Text: Psalm 5 Title : A Prayer for Your Enemies Date: 7/11/21
Intro: There is a certain amount of uncertainty for believers in America. We can sense the feeling that Christianity is not the accepted and even celebrated world view it once was in America. On our currency when you look at a dollar bill it says… in God we trust… not a surprise to anyone… but the popular consensus seems to be that is an antiquated, uneducated view held by those who really haven’t engaged with the real world out there… For some it is more than just antiquated it is harmful and wrong to promote a belief in God and should be opposed actively until those who call themselves christians are eradicated…
Christopher Hitchens a popular thinker and opponent of Christianity said this when asked about his beliefs “ I am not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief is positively harmful.”
When we recognize that the feeling of the popular culture is no longer for us but shifting it causes us to pause. We feel uncertain about who we are and what we believe. It can feel as if the walls are closing in around us, the world is growing increasingly secular, schools are banning christian prayers and expressions of faith, leaders are made to seem unloving and uncaring people by fighting for the rights of unborn babies or traditional Christian marriage values and believing God has given us our gender… We start to feel like enemies are everywhere…
Rebecca Mclaughlin told this story while sitting in the park with her kids “ When my first daughter was four, we were playing in the sand at a local park. An older, Chinese-speaking woman was there with her grandson. My daughter asker he name and where she cam from then whether she trusted in Jesus. I cringed. The woman replied, “I’m sorry?” My daughter repeated the question…. Then I prayed that the ground would swallow me up…”
It turned out that both people in this story ended up being believers but the fear of being found out in a culture that seems increasingly hostile to so many popular world views and made look unloving.
The point is not that we have just made up the enemy in our heads… there are certainly enemies of the christian faith… the story of the encounter in the park is more revealing of the tension in our own minds… we are faced with the idea that not all people want to just get along and happily disagree but directly oppose what we believe… Even though we are desperate to keep enemies away and make everyone our friends… the Bible doesn’t lead us to a place that hides from enemies or just tries to make everything alright… When enemies of the faith have caused us anxiety and even an inner sense of injustice that we want to deal with… there is a right response to that…
Today we are looking at Psalm 5, this is an imprecatory psalm… a psalm that calls judgment down on the enemies of God… while this sounds vengeful and not very christian and we may even hope that our non-believing friends never read these passages… it is here we actually find the right picture of what to do in the face of God’s enemies… knowing that God protects us from our enemies and shapes our understanding of Justice
Read Psalm 5 Pray.
Page 1 of 5 Big Idea: God is just and protects us from our enemies
When we fear/feel anxious from opposition we pray we can find protection and God’s justice then by
MP1: Seeking God’s face Explanation: Let’s read again vv. 1-3
Kings often where attacked in in fear of their life or the safety of their kingdom. Here the response that David has is helpful for us… He is desperate for God to hear his plea… The highest ruler in the land acknowledges the right response…
SP 1: He is seeking God and recognizes who God is… God is his King, God is his God…
SP 2 He recognizes his basis for coming into God’s presence requires sacrifice for sins… after his morning sacrafice he comes before God.
You notice that while imprecatory psalms or these psalms that call out a curse upon other people… the first action is not to take things into his own hands… as the king you can imagine it would be very tempting to do…The right response then is not to pretend nothing happened it is not even to act on the basis of what God said, but to seek God on the basis of what he said…
How often will we be faced with something that truly troubles our souls… and we don’t know exactly what to do with it… Think of this strange application… turn to the Lord… he is judge he is who you need to hear your plea more than any other person…
We have a natural response when something really bad happens… we want to call someone… tell someone about it… ask for advice… ask who will get me out of this…
Illustration: Insurance claim - Who do I talk to?
What is the nature of our problem?
MP2: Seeking God’s justice Explanation: read vv 4-6, 9-10
Here what it says… “ you are not a God who delights in wickedness; Evil may not dwell with you…” He acknowledges this is not about me… Thats odd… why do we usually seek God… I have someone who is my enemy, and they are making my life difficult… we live in a society in which it is not natural to hear who God has called us to be…
We are told we have rights, we deserve those rights, we have our own personal sense of justice…
If we think about our context here we should remember what was the role of the King of Israel was to seek God’s Justice…
In Deut 17:18-20 Moses establishes the picture that the king was meant to seek God’s justice… and when these men were going well as with Solomon early on he knew this…
Psalm 72:1 Give the king your justice, O God, and you're righteousness to the royal son!
Page 2 of 5 When we are wronged the response we want to have is pretty natural… hit back… here we recognize we need to seek not our own justice, our own happiness, our own personal peace and affluence and take down everyone who threatens that… the enemies of those who love God are really enemies of God’s justice and righteousness…
Illustration: Different sides of the same story
App: Have you ever asked questions of the Bible related to your situation? The bible doesn’t say anything about my situation? Does it say anything about God’s justice? That can form your perspective of situations in a different way…
Even if we see God’s justice… we can feel a certain sense of ownership and want to do something about it… These people are evil for goodness sakes… we can’t just let them get away with it…
MP 3 Seeking God’s direction Explanation: Read vv 7-9…
Unlike the evil who cannot dwell in the house of the Lord and do not want to even… the psalmist directs us… we don’t jump up and enact God’s justice for him… we ask him in a fear that knows the goodness and justice of God to act rightly… “Lead me, o Lord, in your righteousness.. because of my enemies; make your way straight before me”
This is not an easy thing to do… our response is one like Peters… If Jesus has an enemy… I am going to take him out… If God’s people have enemies… I will destroy them…
It may seem at times that OT ethics allowed and even approved of this attitude of vengeance “make them bear their guilt, o God” … yet the NT just reiterates God’s direction for his people when Jesus said to Love your enemies this wasn’t necessarily new…
Leviticus 19:17-18 “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”
Even thinking of enemies God’s people where to show compassion…
Exodus 23: 4-5
“If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it; you shall rescue it with him.”
Sounds a lot like the ethic of NT in Romans 12:18-21
“If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 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.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Page 3 of 5 How do we balance this… not seeking vengeance and caring for the justice of God… Those that do evil, seek to pervert justice, oppose the church harshly for no reason whatsoever are indeed opposed to God… This is not something to Love… to just ignore it would be to say, sin is not that big of a deal… It is not an overstatement to come to God and say, God because of your righteousness… when I see seen this is what I see “There is no Truth in their mouth… Their throat is an open grave… Make them bear their guilt because of the abundance of their transgression”
God is the only right place to bring these concerns… we are not capable of dealing with this… we can only come to God… seek to help the poor, the needy, the oppressed, the stranger… seek God’s justice in our own sphere and beg God… make it right… this will not be a good world to live in until that sin is paid for…
We turn then to see how do we continue and endure these difficult relationships… the persecution, the enemies of the church… These things were just left at the throne room of God in prayer… just get back to loving my enemy seeking justice and righteousness?
To do this, we must lastly and most importantly MP 4 Seeking God’s grace Explanation: Read vs 9-12 again with me
We read this and hear, in the midst of persecution… enemies who are literally lying in wait for me… just trying to make my life miserable… I am to rejoice and sing for Joy?
On a second reading we might hear again some familiar language…
“Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” Thats Romans 3… the apostle Paul quotes this and says… Thats you… Jews and Gentiles… no one is righteous… The prayer against my enemy rightly understood and stated could just as easily be prayed against me and be absolutely true… but for the grace of God… Those who love your name may exult in you… you bless the righteous…
When we seek the righteousness and Justice of God we don’t seek after it aimlessly trying to uphold the Law… we see a better David… a better solomon… one who didn’t take a bribe… who didn’t boast… who didn’t speak lies… Jesus was quite different… he didn’t seek even is own justification or vengeance…
Peter said these words
“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”
Page 4 of 5 but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly
This is what this Psalm is after… shaping us in our prayer in the face of our enemies to endure as Christ did and entrusting ourselves to the one who judges justly… We don’t need a church full of human judges… we don’t need a group of people who fight with absolute passion to win the war… it has been won by Jesus… we need to entrust our souls to this Good God… to the one who looked at our sin and saw the offense… we deserved the prayer against our enemies to be spoken and enacted against us… “Make them bear their guilt… make them fall by their own counsels, because of the abundance of their transgression cast them out” Yet Christ bore that for us… there is justice… their is righteousness… if it was not paid for someone else would experience the injustice of my actions…God would now the acts of my rebellion against him… Jesus though took it and was cast out for our transgression, fell because of our counsel…
And he endured and overcame it all for all time….
God then is able to bless the righteous… those who put on the righteousness of Christ, we wear it as a shield…
And in this we can recognize here and now as we face enemies… it is truly awful… it is miserable… and I will pray to God to make it right… and I also know I can rejoice because I no longer stand in the counsel of the wicked… I am standing under the protection of God the almighty…My king and my God…
I can even hope for my enemy… turn from your wickedness… I was once lost… and now I am resting in the grace of God.
We don’t seek our vengeance for those who have wronged us… we don’t act we pray… God will protect us… We seek his face not another’s, his justice not our vindication, his, direction not our best plan and his grace not our enemies ruin… We entrust ourselves to God totally and fully.
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