- Troubles that Liberate
When the time came for Jacob to leave Laban and move on to the covenant-location of Bethel, God allowed a crisis between ‘Executive Director’ and ‘Manager’; between father-in-law and son-in-law (Genesis 31:2-3). It took that ‘quarrel’ between both parties for Jacob to move on to where Covenant was waiting for him. Imagine some ‘concerned’ priest or anyone trying to settle that quarrel!
With Israel, it sometimes took the strange rejection of peace for some nations to grant them the curious license to be invaded and their lands taken (Deuteronomy 20:10-13). It will take divinely engineered ‘enmity’ in some relationships for serpentine enemies to bring upon themselves the curse of God that the righteous might otherwise not have been able to invoke upon them. According to Genesis 12:3, for instance, the only way God can curse some people is when they become enemies enough to curse you first, as a Covenant child.
We may strive to be at peace with everyone, but God is not in every peace deal for which we strive. To force such friendliness or friendships is to bargain one’s life for the other’s, one’s destiny for the cursed (1 Kings 20:42). When Samson tried to marry from those whom God had pre-ordained him to destroy, he got destroyed by them in the end (Judges 13:5; 14:3; 16:30). When King Saul made a peace deal with Agag whom he had been commissioned to kill, he lost his throne (1 Samuel 15:3, 9, 18-19, 22-23, 28). When Ahab spared Benhadad and signed a peace deal with that king of Syria whom God had sent his way to be exterminated, he paid with his own life two chapters later at the hand of the same throne with which he had signed the peace deal (1 Kings 20:42; 22:1, 34-35). About nine years down the line, much after Ahab’s death, his nation was still in the unfinished war with that king of Syria. Strangely and foolishly, Ahab bequeathed avoidable battles to his ‘seeds,’ and it had to take Elisha’s double-Elijah prophetic interventions to check the threats in that season (2 Kings 6:8-11).
God told Abram to separate from his country, from his kindred, and from his father’s house (Genesis 12:1). Rather than separate from, he separated with his father’s house, taking with him Lot his orphaned nephew (v. 4). The result? He got blinded by that companion whose name meant “veil,” or “covering.” In that state, that blessed man couldn’t ‘see’ his inheritance even when he was in the centre of it (Genesis 13:14-15). It took a quarrel between both parties to effect the imperative separation that brought about the ‘unveiling’ that established his possession (Genesis 13:7-14). So, when we tag along with whom we should sever from, whatever the sentiments, we bring a veil upon ourselves, and could altogether miss or be severely delayed from our inheritance. Was it God that ‘put’ that quarrel between them? The Bible doesn’t explicitly say so, but that would be my guess.
Peace is good, but peace cannot be forced. Peace is good, but not every peace is “possible” (Romans 12:18). Peace is good, but God is not in every peace move, and forced peace can be a lie and a dangerous snare. Some troubles are beneficial because they have their origin in God, and their end is freedom for someone. Sometimes the worse tragedy is not in fighting the war feared but in avoiding it.
- The Balance
It might be argued that whom God put into that primordial ancestral enmity were Satan’s seed and the seed of the woman, rather than two humans, therefore… That is true, but what do we say about Jesus’ New Testament affirmations in Matthew 10:35 and Luke 12:51-53? Besides, when someone makes themselves the instrument of Satan in an enmity, who are they? According to Romans 6:16 and John 8:44, they then bear the colours of whom they have yielded to. That seems to be how Jesus saw it, for when Peter became a mouthpiece of Satan, Jesus faced him squarely and said, “Get behind me, SATAN” (Matthew 16:23). Was Jesus calling Peter Satan? I don’t know.
I worry that a message like this can be taken advantage of by recalcitrant evil doers, who rebelliously refuse peace and think it their right and righteousness to strive with everyone. Those are not the ones that this message addresses. They are not “peacemakers” who are “the children of God” (Matthew 5:9). Jesus cast the Satan out of Peter but did not carry on with him as an irreconcilable ‘enemy.’ Peter was prompt to weep his way back to God as soon as he had realised his fall (Mattew 26:75). That Peter became the strong voice for God on Pentecost Day. God sees the heart of everyone. The good name we give a bad deed does not make it good. God ‘puts’ enmities between parties; Satan also does. May God grant us discernment to tell between the two, a firm heart to be willing to obey, and the steadfastness to be right and still righteous. Amen.
- A Prayer
O Lord, may my eyes be opened to discern aright. May I not make friends with whom I should abhor. May I not sign peace deals in the fashion of Ahab, blindly trading off my own destiny. And for serpentine bonds of ‘peace’ into which I may already have put myself, O Lord, poke the fire of Your enmity hotter, until I and my household are free, in Jesus name. Amen.
From The Preacher’s diary,
February 28, 2022.
