Vengeance is Sweet

We all know the verse, “Vengeance is mine the; I will repay says the Lord.” Moses knew it too; so did David. The verse we often quote is in Romans twelve, but Paul is rehearsing his Old Testament. The concept first appeared in the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 (verse 35). David picks up the theme in several of his psalms which Bible scholars classify as imprecatory psalms. The word imprecatory describes the act of invoking evil or cursing. You may be shocked to find that David regularly asked God to curse his enemies. At first it seems out of character for “a man after God’s own heart.” But it is not – not if you understand God’s heart.

When Moses introduced the idea, he was in the midst of telling the Children of Israel about the nature of God’s judgment. He told them that Yahweh would protect them by wreaking havoc on the nations that opposed them. It is fascinating to me that God says He is judging the nations because they didn’t remain faithful but followed other gods – demons actually – instead of Him. The implication is that the nations had the option to follow Yahweh but turned away. The Psalmist underscores this saying, “He rules forever by his might; he keeps his eye on the nations. The rebellious should not exalt themselves. Because they did “exalt themselves,” God chose Israel to demonstrate what His people were supposed to look like. We know they failed miserably, but God never abandoned them completely; there was always a remnant He saved.

We also know now, on this side of the cross, why God kept His people around: they were going to fulfill His promise to Adam and Eve. He would crush the head of the Serpent who led them astray. It seems that the Serpent also led the nations astray. We might not remember that every nation was descended from Noah and his sons. It was after the flood when God divided the nations and then chose Abraham to be the father of His chosen people. My point is that the nations knew who God was; their ancestors were all saved by the same ark. At some point they forgot Who saved them and went after other gods.

I am not going to suggest that we have to justify anything God does or even understand it necessarily. What I am saying is that the nations deserved what they got because they turned their backs on God. This explains the cryptic remark God made to Abraham: He couldn’t let him have the promised land because, “The iniquity of the Amorites [was] not yet fulfilled.” The Amorites is a catch-all term for the nations. God wasn’t ready to destroy them yet in Abraham’s day. He wanted them to be fully iniquitous before He executed justice on them.

If you look closely at Old Testament history, the nations are all over it. God forbade the Israelites from destroying Moab when they conquered the promised land. It could be that God needed Moab to be around years later so a Moabite girl named Ruth could become the great-grandmother of King David, the promised one. God left the Philistines unconquered so they could test the faithfulness of His people. God let the nation of Assyria thrive so they could take captive the ten tribes who rebelled against God’s chosen dynasty and worshipped other gods. Later God let the powerhouse Babylon do the same with the remaining Israelites to punish them for turning from Him. And don’t forget what Peter said in the first gospel sermon: God used evil men, men of His own people, to goad the nation of Rome into crucifying their Savior.

I may offend some people with what I am about to say, but I believe it needs to be said. God still controls “the nations.” I have no trouble believing that He would use nations to discipline His people, the church. After the tragedy of 9/11, a conservative leader suggested that perhaps God was using the jihad to chastise a wayward people. I can’t say I know that for sure. What I can say is that the church in America has large factions that are slipping more and more into apostasy. The faithful believers in this country are not holding up their end of the representative government they are blessed with. (See The Faithful Have Vanished.)

I truly believe that if we understood the dire threat to Christianity posed by the progressive movement in America, we would storm the voting booths in every election to change the leadership. It is not just our right as citizens; it is our duty as the faithful children of God. All the children of Israel had to do to reinstate God’s blessing was to smash their idols and worship the one true God. There are idols among us in this country. (I have named them.) We need to do some smashing of our own. We need to beg God for vengeance on our enemies. Strange as it sounds, that’s biblical. And it would be sweet.

Related posts: Idol Worship; Keep Yourselves From Idols; Storming the Gates