Hating Jesus, Hating God - Part Two

A sermon I preached on Palm Sunday evening - continued

My second point, considering today’s readings, is to ask this question:

2 - What does it mean to hate God now, and can a Christian hate God?

Is this all just theology but, ultimately, should be preached to those who don’t know God rather than those who do? Ideally, yes. Every bit of my theological being wants to shout, “Don’t be stupid! Of course a Christian can’t hate God! That makes no sense!” And it’s true. It makes no sense. We need to bear in mind that hate means a strong dislike of something or someone. And not all hate is equal. You can “hate” fish (i.e. you dislike the taste). You can “hate” your job (you find no pleasure in it). You can “hate” the actions of other people (burglars, murderers, politicians). You can “hate” people themselves (sometimes this is rational and often not).

Hate towards God can also take these forms: a dislike of “religion” can transfer itself to God; you can find that you lose interest in God and the things of God; you can hate what you perceive to be God’s actions (oh, God, why did you let this happen to me - I don’t want anything to do with you now); you can irrationally hate the person of God because you don’t know Him or understand Him properly.

I’d suggest the most obvious form of “hate” the Christian might show towards God is expressed through the Hebrew idiom of “I love x but I hate y”. Take Luke 14:26 in the NIV: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” That is, “I love x (Jesus), but I hate y (family/myself). To think that God intends us to hate our families goes against Bible teaching which Jesus Himself endorsed/quoted, not least the commandment to honour your father and mother, and “if you curse your father or your mother, you are to be put to death”. Good News Bible dodges the word “hate” altogether but explains the meaning for us: “Those who come to me cannot be my disciples unless they love me more than they love father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and themselves as well.” It’s an expression of preference. Who are we going to prize higher when there is a conflict of interest? Whose side are we going to take? Jesus’, our own, our families? To prioritise Jesus, would be to “hate” our families. To prioritise our families would be to “hate” Jesus. The parable of the sower maybe gives us a practical insight into this preference. If we give up on God because we come to think Bible is nonsense, or we give up at the first sign of trouble, or the worries of life and the riches of the world stifle our love for God, then we are effectively “hating” Him because we prefer those things to Him.

On another occasion, while speaking to the disciples, Jesus was clearly having a swipe at the Pharisees who seemed to have been earwigging, when He said: “No servant can be the slave of two masters; such a slave will hate one and love the other or will be loyal to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” The plain meaning is that if we love money we will hate God. It’s a very real danger in our society. “The worries about this life and the love for riches choke the message, and they don't bear fruit.” Paul wrote to Timothy: “But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and are caught in the trap of many foolish and harmful desires, which pull them down to ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a source of all kinds of evil. Some have been so eager to have it that they have wandered away from the faith and have broken their hearts with many sorrows.”

It is possible to become so twisted that we make ourselves God’s enemies. Consider James 4:1-6. “Where do all the fights and quarrels among you come from? They come from your desires for pleasure, which are constantly fighting within you. You want things, but you cannot have them, so you are ready to kill; you strongly desire things, but you cannot get them, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have what you want because you do not ask God for it. And when you ask, you do not receive it, because your motives are bad; you ask for things to use for your own pleasures. Unfaithful people! Don't you know that to be the world's friend means to be God's enemy? If you want to be the world's friend, you make yourself God's enemy.” I don’t know if James is being deliberately over the top in his language. Fights, quarrels, ready to kill. It’s not pretty reading. Christians can, it seems, make themselves God’s enemies. The antidote to this is: “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble… So then, submit yourselves to God. Resist the Devil, and he will run away from you. Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners! Purify your hearts, you hypocrites! Be sorrowful, cry, and weep; change your laughter into crying, your joy into gloom! Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”

We recently studied the book of Malachi in our house group and this is a real case of how you can sleepwalk into hating God. Either religion has become so routine that cutting corners and showing disdain for God had crept upon them, or else they knew they were doing wrong and, like Cain, pretended they didn’t know why He was making such a fuss. They doubted God’s love for them. They disrespected Him by bringing stolen, lame and sick animals to sacrifice. Worship had become a burden. The priests turned away from the right path and taught the people to do wrong. They broke promises to God and to one another. Men divorced their wives to take up with younger foreign women who worshiped other gods. They cheated God by withholding the full tithes and offerings. They thought it was pointless serving God because God helped the wicked to prosper. I missed out some things but the picture is clear - Israel had a grievance with God. As with the Pharisees, religion was no protection from hating God. In Isaiah 29:13 we see God’s view of those who do religion for its own sake. The Lord said, “These people claim to worship me, but their words are meaningless, and their hearts are somewhere else. Their religion is nothing but human rules and traditions, which they have simply memorized.” Jesus Himself picks up this verse and hurls it at the Pharisees and teachers of the law. We have to guard ourselves from this. We can’t let our worship become just a meaningless round of church services, reading words from an overhead projector or a book, giving as little as we can to keep the church going, waiting anxiously for the service to end so we can chat with our friends.

OK, so this has been a heavy preach. I’ll end this point with a bit of humour, before going on to a positive conclusion.

Soap operas. I don’t watch them any more but I’ve often wondered - when there’s a bad character, everyone shouts at the tv or posts angrily on social media. But I wonder, are there people who actually side with the bad guy? Do they cheer him on? Picture the scene: a wicked man and a kind woman in a room. She goes out, leaving her opened handbag temptingly on the table. He looks at it. Most of us would shout for her to come quickly back into the room. But are there people who shout, “go on my son, nick the silly old bat’s purse”. Or a happy couple in the pub and the jealous, nasty, drunk ex-boyfriend who walks up to them. Most people would shout, “watch out! He’s behind you!” But are there people shouting at the screen, “She should be yours, drunky. Go on, smash his smiley face in!”

So, what has this to do with anything? Well, when it comes to the Gospels, I wonder if there are people who side with the Pharisees when they are conflict with Jesus? Well, that would be hating God if they did. And I don’t think I need to pursue this thought, except to suggest that, if we read what God says in the Bible and tell Him we don’t agree with Him, or we read what He did and tell Him He was wrong to do it, then we are on dangerous ground.

Conclusion

So, to conclude, what happens if you find you’re in conflict with God, that you are “hating” Him, that you are doing things which are making Him your enemy? What do you do if you find you are preferring family or your own will when they conflict with what God tells you to do? What do you do when you find yourself in power struggles with other Christians, quarreling and fighting with them instead of loving them? What do you do if you find you have become obsessed with money and it is getting in the way of your relationship with God? What do you do when you are bored with God, can’t be bothered with Him, are disillusioned? What do you do when you find you are so wrapped up in worries that you no longer trust God to look after you? There are various things you can do to tackle these situations, but the one overarching spiritual thing is to repent. All is not lost. You are not in a hopeless situation. God stands ready to forgive. “If we confess our sins to God, he will keep his promise and do what is right: he will forgive us our sins and purify us from all our wrongdoing” (1 John 1:9). “Now, let's settle the matter. You are stained red with sin, but I will wash you as clean as snow. Although your stains are deep red, you will be as white as wool” (Isaiah 1:18). Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, if my brother keeps on sinning against me, how many times do I have to forgive him? Seven times?” “No, not seven times,” answered Jesus, “but seventy times seven…” If Jesus requires this level of forgiveness from Peter, how much more would we expect forgiveness from Jesus Himself?

Hating Jesus, Hating God - Part One

The text of a sermon I preached on Palm Sunday evening

A famous quote has been attributed to former Prime Minister Harold Wilson: “A week is a long time in politics.” And haven’t we been aware of that recently?! Fortunes and events can change so rapidly. Today is Palm Sunday. This morning, churches focus on the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, on a donkey, receiving adulation and cries of “God bless the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory to God!” One week later (spoiler alert), Jesus has been betrayed by Judas, arrested, denied by Peter, mocked and beaten, sent from Pilate to Herod and back again, sentenced unjustly to death, crucified, died, buried and raised from the dead!

The first of my two points this evening is:

1 - To Hate God is to Hate Jesus, and vice versa

The Psalm appointed for this evening, Psalm 69, is already pointing us beyond the triumphal entry into Jerusalem to the crucifixion. To my mind, this is a remarkable messianic psalm. You could easily imagine the vast majority of it coming from the lips of the crucified Christ. Just one verse after the reading ended, we get this: “When I was hungry, they gave me poison; when I was thirsty, they offered me vinegar.” All four gospels mark the fulfilment of this in Jesus.

There are several verses from Psalm 69 which we encounter in the New Testament. Verse 4: “Those who hate me for no reason are more numerous than the hairs of my head. My enemies tell lies against me; they are strong and want to kill me.” Jesus refers to this Himself in John 15. He speaks to His disciples:

“Whoever hates me hates my Father also. They would not have been guilty of sin if I had not done among them the things that no one else ever did; as it is, they have seen what I did, and they hate both me and my Father. This, however, was bound to happen so that what is written in their Law may come true: ‘They hated me for no reason at all.’”

The first half of Psalm 69:9 says this: “My devotion to your Temple burns in me like a fire”. Another version puts it, “Zeal for your house consumes me.” This gets quoted in John 2:17. Jesus upsets the apple cart quite early on here. Or, more literally, the money changers’ tables. He is zealous for His Father’s house, the Temple. He is angry that it is being treated like a marketplace. He makes a whip and drives out the animals being traded, overturns the traders’ tables, spilling their money all over the place. The Jewish authorities ask him (I imagine, with a sneer), “What miracle can you perform to show us that you have the right to do this?” He tells them to tear down this temple and He’ll rebuild it again. He was talking about His death and resurrection, pointing to a greater Temple - His body. Jesus wasn’t setting out to please men.

As time goes on we realise Jesus didn’t fit in with the idea of Messiah. He was a threat to the religious establishment. He pointed out their hypocrisy. He contravened their rules. He aroused their jealousy. They set out to trap Him on numerous occasions. The gospels are full of this. They hated Jesus and therefore they hated God, because Jesus did what the Father wanted and was one with the Father.

The second half of Psalm 69:9 states, “the insults which are hurled at you fall on me.” Paul quotes this in Romans 15 and takes the application in a different direction, but I would bring it back to John 15. The insults hurled at God fell on Jesus. “Whoever hates me hates my Father also.” And, “they have seen what I did, and they hate both me and my Father.” While being separate Persons, Jesus and the Father are stated to be “one”. “The Father is in me and I am in the Father”, He says elsewhere.

To insult God is to insult Jesus, and vice versa. But while He was on earth, the hatred towards God was manifested in the persecution of Jesus. Like in our gospel reading about the man who planted the vineyard. Let’s peek behind the parable, as I understand it. God entrusts Israel to the teachers of the Law and the chief priests. He sends servants to collect what is due to God, but they beat them all up, wanting to keep all the glory and honour for themselves. Eventually God sends His Son, Jesus, with the apparent expectation that they will respect Him. But no. They see the opportunity to get rid of God once and for all by killing the son and heir. This would put an end to all those pesky prophets who keep coming and telling them they’re doing it wrong. All the trappings of religious life are theirs. They’ve got their systems in place just as they like them. It’s all ticking along nicely. The people look up to them as super-examples of righteousness. They’ve got respect. They did charitable acts to get praise from people. They prayed loud and long on street corners so people would think, “how holy they are!” If they fasted, they made sure everyone knew it. They laid down the law and made sure people obeyed them. But Jesus contradicts all this. Jesus runs rings round them with His wisdom and knowledge.Time and again He makes them look stupid. So they plot to kill Jesus to get at God for disturbing their system. They can’t harm God directly, so they plot to kill His Son.

This vineyard metaphor is nothing new. It follows up the reading from Isaiah 5 and shows that nothing had changed in 700 years. So often the Old Testament has the same story. God does everything for Israel and they spit in His face. Thankfully there were exceptions and He always had that remnant that remained faithful. Instead of doing good, the people of Isaiah’s time showed their hatred of God by doing evil. Verse 7 sums it up: “Israel is the vineyard of the Lord Almighty; the people of Judah are the vines he planted. He expected them to do what was good, but instead they committed murder. He expected them to do what was right, but their victims cried out for justice.”

And so this leads me to ask the question - what does this mean for us? Do we sit back and gloat and say, I’d never treat God like that! Or do we lament along with God the sad downfall of Israel? In our world and in our day, when we hear the news or listen to people brag about their sinful lifestyles, or look at people who’ve made a mess of their lives, do we say, “I thank you, God, that I am not greedy, dishonest, or an adulterer, like everybody else. I thank you that I am not like that tax collector over there. I fast two days a week, and I give you one tenth of all my income.” Or do we acknowledge that, given different circumstances, we could be them? And instead of disgust at them, beat on our chests and say, ‘God, have pity on me, a sinner!’ It’s so easy to get angry or bitter when you see the way some people speak and act. I really have to try to stand back and try not to be judgemental. Without God’s grace and salvation, what would I be today?