Three Arrows at Sunrise - I Samuel 18-23

Sermon 5 of 13 from the Journey to the Throne: Meeting God in the Turning Points of Life (I Samuel 16 - II Samuel 1) series

September 2000 - In our study of the early years of David as he journeyed from the sheep pens to the throne, we have come to the story of his friendship with Jonathan. This is perhaps the most famous friendship in the Bible and it is clearly one of the most unlikely. There was no reason that the son of the king and a teenaged shepherd should become close friends. They should have been bitter rivals. But they weren't. The story of how God brought them together and how he used their friendship (especially in David's life) demonstrates how God uses our friends to reveal his will and to protect us in times of trouble.

In the famous children's book Charlotte's Web, there's a wonderful passage that illustrates what friendship is all about. It comes at the end of the book after Charlotte weaved her messages to protect Wilbur the pig. You remember the story. She first wrote "Some Pig" in the web, then "Terrific," then "Humble," and then "Radiant." As a result, Wilbur's life was saved. Now Charlotte has almost come to the end of her own life. Wilbur asks her, "Why did you do all this for me? I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you."

"You have been my friend," Charlotte replies. "That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life could use a little of that."

"Well," said Wilbur. "I'm no good at making speeches. I haven't got your gift for words. But you have saved me, Charlotte, and I would gladly give my life for you—I really would."

The writer of Proverbs said it this way: "A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity" (17:17). "There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother" (18:24). Have you ever had a friend like that? If you have, you know it is a gift of pure grace—a gift from God not earned or deserved.

I. Where Do My Enemies Come From?

On a human level, there are many answers to that question. Enemies most often come from those closest to us. Sometimes people turn against us because of foolish things we do. Other times we may suffer at the hands of someone against whom we have done no wrong. People may disparage us because of our appearance, our background, our personal beliefs, our ethnic origin, our skin color, our position in life, our money (or lack thereof), or for a million other reasons. They may think we are boring, empty, trivial, a bother to them and an impediment to their career. They may be prejudiced against us for no good reason. Perhaps they dislike us because we have succeeded where they failed. Who knows? Enemies rarely explain themselves. On a deeper level, our enemies come from God. He allows them to enter our lives for reasons that are rarely apparent to us at the time. The case of Joseph and his brothers (Genesis 37-50) illustrates this truth. When his brothers threw him into the cistern and then sold him to the Midianites, they had only evil in their hearts. When Potiphar's wife falsely accused him, she lied because of her injured pride. When he was thrown into jail, no one could foresee that eventually he would be the Prime Minister of Egypt, second in command only to Pharaoh. And even Joseph himself had no idea what it all meant until years later, during the great famine, when his brothers approached him, thinking he was an Egyptian, not recognizing him, believing him to be long dead. Then and only then did God's plan come into focus. That's why three times in Genesis 45:5-8, Joseph declares to his brothers that God had sent him to Egypt to put him in a position where he could one day deliver his family and preserve a godly heritage on the earth. Years later Joseph utters these famous words that sum up his understanding of God's sovereignty in what his brothers had done: "You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good" (Genesis 50:20). Only a man with a deep belief in the sovereignty of God could utter those words after suffering so much mistreatment. In the same way, the Babylonians meant to conquer the Jews and humiliate them, but God meant it for good. And not just the good of the Jewish people but also the good of the Babylonians. So where do your enemies come from? They come from God in this sense. If he didn't allow it, your enemies could not trouble you.

II. Who Are My Enemies?

In the broadest sense, an enemy is anyone who turns against me. The dictionary defines an enemy as “one who feels hatred toward, intends injury to, or opposes the interests of another.” It’s important as we think about this that we not restrict the term “enemy” to people like Osama bin Laden. My personal enemies tend to be much closer to home. In fact, home is the first place to look for your enemies. Jesus himself said, “A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household” (Matthew 10:36). In that very passage he specified three very close relationships that go sour: A father and his son, A mother and her daughter, A mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law. We can easily extrapolate from that list to other close relationships, including parent-child, husband-wife, and on out to grandparents, uncles, aunts, and then to various distant relatives. It certainly includes people at work and those who attend church with us. The enemies we are told to love usually are not people in Iraq or North Korea. Most of us will never visit those two countries. But we do have to go home every day to face people who may or may not be glad to see us. Every week we work with people who may dislike us. We may even come to church and see people we would rather not see. If this teaching of Jesus is going to work, it must work first in the relationships closest to us. God places inside every family some people who rub us the wrong way. I heard a Bible teacher say that God puts in every family people whom he uses to prepare for leadership in the world. He puts a Judas, an Absalom, a Peter, a Barnabas and Timothy in every family. That’s why your closest friends, your strongest supporters, and your biggest critics will probably all come from your own flesh and blood. You have to learn to deal with the people closest to you before you can impact the world around you. Let me be more specific: Your children could be your enemies. Your husband could be your enemy. Your wife could be your enemy. Your parents could be your enemies. Dash Their Babies Against the Rocks! Certainly your ex-wife or your ex-husband could be your enemy. It isn’t just people “out there” somewhere—nameless, faceless, anonymous evil people who are our enemies. Sooner or later people we love will hurt us deeply and at that point, and for at least that moment, they have become our enemies. And if we are honest enough to admit it, we have become their enemies too. Something like that had happened to the Jews in exile. They hated the Babylonians with a fierce hatred. Consider the final words of Psalm 137. O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us! Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock! (vv. 8-9). Ever prayed like that? "Lord, may their babies be dashed against the rocks." There is no way to soften those words or to dim the anger they express. The Jewish exiles are asking God to send someone to invade Babylon, to do to them as they had done to Jerusalem, and then to take their babies and dash them against the rocks. You can actually find a metrical version of Psalm 137 in the "New Psalter" of 1696. The last two verses read like this: Proud Babel's daughter, doomed to be of grief and woe the wretched prey; Blessed is the man who shall to thee the wrongs thou lay'st on us repay. Thrice blessed, who with just rage possessed, and deaf to all the parents' moans, Shall snatch thy infants from the breast, and dash their heads against the stones. It's hard to imagine closing a worship service this way. Yet we can't deny that Psalm 137 is part of the inspired text of the Bible. Isaiah 13 contains a prophecy of God's judgment against Babylon. Verses 15-18 explain how God answered the prayer of Psalm 137: Whoever is found will be thrust through, and whoever is caught will fall by the sword. Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished. Behold, I am stirring up the Medes against them, who have no regard for silver and do not delight in gold. Their bows will slaughter the young men; they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb; their eyes will not pity children. Even though the prayer of Psalm 137 seems extreme, God answered it literally, and he did it by using one pagan kingdom (the Medes) to judge another pagan kingdom (the Babylonians). Thus does God's judgment come on those who so badly mistreated his people.

We Don't Have to Choose

It's not as if we have to choose between loving our enemies and hoping they are someday punished. If we do our part (loving them), God can certainly take care of judging them. And in the meantime, we will be blessed if we work for the prosperity of our enemies and pray for God's blessings upon them. If that sounds confusing, then just remember this. If we remain bitter, we cannot get better. If we try to get even with those who hurt us, we are mostly hurting ourselves. If we try to punish our enemies, we are usurping God's authority. But if we love them and bless them and pray for them, things will go better for us and for them. And we can then sleep well at night, knowing that if they need punishment, God can take care of it in his own time and in his own way. That's the real meaning of Jeremiah 29:7. Of course, it is easier to talk about this abstractly. It is much harder to love our enemies on a daily basis. We are to love those who despitefully use us and abuse us and victimize us again and again. It’s not easy to do this in any case, but it is much harder to love when we feel deeply and repeatedly violated and our trust has been destroyed. Yet the command remains: “Love your enemies” (Luke 6:27). We cannot escape it. This is a key part of our own spiritual journey from bitterness to forgiveness to freedom. To say it another way, we cannot be set free until we set them free to be blessed by the Lord. That's as far as we'll go for the moment. In Part 2 of this message, we'll talk about seven specific ways we can love our enemies.