Psalms 9:11- “For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.”
We of course recognize this verse as the Scripture verse used by the enemy himself in Matthew 4:6. “And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in [their] hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.”
I have often wondered about this challenge: If you be the Son of God. I mean surely the enemy knows who Jesus is, Jesus knew who He was, what did He have to prove? Greek is not my strongest area of study but I was mentored one on one by a retired Greek professor who was Greek Orthodox. We looked at this passage and he said that there are three types of if’s in Greek. This if is not the if of whether or not but the if of since this is the case. Thus, the enemy was not saying to Jesus: “Prove to me that you are the Son of God, I don’t believe it.” You know sort of egging Him on: “Come on, come on let’s see what you’re made of.”
What the enemy was saying was: “Since you are the Son of God.” Still the question exist, what was the enemy trying to do or accomplish. Surely he knew he could not get Jesus to sin. If anything the old buzzard is smart. I believe he is convinced he found a flaw in God’s relationship with man. The enemy operates out of fear, but God operates out of love. I could be wrong but for me personally this makes a lot of sense. The enemy believes you better results with fear than love.
When the enemy appeared before God in the Book of Job God said: “Hey about my servant Job down there, he loves me and serves me.” The enemy replied: “Of course he does, you pay him so well. Take it all away and he will curse you.” The Book of Job proved that man can serve God out of love not out getting some reward or the fear of losing something.
You handle evangelism the way you want. As for me, I am only comfortable in evangelism when I am speaking of the love of God. I will not preach about hell or God punishing you if you don’t repent. That is not to say I do not believe in a hell, but I will not scare a person into salvation. I personally came to God wanting to love Him, not because I was afraid of going to hell. Oh, I had preachers scare the living pudding out of me with their sermons on hell and I repented over and over. I prayed the sinners prayer over and over, and I lived in fear of going to hell because maybe I did not say that prayer right or I did not truly repent. Yet, one day I read a book by an evangelist who said God wanted me and loved me a million times more than I wanted Him or loved Him. I looked up to heaven and I said: “God, I want to love you like you love me.” All my fears of hell, being left behind, and God punishing me left and I just rested in His love all these years. So you see when I evangelize I don’t talk of hell or punishment for sins. That is the enemy’s tool, fear. I believe God’s love is a greater motivation that fear.
This is what I believe was going on between Jesus and the enemy when the enemy said: “Hey, since you are the Son of God jump off the highest point of the temple.” I never really noticed this before but he wanted Jesus to jump from the temple in front of all the priest and religious leaders. Then there would appear a host of angels coming to Jesus’s rescue and as he landed on the ground, you can bet that all the religious leaders would have all fallen down and worship Jesus as the Son of God. But they would have worshipped Him out of fear and not love. Jesus wants us to accept His salvation out of love not fear. Sure you can get people to say a sinner’s prayer, come to church, pay their tithe if you strike fear in them. But that is the enemy’s tool and not the tool of Jesus. I came to Jesus in fear and I lived in fear, but when I came to Him in love, I found love and live in His love without fear.
Psalms 91 is a Psalm meant to remove all fear from us. Note in the Matthew passage, like so many Christians who only quote part of a verse and pull it out of context, the enemy leaves off an important part of this verse in Psalms 91:11. He only says that He will give His angels charge over you. He does not say that last part, to keep thee in all they ways.
The word charge in Hebrew is tsavah which means to give orders or command. In the Babylonian Aramaic it has the idea of carrying out a divine command or divine order. One rabbi uses the word tsavah to express the idea of equipping and giving supplies to carry out a divine order. The word for way is derek which is used to express a way of life. The enemy, that crafty old goat, did not add this last part because it would have completed the context. It did not mean that the angels were given charge to just protect Jesus, but to help Him and equip Him to carry out the divine plan of love which involved being persecuted, tormented and dying on a cross for us.
The enemy took Jesus where he could see the world and said, “I’ll give you all these creature, you don’t have to suffer and die for them, they are yours if you just fall down and worship me.” I looked at these word for fall down and it is naphal in the Aramaic. Look at Isaiah 14:12: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!” That word in the Hebrew for fallen is naphal which is identical to the Aramaic word. That old worm knew all about naphal. The word worship is seged, not shachah which is the usual word for worship. Seged in Aramaic has more of the idea of teaming up or joining up. The enemy was telling Jesus, God ahead, take the fall like I did and team up with me. With your love and my fear, we will be perfect in controlling man.
Psalms 91:11 tells us that God is giving us His angels with the divine order to help us carry out our life style in love and not submit to the fear of the enemy. He has given us His angels to preach love, not fear, to bring men and women to Him out of love and not fear. Yet, the enemy still whispers in the ear of the mega preacher wannabe, “You ain’t gonna get people in your church to listen to your preaching and give their hard earned money in tithe with just love. Oh yes, love is necessary but if that is all they need is love why go to church? You need to scare them to death make them realize they have to work at it and watch how faithful they will be when they know they have to sit through your sermon past the lunch hour or they will burn in eternal fires.”
I for one, I ain’t falling for it. True repentance comes when your heart is broken over betraying the God who loves you. That’s my message. You want to bring people to God by scaring them to death telling them September is going to end with earthquakes, financial collapse, plagues, alien invasion and they’d better repent when they have the chance, then go right ahead but I suspect you are listening to the same voice Jesus heard in Matthew 6 and I really doubt his angels are going to have charge over you for they do not operate on fear. God’s angels deal in love, the enemy’s angels, his demons they are the ones who deal in fear.
Recent Comments