Ever had someone you just hated? Hate is a strong word, I know, but what about calling that person your enemy. It was a guy I played football with in high school that never stopped trying to get on my nerves. I, at the time, wasn’t mature enough to handle it and all I wanted to do was punch the guy. The problem was he was a bit bigger than I was so it didn’t make sense to make it a fair fight. So one day at practice, after again being provoked by him, I hit him in the back when he was walking away. He got up and we wrestled on the ground for a bit but I was safe with all my pads on so it didn’t really matter to me. Anyways, the moral of the story was that out of anyone in my life that was the guy that I would say was my enemy.
Psalm 140 is all about David’s enemy’s, the people he hated. Let’s read it really quickly.
This is the message version:
God, get me out of here, away from this evil;
protect me from these vicious people.
All they do is think up new ways to be bad;
they spend their days plotting war games.
They practice the sharp rhetoric of hate and hurt,
speak venomous words that maim and kill.
God, keep me out of the clutch of these wicked ones,
protect me from these vicious people;
Stuffed with self-importance, they plot ways to trip me up,
determined to bring me down.
These crooks invent traps to catch me
and do their best to incriminate me.
6-8 I prayed, “God, you’re my God!
Listen, God! Mercy!
God, my Lord, Strong Savior,
protect me when the fighting breaks out!
Don’t let the wicked have their way, God,
don’t give them an inch!”
9-11 These troublemakers all around me—
let them drown in their own verbal poison.
Let God pile hellfire on them,
let him bury them alive in crevasses!
These loudmouths—
don’t let them be taken seriously;
These savages—
let the Devil hunt them down!
12-13 I know that you, God, are on the side of victims,
that you care for the rights of the poor.
And I know that the righteous personally thank you,
that good people are secure in your presence.
David has enemy’s too. We are not alone in that. What did he do, he prayed that God will protect him from those enemies. Let’s get something straight, our enemy’s will never kill us, David’s enemy’s wanted to kill him so his life was on the line. Above everything that we can learn from this passage, know that prayer is powerful. Ask God for help in all situations, not just the bad ones. Know that God is there for you at all times. We can look at how David handled this situation and learn that whenever you are in a tough situation you just need to give it up to God. This is what the bible is here for, to learn how to handle different experiences and to learn from the people in the bible so we don’t make the same mistakes.
Be thinking about that in this season. I know that we all have issues but God will always be there to help. Merry Christmas and happy first day of Winter.