Turning the Table on Terror

Turning the Table on Terror

Psalm 64

Main Idea: God’s children don’t have to live in fear of the wicked when they trust in him for deliverance.

It’s always especially ironic when “what goes around comes around” and the tables are turned on injustice. Several years ago a commander at a secluded terrorist training camp north of Baghdad was conducting a demonstration for a group of militants. He unwisely chose to use a belt packed with live explosives for the training exercise. During the demonstration the explosives accidentally detonated, killing the commander and twenty-one other ISIS trainees. The weapons he intended for the destruction of some group of innocent people became the instrument of his own death. An employee working the counter at a nearby liquor store commented,

This is God showing justice. This is God sending a message to the bad people and the criminals in the world, to tell them to stop the injustice and to bring peace. Evil will not win in the end. It’s always life that wins over death. (Adnan and Arango, “Suicide Bomb Trainer”)

This observer was correct in suggesting that ultimately God will turn the tables on evil and win the day. Since the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, acts of terror have escalated dramatically across the globe. No longer can we get on an airplane, attend a sporting event or concert, or even go to a shopping mall without thinking about the possibility of something terrible happening. The term terrorist is appropriate. Evil men who manipulate others to do horrific things have the ability to strike terror in ordinary, innocent people. And often—by their own admission—they target followers of Jesus Christ. Most of us find ourselves living in anticipation of the day when God will turn the tables on terrorism.

The temptation to live in terror isn’t new. As Ross observes, “In every age there are malicious people who try to terrorize innocent people, either by their threats and taunts, or by actual physical violence” (Ross, Psalms, vol. 2, 395). David’s day was no exception. Throughout most of his life, he faced the threat of terror at the hands of evil people who sometimes succeeded in causing violence and inflicting pain on innocent people. Yet, in spite of his seemingly frequent vacillation between fear and faith, he always landed on the confident ground that God would turn the wickedness of evil men back on them.

Psalm 64 gives us a clear example of how God’s children can pray with confidence because we’re convinced he ultimately will turn the tables on terrorists and all others who seek to incite fear in the lives of innocent people. His justice ultimately will win the day. Consider how the psalmist requests God’s protection from his enemies, rehearses their résumé, asserts God’s response of judgment, and identifies various reactions to his justice.

The Request for God’s Protection

Psalm 64:1-2

The psalmist begins in a familiar place—with a cry for God’s help. The imperative hear isn’t just a request for God to listen but an urgent plea for him to respond with an answer. Specifically, he’s asking God to respond to his lament over the circumstances. His situation has made him anxious and sorrowful, and he desperately needs relief. He’s in a dire situation he can’t resolve. He needs his God to do something he can’t do.

David’s specific request is for God’s protection, a plea he expresses in two particular ways. The first request is that God might “protect” him from his “enemy.” It would seem that the most complete way for God to do this would be to eliminate his enemy. However, in this context the word protect is a request that they wouldn’t have any effect on him. The psalmist’s second request is for God to “hide” him from the “wicked.” What he wants is to be concealed from an apparent conspiracy, like a crowd of demonstrators or a frenzied mob (cf. Ps 2:1). The picture here is of a small group of evil men who are strategically lathering up a raging mob in order to assault and destroy the object of their hatred. This is a frighteningly familiar picture of what we know of today as terrorism. Quite often a small group of extremists can stir up large groups and manipulate them into hating and attacking innocent people.

Once again, we find David crawling up into God’s lap like a little boy might do with his father. With uninhibited honesty and utter desperation in his voice, he asks God to act on his behalf. And just like a child in the strong care of his daddy, the danger of his situation already begins to disappear because he’s making his appeal to a compassionate ear in a safe place. This is the way it should be when the righteous are being terrorized by their enemies. We find a safe place whenever we climb into the strong arms of our heavenly Father through prayer. Even when danger is still looming, we’re comforted and strengthened just by talking to our omnipotent and loving Father.

The Résumé of God’s Enemies

Psalm 64:3-6

Many of the psalms reflect the writer’s affinity for reminding himself (and God!) about the extreme depraved character of his enemies. Apparently, he sees doing so as helpful—if not needful—in his prayers. Here he begins to review the résumé of those who are trying to kill him in this particular situation.

David identifies five primary characteristics that detail the frightening picture of the terrorists who are targeting him. They wage a war of words. They depend on the element of surprise. They attack innocent people. (The psalmist identifies himself as “blameless” and completely undeserving of their assault.) They act without fear and arrogantly. They are inherently evil. All their devising and perfecting is born in the deepest, darkest part of the heart that can’t even be mined by human understanding.

Passages like this reaffirm my convictions about the Bible’s supernatural, timeless nature. Could there be any more accurate picture of the nature of terrorism today? Terrorists fill the airways, Internet, social media, and printed propaganda with vicious rhetoric and threats. Just as verses 3-4 indicate, they launch malicious verbal attacks and slanderous accusations that incite naïve people to act. Often their words even inspire women and children to use themselves as weapons of destruction while the instigators remain safely in hiding.

Instead of valiantly attacking opposing soldiers, these terrorists act as cowards by blowing up and gunning down innocent people in public places, and they do it at the most unexpected times. These enemies of righteousness carry out their evil plots as if they have a license to exercise such diabolical plans and malicious violence, and they do it without any fear of retaliation from men or God. Truly they are aptly named—terrorist. Their strategy is to strike terror in the lives of their opponents. But their depraved character is nothing new; God has always had their number!

The Response of God’s Judgment

Psalm 64:7-8

Though the heart is unsearchable with human capacities, and though the source of all the evil plots of terrorists is too deep for us to grasp, God is more than capable. He who “searches every heart and understands the intention of every thought” (1 Chr 28:9) weighs their motives and turns the tables on them. Just when they think they’ve carried out their plan successfully, they find themselves in the crosshairs of God’s response of judgment. For he says, “I, the Lord, examine the mind, I test the heart to give to each according to his way, according to what his actions deserve” (Jer 17:10). Mark it down, beloved: God will condemn the wicked and preserve the righteous.

That’s why we find the strong contrastive conjunction but at the beginning of verse 7. The psalmist now confidently states that—although the enemy attack comes out of nowhere and strikes terror—God will flip it on their heads! While the terrorists assume God isn’t paying attention to their wicked ploys, suddenly he turns the tables. While the terrorists once shot verbal arrows and wielded verbal swords at the psalmist, God now “will shoot them with arrows; suddenly, they will be wounded.” The attackers once waged a war of words to slander the psalmist, but now “they will be made to stumble; their own tongues work against them.”

God isn’t necessarily firing literal arrows; the language is figurative. He’s pronouncing his word that will command the destruction of the psalmist’s enemies, just as he did in an earlier messianic psalm: “Then he speaks to them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath” (Ps 2:5). The attackers wield terrifying and malicious words, but God’s decree is more powerful, causing these detractors to be “wounded” (64:7) and to “stumble” (v. 8). “The shooters will be shot; those who planned to destroy the innocent will be destroyed—by one powerful word from God” (Ross, Psalms, vol. 2, 402).

This kind of what-goes-around-comes-around economy isn’t foreign to God when it comes to his just response to the wicked. He’s sovereignly applied this principle to others in biblical history. The gallows Haman erected for Mordecai became his own place of execution. The furnace that was overheated and intended to consume Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego ended up killing the king’s servants who threw them in it. The jealous rulers who plotted to have Daniel killed in the lions’ den ended up as the lions’ dinner. Herod Agrippa, who executed the apostle James, later experienced an excruciating death from an illness. Turning the tables on those who attack the righteous is sometimes part of God’s judgment.

The Reaction to God’s Justice

Psalm 64:8-10

God’s retribution on those who incite terror will bring different reactions from different groups of people. Believers should pray for both reactions.

The first reaction to God’s justice is that of humanity in general (vv. 8-9). These are likely references to unbelievers in contrast to the righteous mentioned in verse 10, and their response is somewhat surprising. The terrorists who were planning to carry out their plans in secret will be the objects of public shame and disdain, even among those who are not part of the people of God. The tables of justice will be turned on them not only in their demise but also in the response of their fellow unbelievers.

God’s judgment also will strike “fear” in the general populace, causing them to “tell about God’s work.” The verb understand means “to be prudent, to deal wisely.” Unbelievers will talk about what they see among themselves and even give it an honest assessment! They will have to acknowledge that the judgment against these cruel terrorists is God’s work and, consequently, they should revere him. While this certainly doesn’t indicate that everyone will become a follower of God, some of them might. God’s righteous retribution on the wicked could serve as an evangelistic catalyst in our day! At the very least, it will cause some people to take Christ and his followers much more seriously (Ross, Psalms, vol. 2, 403).

Believers should make pleading for God’s justice a part of our repertoire of prayer because sometimes the fear of God’s judgment opens people’s spiritual eyes. I trusted Christ when I was nine years old for one reason: I didn’t want to go to hell. I wish I could say I understood things like God’s love, goodness, and grace. I wish I had been motivated by the glories of spending eternity worshiping him in heaven. But I wasn’t. I was motivated by the fear that God would judge my sin with eternal damnation. And he showed me the gospel, and I trusted Christ, and I was saved. The fear of God’s judgment is a legitimate motivator, and we should pray that God will use it to draw some people to himself.

God’s righteous judgment expands beyond the immediate subjects to include everybody on the planet. The consequences of his righteous retribution far exceed the local context of the psalmist. While we don’t see this everywhere in the Psalms, it is in Psalms 56–68. “Because God upholds justice and protects those who are unjustly attacked, all humanity will be drawn to proclaim and consider the works of God” (Wilson, Psalms, 900). The exercise of God’s justice will be a means of making his glory known among all people!

The second reaction to God’s justice is one the psalmist encourages among God’s faithful (v. 10). The righteous can respond by celebrating and resting in God’s protection and care. So the psalmist’s prayer in verse 1 to have his life preserved under God’s safeguard is answered in abundance! While its realization may still be in the future, he finds confidence in knowing he will joyfully worship God in the safety of his presence. Kidner notes that this “is a sober joy, with the facts faced at their worst, but also at their overwhelming best” (Kidner, Psalms 1–72, 247). The sure hope of worshiping God for all of eternity serves as a sustaining force in the believer’s life.

The increasingly expansive glory of God noted early in Psalms 56–68 also shows up here. A progression of praise to some degree begins in Psalm 61:8: “I will continually sing of your name.” It continues in Psalm 63:11—“The king will rejoice in God; all who swear by him will boast”—and reaches new heights here in Psalm 64:9: “Everyone will fear . . . tell . . . understand . . . rejoices . . . takes refuge . . . offer praise.” Then, in telescopic fashion, this sea of worship is broadened in Psalm 65:8 where “those who live far away are awed by your signs.” Ultimately, it finds its crescendo in the two hymns of praise: Psalms 66:1-4 and 67:3-7. This sweeping flood of praise in this series then finds a suitable conclusion in Psalm 68:32-35, where God receives the praise of the entire world after conquering the nations and entering his sanctuary.

Truly the reaction to God’s justice should be worship. That response should certainly come from his righteous people. But ultimately, worship will be the universal response of all people to his greatness and his glory.

Conclusion

While Bildad the Shuhite’s counsel to the suffering Job wasn’t always on target, he did rightly recognize, “God does not reject a person of integrity, and he will not support evildoers” (Job 8:20). The general principle of this psalm is clear: when God’s children are terrorized by evil men for righteousness’s sake, he will show himself strong to them as deliverer and avenger. Consequently, when Christians face the wicked forces of this world for the sake of the gospel, he will be our refuge. When terrorists make those who trust in Christ the objects of their attacks, they act foolishly because God will avenge them. So once again, based on the reality of God’s anticipated retribution, believers can pray confidently for God’s strong help against the onslaught of terrorism. Terrorists will get what they deserve, and they may even get what they had planned to impose on others.

A word of caution is in order, however. The liquor store employee outside of Baghdad, mentioned earlier, actually found pleasure in the accidental death of the scheming terrorist. When he heard the news of the botched training exercise, he burst out laughing. “This is so funny,” he said. “It shows how stupid they are, those dogs and sons of dogs” (Adnan and Arango, “Suicide Bomb Trainer”). Such a reaction should never characterize followers of Jesus Christ. Our God rhetorically asks, “‘Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?’ This is the declaration of the Lord God. ‘Instead, don’t I take pleasure when he turns from his ways and lives?’” (Ezek 18:23; cf. Ezek 33:11). If the one we serve doesn’t find pleasure in the death of terrorists, but instead desires that they repent and be saved, then we should have the same posture.

While we have a tendency not to have a whole lot of pity on a suicide bomber or any other terrorist who loses his life while trying to harm others, these scenarios in the psalms should always point us to the gospel. As Wilson observes, “When we rejoice in the destruction of the wicked, when we are glad that they ‘get what they deserve,’ we might want to be cautious. What if we were to receive what we deserve?” (Wilson, Psalms, 902; emphasis in original). Christ’s disciples must always be careful not to be guilty of the same attitude as the unforgiving servant in one of Jesus’s parables. His master said to him, “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Shouldn’t you also have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?” (Matt 18:32-33). Because of Jesus’s work on the cross, we didn’t get what we deserve. That should always temper our prayers for God’s retribution and clothe them with humility.

Reflect and Discuss

1. David, as he often does, is begging God to “hear” his voice. How does David’s vulnerability and honesty encourage you in your prayer life?
2. David has a rugged and real prayer life because he understands his absolute dependence on God. How is your prayer life? Is its weakness due to your inability to understand your dependence on God?
3. Notice David’s description of God’s enemies in this psalm. Does God still have enemies today? Can similar descriptions be used?
4. David has confidence in God’s righteous retribution against his enemies. Can we, as followers of Christ, have that same confidence?
5. Jesus says in Matthew 5 to “love your enemies.” How can this be reconciled with what David is praying for? Can we rightly pray for God to condemn our enemies if we are also to love them?
6. Stepping back and looking at the broad picture, who are God’s enemies? Who are our enemies? Is it important to define who the true enemy is?
7. What is the first reaction David anticipates in response to God’s judgment? Does this happen today? What are some examples?
8. What is the second reaction David anticipates in response to God’s judgment? What are some examples of this in your life?
9. We are expected to exult over God’s judgment but not to gloat. What is the fine line between these two?
10. In regard to gloating in the presence of God’s judgment, how can the gospel keep our exulting in God’s judgment pure? In other words, how important is it to remember your own sin and guilt?