1.1. Myth 3: Hate the Enemy?

3

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (4)
Myth 3: no love for enemies?

1.  Introduction

1.1. Myth 3: hate the enemy?

1.2. What we’re saying, what we’re not saying

We’re answering a misconception not speaking everything into a vacuum

I’m focussing on where we find a loving attitude towards enemies in the context of “nasty” prayers for or about them.

Not claiming that we’ll find as explicit and developed teaching of enemy-love in OT as in NT.

1.3. Three pointers to love for enemies

·  Warnings to repent

·  Desire for blessings

·  Limiting retribution

1.4. Feeling the enemy closer to home

2.  Testing the claim: only hatred and no love?

2.1. Psalm 2

2.1.1.  Warnings to repent

2.1.2.  Desire for blessings

2.1.3.  Limiting retribution

2.2. Psalm 7

2.2.1.  Warnings to repent

We saw in the last session: Psalm 7:12–13

Here the enemy is warned what will happen if he does not cease and desist from pressing his suit.

2.2.2.  Desire for blessings

What does David pray for himself and what does he pray for the enemy?

7:5

See above.

But also: 7:9

2.3. Psalm 38

2.3.1.  Limiting retribution

·  What do the enemy seek from David? v12

·  Why are they against David? vv16–20

·  To what does David attribute all this trouble?

·  What does David ask concerning his enemies?

How does David’s prayer against the enemy compare with vengeance?

How does it compare with “love its neighbour and hate its enemy”?

2.4. Psalm 40

2.4.1.  Limiting retribution

·  What three things does the enemy do to David? vv14–15

·  Which of these does David want to repay in kind?

·  How does that compare with vengeance?

Might David be aware that “we have a gospel to impart”? v16

2.5. Summary

·  Warnings to repent

·  Desire for blessings

·  Limiting retribution

3.  Series summary

3.1. Introducing the problem and some false solutions

3.1.1.  What’s the problem?

3.1.2.  Pleading for judgment

3.1.3.  Gospel or no gospel in the Psalms?

·  Do the psalms teach us to pray out of self-righteousness?

·  Do the psalms teach us that the enemy cannot repent?

·  Do the psalms teach us not to love our enemies?

3.2. Myth 1, self-righteousness

3.2.1.  The courtroom setting: Deut 19:16–21

3.2.2.  Specific righteousness isn’t self-righteousness

3.3. Myth 2: they couldn’t get their heads around ‘repentance’

3.3.1.  Psalms 1 and 2

3.3.2.  Psalm 7

3.4. Myth 3: hatred, never love, for enemies?

3.4.1.  Warnings to repent

3.4.2.  Desire for blessings

3.4.3.  Limiting retribution

4.  Conclusion—Praying after David

So we, too, pray for our angry enemies, not that God protect and strengthen them in their ways, as we pray for Christians, or that He help them, but that they be converted, if they can be; or, if they refuse, that God oppose them, stop them and end the game to their harm and misfortune.[1]

… the righteous would anxiously desire the conversion of their enemies, and evince much patience under injury, with a view to reclaim them to the way of salvation: but when wilful obstinacy has at last brought round the hour of retribution, it is only natural that they should rejoice to see it inflicted, as proving the interest which God feels in their personal safety.[2]

Steffen Jenkins Keswick Convention 21st July, AD 2017

[1].Martin Luther, What Luther Says: An Anthology (St. Louis: Concordia, 1986),1100.

[2].John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms,2:378.