Speaker 2
0:33 Good to have you back, guys. 0:34 This week on the Daily Blade we are focusing on Ecclesiastes 3, verses 1 through 8. 0:38 I'll read it again here A time to break down and a time to build up. 0:42 A time to weep and a time to laugh. 0:45 A time to mourn and a time to dance. 0:47 A time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together. 0:51 A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. 0:54 A time to seek and a time to lose. 0:56 A time to keep and a time to cast away. 0:59 A time to tear and a time to sew. 1:03 A time to keep silence and a time to speak. 1:04 A time to love and a time to sow. 1:05 A time to keep silence and a time to speak. 1:05 A time to love and a time to hate. 1:06 A time for war and a time for peace. 1:09 So, specifically, today we're keying in on the first part of verse 8, a time to love and a time to hate. 1:15 So, as is true with the entire passage that we're looking at in Ecclesiastes, there is a juxtaposition with each line, so the words are different sides of the same coin, I guess. 1:25 So you have weep versus laugh. 1:27 You have mourn versus dance. 1:29 I mean, yes, baptist dancing is allowed. 1:31 You have keep versus cast away, but in my opinion the juxtaposition in the first part of verse eight is the most striking Love versus hate. 1:41 So in our modern moment, everything seemingly is about love. 1:46 So we're constantly told by people that don't believe in God and don't read the Bible that we are to love our neighbor. 1:51 We are simultaneously told that love is love, even if the love being expressed is contrary to God and to nature. 1:59 And if we don't boldly proclaim that is truth, then we are called a hater. 2:03 Right and beyond that. 2:05 The terms love and hate are just kind of thrown around willy-nilly, right. 2:10 I mean we'll say things like dude, I love this pizza, or man, I hate that band, or something like that. 2:17 So in a lot of ways we've lost the appropriate categories for love and hate, because culture has co-opted those words from God and because we use them cheaply. 2:26 Right. 2:27 But for us as Christians, we have to make sure that we have right thinking and right actions as it pertains to love and hate, because in order to be a true follower of God, we must love what God loves and hate what God hates. 2:42 I mean Paul essentially says that in his letter to the church in Rome. 2:46 So in Romans 12, 9, the ESV titles the beginning of the section marks of a true Christian, and the first line is Romans 12, 9,. 2:54 Let love be genuine, abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good. 3:00 So how can love be genuine right? 3:03 The Apostle John tells us in 1 John 4, beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 3:13 Anyone who does not love does not love God, because God is love. 3:18 In this. 3:18 The love of God has made manifest among us, and God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 3:26 In this is love, not that we have loved, but that God. 3:30 He loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. 3:35 And specifically, we are supposed to love. 3:37 And how are we supposed to love and to what level? 3:40 So Jesus tells us, when he's answering the question of the Pharisees' lawyer that we see in Matthew 22, 36 through 40. 3:47 Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? 3:50 And he said to him this is Jesus, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 3:57 This is the great and first commandment, and the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. 4:03 On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. 4:07 So, yes, there is certainly a time to love, but what about hate? 4:12 Again, going back to Romans 12, 9, abhor. 4:16 What is evil? 4:17 Now, abhor isn't a common word anymore, but it just means to regard with horror, or to loathe, or to detest or to hate, To which you might wonder are you sure? 4:28 I mean? 4:28 That sounds really mean, doesn't it? 4:30 Aren't we, as Christians, supposed to just love everybody and everything? 4:35 I mean, if you go back to the Daily Blade week starting on June, the 23rd of this year, I spend an entire week on this subject, but the center point of that week was Psalm 97, specifically verse 10. 4:46 Oh, you who love the Lord hate evil. 4:50 Now, to be clear, this is not personal malice, okay. 4:54 This isn't untethered anger at something or someone. 4:58 This is righteous hate that is generated inside of us because we have aligned our love and our hate to a God loves and hates. 5:08 So if you are aligned with God, you will love your neighbor as yourself and also hate. 5:13 If your neighbor hurts an innocent child, you will love it when you see a young gal remain chaste when a culture tells her to be a whore, and you will hate it when another gal decides to find acceptance in the arms of a new man every night. 5:27 You will love it when someone puts their faith in Christ and you will also hate it when someone is blasphemous towards him. 5:36 There is a time to love and a time to hate. 5:39 We must be ready for both.