your own self! The problem is too many people are proud and love their own hateful self as is! Also, I have observed some of the worst persecution comes from those of your own family and they can often be the very ones preventing you from having a more total obedience to God.

It is not a literal hate you should have for them or yourself, it is a rejection hate or a type of hate that implies you must put them in last place, hardening your heart against your own rebellion and those who are not doing God’s will so you can be freed up from evil control. What’s first is to be dedicated totally to Jesus’ will.  

8. There is not enough time here to tell you about everything that God hates. I am going to leave this task of researching on Biblegateway what God hates up to you. Here is a clue, look up the word, “Abomination”. When the Lord used this word, it was to define something so evil, something so vile, that it needed to be put to death or be totally destroyed. The Jews of the past kept God’s law sacred to obey these commands to eliminate evil from their camp and this is why they, and Christians, have always been hated and persecuted by evil doers. God’s word exposes evil as evil! The evil ones always confuse and call the good ones evil, yet evil is just evil!

Many world religions, along with Satanic rituals, have you practice these abominations to serve as a proof that you are given over to their dark side. Common sense and our natural inherent God given congenital consciousness reacts repugnantly to these practices which include acts of perversions with animals, children, murder, use of destructive substances, witchcraft, and the hate of God and Jesus. Abominable practices are still punishable crimes in most nations. This proves how God’s law is supreme and is the foundation for any fair and safe society. Consider this, with God ‘hating’ His Son, another righteous person, or His laws is crime punishable by the taking away of eternal life (or going to hell).

1 John 3:15 Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. This verse from the New Testament (I say New because so many people think they can claim that God was murderously cruel in the Old Testament) is very clear. If you “hate” a Christian brother (or sister) then you are as guilty as a murderer in the eyes of God!

9. A true Christian never hates in the way the people of the world hate but always will seek to free all souls captive by the evil spiritual powers that oppressors in our current world! Christians seem to always be accused of being bigots and haters when the truth is the accusers are real bigots and haters! A Christian will expose how others are a slave to their own perverse passions and sins with the intent to give them freedom and eternal life! So this is why Christians, like Jesus, are hated for speaking the truth.  The truth exposes to the light what is truly evil.       

What have I brought to light today? That God does hate evil and evil doers and this is why He gave humanity “the law” and established punishments for committing ‘abominations’. But then He gave us Jesus’ grace to conquer the evil found within our own selves! God expects us to hate the evil within ourselves, to repent, and overcome evil with His love, a love for Him and a love for others. Let go of your own self! You fix the world by first fixing yourself!

Pray now and ask yourself, have I been guilty of hating another as the people of the world do? Have I allowed others to influence me to hate someone when this person might be righteous in God’s view? Who do I hate right now? Reveal to me, Lord Jesus, who do I have hate for and why? Reveal to me if I am in line with you, God, and if I hate what you hate as you hate the abominable works of men. Am I contentious? God hates discord! Do I hate myself enough to repent and change to do your will only, not my own? There is a time for love, and a time for hate, but it must be hate in the way God defines it, not in the way as sinful cruel people in the world define it (or in the way you think). Ask God to fill you with love and the Holy Spirit’s discernment and many things in your life will fall into place under God’s blessings!

People in the Church: Who To Keep, Who Not to Keep

People in the Church: Who To Keep, Who Not to Keep         Kelly Durant  2-19-17

Matthew 13: 47 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: 48 Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.

2. How many of you have ever been in a restaurant and you got some food that you just could not eat? You are never rude on purpose but you just could not take in any more after 2 bites. It was uncooked, or had a bad flavor, something made it undesirable and it is perfectly fine for you to discern what’s what. We all are allowed to choose what you will take into your body or not, correct?

Today let’s apply, as Jesus did, the concept of good food and bad food to the world’s people. A majority of Christian people are like good tasting food and they do us good. They are a pleasure to work with, right?  You and I, and for sure God gets along great with the ones who love Him and others! They have a loving, kind, generous, serving spirit and serve in God’s work applying the Holy Spirit oil to smooth out all the problems in the machinery. These are authentic Christ-like Christians who demand little and produce much.

With Jesus things are always black or white. He compares fish to people, that there are many good people but also there are people that are not good for God or anybody! Sadly, some people will always leave you with a bad taste in your mouth due to their bad nature, immaturity, and rudeness, due to their trouble making complaints, and they destroy love by accusations and back-stabbing. And in their arrogant way of thinking, they believe they are superior to you, yet their personal lives reveal that they are a confused terror. We must watch out as some of these types of ‘bad fish’ become leaders in the church. In their minds pastors and church people are just manipulating others, they think with a carnal mind, not a spiritual one. There exists healthy fish, and there exists bottom feeding fish which live off of the trash of others.

3. The verses of today, if not applied in context might seem a bit cruel that God throws people away out of the net, but let’s analyze well what Jesus infers. He says that the Kingdom of God is like a net that catches all kinds of fish, but later, after a time when the net is out and gone through, some of the fish are kept and others are thrown away or thrown back into the lake. Why throw certain ones away? Doesn’t God want to save everyone? The interpretation implies that each of us must ask ourselves this question: How can it be God’s fault for rejecting someone who they themselves chose to reject God? If a person rejects God’s goodness and salvation preferring their own ways of rebellion and corruption, then this is what makes them at fault by their own ways being useless and lacking in substance. 

The verses of today can be taken within 2 contexts. One context is that when there is the final judgment, when Jesus returns, there will be a scooping up of souls, like catching them in a net, to be presented before the Great White Judgment and then these souls will be separated as the wheat will be separated from the weeds. The wheat goes in heaven’s barn but the weeds are burnt. Here is another analogy…

Matthew 25:32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: Matthew 25:33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. In the end, it is either heaven or hell for the souls of those who went through the testing ground of life on this earth. The point is each person choses their own nature and destiny, either to be a good seed or a bad one, either to become a tame animal or a ferocious one, either to be a fish good for consumption, or a bad poisonous bottom feeder; either to accept Jesus humble loving nature in you or not! And did you know that if you even touch certain fish they will poison you and make you sick, and it is the same as some people!

4. A second way to look at the Kingdom of God is to apply this concept in the here and now, that in real time as we separate the good from the bad. Jesus with His 12 disciples started the Kingdom of God on earth, and ever since then there has been followers of Jesus obeying God’s will and accomplishing His commands. Many Christian churches or groups of ‘called out ones’ do God’s will serving and saving souls (But not all who claim to be Christian really are as by their fruits you will know them). Jesus said, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men” Matt 4:19

A picture of the Kingdom of God on earth can be read in the Book of Acts and in chapter 2 it describes how the followers were the first to share the wealth with each other and helping each other spiritually. A true church representing God’s Kingdom helps the needy and those of his own household while always inviting all to come in and join and share in the work and blessings.  We are figuratively then in the net of God! Gang members often tattoo spider nets on their selves to show they are caught in the net of their particular gang. You and I are either caught by God or caught by Satan! Life obligates you to be in someone’s net… eventually.

Acts2:44 And all that believed were together, and had all things common; 45 And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. 46 And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, 47 Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved. Do you live this way?

5. So if the bodies (souls) of Christ-believers (in the Salvation Army we say Corps, which is a group of bodies) are the Kingdom of God on earth, then how would we apply this sorting out of the fish as described in Matthew 13: 47, 38? It basically means that not everyone is of use and it is okay to let go of the useless ones. Like folks out of rehab, some return back to their old ways, while others go on to serve God even some become Officers. It’s either holiness or unholiness.

Let’s get more specific, let’s take examples from all the many people that have come through our doors and then they left on their own. I know I try to show loving and compassionate attention to all and some people may think I want to keep everyone no matter how bad they are, but this is not the case. I know many people have seen me spend weeks at a time with certain people in need helping solve a problem, and sometimes it has been worth it, and yet at other times not. The role you and I have is just to help everyone anyway without discrimination.

I have often felt, after 40 years of ministry, that maybe a few hundred times that I have helped people who didn’t deserve it at all! But at the time I didn’t know if they deserved it or not when I first started out. I consider it this way, the Lord and I gave them a chance, and if they had thankfulness or not, if they started obeying God or not, it is for God to sort it out later. It is like sorting out the good fish from the bad. God, not me, owns the fish in the net!

6. Here is the usual process, a person comes in the doors for the first time and they either need something or they say they want to serve God and be involved. What do you and I do? You and I help them as best as we can encouraging them and invite them to serve. Then we give them time. In the fishing context it is like giving them line; I let them swim away and then try to pull them back in to see if they are still there. Remember when fishing you do not choose the fish or the kind of fish you want, the random fish just come and bite on the bait on the line.

The only way to get to know people is with time. If a person really wants to be involved in doing God’s work they will come on their own over and over and over be faithful to God’s work. Notice how I said, God’s work. Each person must show respect to the rules and be faithful to the church as well but that is where the problem starts. The church is made up of people.

Over time people reveal if they are sincere in their love for God and for their brothers and sisters or just faking it because they want some personal benefit from the church. And people who are not of God usually become unbearable in their demands and it is good to just let some people go elsewhere! It is ok to cut the line and let some people go! I don’t cut the line too often, I know God has patience and even years are needed for some to turn around to start obeying God. But it is God’s work, not mine, to help each person to submit to the Holy Spirit.

7. I try not to share information about people’s ups and downs with others as doing so would be a violation of trust concerning things happening in their lives. I know some of you may think, why do the Captains/pastors visit so and so, but not the Jones? The truth is one of the hardest jobs we have is having the ability to discern who needs attention and when! William Booth said to “go for souls and go for the worst”. My wife and I pray and counsel together to decide, but it is hard to know all the time who to invest in and who not to. We have to go by the clues we observe to know who is weak and needs attention, and to know who not to worry about because they are strong in faith and do not need many visits, or extra attention.

Sometimes you and I as leaders only have enough time to visit those who are sick, or those in the hospital, or spend time planning with certain leaders. Sometimes we do not invest time in certain people because we are waiting on them to show us their own initiative. Some people when you give them line and time just swim away! Maybe they were coming to God’s Kingdom looking for something, but then they didn’t value it, they got distracted, or disinterested in God’s word and work and then disappeared. They are like, as in the parable of the sewer, the seed overcome by weeds, but that is what they chose. I do get sad, very sad when people leave, but think about it, even begging a person to stay does not work when their heart is not fully set on being dedicated to God or the Corps/church. But people who stay through hard times and disappointments and mature are obviously not staying for benefits or our ‘great luxurious church’ (thank God it is not excessive), or for our greatness as theologians or for being famous pastors as on TV, but instead they are staying because they want to be a part of God’s Kingdom and win other souls to Jesus!

And I will give you an example, without using names, of a case we had in the distant past of how we have had to let a certain fish go. There was a person we hired and he did a fine job but wanted us to hire his wife as well. We actually had the funds to hire her but I chose to let the process go a few weeks to see if she was worth it, if she would volunteer. I kept inviting her to please help us and that if you have nothing to do but be home alone, please come and help us in the office a few hours. Guess what? She never chose to volunteer for hardly anything and my wife and I chose not to hire her! How can one hire a person unwilling to do good knowing there is a need? She never learned of the fact that we were almost hiring her but we backed out seeing she had no goodwill to be useful when she could have been.

8. So, it is alright to let some people go! Some people simply are not choosing to serve God even though you and I may be praying for them. Some people are good as a Corps member but some people that come to church are not even fit to be members of any church! Let me tell you why? Some people when they are not getting special favors and attention, not getting position, not getting something they desire they start complaining and backstabbing the members and the Captains/pastors, bad-mouthing  the church, and they may even backstab members who gave them money or did many good things for them. Remember a true Christian has love and forgiveness and the fruits of the spirit! Not everyone in the net of Christianity is a good fish.

Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. 24 And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. 25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

So the way to know a good fish from a bad one is by their fruits, by their obvious nature of appearances and practices, by their healthy or sickly spirit, by what they do or don’t do. Do they follow and obey as a gentle sheep, or are the independent and destructive as a rebellious goat?

9. I decided to share this as often times some of you question if you should keep investing in a certain friend or family member or not, if you should keep visiting and begging a certain person to come to church or not. There does come a time when we must realize that not every person that accepts Jesus or comes to church for a few weeks will chose to do service to God and serve others and serve the church like you and I do. Genesis 6:3 (a) And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh:

What we witness in all churches is a population of people that come and go. There are ‘seekers’, then there are those who progress to be ‘adherents’ (who adhere to the faith but are not sacrificial to the work yet, or maybe circumstances prevent it), and then there are Soldiers in this volunteer army who are those who chose to do all they can in some manner to serve in this part of God’s kingdom! Thank God for Soldiers, and Local Officers, amen? God will use you only as much as you will let Him.

God owns the net! The final judgement is coming! We serve as His fishermen, we often catch and sort, but He keeps or He let’s go according to what each person chooses! Be faithful to stay with God’s school of fish active in his service in his net and He will keep you forever!