Should Christians hate God’s enemies, and pray for their destruction?

Oh God, break the teeth in their mouths. May their children be fatherless and their wives, widows. Now, do I condone abortion? Dear God, no. But this guy, he's reading all of these passages about death and destruction to God's enemies. Am I against that? Let's look at what Jesus has to say. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Bless those who persecute you and do not curse them. I obviously agree with all the verses he quoted. God really will judge the wicked. So when we pray these prayers, again, as I said earlier, we are praying for God to do what he has said he would do. We need to be equipped with the Psalms, with to pray and sing these. Our offensive weapon in this battle, in this spiritual war that we are in, is the sword of the Spirit. And we need to be able to wield it. If we're not praying that God would destroy the abortionists, destroy the abortion clinics, if we're not praying that God would destroy the Sodomites, we should not be surprised if the Sodomites and the abortionists continue to have the upper hand to culture and continue on in their wickedness and all kinds of destructive ways. [Music] Hello and welcome to the Reformation Red Pill Podcast. I am your host Joshua Hames and as you have at this point, guessed already. And if you haven't then I don't know where you've been. We have a special episode. I only bring you special episodes. Today I have the distinct privilege and honor of bringing on the one and only pastor, Rich Loss. I'm going to play his theme music here because it's very important. He just fits your style really well. [Laughter] I wanted to give a quick intro. Who are you? What do you do and how can people find you in your work pastor? I'm feeling a little underdressed with you today. I just came in from the driveway dental car work. I've never seen you that a lot of other things. I am wrapping for 1819 news. So if you're listening to this in Alabama, definitely check out 1819 news. Yeah, so I'm on X as Vick or 1973. TrinityPrezBham.com is our website. You can get to the pastor's page there where I've got my blog and a bunch of essays and all kinds of stuff. So good to be with you Joshua. It's good to have you back as always. It's always wonderful to have pastor Rich Loss on the program. It's a treat every time. You're one of my most requested guests. So I feel like it's just been too long. I had to get you back on here. And we're getting you back on for you to kind of play your greatest hits. You we've talked through the imprecatory Psalms before. But today we're going to do it again, but we're going to be reacting and responding to a video by a man named David Ladding, young man who is kind of gained a following on social media. Really great guy. I've spoken with him and hoping to have him on the podcast soon. And our big question that we're hoping to answer today is should Christians hate evil doers? Should Christians hate evil doers and pray for their destruction? So how do we think about these passages where David is saying how I hate those who hate you, oh God. And we have so many examples of imprecatory Psalms throughout the scriptures. And so I want to bring you in to kind of respond to that and walk us through that because we live in, and we live in a time where I think Christians need to be prepared and equipped to utilize the entirety of the sort of the spirit, the word of God. And that very much includes imprecatory Psalms. So before we jump into responding and reacting to the video of David Ladding, that he made and he was making it criticizing me for reading imprecatory Psalms over God's enemies. And he makes his case there. So we'll jump into that here in a second. But before we do Pastor Rich, could you walk us through? First of all, what are the imprecatory Psalms? The imprecatory Psalms are those Psalms where the prayer is asking God to bring judgment on God's enemies. So several important things to understand about this one. It's not just the Psalmist praying out of a desire for personal vengeance or revenge. It's also clear from the imprecatory Psalms that the Psalmist is not taking vengeance into his own hands. And that's what he's calling on God to do it. The prayer of these prayers, the prayer of these Psalms recognizes that there is great evil and injustice in the world. Sometimes we're in a position where we can do something about that. Like if you're a civil magistrate. But sometimes we're in a position where we can't do something about it. And so what do we do? We ask God to do something about it. The imprecatory Psalms are found all over the Bible. Imprecation is found all over the Bible. This is not just an Old Testament thing. You can't say, you can't do the dispensationalist thing and say, well, that was the Old Covenant. This is the new. And they're very different. They're in separate, erotic compartments. That won't do. Because we've, first of all, because the Bible itself tells one story and gives us when theology is straight through. But also because in the New Testament itself, you find implications. Jesus pronouncing, whoa, on the Pharisees. You've got Paul anathematizing those who preach another gospel. Even in the Lord's prayer, I would say you have. And what is implicitly an imprecatory prayer when we pray thy kingdom come. Well, if Christ's kingdom or God's kingdom is going to come, that means Satan's kingdom has to go because these kingdoms are a lot in battle with each other. So as the kingdom of Christ gains the victory, that means the kingdom of Satan is being defeated and driven out. The light's driving out the darkness. So this is something that you find throughout the scripture. And we know that God's going to bring judgment on the wicked. There are temporal judgments that fall upon the wicked. That's clear from scripture. Of course, there's also eternal judgment. So in a sense, when we're praying these Psalms, we are asking God to do what he has said he will do. We're not asking God to do something he hasn't said that he will do. We're asking God to follow through on what he has said in his word about how he's going to deal with the wicked. That's great. That's a good starting place that provides the framework for us to even understand. Because I can understand it's very jarring for many modern evangelicals to hear the imprecatory Psalms read and actually prayed. They read them and I think we tend to just a lot of the modern squishy evangelical Christianity just kind of skips over the imprecatory Psalms. Oh, that's the old testament. That's the old testament. Things are different now kind of situation. But as we will get into in the episode, that is not the case. So a couple more things about that really quickly. One is our churches should be singing Psalms. So if you're singing Psalms, you're going to be singing imprecations from time to time. This is one reason why Psalms are so important because most non-inspired hymns that we sing, they're very few of them that actually pronounce judgment on the wicked. But when we pray God's own prayers, when we sing the the the song book, the hymn book that he gave to us, we find ourselves doing this. So that's that's really important. And I would also say one reason why this is so jarring to evangelicalism or evangelicals is because we are we have failed to be whole Bible Christians. And you know, there are people who kind of joke and say, you know, the 11th commandment trumps them all, thou shalt be nice. Okay, or thou shalt be win some and the impregnatory Psalms don't come off as nice or win some, but that's precisely why we need them because it's easy for us to replace God's law with our own sentimentality, our own emotionalism, our own definition of what love is or what niceness is, which is often how we define love is just being nice. And that's clearly not the difficult definition of love. So they challenge us, I think in a lot of really healthy ways. And my son wakes up in the morning at three years old, he wakes up singing Psalms. It is so beautiful. You know, there's that is our song book and to your point, if we are actually singing through the Psalms, then we will we will be singing, we will be singing scripture always and writing it on our hearts, but even singing through things that we might otherwise avoid, right. So we can avoid the kind of emotionalism, the sentimentality that comes with just singing, whatever's popular to the modern cultural zeitgeist, you know, whatever's popular in the CCM movement at the time, we actually go to there's there, there are no impregnatory songs in the CCM catalog. I'm waiting for Beth all to come out with their their implications on that would be, that would be something, but let's pull up this video. So just to give you guys a little bit of context. I had just made a quick short form video on Instagram. And let me pull this up here for us. So I made a short Instagram video where we had discovered last month. I don't know if you, if you caught this on on the news or on X or anything. It was either a month or two ago that it came out that Canada is going to be is potentially pursuing euthanizing newborn babies, you know, so essentially performing post birth abortions is basically what they're doing or trying to do, which isn't surprising because, you know, that's that's where that's where the culture of death. Leftism that is the culture of death. That's where it leads, right? All those who hate me love death. That's right as we read in progress. That's exactly right. It is a culture of death. And so, and so I was just, I got that news and then I posted the news story and then read some of the spiciest bits of the impregnatory songs. And so I'm going to play that video for you guys right now. And we We can kind of talk about it from there, 'cause then I wanna talk about his response. So this is me just reading the impregnatory Psalms here, so let me pull that up. - Oh God, break the teeth in their mouths. Let them become as dumb on the ground. Let burning coals fall upon them. Let them be cast into fire, into myri pits. No more to rise, Lord of the Lord. - All right. - So that was me just laying out some of the spicy impregnatory Psalms against those who would seek to sacrifice children against the impregnatory Psalms against the child sacrifice. Now, this is David Ladding. I wanna reinforce like, hey, I like this guy. He's a really good kid. He's not a kid. He's a guy. He's a man. He's like 22 or something like that. And hopefully he's coming on the podcast soon. But this is his criticism of my reading of the impregnatory Psalms against God's enemies. Dear God, no. Am I against that? Matthew 5, 44. - And Rich, you just jump in here whenever you like. - But I say to you, love your enemies. Let's look at Paul, Romans 12, verse 14. Verse 20, "If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink." 1 Peter 3, 9. You don't repaint evil for evil and reviling for reviling. But on the contrary, bless. Titus chapter 3, verse 3 through 5. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient and led astray, passing our days in malice and in envy. But when the goodness and loving kindness of our Savior appeared, he saved us. Typically speaking, we are not morally superior to those who are participating in, again, horrendous acts. - Now, I actually want to stop it there to just examine even that claim right there that we are not morally superior to those who are participating in these horrendous acts. I think that that's probably, I think we can say that that's not true. I think that in one sense, we are not morally superior in that we are all separated from God by way of our sin. Like our sin separates us from God. But I believe that, well, the law of God makes it very clear that there are degrees of evil, right? And so the person who is molesting children, I would say, is morally inferior to even like the non-Christian kind of conservative dad who tries hard to do good, but he still falls into this center of that sin. I would say that even there, there are degrees of evil, there are degrees to moral inferiority and superiority. What would you say to that pastor Rich? - Yeah, I would agree with you. I think this is falling into the trap that all sins are equal and so therefore all sinners are equal. And that's simply not the way the Bible describes it. The distinction to be made here is this, every sin even the smallest deserves God's wrath and curse. - Right. - So in the sense we can say, yes, we are all worthy of condemnation, no question. But that does not mean that all sins are equal to one another. It does not mean that all sinners are equally sinful. And the Bible clearly gives us a gradation, it talks about greater and lesser sins, greater and lesser commandments. So there is a fallacy involved in that last little bit. He said, do you wanna play the rest of it or do you want me to go ahead and start responding? - No, no, no, no, no, no, let's go ahead and play the rest of it. That would be great here. - We needed redemption. Me weeding these verses, it's not weakness, it's maintenance, it's the way of Christ. Strengths under control rooted in mercy. Let me tell you, it is not easy. Okay, if it's not easy to see what is happening to these children, it's not easy to see what's going on in the world. It's not easy, it's not easy. And sometimes I'm angry that I have to choose kindness and love and to feed the enemy. That's the way of Jesus and that's what he did for me. We have God. So we have to pray. We have to pray for those who are doing evil things. So do that with me now. Dear Lord, let pray for those who are doing evil and who are causing such pain to your innocent children. God, I pray for repentance over their hearts and over their minds and over their soul. God, I pray that you would protect them from the enemy. Lord, that they would no longer side with that great dragon. But in your mighty name, it would come to repentance, it would come to see you, that their force, their might, their power would be, would be for the kingdom of God. In your mighty name, I pray, Amen. - All right, and that does it now. I'll let you kind of speak to it and then I'll jump into the conversation with that questions for you. - Let me just say, I mean, I don't know this, you know what I mean, I have not spoken to him the way you have, but I do appreciate his heart. - Yes. - I think he's very well-intentioned. I think he's very sincere, obviously. I'd also say that he's actually praying an implicitly in precatory prayer. - Yeah. - There at the end of it. And I'll circle back around to that. But let me start first with what I think is really the meta issue here. And this applies to a lot of other controversies besides this one when Christians disagree with one another. No one he did. You were quoting from one part of the Bible. How did he respond to you with another part of the Bible? - Right. - You were quoting from David, you were quoting from the Psalms. He's quoting from Jesus and Paul. Well, if you're pitting, being biblical authors against one another, you're doing it wrong. So let's say you have a question. And one Christian has got his verses, the other Christian has got his verses, and you kind of line those up and it's just a clash between my verses and your verses. The person who's going to win that debate, typically speaking, is the person whose view can account for all of the verses. That's what we have to do. When I say we need to be whole Bible Christians, that's what I mean. The Bible's self-consistent. The Bible never contradicts itself. The Bible gives us a system of truth and is fully internally consistent. And so if it says something in one place that seems like it's intention with another, what that means is not that the Bible's contradicting itself, it just means that the truth is more complex. And I'm going to use one of our favorite words here, more nuanced than maybe we would want it to be, quite honestly, because it does. It does mean we have to wrestle through some things, but this is also how God grows us in wisdom. We grow in wisdom as we wrestle with these tension points in Scripture and learn how to resolve that tension so that we can obey God holistically. So you took implications that call on God to judge the wicked. He took verses to talk about kindness and love towards enemies. Well, how does all of that fit together? How do you integrate all of that together? And it does have to be integrated together. It can't just be, again, one person lining up versus against another person's versus. We've got to account for all the verses. Yeah, right. They're good verses. And there are certainly things that we should obey. There's definitely an obligation that the Christian has to be kind to his enemies, to love his enemies, to pray for those who persecute him. All of that is true, absolutely. I think if we step back and actually ask what's going on in the imprecatory Psalms, like the ones that you were reading, I think we can see how it starts to all fit together into one big picture. One thing you have to understand is that the imprecatory Psalms, like all of the Psalms, are fundamentally more than anything else the prayers of Jesus himself. And that's one reason that we know that there could be some kind of unresolvable tension between where Jesus teaches about being kind to your enemies and where he is praying because he's the one really praying these prayers were singing these Psalms. He's the word. He is the word. And in the New Testament, the Psalms are put on the lips of Jesus, all of the Psalms are Christological. They are all the prayers of Jesus in one way or another. So again, how do you start to fit that together? Well, I think that's the first thing you do, to understand these are the prayers of Jesus. And they're only our prayers. We can only pray these prayers in union with Jesus. And so that means recognizing, and I think this is one of the things he's getting at, that doesn't mean recognizing that when you pray for God to slay the wicked, like David doesn't Psalm 139, that would be a suicidal prayer unless your life is hidden in Christ Jesus. Unless you're united to Christ Jesus who has taken that wrath, who was slain on your behalf on the cross so that now you are right with God. Because he bore the judgment you deserve, you're now right with God. And because his spirit is working in you to make you righteous, to bear fruit, to enable you to be imperfectly but truly obedient in this life, you can't pray these prayers. The Bible does make a distinction. This goes back to what we were saying earlier. The Bible does make a distinction between the righteous and the wicked. Now, because the righteous are sinless, but because they really are bearing fruit that brings God glory and that pleases him and the wicked are not. So there is that division. It doesn't mean that we're not sinners. It doesn't mean that we can't identify with sinners in any kind of way. Again, we recognize that left to ourselves on our own, we would all deserve God's eternal condemnation, God's eternal wrath, no question. But now that we're in Christ Jesus, we've been set free or sins have been forgiven. We can now live a new kind of life and in the power of God's spirit, we are growing an obedience and the Bible does make that distinction. So that's one thing to keep in mind. These are the prayers of Jesus. The church prays them in union with Jesus. And it's because our lives are hidden in Christ Jesus because we are in union with Him that we can pray these prayers without them being suicidal. Another thing to recognize is that God really will judge the wicked. And he will judge the wicked in history. He often brings temporal judgments upon wicked people, wicked individuals as well as wicked cultures or nations. And of course, there's also going to be a last day, a final judgment and there's going to be eternal wrath for the wicked. We're simply, saying to God, "God, you have said you will slay the wicked." Here is great wickedness, great evil we see going on in the world around us, do what you said you would do. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. And so smash those who are standing in the way of your kingdom, who oppose your kingdom. May the light of the gospel and the light of the Lord Jesus drive out that darkness. One more thing I would add to that, one further wrinkle. When we pray these implications implicit in the implications is a prayer for the conversion of the wicked. The implications are a two-edged sword. Conversion is a kind of death and resurrection. So when we pray that God would slay the wicked like Psalm 139 or that God would dash the heads of the babies of the wicked against the rock, implicit in that is a prayer for their conversion. God slaying the wicked could mean God slaying that person in their flesh so they can be made alive in the spirit. Dashing the baby's heads against the rock could mean who's the rock. It's ultimately Jesus bringing those babies to Jesus where they're converted by him and brought into his kingdom. The language is multivalent in that way. It can actually include a prayer for their conversion. So it's double edged. And obviously in his prayer that's what he highlighted when he was praying for the wicked, he was praying that they would be converted. I would say that's inherent in the impregnatory Psalms. What we're really praying is God either convert the wicked or destroy them, or destroy them. So what I would say if you take all of this and try to put it together. Let me say something into that because I thought that was that stood out to me the last time we spoke about this. Whenever you are praying for someone's conversion, you are praying that God would destroy them. You are praying that God would kill them and raise them to new life that the flesh would be crucified. And so I was talking with my wife about this the other day. We were talking about the impregnatory Psalms and about just, you know, real as an aside, the reason this is really important guys is because we are facing evil in our day that our grandparents didn't have to face. That's just the reality because because of the degradation of our culture and the disintegration of or the apostatization, that's should we say, of America walking away from the faith that made this country great. We are descending more and more into cultural chaos and we are seeing real rank, idolatry and evil, child sacrifice, child mutilation. We are seeing such unbelievable wickedness that we need to understand like we need to be equipped with the Psalms with to pray and sing these because we're I mean, we were given our offensive weapon in this battle in this spiritual war that we are in is the sword of the spirit and we need to be able to wield it, wield it effectively and not just put not and not, you know, leave some of it on the shelf like, oh, we don't want to use the impregnatory Psalms. Those are too harsh. Well, those are actually what's needed in many of these situations, but when I was talking to my wife about this, that's what she asked me. She said, well, and she and she made that observation too, which I thought was really apt of her, but that, yeah, we want them to die. We want their we want their flesh to die and we want them to be raised to new life. But if they if it would be not within God's sovereign will and his plan to save them to raise them to new life, we pray that God would stop them by any means necessary that, hey, stop the child sacrifice, stop the child mutilation, stop the sexual degeneracy that is leading our nation into into degeneracy and chaos. And we we should be eager and I would say desperate for God to stop this by any means necessary. That's right. Yeah, that's exactly right. Brothers, the woke mind virus is not the only poison wreaking havoc on our mental health. Toxins, stress, and our modern diet drain your energy at the cellular level, leaving you foggy and tired when your family, your church, your community, and your country need you strongest. God has called you to be the man who stands firm, leads clearly, and gives everything for those in his care. But this fallen world attacks our bodies relentlessly. Your cells need help and methylene blue delivers the help that your cells actually need. 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They use 100% specialty grade beans in every blend. Top tier quality, it's delicious Montana coffee. It's quite literally in my mug every single morning and it should be in yours too. Every morning is a choice. Fund to the people who hate you and mock your faith or fuel the guys who actually want to make America Christian again. If you're done compromising at the coffee pot and you're ready to keep the money in the covenant, go to MontanaCoffeeCompany.online/stand for something and use code reformation for 10% off of your first order today. Yeah, so one question Christians ask today is why does it seem that the wicked are prospering? Why does it seem that the wicked constantly have the upper hand? Why are they the ones who are gaining influence and strength in the culture which has been going on for several generations now? Like you said, we have to deal with wickedness, certainly wickedness in the culture and public life in ways that several generations ago our ancestors did not. So why is that? Well, one reason why the wicked continue to flourish is because God's people don't pray the impregnatory Psalms. We're not praying for God to do something about it. And that is a reason why the wicked continue to flourish. If we're not praying that God would destroy the abortionists, destroy the abortion clinics, if we're not praying that God would destroy the Sodomites, we should not be surprised if the Sodomites and the abortionists continue to have the upper hand in the culture and continue on in their wickedness and all kinds of destructive ways. Now the the the naysayer will say, but pastor rich, you're a Calvinist. What do you mean if you don't pray? You know, I thought God was sovereign over all that. How would you respond? I have a thought, but how would you respond to that? Well, that's another podcast in and of itself. That's a lengthy discussion, but we know that God has dredan the ends and the means. That's right. So so prayer is a means. If God is going to bring about that kind of judgment and that kind of the kind of reformation and renewal and transformation that would mean in our culture, he's also ordained the means to that end, which would include prayer. So just say, well, I'm not going to pray for that because I don't know what God's ordained. That's like saying, well, I'm not going to pray that God would give me my daily bread because why would I do that? If God has decreed for me to have daily bread, I'm going to have it. That's is not the way the Christian life works and that's incredibly foolish. God's sovereign decree does not produce fatalism in God's people. That's right. It gives us confidence that God has a plan and so we and we know the big picture of where that plan is headed. We know that the kingdom's going to grow. We know how this whole story that we're in, the story that is the history of God's creation. We know how it ends. Well, it gives us confidence in those things, but it should not make us fatalist. It should not make us give up on the use of these means that God uses to bring about the growth of his kingdom. I think it's something of evangelism. We wouldn't say, well, God has his elect. So he'll save them whether or not I evangelize. That's right. No, God has his elect and his appointed means for bringing the elect into the kingdom is the preaching of the gospel. It is doing evangelism. That's right. And so and in the same way, God has ordained that our prayers are actually effective. That's that's all part of the process. God has ordained that our prayers are actually effective. In fact, that's what that's the the parable of the unjust judge where God, where the the woman keeps coming and making her case before the unjust judge. And finally, just because he's so annoyed with her, he gives her what she wants. And then Jesus says, how much more to the the just judge and the good father should you be making your case daily coming before him, just like the the persistent widow coming before the unjust judge and he's good and just and so and so annoying God with your prayers. Yeah, that's right. That's right. We can know you God with your prayers until you give what you want. Yeah. Now, first of all, you also need to make sure our prayers are aligned with scripture and that kind of thing. But again, this is where the impregnatory prayers can really help us. So I look at the prayer that this young man offered and I would say, that's great. I like the way that you pray. But but I would say, let's go one step further with that and let's actually pray that if God doesn't convert them, that he brings judgment upon them. Yes, if they're not going to be converted, they need to be obliterated. If they're not going to repent, they need to be destroyed. That's right. So go ahead and pray that. Pray that God would do that. Pray that God, this is what I'd really like. I'd love to see you turn that abortionist, and I'd love to see you turn that satanite into my brother in Christ. And we know that can happen. That has happened many times in the history of the world. So do that Lord. But if you don't judge them, remove them so that they will not stand in the way of your kingdom so that they cannot promote and spread this horrific wickedness and injustice. That's right. We want your kingdom to come. And so that's where praying works. Amen. One last piece here. We could ask. So given all of this, given that we've got to pray the impregnatory Psalms and love our enemies, how do you synthesize that? How do you integrate that into one total picture of what the Christians posture towards the wicked should be? And I would say we can get a sense of this by looking at what God's own posture towards the wicked is. I'm not saying that we can imitate God in every respect, obviously. But what I am saying is we see some of the complexity involved in the way God, the scriptures describe God's own posture towards the wicked. So in the one hand, you've got passages like Psalm 5 where we read that God is angry with the wicked every day. We also know that God has a general love and benevolence towards all of his creatures. So if you have an unconverted wicked person, there's some sense in which God loves that person and showers what we might call common grace blessings upon that person. The rain falls on the just and the unjust. The sun shines on the just and the unjust. The way Cornelius fan till the scribe, he said, the unbeliever is like a little child sitting in his father's lap slapping his face. God keeps doing good to him, piling blessing upon blessing upon him. And how does he respond to that? Not with thanksgiving, but by slapping God's face, by denying God's existence, rejecting God's law, rebelling against God. God continues to show favor, but that favor does run out. God's patience is, God is very patient, but his patience does run out and he will eventually bring judgment. You see this with old covenant Israel. You know, when you read the history of Israel, and especially after the kingdom splits and you know that we know going back to Moses, God has threatened exile for the people when they rebelled against him as you're reading through the history of Israel. And you see it's one wicked king after another and the people keep falling into the cent of idolatry and they keep living like the nations live rather than living as God's holy nation. The question is not, you know, why does God bring judgment on them? It's why did God wait so long? I mean, that's the question when you're reading those historical books in the Old Testament is the prophets keep calling the people to repentance and threatening judgment and yet God is patient and waits and he waits and he waits. And then finally judgment comes. God's patience runs out. God in perfect wisdom, new exactly into you bring the judgment of exile upon the people. That's good. But if you look at what God, God's own posture towards the wicked, you can say God loves them even as he hates them and he hates them even as he loves them. He loves them and does do kind, he does do good to them, he does show them kindness, but he's going to, that's not going to prevent him from bringing judgment on them in due time. Okay. I would say for the Christian, it ought to be the same. We love them even as we hate them and we hate them even as we love them. So the thing about it this way, let's say that you've got, you know, let's talk about the lesbian next door. Okay. You should love her in your personal relationship with her. You should do kindness for her. If she has a flat tire, you should go change it for her. If she needs to borrow a cup of sugar, you can share, you can share that with her. You can be kind, you can be generous. You can be, you can be showing her the love of Christ in these ways. And of course, we would hope that these would be ways that she would be drawn to Christ, that she would see your love for her and recognize that, oh, this is what the love of Jesus looks like. At the same time, I would hope that in your friendship with this lesbian, that you're speaking truth to her and you're saying to her in whatever words are appropriate, but still firmly and clearly, the way you're living your life is an abomination. It is unnatural. It is anti-god. It is anti-nature. It is a violation of God's law and it will bring temporal and especially eternal destruction upon you if you don't repent and turn to Jesus. So, so this, so, and let me go one step further with that. In my daily interactions with this non-Christian person, I can be kind to them. At the same time, I can want to see their worldview, their LGBTQ political movement completely and utterly destroyed. Yeah. I can want both of those things at the same time. I can be kind to them at a personal level while wanting to see their worldview, their way of life, their political and cultural movement completely obliterated. Well, on that note, I think it's really important that I learned this a few years back how the word that's described when Jesus is using the term "love your enemies" is the is the word that for private enemy, for a personal and private enemy. And there's a distinction to be made between private enemies or personal enemies, someone who is personally wrong to you, somebody who has, you know, given you their hand, you know, has insulted you and you have a personal grievance against them versus what would might be called a public enemy, which would be the barbarian horde at the gate that threatens your civilization, you know. And you're not called to love the barbarian horde. You are called to love your personal enemies, those who, you know, you have personal grievances against, but that barbarian horde at the gate who wants to come in and rape and pillage and plunder and destroy you, your family and your civilization. You don't love them, all right? You don't say, oh, well, you know, I guess I got to love them. Come on in, guys. No, you don't. You cry out to the Lord that he would bring judgment upon them that he would stop them. And like you said, first and foremost, hey, may the Lord Jesus Christ appear to them in the sky and convert them first and foremost. Yes, that would be great, but stop them, Lord, by any means necessary. And I think ideologies like, you know, the alphabet cult ideology or even like mass immigration, leftist ideology, egalitarianism, feminism, all of these ugly isms that are destroying our society. Those are equivalent to the barbarian horde, those who have been sucked into that ideology and promote those ideologies and pursue them in our, in our current cultural climate in our context. Those are enemies. Those are public enemies who have made themselves enemies of God. And like you said, enemies of nature, enemies of the created order. And we want God to stop them. And yet, like you said, if my, if my lesbian neighbor needs someone to help her change her tire, I want to be quick to be able to do that while also saying everything that you stand for and that you pursue is evil and wicked. And I want it stopped. I want it stopped by any means necessary. Does that make sense? A Christian home without financial order is a fortress without walls. Dominion wealth strategists exist to help families rebuild those walls with clarity and conviction. They offer holistic financial consulting, shaped by scripture, guiding households through budgeting, that management, savings, life insurance and more. Dominion provides this council entirely for free because their purpose is to fortify the church rather than to profit from its uncertainty. They are the only distinctly reformed, full service, financial services brokerage firm in the nation. Serving real Christian households with real conviction. Listeners who want their financial lives aligned with their faith and future can visit www.reform.money and schedule a free consultation today. Once again, it's www.reform.money and tell them Joshua Haynes from Reformation Red Pill sent you. Yeah, yeah, I would maybe add another recall to that. I would maybe put it this way because it is interesting in the sermon on the mount, the enemies that Jesus is talking about for the Jews in that context would have primarily been Romans who were in a sense both public and private enemies. But, and this is where Ordo Amoris can really help us. So Ordo Amoris means that there is a structure to our loves. There's a hierarchy to our love. We don't, we don't, we're not supposed to love everybody in exactly the same way. I've got greater obligations and therefore greater love towards, say, my family than I do someone who's outside of my family. I've got greater love for my own countrymen than I do people on the other side of the world. There are different kinds of proximity. We can talk about chameleon or geographic or, is familial geographic spiritual forms of proximity and depending on that proximity, I've got a different kind of obligation to that person. So let's say somebody breaks into my house and they're threatening to kill my family, maybe kidnap my children, rape the female, my wife and daughters, all these kind of terrible things. I mean, in the moment, if you say, well, do you love this person, I can say, well, he's an image bearer. I can love him in some sense, but I love my family much more than I love him. So therefore out of love for my family, I will kill him. I will kill this evil intruder who's threatening my family's life, the lives of my family members. I will kill him because I love my family more than I love him. And I've got an obligation to protect him, to protect my family and in protecting them, that may mean that I have to end his life and send him to meet his maker. I don't have to say that I don't love him in any sense whatsoever. I can say I do, but I love my own family so much more. That I will defend my family and I will do what is necessary to defend my family. family. If that means killing him, that means killing him. Yeah, that's right. And that, you know, so because that's what the law of God requires and you could certainly say allows, but I would also say even requires in that kind of situation. So even if you say you, we are to love our enemies, even our political or public enemies, there's still a sense in which we can say, yeah, there are times where we have to kill someone we love, out of self-defense or out of national defense, because we love our people more. And we've got a greater obligation to them. We have an obligation to defend them from this kind of person. David love Goliath in that moment when he slung the stone that Goliath had and killed him. I think he can say, yeah, sure, he loved him, but he loved God more and he loved his own people more. And of course, he also hated Goliath as a blasphemer and an idolator. And so this in this context, this is what love looks like. So something that you said last time that there would be great for you to just like land the plane on, I think. And it was so, this is always stuck with me, as I told my wife this the other day, how you said hate and love absolutely can coexist in the same person even at the same time, which is basically the short way of saying what you've just now been saying. And you said, you told me, I know this because, and we know this, because you do that in yourself all the time. Like whenever you sin against God and fall back into that temptation or whatever it is, you hate yourself. Like, oh, you like you, you, you can grow furious with yourself and you hate yourself. And yet you also love yourself at the exact same time. Those two things can coexist. That was so profound. And that just as always, that always stuck with me. Yeah. And when I pray that kingdom come, I'm even praying for God to deal ruthlessly with sin in my own life. That's right. I'm praying for God to do what is necessary in terms of the kind of discipline, the kind of suffering he needs to put me through in order to refine me and purify me so that I can live a more faithful and obedient life. So yeah, all of so there is a, there are layers of complexity to this. And I think it's important to see that. And I think one of the worst things that Christians can do is oversimplify things in such a way that we leave a lot of scripture on the cutting room for. That's good. And I'm afraid that's what our young friend has done is you gave your verses, he gave his and we all agree with his. But he doesn't seem to be able to bring himself to agree with yours. That's great. He spoke in that, you know, when he went to pray, he prayed about his anger and how it was hard for him to to love people with whom he is angry. And I would say, actually, that's exactly what we're called to do. Your anger in that context can be very constructive. Your anger at injustice might be the very thing that impels you to do something about it to make real world changes. That if that's righteous anger, that's not said in opposition to love. It's righteous love that drives that righteous anger. And what I would say to him is the Bible is actually given us a channel for that righteous anger. And the channel for our righteous anger is the imprecatory song. That's great. And some people think, well, you pray these imprecatory songs, isn't that going to make you a violent people and, you know, you're going to go shooting up, you know, your enemies and that. And I would say it's the exact opposite. The imprecatory songs allow us, they give us a way of entrusting judgment to God so we don't have to become vigilantes in God's universe and bring justice ourselves, particularly in situations where that's not going to be our calling, our responsibility. So, you know, so you think about this way, if I know a final judgment is coming and further, if I know that God brings temporal judgments against his enemies, in a sense that releases me. So think about this. He quoted from Romans chapter 12 where Paul talks about being kind to your enemies. Okay, it's in Romans chapter 12 where Paul talks about even giving food and drink to your enemy when he's hungry. Later in that chapter, Paul quotes from the Old Testament where God says, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay." Okay, well, that is that's the language of implication. That's right. So I can be kind to my enemy even as I'm praying for God to bring judgment on him. And one of the ways God brings judgment, ignore the chapter break between Romans 12 and Romans 13. One of the ways God brings his vengeance against the evil doer is through the civil magistrate. Right. God is ordaining the civil magistrate to be a terror against the evil doer. And when the civil magistrate is doing his job, the evil doers, those who are who are sitting in egregious ways are terrified and rightfully so because that's the civil magistrate's job. One place where I think we saw this was at Charlie Kirk's Memorial Service. Yes. We're on the one hand, Erika extended forgiveness. And we can talk about the, again, I'll use the word nuances of forgiveness. What does it mean to forgive somebody who is not repentant? You can't, you can't have a full transaction of forgiveness with somebody who's not repentant. You can offer them forgiveness, but in order for there to be a transaction in which that forgiveness is complete, they've got to seek your forgiveness, they've got to be repentant. But you can certainly extend forgiveness to those who are not repentant. And that's something as Christians we should do so that we don't grow bitter. Yeah. On the other hand, you had others who were in civil government who have offices that we could, we could just say they're civil magistrates who talked about bringing vengeance against the person who did this, who murdered, who murdered Charlie Kirk. It was entirely appropriate to have both of those responses on the same stage. You've got a private Christian whose spouse has been killed in this way offering forgiveness to the one who's done this great evil, who's perpetuated this great evil. And you've also got civil magistrates saying we're coming after you for justice. We want to see justice done. We're going to bring the Lord's vengeance against you because that's what we've been appointed to do as the civil magistrate. That's not the only way God's justice for God's vengeance is exercised, but it is a way. And in the context of Romans 12 and 13, it's obviously one of the ways. And so it keeps us from having to take that vengeance in her own hands if that's not our particular calling. And it frees us up to entrust the Lord to bring judgment in his own way. So I'd say it actually doesn't make us violent in ordinary circumstances. It actually frees us from having to be violent. We don't have to bring the judgment because we know God will. Again, there are situations where we are called to bring the judgment of self-defense, situation in our own homes, or if you are a civil magistrate, that's going to be your responsibility. But otherwise, you have to largely trust the Lord to bring vengeance in his own way. Yeah, that's good. What would be, I know you've got to get going here. Why is it important for young men to understand these categories and to begin to really take hold of the imprecatory Psalms, like in an elevator pitch format? Why is that important? Yeah, well, so I would say first because we are called to be whole Bible Christians, and we need to pray the Bible holistically. And so this is clearly part of that. So God has given us the Psalms as the prayer book of the church, the hymn book of the church. And so we ought to be praying then we ought to be singing them. That's true for all Christians. I would say you've also got a lot of young men today, young Christian men, who have a deep sense of the, and I would put the young man in the video in this category, a deep sense of the injustice and the wickedness going on all around us. Okay, so what are you going to do with that anger? Okay, even if your anger is at, even if your anger is aroused because of some kind of wickedness in the world, it's still possible to express that anger in unrighteous ways. So one thing the imprecatory Psalms do is they give you a righteous way of expressing that anger, a righteous way of directing that anger and putting that anger to good use. Take all your anger at the injustice in the world and pour it into the imprecatory Psalms. I think that's one thing we're clearly called to do. Now there may be all kinds of ways that God's calling on each one of us to act to bring about a more righteous world, to bring God's kingdom in through various ways that we can obey God and bring transformation to the world around us. I certainly think that's true too, but I think the imprecatory Psalms are one clear avenue God has given us for pouring out our righteous anger at the wickedness we see going on in the world all around us. And I think that's something that young men very understandably struggle with right now is what do I do with all the injustice I see in the world around me? What do I do with the wickedness that I see going on in the world around me? What do I do? Yeah, when we need injustices or targeted at my own people group, what do I do? Well, the imprecatory Psalms give you a way of channeling that anger that is constructive and that we can trust will bring change, will bring transformation to the world. That's great. That's great. Well, thank you, Pastor Rich, for the crash course in loving and hating your enemies and praying the imprecatory Psalms. This has been so good. As always, I'll have to get you back on soon. Yeah, anything you're working on or anything you want to plug or have people check out? Yeah, so I stay active off in the one on X so people can check me out there. That's a way to see what kind of crazy things I have to say. Of course, on our church website, we've got sermons that I preach. We've got conferences that I speak at. I've got a blog where I put some stuff up. All of that. I've actually got a book in the works with Canon Press on Jonathan. The working title, the tentative title is "Son of Saul." I didn't really intend for this to be a book on masculinity. In a lot of ways, that's what it is. But basically, it goes through Jonathan's life as recorded in first Samuel. Obviously, he's often overshadowed by David. He's overshadowed by David in one way and by Saul and another, but Jonathan is a man of serling character. Every time he shows up in the book of first Samuel, he shows out, he shows himself the righteous man, a wise man, a man of integrity. He's a man we can learn a great deal from. So I don't know when that's gonna be out or in the editing process right now, but that's gonna be coming out at some point from Canter Press on Jonathan. Again, the working title is "Son of Saul." - That's great. And you got many other books we could mention, "Pato Faith" for those of you who guys, those of you who are looking into, "Pato Baptism, Pato Communion," these kind of things, Pastor Rich has been such a blessing to me in studying that and getting deep into the weeds of covenant theology. It's been a lot of fun. So highly recommend all his works there guys. Well, with that, would you pray for our audience and then we'll wrap it up? - Yes, I sure will. Father, we do thank you. You are a good and gracious God. And Father, we thank you that we can entrust you to bring vengeance upon the wicked. Father, we do pray that you would slay the wicked. Father, we pray that Christ would slay the wicked with the breath of his lips. Father, this means conversion. You know, we would rejoice in that. We would love to see wicked people in our culture, wicked elites, wicked neighbors, people that we see bringing all kinds of corruption and injustice into our world. We long to see them converted and to become brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. But if not, Lord, we do pray that you would remove them, that you would smash them with Christ, rod of iron. Father, we pray that you would bring judgment that justice might prevail, that as your kingdom comes, that Satan's kingdom might be driven out, that the light of your glory, the light of your grace, the light of your gospel might drive out the darkness. Father, I pray that when we are angry in a righteous way, that we would use that anger in a constructive way to do constructive things and that we would pour that anger out before you and the imprecatory Psalms that you've given to us for justice purpose. Father, I pray that you would give us wisdom about these things. I pray that we would love and that we would hate according to your word, that our loves and our hates would be proportioned according to wisdom that you give to us, that we would love and hate in a way that reflects your own love and hatred. Father, we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. And thank you so much, Pastor Ridge. Yes, thank you, Pastor. And guys, my hope and prayer for you, as you well know, is that all that we create here at Reformation Red Pill would be used to equip you to build, defend, and expand the kingdom of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen. [MUSIC PLAYING]