Proverbs 8:13 All who fear the LORD will hate evil. Therefore, I hate pride and arrogance, corruption and perverse speech.
Jesus said, John 15:25b They hated me for no reason.
Genesis 3:12 The man replied, “The woman you gave to be with me — she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate.” What Adam said with aggressive blame in his tone of voice was, “None of this is my fault, GOD! The woman YOU gave me made me eat the fruit that I did not want any part of. This is YOUR fault and YOUR mess to clean up! I am innocent of all wrongdoing!” And the Lord’s love went to work right away to clean up the mess that the deceived heart of man had caused from the beginning. God judged the original liar who sowed the biggest lie of all when the serpent said, “You will not surely die if you eat of the fruit from this tree.” With this deception, Satan had accused God of being a liar. Adam and Eve believed the lie and became subject to death the moment they had eaten. God’s redemptive plan started immediately. Gen. 3:15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.
We are still accusing God of all kinds of things that are our fault and caused by our stupidity. “Why God did YOU let this happen to ME?” is a common sentence that flows so easily from our mouths and our hearts. The mouth speaks what the heart contains. Luke 6:45b For of the abundance of his heart his mouth speaketh. I think the devil does his best work with the lie that causes people to question and mistrust the integrity of God. Once Satan has a person wondering about God’s love, to be true or false, it becomes a slippery slope as they reject anything God says, and everything God does for them becomes questionable to their deceived heart. Mal. 1:2a “I have always loved you,” says the LORD. But you retort, “Really? How have you loved us?”
When we think about the arrogance that humankind has become so talented at expressing, it makes us wonder how the Lord can keep loving us, and yet, He does. Mankind has learned how to justify every imaginable evil there is, and in most cases, God gets blamed for it. I know someone who is on government assistance because he chooses not to work but complains continually about how hard his life is and how bad he is treated. “Why does God let this happen to me?” he says in a way to disguise his laziness. Why doesn’t he just go spit in God’s face and accuse Him of not being Jehovah-Jireh? Either God is who He says He is, or God is the liar you believe Him to be. If you are at that stage of existence then your troubles are about to increase with great intensity.
When we live our lives where we no longer trust God, we end up becoming reckless in our actions and end up blaming everything that unjustly happens to us on someone or something else. We become like the people who are described in the book of Malichi whom God is trying to reason with. These people had gone their own way and questioned everything God said. The Lord patiently explains His love for them and the good that awaited them if they chose God’s leading. But the retorts from the people were arrogant backtalk. Mal. 1:11 My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to me, because my name will be great among the nations,” says the LORD Almighty. 12 But you are profaning it when you say: ‘The Lord’s table is defiled, and its product, its food, is contemptible.’ Really, the Lord’s table that is prepared before us and set in the presence of our enemies, is defiled and contemptible? How foolish they had become.
The Lord’s remedy for overcoming the infectious lie Satan sows so freely amongst the people of this earth is to hate evil and to grow in the wisdom and love of God by accepting His gift of salvation through Christ for our eternal souls. Prov. 9:10 Fear of the LORD is the foundation of wisdom. Knowledge of the Holy One results in good judgment. The Lord says if you are going to hate anything, then hate what causes us to blame God and each other for our sins. God says to hate pride, arrogance, corruption, and the perverseness of thought. Prov. 8:13 All who fear the LORD will hate evil. Therefore, I hate pride and arrogance, corruption and perverse speech. This is a good place for us to start taking responsibility for our choices. The reverence of the Lord and hating what God hates will help us remain in honest fellowship with our God.
God invites us to come and reason with Him regardless of the sinful state we are in. Isa. 1:18 Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. Reasoning implies an intelligent exchange of thoughts and ideas. Even though our All-Mighty God is inviting us to reason with Him in love, it would be wise on our behalf to do more listening than talking. God is our saviour. Our salvation is not gained by anything we do to impress Him. The Lord is our deliverer and redeemer. Our Heavenly Father is the healer of our fallen condition because we do not have the answers for our healing, otherwise, we would have done it by now. No Saints! Jesus is Lord, and we are, in eternal need of His gift of salvation. Get out of God’s face and stop accusing Him for your problems and start praising Him for solving them. Amen and amen!
Good word Norm
1 John 1:9. …. Is the big IF
Proverbs 24:30-34 … the poor steward, the lazy man refuses to take personal responsibility for his life and his choices.
Good word 🙂