Tuesday,
December 6, 2016
You will capture all your enemies. Your strong right hand will seize all who
hate you. You will throw them in a
flaming furnace when you appear. The Lord will
consume them in his anger; fire will devour them. You will wipe their children from the face of
the earth; they will never have descendants.
Although they plot against you, their evil schemes will never succeed. For they will turn and run when they see your
arrows aimed at them. Rise up, O Lord,
in all your power. With music and
singing we celebrate your mighty acts. Psalm 21:8-13(NLT)
David writes this as if the
congregation of Israel is responding to God, seeing the Lord in a final flash
of victory defeating all His enemies. Fire
devours people and whole families being erased from the future as if they’d
never existed. It is total and irrevocable,
this victory – and lethal! This is what’s
left after Armageddon.
The psalmist teaches to look forward with faith, and hope, and prayer
upon what God would further do. The success with which God blessed David, was a
type of the total overthrow of all Christ’s enemies. Those who might have had
Christ to rule and save them, but rejected him and fought against him, shall
find the remembrance of it a worm that dies not.[ii]
I don’t have a
warrior-spirit at heart; these images are troubling to me. I’ve always looked to find ways for everyone
to get along. I like peaceful ways. That is why I don’t watch most “reality TV” –
too much in-your-face anger and confrontation for me.
While I long for the day
when this earth’s conflict will pass away into God’s promised peace and
tranquility, it is naïve to think it will pass quietly. Evil does not go quietly back into its
hole! There are those who plot against God. It’s inconceivable to me that any being can
honestly imagine winning against the Almighty…but God’s Word is true.
And what this harsh part of God’s
Word says is as chilling to my bones as the “calmer” passages are
comforting. There is an even-confidence
about God dealing with darkness. The
Psalmist holds up the underhanded evil plots of those who reject God for us to
consider, but these enemies meet an immovable God like a glass ornament dropped
from my Christmas tree meets a hardwood floor; the floor always wins!
Truth meets error boldly, face to face, and is not afraid of a fair
fight. In every such conflict error will ultimately yield; and whenever the
wicked come openly into conflict with God, they must be compelled to turn and
flee.[iii]
Reading these passages of
God’s final conquest of evil always evokes two sets of feelings in me:
1. I feel comforted that God will keep His promises and rescue His family.
2. I feel compassionately sorry for those who will be punished.
Both sets of feelings pass
Biblical muster. This Psalm is a song of
praise for God keeping His promises. And
you don’t have to look far to find compassion for evildoers:
As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, I take no
pleasure in the death of wicked people. I only want them to turn from their wicked ways
so they can live. Turn! Turn from
your wickedness, O people of Israel! Why should you die? Ezekiel 33:11(NLT)
For You Today
Have
trouble wrapping your mind around the judgment of a loving God? You should; He doesn’t like it any more than
you do.
NOTES
[i]
Title image: By Photo
courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office
[Public domain], via Wikimedia
Commons
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