Friday, February 13, 2009

Reflections on Psalm 83

 
    Psalm 83 (Contemporary English Version)

  1. (A song and a psalm by Asaph.) Our God, don't just sit there, silently doing nothing!
  2. Your hateful enemies are turning against you and rebelling.
  3. They are sly, and they plot against those you treasure.
  4. They say, "Let's wipe out the nation of Israel and make sure that no one remembers its name!"
  5. All of them fully agree in their plans against you, and among them are
  6. Edom and the Ishmaelites; Moab and the Hagrites;
  7. Gebal, Ammon, and Amalek; Philistia and Phoenicia.
  8. Even Assyria has joined forces with Moab and Ammon.
  9. Our Lord, punish all of them as you punished Midian. Destroy them, as you destroyed Sisera and Jabin at Kishon Creek
  10. near Endor, and let their bodies rot.
  11. Treat their leaders as you did Oreb and Zeeb, Zebah and Zalmunna.
  12. All of them said, "We'll take God's valuable land!"
  13. Our God, scatter them around like dust in a whirlwind.
  14. Just as flames destroy forests on the mountains,
  15. pursue and terrify them with storms of your own.
  16. Make them blush with shame, until they turn and worship you, our LORD.
  17. Let them be forever ashamed and confused. Let them die in disgrace.
  18. Make them realize that you are the LORD Most High, the only ruler of earth!




The occasion for the writing of this psalm was the forming of a confederacy of nations to attack Israel saying, "Come, let us wipe them out as a nation so that Israel's name will no longer be remembered." The psalmist pleads with God not to be silent or idle, but to strike down these enemies. They are not just Israel's enemies, but God's enemies, says the psalmist. They hate God and act arrogantly, thinking they can wipe out God's people. It is equivalent to trying to wipe out God. The psalmist asks that God would deal with these enemies as He did with some earlier enemies such as the Midianites. He destroyed them and made them like tumbleweed and straw before the wind. With a passing note of evangelistic concern, he asks that God would "Cover their faces with shame so that they will seek Your name, LORD." In the end the psalmist wants the enemies to know that God alone is "the Most High over all the earth." As God's chosen people who God had cared for and protected, the psalmist could, with reasonable confidence, identify Israel's cause as God's cause. This was not always true for Israel, however, for there were times when Israel had been unfaithful to God and the enemy was at her doorstep by God's design. But on this occasion it seems appropriate that the psalmist could say these nations had formed an alliance against God.

If, indeed, we are God's people who have chosen Him as our God through faith in Jesus Christ, then we can also expect that God will protect us against the attacks of enemies. But before we blindly call on God to wipe out the enemy at our door we need to consider whether they are enemies we have made through our own ungodly actions or whether they are truly God's enemies who are attacking us because of our allegiance to God. In other words, before we call upon God to help us, do we first need to repent of our sins that brought on the situation we face. Let's not be too quick to always identify our cause as God's cause and our enemies as God's enemies. When under attack our first action needs to be one of humbly going before God to be sure we are in alignment with Him and His calling on our lives. Is this problem we face one that comes to us because we are faithfully doing what God has called us to do or because we have been pursuing our own plans and calling them God's? We need always to be realigning ourselves and our plans with what God has called us to do, and when under attack is a time when we should especially do so.

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