Archive article 34

“You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies . . .” 

Salmo 23:5

The total surprise in this phrase lies in the fact that God doesn’t take the enemy away! When we have a bad headache we take a pill. Why? So that the pain will go away? And that’s quite true of all our aches and pains – we look for the most efficacious medicine which will remove our physical pain.

Isn’t this the way we also tend to think about our own difficult life-situations when we pray? Aren’t we half expecting God to resolve our problem by taking it away? We cry out to God: “Please help me” wanting Him to intervene in a miraculous way either taking us out of the situation, or by dissolving the trouble itself.

In line with everything in this Psalm, God doesn’t promise His blessings this way. The dilemma so often remains. But note, although it remains, it’s no longer centre stage! What’s at the centre of the screen is now a table which is very well prepared and which the enemy can’t touch. He’s off to one side, an impotent spectator of how God is choosing to bless those who belong to Him.

This way of answering prayer is quite typical of God all the way through the Bible. He hears and answers demonstrating visibly and powerfully His glory right in front of the enemy . . . He’s not answering just to make it easy for us.

God would have easily given the son He had promised Abraham very quickly. Instead he made him wait 25 years? Why? Is God capricious? Absolutely not! All through those long years He’s teaching Abraham to wait on Him so that when He does give the son, it’s actually when it is no longer humanly possible! (This is recounted in Genesis 12-21 – the first book in our Bible)

Perhaps even more surprising is the way God didn’t answer His Son’s prayer keeping him from being crucified. Jesus pours out his heart to his Father asking him three times: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me” (The Gospel of Matthew 26:39) God did not grant this request in the way Jesus’ human nature would have wanted. Did that mean that God was ignoring his son’s prayer? Not at all! He was choosing to set out a table which was magnificently prepared in the face of Satan and death. He was choosing to demonstrate his might power . . .”which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him at his right hand in the heavenly realms” (The letter of the apostle Paul to the Ephesians 1:20).

Dear reader, the privilege of this promise in the Psalm is not that our enemy disappears! It’s rather that God shows how it’s not the enemy dictating the course of events. As God prepares the table for His own, the enemy can only be shamed into watching and in humility admitting who really is the Lord. And “God . . . cannot lie” (Titus 1:2)

Paul Finch, pastor