Praying within the Tension

Praying within the Tension

Psalm 83

Main Idea: Believers should pray for God to glorify himself by both defeating and saving those who oppose his people.

When Charles Spurgeon was asked how he reconciled divine sovereignty and human responsibility, he replied, “I never have to reconcile friends. Divine sovereignty and human responsibility have never had a falling out with each other. I do not need to reconcile what God has joined together” (The New Park Street Pulpit, vol. V, 120). Spurgeon was honest in his acknowledgment that “where these two truths meet I do not know, nor do I want to know. They do not puzzle me, since I have given up my mind to believing them both” (Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. XV, 458). Spurgeon refused to go where Scripture doesn’t go, but he firmly believed what Scripture says where it does go.

We as believers have to get comfortable doing the same thing with imprecatory psalms (see also Pss 35; 58; 69; 109; 137). They contain another mysterious tension between praying for God to wipe out enemies of the gospel and asking him to save them. Nowhere is that more evident than in Psalm 83. While we can’t be sure about the exact occasion of this psalm, it likely served as somewhat of a war oracle whenever Israel was being threatened. The psalmist prays for God to deliver his people from enemy nations that are trying to destroy them. However, his prayer contains both a request for these adversaries to be destroyed and put to shame and an appeal for them to turn and seek the Lord.

This desperate appeal for God’s help gives birth to three practical applications for contemporary Christians. First, because God will ever be faithful to his promises, we must ask for his protection and deliverance whenever nations attempt to eradicate the nation of Israel. Second, we must cry out to God on behalf of our fellow believers around the world who are being persecuted for their faith. Third, we must pray for enemies of the gospel worldwide to repent and trust Jesus Christ for salvation. To those ends, the following are three prayers we should pray within the tension for God to glorify himself by both defeating and saving people who oppose the gospel.

Pray for God to Show His Concern

Psalm 83:1-8

As we see so many times in the Psalms, the writer starts this poem like a desperate child who climbs up into his father’s lap and unloads his honest and sincere heart on him. He knows he’s talking to his good Father, whom he knows to be far from disinterested in or unfeeling about the suffering of his people. This is God he’s talking to. The first verse begins and ends with “God” in Hebrew, which makes clear that the psalmist’s hope is in the one who cares deeply for his children and comes to their aid when they suffer. So he prays for this compassionate God—not to have concern but to show the concern he certainly already has in his people’s current crisis.

The psalmist begins his appeal by putting his two hands on God’s cheeks, turning his face toward his own, and pleading for him to give careful attention to the persecution of his people and demonstrate his concern for them (v. 1). In a way that a child might address a seemingly distracted parent, he pleads with God not to be indifferent to his people’s plight by remaining quiet and showing no response.

What is this current crisis? Multiple groups of wicked people are plotting together to destroy God’s children. So the psalmist grabs hold of God’s heartstrings. The last phrase of verse 3 describes God’s people as those whom he cherishes and protects. He wants him to spring into action and do something about the need of his treasure!

These enemies of God, however, are zealous for their cause and passionate about their mission. They lather themselves into an emotional frenzy and rise up in confident hostility against his people (v. 2). And their united front and joint conspiracy are clear (vv. 3,5). Still today a hatred of God’s people seems to rally so many groups that wouldn’t otherwise play well together. It’s an amazing thing that people who disagree on so many political and religious issues find common ground in their opposition to the things of the kingdom of God.

To validate the psalmist’s alarm, he provides a roll call of some of Israel’s frequent opposers a few verses later (vv. 6-8). Some of the ten nations on this list reflect close blood relationships with Israel. Consequently, their hatred of God’s people was evident and off the charts. Others we don’t know as much about, but we can be sure about two characteristics they have in common. One, they all attacked Israel numerous times throughout their history. Two, they all had the same goal of extinguishing Israel from the planet.

The specific aim of these enemies is clarified in verse 4. They want a complete annihilation. Their goal is that no one would even remember Israel’s name. Hosts of people and nations in the Middle East and beyond have shared this agenda throughout history and continue to do so today. If they had their way, Israel would have been exterminated long ago.

This hatred of Israel, however, is deeper than political rivalry and national rift. It’s actually an attack on two deeper realities—God and his gospel. The persecution of Israel and the hatred of her God ultimately is an attack on him. He is the object of the rage and jealousy of those who come against his children. The psalmist says these are “your enemies . . . those who hate you” (v. 2). He says this conspiracy is levied against “your people . . . your treasured ones” (v. 3). Ultimately their plot is aimed at “you” (v. 5). Ross says,

The hatred cannot be explained simply as rivalry for the land, or even for world dominion. There is something more evil at work behind this constant tension, and the psalm hints at it with the clarification that these nations are God’s enemies. If they could destroy Israel, they would in effect destroy the work of the Lord in bringing people to faith in him, and they would also destroy his prophetic word, especially concerning Israel, in which believers place their confidence. (Psalms, vol. 2, 735)

Whenever the people of God are attacked and assaulted for their faith, the real motive is the destruction of God (Ps 2:1-3). The bottom line is that people don’t like him and his reign over their lives, so they go after the only tangible representation of him they can find—those who worship him.

The animosity levied against Israel is not just a diverted hatred of God; it’s also a hatred for the salvation he’s provided. It’s a spiritual matter rooted in the opposition to God’s work of redemption through the gospel, and it should come as no surprise to believers. It’s as old as the conflict revealed in God’s prophecy to the serpent in the garden of Eden: “I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel” (Gen 3:15). The agenda in Psalm 83 to exterminate Israel is merely one attempt among many that Satan has made and is making to foil the advancement of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the offspring of Israel who crushed his head on the cross.

Two clear applications emerge from this first prayer in the text. First, believers everywhere should pray for God to defend the nation of Israel and defeat her enemies. I guess I’m one of those guys without a country when it comes to many aspects of eschatology. I believe Christ’s church is the true “Israel of God” (Gal 6:16) and that believers are truly “Abraham’s sons” (Gal 3:7; cf. Gal 3:8-9,29; Rom 2:28-29; 9:1-33). However, I’m old-fashioned enough to believe that—based on his covenant promises—God still has a place for ethnic Israel in the eschaton. I don’t claim to understand all that it entails, but I believe a remnant of the nation will play some role in the eternal kingdom (Matt 19:28; Luke 22:28-30; Acts 26:6-7; Rom 11:1-36; Rev 7:1-8; 21:12-14). This conviction compels me and all believers to pray for God to defend his name by defending the nation of Israel, overcoming their opponents, and bringing peace to their land (Ps 122:1-9).

Similarly, believers should pray for the persecuted among the true Israel, the church of Jesus Christ. The oppression of God’s people this psalm describes is not something with which most Christians in the Western world can identify. Many of our brothers and sisters elsewhere, however, are all too familiar with it. They wake up every morning and go to bed at night with a keen awareness that it could be their last day alive, or at least outside of a prison cell, simply because they profess faith in Christ. Someone needs to be an advocate for them like the psalmist was for persecuted Israel. Believers everywhere must step up to that role and cry out to the Father on behalf of our spiritual siblings who are suffering for their faith.

Pray for God to Show His Consistency

Psalm 83:9-15

A second prayer in this passage is for God to act in the current situation the same way he’s acted in the past—to be faithful and true in the present to the way he’s demonstrated who he is and what he does in the past. He calls to mind how God has glorified himself through some of the great victories he’s brought about in Israel’s history.

In the fashion of young children recounting the great Bible stories they learned in Sunday school, the psalmist first appeals to two of Israel’s great campaigns recorded in Judges 4–8. Regarding the current enemies, he wants God to “deal with them as [he] did with Midian” (v. 9) by the hand of Gideon, who overcame his adversary with just three hundred men, armed only with trumpets, jars, and torches (Judg 7:19-25). The psalmist asks God to make their rulers like Midian’s four rulers (v. 11). He destroyed them because they wanted to destroy Israel.

The songwriter also refers to the story of Deborah and Barak. He asks God to do to the current oppressors what he did to “Sisera and Jabin at the Kishon River” (v. 9), when he sent heavy rains that enabled Israel to defeat the Canaanites in their iron chariots and to deny them an honorable burial by spreading them like “manure” (v. 10). And the psalmist goes on in verses 13-15 to ask God to bring natural disasters like he did in Judges 4–5. He wants God to be consistent with his judgment in the past, cursing them with the same devastation they intended for Israel (v. 4).

Regarding his present battle, the psalmist’s resounding cry in these verses is, “Lord, do it again!” He’s asking God to exercise the same divine force as in those great Bible stories. And that’s how we should pray today when we’re asking God to defend and deliver his children. We don’t need to ask him to make us like the great judges of the Old Testament so we can deliver ourselves. We need to appeal to these great Bible stories in which he showed himself strong on behalf of his people. We need to revisit those tales of his strength from the past and cry out, “Lord, do today what you did back then.”

Beloved, the lesson for our children in the great stories of the Old Testament is not, “Be like these heroes.” Do we really want our children to be like Gideon, who doubted God’s wisdom and then set up idols that people worshiped even after his great victory (Judg 8:22-28)? Do we want them to dream about being strong like Samson, who was the Old Testament poster child for arrogance, sexual immorality, and spiritual infidelity (Judg 13–16)? Do we truly want our kids even to aspire to be like Deborah and Barak, whose victory was short-lived and who still needed a better judge to rise up after them (Judg 6:1-10)? These Bible characters were not heroes! They were men and women who needed God to do for them what they couldn’t do for themselves and whose lives testified that Israel still needed a righteous Judge and Deliverer to give them true victory.

Believers can and should appeal to the same Bible stories we learned in Sunday school when praying for national Israel. We should ask God to be consistent with the way he’s sovereignly rescued his people and defeated their enemies at critical junctures throughout biblical history. In addition, we should pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ around the world by not only appealing to those same Bible stories but by invoking the promises of Christ to go to battle on behalf of his own. He assures us that “the gates of Hades will not overpower” his church (Matt 16:18) and that his sheep “will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28). On behalf of our suffering fellow believers, we’re obligated and privileged to ask our Lord to be consistent with what he’s pledged regarding his care for his disciples and the overthrow of their enemies.

Pray for God to Show His Compassion

Psalm 83:16-18

The first two prayers in this psalm come down on the side of God’s eradicating his enemies and thereby ending their oppression of his people. But at the end of this psalm we see the tension similar to what Spurgeon addressed, and that frees us up to live and pray within it. Here we catch a glimpse of God’s showing compassion toward them for a larger purpose—that everyone on the planet would know and revere his glorious name.

The psalmist knows that the global acclaim of who God is and what he does will somehow come about through the mysterious tension between destroying his enemies altogether and turning their hearts toward him. This tension is nowhere more vivid than in verses 16-17. Seeing how the psalmist prays in these verses helps guide our understanding of how we should pray the previous two prayers in this song. He asks for God to both shame his enemies and save them.

Three requests mark the author’s prayer for God to shame his enemies and condemn them completely, just as he’s asked God to do in verses 1-15. First, he asks that God make their facial expressions show their fear of him (cf. Dan 5:6). Second, the psalmist prays for them to be completely disgraced so that they are no longer formidable military foes but rather terrified enemies running for their lives. Third, he prays that all their plans are foiled and they are utterly destroyed. Needless to say, the psalmist’s prayer list comprises a series of vivid requests for God to show his strength in complete judgment.

These appeals for God’s terrible sword, however, are tempered in almost oxymoronic fashion by the psalmist’s prayer “that [these enemies] will seek your name, Lord” (v. 16). In the same breath in which he asks for their destruction, he asks for their salvation! Although he wants these enemies defeated, he compassionately appeals that—once they see the demonstration of God’s power—they will realize the foolishness of their ways and cry out to God for his mercy. Somehow the psalmist acknowledges a place for the richness of God’s salvation in the midst of his awful judgment.

The psalmist’s ultimate desire is that even God’s enemies would know that he is the one true God who is sovereign over the whole planet (v. 18). God doesn’t just reign over Israel—or America for that matter. He controls the destiny of the entire universe. So he’s not interested in merely defending his name as the God over one nation. In the Old Testament God’s “name” is always a reflection of his nature. He wants his name—who he is and what he does—to be acclaimed by all nations.

Such is part of the mystery that characterizes the imprecatory psalms. At times—under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit—the psalmist appears to be calling fire down from heaven out of one side of his mouth while pleading for God’s mercy out of the other. That must be our posture as we read these psalms and learn to pray from them. As we pray for God’s kingdom to come and for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, we pray in this tension. Out of one side of our mouths we pray that Jesus Christ might reign in righteousness and condemn those who oppose the gospel. Out of the other side of our mouths we pray that those same opponents of the gospel will repent of their sin and place their faith in Christ.

All the while we know that both of those things can’t happen in the same person’s life. Someone who opposes the gospel can’t be damned forever and yet at the same time repent and be saved. However, we must remember that salvation and eternal destiny is the business of God, not of his children. Our business as his children is to pray for justice and to pray for grace. We don’t have to understand how the two can be friends but simply to be faithful to pray for both. We pray for both to the end that God’s acclaim will be widely known among all people.

Conclusion

The tension between awful judgment or merciful salvation actually shouldn’t baffle us as believers in Christ. Those two realities that appear to be in juxtaposition to each other actually are at the heart of the mystery of the gospel. They’re reconciled in the two-dollar theological word propitiation. In Greek one of the words translated by it came to denote the mercy seat, or covering, of the ark, which foreshadowed reconciliation by the blood of Christ. God “presented [Jesus] as an atoning sacrifice [propitiation] in his blood, received through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his restraint God passed over the sins previously committed” (Rom 3:25; cf. Exod 25:17-22; 30:6; Heb 9:5). A related Greek word also translated by “atoning sacrifice” similarly refers to Christ becoming our substitute and assuming our obligations, thus expiating and covering our guilt by the vicarious punishment he endured (1 John 2:2; 4:10).

On the cross Jesus incurred the wrath of a holy God in our stead. He died the death that we should have died. In so doing, he provided mercy and forgiveness for those who would believe. Both judgment and salvation happened at the same time. As Christ followers, that‘s the end to which we must pray for enemies of the gospel. Maintaining this tension between asking for judgment and for salvation, we pray through the lens of the gospel for every nation on the planet and every citizen of those nations to believe in Christ and bow to the “Most High over the whole earth” (v. 18).

Reflect and Discuss

1. What are we to do with the seeming tensions in the Word of God?
2. How are we to handle the tension of praying for God to wipe out enemies and asking God to save them? Is there a balance here?
3. How do we live with a consistent perspective and attitude toward the enemies of God?
4. Should we focus our prayers more on the annihilation of God’s enemies or for God to defend and uphold those who are his? Why?
5. How do we get our hearts and minds wrapped around Christian persecution throughout the world in such a way that it moves and motivates us to intercede for the persecuted church on a regular basis?
6. How does God’s activity in the past, through biblical examples, instruct us in how to pray concerning the enemies of God’s people?
7. What are some specific prayers that we can pray on behalf of our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world based on Matthew 16:18 and John 10:28? How should these New Testament promises inform our present intercession?
8. What’s the connection between God’s shaming his enemies and saving them?
9. How does God’s judgment against sinners make way for his salvation of sinners?
10. In what ways does the cross of Christ display both the judgment and the mercy of God?