Jesus and His Enemies
Psalm 10
At this point some might think, Oh, Jesus was so kind and loving to everyone. He couldn't have enemies. A quick easy answer to that would be, Why did the Jewish religious leaders have Him crucified? The life of Christ cannot be seen only as one great romantic loving story, though it is the greatest love story. Sorry, wrong type of love came to mind when saying "loving". The English word "love" looses so much in its translation from other languages, very evident in the New Testament of the Bible. Likewise, the concept of enemy can be seen quite differently also. In today's American culture at least two lines of thought are present. One is we can "agree to disagree", we can have widely opposing viewpoints, but we are not enemies. Yet another prevalent, even a seemingly strong political position is that if you don't think and accept my way you are an outright evil enemy and I will do everything in my power to stop your thoughts from spreading to others. And that mindset only assumes that is how the opposition thinks as well. What is even more deceiving and subtle is the claim they also can "agree to disagree". Interesting, these two lines of thought haven't changed much since the days of Jesus, or further yet since the days this Psalm was written.
The wicked is so proud that he seeketh not for God: he thinketh always, There is no God.
Psalms 10:4 GNV
The Pharisees had a very defined idea of the Torah, the Law, and also the prophets and Psalms.. The Sadducees limited themselves to only thr Torah and didn't believe in a resurrection or essentially anything supernatural. But Jesus, the Word who became flesh, who challenged the Jewish leaders to search the Scriptures, His intent for in them you think you have eternal life, and they are they which testify of me. (John 5).
So did Jesus as fully man in His humanity see the world the same way as the writer of Psalm 10? Could He have prayed this Psalm as a prayer? How did He define enemy?
Why standest thou far off, O Lord, and hidest thee in due time, even in affliction? The wicked with pride doth persecute the poor: let them be taken in the crafts that they have imagined.
Psalms 10:1 - 2 GNV
In Mark 7 (and other of the gospels) Jesus spoke about what defiled a man, what came out of his heart. Yet those He did not label as His opposition, His enemies.
Arise, O Lord God: lift up thine hand: forget not the poor. Wherefore doth the wicked contemn God? he saith in his heart, Thou wilt not regard. Yet thou hast seen it: for thou beholdest mischief and wrong, that thou mayest take it into thine hands: the poor committeth himself unto thee: for thou art the helper of the fatherless.
Psalms 10:12 - 14 GNV
Could this have been His prayer when He watched the widow put her two mites into the treasury? (Mark 12, Luke 21) Since Jesus knew the heart of man when He saw her cast in all she had He certainly understood that it was those who made her life so financially difficult in the first place were also those who benefited from the proceeds of the treasury, definitely not God's plan. Though they would have thought it blasphemy to say "there is no God", yet in how they practiced the Law they lived as if there was no God. Their life practices were what caused them to be known as the enemies of Jesus.