"what To Do With Your Enemies"

19 November 2006

“WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR ENEMIES”

Deuteronomy 2:16-22

Allow me to do a little review.  WE are making our way to the Promised Land.  In so doing, we will inevitably encounter people whose very existence is a threat, an obstacle to our arriving in the Promised Land with power.  First, our own people, our own blood with whom we may be estranged, secondly there are people who are comparatively speaking doing worse off than we are, weaker, if you will whom we could probably wipe out.  Leave them alone.  Don’t pick on people.  Today we find the third set of people on and in   our way, our enemies.   With whom w3e have a history of bad blood and ill will.

All right.  Let’s deal with enemies.  Everybody’s got some. 

Our inclination is to think first about survival.  I cannot survive as long as my enemies are alive.  Not true.

Who are our enemies?  The Ammonites are the children of Lot.  A pass characterized by distrust and trickery.  “May the Lord watch…”

Verse 16

God has to kill of something inside of us.  This is tough for some of us. After all, we are grown.   Big enough to do and say whatever we wish to.  That’s just not true.  We exercise our true strength by practicing constraint.

The enemies will devour your very souls.  Wickedness and evil are like cancer, spreading, consuming and overtaking everything in their path.  The only way to overcome the hatred is to cut it out.  Lord, take my hatred away.

We may not be able always to choose our relationships but we can determine their power over us[1].

2 Chronicles 20:22,23

Hatred will inevitably destroy itself.

I Peter 3:9-12

How can I be a blessing to the every people who are trying to destroy me.  I know what you are saying, “Why in the world would I want to do that?!”  Let me remind you that you are not in the world.  IN one sense, it makes no sense.  IN the economy of God, it could save two lives.

Matthew 5:43-48

Lord I want to be a blessing

Lord I want to decide what has true power over my own life, with your leading

Lord, I want to be free of the cancer of hatred that eats away at everything in its path.

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[1] Daniel, in “Rough Edges of Holy Friendships”  as quoted in Jones and Armstrong, Resurrecting Excellence, 72.