June 17, 2021 – Click here to listen
Did you ever wish evil upon your enemies? I read Psalms 109 this morning for Bible study. David asked God to give payback to someone who had wrongly accused him.
He pleaded for God to deal with the perpetrator:
- Let his prayer become sin
- Let his days be few
- Let another take his office
- Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow
- Let his children continually be vagabonds and beg
- Let the creditor seize all that he has
- Let there be none to extend mercy to him
- Let there be no favor to his children
- Let his posterity be cut off and in the generation following let their name be blotted out
- Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered by the Lord
- Cut off the memory of them from earth
He continues on with this but you catch the drift. It’s like a wish list of destruction that would decimate his enemies and their families. Wow I would hate to be his enemy. It’s odd for David not to begin and end a chapter with effuse praise for God. He must have been really angry at that dude. I thought that he must have missed having his coffee that morning but I’m not sure they drank coffee in ancient Israel.
Confucius famously stated that “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. Deep thinkers have figured this out and for those who didn’t, God said three times, (Deuteronomy 32:35; Romans 12:19; Hebrews 10:30,) in His Holy Word: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.”
Of course, Jesus had not come on the scene when this was written. What a difference Jesus made when He declared that we pray for our enemies. It seems odd though and out of place for David to ask God for what he did. He refused to take revenge on Saul even though Saul relentlessly pursued him and wanted to kill him. It somehow seemed out of character for him.
To retaliate and return in like-kind comes natural to most of us. Someone hurts us; we hurt him back. Getting even is a natural response to being wronged, but God calls us to live above our natural responses. He demonstrated holiness through His Son Jesus Christ, and He offers to empower us through His Holy Spirit so that we can live above our selfish instincts.
As Christians, we are to follow the Lord Jesus’ command to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” leaving the vengeance to God. Retaliation for harm done is the world’s way of making things right. But God’s way is to “heap burning coals on his head” by refusing to stoop to the level of the offender.
It goes against every instinct I have to refrain from retaliating when I am wronged; indeed, I did my fair share of it in my early life. Nowadays I reflect on God’s laws and use His word to repress those feelings as best I know-how. If one believes the Bible, and I do, it is a form of robbery to take something that belongs to God, (Vengeance,) for ourselves. Stealing from God can’t be good, eh?
Romans 12:19
Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”