An Introduction to Imprecatory Psalms #2

The problem is not that the imprecatory psalms are in the Bible with their cries for justice and their cries that God would deal with the ungodly.

That's not the problem. The problem is that there's not more of the imprecatory psalms in us. When King David and others in the Bible called down the power of God as a means of exacting justice or even to vanquish their enemies, it was never with evil or selfish intent.

In fact, the exact opposite was true. Hello and welcome again to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. I'm Bill Wright, and today as Don brings us part two of a message called An Introduction to Imprecatory Psalms, he'll show us that the people in the Bible who practiced this sort of appeal to heaven were actually calling on a holy God to exact his justice, not on some nameless, faceless idol or wicked spirit.

Let's join Don right now as he delivers today's fascinating lesson from God's holy Word in the Truth Pulpit. So Leviticus chapter 19 in verse 17 says this, and this is in the foundational book of Moses, the book of Moses being the first five books of the Bible. In Leviticus 19 verse 17, the law of Moses which David would have been steeped in as the king of Israel, he knew what this text said. He says in verse 17, you shall not hate your fellow countrymen 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. That was written prior to David by some 400 years. Go to the Proverbs in Proverbs chapter 24 for something written after the time of David. Proverbs 24 in verses 17 and 18. Proverbs 24 verses 17 and 18 says, do not rejoice when your enemy falls and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles. This is Proverbs 24 verse 17. Verse 18, or the Lord will see it and be displeased and turn his anger away from him. And here's the thing that I want you to see as we look at those passages, beloved, is that both before and after the time of David functioning like bookends, the Old Testament warned God's people against vengeance and a bitter spirit.

Now, if all of Scripture is God's Word, and it is, then it cannot contradict itself. And somehow, therefore, these imprecatory Psalms are informed by these warnings against a vengeful spirit. Somehow these imprecatory Psalms fit with the overall spirit of the Old Testament. You can think about it as the colors of the rainbow. There are seven colors on a rainbow. Not every passage of Scripture has to be painted with the same shade of color, does it?

Wouldn't that make for a boring rainbow if it was all just one color? Well, the Scriptures can speak in different colors to different situations and still be consistent with the overall one greater whole, just as seven colors don't contradict each other. In the rainbow, beloved, as we're thinking about these things, we must realize that these imprecatory Psalms are God's eternal Word. And even within their own context in the Old Testament, there are warnings against vengeance.

There are warnings against taking out your own judgment. And that means that we look at this and we say, here are these difficult imprecatory Psalms. Here's what the Old Testament says about these. Somehow, somehow these are in balance with one another. They are not in contradiction with one another. So that we see, even in the Old Testament, a caution against a vengeful spirit. And that informs the way that we look at it.

So here's the framework of thought that we're putting together as we consider this. All of Scripture is God's Word. God's holy. God is true.

He could never speak wrongly. There's going to be an internal consistency to His Word. Yes, we understand that these imprecatory Psalms, at first glance, at a superficial reading, seem to be in conflict with a biblical ethic. But that couldn't be the case.

As soon as we think that way, we correct ourselves and say, no, that couldn't be the case. I know that from the Old Testament that there are conditions and qualifications that should inform the way I think about these things. And so the Old Testament warns against a sinful vengeance, and there's another side to it that the critics don't always acknowledge.

Which brings us to point number three. The New Testament has its own imprecations. The New Testament has its own imprecations.

Now, the idea that informs some of the criticism of these imprecatory Psalms is that some people will say, well, the Old Testament had a different ethic. The Old Testament engages in vengeance and is marked by thirsty bloodshed and war and all of that. So on the one hand, you have the Old Testament engaging in vengeance, but the New Testament calls us to forgiveness and calls us to love. And so these two things, these two books, the Old and New Testaments, are just presenting different ethics to us.

And they use that as though that would explain away problem. Well, we've already seen that that doesn't hold water with the Old Testament because there are these calls to moderation and love and against grudges in the Old Testament. But then when you read the New Testament, you realize that that argument won't get you very far at all if you actually read all of it and not simply focus on two or three famous passages from the Lord that were addressing different concepts anyway. Look over at Matthew chapter 23, for example. Matthew 23. I originally thought that I might read this entire passage of Matthew 23, but it's just a little bit too long for our purposes. But in Matthew 23, look at verse 13 and how Jesus addresses the Pharisees. And keep in mind this idea that, oh, the New Testament is only about love and forgiveness. Well, that's kind of hard to square with everything that you find and what Jesus says in verse 13 of Matthew 23, where he says, But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people.

For you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows' houses and for a pretense you make long prayers. Therefore, you will receive greater condemnation. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves. Verse 16. Woe to you, blind guides, who say, Whoever swears by the temple, that is nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the temple is obligated.

You fools and blind men, which is more important, the gold or the temple that sanctified the gold? And he goes on repeating woe after woe after woe eight times in this chapter, as I recall. Verse 29, he says, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous and say, If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets. So you testify against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.

Fill up then the measure of the guilt of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell? Now this is Jesus talking. One writer said this about Matthew 23 and Jesus' words and condemnations of the Pharisees and I quote, he says, There is no hint of sympathy, no proposal of clemency, no trace of kindness, no effort on Jesus' part to be nice to the Pharisees. Indeed, with these words Jesus formally and resoundingly pronounced their doom. By today's standards, Jesus' words about the Pharisees and his treatment of them are breathtakingly severe.

End quote. You remember, don't you, that in Galatians chapter one, the apostle Paul pronounced curses on false teachers. Galatians chapter one, turn there with me. Galatians chapter one in verse eight says, Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed.

As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed. In the book of Revelation, God vindicates the martyr's cry for vengeance. Look at Revelation chapter six. Revelation chapter six, beginning in verse nine.

Revelation six verse nine says, When the lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and because of the testimony which they had maintained. And they cried out with a loud voice saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, will you refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth? Crying out for vengeance, crying out for justice. God, look what they have done to your people. How long will you let this justice go unsatisfied?

How long will you let, I should say, how long will you let this injustice go unsatisfied, unaddressed? Then if you turn to chapter 19 of Revelation, you find that God answers. And in Revelation chapter 19 verse one, his answer becomes a ground for great praise. After these things, I heard something like a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven saying, Hallelujah, salvation and glory and power belong to our God because his judgments are true and righteous. For he has judged the great harlot who was corrupting the earth with her immorality and he has avenged the blood of his bondservants on her. And a second time they said, Hallelujah, her smoke rises up forever and ever. And the 24 elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who sits on the throne saying, Amen.

Hallelujah. You see, what do these passages show us from Matthew, from Galatians, from Revelation? As we think about the imprecatory Psalms, what does it show us? It shows us this. You cannot pit the New Testament against these imprecatory Psalms because the New Testament contains its own vengeance and curses as well. And so let's step back and just kind of take this all in as we're, again, we're just introducing things.

All of the Bible is God's word and we expect an internal consistency to what we read in it. When it comes to these imprecatory Psalms, we say, ah, this is hard. This is difficult.

I'm not quite sure what to do with this. So let me remember a couple of early things on. First of all, I find warnings against excessive vengeance in the Old Testament itself. And so I should understand Old Testament passages with a sympathetic ear in light of that. And I also realize I can't just say the New Testament out and out condemns judgments and prayers for judgment against God's enemies because I see Jesus declaring judgment. I see Paul declaring judgment. I see Revelation carrying out judgment. And so I may not know just yet — speaking as a student of Scripture, I know where I'm going with this myself, even though we're not going to get all the way to the station — I may not know myself how to put all of these things together, but there's something going on here that means that I need to be careful about how I speak. I need to be careful about speaking against God's Word or being critical of the psalmist, as if they were writing sinful things that I should not be paying attention to.

Here is a preview of coming attractions. Beloved, this is important. The imprecatory Psalms remind us of something very, very critical too easily forgotten in our flabby age. God is not just a God of grace and forgiveness. God is a holy God of justice. God is a God, Psalm 7 says, God is a righteous judge who has indignation every day. God, it says in Exodus 15, just immediately after he buried the Egyptian army in the sea, God is a warrior. God is a warrior. God is a judge. God is holy. God does not bear lightly with sinners, but us, meaning us in our day and age, not in this room. What about our day and age?

Let's be honest. Truth and holiness are not a priority for our refined age, are they? Ours is an age of false tolerance and moral equivalence.

At best, our age, the spirit of our age, sees good and evil simply as varying shades of gray, simply seeing it as different shades on a continuum with no sharp distinction between them. You see, beloved, there is a problem. There is a real problem with the imprecatory Psalms, but it is not where the critics of Scripture think they are. You see, the problem is not that the imprecatory Psalms are in the Bible. That's not the problem.

That couldn't be the problem. That's impossible. That's foolish to think that way.

It is ungodly to think that way. No, the problem is not that the imprecatory Psalms are in the Bible with their cries for justice and their cries that God would deal with the ungodly. That's not the problem. The problem is that there's not more of the imprecatory Psalms in us.

I said that. I believe that to be absolutely true. The problem is not that the imprecatory Psalms are in the Bible. The problem is that there's not more of the imprecatory Psalms in us.

What do I mean by that? Our world, we can be more particular, the evangelical church in general, needs more holy zeal. It needs more righteous indignation.

It needs that more than anything right now. Haven't we had enough of the saccharine-coated messages of the past 50 years that have conditioned people to simply think that God only loves them and only has a good plan for their lives? Haven't we had enough of the sugar-coated ministry that has promised to so-called seekers that God simply wants to bless them and help them in their... along in their earthly lives? Haven't we had enough of the men with poofy hair promising us health and wealth and prosperity and performing phony miracles in order to captivate a people and empty the wallets of destitute widows desperate for help? Haven't we had enough of that?

Haven't we had enough of the dripping blood on the hands of abortionists and on our culture killing millions of babies year after year after year simply for the sake of personal convenience? Haven't we had enough of the distortion of marriage wrought upon us by people who hate God and want nothing to do with Him? Haven't we had enough of these things and a thousand others like them, all of which is an offense against God? Haven't we had enough of the attacks on Scripture? Haven't we had enough of the denials of Christ? Haven't we had enough of the false religions perverting the gospel of grace with their man-made traditions? Haven't we had enough of false teachers, blind guides leading the blind into a pit?

Haven't we had enough of the corruption in Catholic leadership and the sexual abuse scandals that they've perpetrated on decades of those who trusted them? Where is the holy zeal that would rise up and protest before the throne of God? God, this is not right. God, this is a perversion of everything you've declared to be holy and true. God, this is a violation of your truth. God, this is a violation of your holiness. Haven't we had enough? You see, our problem isn't that there is judgment spoken in the Bible.

Our problem in our age, our problem in the church at large is that there's just not the zeal and the righteous indignation against these things which God's Word clearly declares and a thousand others like them to be an offense to his good and holy name. That's the problem. That's the problem. The problem is that C.S. Lewis and others like him are of such flabby disposition spiritually speaking that they can't recognize black and white so clearly to realize that we need to be on the side of white and against the side of black.

I'm using those as colors, not as races. You see, beloved, if we had a sense for the zeal and the indignation, the concern for the glory of God, the zeal for his glory, for his righteousness, for his truth, if we had something of that zeal within us, we would understand why the psalmist speaks at such extremes when his glory is so violated. We would rather than sitting in judgment of God's Word and rather than sitting as armchair quarterbacks critiquing what God's men wrote thousands of years ago and which will stand long after our lives are gone, if we knew something of holy zeal and righteous indignation, we would realize that perhaps, no perhaps to it, we would realize that the fear of God would be the beginning of wisdom. To revere his holiness, to learn to hate what he hates would provoke within our hearts some kind of response against it rather than settling into a lukewarm compromise with all that evil that is around us.

The fear of God would be the beginning of wisdom. The zeal of the psalmist would become our own zeal and we would more gladly and more fearlessly align ourselves with the holy purposes of God. That's what I mean when I say the problem is that there's not enough of the imprecatory psalms in us.

Now, all of that doesn't solve the dilemma, it doesn't solve every question that even what we've raised here, all that we've done, all we wanted to accomplish, I trust we have accomplished. What we've seen from Scripture has cautioned us to approach these psalms with a sense of humility and as we approach them with humility, for us to be in a position then to sit and say, speak Lord, teach me, help me to understand what it is that you would have me take from these passages of Scripture that are so contrary to the spirit of the age in which I live. Even when you say it like that, shouldn't it be obvious to us in this room as Bible believing Christians, shouldn't it be obvious when we frame it that way? Lord, these psalms are contrary to the tolerant spirit of our age.

Simply saying that, shouldn't it click in our minds, aha, the problem is the tolerant spirit of our age. These imprecatory psalms will influence us, will have a sanctifying impact on us as we study them in future weeks. I invite you to come back next as we resume our study of them in the days to come. Let's pray together. Father, we've only opened the door to peek inside to what you would have us learn from these imprecatory psalms and from their place in the canon of Scripture. Father, we want to be aligned with you. We realize that we are all in danger of wrongful, vengeful spirit.

We all get out of sorts with people who cross us. And Father, so often there is sin in our reaction to those situations. So Father, as we look at these things in the days to come, would you give us grace to understand? And Father, may you strengthen us that we would stand with you and against the wicked spirit of our age. And we thank you for this time together in Jesus' name.

Amen. That's Don Green wrapping up a message called An Introduction to Imprecatory Psalms, a part of his series, A Cry for Justice, here on The Truth Pulpit. Well, friend, if you'd like to hear this message again, or you'd like to share it with a friend or loved one, just go to thetruthpulpit.com. Also, feel free to post these teachings to your favorite social media page so that more people can hear about the good news of God's grace. Again, that's thetruthpulpit.com. I'm Bill Wright, inviting you back next time, when Don Green presents more from The Truth Pulpit, teaching God's people God's Word.