Narrow Focus

Psalm 21:8 (KJV) Thine hand shall find out all thine enemies: thy right hand shall find out those that hate thee.

(Proverbs 22 also read)

Usually when I read through this verse, I think of God’s enemies as being the nations outside of Israel.  To us today this would be all those servants of Satan, who are outside the church and who are working to destroy the church.  But then I began thinking about some of the other reading I’ve been doing this past month in the book of Leviticus, and a parallel passage in Deuteronomy.

I believe it’s Leviticus chapter 26 that talks about how God will bless those who are obedient, and then, in a much longer passage tells about how He will punish those who are disobedient.  He goes through verse after verse, scenario after scenario, time after time, where the disobedience of Israel brings them to destruction.  By the time you get to the end of the chapter, you wonder if they were going to be any Jews left alive to make up the nation of Israel.

The point I’m making is that often God finds His enemies within.  He doesn’t need to look outside.  There are enough people who attend church on a regular basis, who refused to bend their knee, who insist on going their own way, and to put God into a subservient servant mode, deserve them, and to produce what they want.

These are the enemies of God.

So?  Evangelism is important.  We are called to go into the world.  Revival is probably more important because if we bring in new believers and they are polluted by the refuse sitting in the pews, then what have we gained?