Psalm 139 -Rick Emerson

Reformed Ex-mormon

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God, we love you. We thank you, Lord. We are the sinners and we ask you to be merciful to us.

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God, I would ask that you would bless Nick today, as he is approaching his apotheosis. Look at his text and tell us about the wonders and the greatness of who you are,

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Lord. God, thank you. God, may you bless his mouth and his mind and his ability to proclaim your name among his people.

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May you be with him on high, Lord, as you saw him in his own worship. Lord, you are holy and we are so thankful that we can be in moderation about you,

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God. God, may you be the grip of our minds and our hearts and our strength. Just the unfathomable attributes and character of who you are,

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God. Lord, may Rick glorify you today. All right.

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Well, good morning, everybody. This morning, we're going to be in Psalm 139.

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And so this is a psalm that I have wanted to be able to teach through for quite some time.

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We have sang this psalm in worship for, I don't know, over a year, year and a half or so.

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And I have thought that it'd be good to go through it so we know, have a better idea of what we are, when we're singing it as worship to God, we have a better idea of what it means, what we're saying in doing that.

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And so that's what we're going to go through this morning, Psalm 139. We're going to go through the whole thing. And so let me go ahead and read through it.

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For the chief musician, a Psalm of David. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.

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It is high. I cannot attain it. Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can

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I flee from your presence? If I ascend into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there.

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If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me.

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If I say, surely the darkness shall fall on me, even the night shall be light about me.

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Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from you, but the night shines as the day. The darkness and the light are both alike to you.

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For you formed my inward parts. You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

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Marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from you when

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I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed, and in your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.

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How precious also are your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them!

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If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand. When I awake, I am still with you.

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O that you would slay the wicked, O God! Depart from me, therefore, you bloodthirsty men, for they speak against you wickedly.

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Your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate you? And do

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I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with perfect hatred. I count them my enemies.

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Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties.

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And see if there is any wicked way in me. And lead me in the way everlasting.

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Let us pray. Lord God, we thank you for this psalm. We thank you for your servant David, and for using him to write these words down that have been passed through the millennia and translated into English where we can read it and understand it.

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And we just pray that you would bless this time, that we'd have a better understanding of who you are, and what you've done for us, and what you expect from us after going through this psalm this morning.

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And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right. So I'm sure we are all familiar with at least certain verses of this psalm, right?

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So let's go back and let's work through these. O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

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You know my sitting down, my rising up. You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.

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God knows everything about us. He knows our thoughts before we think them.

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He knows our actions before we do them. He knows our words before we speak them.

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You have hedged me behind and before and laid your hand upon me. In verse 5 we see that God is even orchestrating events in our lives.

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God is not an impersonal force or a deity. He did not make a clockwork universe where he put everything so it would run and then kind of lets it go after he winds the spring, steps back, and just lets things work out.

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But he is intimately involved in every minute detail. And when we look at that, notice the tense that is used.

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It's have searched, known. These are things that are in the past. God, since eternity past, has already known every detail about us.

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This is David writing, but this is applicable to all of us, that God knows before we were made.

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And we're getting to that part in several verses. While he was making us, before he made us, he already knew about us.

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He is intimately familiar with who we are. God cares about the details of our life.

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Charles Spurgeon said, in relation to this, he said,

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So that we mourn not. David is right here.

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Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it. Like just trying to not think about every single person, but just how does

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God know all about us? I can't comprehend that. It's too wonderful.

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It's high. I cannot attain it, that understanding that God would know all these things before I even think them. He knows it.

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Before I say it, he knows it. And so in this psalm, and maybe we need to talk a little bit about what psalms are.

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So the psalms are basically the hymn book of believers in the

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Old Testament into the New Testament, to the early church. Jesus would have sang these as worship songs.

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And so David wrote this inspired worship song.

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And so in the psalms, like through Job, there's some poetic language that is used.

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Everything is true, but it's true in a way that is not, you're not going to find in a science lab.

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There's true things beyond science that science cannot touch. And so that's what we're going through, through this poetic use of language.

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God is explaining to us through his servant David what he is like. So as we continue on to verse seven, where can

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I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?

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So not only is God omniscient, he knows all things that we, those first six verses, knows all things about us, intimately familiar with everything that we are, everything that we have, and everything that we will be.

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But we can't like run away. Oh, I know they're going to run away, and I'm going to go somewhere I can't go. I still know about them, but I can't go there.

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No, that's foolish. Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend into heaven, you are there.

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Whether we're talking about spiritual heaven, or we're talking about in the sky, or into outer space, we can't go somewhere where God is not.

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Obviously, he dwells in heaven, so if we go there, he's there. We'll talk about outer space.

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Go as far to the edge of the universe. No, God's there. He's the one that has spread the stars across the sky with his hands.

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If I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there.

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Whether he's talking about the depths of the earth, the center of the earth, or in the grave, or in hell, where God punishes those who have rebelled against him.

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We cannot escape from his presence. You're there.

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If I take the wings of mourning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.

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So not only can we not escape from him, there's some pretty deep trenches.

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We think we know a lot of the surface of earth, but there's things about earth that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about earth.

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And the depths of the ocean is one of those things. So even if we go somewhere like that, miles beneath the ocean,

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God is there. And even when you go there, it's not just, oh, okay, I know you're there. I'm there with you.

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No, God is his hand. He's leading us. His hand is holding us.

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If I say, surely the darkness shall fall on me, even the night shall be light about me. We can't turn off the lights and hide from God.

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Now, you might be able to do that from your parents and hide, but you can't hide from God. Verse 12, indeed, the darkness shall not hide from you, but the night shines as the day.

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The darkness and the light are both alike to you. God's omnipresence is on display here.

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God is spirit. His presence fills creation. One cannot escape from his presence. And we can think of Jonah.

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God commanded him to go to Nineveh to preach repentance, to preach judgment on them.

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And he didn't want to. He knew that God would show mercy on them if they repented. So he tried to flee from God.

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And what happened there? God caused a fish to come swallow him up and spit him back out where he's supposed to go, back the direction he's supposed to go.

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If one were to go to heaven, physically or spiritually, God would already be there. If one were to go to Sheol, to hell, to the grave, either physically or spiritually,

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God is there. And God, again, since he's spiritual, he's not limited by physical things, by the properties of physics.

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When there's complete lack of physical light, that cannot fool

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God. God's not fooled by doing things behind closed doors or in darkness. He is omniscient.

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He is omnipresent. He knows what's going on, and he is there. Verse 13,

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For you formed my inward parts, you covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

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Marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well. These verses are often brought up in relation to the pro -life movement.

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Right? That God is there at the creation of little babies.

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He's there at the moment of conception. He's there, and he knows that individual. He knew us.

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Before our parents even knew they were pregnant with us, he knew us. He knew that we were there, and that was his plan, even before we had been conceived.

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He knew us. My frame was not hidden from you when

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I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed, and in your book they all were written.

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The days fashioned for me when as yet there were none of them. God is there at the very beginning of our human development.

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He knows who we are. He knows everything about us. He knows what we're going to do.

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God cares about us from the very beginning, and he is involved in every moment of our life until the end.

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And with this, our response should be praise. David's response is praise. So it says we're fearfully and wonderfully made.

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A synonym for fearful would be in awe. It should amaze us.

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We should be in awe at what God does in his creative power, how he takes apart from the dad, takes apart from the mom, and creates a new life.

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Like, that's crazy. Just think, a unique human can come from that.

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That should cause us to worship when we realize some of these biological realities.

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God's work in the creation of each and every human life is awe -inspiring. And along with that, each and every human life is distinguished from others.

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We're not just all lumped in together. God knows us as individuals in that. He doesn't get us confused.

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He doesn't call us by the wrong name, as parents or teachers have done. He doesn't get confused when looking at us.

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He knows each and every one of us individually exactly how we are. And with this, if that's how

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God views us and has that care and interest, we should too. And that's why we are pro -life.

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That's why we care about babies. That's why we want to, when

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Jesus said, let the little children come to me, don't keep them away. That's why we have children here. That's why we're here talking.

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We care about them. We want them to see what their mommies and daddies are doing, that they're here worshiping Jesus. We want them to hear the preaching of the word.

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Even if they can't understand it all, we want them here because this is important. We should care about human life from conception to the tomb.

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We should care about human life wherever we see it.

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Your eyes saw my substance being unformed, and in your book they all were written. The days fashioned for me when as yet there were none of them.

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Before any of us or our parents or their parents or their parents or their parents were conceived,

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God knew and prepared the days of our lives. That goes for everybody.

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But as Christians, this says even greater in 2, 8 through 10.

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For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

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For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

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God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So God has all the days of our life.

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He has them in his book. They were all written, the days fashioned for me, even when as yet there were none of them.

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So for us to have confidence and step in doing things, God has stuff for us to do as believers. Be confident, take the next step in doing good and serving

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God, for serving and loving his people. When we realize who

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God is and what he has done for us, his attitude towards us, his concern for us, our response should match

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David's in these next couple of verses. Verse 17 and 18, How precious also are your thoughts to me,

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O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand.

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When I awake, I am still with you. Because of God's omniscience, his omnipresence, his omnipotence, because God is not bound by space or time, because he is so holy, because he is so otherly, so distinct from us, as he's the creator and we're the creation.

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He's the creator, we're the creature. It's incomprehensible that he would want to care about us because we are not like him.

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It's incomprehensible that he does not stop thinking about us. There are times that we do not think about him. There are times we don't think about our other family.

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We just think about ourselves, our sinful nature, our narcissism. We think about us, and that's not what

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God does. Even though he is the best thing, he is the most important thing, he is the being that is worthy of all our attention, all our worship, he still cares about us.

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Like, he would be the one out of anyone that could just only think about him and be okay. And he doesn't, in that he takes great care for us.

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He does not stop thinking about us. He doesn't sleep. And when we do, he's still there.

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He is constant, he's unchanging. And that's going to lead us into our next verses.

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So maybe these are the ones, okay, maybe we shouldn't read these ones. Maybe these ones should be edited out.

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David, I don't know if you were really speaking for God when you said these things because this won't get played on the radio.

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You're probably not going to have contemporary Christian music sing on Psalm 139, verses 19 through 22.

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Oh, that you would slay the wicked. Oh, God. That doesn't sound very nice.

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That doesn't sound like the Jesus way. Depart from me, therefore, you bloodthirsty men.

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For they speak against you wickedly. Your enemies take your name in vain. Okay, yeah, there's wicked guys, we understand that.

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Verse 21, do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate you? I thought we were just supposed to love.

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What are you doing, David? Do I not loathe those who rise up against you?

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Just doesn't seem very nice. Verse 22, I hate them with perfect hatred.

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Not just hatred, perfect hatred. I count them my enemies.

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I thought we weren't supposed to have enemies. We're supposed to love everybody. So the modern church, we take issue with these verses.

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They're not comforting. Oftentimes, they're not positive and encouraging.

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And so because of the neglect of our teachers to explain all of Scripture, we can get confused when we're reading through this.

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Okay, Psalm 139 is great. Fearfully, wonderfully made, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, wow.

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Slay the wicked, O God. Do I not hate them, O Lord? That can cause a lot of confusion.

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So there are certain words that the modern church detests and certain concepts.

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And jealousy is one, right? We're like, no, jealousy is bad.

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We're always told that's bad. But if we look at Exodus, God actually says his name is

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Jealous, for he is a jealous God. So there is a time for jealousy.

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Paul talks about how he's jealous for the church to present them as a spotless bride before Jesus Christ.

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And so maybe we're not right. Maybe we're letting the culture influence us more than we're letting

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Scripture influence us. There is an okay time to be jealous. There's a right kind of jealousy.

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There's a good time of jealousy. There's a time when to not be jealous would be sinful. That's going to have to be another sermon.

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Right now, we've got enough to talk about with hate. So looking around our world, is hate something we need more of?

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No. There's plenty of hate in the world. This is not a call, okay, guys, we need more hate.

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There's not enough hate. We need more hate. But hate in itself is not necessarily a bad thing.

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It's a neutral thing. It depends what you hate, where that hate is directed. So hate is another one of these words that goes against our modern sensibilities when shown in a positive light.

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Yet here in Scripture, David, a man after God's own heart, is praying that God would kill his enemies.

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God's enemies, not David's enemies. And that David, he hates the enemies of God with a perfect hatred.

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And that he counts them as his own enemies. Is David wrong?

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Did he not understand the full revelation of God? Does he not understand the

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Jesus way? That's what modern pastor teachers will say.

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Well, David, he's doing his best. He's reaching for what God wants, which is really fuzzy in the Old Testament.

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And he didn't know the full revelation. And if Jesus could have just been there to explain it, he's like, no, David, I don't want you to hate anybody.

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Just help. You have good intent, but you're just wrong. Or others will say that maybe

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God is a different God in the Old Testament. That, you know, the God of the

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Old Testament, he was mean. He was jealous. He was vengeful. You know, he would commit mass genocide.

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And he killed everybody except for Noah's family, for eight people. And so he's a bad guy.

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But in the New Testament, we got Jesus. He's loving God. And so how is the church to reconcile the fact that God seems to be endorsing hatred for his enemies in the

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Psalms, but Jesus instructed us to love our enemies?

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So before we can get into that, understand what's going on, it's going to be important to define our terms.

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What is love? And what is hate? And so according to Webster's Dictionary 1828, and just a side note, it's an interesting reference because maybe you're aware of this or not, but dictionaries keep getting updates, especially online ones.

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So if you don't have a print one, you might go back and one day the definition for something has changed.

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And I've done that. I can't remember what it was, but they changed it from one week to the next to fit in with postmodern sensibilities.

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And so there's a website. Webster's Dictionary 1828 has what was published in 1828.

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So at least we have something solid, some standard of what these words mean that we don't have to, hey, what is it today?

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I liked love yesterday, but let's see if I like it today, see what the Internet has to say.

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So love as the verb, in a general sense to be pleased with, to regard with affection on account of some qualities which excite pleasing sensations or desire of gratification.

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We love a friend on account of some qualities which gives us pleasures in his society. We love a man who has done us a favor in which case gratitude enters into the composition of our affection.

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We love our parents and our children on account of their connection with us and on account of many qualities which please us.

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We love to retire to a cool shade in summer. We love a warm room in winter. We love to hear an eloquent advocate.

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A Christian loves his Bible. In short, we love whatever gives us pleasure and delight, whether animal or intellectual.

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And if our hearts are right, we love God above all things as the sum of all excellence and all the attributes which can communicate happiness to intelligent beings.

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In other words, the Christian loves God with the love of complacency in his attributes, the love of benevolence towards the interest of his kingdom, and the love of gratitude for favors received.

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Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

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Matthew 22, 37. And so another way would be to have benevolence or goodwill for someone or towards something.

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Love as a noun, the affection of the mind excited by beauty and worth of any kind, or by the qualities of an object which communicate pleasures, sensual or intellectual, is opposed to hatred.

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Love between the sexes is a compound affection consisting of esteem, benevolence, and animal desire.

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Love is excited by pleasing qualities of any kind as by kindness, benevolence, charity, and by the qualities which render social intercourse agreeable.

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In the latter case, love is art of friendship or a strong attachment springing from goodwill and esteem, and the pleasure derived from the company, civilities, and kindness of others.

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Between certain natural relatives, love seems to be in some cases instinctive, which manifests itself toward an infant before any particular qualities in the child are unfolded.

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This affection is apparently as strong in irrational animals as in human beings. We speak of love of amusements, the love of books, the love of money, and the love of whatever contributes to our pleasure or supposed profit.

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The love of God is the first duty of man, and this springs from just views of his attributes or excellencies of character, which afford the highest delight to the sanctified heart.

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Esteem and reverence constitute ingredients in this affection, and the fear of offending him is its inseparable effect.

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So when God loves, and something to note, God, there's an attribute of God called his impassivity, and it means that he doesn't have passions like we do.

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It doesn't mean that God doesn't have love. When we use emotions to describe

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God as love or hate or something like that, for creatures like us, it's something different.

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I heard a song, and I loved it. It moved me to joy. Or something happens, and you get moved to anger.

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You smash your foot, and, oh, I'm angry, right? Something happened to me, and now

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I'm reacting, and my anger is causing me to do something. And that's not what God's emotions you want to use.

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That's not how he is. He's not emotional. He's not manipulated by his emotions.

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He's not led by his emotions. He's not led by his passions. He's his impassivity.

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And so with God's love, when he pours out his love on us, it's not because of something that we do.

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We can't earn his love. It's not like, well, I really hate Rick because he's in sin. Oh, but now he's not saying so much.

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Okay, I love him now. That's not how he works. His love is his blessing, his sacrifice, and I think that's exhibited to us in what

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Jesus has done, that even while we were sinners, even while we're enemies of God, Christ died for us, right?

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That's the gospel. And so hate, the definition of hate, to dislike greatly, to have a great aversion to, expresses less than abhor, detest, and abominate, and less pronounced with a peculiar emphasis.

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And so that would be the definition given for hate in Webster's. And then another related word to hate that I think is useful, that was the verb.

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So for noun, we have enmity, the quality of being an enemy, the opposite of friendship, ill will, hatred, unfriendly dispositions, malevolence, and expresses more than aversion and less than malice, and differs from displeasure in denoting a fixed or rooted hatred, whereas displeasure is more transient.

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And so we have reference in Scripture back in Genesis 3 .15, when

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Satan is cursing man and woman and the serpent, he says, I will put enmity between thee and the woman.

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In Romans 8 .7 says the carnal mind is enmity against God. It's a state of opposition.

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In James 4 .4, the friendship of the world is enmity with God. So with kind of those laid out, what does it mean to be an enemy?

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What does it mean to be enmity? What does it mean to hate? What does it mean to love?

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God's love, God loves what is in accordance to his nature. God loves what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful.

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Love is one side of a coin, and hatred would be the other.

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To love what is good would to hate what is evil. So in God's love, he hates the false, he hates the evil, and he hates the ugly, the mutilated, the perverted.

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And as followers of God, we are to do the same. We can't just have one side of the coin.

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We are to do both sides. Because if we do not actively hate that which is evil, then we are loving that which is evil.

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And as I mentioned before, when it comes to God's love, his love is not emotional. God does not experience emotions like we do.

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He is not moved by his emotions. When he loves, it is measured, decisive, and intentional.

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It does not change with the whims of emotion or when situations change. In the same way, his hatred is not emotional.

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It is measured, it's decisive, and it's intentional. So when

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David says, I hope that you would slay the wicked, O God. Depart from me, therefore, you bloodthirsty men.

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After everything, the previous 18 verses, we see how much God cares about humanity.

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He knows all that we do. He knows where we go. He knows everything that we will do.

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He was there forming us together inside our mothers. The whole way he was with us, taking our hand through life.

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And so when someone does that and the understanding of that and they decide to rebel against God, that's wicked.

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When they go to pervert, when they want to destroy life inside the womb, when they want to kill and mutilate people, when they want to glorify ugliness and death, that's wicked.

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And it's not loving to people to want to encourage and promote wickedness.

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And so as Christians, we should be able to sing along with David, oh, that you would slay the wicked,

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O God. Think of whatever wicked is going on in the world today. Think about abortion.

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Maybe you have in mind that, okay, well, abortion, it's the mom, the woman, she doesn't know, she's in a hard situation, doesn't feel like she can do it, so she's a victim too in this.

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And there could be a case where they don't know, but the vast majority of abortions, the moms know what they're doing.

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They know that they're killing a baby. Brayden knows from doing evangelism, pro -life evangelism.

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You can watch videos of pro -life groups, of abolition groups going out, and there's moms like, yeah, this is my eighth baby.

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I like killing babies. And as they're walking to the abortion clinic, got to get another one done. And so that wickedness, the doctors that are doing it, they know.

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They know when they go in to the woman, they have to surgically remove. They're taking out pieces. They're taking out arms.

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They're taking out heads. They have to crush the head. Like the appropriate response is not just to say, oh,

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I just love you. No, it's I want you to be blessed. I want you to keep doing this thing.

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But it's God, slay the wicked. Put an end to those who are killing innocents.

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Depart from me, therefore, you bloodthirsty men. And with us, it's not because as Christians we know, and we'll get into this at the end of the psalm, but we know that if it were not for the grace of Christ, that we have committed great wickedness too, that God should damn us, that God should send us to hell.

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He would be just to do that to us. And so it's not just like, oh, you got to send those people to hell,

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God. But we pray out, God, please stop them. Whether you have to kill them to stop them from killing people or whether you kill them spiritually and they come to you, they die to themselves and they come alive in Christ.

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God, stop them. Slay the wicked. And we don't want to be in the company of those people.

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People say, oh, well, Jesus ate with sinners. He ate with tax collectors. Yeah, he wasn't going to abortion clinics and helping them out.

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Oh, here's your forceps. That's not what he was doing. He wasn't participating in their sin. These were repentant people or people on the verge of repentance who he was interacting with, that they wanted to, they're in search of forgiveness.

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And so we don't want to be in the company of people that are rebelling against God. They hate God and just, oh, yeah, my best friends, they all do all sorts of wickedness during the week, but we have a good time.

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Like, depart from me, therefore, you bloodthirsty men. We don't want to keep company with those who actively pervert

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God's creation and destroy it and promote death. For they speak against you wickedly.

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Your enemies take your name in vain. We had that as our catechism this morning, talking about not taking the

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Lord's name in vain. These people that are blaspheming God.

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You can even think of false religions, false prophets. You can think of Jehovah's Witnesses.

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You can think of Mormons, and they're going, they're preaching another gospel that if people believe it, they are going to hell.

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God, stop those false prophets, those missionaries going out.

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Stop them. Put an end to them. Maybe not that they get ran over on their bike, but that they come across someone that can answer them, that can put a question, can put a pebble in their shoe that bothers them, and they come to the realization of who

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God is. But we want you to stop them from doing wicked, promoting wickedness and blaspheming you.

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We can think of, you know, the last five years, especially, you know, we have great evil of abortion, but we have, like, transgenderism and the wickedness of that, of now, okay, it's one thing.

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It's still evil. You still need to put a stop to it. It should not be tolerated in civil society for adults to do that.

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But then they start doing it to children, the doctors that know very well what they are doing, cutting off healthy body parts, giving them hormones and puberty blockers and cross -sex hormones and drugs.

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Stop them. Oh, God, that you would slay the wicked.

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Do I not hate them, oh, Lord, who hate you? Do I not loathe those who rise up against you?

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And so we should make note that there is a difference here when

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Jesus says that we're supposed to love our enemies. That is true. We are supposed to love our enemies.

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But there is a difference between enemies of God and personal enemies and even exactly what that looks like.

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Because I said love and hate are not opposed forces, but if you love what is good, you're going to hate what is evil.

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And so even in loving somebody, okay, I want, so how do

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I love an abortionist? I tell them to stop what they're doing. I say that they need to repent or God's going to cut them down.

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That's a loving thing. I don't, well, you're doing okay. God loves you anyway. You probably shouldn't do that, but no, you need to stop.

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You are going to hell if you do not stop this. You are killing babies. Babies are being murdered here.

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For the transgender doctors, you need to stop. You are mutilating humans. God does not look kind.

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He is going to reserve, he has reserved a special spot in hell for people like you. You need to stop.

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If you do not stop, God will cut you down. And that is loving to them. Not, well, no,

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Mike Pence, people are going to do what they're going to do. He had some statement that was brought up again about transgender. Well, you're not supposed to love my neighbors, so I'm going to let them transition.

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No, love does not let your neighbor mutilate themselves.

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Oh, I know my neighbor is going to commit suicide, but I'm just going to let him do what he's going to do. No, you go over and you stop that neighbor by force if needed.

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You know, somebody breaks into your house, and they want to cause harm to your family. Well, you're just supposed to love them.

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Can I get you anything? And not to get into, but, you know, you have a wicked man come in, and you have your wife and your daughters, like, okay, can

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I do anything? Can I give you a massage? Can I help you out? Do you need a drink? No, they come in to do harm, perverse things.

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And the loving thing for your wife and for your kids is to end that threat by violence.

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You're not supposed to just roll over and, oh, how can

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I make this easy for them? No, to love my neighbor and even to love that person, stop them.

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Don't do so wickedly. It even echoes back to Sodom and Gomorrah with, no, don't act so wickedly to the angelic guests that Lot had.

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Don't act so wickedly. To prevent people from acting wickedly is loving, even if they seem that as hate and hating what they're doing.

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So, again, sorry,

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I got off a little bit. But with, we are, when we're supposed to love our enemies, there's a difference between enemies of God and personal enemies.

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And so, like, she says, okay, like, if someone strikes you on the cheek, turn on their cheek.

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Okay, that's true. But what does strike mean? Well, if you look into the language of what was going on, it was more as a personal insult, okay?

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You're not going to kill somebody by striking them on the cheek. You wouldn't say, oh, if they stab your wife, give them your daughter.

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That's not what, it's a personal insult to you. They slap your cheek, and with the hands used, thinking back to the time, the context, they didn't have toilet paper.

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They used their hand, and so that was disgusting. It was a personal insult, okay? So they slap you on one side, turn on the other cheek.

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You take that insult, okay? You love them. They revile you, you bless them for personal things.

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When people hate and revile us, we are to bless them. When people strike us and insult, we are to turn the other cheek.

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When God says love, bless, do good to your enemies, this is speaking of your rivals or your personal enemies in life.

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So neighbors, coworkers, classmates, relatives that hate you for your faith, they're persecuting for you.

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There's ways that, no, you are to love them. But maybe to illustrate this, going back to Genesis 3 .15,

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when God says he put enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, he's establishing that we are enemies of Satan.

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So should we love Satan? We're supposed to love our enemies, so I love you,

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Satan. Like, no, we know there's no hope, there's no salvation for Satan. His destiny is laid out, and he's at war with God.

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We know that. We are not entitled to love Satan. So just to put a blanket, oh, love your enemies means anybody that's an enemy at all, we can't ever hate.

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No, we are supposed to hate the works of the devil. We're supposed to hate Satan. We're supposed to hate the devil. And we're supposed to, and it says, between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, we are enemies of Satan and those that do his bidding.

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And so we're supposed to hate the devil. It says, are we supposed to love the world?

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As James said, or be friends of the world, or it's John as well. No, we're supposed to hate the world system, hate the way the world that leads to sin is controlled by Satan.

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Love of the world is enmity with God. So we've been misled into thinking that we must love everyone, no matter what, and in that love.

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So we want, and when it talks about how I hate them with a perfect hatred, we want that hatred to be like the hatred that God has.

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Not an emotional hatred, not somebody left Legos on the floor and I stepped on them, and now

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I hate the person. Like, I'm being driven by something. Like, are Legos evil? No.

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Was that intentional? Maybe. But I'm not to hate someone that did that.

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I need to be in control of my emotions, not them being in control of me. To have perfect hatred, to have righteous hatred, is to be like God.

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And we're supposed to be like Him to the best of our abilities. And yeah, there's going to be sin that can be in there and that taints things.

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But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do it, just because sin can taint it. Sin can taint love. It can taint anything. So, well,

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I might not be able to love perfectly, therefore I shouldn't love. We'd say that's absurd, especially since we're commanded love.

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But the flip side of that is hate. We want to, in the same way, not have a passionate response, and now

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I hate something, but thinking about what is true, what is good, what is beautiful, and things that are trying to destroy that and pervert that, and the smirch that we want to hate those things.

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That's our attitude towards it. And, you know, maybe you're like, well, what about hating the sin and loving the sinner?

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And that's not really found in Scripture. In fact, the opposite is found. So I'm going to turn real quickly to Psalm 5.

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Psalm 5 says, The boastful shall not stand in your sight.

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You hate all workers of iniquity. God doesn't just hate the iniquity.

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He hates the workers of iniquity. And Psalm 11 .5 is another example.

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There's others, but these are two quick ones. Psalm 11 .5, The Lord tests the righteous, but the wicked and the one who loves violence his soul hates.

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He hates his soul, not just his wickedness and his violence, or his love for that. He hates his soul.

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And so we can even look that out like, if God just hates the sin and he loves the sinner, then why doesn't he just send adultery to hell and not the adulterer?

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He sends people to hell, not sins to hell that are not repented and forgiven.

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And so just logically, that doesn't make sense. And so, like I mentioned at the beginning of the section, there's plenty of hate in the world.

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We don't need just any more hate. We're lacking hate. But we want, in our own, we need to have righteous hatred and a little bit that we reserve for those things that are truly detestable.

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When someone comes in to try to harm your family, you hate them. To get rid of them doesn't mean that you just want them to go to hell, but your hate is in level to the threat.

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They're coming with guns. Okay, I'm going to hate you, and I'm probably going to send you to hell. You're going to meet your maker. I'm not doing it, but God's doing it.

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If they're coming, they're trying to pervert your understanding of the gospel.

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I hate them to that degree, and I'm preaching the cross. I'm telling them to get out of here.

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I don't want them to influence my family and jeopardize my children's salvation.

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And so it will be measured response into the level of the wickedness and the necessity and the urgency of that.

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So after all this hatred talk, I hate them with perfect hatred. I count them my enemies.

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We have a conclusion. Verse 23, verse 24, going back, kind of tying into the beginning.

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Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties and see if there's any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

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So like hate is very powerful, and it can be very dangerous.

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So we want to be careful. We want God to examine us. Hey, God, please, I don't want to do this sinfully.

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It's not something to be taken lightly. It's like guns. You don't want guns lying around your house. Oh, guns are good.

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They need to be locked up in a way where they are safe. And so the same way you shouldn't just have hate everywhere, it needs to be measured and reserved for things that God hates.

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So search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties and see if there's any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

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Ultimately, in this, we see how God knows everything about us, his omniscience, his omnipresence, his omnipotence, his involvement in human life from before any humans existed, beginning of creation all the way to the end.

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He knows all our days as all written down. He's involved with everything about us, causes us to worship.

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It causes us in that worship to hate those things that are contrary to God. And in all those things, in all our ways, and even in our worship,

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God, search me, know my heart, try me, test me, and know my anxieties, my worries.

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Remove those from me. Purify those from me. And see if there's any wicked way in me.

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And if there is, if any of those things are sinful, lead me in the way everlasting. And so that should be our heart and our desire that we want to imitate

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God and we want to do it as best as we can without sin.

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So we want God to cleanse that sin from us. So let's pray. Lord God, I thank you for this psalm.

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Thank you for your servant David, our elder brother in the faith, that we have these words of his recorded as a worship song to you.

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And as we sing this song to you, help us to have the same thoughts that David had directed at you.

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Help us in having proper understanding of these things. Help us to glorify you in all your attributes and in your involvement in humanity in general and in our lives.

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Help us to love the things that you love and to hate the things that you hate and that we would be driven by your truth.

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And we thank you. Please remove any sin from us. Take it far away.

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We thank you for your cross. Thank you for dying upon it for our sins. And just help us trust in you and walk in your ways.

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And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right. So we're going to do communion right now.

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I think I appreciate Rick and the message. And you're promised at the end of the

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Bible that guess what? Our God, the same God that David is praying for, that Jesus, says that he's going to come again and there's going to be a sword that's coming from his mouth, his throat will be dipped in blood, and he's going to become a judge for them.

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This is a very serious matter. There's very many of that in the Bible. And if you need an example of perfect Jesus, look no further than the

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Bible. Look no further than Jesus Christ suffering. Look no further than what perfect Jesus that you deserve.

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You deserve full. You tasted it. You satisfied it. And that's what we're celebrating here today with communion.

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You have faith that Jesus Christ, God himself, took the punishment for you and by his punishment.

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You don't have faith in that today. But I invite you to stand with me. Come grab both elements.

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Take them back to your seat. And we're going to take a moment to pray amongst one another before we do this together as a body.

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Please come and partake. If you have faith. Take a moment to pray with one another.