The vengeance of God

I have a good friend who teaches the greatest vengeance God can dish out is to take away all the
evil Satan has done in this world. I wonder how if we realize that… The greatest vengeance God can
bring isn’t to smite our enemies, or to bring worldly justice against people who are constantly unjust in
their dealings. Instead, the vengeance is when God removes every inch of ground the enemy has to stand
on. The Best vengeance is when God uses the people who have been closest to the devil, when He turns
them into His children and then raises them in such a way that they become His greatest weapons against
the devil. That is the greatest vengeance. When Jesus began His public ministry, He quoted Isaiah 61 as
an announcement:
“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach the
good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom for the
captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”- Luke
4:18-19
I find it extremely interesting that Jesus didn’t read the rest of the passage from Isaiah 61. If He
had, it would have finished with, “and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn.”
Some would speculate that He stopped because these are two different things: 1) Year of the Lord’s favor,
2) Day of vengeance of our God. That’s interesting. I can see why they believe that. Maybe they are right,
maybe they are wrong, I don’t know. What I do know is Isaiah’s version doesn’t stop at the day of
vengeance. Instead it stops at “comforting the mourning.” Apparently, when Isaiah heard God say it, the
day of vengeance was a day of comfort. As a matter of fact, Isaiah mentions the year of favor multiple
times throughout his prophetic book. For example, Isaiah 49:8-13 talks about it.
This is what the Lord says: “In the time of my favor I will answer you, and in the day of salvation I
will help you; I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people, to restore the land and to
reassign its desolate inheritances, to say to the captives, Come out, and to those in darkness, Be free!
They will feed beside the roads and find pasture on every barren hill. They will neither hunger nor thirst,
nor will the desert heat or the sun beat upon them. He who has compassion on them will guide them and
lead them beside springs of water. I will turn all my mountains into roads, and my highways will be raised
up. See they will come from afar- some from the north, some from the west, some from the region of
Aswan. Shout for joy, O heavens; rejoice, O earth; burst into song O mountains! For the Lord comforts
His people and will have compassion on His afflicted ones.”
This is a beautiful passage, isn’t it? Hopefully it gives more clarity for you about the year of favor.
But did you see it? The last sentence… For the Lord comforts… but He comforts on the day of
vengeance, doesn’t He? He doesn’t comfort in the year of favor- who needs comfort when they are being
blessed?? Who mourns while they are in the downpour of blessings in His presence?
When Jesus came, He wasn’t just a baby bringing hope. He wasn’t just God fulfilling a promise.
He was destroying the work of the devil. He was light coming into darkness to remove its hold. And He
didn’t just ask us to believe in Him… He is still asking us to become His light and to still drive out the
darkness. The past few years have been pretty dark, haven’t they? Politics, inflation, health issues,
pandemics, and our media platforms have flooded the earth with darkness: fear, anger, worry, anxiety,

selfishness, laziness, apathy, greed. Darkness has grown bold and strong. But do you know what? It’s a
new year. And there is a new hope. I’m not talking about hoping things will get better. People hope that
every year… What if 2023 is a year where we stop looking for something that sounds good, and start
partnering with God. What if we turned on the brights and flooded the darkness of this world with so
much light that favor shined upon us? What if we stopped caring about our feelings and situations and just
made a conscious effort to be the vengeance of God? What if we were the thing that God used- taking
something that the devil thought was his, and instead punished him for all he has taken? What if we
recovered all that we lost? What if we got our “stuff” back?
Today is the day of vengeance. Today is the year of the Lord’s favor. Today. Bless you…