Pray for your Enemies
Psalm 137
I had a variety of introductions ready for today's message, most of them focused around some humorous quip about the final verse of this Psalm being my "life" verse or my "favorite passage of Scripture." But as I thought about the subject and examined the issues related to it, I must admit that it really has become one of my favorite passages. This may sound rather odd to you, since for the most part modern Christians seem very uncomfortable with the "imprecatory" Psalms, the Psalms in which the psalmist calls down God's wrath on his enemies, and wonders how these relate to the NT. No less popular a theologian than C.S. Lewis felt that the imprecatory Psalms were "sub-Christian," and had no part in the worship and prayer of God's people today. A leading OT scholar, Dr. Peter Craigie, in his commentary on the Psalms, says that God's people express their outrage at the evil which is in the world through "sentiments which are themselves evil." A number of popular hymnals, including at least one published for the use of sister reformed denominations, excludes Ps 137 in the Psalter selections, where the Psalms are usually read responsively.
Now let me ask you, do these ideas ring true to everything we know about the relationship of the Old and New Testaments? They certainly don't ring true to me. Paul has taught me that all Scripture is inspired by God, and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and righteousness," and when he writes this to Timothy, he is speaking primarily of the Old Testament. Jesus taught us that the entire OT gave witness to him, and spoke of him and the work that he came to do. Does that not also include those passages which make us uncomfortable, or seem (and notice the emphasis) to contradict the NT? Let me suggest that if we think we see a contradiction or a dichotomy here, the problem is not with the texts involved, but our understanding of the text.
With all this being true, how may we nevertheless approach this? Let me spend just a very brief time on the background and internal logic of the Psalm, and then we'll examine it from the entire canon of Scripture, the totality of what Scripture has to say in helping us to determine how to interpret it.
The background, of course, is the Babylonian Captivity. I will not go into a great deal of detail here, except to say that, according to the Scriptures, God had raised up the Babylonians in judgment against Israel, for Israel's continued rebellion. In the final round, the king whom Nebuchadnezzar (or his father) had appointed had rebelled against the authority of Babylon (and against the good advice of Jeremiah the prophet, and so against God's revealed will). This was the last in a long series of unfaithfulness and rebellion. Up to this point God had used other nations to discipline Israel, but now he determines to take them away from the very land which he had promised them when he had rescued them from Egypt. And so the troops came. The people foolishly resisted. Even on the human level, the chances of fending off the mighty armies of Babylon were slim, but the people of Judea had the added difficulty that they were warring against the God of Israel himself. Their doom was inevitable. The walls of the city were broached, the buildings were burned, and the people suffered what people always suffered in those days, and even today, when an invading army sweeps through, and woe to the women and children.
There is a beauty in this Psalm that, if it were not for that pesky last verse, would count it as one of the most beautiful lament Psalms in the Scriptures. Verses 1-4 were even made into a song for the Godspell musical. Few passages even in Scripture quite capture the desolation and sense of abandonment which the people of God felt under the disciplining hand of their God. This lament leads up to the prayer of God's wrath against his people's enemy, that God would do to Babylon exactly what Babylon would do to them. You see, this is part of the internal logic that I mentioned. The people of God are asking God to treat the Babylonians as his enemies, for they had gone far beyond what was necessary to take the people into captivity. If we examine the rest of the passages related to Babylon, we will see that although God uses them as his instrument to accomplish his purposes, they are nevertheless not looked at as willing servants, but hostile tools which sin greatly in what they have been called to do. The people of God therefore plead with God to take revenge on their behalf, to do to Babylon what Babylon has done to them.
But is this internal logic sufficient? Does this really jibe with what we as Christians have been taught? After all, we are told in the NT to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. I think part of the problem here is that many people want to separate God's love and God's wrath, God's salvation and his judgment, but this is precisely what we want to avoid, for the one implies the other. If we need to ask the question, "From what are we saved," the clear biblical answer is from God's wrath and judgment on our sin: we have only to examine the first chapters of Romans and several other relevant texts if we want to prove this. Nor is the God of the OT and the God of the NT two separate beings. There were no growth and development, so that the God of the NT is somehow more mature than the God of the Old. Instead, we see that if anything, the God of the New Testament is identical to the God of the Old, but we are given much clearer revelation which shows us the way in which God carries out both the redemption of his people and judgment on his enemies.
Indeed, the God of the Old Testament had enemies, and because the people of God were so closely associated with God's purposes in the world, they too had the same enemies. God had chosen to work through people in the world, and the forces of darkness, the minions of Satan and all the ancient rebellion which he heads and represents, similarly worked through human agents. In the Old Testament we see the people of God are commanded to take up arms and literally destroy God's enemies. There are a couple of principles that help us understand this better:
1) It is important to remember that God does not make arbitrary decision, and God's choice to destroy his enemies is no exception. The people of God were not to engage this type of warfare on their own: whenever they try to do so, they fail. Rather, they only so destroy God's enemies when they are specifically directed to do so by God. Only certain enemies are so put under the ban. It would be the utmost hubris for an Israelite to try to do this on his own, apart from the revelation of God's will. Only God, who created and owns everyone, has the ultimate right to terminate a life.
2) Not all outsiders are enemies. Indeed, one of the chief reasons that Israel was constituted was to be a blessing to all the nations of the world. Their laws were to be a display of God's righteousness, and they were to take special care of the foreigner and stranger in their midst, that God would be glorified. Only certain peoples were designated as the enemies of God, and set apart to be totally destroyed. Even in the OT, then we see that both God's grace and God's wrath are operative principles. There are hints throughout the OT that God will include much more than just the literal descendants of Abraham as part of his people.
Similarly, the God of the NT is not one who will spare the guilty, but will also destroy his enemies. Many people seem to have forgotten that 2 Thess 1:6-10 is in their Bibles:
6 God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you 7 and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. 8 He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power 10 on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.
Indeed, the God of the New and the Old Testaments is the same God.
Now, we might at this point profitably consider the difference between OT and NT warfare. Indeed, the Christian today is called to warfare no less than his OT counterpart, but that warfare is no longer literal, but spiritual. It is no less real, but the weapons of our warfare have surely changed. What does Eph 6 tell us about our weaponry? We wield the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; we wear the belt of truth; our feet are shod with Gospel of peace; our hearts are protected by the breastplate of righteousness; our heads are protected by the helmet of salvation, and we take up the shield of faith. The point of this is that our weapons are no longer physical weapons. We no longer cut down our enemies. God no longer designates specific peoples as our enemies and tells us to literally slay them. Instead, we have other weapons with which to accomplish God's purposes in the world.
Several passages of Scripture in the NT, such as Luke 24:44 tell us that the entire OT pointed to Christ and was fulfilled in him. The OT speaks in terms of shadows, of things that are hidden and hinted. It is a book of ritual and symbolism, type and image, which points to something far greater, and that which is far greater is Christ himself. Christ's coming is the center point of history, and nothing is the same after the work of Christ. Often, what was physical and literal in the OT becomes spiritual in the New: no less real, but spiritual.
What are the major differences? We have seen one above: the weapons of our warfare are entirely different. Another is that the church is no longer restricted to national boundaries, but is commanded to all the nations, not only to Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, but to the uttermost boundaries of the earth, to the farthest, uncharted shores, and peoples of strange languages and customs. The church is still the people of God. They are distinct, separate, but they are now among the nations, so that every people has an Israel to whom they can come, and so the prophecies are fulfilled that speak of the nations bearing their sacrifices to Israel, and seeking to know the true God. As part of this, we are no longer a civil constitution, but a spiritual one. We no longer invoke the death penalty for blasphemy or disobedience to parents, but instead bring church discipline to bear, even to the point of excommunication.
In other words, what we do is no different from what God's people did in the OT. What is different is how we go about doing it . . .
This includes our relationship to God's enemies, who are ultimately our enemies if we are rightly related to Christ. Now, a very important point to consider, here: you at one time were yourself an enemy of God! Do I need to prove this? There are many Scriptures. Rom 5:8ff:
8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! 10 For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
Now, Paul is arguing in a particular direction here that we don't have time to explore. But the point is this: we were God's enemies. Elsewhere Scripture makes it very clear that all have sinned, that we were strangers to the covenants of promise, and that we were without God in the world.
How, then, did we become God's friends? We were redeemed and reconciled to him. How? Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. In other words, it is through his death that we are reconciled, and through his life that we live.
In the Rom 5 passage, in 1 Cor 15, and a number of other passages of Scripture, the fact that we are in Christ, and that Christ represents us is fully expounded. We are united with Christ through the Spirit of God by faith, so that all that Christ has experienced becomes our experience as well. Paul tells us in Rom 5 and 6 that we are united with Christ in his death, and we are united with him in his life. How did we obtain this life? We first had to die with Christ .
And this is the point. How do we pray this Psalm? We do so in the light of fulfillment in Christ. In order to become one with Christ, God first had to slay us, he had to kill us, in order that we might be raised with Christ in newness of life! We have died to our old selves and we have been born again to a new hope, to a new life, to a new existence through Christ and the Spirit. Before resurrection comes death, and we have died with Christ in order to be raised with him, we who were once the enemies of God in every way that counts.
How then do we use this weapon of prayer? The rock is Christ, Christ whom we pray that we fall against, unless that rock should fall on us and smash us utterly to pieces (Luke 20:17-18).
17 Jesus looked directly at them and asked, "Then what is the meaning of that which is written: "'The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone'?18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed."
(And, in support of this, the Hebrew word translated "rocks" in Ps 137:9 may be translated either as a singular or a plural).
We pray that God will indeed slay his enemies, and smash their teeth in their mouths (Ps 58:6), that he will destroy them to raise them up again, and fill their mouths with songs of praise in Zion. We pray that their babies be smashed against the rock, but the rock is Christ, and we are really praying that the children of our enemies be baptized and raised to glory as children trusting in Christ. And in the background of our prayers is indeed the idea that God could so answer our prayers as to reserve those for whom we pray for the final judgment, for the final destruction of God's enemies.
Therefore, in the light of the entire Scripture, I have very little problem with these passages at all. Indeed, I rejoice so to pray for the enemies of God's people, that God would slay his enemies, bringing glory to his name and adding to his kingdom.
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