It’s simple …..
Vengeance IS for God ALONE!
A hurt quickly turns to anger and anger can quickly turn to ‘I’m gonna get you!’
When I was thinking about a title for this post … all that came to my mind was the classic movie, “The Wizard of Oz”. The wicked witch was going to get back at Dorothy for her house falling on her sister and killing her … at all costs … even the cost of her own life!
Intentional or unintentional hurt by someone can get our hearts having an attitude of great dislike (even hate maybe) for the person and get our minds moving in the direction of how we are going to make them ‘pay’ for what they’ve done to us. There is so much going on inside of us and most times … no one even knows.
God tell us in His Word to not take vengeance out on the one who has hurt us. This command is given first in the Old Testament in the book of Law ~ Leviticus. It is also repeated in the New Testament as well … but for today we will focus on the Old Testament verse.
Studying Leviticus 19, verse 18 ….
I’ve found some pretty fascinating things as I’ve looked into this command in Leviticus! One thing I’ve found is that we need to keep verse 17 WITH verse 18! Let’s read these two truths from the Word ….
‘You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him.
‘You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord. (reference is below)
We are not to keep any kind of hatred in our hearts for anyone and to do this God tells us the we can ‘reprove’ one another. What does that mean? We can confront one another directly so that we can work it out …. not hate it out!
This has the same idea as Jesus taught in the New Testament in Matthew 18. If someone has something against us we should go to them and try to work it out. If someone hurts us, we need to go to them with gentleness and humility and work through it.
More times than not … our flesh that wells up with hurt feelings, will choose to live and act on those feelings. We lose the fact that it’s up to God to enact any kind of vengeance. And if we don’t duck and get out of God’s way and we think we can do it … He may just wait to enact His own judgement.
Today, friends ….
- Let’s choose to not have a hurt linger in our heart so we begin to plan a way to retaliate
- Let’s make it our goal to watch over our heart in such a way that anger has no place in it ~ this pleases Him
- And … let’s passionately love Him who demonstrated His love towards us while we were still His enemies
Blessings Friends,
New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (Le 19:17–18). LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.
