What Does God Hate?

I watched the session of the Southern Baptist Convention last night as it was being broadcast live by Daystar. The session that was televised was themed "A New Awakening" and was built around the verse, "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14).  

The session consisted largely of seasons of prayers of confession and repentance for various sins including racism, cultural divisions, as well as a whole hosts of other things that need to be confessed, repented of and forgiven if we are to go forward with the Gospel in our world. I applaud it all. 

As he introduced the session Ronnie Floyd spoke of the fact that we had mastered the art of marketing but lost our sense the power of God. I think I could write a book on this but it is not what is on my mind right now.

I was taken by what was not included in the call to repentance. . . . the thing that I think is at the core of where we are as Baptist and Christians as well. I have been retired for 10 years now and out of the mainstream of denominational life. However, from the 1960's until 2005 I was as involved in Baptist life as the next pastor and more than some.  

I served on local and state committees and boards; I worked on international mission projects; I attended State and National conventions and meetings; I challenged leadership when  I thought they were crossing the lines of Christian ethics and morality in relationships, with employees and with each other; I lived through the "Battle for the Bible" travesty and attended many an ad hoc meeting related to how we should proceed in that battle. . . . To say the least I was involved. The end result was the formation of a competing group of churches who called themselves the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship 

Stay with me, I am going to soon get to my point. I  have said all of the above because I believe as wonderful as that meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention was one essential thing was glaringly absent. We prayed for forgiveness for a whole range of our attitudes and actions that needed to be acknowledged (confessed) and cleansed (forgiven).  I would not remove a single one of them. If we are going to have a great outpouring of the Power of God then we need to get all of those things out on the table and resolved.  

But one thing was missing and that was the need to confess that we were guilty as a denomination and as individuals involved in the Battle for the Bible of what might be the most egregious of our sins.  

I remember when I was just a youth that my pastor preached a series of sermons based on the text of Proverbs 6:16-19 "There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community." 

Each week he dealt with one of those items that God hates. However when he came to the last (seventh item) he pointed out a significant difference in it and the previous six. To be sure it is still included in what God hates. He shared that the first six can be isolated as attitudes that people can have or actions that people can take. However, the seventh item is not like the first six. Instead of the attitude and/or action people can have it is the person taking the action. The person God hates is the person who draws others into discord or strife. This may well be the only time God is said to hate a person. 

The Hebrew word for hate used is the word  שָׂנֵא   and means to have a feeling of open hostility, intense dislike and a of lack of any feeling of love and compassion for an for the object of His hate. The result of this kind of hate is a refusal or shunning of any relationship with the one hated. Simply stated, the person who goes about disturbing the peace and fellowship among God's people is completely alienated from God. 

Oh, I can hear it now. "God doesn't hate anyone. He loves everybody. What He hates is their sin but not them." But is that what the text says?  Whatever else this verse means it means the sowing discord in the household of faith (church: body of Christ) is so serious to God that He is spoken of as hating not just the action but the actor as well. 

Now what has that to do with an effort at bringing about a new awakening of the power of God among his people and a great outbreak of soul saving revival? Remember our starting verse: "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14).   

We do well to confess our sins of prejudice, bigotry etc but unless we get to the one sin for which God wants to hear a confession and see evidence of repentance we will not see a mighty moving of the Spirit of God or God acting in great power among us. I believe the great rift in the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1980's constituted a sowing of discord of on an enormous scale among the brethren.  

Remember, I was there. I sat in the meetings; I heard the defamation of character and the slander; I felt the pain of relationships broken as the house became divided. Until that broken relationship and the fellowship of the faith that it fostered has been restored through confession and repentance there is little hope of any great awakening among Baptist.  

As I watched that broadcast and joined in the prayers of confession and repentance I kept thinking, "Any minute now we will get to the one that set brothers against brother . . . the sowing of discord. But alas it never happened.  I suppose they thought that was a previous generation's doing and old wounds need not be reopened. Two thoughts on that: First, sometimes the wound has to be opened to clean out the poison and second, "The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation" (Numbers 14:18). 

We need to keep in mind that we think in terms of generations while God works in terms of eternity.  Israel was enslaved in Egypt 400 years before God sent Moses to deliver them.  Then the Hebrew Children wandered in the wilderness for 40 years and only a handful of those who started the journey entered the promise land with Joshua. 

We have confessed sins of which of which I am not personally guilty but those who came before me were and some around me still are. They are all sins of our fathers and the truth is they are all a part of that greater sin of sowing discord among the brethren. Until the core of our collective sin is dealt with we may never see another mighty moving of God the people called Southern Baptist. 

I have had a few people over the years in churches that I pastored come to the alter to confess and be forgiven of every kind of sin you can imagine. Week after week they came and the confessed but they never had the peace they were seeking. Why, because they were not willing to deal with the issue God was focused on in their lives. When they finally swallowed their pride and over came their fear and confessed the sin God was focused on they went away with peace in their heart and seldom had to make that long hard walk down that aisle.  

Indeed, one man asked to share his testimony realizing that the speaker stand had been place at the very spot he was standing when he finally dealt with the issue God was dealing in his life, picked up the stand moved it a few feet and said, "That's were I finally laid my burden down I don't want to chance standing there and getting it back." 

Such a confession and repentance would mean restoration but not necessarily reunification. It means a restoration of fellowship and joint commitment to carrying out the Great Commission. Will it ever happen, I hope so but I am not optimistic. I am afraid our pride in this area will get in the way. Like I said, it is not a call to reunification is is a call to repentance for all the anger, hatred, slander and just plain mean spiritedness toward one another. It is a call to restoration around the answer to the question, "Jesus, whom say you He is?" The answer, "He is the Christ, the Son of the Living God." On this we are agreed and in this agreement we should be able to walk together having been saved by His grace through His blood and commissioned to take the message of redemption to a lost and dying world.

By the way, the same thing applies to the Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Southern Baptist of Texas groups.