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Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the Spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

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Alright, guys, welcome back to a new week of the Daily Blade. I'm just so pumped that you guys are here and listening to this. Joby and I are very, very thankful for all of you. This week we're digging into one of my favorite psalms and that's Psalm 97. So we don't have a definitive author of this psalm, but most scholars tend to believe that this is another psalm of David because it kind of meets some of those same Davidic standards and the things that he said in other psalms. But Psalm 97 is one of the enthronement psalms, so this includes Psalms 93 through 99.

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So thematically, these psalms celebrate the reign of the Lord as king. So basically, all throughout this group of psalms we see a heavy emphasis on God's sovereignty, his power, his justice, his majesty, so on and so forth. So let's go ahead and read Psalm 97 in its entirety, and I'll be reading it in the English Standard Version. So the name of it is the Lord Reigns. The Lord Reigns. Let the earth rejoice, let the many coastlines be glad. Clouds and thick darkness are all around him. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. Fire goes before him and burns up his adversaries all around. His lightings light up the world. The earth sees and trembles, the mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth, the heavens proclaim his righteousness and all the peoples see his glory. All worshipers of images are put to shame, who make their boasts in worthless idols. Worship him all you, gods. Zion hears and is glad, and the daughters of Judah rejoice because of your judgments, o Lord. For you, o Lord, are most high over all the earth. You are exalted far above all, gods, o, you who love the Lord, hate evil. He preserves the lives of his saints. He delivers them from the hand of the wicked Light is sown for the righteous and joy for the upright in heart. Rejoice in the Lord, o you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name. So, guys, there are many things that we can take from this particular psalm.

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The psalm itself actually breaks down into three main sections. You probably started to notice that a little bit, but section one is verses one through six, so these focus on the glory of God that is displayed through his creation. Then section two is verses seven through nine, and these focus on the exaltation of God over false idols. And then the last section, section three, is verses 10 through 12. And these focus on people rejoicing and trusting in the Lord. So it's a very intense and interesting Psalm Most of them are, and there's a lot we can discuss, but this week I want us to focus in like super duper focus in on verse 10 of Psalm 97.

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And I'll read it again here oh you who love the Lord, hate evil. He preserves the lives of his saints, he delivers them from the hand of the wicked. Oh you who love the Lord, hate evil. So this is an imperative in this Psalm. Okay, so it's an imperative that is addressed directly to those that consider themselves to be faithful followers of God. So what is the imperative? That followers of God should align morally with the character and nature of God.

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So in our current cultural moment, many churches and in some cases entire denominations have accepted the role as being downstream of culture and they no longer see the word of God as authoritative. So they see the Bible and Jobie's pointed this out before specifically the words of Christ, as a stumbling block for evangelism. So they see it as hurting their church initiatives and programs and outreach efforts. And beyond that, verse 10 reveals to us that, in order to truly love God, that does not simply stop in the realm of the emotional right. It's not just worship songs and falling down the aisles. Right, loving God requires. It demands a response of obedience and holiness.

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And in the context of Psalm 97, we are called to hate evil. So wait, you're saying that God is telling us to hate. I thought hating was bad. You see, this is the problem with people that read individual verses of the Bible without considering the context of the entire Bible. But to the person posing a question like that I would emphatically answer yes, we are for sure called to hate, but hate what Evil, which is what God hates. So we see this throughout Scripture.

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Guys, there's another psalm, psalm 5, verses 4 and 5. For you are not a God who delights in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all evildoers. In Proverbs 8, 13, the fear of the Lord is hatred of evil, pride and arrogance in the way of evil and perverted speech I hate. And then in Romans 12, 9, the Apostle Paul says this let love be genuine, abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good. So the problem for most Christians, regardless of what the atheistic culture says, is not that we hate too much, it's that we don't hate nearly enough. We simply do not hate evil enough, and that's what we're going to focus on this week. So, for each of the days of the rest of this week, I'm going to talk about something that we, as Christians, don't hate enough. Come back tomorrow.

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Thank you for listening to today's episode Before you go. If you want to help equip other men for the fight, share this podcast around and leave us a five-star rating and review. Stay sharp.