But when the matter was brought before the king, he commanded by letter that the evil plan Haman had devised against the Jews return on his own head and that he should be hanged with his sons on the gallows. Esther 9:25 HCSB
You may have read the title and said, “I would never”, or “I have never” but let’s be honest here. When people come against us or people we love, we don’t usually wish them well. I will admit that there are times that people have wronged me or someone I love, and I have actually thought about how I could resolve the problem. This is where the trouble starts. When we start thinking about how we can resolve the problem or make things right. When we do this, we aren’t exactly planning on blessing them, right?
In our Scripture passage there was a man named Haman who became upset with a man named Mordecai. Haman plotted and schemed to make the king so angry at Mordecai that he would order him to be hung. Haman had even gone so far as to build these high gallows to serve the purpose. But there were some problems with Haman’s plan. At the forefront was the fact that it was a pride issue on Haman’s part that had caused him to be upset with Mordecai in the first place. We all know that God hates pride. But then Mordecai went against all that the Bible teaches about how to deal with our enemies.
God’s word is very clear on how we are to deal with our enemies. We are told in Matthew 5:44 that we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. This doesn’t mean that we have to trust them, but we are to forgive them as God forgive us. We are to love them as God loves them and we are to pray for their salvation.
Romans 12:19 tells us not to avenge ourselves, but to leave room for His wrath. For it is written: Vengeance belongs to Me; I will repay, says the Lord.
Perhaps you have seen God’s wrath fall on your enemy. The Bible tells us how to handle this also. Proverbs 24:17-18 says that we are not to gloat when we see our enemy fall. We are not to rejoice when they stumble. If we do, the Lord will see and disapprove and turn His wrath away from them.
God assures us in His word, that He will take care of those who plot evil. This is why you want to be careful not to get into that. Just like Haman, we tend to become prideful when someone does something against us. We tend to think that we are better than that and they shouldn’t treat us that way. Then we begin to plot and scheme on how we can handle it.
The first thing we should do is pray for them. We should forgive them. If you are having a hard time doing that pray for yourself. Pray for God to remove bitterness and help you to forgive them. If we fail to do these things and go on fueled by our pride we are headed for disaster.
Give it over to God. Trust Him with it. When we insist on taking matters into our own hands, it’s just as if we are telling God that we don’t trust Him to deal with it.
In the historical account of Mordecai and Haman found in the book of Esther, Haman’s pride led to his destruction. Proverbs 16:18 tells us that pride comes before destruction and an arrogant spirit before a fall. This is exactly what happened to Haman. Spoiler alert, the end result is that Haman and his sons were ordered by the king to be hung from those gallows. Mordecai was victorious and was given orders to kill all their enemies.
Never forget we serve a God of justice. If you don’t want to be on the receiving end of his wrath, turn your pride and anger and resentment and bitterness over to Him. Let it go and let God deal with it. Otherwise, you may find yourself on the receiving end of the evil that you have plotted for someone else.
Have a great weekend!