TLP 189: 10 Things All Parents Should Hate, Part 1

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Wait, Christians are supposed to hate things? That doesn't sound right. Well, today we're going to discuss the meaning of Biblical hate and see how

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God Himself can love and hate something at the same time. Welcome to Truth.

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Love. Parent. Where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents.

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Here's your host, AM Brewster. So did today's titles pique your interest? What? Ten things all parents should hate?

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Well, I'm looking forward to this two -part episode. It's going to be really important that we understand our God, His Word, and ourselves, and these episodes desire to do just that.

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But before we jump into today's discussion, let me remind you of a couple of really important things that are coming up. First, on September 17th, 2018, we'll be having our first ever

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TLP meetup in Dallas, Texas. You can go to Facebook right now and click attending. You can also send an email to teamTLP at truthloveparent .com

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to reserve your spot. It'll be a time of challenge, learning, fellowshipping, counsel, prayer, and whatever else we can do to be a blessing to you.

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And if you'd like to have a TLP meetup in your area, you too can contact teamTLP at truthloveparent .com

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or go to the speakers tab of truthloveparent .com. And then on September 25th, 2018, we'll be celebrating our second full year of podcasting.

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And on October 5th, we plan to publish our 200th episode. So this is a really exciting time for us, and we hope that all of this helps us fulfill our mission of equipping parents to the glory of God.

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So I hope you're excited for the future of TLP. I know, obviously I am, because there's really nothing more important any of us can do than to publish the glad tidings of God's eternal

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Word. So with that, let's jump into today's episode. The first thing we need to do is adopt a biblical definition of love and hate.

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In our culture, love and hate are mutually exclusive concepts, and hate is attached to everything bad in this world.

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Hate speech, hate groups, you get the idea. But did you know that there are things Christians should hate?

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It's good to hate. So how do we reconcile this? Well, here's how. Number one, we need to understand the biblical definition of love.

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Now I could do a whole month of episodes on love. Oh wait, I did. And part of that month was dedicated to a seven -part series called the

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Four Family Loves series. It starts in episode 128, and it'll be very important that you understand that God's definition of love is not the world's definition.

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And two, we then also need a biblical definition of hate. Now the closest we've come to that on this show is episode 126, how to rear a hateful kid.

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That may also be a great follow -up to today's show. However, that particular show was how to rear a kid who is sinfully hateful.

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But we need to take a moment before we move on to very quickly and superficially get us all on the same page that there's not this confusion between good hate and bad hate.

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Number one, love and hate are not emotions. Let me say that again. Love and hate are not emotions.

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We've talked a lot about emotions on this show. It's another really important topic, but love and hate do not fit into the category of feelings.

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Two, biblically speaking, love and hate are both choices. So the next logical question is, what choice is being made?

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Three, love is the choice to do what's in God's best interest for the person loved. And four, Christ honoring hate is the choice to set yourself against something or someone.

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Now what exactly does that mean? Let me start by saying that there are at least three different definitions of hatred in the

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Bible. One of the definitions is to detest. In John 7, 7, Jesus says the world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil.

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Another definition is to love less. In Luke 14, 26, Jesus says, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

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The Greek word being used has both of these meanings, but there's also the idea of setting yourself against something, a .k

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.a. to be an enemy of. We see this in Psalm 26, 5, I hate the assembly of evildoers, and I will not sit with the wicked.

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Now, Vine's complete expository dictionary reads this way. This verb appears in Ugaritic, Moabite, Aramaic, and Arabic.

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It appears in all periods of Hebrew and about 145 times in the Bible. It ranges from intense hatred to the much weaker set against and is used of persons and things.

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Later, the same dictionary goes on to say, in a weaker sense, this word signifies being set against something.

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Jethro advised Moses to select men who hated, were set against, covetousness, to be secondary judges over Israel, in Exodus 18, 21.

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A very frequent but special use of the verb means to be unloved. For example, this word may indicate that someone is untrustworthy, therefore an enemy is to be ejected from one's territory.

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This sense is found in an early biblical occurrence in which Isaac said to Abimelech and his army, Wherefore come ye to me, seeing ye hate me, and have sent me away from you?

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Genesis 26, 27. Unquote. Now, I went into that much detail because it's going to be very important to understand my fifth point.

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All right? First, let's review. Love and hate are not emotions. Love and hate are both choices. Number three, love is the choice to do what's in God's best interest for the person loved.

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Four, Christ honoring hate is the choice to set yourself against something or someone. And five, love and hate can perfectly coexist.

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Consider John 3, 16. For God so loved the world. But then consider Proverbs 6, 16 through 19.

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It starts this way. There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to Him.

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He then lists out seven things, and these are the last two. A false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among his brothers.

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Let's put out the middle five for now and read the beginning and the end together. There are six things that the

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Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to Him. A false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.

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How does the Lord both love the false witness and hate him at the same time? How does He hate the one who sows discord among brothers and yet love them so much that He would send

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His Son to die for them? The reality is that the sentence, God hates the sin but loves the sinner, is both correct and incorrect.

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Yes, God hates sin. Yes, God loves sinners. But it's equally biblical to say that God hates the sin and He hates the sinner.

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Or God hates the sin and loves the sinner. They're the same, and here's how. For those of you with rebellious children, this should resonate.

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Let's say your child has turned from God and embraced a horrific lifestyle. You cannot support what they do.

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You can't bankroll it. You can't allow it. You can't even tolerate it. But yet you unconditionally love your children.

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You've set yourself against their lifestyle. You may have even set yourself against them in that you have had to send them from the house or take back family privileges until they submit to God.

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But you still want God's best for them. In fact, setting yourself against them was a huge part of your showing them that you love them.

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Now, in a modern context of emotionally driven definitions and secularly messed up ideas of love and hate, it's really, really easy for everything

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I'm saying to sound foreign and maybe even a little wrong. But stick with me. I believe this will make more sense as we dig into God's Word.

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So here we go. All throughout the Bible, we're told that God hates things. In fact, there are at least 10.

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1. God hates false worship. Jeremiah 44, 4 -5 says,

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I persistently sent to you all my servants and prophets, saying, Oh, do not do this abomination that I hate.

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But they did not listen or incline their ear to turn from their evil and make no offerings to other gods. And as we come to the end of season 7, a season all about God's truth, we're going to discuss worship within the context of the family.

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There's so much more we need to learn about family worship. But God not only hates false worship, 2.

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He hates incorrect worship. Isaiah 1 -14 reads, Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates.

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They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. Amos 5 -21 says, I hate,

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I despise your feasts and take no delight in your solemn assemblies. And Isaiah 61 -8 reads,

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For I the Lord love judgment. I hate robbery for burnt offering. But numbers 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 are all very similar.

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God hates the prideful. He hates liars. He hates murderers. He hates those with wicked intentions. He hates mischief makers, and he hates people who tear down relationships.

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And all of this is found in the passage I referenced earlier, Proverbs 6, 16 -18, where it says,

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There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him, haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.

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Please notice two things. A. Liars are mentioned twice. That's just an important thing to note.

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And B. God uses synecdoche throughout the entire section. Now synecdoche is a form of figurative language that uses a part of the whole to represent the whole.

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In the sentence, The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, the hand is being used to refer to the mother.

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Now look again at this passage. It's the haughty eyes, the lying tongue, the hands that shed innocent blood, the heart that devises wicked plans, and the feet that run to evil.

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And it appears the natural conclusion of the synecdoche is that the last two comments then put them all together to refer to the whole man, a false witness, the whole man who breathes out lies, and one talking about the whole man who sows discord.

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It's not that God only hates the eyes, hands, heart, tongue, and feet. It's that he set himself against the whole man who lives in abomination.

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Okay, so we need to move on. Number nine, God hates divorce. Malachi 2 .16

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reads, Now, I'm sorry to say something that could sound hurtful and leave some of you confused and then rush on, but this is not the time or the place for a fuller discussion on the topic of divorce.

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I do plan to discuss the topic in the future, and I hope it'll be a help, a challenge, and a blessing to you. But moving on, number 10,

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God hates perverted speech. Proverbs 8 .13 says, I hate.

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Okay, so let's recap. Love and hate are not emotions. They're choices that can and should coexist.

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Now, we also saw the specifics of God's hatred. If we kind of boil it all down, we'd say that he hates sin and the people who consistently live in sin.

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But even though God hates sin and those who commit it, he still loves them. When we sin, we set ourselves against God.

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We make ourselves his enemy, even if we're born again. Now, we don't lose our salvation, but we're like soldiers taking potshots at our own side.

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Sin hurts, and we're actively hurting ourselves and others. That's enemy behavior right there. And God, in his holiness, can't side with sin.

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He sets himself against it. But he loves the sinner nonetheless. He wants his best for the sinner.

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He wants them to cease from sin, come back to his side, and embrace righteousness and life. He wants us firing at the right enemy again.

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So, based off of all of this, our next episode is going to answer the question, what am

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I supposed to hate? But we're also going to answer the question, why am I supposed to hate these things?

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And we're going to take a look at how this should work itself out practically in your homes. Now, I know asking you to share this episode may seem strange, but we all need to hear this.

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As ambassadors of God, we all need to be able to understand and walk the seeming tension between love and hate that God does.

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As always, our episode notes are at Taking Back the Family, and I hope they're a help to you as you desire to know God's mind on the subject.

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And I always include all of the references from the episode so you can study them later. You know, sometimes we encounter things in God's word that seem contradictory or impossible, but we must believe that God makes sense and that he will empower us to do what he commands.

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So, to that end, I'll see you next time. Truth. Love. Parents is part of the

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Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you become an intentional premeditated parent.

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Join us next time as we search God's word for the truth your family needs today.