The Purpose of Imprecatory Psalms #1

We should look at these Psalms with deference, with a sense of reverence, with a sense that says maybe there's something here that I'm missing. Maybe the person who is missing something is not the psalmist.

Maybe it's today's critic. Is it ever okay for Christians to pray that God would drop the hammer, so to speak, on their enemies and just wipe them all out? Could there ever be a legitimate reason or motive to pray a prayer like that? Hello and welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hi, I'm Bill Wright. Today Don continues in his series called A Cry for Justice. And he'll show us that the people in the Bible who prayed these kinds of prayers weren't doing it for personal gain, but rather for the glory of God, for the good of his people, and as a means of rebuking and saving sinners. Let's join our teacher right now for part one of a message called The Purpose of Imprecatory Psalms. We want to wrestle with the difficult question of the place that these kinds of psalms have in the biblical canon and in biblical ethics. I'd encourage you to pick up last message if you didn't hear it because we addressed it from kind of a global perspective about the nature of the Old and the New Testament as it would inform our understanding of these psalms. And I don't have time to repeat all of that material here, but we said the totality of Scripture would caution us against rendering harsh judgments against the biblical writer, and that was kind of where we started.

We quoted from C.S. Lewis who said that, among other things, he accused such psalms as being devilish, being written by petty and vindictive men, and we wanted to come to grips with some of that. Well, let's just remind ourselves up front that we do not join with the critics of God's Word. We do not stand in judgment of the Bible. The Bible stands in judgment of us, and when something seems difficult, we need to slow down and try to understand what it's saying and the spirit of what's being said, rather than running to quick conclusions where we would find ourselves in opposition to God's Word.

That's not a good place for anyone to be. So we do not join the critics, but we want to address the question earnestly at the same time. And I agree, our church agrees, with the sentiments of S. Lewis Johnson who said this, the former pastor and theologian from Dallas who's now with the Lord. He said, and I quote, Many Christians are disturbed by the imprecatory psalms.

They hear the psalmists asking God to curse individuals and to destroy them and even destroy their children. That has proved troubling to many Christians. And he goes on to say this, It is one of the illustrations of the fact that we don't always have the same spirit that God has, and we need to learn and grow so that our spirit becomes more identifiable with his spirit.

End quote. In other words, if we find something that seems very foreign to us in God's Word, the likely need is for us to grow spiritually, to grow in our understanding, to grow in our priorities and affections, rather than the fact that the Bible would need to catch up with us in our supposedly enlightened state. And so we want to work through these things, not denying the difficulty of the question, but trying to come to grips with it.

Now, many authorities in trying to answer this difficulty will assert that what you read in the imprecatory psalms is merely a poetic vividness that goes beyond the literal intent in the words used. And so he's just using exaggerated language to make his point. And so for an English equivalent, this is a very rough and kind of a crude example, but one that I think that we all could agree with. You might know a man who's angry with someone who would say something like this, or a woman.

I've heard women speak this way, not within my immediate family. But an English equivalent might be, you know, I could just break his neck. Now, there's a certain poetic expression to that. That's not a godly thing to say.

Let me make that plain right up front. But my only point here for now is that when someone says something like that, that's not a statement of conscious intent on their part, that they are literally going to go and snap vertebrae from vertebrae in order to exact their revenge upon the person. They're simply expressing anger.

They're simply giving voice to a picture that would say, I am really angry with that person without stating that they intend to go and render him a quadriplegic. That's not the intent of the language like that. And in like manner, some commentators, many commentators will say, that's what you see going on in the imprecatory psalms, that it's just exaggerated language that is fitting with the style of the culture of the time.

Now, that's not an unreasonable position for someone to take. There are elements of that in Scripture. If you turn over to Jeremiah chapter 20, Jeremiah chapter 20, just to see some poetic vividness that goes beyond literal intent, in Jeremiah chapter 20, verse 14, Jeremiah is speaking from deep discouragement. And he says in verse 14, Jeremiah 20, verse 14, he says, Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father, saying, A baby boy has been born to you and made him very happy. Let that man be like the cities which the Lord overthrew without relenting, and let him hear an outcry in the morning and a shout of alarm at noon. Because he did not kill me before birth, so that my mother would have been my grave and her womb ever pregnant. Why did I ever come forth from the womb to look on trouble and sorrow, so that my days have been spent in shame?

Deep, profound discouragement, but I don't believe that he's actually wishing that the man who delivered him actually had instead been an abortionist. He's simply using vibrant, expressive language in order to arrest the attention of the reader to the depth of the discouragement of his soul. Now, that may explain some of what we see in the imprecatory Psalms, that there's just a poetic vividness to it, but to me it's not a satisfying answer in the end. It's not a complete answer.

It's not a comprehensive answer. It doesn't bring us into what I believe is more of the heart of these imprecatory Psalms as you can see as you examine them in context. And here's what I want to lay before you, is that the Psalmists in these imprecatory Psalms have very profound spiritual purposes in mind.

They have spiritual goals that are being expressed in what they write, and when we understand and see in the context what those purposes are, we start to realize something that is very humbling in my opinion that I think you'll find by the end of our time together. You see, we find that men look down on these imprecatory Psalms as being unfit for human consumption, unfit for godly people to consider or to have ever written. The truth of the matter is, I believe, that when you start to see the things that we're going to see, you're going to find that we actually shrink in our self-estimation about our own spiritual condition in light of the zeal of godliness that is expressed in these kinds of Psalms. So that's what I want to try to show you here to give us another perspective to look at these Psalms and to look at the Psalmist sympathetically and to ask ourselves some penetrating questions about whether the nobility that is expressed in these Psalms are actually live and vibrant impulses in our own spiritual lives.

And you'll see what I mean as we go along. What is the purpose behind the imprecatory Psalms? Well, we're going to look at four different aspects of them. Not every aspect true and evident in every single imprecatory Psalms, but we're looking at them as a whole. And first of all, dealing with Psalm 69 in particular, what do you find motivating the heart of the Psalmist in these texts? Point number one, the glory of God.

The glory of God. Sometimes when you are reading these Psalms, you find that the Psalmist is preoccupied to defend and see vindicated the glory of God in the situation that he is dealing with. So look at Psalm 69 verse 7, the preceding context to the passage that I read at the beginning. Look at what David says here in Psalm 69 verse 7. He says, because for your sake I have borne reproach, dishonor has covered my face. I have become estranged from my brothers and an alien to my mother's sons.

Why? Why this estrangement from his relatives, from those close to him and his family? He says in verse 9, your zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me. Now, when we read this Psalm as a whole, we should always remember, as we said, David is writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He is speaking truth about what truly animates his heart as he is writing this Psalm. And as he is writing this Psalm, he says, your glory is what I am agitated about as I write here. Zeal for you, zeal for your name, zeal for your house is consuming me. It is eating at me. I long to see you receive the glory that you deserve.

I long to see men honor you and ascribe glory to you as your name so richly deserves. And yet, I find that that's not what's happening. And the disparity between what I know you deserve and what men ascribe to you is something that is gnawing at my soul.

I can't handle it. I must give voice to it. I must express it to you, O God, in what I have to say. And so as he's writing, God's glory is his focus. Now, let's step back and just ask a question from a biblical perspective. Asking a question, not carrying a wit for the moment, what any human being thinks about these Psalms, let's look at this and ask the question from God's perspective. Is God's glory, is zeal for God's glory a noble purpose to animate what's going on in a person's heart?

The answer to that question is clearly yes. That is a noble focus. That is a noble end. That is a noble purpose for a man to write, for a man to have animating his prayers. Turn over to Psalm 79, verse 8, where you see a similar combination of these themes. Psalm 79, verse 8, where the Psalmist writes in verse 8. Let's go to verse 6, where he says, Pour out your wrath upon the nations which do not know you, and upon the kingdoms which do not call upon your name, for they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his habitation. So he's asking God to pour out his wrath on the nations which came against his people.

And then in verse 8, he says, Do not remember the iniquities of our forefathers against us. Let your compassion come quickly to meet us, for we are brought very low. Help us, O God, of our salvation, for the glory of your name.

You see it again? God, as I'm praying for wrath to be brought on these nations, remember that I am praying for the glory of your name and asking you to help us and deliver us and forgive our sins for your name's sake, your glory, your name. Verse 10, he says, Why should the nations say, Where is their God? Let there be known among the nations in our sight vengeance for the blood of your servants which has been shed.

Let the groaning of the prisoner come before you. According to the greatness of your power, preserve those who are doomed to die and return to our neighbors sevenfold into their bosom the reproach with which they have reproached you, O Lord. So we, your people, and the sheep of your pasture will give thanks to you forever to all generations when we tell of your praise. Here's my point. The glory of God is wedded to his cry for the wrath of God to be shown.

You cannot separate the two. The reason that he's crying out for wrath to be shown upon the enemies of God is because of his great consummation, the great envelopment of his mind with this theme of the glory and the worth of God. And here's what you see when you start to see these themes, when you start to see this. These psalmists are not writing as petty, vindictive men trying to get their pound of flesh from somebody who's personally offended them. They have high and lofty goals about the glory of God that are animating them as they write. And that means for you and I today that we should look at these psalms with deference, with a sense of reverence, with a sense that says, maybe there's something here that I'm missing. Maybe the person who is missing something in what was being said here is not the psalmist who's writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit after all and is consumed with the glory of God.

Maybe he's not the one that's missing something. Maybe it's today's critic that's missing something fundamental that would change the perspective with which these things were written. John Calvin said this, and I quote, he said, David did not allow himself recklessly to pour out his wrath, even as the greater part of men, when they feel themselves wronged, intemperately give way to their own passion. He simply called upon God to exercise just judgment against the reprobate. It was not on his own account that he pleaded in this manner, but it was a holy zeal for the divine glory which impelled him to summon the wicked to God's judgment seat. End quote. See, he's not praying, God, you know, this guy ripped me off.

Get back at him. Go out and fight for me. He's saying, God, go out and defend your own glory. That's a different matter altogether, isn't it? That gives us a whole different perspective on it. The high theme of the glory of God. What's interesting is, is that when you consider the theme of Psalm 69, that this is quoted in reference to our Lord Jesus Christ in John chapter 2.

Turn over there with me. Just for a moment, John chapter 2. See, there are plenty of people who want to redefine Jesus down and rob him of his zeal for the glory of God and simply make him a lukewarm man who had very little in the way of convictions, but was just always loving and disregarding of the sins of people and so forth. Not true.

Not true. In John chapter 2 verse 13, the Passover, John 2 verse 13, the Passover of the Jews was near and Jesus went up to Jerusalem and he found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves and the money changers seated at their tables and he made a scourge of cords and drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen and he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables and to those who were selling the doves, he said, take these things away. Stop making my Father's house a place of business. And verse 17, quoting from Psalm 69, it says, his disciples remembered that it was written, zeal for your house will consume me. Well, beloved, when we see, when we come to the scripture as those who respect God's word, who honor God's word, who view ourselves as being under its authority and that it judges us, we don't judge it. When we see the glory of God attached to such Psalms, when we see them, when we see the Psalm applied to our holy, innocent and undefiled Lord Jesus, how can we take a negative perspective on these Psalms as if they were words that never should have been written out on the thought? Christ is opposing the false worship, the irreverence, the perversion of the worship of God to such a point that he's taking no prisoners. He is literally overturning tables because zeal for the purity of the worship and the glory of God is animating his sinless soul.

That changes the way that we look at these things. And so we see these Psalms consumed with the glory of God. Now secondly, as you read these Psalms, you'll find another theme that is animating him and that is this. It's the people of God.

The people of God. Sometimes the psalmist is concerned to protect and to encourage the discouraged people of God. He wants them to flourish spiritually. He wants them to rejoice in the Lord, but as they are face to face with the seeming prosperity of the wicked, he knows that they become downcast, that they would shrink back perhaps from following Yahweh.

And so he's concerned and so he turns to the Lord in prayer in response. Go to Psalm 35 with me. Psalm 35.

Psalm 35 beginning in verse 22. He says, You have seen it, O Lord. Do not keep silent.

O Lord, do not be far from me. Stir up yourself and awake to my right and to my cause, my God and my Lord. Judge me, O Lord, my God, according to your righteousness and do not let them rejoice over me. Do not let them say in their heart, aha, our desire.

Do not let them say we have swallowed him up. Let those be ashamed and humiliated altogether who rejoice at my distress. Let those be clothed with shame and dishonor who magnify themselves over me. And why does he say that or what else is in his mind alongside those thoughts as he prays against his enemies in this manner?

Verse 27, he says, Let them shout for joy and rejoice who favor my vindication and let them say continually, The Lord be magnified who delights in the prosperity of his servant and my tongue shall declare your righteousness and your praise all day long. You see, in this psalm here, in Psalm 35, David is writing as a leader of the people of God, a leader of the nation of Israel. Writing as the king and the well-being of the people is tied up with their leader.

This is not simply a personal matter of which he is writing about and speaking about. He is praying as the chosen leader by God of the people of God. And what affects David affects many other people as well.

They see in him the symbol of the presence of God, see in him the presence of the blessing of God, and if enemies are triumphing over David, it is going to have a negative, discouraging impact on the people of God. And so David says, God, rise up against these enemies because he's praying, he's praying not in a personal capacity, praying not as we sometimes selfishly pray here in the 21st century when somebody crosses us, he's praying from a much loftier position and a much greater theme in mind. And so he's praying in this representative capacity, God, vindicate me so that there's a pass-through, there's a flow-through benefit that he has in mind so that your people could walk in peace and confidence and courage before you. Answer my prayer against these wicked men for their sake. This is not a selfish prayer. God's people become discouraged when they see wicked people flourish, when they see wicked people flourishing and triumphing over God's servants. Well, what does the man of God do in response to that? God, deal with the enemies so that the people that you've chosen for yourself could flourish and be at peace.

This isn't selfish. He's got far broader vistas, far bigger horizons that he's praying on than just his own personal interests. That's Don Green with the first half of a lesson looking at the purpose of imprecatory psalms here on The Truth Pulpit. Well, friend, if you'd like to find out more about this ministry or you'd like to share this broadcast, just go to thetruthpulpit.com. While you're there, be sure to explore our website more fully so that you can enjoy all of the resources available to you. That's all at thetruthpulpit.com. And that's all the time we have for today. So for Don Green, I'm Bill Wright, and we look forward to the next opportunity to study God's Word with you here on The Truth Pulpit, teaching God's Word to God's people.