An imprecation is a prayer which invokes a curse from God upon an enemy. These psalms are seeking the judgment of God on someone else, and they're asking God to overthrow the wicked. Maybe you've seen a movie in which a haggard old woman points her crooked finger at someone and pronounces a curse upon them.
Snow White comes to mind, for example, usually an act of hateful, selfish, unholy vengeance. Hello and welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. I'm Bill Wright, and today Don begins a series called A Cry for Justice. He'll show us that we also see many people in the Bible pronouncing a curse, or more accurately, calling down the power of God for a reckoning.
What's the difference? Well, these folks usually had a righteous reason behind their request rather than evil intentions. And Don, a lot of people don't realize that there's an enormous difference between, say, a witch's curse and a Christian's call for a righteous God to vanquish their enemies. King David, for example.
My friend, as I think about the series that is just ahead, I want to frame it for you in this way. We live in an age of false tolerance and of moral equivalence. People are unwilling to call evil evil, and to uphold good is good. And in the midst of that society, and even within the evangelical church, I'm sad to say, we have lost sight of God's justice and God's hatred of sin. And yet these things are fundamental to his holiness. The Bible says that he's a God who has indignation every day with sinners. And that has implications for you and I as we think about the world in which we live, and we think about the remnants of sin in our own lives, we need a holy zeal and a righteous indignation against everything that offends the holiness of God. And that's what we're going to consider in this series titled A Cry for Justice. Join us as we see these things from a biblical perspective right here on The Truth Pulpit.
Thanks, Don. And friend, right now let's find out more from our teacher as we join him for part one of a message called An Introduction to Imprecatory Psalms here on The Truth Pulpit. Well, our study brings us to Psalm 69 in the Old Testament book of the Psalms, and I would invite you to turn there with me. Psalm 69 is a fairly lengthy psalm, and it presents us with content that is somewhat difficult to deal with, and we want to approach it carefully.
And so what I'm planning is to do some preliminary messages before we consider Psalm 69 as a whole. I want to look at some specific aspects that this psalm raises because of the profound questions that it brings to our mind. In Psalm 69, as is often the case, David is dealing with enemies. If you look at verses one through four with me, just to kind of start things here, he says, And then he introduces part of the problem that he's facing.
He's facing enemies. In verse four he says, So there is a framing reference to enemies early in this psalm that helps condition us to his situation as he is writing this prayer to his God. Now, skipping over much of the psalm for now, remembering that we're going to address the psalm in full down the road, in part what he does in this psalm is he asks God to bring severe judgment on his enemies. Look at verse 22 through 28.
He says, These are pretty severe words, aren't they? And at first blush, for those of us that are steeped in the New Testament and used to thinking in New Testament categories and New Testament texts, this is a hard passage and a hard type of prayer to reconcile with the New Testament call to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us, not to pray against them. Look over at Matthew chapter five just to kind of frame the issue here. Matthew chapter five in verses 43 through 45, Jesus says, Well, that doesn't sound much like what David was doing in Psalm 69, does it? And the truth of the matter is, as you read the Psalms with this matter of these prayers against enemies raised to you, you start to see that this is quite the problem because the Psalms frequently speak in such language. The psalmist is frequently praying against his enemies.
Let me just show you three other examples to kind of frame the issue. Let me go back to Psalm 5, and I deleted many texts from my notes simply for the sake of time at this point. Psalm 5 verse 10 says, Hold them guilty, O God, by their own devices, let them fall in the multitude of their transgressions, thrust them out, for they are rebellious against you.
One of the more famous Psalms in this genre is Psalm 109, if you would turn there with me, Psalm 109. And all we're doing right now at this moment is just introducing the problem. We're just framing the issue so that we could see what we need to deal with to come to grips with the biblical text. Psalm 109 verse 6, speaking of accusers against him, This is pretty severe, isn't it? The most severe of all of them is the well-known passage in Psalm 137, if you would turn there.
Again, we're just illustrating with texts the nature of the problem. Psalm 137, a psalm written during the course of the Babylonian captivity in the Old Testament, says in verse 7, Remember, O Lord, against the sons of Edom, the day of Jerusalem, who said, Raise it, raise it to its very foundation. O daughter of Babylon, you devastated one, how blessed will be the one who repays you with the recompense with which you have repaid us. How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones against the rock.
Now, you read that for the first time, that does not sound very kind toward the enemies. These texts and others like them bring us to a genre of the psalms known as the imprecatory psalms. An imprecation is a prayer which invokes a curse from God upon an enemy. These psalms are seeking the judgment of God on someone else, and they're asking God to overthrow the wicked. And as we see, as we compare these psalms superficially, superficially I say, with the New Testament passages like the one I read from Matthew 5, they raise difficult ethical questions for us. One 19th century writer said this, and I quote, he says, it is undeniable that these expressions in the psalms have been a source of grief and perplexity to the Christian while they have furnished occasion for scoffing to the skeptical. What he's saying is, tender-hearted believers look at this and compare Scripture with Scripture and are not sure what to do with it, not sure what to do with the seeming vindictive nature of these psalms. And along with that, on the other side of the spectrum, you have those who do not believe the Bible, who do not believe in Christ, and they use these things to scoff at Scripture and to scoff at those who would uphold a high view of God and say, is this the ethic that you're trying to teach, that we're trying to bring judgment on your enemies? And that's the kind of skeptical nature that he's referring to.
One of those skeptics is C.S. Lewis, a man whose influence is far greater than his reliability. He says about these psalms and goes on for pages and pages about it in his book Reflections on the Psalms. He says that these psalms are full of malice, pettiness, vulgarity, and vindictive hatred. He goes on to say that ferocious, self-pitying, barbaric men wrote these devilish cursings. The psalmist's reaction to injury, though profoundly natural, is profoundly wrong. That's no less a man than C.S.
Lewis. Again, I say whose influence is greater than his reliability. Well, is that the right way for us to think about these psalms? Should we look at them and say that they were written by a ferocious, barbaric man who was profoundly wrong in what he said?
Do these psalms and others like them violate biblical ethics and godliness, and are they merely an example of a man whose hatred has taken over his heart? Well, the truth of the matter is, beloved, that this is not an easy topic. This is somewhat elusive, and it requires us to think with close consideration, lest we go astray. And this is a topic, I would say, that brings us back to an entire way of thinking, an entire way to approach thought and the way that you think about issues. The problem that the critics run into is that they too quickly want to solve this apparent tension, and the easy way to solve the tension is to dismiss the Old Testament writer and elevate so-called New Testament principles in their place. But it's not that simple, and what we need to do is we need to step back and remember general principles that can never be violated, and let those general principles inform the way that we think about a difficult issue. You don't start immediately with the most difficult issue that you can find and try to sort it out on its own terms. You have to think and step back and say, what are the broader general principles that inform my thinking about everything, that inform my approach about all of Scripture, and then you let those general principles gradually bring you into a conclusion that is satisfactory, and that's what we're going to start to do. Basically what I have for you are three basic points.
I just want to get started with this and then expand on it more. But, beloved, here's the thing that we should start with, I guess, is to remember point number one, that the Psalms are God's Word. The Psalms are God's Word. Everything in the 66 books of the Bible comes from God, and that has a serious implication for us as students of the Bible. That means that we should not quickly dismiss it.
We should not quickly criticize it. We should not rush to condemn anything that we see stated and affirmed in Scripture. Remember Romans chapter 15 verse 4.
If you want to turn there, you can. Romans chapter 15 verse 4, the Apostle Paul says that whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. Whatever was written in former times in the Scripture was written to profit us, to instruct us, to give us direction. And so we start with the premise that these Psalms are somehow profitable, somehow are useful, somehow are good for us, even if, watch this, watch this, even if it is not immediately apparent to us how that could be the case. And so we start with that premise that somehow these Scriptures are good for us, that they instruct us well because all of Scripture is God's Word. You remember 2 Timothy 3 verse 16. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
And so we have the New Testament looking back and stating with a blanket affirmation of the Old Testament, there is profitable instruction to be found there. And one of the reasons that this is so important to us, this point about the Psalms being God's Word, is that it causes us to slow down. It causes us to humble our hearts.
It causes us to put a muzzle on our tongue, which is sometimes so quick to speak foolishly. And we say, but wait a second, I may not immediately see the prophet here, I may not immediately know the resolution to the problem here, but I know from a broader consideration of Scripture that I am supposed to come to Scripture with an attitude of deference. I'm to come as a disciple.
I am to come as one who is here to learn. And you and I should approach Scripture, should approach the psalmist, should approach the prophets who often spoke in these ways with this fundamental principle in our minds. We are not morally superior to the biblical writers who are writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Scripture sits in judgment of us. We do not sit in judgment of Scripture. And that changes the way that you think about these imprecatory Psalms. Rather than coming on a moral, a self-appointed moral throne and saying, I find this to be objectionable and not profitable for human consideration, I consider these writers, as C.S.
Lewis said, to be devilish. No, we step down from that position of pride and arrogance and come as one who needs to sit at the foot of Scripture and say, what is it that this would teach me? What is it that I would learn from here? When I was teaching Greek back in that other place that I came from, I often told the students that when you come to a difficult text, when you come to difficult grammatical structures, as you're studying the Greek New Testament, I would tell them, you need to adopt an attitude of patience and sit down, as it were, and I would literally sit down on the floor in the classroom.
That always got their attention. But you need to sit down in front of the text and rather than thinking the text is the problem, rather than thinking that somehow Scripture is the cause of this difficulty here, is to recognize that the cause of difficulty is always within yourself. It's from a lack of understanding, perhaps a sinful attitude, perhaps a lack of perspective, but Scripture is perfect. Scripture is high and lofty and exalted because it is the very Word of God, and therefore our first presupposition should be when we come to something that causes a difficulty in our mind, like the imprecatory Psalms do, is to say, wait a second, the Psalms are God's Word. The problem must somehow be with me because it couldn't possibly be with the Scriptures. And if you adopt that perspective, it will help you deal rightly with the imprecatory Psalms, in my opinion, and it will also, more broadly, that attitude will shape you in a way that will make you a fitting disciple of your Lord Jesus. This is what His Word is worthy of.
This is the devotion and trust of which Christ is worthy of, never to raise our hand against Scripture, never to raise our voice against it, but to seek to learn from it and to seek what it would have to teach us. The Psalms are God's Word, and that frames the way that we think. Now secondly, we could say this, the Old Testament warns against a vengeful spirit.
The Old Testament warns against a vengeful spirit. Now as we said, the Psalmist wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and all of Scripture, all of Scripture is inspired by God in that manner. The Spirit of God worked through the human riders in a way to produce a product that was entirely the Word of God and expresses exactly what God wanted to express. Even though the Psalms were written 3,000 years ago from our time reference, we do not view them simply as a human product written by men from a barbaric age. We understand that Scripture bears the imprint of God, that these riders were recording exactly what God wanted said. That means that we take an attitude of deference to it.
It also means something else. Because all Scripture, all 66 books of the Bible, are ultimately a reflection of the one mind of God, it means that there is going to be an internal consistency between every passage of Scripture. It may not always be apparent to us, and beloved, it may not always be easy. It may require a lot of work and difficult thought and difficult questions before these problems begin to unfold before us, but there should be this underlying understanding in our mind that there is an internal consistency with Scripture.
They are not in competition or in contradiction to one another. Again, that thought is far bigger for your philosophy of life, your philosophy of Scripture, the way in which you walk with God. It's much bigger than just the imprecatory Psalms. It reflects the attitude that says not only is this true, it is internally consistent in one manner or another, and if I don't see that immediately, the problem is not with the Bible, the problem is with me.
There's some lack in me that's not seeing it. And so, how does that point help us here? Well, the accusation against these Psalms, these imprecatory Psalms, is that they're vengeful and vindictive, blah, blah, blah, but when we look at other texts in the Old Testament, we see that there is an atmosphere that pervades the Old Testament that should inform the way that we consider these imprecatory Psalms. Go back to the book of Leviticus, if you will, Leviticus chapter 19. Leviticus chapter 19. And what we're doing in large part is just kind of like just getting all of the tools out and laying them out so that you're ready to do the work later.
And we're just getting the tools out and getting them ready so that we can think rightly. 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. And 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. That's Don Green with the first half of a message called An Introduction to Imprecatory Psalms here on The Truth Pulpit. We'll hear the second half of this lesson next time. And friend, we pray that today's teaching has blessed you, and we hope you can join us again here on The Truth Pulpit. If you'd like to review this broadcast or you'd like to share it with a friend or loved one, just go to thetruthpulpit.com to listen again. And while you're there, be sure to explore our website in order to utilize all of the available resources. Again, that's thetruthpulpit.com. Now for Don Green, I'm Bill Wright. Join us again here on The Truth Pulpit, teaching God's people God's Word.
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