Responding to Injustice:
When we observe terrible injustices done to innocent people,
including ourselves, we are to pray for God's intervention.
Here now is Gene Getz:
It's interesting as we look at this psalm.
It's one of those psalms that is called an
imprecatory prayer. And basically,
thats when David actually
pleaded with the Lord to bring severe judgment on his enemies.
And we see that here. This is one
of these psalms. In Psalm 35, verses 1 to 4:
"Oppose my opponents, LORD; fight those who fight me.
Take Your shields--large and small--
and come to my aid. Draw the spear and javelin
against my pursuers, and assure me:
'I am your deliverance.' Let those who seek
to kill me be disgraced and humiliated; let those
who planned harm me be turned back and ashamed."
Now let me try to put this in perspective.
We have to understand the social dynamics.
We have to understand David's position. We have to understand
his leadership role. You see,
he was king. He was also
a judge in Israel. God had
invested authority in him as the king.
And apart from the role of a king,
chaos would have taken place. There was enough chaos in Israel as it were.
But he was fulfilling his role
to maintain protection for
Israel. In fact, the interesting thing here
is he even cries out to the
angel of the LORD. Notice in Psalm 35:5 and 6:
"Let them be like chaff in the wind, with the angel of the LORD driving them away.
Let their way be dark and slippery, with the angel of the LORD pursuing them."
And when you see that statement
with a "the" in front of it--"THE" angel of the LORD.
In most instances,
it's referring to an Old Testament manifestation of Jesus Christ.
Or a reference to Jesus Christ before He came into this world born as a child,
a baby. In fact, Joshua encountered this Warrior that was probably
an Old Testament manifestation of Jesus Christ
in terms of conquering the land
of Canaan. So how do we
reconcile this with what God tells us in the New Testament?
Because when we get to the New Testament we have
a whole different perspective.
We are not to take vengeance. That belongs to the Lord.
And we read about this.
For example, in Romans. Romans chapter 13 where
Paul deals with government. And remember now, he's living in the midst of the Roman government.
But I think he is establishing a principle here
that God is working out, in relationship to
the way in which we live today. And the authorities that surround us
in our own governments. "For government is
God's servant to you for good."
Now keep in mind, he is not saying that government is God's servant to us
in terms of the way we are to serve one another as believers.
What Paul is saying is that government
is a servant to us for our good.
And he goes on to say, "But if you do wrong, be afraid,
because it does not carry the sword for no reason."
In other words what Paul is saying is he's established governments
to control humanity. Because without that control, chaos will exist.
People will be out of control. "For government
is God's servant, an avenger that brings wrath
on the one who does [what is] wrong."
You see as king and as judge in Israel,
this was David's responsibility, primarily.
This was the responsibility of the kings in Israel. They didn't do a very good job of it
because of their humanness and their failures.
But David was a part of that process in maintaining,
not only peace within Israel, but in dealing with the sins of the nations
around them. And God was using Israel to bring judgment
on those nations. But once we get to the New Testament,
we do have this different perspective
in the sense that we are not to take the law into our own hands.
We are not to take vengeance. God has established this
through governments. Now that raises a very interesting question is, what do we
do when governments are led by very evil people?
And governments go awry. That's another problem
that we have to face because of this fallen world. But I'd just
like to leave you with one practical question
that we're facing in our world today. And it's probably not going to go away. And that is:
How does this principle apply to the heads of state
who are responsible to deal with terrorists?
People who are purposely out to destroy
people. People who hate.
People who destroy. Well I want to say,
the first thing in relationship to that question.
We need to pray for our government. And that's one of things that's very clear in Scripture.
We are to pray for kings and all those in authority, that we can live peaceable lives.
But the fact of the matter is, there are people out there
that want to destroy people. They want to destroy people.
And we need to pray for those who are charged
with protecting us. And I simply
believe that means praying for our Special Forces
who put themselves in harm's way.
People who are out there, actually,
taking their lives in their own hands in order to protect us.
Let's not forget those people because they are responding
to government that is saying,
we need to protect our citizens. We need to protect
people from evil people. And we see a lot of that
around us. And so let's not forget to pray for our government.
Let's pray for our government: that's human, that has weaknesses,
that has problems. And let's pray for our government that they will look to God.
Let's pray for those who are assigned to protect us.
Particularly the Special Forces: those people
who undercover in order
to really deal with those who are trying to destroy us.
They are responding to government
that's in place for our protection.
But let's also remember
that when all is said and done,
as Christians, our battle is not against flesh and blood.
That's a higher principle that we live by.
Because Paul said, "our battle is not against flesh and blood."
Ultimately, we're in battle against the evil
world that surrounds us. The principalities of
the air. Those evil forces that are related to Satan
and all of the evil demons that are at his disposal--who are attacking.
And that's why Paul said, as believers,
let's "put on the full armor of God." And I love--I love what he said with that metaphor.
That we are to have on the "breastplate of righteousness."
We are to have our
"loins girt about with the belt of truth" And Jesus Christ
is the truth. Our "feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace."
We are to have "the helmet of salvation," our position
in Christ. We are to
"take the sword of the spirit," which is what?
The Word of God. And we're to take the "shield of faith"
with which we can extinguish all those "fiery darts"
that are coming at us. And he culminates this,
not with the metaphor, but with a statement that we are to pray.
That prayer, above all, is so important.
Prayer for each other. Even Paul asked for prayer that he could open
his mouth boldly to communicate as he should.
So we live in a fallen world. We live in a world that
is governed by people that are human.
We need to pray for them. We need to pray that we might have peace.
We need to pray for those who're putting themselves in harm's way.
But most of all, as believers living in this world,
let's put on the full armor of God so that we can take our stand
against Satan. And when we take that stand
to be victorious, and the wonderful promises,
we can--we can--defeat Satan
with the full armor of God.