In the previous BLOG I tried to set out that all sin is a form of idolatry and so all sin (of unbelievers) involves in some way a hatred of God. Deuteronomy 5:9 is the second commandment: “‘You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me.” This text appears to connect idolatry with hating God. Deuteronomy 5:21 then gives us the tenth commandment which is “you shall not covet.” In that verse it tells us that we are not to covet our neighbor’s wife (lust is adultery) and we are not to desire (covet in Exodus 20) our neighbor’s house, field, servants, ox, donkey, or anything that belongs to our neighbor. The tenth commandment regulates the desires and cravings of the heart, but it also gets to what idolatry of the heart is too. Ephesians 5:5 tells us that coveting is idolatry and Colossians 3:5 says that greed is idolatry. Idolatry, we must remember, is to hate God and He is a jealous God who hates idolatry.
It is commonly accepted that the second commandment also regulates worship as well. It commands us to worship the true God rather than the idols that people set up and also the idols that people set up in their hearts. This will allow us to look at why God judged the nation of Israel the way He did and then why His judgment is on the United States now. He judged Israel over and over because of their idolatry. The Israelites would go to the idols of other people and offer sacrifices in ways that God did not command them throughout the Old Testament. This, then, would have been seen by God as acts of hatred. All of the idolatry of the Israelites was viewed by God as acts of hatred and so He must punish it.
In the New Testament times we see the Scribes and the Pharisees. The Lord Jesus Christ was harder on them than He was any other group. He was kind to prostitutes and to the tax collectors, yet He spoke in a way that almost seemed harsh to our tender ears today. How is it that He could speak so gently to the sinners and yet so “harshly” to the religious elite? I think it was because of the idolatrous hearts of hatred toward God that the Scribes and the Pharisees had. It is true that the more outward sinners were idolatrous and hated God, but they were not as idolatrous as the Scribes and the Pharisees. The outward sinners disobeyed the outward commands of God and the inward ones as well. The outward sinners were indeed those that were walking idols. However, the Scribes and the Pharisees used religion for their selfish purposes and they had erected many false idols by stamping down what the Bible taught about God. In other words, God hates false religion more than what we think of as gross, outward sin. When people take the true religion and bend it where the character of the true God has been changed in order to allow for religious activities and pride, that is far more hateful to Him than those with the gross, outward sin.
This should be a warning for all today. Liberals indeed try to water a lot about God down in order to have a god like themselves that is warm and cuddly. But conservatives try for a God that is like them in setting up standards of morality that can be kept outwardly. One of the big rages of the day is on all the methods of worship and how to please everybody in that. We must realize that worship is for God and not ourselves. In our pretending to worship God in the ways we like with the music we like we just might be worshipping ourselves rather than God. Our very worship may be acts of hatred against God and will bring His wrath. Our sermons can be acts of self-worship with a focus on the preacher or perhaps just be centered on human beings rather than God. Our evangelism might be done where we are more concerned to get the human being to pray a prayer than to tell them the truth of who God is. In that case our evangelism would be hatred of God and the human since we cannot love another human being apart from a love for God first.
Christianity is not about being nice, it is about the life of the true God in the soul which will come out in true love for God and then for human beings. Christianity has been hijacked by replacing the God-centered core with centeredness on human beings. True love only has one origin and one source and that is God. But we have replaced that with external niceness. It is more important to be polite than it is to love. It is more important to be nice and polite to people than it is to speak the truth about their sin and about the character of God. Professing Christians can adjust the truth to where it is no longer the true God that is being taught and worshipped, but instead it is nothing but idolatry. As the devil appears as an angel of light in order to deceive, so it is possible for a “Christian church” to wrap its self-centered teachings in enough truth to deceive. In that case the truth is being used to spawn hatred of God and the deceived people are walking idols. It is possible to hide a lot of error in the robes of Reformed theology and so people swallow the pills of idolatry to their own destruction. We must beware.
God Loves... Himself 
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