God Loves… Himself

In the last BLOG the idea was that in the professing Church the reality of what love is has been changed. The Bible is reduced to the idea that if we love we are okay. While it is true that love is a core message of the Bible, if the very idea of love has been changed or distorted that would cause a massive misunderstanding about God and about Christianity itself. If someone has imported the world’s idea of love into the professing Church today, then the professing Church is in pursuit of the world and its ideas while it thinks it is pursuing God. Simply put, in former BLOGS pains were taken to demonstrate that all human beings are divided into two types. There are those that hate God and then there are those that love God. If those that hate God have changed the definition or idea of what love is and have brought it into the professing Church, we can see the kinds of problems that would result. The God who is love within the Trinity would no longer be the same and that by which all things are to be done in the Church would also have changed. A massive deception would have occurred and many souls would be deceived.

1 Corinthians 13:1 – If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. 4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

A great mistake is often made concerning this text. It is thought that if the things listed above (like patience and kindness) are being done then that demonstrates that love is being shown. So people will give themselves to feeding the poor (good thing ) and other social works and think that they have love. People will take on an outward form of niceness and kindness and convince themselves that they have love. But what is missing here is the biblical idea of love. This text gives us the qualities of biblical love, but we must not assume that if we have forms of these things that we must have biblical love. These things themselves must come from biblical love or they are not love at all. True patience pleasing to God can only be produced by true love.

Patience is said to be a virtue so people decide that they want it quickly. It is easier to develop a form of patience through the practice of self-love and the desire to be honored for patience than it is to die to self-love by the mercy of God. Human beings are full of self and self-love in all they do until they are converted and filled with the love of God. Self-love is really the idolizing of self and having self as the focus of all that is done, even in the “service” of others, so in reality self-love is a form of hatred for God. If I do what I do from self-love then it is not love for God that is moving me. Just because I have what I think is love does not mean that it is a love for God. I can do what I do out of love for the world and all that I do is from love, but a love for the world is hatred for God (James 4:4; I John 2:15-16). If I am a worldly person and do all from self-love, then I am an enemy of God. If I practice patience from self-love, then my patience is an act that is at enmity with God as well. If I do acts of kindness that is from the love of self, then my kindness is actually acts of enmity against God. If I think that by being nice I have love, then my niceness is at enmity with God. If even our love is actually hatred for God, then all we do out of “love” is hatred for God. No matter how nice and “loving” a man may be to a woman that is not his wife, his wife may take that as enmity toward her. God commands all of our love and so our self-love is enmity toward Him.

Christianity is not about making the self better by making it more patient and kind, it is about human beings dying to self so that the love of God will dwell in them. The human being is to be an instrument of God rather than an instrument of self. When what is called “Christian” is nothing more than efforts to strengthen self and to enable people to help themselves, it has become a religion of self rather than a religion of the glory of God shining in and through Christ. The Gospel does not take us and make us better; it comes to us and kills self so that the life we live would be the life of Christ. The human soul was never made to function and operate by self-love. That is the innovation and deception of the devil. The human soul was not made to become better and better by more and more actions, but to die to self and become more and more under the control of the indwelling God who is love. The unregenerate human soul has no capacity for true love and so lives by self love apart from the God who is love. We have replaced that which God alone can do by human efforts. That is nothing but hatred for God.

If we look at what the Bible says about love, we can see fairly quickly that it is far different than what the world says is love. When the world’s thought of love is passed off in the professing Church as love, then we have true hate being passed off as love. People will be deceived into thinking that their hate of God is true love. Whole professing churches will be deceived into thinking that they are Christians because of what they think of as love when in fact they hate God. This is one of the most deceptive things that is happening within the professing Church in our day. What is truly hate for God is being passed off as love for God. This is a deception of monstrous implications that has tentacles in all things that relate to Christianity.

1 Corinthians 13:1 – If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. 4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

This is said by many that this is at the heart of Christianity. It is very true that nothing we can possibly do is pleasing to God without love. We can have the best of grammar and have the best possible word choices or have the greatest gift of public speaking possible, yet without love we are nothing more than a noisy gong. We can have all sorts of gifts in terms of preaching or foretelling or be the most knowledgeable person alive, yet without love we are nothing. We may think that the gift of faith is a great thing, yet without love it is nothing. Faith is nothing without biblical love. We may think that we are wonderful people, give so much to the poor, and do things that cost us a lot, but without true love it is nothing. We may think that we are making great bodily sacrifice, yet without true love it is nothing. We may think that we are patient, kind, without jealousy, humble, and certainly not seekers of self, but without love those things are absolutely of no benefit.

But let us switch this around and look at it from a different point of view. If our idea of love is not that which Scripture teaches, then all that we do is actually hatred of God. If we are wrong on what love truly is and we don’t have true love, then all we do (even our religious and social actions) is hatred for God. The Greatest Commandment is to love God with all of our being. If we are without love for God, we hate Him and are in violation of the Greatest Commandment each moment of our existence. The Bible teaches us that we will give an account for each careless word (Mat 12:36). If each careless word will be brought into judgment, then what of our religious discussions and taking the name of God on our lips? Could it be that every word we use that is not out of love for God is a careless use of language and in fact a vain or empty use of the things of God? The third commandment tells us that we should not take the name of the Lord our God in vain (empty, meaningless use). But when we are made in the image of God, all that we do is a use of His name. All of our language if not from a love for God would actually be a hatred for God since our words are from our souls made in the image of God. We cannot escape the Greatest Command so easily. It penetrates to all of the commands and all we do.

Imagine what would happen if someone changed the “language” of a computer. What you thought you “commanded” it to do it would do the opposite. It would result in a lot of anger toward the computer screen which images forth what happens in the computer. It would create utter chaos in the computer and all it did. Now imagine that a human being is commanded to love God in all it does. Satan came in and changed the “programming” of the soul so that the very definition of love and of God is now distorted and changed. That leads to proud human beings thinking that they know God and love God when in fact they have idols in their minds and hearts and hate Him in reality. All the religious things they do, even when they think they are coming from the Bible, are actually hatred for the true and living God. People can read I Corinthians 13 and feel quite good about themselves and their own works. Yet because they don’t understand what true love is they actually hate God in all they do. This is perhaps a very accurate description of what is going on in the professing Church today. Much of its learning and its working in the name of religion is done from a “love” that has been distorted and so is really hate for God.

What is it that really distinguishes men from each other in the eyes of God? What is it that marks one person out from another in the spiritual realm and distinguishes true religion from what is false? Love for God is the mark of true religion and what really distinguishes people. That is because love for God is the sign that a person has had the old nature of hate for God taken away and now God lives in that person. The true believer will hear new teachings about God and will not hate them, but the religious and the unreligious unbeliever will hear of a new teaching about God and will hate it. It may be presented as an intellectual disagreement or of some reason, but down deep the person hates it. Romans 8:7 shows this: “because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so.” Romans 1:28 does too: “And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents.” Even though the person may be very religious, there is a refusal to keep the true God in the knowledge so the truth of God is cast out because the mind is hostile to the true God and does not want to recognize the true God.

We must realize that there are very religious people who attend church every time the door is open who hate God. People who are very knowledgeable of the Bible and perhaps of theology are leaders in the churches and yet hate God. There are professors at Bible colleges and seminaries that have vast amounts of information about the Bible and theology and yet hate God. The Pharisees were very religious and professed a great commitment to God and yet hated the truth of God when He shone forth in Jesus Christ. “He who hates Me hates My Father also” (John 15:23). It is possible for people to pursue knowledge of the Bible and theology out of hatred for God rather than out of love for Him. One can pursue those things out of love for self which is to be at enmity with God. It has been said that the devil knows more about the Bible and theology than any human and yet it fuels his hatred for God. The Holy Spirit must work love for God in the hearts of people. While the Spirit works through Scripture, He does not work because of a person’s knowledge of Scripture. The Spirit works by grace alone.

The modern world jeers and mocks at the idea that Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation and to the Father. Many under the umbrella of Christianity (in name) are as worldly as the world. It seems as if the only difference between the world and many in the professing Church is that some think God is there to make them rich and to give them worldly things as long as they are good and say the right things. Yet James tells us in his letter to churches that if one that is a friend of the world that shows the person to be an enemy of God (4:4). Matthew tells us that we cannot serve God and wealth at the same time (6:24), yet many think that in the service of God He will give them a lot of wealth. So they say they are serving God and get wealth. They are blind to the fact that they serve God in name only and do this in order to obtain wealth. This is also hatred for God.

It is a shocking thing to think but it is necessary in our day. Many make professions and attend a local congregation for a while, but then they fall away and go back to a good life or the world. They say that they just don’t need church. They might blame things or people for their dropping out, but it might be that they hate God. It might also be that they love God and cannot stand to see His name dishonored. The practices and thinking of the world has become part of “doing church” and yet those things are just thought of as innovative. It is a terribly deceitful thing when the hatred of God is brought into the church and then passed off as being love for God. One of the most dangerous places to be in America is to be in a professing Church when that “church” has swallowed the world and is dispensing it in the name of God. That is hatred for God being passed off as love for God.

The real distinction between people in professing churches is not if they are Reformed or Arminian and is not in the kind of music people listen to or the clothes they wear. The real distinction is between those that love God and those that hate Him. Psalm 81:15 tells us that “those who hate the LORD would pretend obedience to Him.” If churches are going to repent of sin and seek the Lord in truth and love, then there must be a real examination of hearts to see if the love of God is truly there. Many wonder why there is such a thing as dead orthodoxy. Others wonder why some churches are so dead and lifeless. One major reason could simply be that there are a few to many people in those congregations that hate God in reality. It might even be the most kind and sensitive person in the congregation. It might be the one that is the hardest worker on the outside. Both of those kinds of people can pretend obedience as well and all they do may be an effort to hide their hearts from themselves. We must begin to look for biblical love (not as the world defines it) for God in the “churches.”

The thought that much of the modern version of Christianity may actually be a reflection of the hatred of the heart for God is not pleasant, but it does explain many things. Not only has most (seems as if virtually all) seem to have left the biblical truth of a high and sovereign God, but there also seems to be a mad dash to deny that Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation. The denial of that, by the way, is an utter rejection of the Gospel of God and of Jesus Christ. It is okay at times to offer general prayers to a general deity at sporting and political events, but there is outrage when the Lord Jesus Christ is prayed through and to. It is thought to be arrogant when Jesus Christ is taught as the only way. It is thought to be repugnant to think that Jesus actually died for the sins of others and God is accused of cosmic child abuse if in fact He sent Jesus to die on the cross. Why are these things so?

John 15:23 “He who hates Me hates My Father also. 24 “If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated Me and My Father as well.

The text above explains why there is a wholesale attack on the exclusivity of Jesus Christ. It is because men and women hate God. The meek (modern thought of it) and mild Jesus that never utters a harsh word and gives us good moral teachings is not a threat, but the living God who manifests His glory in Jesus Christ is. When people see the glory of God in Christ, they respond with hatred because they hate both the Father and the Son. Religious leaders in the days of His early sojourn hated Jesus because He pointed to God and not them. He was the truth and He spoke the truth. The religious leaders of that day hated Him because they saw a true holiness and love and their positions of power and very religion itself were threatened. The same is true today in many ways.

If Jesus Christ is preached as He really is, then people would see a glimpse of His true glory and many would hate Him. We have people today wanting the teaching watered down, they say, in order to make it more understandable. That may be true in many cases, but in a lot of cases it is just the fact that people don’t like what they hear. If they hear the truth of God, they hate it and the revulsion they feel for it is transferred to the minister or someone else so that they won’t have to deal with their own hearts. So ministers, in order to keep their jobs, try to keep the peace and unity of a place by speaking soothing words. The Gospel is turned into a message of how much God loves people and desires to have a love relationship with them both now and for eternity. All that does is speak to and move the latent self-love of the heart. God is in a relationship with every human being on the planet. It is one of wrath or one of love through His Son. Fallen human beings desire and long to hear of God’s love for them apart from Jesus Christ, but the truth of Christ tells us that God only loves human being on behalf of the Son. Human beings must know that they are under the wrath of God and that they hate Him in order that they may be reconciled to Him. They must see the depths of the sin of their hearts in order that they may truly repent.

The truth of Jesus Christ is not in demand today because the human heart hates Him and His Father. When Jesus Christ walked on this planet He was hated more than anyone in history and He was the very truth, love and grace of God incarnate and the very shining forth of the glory of God. But He was hated and rejected in order that a true criminal could go free and then was sent to the cross to be shamed and executed. He was hated because He was truth and love. He was hated because of the Father and the Father was hated too. One could make the charge that the ecumenical movement today gets its real impetus from the hatred of the human heart toward God. The ecumenical movement is known for its outright denial of Christ as the only way and for trying to take off the rough edges of the truth about God. That movement is nothing but people getting together and expressing their disdain and disgust (hatred somewhat in disguise) for who God is in Christ.

When Jesus did miracles the self-love of people were moved at the thought of free food and healing, but others hated Him because those miracles revealed the truth of who He was. It is one thing to receive free food, but it is quite another to have that one make absolute demands upon you and claim to be the only real bread of life. It is one thing to be healed, but it is quite another for that one to reveal that all of your own righteousness is a mass of sores in need of the great Physician. As long as Jesus gave people what they wanted, they would flock around Him. But when He told them the truth, they would leave. Their hearts hated His teaching and Him. The same is true today. Give people free things and they come. Proclaim the truth of Christ and people will hate Him and the Father. The truth is, however, we need to see our hearts in order that we can seek Him who alone can change them.

It is true that this series on hating God might be chilling to the bone, but our revulsion of it does not reflect against the truth of it. In fact, revulsion of it might just show that we hate God in truth. Romans 8:7 tells us that “the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so.” Even if the mind sees the truth that it hates God, it will not want to subject itself to that truth. A person may hate the fact that s/he hates God, but the fact remains that the hatred for God is still there. Many people try to deal with their own hearts and tell themselves that they do not hate God. In order to convince themselves that they do not hate Him they will either change their behavior or change something about God. Since people love themselves so much, it is easy to project a God that will love such a loveable person as themselves. But once that move is taken, God is no longer God who loves on the basis of grace. If a person lives in love for the god of his or her own imagination and it is a love based on the thought that God loves him or her, that is loving a god on a false basis and is most likely hiding a heart that hates the true God.

Luke 6:32-34 teaches us the basic heart of the sinner. Sinners love those who love themselves. “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 “If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 “If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount.” Sinners do for others in order to get something back for themselves. The only love that they really have is for self and when another does something that benefits self the sinner will respond in ways that reflect self-love. So when a sinner is evangelized and is told that God loves him or her, that is nothing that is surprising to the sinner. It also does nothing to show the sinner his or her heart of hatred which must be repented of. What it does, however, is delude many people because when they hear that God loves them and desires wonderful things for them (which they interpret as they please) they react as a sinner does. Sinners love those who love them and so they think they are converted because they have made some form of commitment to the god they think they love. It is a very strong delusion. The Greatest Commandment is to love God and now these people think they do love Him. In fact, however, all they are doing is continuing on in their sin by loving themselves and a distortion of God.

These poor deluded people are then admitted into a “church” and set about serving the god they think they love. In fact they do nothing but continue on in their self-love and delusion. Some will attend a liberal “church” and others will go to more conservative ones. Why do they do that? It is because they can be around the kind of people that they love (which is really self-love). They can get involved in “Christian” activities and make themselves think that they love God. The “fellowship” that these people have is really based on modern ideas of being polite and kind rather than a true fellowship of the Spirit. They might talk a lot about what it means to be loved by God, but the conversations are generally governed by things about life and of what is of general interest to people. Some people prefer Arminian thinking and so they like to hang around those like that. Others like the intellectual challenge of Reformed thinking and so they hang around those. Those who are into social and moral issues like to find congregations that stress those. But all of those things can be nothing but the exercises of loving those who love self. When a religion has degenerated to loving those who love me and attending a “church” on that basis, you can know that God has turned a nation and a professing Church over to self and He has abandoned it.

These kinds of “churches” can be Reformed and can be very conservative. But they all have a God that loves them and what they do. The hearts that hate God are not changed, but instead religion and an idol have been conformed to the self-love of those that attend. The sermons, though indeed thoroughly orthodox, may dull hearts and leave people in their self-love. The thoughts of God may be all about a God of love. After all, that is what we want to hear more than anything else. We want to hear about a God that loves us. Why do we want to hear that? It is because we want to be comfortable in our self-love and of a god that loves us like we are. Hearing about a god that loves us and makes much of us allows us to hide the hate for the true God in our hearts from ourselves. When the fellowship of these “churches” is not biblical fellowship but religious fellowship built on the model of self-love, that is a fellowship of the devil in a “church” rather than of God. The devil loves himself and does not care if people are very religious as long as they remain focused on self. Hatred for God keeps the devil busy in trying to keep people from a real love for God. He does not want people to see the hatred they have for God in their hearts and so he works at deception. The professing Church of today has fallen for self-love out of self-love and has twisted the truth of God so as to feel loved. It is nothing more and nothing less than the work of the devil.

While hating God is not a popular subject and will most likely never be a book that is high on the list for bestsellers, it is a widespread practice. If it were a disease, it is epidemic. All people are born dead in sins and are at enmity with God. All people are born with hearts that do not desire the truth of God and do not want to retain the knowledge of God (Romans 1:18-32). All hearts are more deceitful than all else (Jeremiah 17:9). The result is a lot of action by religious people that want to retain something of their history or a sense of self-righteousness. It sure appears to be the case that many people celebrate and practice their self-love in religion by doing all with a focus on themselves and creating a God in their own image who is focused on them as well. The whole of their religion is nothing more than a shining out of their own self-love and self-focus. They have made a god in their own image and it is that god that they worship which is really the worship of self. They imagine that the god they have dreamed up is the true god and that their god is focused on them and loves them beyond all that they can imagine.

The human heart is irresistibly religious. It simply cannot get away from the nagging idea of God, but it will distort that idea as much as it can in order to live as it pleases. What is interesting to note is that the vast majority of verses in Scripture about hating God are directed to the Jews as a religious people or toward a church. For example, the passage in James 4:4 is to a group of churches (James 1:1). John wrote I John to people to help them distinguish between the saved and the non-saved. He warned them that a love for the world meant that the love of the Father was not in them (I John 2:14-15). Though John did not say it at that point, yet in 4:7-8 he is clear that the one that does not love God does not know God. A person that does not love God hates God. This sounds brutal, but Jesus taught the religious people around Him that they could only have one true master at a time. If they tried to have two they would love the one and hate the other (Mat 6:24). Do we see people in the churches loving pleasure? Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 3:4 that these are “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” Those who love pleasure are following after the master of self and hate God in reality.

If we face the Bible as God’s Word and without flinching, we will see that it teaches some very uncomfortable things. One is that there are only two kinds of people in the world. There are believers and unbelievers, but believers are those who love God and unbelievers are those that hate God. The population of planet earth is not primarily divided among political beliefs or any other beliefs as such. It is divided among those who love God and those who hate God. The real divide shows us what is really going on. In the United States there are real divisions among Republicans and Democrats, and then those of other parties as well. But those parties will come together at times over certain issues. But the real battle is between those that really love God and those that really hate Him. All other divides come as a result of self-love rather than the love of God.

Another truth that we have to face without flinching is that those that are members of differing religions and denominations are also made up by the same kinds of people. All religions in the world are made up of those that love God and those that hate Him. In fact, it certainly appears that the vast majority of religions are made up with a vast majority of people that hate God. The Bible teaches that there is only one kind of person that loves God and that is the one that has been born of God and knows Him (I John 4:7-8). If we continue to face this without flinching, we can then look at what happened in the book of Revelation and the churches addressed there in chapters 2-3. If we now turn our gaze back to the modern day we can see that true Christianity is certainly hard to find in both Europe and America. What has happened to those places where the great revivals used to be? What has happened to the places where the great confessions of the faith were written?

True religion cannot be transferred by human beings to other human beings because the love of God can only come from God Himself. True Christianity can only be obtained from God. Perhaps true Christianity was diluted when men tried to teach it rather than point to God Himself. Perhaps true Christianity was diluted when it became either a doctrine to learn or a moral life to live. Whatever the case, however, the buildings of the churches are now inhabited by people that hate God in truth while they claim to love Him with their lips. It is as if the modern professing Church has become a synagogue of Satan in which the hatred of God dwells. People want to have their ears tickled because they don’t want to hear the truth about themselves or of God. They don’t want to hear the truth about themselves because they hate God and love themselves. We must begin to understand the gravity of what is really going on and wake up. Hatred for God under the guise of love (worldly love) reigns in religion today. This should change how people view church and how churches view the people. It is very deadly to true Christianity.

In the last post the attempt was made to show that much religious activity can be nothing but hating God. The text used was Isaiah 1:10-15. This text must not be dismissed because it is an Old Testament text dealing with many laws that have been fulfilled by Christ. All of those laws pointed to Christ and deal with the hearts of sinful human beings as well. When we look at the nature of true religion or Christianity, we will see that what was lacking then is also lacking now. The Greatest Commandment is to love God with all of our being. I Corinthians 13 sets out how there is nothing we can do to please God if we do not have love. I might add that this must be true love as well. “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing” (I Corinthians 13:1-3).

Isaiah 1:10 – Hear the word of the LORD, You rulers of Sodom; Give ear to the instruction of our God, You people of Gomorrah. 11 “What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me?” Says the LORD. “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams And the fat of fed cattle; And I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs or goats. 12 “When you come to appear before Me, Who requires of you this trampling of My courts? 13 “Bring your worthless offerings no longer, Incense is an abomination to Me. New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies– I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. 14 “I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, They have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them. 15 “So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood.

When we see this passage and compare it with the Greatest Commandment and I Corinthians 13, we see how God would be so angry at the wicked religions acts (though commanded) of the Jews. Later in Isaiah the commanded actions that were carried out were compared to various hideous sins: “But he who kills an ox is like one who slays a man; He who sacrifices a lamb is like the one who breaks a dog’s neck; He who offers a grain offering is like one who offers swine’s blood; He who burns incense is like the one who blesses an idol. As they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations” (Isaiah 66:3). The Jews trusted in their religious actions rather than God Himself. They trusted in the performance of the action rather than looking to see if their hearts loved God. The Greatest Commandment was true in the Old Testament as well. Their special religious actions could not be endured by God. Their prayers were not listened to and God hid His eyes from them. Yet they continued on with their religious actions thinking that God was pleased.

The religious actions of the Jewish people were actually used to harden their hearts. They lived as they wanted to live and gave God what they thought He wanted. They treated Him as if He were nothing more than the gods of the heathens who needed to be appeased in order to get something good or perhaps to be protected. They lived in love for themselves and instead of loving God; they actually hated Him in carrying out His external commands. But let us not think that we are any different. The Greatest Commandment and I Corinthians 13 still stand in our day. If we are going to worship God as He commands, it must be done in truth and from the spirit. There is no worship of God apart from that which is done in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). There can be a lot of high octane music that get people fired up and their feelings flowing at high levels of energy, but the priests of Baal had their feelings at a high level too. There can be a lot of what people call sacrifice in terms of time and money, but the Israelites did that too. There can be a vast amount of time devoted to prayer, but the Pharisees did that. What of those who have hardly any prayer at all? There can be vast amount of time and money given to build buildings, but many heretics throughout history have done that. There can be long sermons given, but heretics and false religions do that.

There is nothing that we can do in our day apart from love for God that is anything but hatred of God. If even our very best religious actions are as filthy rags before Him, then we can claim nothing for them. We either love God or we hate Him. Imagine how awful it would be to lift up our eyes in hell and discover that all of our preaching, our prayers, our Bible study, and all that we have done in the name of Christ was actually only lawless deeds done out of love for self rather than love for God. Imagine the truth of what God thinks of us if we do not love Him now. Our prayers would be an abomination to Him and our worship would really be action sacrificed to idols because it is not out of love for Him. I fear for many today it is no longer “would be,” but in fact is. We must seek Him.

In this series of BLOGS on hating God we have moved from the fact that there are only two kinds of people. There are those that hate God and those that love God. There are many differing degrees within the two camps, yet the Bible knows of no other distinction. There are many that hate God that are very religious and outwardly pious, yet their very religious activities are acts of hatred against God. As we think through the history of Israel, what we see is that the religious actions of the Israelites were hated by God and were in fact nothing more than outward signs of submission to Him, but in reality were nothing more than an effort to get away with sinful activities. This is simply to say that the Israelites were given over to sin (acts of hatred toward God) and then they tried to use religion to cover over their sin or perhaps get away with it. Their religion, therefore, were acts of hatred toward God. Listen to the words of Isaiah the prophet to Judah.

Isaiah 1:10 – “Hear the word of the LORD, You rulers of Sodom; Give ear to the instruction of our God, You people of Gomorrah. 11 “What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me?” Says the LORD. “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams And the fat of fed cattle; And I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs or goats. 12 “When you come to appear before Me, Who requires of you this trampling of my courts? 13 “Bring your worthless offerings no longer, Incense is an abomination to Me. New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies– I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. 14 “I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, They have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them. 15 “So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood.

God Himself spoke to the people of Judah and referred to them and their religious acts as comparable to the sins of the rulers of Sodom and the people of Gomorrah. This is a devastating passage of Holy Scripture. The professing Church of today needs to be very careful of how it condemns homosexuality because of its own sins. When Jesus taught us to “judge not” (Mat 7:1ff), the reason that He gives is because we will be judged in some degree as to how we have judged others. So if God looks upon a religious people and thinks of them as He did Sodom and Gomorrah, we need to be careful to judge by Scripture and nothing else. This is not to say that homosexuality is not sin and that it should not be condemned, but simply to say that the sin of a people that take up the name of religion without a real heart toward God is a sin of spiritual adultery and harlotry against God. It is also against nature since it is against the God of nature. We need to beware of self-righteousness in this as in all things.

What were the sacrifices of the Jewish people to God? Did He need them? Did they do Him any good at all? Why did they do them? Well, let us ask ourselves about our own religious “sacrifices.” Does God need them? Do they do Him any good at all? Why do we do them? Could it be that the downward slide of the nation and the professing Church is a sign that God is saying to us that He has had enough of our so-called sacrifices? Has God had enough of our moral fights and instead desires us to stand forth for the truth of the Gospel? Could it be that God is looking upon the professing Church in our day and thinking of it as He did of Sodom and Gomorrah and of Judah? The text is speaking of God’s attitude toward Judah and her religious services and duties. It certainly appears that they kept the outward actions going, but God says very clearly in the text that He hated them and that they had become a burden to Him.

Let us look at the other side of this passage. What kinds of hearts were involved in a so-called worship like the ones described in Isaiah? These people brought the animals that were required to be sacrificed. They brought the rams and the cattle, but God was not pleased at all. He even calls them “worthless offerings” in the text. Their incense was more than just not acceptable, it was an abomination. God could not endure their Sabbaths and even calling of solemn assemblies. He even hated their appointed feasts. But notice that all of these things were commanded by God. The hearts that were involved in these things had no true love for God. The hearts that went through the commanded things were hearts that hated God in reality and only did what they did in order to obtain something from God. It might even be that their deceitful hearts had twisted things so that they thought they were serving the true God, but the words that God gives us inform us that the hearts that went to all of the trouble and expense of these rituals actually hated Him. What if God hated our sacrifices? What if God thought our prayers were abominations? What if His eyes were hidden from our prayers? What if all the professing Church did was really out of hatred for God? What would our nation look like? Perhaps pretty much like it looks now.