David had many enemies. There was King Saul, who persecuted him mercilessly for a significant period of his life – after Samuel had, at God’s command, anointed him king over Israel. Later in life, Absalom, David’s own son rebelled against him. But these are only two examples; David had to pray, “Consider mine enemies; for they are many” (Ps 25:19). When he was asking the Lord to consider these enemies, or to look at them, he was asking Him to act, to “deliver” himself (v 20). He was conscious that they were hating him with a “cruel hatred”, and even in David’s petition that the Lord would consider his enemies, the request was implied that He would act by way of delivering David from these enemies.
But lying behind these human enemies was Satan, who has a cruel hatred against all God’s children, wanting to bring them down by his temptations so that they would sin and dishonour God and His cause. And when Satan did succeed in tempting David to sin with Bathsheba, he gave “great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme” (2 Sam 12:14). If it was possible for him, Satan would persuade God’s children to leave the way of holiness, just as he tempted Adam and Eve into a state of sin.
Satan also seeks to damage the people of God collectively. We see that illustrated in the evil one stirring up the Pharaoh who “knew not Joseph”, to oppress the Children of Israel, the people whom God had chosen as His outward followers – some of whom were sincere, believing followers of the living and true God. Satan acted against them with cruel hatred, particularly when he tempted Pharaoh to order that all the male babies were to be killed. Satan must have known that it had been prophesied that the Messiah would come through the descendants of Jacob, for the Lord had promised him: “In thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (Gen 28:14). If Satan could bring about a generation of Israelites in which no males were left, there could be no Messiah in the way God had promised. But, of course, Satan could never succeed in thwarting God’s promises, he could not prevent the fulfilment of God’s prophecies. Satan is without question powerful, but he is most certainly not all-powerful. He is powerful, but finitely so; God
is infinitely powerful, which ensures the fulfilment of all His purposes, including those which He has chosen to reveal in prophecy.
There were surely some among the suffering Israelites in Egypt who were praying to God in terms such as these: Consider our enemies, who hate us with a cruel hatred. God heard their cry and appeared to Moses at the burning bush, promising, “I have surely seen the affliction of My people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey” (Ex 3:7,8).
It was by an exercise of supernatural power that Israel was brought out of Egypt. Succumbing to Satan’s temptations, Pharaoh resisted again and again, until the last of the 10 plagues left him unable to resist any longer. Even after Pharaoh had let the Israelites go free, Satan still harboured cruel hatred against God’s people. He again tempted Pharaoh to pursue them with his army, and Israel found themselves trapped between Pharaoh’s forces and the Red Sea. The Lord miraculously opened up the Sea to let Israel pass through safely to the other side. Pharaoh presumptuously followed them, but the miracle had been performed for Israel, not for the Egyptians. They were drowned. God had considered the enemies of His people; He delivered Israel from destruction. Pharaoh was destroyed, and Satan was foiled.
We are to see Israel’s deliverance from bondage under Pharaoh in Egypt as a type of the deliverance of sinners from spiritual bondage to sin and Satan. He is holding them captive, doing all he can to keep them content to go on in the ways of sin, until they will go down to the blackness of darkness for ever in hell. If they are to be set free, divine power is necessary. And if they were awake to the seriousness of their condition, they would cry out to the Lord, asking Him to consider their great enemy and rescue them from Satan’s clutches. Yet it is part of God’s saving work to awaken sinners to a sense of their need – to realise that they are guilty and must be punished, to realise also that they are polluted by sin and must be cleansed.
We must recognise that Satan, in his cruel hatred towards God and in his determination not to allow anyone to escape his cruel grasp, will do all in his power to prevent sinners being awakened to a realisation of their danger. Yet we must realise that God is gracious and is ready to deliver sinners from going on in carelessness, and bring them to face the dangers involved in continuing in such a state. There can be no question about God’s power to awaken sinners, in spite of the strength and craftiness of Satan’s temptations.
But when a sinner has been awakened, Satan does not let go easily. He will, out of cruel hatred, continue his temptations, trying to get the sinner to
forget his serious thoughts and to plunge back again into worldly ways of thinking and acting. It should be obvious that there is no hope for the sinner unless the Holy Spirit will work savingly in his heart, calling him effectually “from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God” (Acts 26:18). The Spirit makes the sinner spiritually alive and creates faith in his heart so that he is able to respond to the call of the gospel – expressed in such words as these: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31). Satan will continue to oppose but, where the Lord has a purpose to bring a sinner into His kingdom, no effort of Satan can prevent that purpose being fulfilled.
Even after the sinner has been brought into the safety of the kingdom of God, Satan will not cease to act according to his cruel hatred, as is illustrated in David’s experience. Satan will follow the believer with temptations for the rest of his life, as far as the Lord will permit. He still warns His children: “Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour”; and He directs them: “Whom resist steadfast in the faith” (1 Pet 5:8,9). Yet the Lord will restrain Satan from going further with his cruel temptations than the Lord in His wisdom sees fit. He will enable the believer to resist many temptations and will prevent Satan from so tempting the believer that he will be swept out of the way of salvation. The believer is to remember that the Lord hears the cry, Consider my enemy, and that He is ready and able to deliver His child from Satan’s cruel hatred. And at the moment of death the believer will be brought out of the reach of temptation.
We may also notice that it is dangerous for anyone to be doing Satan’s work for him, even unconsciously. God used the heathen kingdom of Assyria in punishing Israel and Judah because of their sins. Yet Assyria attacked these nations for selfish reasons and must themselves be punished. So it was prophesied: “When the Lord hath performed His whole work upon mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks” (Is 10:12).
So it is dangerous for people today to persecute professing Christians, for example, to agitate against true religion, to promote a false morality, and to make sin attractive in entertainment. The Lord’s people should ask Him to “consider” these people – asking Him to act by turning them from those sins and bringing them to Himself in saving mercy. Psalm 2 speaks of rebellion against the Lord and His Anointed One, but it closes with the call, “Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little”. What a glorious exercise of God’s power it would be if this call was made effective in the hearts of many of Christ’s enemies today! What a setback it would be for the great enemy of souls!