When it came to the idols of Canaan, which stood alone and wanting after the destruction of their worshippers, Moses had an ardent word for Israel:
“You shall utterly detest and abhor it” (Deuteronomy 7:26).
Detest: to have a strong emotional response of rejection and antipathy. Abhor: have a hate or very strong dislike for an object. These are clear words that leave no haziness.
Simply put, Israel was to hate what the Lord hates.
The idols were an abomination to God. Thus, they were to be an abomination to God’s people.
It would be simple to think that hating what God hates should be easy. But that is not always the case.
This is evident in the word used by Moses in telling Israel why they needed to destroy the idols left behind, “lest you be ensnared by it” (Deuteronomy 7:25).
To “ensnare” means to be caught by bait. Thus, if Israel failed to hate the idols there was something about them that would ultimately lure Israel away from God.
We know that God hates sin, but we must acknowledge that our flesh finds pleasure in sin (cf. Hebrews 11:25).
Thus if we don’t hate sin, it can eventually lure us away from God and we return under sin’s curse (Deuteronomy 7:26; 2 Peter 2:13).
Solomon penned, “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil…”(Proverbs 8:13 KJV). Millennia later we see it practiced in the early church: “Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate” (Revelation 2:6 ESV). The Ephesians may have been commended for hating what the Lord hated, but they failed in leaving their first love.
As we detest and abhor the abominable, as we devote ourself solely to Him, it must be motivated out of our love for the Lord—for it is God’s love for us that motivates Him.
“For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:2 KJV).
