Walk With Me
Christian discussion of biblical topics, and a dose of daily application. Yes the Bible is still relevant, and we find out more and more each day how relevant it has always been.
Walk With Me
God’s Love vs Sin: God does not hate YOU. Just the Sin
Hello everybody and welcome to today's episode of Walk With Me. I am your host, jj. So good to have each and every one of you here, love each and every one of you, even though some of you guys and we'll talk about that later may not necessarily love me back. That's okay, because I love you anyway. You're the reason actually why we do this podcast. So thank you all. Thank you for listening, thank you for liking and sharing, thank you for comments, thank you for the emails and we're going to deal with a particular email today, but before we do that, we got to give our due. Thank you, god, for this podcast. Thank you for the people who listen, thank you for those who comment and questions and send questions and comments to walkwithmebiblestudy at gmail. Walkwithmebiblestudy at gmail. It literally costs you nothing, and that's the way I really want to keep this podcast. I want it to be free. Salvation is free, right? So I basically, with the help of my sponsors and all that is what keeps this show on the air. Thank you all so much, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Speaking of sponsors. Thank you for True Bars, the lyricists, thank you for the intro and outro music and also for Exquisite Creations Just had a big shipment of tumblers go out today. Thank you for that, thank you, thank you, thank you. I have not had any discussions about any promo codes, or you for that, thank you, thank you, thank you. I have not had any discussions about any promo codes or anything like that. We'll get to that. But thank you all so much for you know, shopping, the sponsors and, yes, that other third sponsor is coming. Thank you for the questions about Iron Gate Ministries. Right now, we just formed it, so I haven't really done anything with that yet, but we will be doing something with it. I'm just waiting for God to give us a direction, thank you, thank you, thank you for that.
Speaker 1:Now let's get down to business, because I know we're going to be short on time Because we have a lot of scripture to go through and a very serious question to ask. And, catherine, this is for you because you put your name in the subject matter, so, in the subject line, that means I'm going to address the question directly to you. Thank you for the question, um, and also, before I even get started on that, let's talk about that. Uh, if you have any questions or comments, or uh, shout outs questions if you put your name in the subject line, I'll address you directly. Uh, in the you, directly in the episode.
Speaker 1:And these are for questions that really take more than one or two scriptures to answer, or a question that I'm getting repeatedly, because I don't want to copy and paste the email, because that's really generic. I don't want to do that. So if we're getting two, three, four, five questions around the same topic, so if we're getting two, three, four, five questions around the same topic, I'll probably pick the one that's more in depth and then I will answer that question. And if you have any follow up questions, go ahead and send them to walkwithmebiblestudy at Gmail. And since we're going to be talking about scripture, one thing I will always say is that we have a rule on this podcast Always read a verse or two above the scripture or a verse or two below, preferably the whole chapter, because context is key.
Speaker 1:I had a guy who tried to wrestle with me for two days over slavery in the Bible and he pulled out everything he could find. He finally got to Exodus, chapter 20, and he thought he had won. But he didn't understand that there was a reason why certain things were allowed. Polygamy was allowed in the Bible too, but that was because of the hardness of your hearts. So a lot of things were allowed in the law but was restricted by the law. In other words like say, for example, doing weed this today it's not the smartest thing to do, but since you're going to do it, let's figure out a decent way to do it.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm saying, so, uh, that's neither here nor there, but this question and it boils down to this. I'm not going to read the whole email because it was a long one, but the whole question boils down to this is why do you serve a hateful god? Why do you serve a god that hates us? And people generally say that when the subject of LGBTQIA whatever new letter they're adding this week people generally say that when that subject is brought up, your God hates us. We don't have the right to exist. What other things, oh? And then some right person in the crowd will say well, jesus was trans. No, he wasn't. No, jesus did not wear a dress, and someone literally said that to me yesterday. Well, jesus wore a dress. No, jesus wore robe. And he got dressed, which means he put on his clothing, which was robe. So that was the dressing of the time. So this is why context is key, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1:But this is a very, also serious question that I don't think is addressed enough. And even though the LGBTQ well, you know, it's too many things, I'm just going to call it the Purdy movement. Even though the Purdy movement, you know, tries to own this argument or own this question that God hates them, I'm here to tell you God doesn't hate you any more than anybody else. He's already saved, and if he had hated anyone he'd already saved, then it wouldn't make any difference for him to hate those he'd already saved. That's not what this is about.
Speaker 1:This is about you, and I'm by you. I'm not talking about you necessarily, catherine, because I don't know your life, but by you I mean generally, by you or me living a life with sin in it and accepting the sin and codifying the sin and embracing the sin. There's one thing to have something in your life that you're struggling with, that you are desperately repenting of and trying to get over. Let's, just for the sake of argument here, let's talk about drug use. Like you said, drug use You're struggling with an addiction. You're struggling with heroin addiction, for instance. God doesn't hate you because you're addicted to heroin. God actually died so that you can get over that. Jesus hung on the cross so you can get over that.
Speaker 1:But it's easy for us to assume that, just because we think something is wrong, that someone hates it, and this is not really the case. It is actually more hateful to tell someone that you're doing okay when you know for sure they're not, or when the parameters that you're using for the word okay says that they're not. Let's say, for example, I was a driving instructor and or no more like a driver, like the person who gives you the driving test at the DMV. And I'm telling the person, yeah, you're doing great, you're doing great. They haven't stopped at any stop signs, there's no turn signals, they're just switching lanes. They're driving 42 miles over the speed limit. And I say, yeah, you're doing good, you're doing good. But when we get back to the DMV, I give them a big F or a zero and I say, yeah, come back and see me in 30 days.
Speaker 1:That's actually not love. That is not love. Well, we tell them that we even just pass them because we just don't want to see them anymore. It's been the sixth or seventh time that they've been out there and they get out there and they cause a wreck and they kill somebody with a family of four. That's not love. Not only have we condemned that driver, but we've also condemned any one of the people that he or she touches. So it's not love to sit there and pat them on the back. It's really love to say, hey, listen, this thing is wrong and you should probably stop doing it. And if you can't stop doing it, you feel like you're too far into it you might need help. This is where prayer comes in and repentance comes in. You need help. This is not hate. This is not hate.
Speaker 1:And the fact that someone is willing to tell you that, knowing the amount of abuse that you're about to unleash upon them, because of all the times I've been either behind a microphone, which has gone on for years now, or have been listening to these conversations you tell some people that they're doing the wrong thing. They just unleash physical and verbal abuse upon you like you never would think. But we know where that comes from. If you're living for God, you know where that comes from. And you still cannot lay that to the person Because it's something that they did, but we know where it's coming from. It's coming from inside them. It's coming from the influences inside of them that they don't even know that they're living in. So no, catherine, it's not. We don't serve a God that hates you. We serve a God that loves you enough to tell you that this is wrong. Now here's where the rubber meets the road on this, because at the end of the day, when we all die, we all have to be judged. So I would rather be judged righteously now than judged righteously later.
Speaker 1:And some of the things you said in the email was like you don't believe that God would send us to hell for engaging in love. Here's the thing In a roundabout way. God doesn't send us to hell. We make the choice to go to hell Because God didn't even increase, god didn't even make hell for us. God made hell for the devil and his angels.
Speaker 1:Matter of fact, let's look at Matthew 25 and 31. Now I am going to read it out of the King James Version I really like again. If you've been following me for any length of time, I've recently started reading everything through the New Living Translation and I love the way it's written in the NLT. So I'm going to read it first in Matthew 25, 41. Yeah, 25, 31. When the Son of man shall come into his glory? Nope, I meant 25, 41. Yeah, 25, 31. When the Son of man shall come into his glory? Nope, I meant 25, 41. All right, matthew, 25 and 41.
Speaker 1:And granted, if you read above that it's talking about what you've done to people and stuff like that. But this is. I want you to pay attention to the last part of this verse. Then shall he say unto you, to those on the left hand, depart from me. You cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. So that tells you right there. It wasn't about making a hell to put people in. This was about making a hell for the devil and his angels. And you just decided to go there because you thought it was better than going where you should go, which is heaven. And even in the New Living Translation it says the king shall turn to those in the left and say away with you, cursed ones, into eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his demons. Now it's the same thing that has happened twice here.
Speaker 1:In King James Version, the KJV has talked about everlasting. In NLT it talks about eternal. So what that means and this is going to answer a question that someone else said. There is no kind of a burn up and you're done. The fire is eternal, it goes on forever and there's no way for our minds to truly wrap around what that is. It's no way to really explain this on the radio. If you were to take a little tiny drop of water and drop it onto a granite rock and continue dripping that water onto the granite rock until you can drip all the way through that rock to and I'm not talking about like a little pebble, I mean like the size of the grand canyon look at how they talk about it took so long for the grand canyon to be carved. They talk about it took so long for the Grand Canyon to be carved. That is not even a drop of water in eternity. That is not even just the beginning of eternity. That's like a blink of an eye to eternity. Eternity is eternity.
Speaker 1:And again, it's not a thing about God hating you. It's about the fact that you've chosen to live this life, even if it's on a subconscious level. At one point you made the choice to live this life, to do these things that God does not like and as a person, as being, as God is concerned, he has the power to separate himself from the things he does not like, and the Bible talks about that where it talks about the separation between God and sin. He does not like it. Isaiah 59 too. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you. That he does not hear. So I kind of am in awe here. There's so many different scriptures.
Speaker 1:We're going to talk a lot about the permanence of hell and what separates us from hell, but I want to say I just want to say for any of you self-righteous Christians out there, you churchianity folks, it ain't just LGBTQ or the birdie movement that we're talking about. This is about stealing, this is about lying. This is about knowing you should do the right thing, because there's a verse in there that the Bible that says if you know you do good and you do not, him, it is sin. I can see somebody drowning and you don't jump in and help them. That's a sin. If you see somebody living a self-destructive life, you don't tell them hey, man, listen, I know a better way to be. It may hurt you for a moment, but I know a better way to be. You don't do that, that's it. It may hurt you for a moment, but I know a better way to be. If you don't do that, that's sin. You're going to be in the same hell as the person that you're looking down your nose at. Sorry, sorry, catherine, I kind of got off track there for a second.
Speaker 1:But here's the thing. We don't really go into detail about why God separates himself from sin and believe it or not, it's kind of hard. It just tells us that we've separated, but it doesn't really tell us why. Because God doesn't like evil, god doesn't like sin. That's the reason why he drove Adam and Eve out of the garden. We just see that he does it and he explains hey, because you have done this thing, I will forsake you, I will move away from you.
Speaker 1:Romans 9 and 3 says for I wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ, for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen. According to the flesh, he he's saying if he was cursed, he would be separated from God. Ephesians 2 and 12. Remember that you were, at the time, separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. So absolutely. There are things that will separate us from the love of God, and we're not talking about trial. We're not talking about highs and depths or poverty. We're not talking about that.
Speaker 1:You can be the poorest person in the world and you could be the richest person in the world. You could have the I don't know. Whatever diametric opposite you can think of is in the physical sense. But if you are still living a holy life, you're still living a life where you are not accepting of sin. If you are doing these, you are getting away from enduring repentance and you're trying to live for God. God still accepts you. On the other hand, if you're doing every sinful thing you can think of in the book, god still loves you, but he doesn't love your sin and because you've embraced that sin, it's now a part of you.
Speaker 1:You have to get rid of it. I have to get rid of it. I have to get rid of it. I don't want you to think I'm coming down on you and I don't know your situation, but I have to get rid of the things that I know I shouldn't do, and if I don't, god's going to let me burn in the same hell as him.
Speaker 1:So God is not about hating people. God hates the sin that we do. Because he hates that? Because by us doing the sin that we do, we are actually making a choice. We're choosing to serve the devil, satan, lucifer, whatever you want to call him. I'm not one of those guys where you can't call him Lucifer because he's no longer Lucifer.
Speaker 1:You say, yeah, I know what the Bible says, but for the sake of simplicity, whatever that is the world, your flesh, the devil, whatever, if you're not serving God in your actions and I'm not. And let me just stop right here and say I'm not saying, you know, churching all the time and walking around holier than thou, because that's a problem too. But we have to stop thinking that just because someone tells us that, hey, we should not be doing a thing, it doesn't mean that we hate them. It doesn't mean that God hates them. And it doesn't mean that, as bad as I am at the moment, if I repented and turned around, it doesn't mean that God was like well, you were a sinner back then, so I can't message you. That's not it. That's not it at all. That's not it. That's not it at all. That's not it.
Speaker 1:If I say God, I need help. I gotta get rid of this thing because I realize now that you don't like me. It's a sin. It's a sin in your Bible that you've given us. I've heard it preached and just because wait, hold on, I know I know will you say anything, because it's preached doesn't mean it's biblical. I get it, I get it. I get it, but I've heard it preached, I've heard it spoken about, I've heard it confirmed, I've heard it dealt with and you know what the Holy Ghost in me is telling me that, hey, this might be something I need to pay attention to and you know, it's something that I really have to pray and ask to help me get over.
Speaker 1:And these things happen. And that doesn't mean that God hates me. God just hates the sin that's attached to me. And there's no way of removing that sin unless I make the choice to ask him to remove it. And how does that work? Acts 2.38.
Speaker 1:Repent, in other words, turn away from Ask for forgiveness, just give it up, just stop doing it. It's going to suck for a little while. It's going to suck Especially little while it's going to suck, especially if you go on cold track. It's going to suck, and I'm trying to be as forthcoming as I can, because there is no biblical formula for making it suck less, except by prayer, and eventually it gets cleaned out of your system, repent and be baptized in Jesus Christ, the name of Jesus Christ, and have in the Holy Ghost. That is the formula. That is the only formula that works. Accepting the Lord as your personal Savior ain't gonna work and I'm sorry, I'm sorry to come at you, churchianity, folks again, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's just the beginning. You still have to repent, because you have to believe when you're repenting too. So, yeah, you still got to do that. And you have to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, because by being baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, you're being baptized in his symbolic blood, which actually is the symbolic blood of the sacrifice, and that's a four-episode Bible study right there. We'll talk about that. But no, it's not that the God that we serve is hateful. And yeah, yeah, I know he's done some things where he's demonstrated how much he dislikes sin.
Speaker 1:We talk about Sodom and Gomorrah all the time. You know why? Because those people were unrepentant. We talk about the great flood. You know why those people were unrepentant. We talk about the various genocides that God told Israel to do. You know why? Because those people were unrepentant, and God gives us faith they were.
Speaker 1:Whoever was unrepentant didn't just decide I'm going to steal a candy bar today and I'm not going to repent of it by this afternoon, and then, you know, here comes the judgment. That's not how that works. God always gives people a space to repent. You know what, matter of fact, let me just let me pull that up for you. I can read, I can tell you, but I can show it to you. But I can show it to you. Alright, here we go. Revelation. Revelation 2 and 21. I gave her time to repent. She does not want to turn away from her immorality. Okay, ezekiel 33 and 9. If you want her to repent and they don't repent, they will die in their sins, but you have saved yourself. This is.
Speaker 1:I tell people about this, um, because in in the original, in ezekiel, they talk about how, uh, you're, we're supposed to warn people. Matter of fact, let's go back to that. 33 and 8, I believe it is Now son of seven. 33 and seven. This is going to be our new living translation Now, son of man. I'm making you watchmen for the people of Israel. Therefore, listen to what I say and warn them for me Now, by son of man. He's talking about people. He's not talking about Jesus. He's talking about people. I'm making you a watchman for the people of Israel. Now that watchman in today's day are the pastors who are preaching right and living right. I know I know Serious concept. Very few are, and I know I'm not trying to discredit that.
Speaker 1:And I recognize the argument that you made in the email. If I announce that some wicked people are sure to die and you fail to tell them to change their ways, then they will die in their sins and I will hold you responsible for their deaths. But if you warn them to repent and they don't repent, they will die in their sins. But you have saved yourself. He's telling you, he's giving people warning. He's giving you warning right now.
Speaker 1:If God was such a hateful God, then he would just come by and just strike you down the way it's being portrayed by people who don't know any better. He would just come by a random lightning bolt and just start popping people like mosquitoes on a mosquito lamp. So please understand, it's not about that. I can go on and on about how sin separates us from God. But then, if you go into it, there's only two places to go. God didn't make a purgatory where you can somehow cleanse your sin. I can't remember where I first ran into that doctrine when you can go to some place. Well, you're not quite bad enough for hell, but you're not quite good enough for heaven. So you go to this kind of like spiritual boiling place or cooking place or washing machine place and just get the sins washed off of you and then you can go to heaven.
Speaker 1:The Bible does not say that at all. The Bible only talks about two places heaven and hell. And both are eternal. Why? Because our souls are eternal. There's no way for a soul to die. God made souls eternal. God made angels eternal and, like it or not, the devil and his angels, the devil and his demons, are actually angels, so they are also immortal. But you will be burning with the same devil that lied to Eve, I know, I know, I know. But you will be burning with the same devil that lied to Eve. I know, I know, I know.
Speaker 1:It's a hard thing to kind of wrap your head around and I'm not trying to say again Again God does not hate you, he hates this thing that you're doing. He hates this thing that you're doing. He hates this thing that I'm doing. He hates this thing that whoever is doing a sin, if we are doing a sin, god hates the sin. And if we decide to choose that sin over God, then that's why we end up going to hell, because we have taken that. Now, I know, and it wasn't lost on me, it was a little dig you gave me at the end about how everybody's a sinner. Not exactly, because and this is very difficult to sort of explain as far as and I know we're running out of time, but this is sort of hard to explain, maybe we'll do a part two in this because, as a person who is living for God, we are.
Speaker 1:Our struggle is living above sin. That's not to say that we are living without sin. If that makes sense, because he that sins is of the devil, right Then if we're of the devil, we're going to hell. But if we have an advocate that we can live above sin and we can then it doesn't put us in jeopardy of the other scripture that you tried to quote about. If he that says he's without sin is in danger of hellfire, because that is to say that that means we are not. We are without sinful desire. So and we're going to talk about that we're out of time.
Speaker 1:But listen, catherine, please understand. I'm not coming at you personally. Yeah, I don't know how many times I've said it during this episode. I am not coming after you personally, and the only reason why we've been airing this is because this is a common theme. For the last month or so, I've been getting a lot of questions about this. I hope it means that somebody is looking for a way out.
Speaker 1:You know, we're here. God is here. He's reaching out to you. So no, he doesn. We're here, god is here, he's. He's reaching out to you, um. So no, he doesn't hate you. He loves you. He may send some, some donkey like me, around to tell you about it, but that just means that's the thing. He's reaching out to you. He's trying to save you. I can't save you and I can't condemn you. Only thing I can tell you is that this is the right road to heaven and that's the right road to hell. That's the only thing I can do. I can't judge you.
Speaker 1:Here's another thing that we talked about. It was a big revelation to me. I don't know how. But it was a big revelation to me when Jesus was talking about you know, he's without sin cast the first stone. He was talking about an execution of a judgment. He wasn't talking about the judgment. The judgment was already made.
Speaker 1:The woman was an adulterer. She was an adulterer. They caught her in the very act. This is done and settled. What do you think we should do with her? They're asking for the execution, not the judgment. They're asking for the execution and they were trying to do that to trick him up because of some things he had said before and so and we're going to go through all that, but again, we are out of time. But when he said he's without sin, cast the first stone. He was saying he was without sin. Be the one to execute the judgment.
Speaker 1:We can tell you all day that you are doing a marvelous thing. We can tell you all day that you are doing a terrible thing, and we can judge that. The Bible talks about judging that Us, for us to judge that. The Bible talks about judging that Us, for you know, for us to judge that. However, we cannot and I repeat, we cannot send you to hell. I can't look at you and say I hereby send you to an eternity in hell. All I can say is hey, man, if you don't fix your life, that's where you're going, because that's what the Bible says. I don't have any authority, because if I had authority, I would be able to go into hell and pull people out. So no, there is no, we're not serving a hateful God. I get it. We'll talk more, but right now I got to sign off because we are over time. Love you. Thank you very much, catherine, for the question. Please follow up. Please follow up. I love you.
Speaker 1:This podcast is for you. Anybody that you I don't care. Come after me if you want. I'm just saying I love you all. Thank you all for liking and sharing. Thank you all for sending me comments and stuff like that. Remember, if you have questions, if you want me to address you directly, put your name in the subject line. Love you all. Thank you all. You all have a great day and if you are listening to this podcast, tell somebody else that God loves them. It's probably the only time you'll hear it. So just tell that person that God loves them or somebody loves them. They may reject it if you're bringing it from God. So I get it, but just tell them God loves them. Anyway, all right, love you all. Thank you all. See you all on the next one.