The God Who Loves And Hates (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

Introduction

This morning’s sermon will be different. We are pausing our series in Nehemiah today, because I am convinced that we are in an important moment, and there are some hard things that we have to talk about.

If you are a visitor this morning, I am sorry. Come back next week for our regular menu.

But I believe no sermon I have ever preached is as vulnerable to misunderstanding as this one. Either in its content or its intent.

So I will do my best to serve you as your Pastor, with some thoughts and reflections that I offer up with all the humility and earnestness I have.

Christians are a people who have always been known for their love. Their love for children, and for babies, born and pre-born. Their love for each other. Their love for the poor. For the widows and widowers. Above all their love for the Lord.

And the love of God is everywhere put on display in the Bible. But that is not all that is on display. If we pay attention to the whole counsel of God, as we must, we come face to face with God’s wrath against sin. And God’s deep hatred of sin and wickedness.

The point of the sermon this morning is that God is often bigger than the slogans that we build for him. We like to build slogans and cliches and put them on t-shirts and coffee mugs. And they might be profound and they might be sentimental. But they often don’t tell the whole story.

And I want to address some of those slogans this morning, because it is my experience that too often, our slogans and our sentimentality guides our theology more than the Bible.

The things we get use to saying, the cliches we get used to throwing around–these are the things that often guide and shape our theology more than anything else.

And so, with all these things in mind, I would invite you to turn to Ecclesiastes 3:1-8.

Ecclesiastes 3:1–8 ESV

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God!

As I said, the sermon will be a bit different this morning—topical in nature, which is rare for me. But I want to talk to you today about an often neglected topic and that is the use of “hatred language” in the Bible, coming not from sinners, but from God Himself.

And there are at least three things I want to talk about:

First is God’s Exercise of Holy Hatred

Second is Our Exercise of Holy Hatred

Third is How We Live Today

Let’s Pray.

Lord indeed your word tells us that there is a time for everything. So this calls us to wisdom and discernment, to know what kind of time we live in, and to serve you faithfully and joyfully in it. Lord, let the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts today be pleasing in your sight, and please, our Father, fit us for the time in which we live.

In Jesus’s Name, Amen.

I. God’s Exercise of Holy Hatred

There are scriptures–we will get to them in a moment–that talk about God’s hatred for sin and for sinners. Now, when Scripture says God hates, let’s talk about what this doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean He has lost His temper. God’s hatred is not fallen man’s hatred, which is usually an outburst of uncontrolled emotion, or vengeful bitterness. This is not how our Lord acts. When we see passages of Scripture that talk about God hating, we must be mindful that

God’s hatred is the holy recoil of perfect righteousness against all that is evil.

And the hard fact is it must be this way. It must. Because the God who loves righteousness must also hate wickedness, or else His love is little more than sentimental nonsense.

Now, I know what many of you are thinking. You are thinking “Well sure, Pastor Bryan. God hates sin. But he loves the sinner. Right? He hates the sin and loves the sinner.

And in a real sense, the answer is yes. I want to start by giving that an unqualified yes.

And now I’m going to qualify it.

We are often tempted to let our sentimentality guide our theology, rather than talking how the Bible talks. Because “Love the sinner, hate the sin” while that is true to a real extent, is not found anywhere in Scripture.

The Bible says things like

Psalm 11:5 ESV

The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.

You see here, the Psalmist in his song is not rushing to qualify this. He says God, deep in His soul, hates the wicked and the one who loves violence. Not just the wicked man’s sins or the wicked man’s wickedness. But actually, the wicked man.

Romans 9:13 ESV

As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

One of the most talked about passages in the Bible, precisely because it’s so hard to hear. In a real sense, it is true that God has a pervasive love for all the image-bearers in the world, and it is also true that he has a holy, sinless hatred against those who despise him.

Proverbs 6:16–19 ESV

There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and 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.

Please notice again that the hatred of God here is not directed only to acts of sin, but also to the sinners who sin them. Not just lying, but liars too. Not just discord, but the one who sows discord.

And finally, these words from Psalm 5 that we sang together a few weeks ago, that I bet some of you tripped over a bit when we sang them

Psalm 5:5–6 ESV

The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.

Now, this seems to me a good time to remind you of our mission statement. We exist to worship the Triune God and to proclaim all God’s Words to all people for the whole of life.

These texts would be included in all God’s Words. And what’s missing from them is exactly that kind of “loves the sinner but hates the sin” distinction that we are looking for, right?

So let’s talk about it. Once again, let’s return to our definition:

God’s hatred is the holy recoil of perfect righteousness against all that is evil.

It’s a holy recoil. And it is a settled opposition against that which destroys what he loves.

This settled opposition is present in all the texts that I just showed you. But how do we reconcile that with the far greater number of texts about God’s love for the sinner?

Well, I would suggest that we don’t reconcile them, because they are already friends. God loves with a love that we cannot fathom. And God hates sin, and he has a holy hatred against sinners who love wickedness and who destroy what he loves.

And the Lord also knows which of those unbelievers–who are objects of his wrath–will come to him and be numbered among his elect, and thanks be to God, that is all of our stories.

We were his enemies, and that enmity was as real as the air you are breathing. And God turns enemies into sons. That’s the Gospel. Objects of hatred can become objects of love, just ask the Apostle Paul.

And so, in the high mystery of the ways of God it is most certainly true that God both loves the sinner and hates the sinner until he turns the sinner into a son. And for sons, all that is left is love.

So, that is an overview of how God talks. But how should we talk.

II. Our Exercise of Holy Hatred

Many of us at this point might be tempted to say “Well God is allowed to hate, because he is God. But I am not allowed to do that, because I am just a fallen sinful man or woman.”

That’s actually a good cautious impulse. So let’s think about that for a moment.

Probably the most relevant text here is Psalm 139. Which is–I want to remind you–inspired by the Holy Spirit, and written by King David, the man after God’s own heart. There is no sin in this text. And most music versions stop at verse 18. Because once you hit verse 19, it gets a bit odd. He goes from

Psalm 139:1–2 ESV

O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar.

To

Psalm 139:19–22 ESV

Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from me! They speak against you with malicious intent; your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies.

Wow. What to do with this? Well, like every other text of Scripture, we grab hold of it and we say Amen first, and then work it out second.

First I want to say that outside of knowing the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and as the forgiver of your sins, these words would be very dangerous for us to pray. It is in Christ that we can pray them with confidence and protection.

What David is praying here is that God’s enemies are also his enemies. And David here prays two central things: That the wicked would be slain and that the men of blood (that is murderous men) would depart from him.

In other words he is saying that the death penalty would be applied to murderers (which is biblical justice), and that he would not be the next one to be killed. And when you realize that Christ himself tells the wicked at the end of the age “Depart from me. I never knew you,” David is here recognizing that light cannot have fellowship with darkness.

In other words, David is praying “Your kingdom come.” And biblical scholar James Hamilton is right when he says

“We should not be troubled but inspired” by what David here expresses in his “utter devotion” to God and his kingdom.

David has words of hatred here for the wicked precisely because he is a godly man.

Theologian Christopher Ash reminds us that “...it is a mark of friendship to align our affections with our friend. Such hatred is not incompatible with praying for their conversion, but it is to acknowledge that while people are impenitent, they are God’s enemies.”

In other words, David is saying, when men hate God, and oppose him, I know whose team I am on.

But please also note that David closes with these words

Psalm 139:23–24 ESV

Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!

Do you think there might be a reason David prayed that, after these words of imprecation?

So it must be with us. If we chose to talk like David, and we should, we have to also plead with God like David to guard us, and we should.

And so where I want to go from here is the main passage for our sermon today:

Ecclesiastes 3:1–8 ESV

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

Now, especially because I am not preaching through Ecclesiastes right now, it’s important to give some context here.

King Solomon writes Ecclesiastes near the end of his life. He is the wisest man who ever lived, and yet also the man who violated much of his own wisdom. Ecclesiastes is then, in a sense, Solomon’s repentance as he considers his own life and his own failures. And Chapter 3 is where he addresses the matter of the duties that fall to the people of God in various seasons.

The point here is that there are appropriate times and seasons for various things. This calls us to wisdom and discernment. To know what kind of moment we are living in.

And Solomon tells us there is a time to love, and a time to hate. And it’s talking about our responsibility. Not just the Lord’s action.

And I think the best way to think about this is that just as there is a biblical and righteous and not sinful way to get angry, so there is a biblical, righteous, and not sinful way to express hatred.

Not just for sin itself but for the enemies of God. Not because we are better than them, we are not. All we have is by grace, dear saints.

And I trust all of you know why I am preaching on this. It is no secret that the last few weeks have brought about a surge of emotions for many of us. Especially anger.

We’ve seen the targeted hateful murder of Irena Zarutska in Charlotte. We’ve seen the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

And even though we’ve had some time to process, there’s been real anger to work through. Fear. Confusion. And maybe hatred. And usually in moments like this, wise Christians are quick to say that there’s a difference between righteous anger and unrighteous anger. And this is most certainly true.

And there’s also a difference between hatred that is rooted in pride and bitterness and tribe, and a holy hatred that is rooted in God, which we can express, so long as right after we pray in earnest “Search me O God and know my heart, and see if there be any wickedness in this.” Because the reality of all kinds of anger including the righteous kind is that it will spoil and go rotten if we sit on it.

So then what do we do with this data? I’m going to slow my data exploration here and move to application, because honestly this is not an open and shut case for one Sunday. My hope and prayer for all of us is that we will be considering in the coming weeks and months how to live out these things. So let me address that now.

III. How We Live Today

So if it is true that even righteous anger can go rancid if we just sit on it, then let’s not just sit on it. If you are looking around and trying to figure out what time you live in and what moment you live in, the question you should also be asking is “What are my responsibilities?”

First,

Be prepared to die.

I am not saying that you will meet the same fate as Charlie Kirk, but I am saying we are living in a moment where we saw a Christian father and husband get murdered on a livestream. And then we watched a number of our countrymen celebrate it. That is a sobering moment that I, and probably many of you are still processing. That was a wake up moment that our culture is far sicker than we knew.

But this is a moment for us to consider our mortality. We try not to think about death. We do everything we can to keep ourselves from thinking about death. That is why, in a weird way, I think funerals are really good for us, as a people. It’s the only time we gather together so we can stop refusing to think about death, and confront it, head on, with tears of grief and the hope of the gospel. And this is a moment to confront the question “When will I die?” and let the answer be “Sooner than I think.” Which is when most people die.

Also, as far as applying material from this sermon, if we are going to talk about the wrath of God or the hatred of God or the enemies of God, we need to balance that with this singular reality—that Jesus saves lost people.

God has enemies. And God delights to turn enemies into sons. So we should pray for them. We should pray for the lost. Because Jesus saves them. He turns enemies into sons. And if today you are resisting the call of Jesus Christ, stop resisting. Do not wait. Come to Jesus Christ today. The doors of mercy are wide open for you. Come and be saved.

Next, refuse to tolerate wickedness in your life. Love what God loves. Hate what God hates.

Proverbs 8:13 ESV

The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.

Third, Start with your own sin. When it comes to hatred, you must always start with your own sin. And from there, it is right and good to move out. To hate the murder of babies and those who do it. To hate corruption and abuse of power and those who do it. To hate the incompetence and sin that keeps our city and Parish from flourishing. And at the same time, hating the sin, and loving the sinner. And pleading with God “Is there any wicked way right here in me?”

Because we do love our enemies. We do! Jesus commanded it, and we must do it. We must do it because that is what God does. He loves his enemies, he even dies for them, forgiving them while he dies.

And yet, the dying words of Jesus do not reverse Psalm 139. They give it a weight and a complexity that we must continue to learn and trust and obey. As Eddie likes to say, we can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Can we love and hate at the same time? Apparently God does, and there is sufficient evidence to show us that we are called to do the same. How this works out practically is that when wicked men engage in their schemes, we do pray for the total downfall of those schemes.

We pray for the total unraveling of the plans of wicked men. We faithfully oppose that wickedness wherever we see it. We hate it. We hate the destruction that flows from it, and we pray with the words of the Bible that God would put a glorious stop to it. We also name it. Clearly. Point at it.

And we also, as it were, carve out a place in our minds and a place in our hearts that yearns and hopes that our enemies will become our brothers. That objects of wrath would become objects of mercy. And part of loving them well is opposing their wickedness.

Like Gideon who tore down idols starting with his own house, and like Jesus who flipped over tables in his own house, we stand opposed to wickedness, and seek to bring it down. We don’t return evil for evil, but (hear me!):

Opposition to wickedness is not evil.

When wicked men recklessly spill blood, we pray for their conversion and a speedy execution, which is the job of the civil magistrate according to Romans 13. That’s biblical justice.

So what do you do? What do you start doing today?

You get your family in order. This is where our obedience must start.

For many men, this means to stop abdicating. Stop giving yourself over to lust or to explosive anger or to excuse-making. Lead your family in worship, in example, in joy, in wisdom, in humility. Be wise in your speech and wiser still with your time. And by lead I mean actually lead and not be passive.

“But you don’t understand Pastor Bryan, she won’t hear me, and there’s really no talking to her.”

You had better figure out how to talk to her then. Ask me or your elders for help, that’s why we’re here. I know that is a radical idea to a lot of Christians in America. “My church leadership is here to help me deal with sin in my personal life?” Yes, we’re not just here to organize programs, I promise. It’s all there in the Bible.

For many women, this means respecting your husband’s lead, and affirming it and submitting to it, especially when it’s hard. Trusting him when he’s trying to protect your home from dangers or false teaching. The mindset should be “We might not agree on everything, but setting that Christ-and-the-Church image before our children is more important than me getting my way.” Unless he’s driving you to sin, or spiraling into immaturity, in which case you should probably ask me or your elders for help. Again, that’s why we are here.

For all of us, in the time we live in, my encouragement is love your church. The moment we are in requires us to leave the sidelines. No neutrality, and no apathy. Recognize that the moment you are living in calls us all to repent of a passivity to the life and work of the church.

Because with grief, we have watched my generation go apostate and flee the faith in record numbers, and yet we have often still refused to examine ourselves and to repent of the way we do things in the church. We have seen an avalanche of apostasy in the last 40 years, but we just assume it must be the TV.

We must repent of seeing the church as a cruise ship where we’re all just here to sit back and coast. And that really the church is more like a battleship with all hands on deck, loving and caring for each other, working and serving together. Laughing and eating together. Fighting and singing together. And choosing to be a light in dark places.

Finally, make sure love is behind all you do. I used to say “God is love, but he is also wrath and hatred.” I think that’s probably the wrong way to frame this. And so if you’ve heard me say that, I’m sorry. I think that’s the wrong way to put it.

I think it would be more appropriate to say God is love and he has anger. God is love, and he has hatred. Love is still where he chooses to center the revelation of himself.

And perfect love knows when to hate. So do not let your love grow cold. That’s a very serious admonition. Do not let your love grow cold. Guard your heart in this way. And frequently come to the Lord Jesus, asking him to search you and know you and see if there be any wicked way in you.

Have the courage to ask your brothers and sisters that same question. Is there anything in my life that is out of line? And bring it to the Lord Jesus who loves to forgive you. He loves to feed you. He loves to bless you. He loves to sustain you. He loves to give you hope in this and every time and season, and he is still the Sovereign God of heaven and earth even over these troubled times.

In the name of Jesus, Amen.