“Your hand will find out all your enemies; your right hand will find out those who hate you. You will make them as a blazing oven when you appear. The Lord will swallow them up in his wrath, and fire will consume them. You will destroy their descendants from the earth, and their offspring from among the children of man. Though they plan evil against you, though they devise mischief, they will not succeed. For you will put them to flight; you will aim at their faces with your bows.” -Psalm 21:8–12
The kingdom of Christ is never without its enemies. As the word of the Lord goes forth, evil ones persist in fighting against and suppressing the truth more and more. No good can be done, no truth proclaimed, and no beauty cultivated without instigating the enemies of God to do evil against his kingdom. But they will not prevail.
Here the congregation turns from celebrating the glory and grandeur of the eternal kingdom of David to celebrate its invincible strength. They rejoice that the evil ones who hate the Lord are no match for his hand. His strength reveals their weakness. The heat of his eternal vengeance swallows them up and consumes them. Their posterity are cut off from the earth and from man’s memory forever. And, all those who devise mischief against the Lord will be put to flight with the cunning skill of his bowmanship. That is, their very faces will be cut down e’er they reach the city gates.
I love this! That “all those who devise mischief against the Lord will be put to flight with the cunning skill of his bowmanship.” Thanks for encouraging me to keep praying and believing God is intimately in control.