The Real Reason Why Unbelievers
Hate God's Word By Charles Simeon John Chapter 3, Verses 19 and
20 This is the verdict. Light has come into the world,
but men loved darkness instead of light, because their deeds
were evil. Everyone who does evil hates
the light and will not come into the light, for fear that his
deeds will be exposed. The real reason why unbelievers
hate God's Word is because they will not part with those sins
which His Word condemns, nor will they practice those holy
duties which the Word commands. If they were willing to renounce
their sins, they would find the Word of God to be precious and
delightful to them, as an inexhaustible ocean of encouragement. But unbelievers
hate to hear of the wickedness of their hearts, the insufficiency
of their best works to bring them to God, the impossibility
of being saved without an entire dependence on the sin-atoning
merits of Christ, the necessity of an unreserved surrender to
His will, as seen in Scripture. Their pride and self-sufficiency
are insurmountable obstacles to the proper reception of scriptural
instruction. They hate to be told that they
are spiritually wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked before
a holy God. They abhor to walk in the path
of the righteous. They simply will not forsake
the path of sin, which infallibly leads to destruction. It is in
vain that the Scripture shows them the only genuine way to
heaven. They will never forsake that
broad road of sin, which inevitably leads to damnation. Between God
and the unbeliever who perishes in his sins, there is a great
gulf fixed, a gulf that never can be passed. Once entered into
the eternal world, the unbeliever has his state fixed forever.
The man who dies unbelieving and impenitent will bewail his
folly in irremediable and everlasting misery. For they are a rebellious
people, unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord. They
say to the seers, Do not see. And to the prophets, Do not prophesy
to us what is right. Speak to us smooth things. Prophesy
illusions. Let us hear no more about the
Holy One of Israel. Isaiah chapter 30, verses 9 to
11. They perish because they refuse
to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason, God sends them
a powerful delusion, so that they will believe the lie, and
so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth
but have delighted in wickedness. 2 Thessalonians 2 verses 10-12