The Psalms ask God to defeat His enemies. Why don’t we pray that way today?

The book of Psalms is one of the greatest treasures God has given His people. The relative ignorance of the book of Psalms in the last generation or so is one of the real tragedies in the life of the church. The Psalter is inspired in such a way that you need to know it well so that you know which Psalm to turn to in which circumstance. If you are facing a circumstance and you have never read the book of Psalms, you don’t know where to look.

The book of Psalms constantly reminds us that God will conquer His and our enemies for us. Just read Psalm 2, which is part of the great introduction to the Psalter: when the world conspires against God, He laughs. It is not good to fight against God. If you have never thought about that, ponder that truth. You cannot fight against God. So, the enemies of God, His purpose, and His people will surely and ultimately be destroyed.

The world, in its sexual revolution, is opposing Christian ethics. However, the confidence we could have is that the lie will always collapse of its own weight and foolishness. The problem is that it takes a while sometimes. It took Nazism twelve years to collapse. It took communism eighty years to collapse. They collapsed in part because of outside pressure but also because of the internal lie that couldn’t sustain itself. So, the lies that we face in this world will ultimately collapse, but we need to have confidence that God will vindicate Himself, if not in history, on the last day.

As I was thinking about how we reduce fear of the world, one of the thoughts that came to me was a spiritual discipline that Calvin recommended. As far as I know, it has been largely neglected by Reformed people, but Calvin said to spend time meditating on the future life. I have been studying 1 Peter recently, and one of the things that strike me is that Peter was living constantly in light of the world to come. He was not worried about what this life would do to him because his treasure was laid up in heaven, imperishable, undefiled, and untouchable by the world. The more we have a sense that, ultimately, we belong not to this world but to the world to come, the less we’ll fear this world and the more we’ll seek to live for God.