Holy Hatred
Favorite Psalms Part 23
Psalm 139:17-24     9-29-2013
Summary: God's thoughts (especially His thoughts about us) are precious to us in relation to how much we see Him as a loving parent who celebrates our little victories. He is our constant companion. We hate the wicked (while maintaining love, as a prayer not an action, for God's honor, not ours, out of loyalty to Christ and rejection of sin, and this includes our own sin). David's approach teaches us how to pray: Focus on the attributes of God that speak to that problem, so that by the time you pray those thoughts about God dominate more than the problem itself.
Introduction
Mastermind
Value
Unique
The Cause of All Good Things
The Standard for Good Thinking
The God Who Reveals His Thoughts
God Who Delights to Think About You
Vastness
The Preciousness of This Depends on Your View of God
Companion
When I Awake
Worthiness To Be honored
Your Troubles and God's Attributes
Tension: Imprecations vs. Enemy Love
Hate the sin, love the sinner?
Higher Ethic?
The Old Testament Ethic Includes Love
The New Testament Ethic Includes Imprecation
1) Alongside Love, Not Instead of Love
2) Prayer, Not Action
3) God’s Honor, Not Ours
4) Loyalty to Christ Over Love for Sin
When They Force You to Choose Sides
Withhold Affirming Love
God Deserves Honor
Evangelism as an Excuse for Dabbling in Sin
5) Hate Your Own Sin, Not Just Your Enemies'
Conclusion
James 1:25 Questions

Psalm 139:1 O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. 2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. 3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. 4 Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord. 5 You hem me in--behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. 7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, behold, you! 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. 11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me," 12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. 13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, 16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. 17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you. 19 If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty men! 20 They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name. 21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you? 22 I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies. 23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Introduction
We have spent the last several weeks studying Psalm 139 and marveling at one amazing attribute of God after another. We left off last week in verse 16, where David says all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. God is the Author and Architect of our lives.
Mastermind
As soon as David mentions God's book, he starts thinking about why God wrote what He wrote in that book. If God wrote about you it means He was thinking about you. So David starts thinking about the thoughts of his Maker.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.
We can add this to the list of our attributes of God in this psalm: God the Mastermind. The God of an infinitely perfect mind generating infinitely perfect thoughts. And if you love God, those thoughts are precious to you.
Value
Precious means uniquely valuable.
Unique
God's thoughts are like precious stones - precious because they are rare. That is not to say they are few in number. Verse 18 says the number of them is vast beyond counting. But they are rare in the sense that there is nothing else like them. Nowhere can you find thoughts that are the quality of God's thoughts. The highest and greatest thoughts from angels around the throne of God in heaven are no doubt magnificent and profound and wonderful, but they are nothing like the thoughts of God. No mind in existence comes up with thoughts like the thoughts of God. That is why we preach God's Word instead of our own opinions and ideas. Our method of ministry here at Agape is to apply the Word of God to the hearts of men and women. Why? Because what people need is not our thoughts, but God's thoughts. The best thing we could ever aspire to is to think God's thoughts after Him.
The Cause of All Good Things
God's thoughts are precious to us because they are unique, and also because it is from the thoughts of God that all good things spring. In order for anything good to ever happen, God has to be thinking it. No good thing can ever happen unless it is going through the mind of God. And if God stops thinking it, it will stop happening. So we love God's thoughts because they are the point of origin of every good thing.
The Standard for Good Thinking 
Thirdly, we love God's thoughts because they are the standard for perfection in thinking. Some thoughts are better than other thoughts, right? Aren't true ones better than false ones? Aren't loving thoughts better than selfish thoughts? Clear thoughts better than convoluted thoughts? Coherent thoughts better than irrational thoughts? Logically sound thoughts better than self-contradictory thoughts? Pure thoughts better that vile thoughts? Important, high thoughts better than trivial, useless thoughts? In every category, the measure of what defines the best possible thoughts are the thoughts of God. The best possible way of thinking about something is whatever way God thinks about it.
If you set out to research the best possible way something could happen - try that method by creating the world and letting the whole life span of human history play out from beginning to end with that system - then you try another option and do the same thing, and you keep doing that until you have tried every possible idea that could be conceived. Then one by one you eliminated every option that is not as good as some other option, and by the time you exhausted that process so that every single option was eliminated except for the absolute best, you would find that that was the exact method God gave. The best way to design trees, the best possible way for electricity to function, the best way for God to reveal Himself, the best way to save lost sinners - you name it. If you could do a comprehensive study and eliminate every possibility that is not as good as some other possibility, you would end up with the exact way God did it, because all His thoughts are best.
The God Who Reveals His Thoughts
And these marvelous, perfect thoughts of our Maker are revealed to us. That is the next attribute of God we see - the self-revealing God. We might naturally think that the most inaccessible thing in existence would be the thoughts of God. I cannot even read your mind. You are finite, you are human, just like me. I can see you and hear you and study you with scientific investigation and still - zero ability to read your mind. I cannot even read the thoughts of a lower creature, like a dog or cat. The idea that I could ever have even the slightest notion of what is going through the mind of God - who is infinite, and who is transcendent above the entire creation, and who is invisible and unfathomable - what could be more farfetched than to imagine I could ever have the slightest ability to know what thoughts are in His mind? And yet I can, because He has revealed them. 

Psalm 104:2 He wraps himself in light as with a garment

God has clothed Himself in the very means by which perception takes place—light. If light itself is His garment, there is no excuse for not seeing Him—other than closed eyes. Not only are we deeply and thoroughly known by God, He allows Himself to be deeply and thoroughly known by us!
What a privilege we have, to be involved with the workings inside the awesome mind of God! To receive into our feeble minds the actual thoughts of God! You would think they would be way too high and holy to ever tread upon the unholy ground of my mind. But in spite of my unworthiness, I can have God's priceless, undefiled, holy thoughts actually enter into my innermost being and be joined together with my own thoughts – to actually become my own thoughts! God save us from contaminating those holy thoughts or perverting them by bending them to fit our own ideas. Let it work in the other direction - let our bent, messed up thoughts be corrected and straightened out by His perfect thoughts.
God Who Delights to Think About You
So the ability to simply know what God's thoughts are is precious beyond words. But even more precious to us is the fact that God has thoughts about us! Did you know that God thinks about you specifically? Spurgeon said he once knew a man who constantly boasted that King George IV once spoke to him. (All he did was tell the guy to get out of the street, but he did talk to him.) Such a feather in this guy's cap to have been noticed, momentarily, by King George IV. But God thinks about you!
What is the significance of that? When we tell a person, "You'll be in my thoughts," we want them to be comforted by that. It is a way of saying, "I care about you," because we think about the things that matter to us. So the fact that God would have thoughts about me shows that I am in His heart. He cares. And how much does He care?
Vastness
17 How precious to me are your thoughts O God, how vast the sum of them! Were I to count them they would outnumber the grains of sand.
It is amazing that God would have any thoughts of me at all, much less thoughts more numerous than the grains of sand about me. God thinks of me more than I think of me - which is really saying something. All night while you sleep, and you are not even capable of thinking about your own wellbeing, God is.
In between the thoughts you have about God, in that interval of time when you had zero thoughts of Him, God had countless millions of thoughts about you. God is infinite, so we will never know all His thoughts. He has revealed enough of the most important ones in the Bible to keep us busy throughout this life. And in the next life, every day, for all eternity you will be learning new, wonderful, amazing things about God, and after 20 million years of that learning, you will learn something so new to you and so marvelous that it will almost seem that prior to that you barely knew God at all. 
Compare all this to our cultures ridiculous conception of an impersonal God. They think they have a high view of God, but in reality it is an incredibly low view. Their god can't even think! Their god is not even capable of thought. What a horrible thing it would be if that were true! What a cold, dead world it would be if everything were mere impersonal machinery. And what an utterly useless god that would be.
But the reality is God can think, and He thinks about you - which is a great truth because we all love being remembered and thought of. It is a terrible feeling when it seems like you are just forgotten and no one cares what is happening in your life. People get so encouraged when you send them a note or a prayer you have prayed for them. But if it is good to be remembered by another human being, what an incredible thing it is to be remembered and thought about by God!
The Preciousness of This Depends on Your View of God
For some people this is not encouraging at all, because of their view of God. They think He is a hard master who is impossible to please so they think all of God's thoughts about them must be thoughts of disapproval or disgust or anger. They can not imagine God thinking about them and enjoying those thoughts at all. They don't realize that the eyes of love look past inadequacies and take delight in what is good - like the way a parent looks at a child. When your little baby takes his very first steps, what is your reaction?
"Brother - what a lame attempt. Wobbly, slow, directionless, three steps then fell down - ended in total failure. I think I'll give him a spanking."
No! Your response is nothing like that. You are taking videos and posting them online and you call your spouse and you are all excited. That is why kids love being watched by their parents - because only their parents really appreciate their little victories. I remember when I was in elementary school - at recess we would all go out and play a giant game of soccer in a big parking lot. All the grades would join in, and we would have probably 50 or 60 kids out there playing soccer, with 20 or 30 balls going all at once. And I remember I thought I was so good at it because I could always score a goal. One day my mom was walking past the school down to the grocery store, and I saw her walking past and yelled through the chain link fence, "Hey Mom, watch this! I'm going to score a goal!" So she stopped and watched while I started at one end and made my way through huge numbers of the opposition and finally scored. Did I end up scoring with the same ball I started out with? No. Did anyone on the other side actually play any defense? Was it the most impressive athletic display my mom had ever witnessed? No. But she was happy for me, and it was so pleasurable to me to have her watch and see me score that goal that it has stayed in my memory all these years (which is amazing because I remember almost nothing from that age). Kids love to be watched by a parent who is genuinely happy about their little, kid-sized victories. And God made parents that way for a reason - to teach us what He is like toward us. Learn to love being watched and thought about and remembered by a God who delights in your little creature-sized victories. He loves you, so when He thinks about you they are enjoyable thoughts!
Companion
So we see God as the Mastermind, we see the self-revealing God, we see the God who enjoys thinking about His children. What else? How about God our constant Companion? 
When I Awake
18 ...When I awake I am still with You. 
Have you ever opened your eyes after being asleep, only to see your spouse smiling at you? In a moment of affection they were just enjoying watching you sleep. You really have to love someone a lot to enjoy watching them sleep. But no matter how much you love someone, you are not going to watch them sleep all night long. So most of the time when you wake up, no one is paying attention to you. You are all alone - humanly speaking. But the reality is, God is always right there, attending to you the moment you wake up. As His children we always wake up in His presence.
The only question is, am I aware of it? A great goal to have in life is to get to the point where you wake up every morning enjoying God's presence. So many times we are awakened in the morning battling sin right off the bat. It is like Sampson waking up with the Philistines already upon him and having to instantly fight the moment he woke up – that is how it is for us with our enemy. Thoughts of worry, lust, pride, anger, folly, trivia… You are barely awake and the enemy is all over you. Sometimes the fiercest spiritual battles take place in our first waking moments in the day. What a comfort to know God is there. If we could only train our hearts to look to Him and His glory as our first impulse upon waking up.
Worthiness To Be honored
Your Troubles and God's Attributes
19 If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty men! 20 They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name. 21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD, and abhor those who rise up against you? 22 I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.
What is that about? Why does David suddenly start talking about the wicked? Evidently, this is what was on David's mind. The reason it does not come up until verse 19 is because of the way David prayed. For a man like David, if he has a problem (like evil men mistreating him), that would create anxiety and stress, and His response to anxiety and stress was to turn his attention to whatever attributes of God that would be of great comfort in this kind of situation. So when he prays, those thoughts about God are the thoughts that dominate. When you pray about a problem, if most of your prayer is about the problem and not about what God is like, you are probably not thinking the right way.
Do you think maybe these wicked people might have been accusing David falsely and unfairly? If you think about it, any time someone is against you, whether they verbalize it or not they are accusing you of being a bad person in some way. If they don't think something is wrong with you, why would they be so against you? So the fact that these bloodthirsty men are so against David means they think something is wrong with David. And when people think there is something wrong with you, the first, kneejerk reaction should be to turn toward God and His assessment of you.
"God, You have searched me. You know me. You can see all my motives and attitudes and thoughts. When I'm being opposed or falsely accused, You know the truth about me."
So it is really not any big shock to read a prayer that starts with 18 verses about how God knows David's heart before saying anything about the problem at hand.
Isn't that how Jesus taught us to pray? In the Lord's Prayer, didn't Jesus teach us to start out thinking about God as our Father, and that He reigns above in heaven? And then to pray about the hallowing and honoring of His name? And then to focus on His kingdom and His will? And only after all that do we bring up our needs?
Tension: Imprecations vs. Enemy Love
So it is not really a problem that David suddenly starts talking about his enemies. The much more difficult question has to do with what David actually says about them. He hates them and asks God to kill them. If you want the seminary word for this, it is called an imprecatory prayer - when you ask God to punish someone. It happens about ten times in the Psalms. And the question is, how can we possibly reconcile that with what Jesus said?
Luke 6:27 Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. ... 35 love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.
How do you reconcile that with “I have nothing but hatred for them, God - kill them!”?
Hate the sin, love the sinner?
Some people say, "Oh, that's easy - hate the sin; love the sinner."
That sounds good, but it does not match what the Bible actually says. 
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you? 22 I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies. 
He is not distinguishing between the sin and the person. He is saying he hates those people.
Higher Ethic?
Some others have suggested that this is simply an example of the New Testament teaching a higher ethic than the Old Testament; that Jesus taught us a better way that advanced beyond the vengeful Old Testament ethic. But that does not work either. Why would God teach the people a substandard ethic in the Old Testament?
The Old Testament Ethic Includes Love
The Old Testament ethic is love God with all your being and love your neighbor as yourself. There is no ethic higher than that. Even love for enemies is clearly taught in the Old Testament.
Proverbs 25:21 If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.
Exodus 23:4 If you come across your enemy's ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to take it back to him. 5 If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help him with it.
And not only were Old Testament saints required to show kindness to their enemies, they were not even allowed to feel glad when their enemy had trouble.
Proverbs 24:17 Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice, 18 or the LORD will see and disapprove
Job 31:29 If I have rejoiced at my enemy's misfortune or gloated over the trouble that came to him … 40 then let briers come up instead of wheat and weeds instead of barley. 
The New Testament Ethic Includes Imprecation 
So the idea of loving one's enemies is not foreign to the Old Testament, nor is the idea of praying for God's judgment on the wicked foreign to the New Testament.
1 Corinthians 16:22 If anyone does not love the Lord-- a curse be on him.
One of the imprecatory psalms is Ps.69, and Paul quotes it in…
Romans 11:9 May their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them.
Thessalonians 1:6 God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you 
2 Timothy 4:14 Alexander the metalworker did me a great deal of harm. The Lord will repay him for what he has done.
In Revelation 6:10 the martyrs call out in a loud voice, "How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?" So how do we solve this problem? If the old "hate the sin, love the sinner" thing does not work, and it is not an Old Testament vs. New Testament issue, how do we harmonize the command to love our enemies with passages like verses 19-22? It is not an easy issue, and I don't know that I can fully resolve the difficulty, but I will suggest five principles that can help us make sure we stay inside the boundaries of what Scripture teaches in our effort to reconcile these ideas.
1) Alongside Love, Not Instead of Love
Principle #1 is that these curses on God's enemies are intended to exist alongside of love, rather than replacing love. David loved the very people that he called these curses down on.
Psalm 35:12 They repay me evil for good and leave my soul forlorn. 13 Yet when they were ill, I put on sackcloth and humbled myself with fasting. When my prayers returned to me unanswered, 14 I went about mourning as though for my friend or brother. I bowed my head in grief as though weeping for my mother.
David did good to them, they repaid him with evil. Then they got sick and David begged God to heal them and even fasted. And when God would not do it, David mourned. Few people have ever loved their enemies like David. Just read about his love for Saul while Saul was trying to kill him.
Is it possible to love someone and hate them at the same time? Yes. In John 3:16 it says God so loved the world that He gave His Son to die for them. But Psalm 5 says God hates and abhors wicked men. So principle #1 when it comes to praying for judgment is to remember that it is not a replacement for love. Kindness continues. 
2) Prayer, Not Action 
Okay, so with that background let's take a look at the text itself and see what it teaches us. The requests are in verse 19.
19 If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty men! 
Those are David's two desires - that God kill them and that they get away from David. Now let me ask you this - did David know how to use a sword? Yes. Any time he wanted he could just go out and kill 100 Philistines. But what is he doing here? Is there a sword in his hand? No. What is in his hand? A pen. And what is he writing? A prayer. This is between David and God. David is not doing anything or even saying anything to these people. He is talking to God about how he feels.
That is the second key principle for understanding the imprecatory prayers - they are prayers, not actions. Our actions toward our enemies are to be actions of kindness. Never revenge. 
Romans 12:19 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord.
That is exactly what David is doing here. Instead of taking revenge himself, he is leaving it up to God. There is a place for asking God to bring justice on wicked men. We do not dictate the timing - we trust God for that. But it is a wonderful truth that our King will ultimately win this war with evil, and will bring perfect justice, and defeat all His enemies decisively, and someday vindicate His name and His people, make all wrongs right, and eliminate all evil. And desiring that and praying for that is a good thing to do. It is a good thing to hate evil and pray for it to be defeated.
3) God’s Honor, Not Ours 
So the first principle: This is alongside of love, not instead of love. The second principle: This is a prayer, not an action. The third principle is in verse 20, where David tells us his reason why he is so upset.
20 They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name. 
That is the reason behind all this. These people may have done all kinds of bad things to David, but that is not what he was upset about. What made him so upset was that they dishonored God. Evil intent refers to sinister plotting. They were intentional about their blasphemy - planned it out. If you hurt David, abuse David, hate David, even try to kill David - he can overlook that personally. But hating God is a different story.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD, and abhor those who rise up against you? 22 I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.
So the third principle is that this is all about the name and reputation of God - not a personal offense. This is not the hatred of personal animosity. It is the hatred of moral repugnance.
My first thought toward a wicked person should be the desire and prayer for his salvation. But if he ultimately refuses to repent and remains an enemy of God, then God's honor and justice require that he be punished for his sin. So to the degree a person insists on identifying himself with his sin, to that degree we must oppose him. If he will allow me to hate the sin and love the sinner, great, but if he insists on clinging to that sin and identifying himself by that sin, then I have to oppose him as a person.
4) Loyalty to Christ Over Love for Sin  
Ecclesiastes 3:8 [there is] a time to love and a time to hate
When is the time for hate? It is when they force you to choose between them and God.
When They Force You to Choose Sides
When I meet an unbeliever, my attitude should be this: If you will let me love you without forsaking Christ, I will love you. And the vast majority of unbelievers will be more than happy to do that. But once in a while you get someone so hardened in their hatred of God, and so militant in their rejection of Christ, that they force the issue. In order to befriend them you have to join in with their sin and blasphemy. So they force you to choose. And at that point it becomes an issue of loyalty.
Withhold Affirming Love
When you think about the different varieties of love - there is a kind of love that affirms what the person stands for. You love that person because you love what he is all about. Imagine there is a guy you have never met - but you hear from everybody that he loves the Lord, he loves the Scriptures, and everything you hear about him makes you think, "That is my kind of guy." You have never actually met him, but you have an affinity with him because you love what he is all about. Suppose you hear about a guy who is a big drinker, big partier, foul mouth, sleeps around, atheist, hates Christianity, mocks Jesus whenever he gets a chance - if you hear about him and there is an immediate attraction to him; you think, "That's my kind of guy" - that would say something about your heart, wouldn't it? If that description has no impact on your heart, that also says something about you too. But if you are repulsed by that, if you hear that and immediately you have a strong aversion to it in your heart, that is a good thing. That means your affections are like God's affections. You prefer loyalty to Christ over love for that kind of life.
We dishonor and displease God when we are attracted to things He hates. Have you ever had someone you really love be good friends with someone you can't stand? That hurts, doesn't it?
There are some people who think they hate God but in reality they are only rejecting a false concept of God. We feel sorry for people like that because of their ignorance. But there are some people who, the more you tell them what God is really like, the more they hate it. That should repulse us. It should anger us. We should love God so deeply and so profoundly and with such zeal that those who hate Him are very much at odds with us.
Psalm 101:4 Men of perverse heart shall be far from me; I will have nothing to do with evil.
"But if we have nothing to do with wicked men, how will we reach them with the gospel?"
Where do you draw the line when it comes to friendship with unbelievers? The rule of thumb is this: If you are having more influence on them then they are having on you, keep that friendship going. But if it is the other way around, cut it off. And if you find in your heart an attraction to their sin, cut it off. In fact, if you even find a lack of distress in your heart over their sin, that is a major red flag.
God Deserves Honor
What is the attribute of God that we see in verses19-22? It is His worthiness to be honored. That is what drives the imprecatory psalms. God is worthy to be honored. If it is not upsetting to us when people hate God or mock God or blaspheme God, that is a lack of zeal for God. So to the degree that they insist on identifying themselves with their sin, we must oppose them.
Psalm 26:5 I abhor the assembly of evildoers and refuse to sit with the wicked.
Evangelism as an Excuse for Dabbling in Sin
There are people who fall into all kinds of sin in the name of reaching out to the lost. They want to become all things to all men, and they want to reach out to the people in the bars and ... well, mainly the bars. So they hang out there, and the reality is, they are drawn to that culture. By no means am I saying this is always the case. There are people who do evangelism in bars who have zero attraction to the sinful lifestyle in those places. And I praise God for people like that. But I know there are others who use reaching the lost as an excuse to party and drink and dabble around in forbidden areas that their heart secretly desires. And so they are not outraged by those people’s sin. That is disloyalty to Christ. 

Before passing judgment on David here for being unloving, ask yourself this: How would you feel if someone kidnapped your five year old daughter and tortured her for several years? I am not asking what you would do - just how you would feel. (Remember, David does not do anything in verses 19-22. It is only a description of how he feels.) How would you feel about someone who did that to someone you dearly loved? Do you think you might be a little worked up, or would you just be nonchalant about it? If you caught up to the guy and rescued your child, would you turn to the guy and say, "We all make mistakes. Don't worry about it. Let's just let bygones be bygones"? If you had that response, do you think your daughter might wonder how much you really love her?
Let me ask you this - who do you love more, your daughter or God? Who is more important? Who is more worthy of honor and good treatment? Who is more worthy of loyalty?
The way it affects us when someone opposes God is a matter of allegiance and loyalty. If a bunch of people hate you, mock you, fight against you, try to destroy your work, lie about you - and then I buddy up with those people, how can I claim to be your friend? Isn't it going to hurt you every time you see my attraction to those people? And that is a much lesser thing, because those people who hate you might actually have some legitimate gripes against you, right? But no one has any legitimate gripe against God.
5) Hate Your Own Sin, Not Just Your Enemies'
One last principle for understanding these kinds of psalms. If you are going to ask God to bring judgment on the wicked, and you are going to have righteous anger at the sinners for dishonoring God, you had better have the same hatred for sin in your own heart, right?
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. 
If I get worked up about sin in other people but I don’t get very worked up about sin in my own heart, that shows that my zeal for God and loyalty to Him is a sham. There is a lot to be said about this last point, so I would like to devote a full sermon next time to these last two verses, but for now, just add this to the list of principles for understanding righteous anger. If all our so-called righteous anger is directed toward the sins of those who hurt us, but not toward our own sin, it is selfish anger, not righteous anger. Hatred of evil must always begin with my own heart. So we run to the Great Physician for a heart exam every day, and ask Him to do a full scan to reveal to us any hidden sin, so we can declare war on that sin in our lives.
Conclusion
This God we worship - what is He like? If you are one of His children...
•	He is interested in every detail of your life - even more than you are.
•	He is attentive to you at all times.
•	He is omniscient about you.
•	He is personal, laying His hand on your shoulder.
•	He is unfathomable.
•	His favorable presence is always available, no matter where you go.
•	He is self-sufficient - His own supply of everything and in need of nothing.
•	He is the glorious Craftsman who made you in the womb.
•	He is the master Architect of each one of your days.
•	He is worthy of fear and awe and wonder.
•	He is the Mastermind with infinite, glorious, unique, and precious thoughts.
•	He is like a loving parent, who delights to think about you and celebrates your little creature-sized victories. 
•	He is the self-revealing God, who stoops to make Himself known to us.
•	He is our constant companion, right there with us every time we wake up.
•	He is a just God, who will defeat all His enemies, win the war decisively, and eliminate all evil.
•	He is therefore worthy of honor and loyalty.
•	He is the great Physician who examines our hearts, and whose scrutiny is a delight to us.

Benediction: 1 Corinthians 16:22-24 If anyone does not love the Lord-- a curse be on him. Come, O Lord! (Maranatha) 23 The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. 24 My love to all of you in Christ Jesus. Amen.

James 1:25 Questions
1)	How does it strike you when you hear that God is thinking about you? Does He seem to you more like a happy parent who delights in your little victories, or a hard master, who is next to impossible to please?
2)	We all have pockets of spiritual blindness that make it hard for us to see the evil in certain sins. Which of the things God hates do you find it difficult to hate? (The Bible says they are evil, but to you they just don't seem that bad.)
3)	Is there any relationship in your life where the unbeliever is influencing you in the direction of the world? What steps do you think God would have you take in that relationship?