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Hello brothers and sisters. It’s Wednesday morning. I hope you are all having a blessed week.
In my last message, I told you all I would be doing more Bible studies unless the Lord gives me a dream or message to speak. And I have a few things I want to do some studies on, but this week something has come to my attention that is greatly disturbing me.
Like all of you, I watch or listen to certain YouTube channels and I have a subscriber who sends me links to videos through my email. She sent me one the other day and I went to the comments section on this particular video as I usually do. I like to interact with my fellow Christian brothers and sisters and if I have something to add to the conversation, I do.
In this particular comments section, I was appalled to see that there are Christians who are saying God hates people. They reference the scripture, “Jacob I loved and Esau I hated.” (Malachi 1:2-3 and Romans 9:13). The Hebrew root word for hated in these verses is ‘Sane’ (Saw-Nay).
Did you know that the Hebrew language started out as pictographs? We can imagine that all ancient languages started out as pictures that were drawn to describe one’s feelings, thoughts, things heard, and things that were seen.
The pictograph for the word ‘Sane’ (Saw-Nay) is a thorn and a seed. This translates as ‘thorn seed’. The thorn is the seed of a plant with small sharp points which cause one to turn directions to avoid them. You know that if you get pricked by a thorn, it’s going to hurt and you’re going to bleed. So naturally, a thorn is something you try to avoid. This can also mean that there was something between Esau and God that kept them from one another. That something between them is the same thing that sometimes causes us to not hear God or to not feel His presence and that is SIN. God withholds Himself from those who are in sin. This is what He actually meant when He said, ‘Esau I sane’. That word was incorrectly translated as ‘HATE’ when it should have been translated as ‘kept from’.
I found an article written on this at the website ‘firmisrael.org’. This is what it says…
In Biblical times, thorns were used as fences to protect flocks from predators or even used as weapons. The idea was that thorns caused pain and the pain made someone avoid whatever caused it. Thorns created a shield, hedge of protection.
While intense emotions are sometimes involved, the ancient Hebrew view of hate was more about being hurt or wounded by something, because of love being involved. Opening oneself to love meant opening to hurt. Hate then meant staying away from that source of pain. We see this in Isaac’s response to Abimelech:
“Then Abimelech came to him from Gerar with his adviser Ahuzzath and Phicol the commander of his army. Isaac said to them, “Why have you come to me, since you hate me and have sent me away from you?” (Genesis 26:26-28)
Hatred was less about an intense confrontational emotion and inflicting pain. Instead, it was more about making choices to avoid that pain – physical or emotional.
This understanding can directly affect our view of God’s character. If this is true, consider a couple common scriptures in a whole new way:
And when the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb (Genesis 29:31; KJV)
Some translations use “un-loved” here instead of hated. There is nothing in the Scriptures that would suggest that Jacob was aggressive towards her. From what we can read, he mostly stayed away from Leah. This may have been due to his desire for Rachel. Or perhaps because Leah reminded him of Laban’s deceptions (Gen 29:21-25).
Jacob possibly avoided Leah, since their relationship was complicated to say the least. Yet, out of God’s compassion for Leah’s constant rejection, He gave her children.
Esau is the only person that God said He hated. Could it be that the Lord was so wounded by Esau’s rejection of His prized gift of the birthright for some stew that God wanted to stay away from him?
There is a very specific order of events here. God had not rejected Esau, rather Esau rejected God’s plan. It causes the Father a great amount of pain. In this context, this verse shows God’s broken heart rather than His anger at disobedience.
God’s character is not aloof to our experiences and He is not angry at one thoughtless act of disobedience. On the contrary, He is “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger…” (Exodus 34:6). When we feel pain, we want to withdraw; we are made in His Image. Yet Jesus challenges us to love those that hurt us. Instead of avoiding (hating), return in love.
“But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you…” – Luke 6:27
Here are some other scriptures commanding us to love.
1 Corinthians 16:14
Let all that you do be done in love.
1 John 4:8
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
John 3:16
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
1 Peter 4:8
Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.
Colossians 3:14
And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
John 13:34-35
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
John 15:13
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
1 Corinthians 13:13
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
1 John 4:19
We love because he first loved us.
1 John 4:7
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
John 4:9-12
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
Brothers and sisters, there are so many verses in the Bible regarding God’s love for us and how He desires for us to love one another. It is unimaginable that God could love so much and have such a desire for us to love one another that He would truly hate anyone. This cannot be. Love and hate cannot flow from the same vessel. He cannot command us to have love for one another and for us to forgive one another our faults if He does not do the same. Hatred toward anyone would make Him a liar and a hypocrite, which He is not.
God loves all of His creation, good and bad, holy and wicked. Having love does not mean He won’t correct, chastise, and judge. He IS grieved when any of us choose to sin and disobey Him. But this does not mean He does not continue to love. It is because of His love that He gives mercy and grace. He does not desire for us to have our eternity in hell and so He gives us many opportunities to repent and correct our wrongs. He hates sin, He does not hate the sinner.
If God hated those who sin, He would not have sent Jesus, His only Son, to die for our sins. And Jesus, if He did not love, He would not have allowed Himself to be crucified upon that cross so that we may have redemption and salvation through Him.
The teaching that God hates people comes directly from Satan, our adversary. He wants you to believe God hates you and that God is a liar and a hypocrite. But Satan is the one who has hate within his heart. He is the one who hates God and all of God’s children.
My brothers and sisters, do not believe anyone who tells you God hates people. This is not true. God hates sin. God hates unrepentance. God hates evil and wickedness. He does not hate His creation.
He may get angry and frustrated with you as any father gets angry and frustrated with his disobedient child. But no father, if he is a good and loving father, ever comes to hate his child.
When we have something in our life that our father disagrees with, it puts distance between us but that distance is not hate, it’s indifference.
God will judge the unrepentant, the evil, the wicked, and the disobedient and they will spend eternity in hell, but it is not God who sends them there. They have chosen to go there themselves because they have refused God and this grieves Him. But He has given each of us free will to make our own choices and so that we will choose Him. He will never force Himself on anyone. He is not some angry tyrant, eager to send people to hell. He is loving and merciful and desires that you will choose Him.
If you hold unforgiveness toward anyone, forgive as God forgives.
Do you know that hatred is as murder?
1 John 3:15
Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
Is God a murderer? Certainly not, since murderers will have no part in His kingdom.
Galatians 5:21
Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
Revelation 21:8
But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”
Anyone who thinks God hates anyone is being deceived by the enemy and if they teach this, they are a deceiver.
Do not believe this lie. It comes straight from the pit of hell meant to distort your view of our holy Father and Creator. God is not the author of confusion and He is not a liar. He says we are made in His image and if we are commanded to love and forgive then God cannot oppose this Himself. He will never go against His own laws and commandments.
The attacks of the devil and his demons are getting stronger and we must put on our Godly armor each and every day. This means reading your Bible every day so that you stay refreshed in His Word and so that the attacks of the devil will not burden you or destroy you. God’s Word is our sword and our shield. The devil cannot take down anyone who stands firmly in God’s Word.
Brothers and sisters, do not let the devil confuse you and lead you astray. Be lead by the Holy Spirit at all times.
I love each and every one of you. I pray the Lord comes to rescue us ASAP and I pray that we will see eachother in the Father’s house soon. Until next time, God bless each and every one of you. Shalom.
