An Earnest Plea for Vindication

1:07Let his days be few, and let another have his office. This is a somewhat snarky prayer that a Republican had for a Democrat. We should be very grateful that this Republican did not continue to read. Verses 9 forward from the 109th Psalm. Let me read this: May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. May his children wander about and beg, seeking food far from the ruins they inhabit. May the creditor seize all that he has, may strangers plunder the fruits of his toil.

2:02Let there be none to extend kindness to him, nor any pity to his fatherless children. May his posterity be cut off, may his name be blotted out in the second generation. Psalm 109 is what we call in the scriptures an imprecatory psalm. An imprecatory psalm calls down God's curse on the wicked. There are something like 24 specific curses in Psalm 109 itself. I disagree with C.S. Lewis and other Christian scholars who say that imprecatory psalms like 109 are sub-Christian, that they expect Express ungodly anger, vendetta, or vindictiveness.

3:08Brothers and sisters, this is God's word. The imprecatory psalms are hard to understand. This will not be an easy sermon this morning. They certainly should not be incorporated into our normal day-to-day prayers. And if we do incorporate them, we should never do so without a full understanding of their purpose or without a full understanding of how we can reconcile those prayers with Jesus' teaching to love our enemies. Yet, being God's word, we need to understand how we can appropriately use them in our day-to-day life.

4:11So, this morning I'm going to try and answer three questions. What is an imprecatory psalm? What is the meaning of Psalm 35? And how does Psalm 35 apply to us today? It is my prayer this morning that as you depart, that you will understand Psalm 35 to be an earnest petition to God to save his people by exacting vengeance for his glory. Let me repeat that. Psalm 35 is an earnest petition to God to save his people by exacting vengeance for his glory.

5:08Let us pray. Heavenly Father, this is your word. We need your help to understand it. And if you have called us to go through anything like the psalmist is going through here, we need your sustaining grace. I ask this, Lord, especially for any who know these burdens. Minister to them. Lord, open our eyes to behold wonderful things in your word so that we can give you all the praise and all the glory. We ask it in Jesus' name.

5:58Amen. Let us go ahead and answer the first question. What is an imprecatory psalm? My wife gets nervous every time that I throw up theological terms, not trying to impress any of you in the audience, but we will have to throw up two theological concepts today, which are critical for your understanding of Psalm 35. And the first one is that Psalm 35 is an imprecatory psalm. So, what is an imprecatory psalm? Carl Laney defines it very quickly, shortly, and concisely: it's an invocation of judgment, calamity, or curse uttered against one's enemies or the enemies of God.

6:54There are two critical or crucial elements of every imprecatory psalm. One, it's an invocation, prayer, or address to God, and it must contain a request that one's enemies or the very enemies of God Himself be judged and justly punished. The presence of imprecatory psalms, like Psalm 35, poses at least three Ethical and theological problems for Christians. First, how could the Spirit of God have inspired the psalmist to utter harsh sentiments like this? Second, how can the Psalms arise from a sense of anger and revenge? And how can we as Christians ever think about uttering them?

8:07And lastly, how can any Christian conclude that imprecations or imprecations are tolerable or excusable in light of Jesus's ethical imperative, love your enemies, or Paul's imperative, to bless those who persecute you. Bless and curse not. These are ethical and theological problems. These problems have unfortunately led Christian scholars to craft solutions to these problems. Let me just quickly mention five of them. We won't dwell on them, but it's important that you hear how Christian scholars try to wrestle with. This, with these imprecatory psalms. First, some will say this is the utterance of David against his enemies. Nope, nope, it's not that. It's the utterances of the enemies against David. So he's repeating back what they say of him.

9:21Some suggest that David is uttering what he feels in his heart, and these are not the words of the Holy Spirit. You can imagine the difficulty with wrestling with that to know when is David speaking and when is the Holy Spirit speaking? That's a problem. Some suggest that this speaks to spiritual antagonists, but not real people. It's just kind of an abstract group of people, but it's not real people who are, he's basically pleading against. Some say this is prophetic. It refers to what will happen in the future. It's not going to happen today.

10:07And then last, some say that since this is the Old Testament and the old dispensation, it doesn't apply to us as Christians anymore. We can just ignore it. So these are five solutions that Christian scholars have come up with. And all of them are simply to be rejected. They're not true. So before we set up the word, Forth a satisfactory solution to the ethical and theological problems, I want to answer the second question that I set forth.

10:41And to properly exposit this psalm, what does Psalm 35 mean? I just have to lay a little more groundwork for you. First of all, we need to understand that Psalm 35 is a Psalm of David. Many of you have the ESV in front of you. Look at what the superscription says right below 35 and right below the title. It'll say a Psalm of David or of David. So it is expected that who the speaker is is David.

11:15Second, the context of this psalm is somewhat important for you to understand. This psalm was very likely written during David's running away and hiding from Saul and his followers. Or this was a time in which he was running away from his son Absalom when Absalom rebelled against him. The context of this psalm is David running and hiding and fearing for his life from a set of enemies. And this will be very important here in a second. When we get into the psalm, now let me give you the outline of the psalm. And let me introduce the second theological concept that will be important for you to understand this morning. Notice with this psalm, and if we get the psalm up, there we go, it has what is a chiastic structure.

12:24Now, if you think, well, who cares about that? Those of you in English literature or in English know about alliteration, assonance, metaphor, rhyming. Well, in Hebrew poetry, chiasm is very common. Chiasm is just a literary device in which a sequence of ideas is presented, then repeated in reverse order. Notice, A1, B1, C, then you have B2, A2. Okay, so they're just repeated. This has a unique structure, very common again in Hebrew poetry. It's called an ABCBA structure. And why that's important is that you have two repeating ideas with an insertion in the middle. And that's C.

13:20And in Hebrew poetry, C is the key. That's where you will find the theme, the main point. The emphasis, the heart of the psalm. This will also become evident as we exposit this psalm. So let's look at the psalm starting in verse 1. So open your Bibles and we're going to unpack this psalm very quickly. Verse 1 calls for a, this opens with a call for deliverance. Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me. Now, this call assumes a covenantal relationship. So there's a covenantal appeal that David is making. And we know that embedded within this, and you'll see this throughout the rest, there are at least three truths that underlie this covenantal appeal. Number one is the promise made to Abraham in Genesis 12, which promised blessing on those who blessed Abraham's posterity and cursing on those who cursed Abraham's posterity.

14:37This covenantal appeal is also undergirded by the promise made to David himself in 2 Samuel 7, when the Abrahamic covenant was renewed with David. And then David being the king of Israel at the time that he's running around from these enemies. He still is the representative of Israel. Thus, it is right and proper for him as the king of Israel, as the representative of Israel, to appeal to the covenant God to say, not only are you to bless those who bless us, you are to curse those who curse us. In essence, the enemies of the covenant should be cursed. So, in other words, God is the covenanter.

15:34David is the covenantee because he represents Israel, and the enemies are the violator of this covenant. Back to verse 1. Who are these enemies? They are the ones that contend with him and fight against him. And given that historical setting, they are very likely Saul and his followers who seek his death, or it's Absalom and his followers who seek his death. His enemies are fierce attackers. They want to kill him. They falsely accuse David. You'll see that in verse 11 as an example. He's innocent. They slander him. You see that in verse 15.

16:26Simply stated, the enemies of David. Are covenant breakers, and by being covenant breakers, they're enemies of God. And these enemies seek to murder David. And what do covenant breakers do? They also violate commands. Don't murder. So, as such, this psalmist, David, calls out for help. He calls out to the divine warrior in verse 3 to draw the spear and javelin against his pursuers. And he desires to hear that the divine warrior is his salvation. Now we enter the second section. And in verses 4 through 10, David is now going to pray for vindication.

17:23Rather than launching a revengeful counterattack against these aggressors, the psalmist turns to God for assistance and refuge. Look in verses 4 and 5. He asks God to put to shame and dishonor those who seek after his life. He asks God to turn them back, to disappoint their plans, and to drive them away. In verse 7, David argues there is no No justification for their attacks. Their attacks are without cause. In verse 8, David pleads that God will bring destruction upon his enemies. In fact, David prays that his enemies themselves will become the victims of the very ruin that they planned for David.

18:29And when God will eventually come to the rescue, look what he says in verse 9 and 10. I promise to rejoice in the Lord, to exalt in his salvation, and to shout out, O Lord, who is like you? That concludes the first of two prayers for vindication. And beginning in verse 11, we enter the third section, the insertion. Here we look at the very heart of this psalm. We get a peek into the very soul of David.

19:19Remembering the chiastic structure, this is where the emphasis of this psalm sits. And the essence of his complaint. Shows up in the very first verse. Repay me, all of my enemies, repay me evil for good. Now, some of you are thinking, of course, our enemies repay any good that we do with evil. Of course, that's what enemies do. So, thus, if you look at what David is saying and just, oh, that's just this is trivial and just dismiss this, you misunderstand the pain that David is going through. You misunderstand the gut-wrenching nature of David's loss. Let me explain why. Because in verse 13, he states that his enemies attack, accuse, and slander him, were individuals that he nurtured in his past life.

20:34First, these people who are attacking and slandering and accusing him were people that when they were sick, I, David, cared for them. I wore sackcloth. I afflicted myself with fasting. I prayed with my head bowed on my chest. This is not a man who just expressed sympathy in passing. This is a man who bodily suffered with those who suffered. He wore sackcloth. That was not a comfortable thing. He fasted and he prayed extensively. These were people that, when they were sick, he would have been the one up at night caring for them.

21:39Second, this is a group of people that he grieved with when they had lost a loved one. His grief was not cursory. He grieved for them as if he had lost a close friend. Remember how he grieved when he lost Jonathan. He grieved like that with these people. He grieved with them as if he had lost a brother, or even if he had lost his own mother. Look in verse 14. I went about as though I grieved for my friend or my brother or one who laments his mother. David is not being pursued by enemies who were nameless and fast. Faceless. The enemies that David knew were people he was intimately familiar with, enemies who he had grieved with, he had suffered with, he had cared for. Yet in verse 15, when he stumbles, these very people do the exact opposite.

22:56These people rejoice and gather against him like profane mockers at a feast and gnash at him with teeth. The people he has tenderly cared for, like a mother caring for a child, or a best friend caring for another, or a brother or sister caring for a sibling. These people he care for turn against him, attack him, accuse him, slander him. And in verse 17, what does he say? How long, O Lord, will you look on? God, when are you going to quit doing nothing?

23:54David feels the desertion of these acquaintances. With the intensity of betrayal. And that's why David says in verse 12, my soul is bereft. Now we enter the second prayer for vindication. Now you begin to understand the magnitude of what he's appealing for. He again prays in verse 19 for vindication. His enemies rejoice over David's misadventure, verse 19. They hate David without cause, verse 19. They speak words of deceit, verse 20. They mock him with lies, verse 21. Enough of this.

24:55David believed himself to be an innocent victim that calls on God to quit being silent, verse 22. He calls on God for vindication in verses 23 and 24. He pleads for their defeat in verse 25. Finally, he pleads that they may be shamed and dishonored in verse 26. And that ends the second prayer for vindication. And in the final section of the psalm, he returns to that call of deliverance. And he calls on all who stand by him, who believe in his innocence, to join him in praising God for his ultimate deliverance. Look, let those who delight in my righteousness shout for joy and be glad and say evermore, Great is the Lord who delights in the welfare of his servant. Then my tongue shall tell of your righteousness and of your praise all the day long.

26:17One side note before we move on to our final question. You should have heard it in Anne's reading. You should have seen it in my exposition. There is an upward movement to this psalm. The psalmist goes from grief to joy, from grief to joy, from grief to joy three times. In his first prayer for vindication, it ends in his exaltation in verses 9 and 10. His intense Sense of betrayal ends in his plan to praise God in verse 18, and his second prayer of vindication ends in his call for others to join in with him to praise God in his deliverance.

27:15Why do I want to make this comment? David's grief is not the end, but the process by which he will experience joy and deliverance. David's appeal for God's retributive justice, stated in this manner, neither violates God's nature nor aims to gratify a vindictive spirit. It is biblically justifiable, permissible, and relevant. Psalm 35 is an earnest petition to God to save his people by exacting vengeance for his glory. So, now, having exposited the text, what is a satisfactory solution to the problem of the imprecatory psalms? Question number three.

28:30Answer will be found. So, how does Psalm 35 apply to us today? First, a valid imprecation must appeal to promises in God's Word. In Psalm 35, David appealed to the covenant with Abraham to the renewal of his covenant. There's also text in there that says that he appealed to the very song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32, which calls for God to vindicate his people in verse 36, because vengeance is mine, verse 35. Second, a valid use of the imprecatory psalms must appeal to God as the avenger.

29:28David did not take matters into his own hand. The power to and write to avenge belongs solely to God. Again, Deuteronomy 32:35. David simply requested that God use judgmental retribution for his own glory and for the deliverance of his servant. Third, a valid use of the imprecatory Psalms must include. Appeal for vindication, not revenge. David was pleading for justice and that justice would take place. He wanted justice and right to be vindicated. Fourth, valid use in the precatory Psalms must be an appeal for the vindication of the righteous.

30:35Take a little bit of detour here to emphasize this. We know that in the New Testament we are to pray for our enemies. But as Chris mentioned in his prayer, we are also to pray for who? Our persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ. The scriptures are unequivocal in affirming that God is by no means an indifferent being. Rather, he is one who has passionately and decisively taken sides for his people throughout history. And if he is to save his people from sin, oppression, injustice, Then he must exact vengeance upon his enemies who are the enemies of his people.

31:42Both Testaments record multiple examples of God's people on earth crying for vengeance without any intimate implication of divine disapproval or expression of that nature. Rather, in almost every single indication or example of these utterances, we find them justified or even commended. Indeed, looking at the passage behind me, Scripture records an instance in which God's saints in heaven, individuals who are no longer with sin, what do they appeal for? They appeal for divine vengeance in language that is very reminiscent of the imprecatory Psalms. And they are comforted by this assurance. Let's read this.

32:48When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God. For the witness they bore, they cried out with a loud voice, O sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth? Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.

33:34Brothers and sisters, it is good and right to pray that God will intervene for our persecuted brothers and sisters. Robert Louis Dabney notes that righteous retribution is one of the glories of the divine character. If it is right that God should desire to exercise it, then it cannot be wrong for his people to desire him to exercise it. Now, many of you are thinking, maybe just some, but I'm going to assume many of you are thinking, Mark, this is helpful. I now know how to make a valid imprecation.

34:31It must appeal to promises in God's word. It must appeal for God to act as avenger. It must be an appeal for vindication, not revenge. And it must appeal for vindication of the righteous. That's all well and good. I got it. That's cool. But when do I stop praying to love your enemies and start appealing for this type of vindication? Whereas love and blessing is the dominant tone and characteristic ethic of the believer in both Testaments, calling for divine revenge is the believer's extreme ethic.

35:28Although we are normally called to seek reconciliation, to practice long-suffering, forgiveness, and kindness, there does come a point in time in which justice must be enacted by God or through God's agents, not by us. And when one looks at how God operates, how Christ operates, and how we as God's people operate, we see there is a dual response. Responsibility to seek for love and blessing, but to also call for judgment. This pattern is seen in Scripture very easily with God. There is this call of repeated grace, repeated grace, repeated grace, and then judgment.

36:20Remember Canaan? The inhabitants of Canaan were given grace, grace, grace, 400 years of grace. And then, when their iniquity was complete, they were destroyed. The Israelites themselves were shown grace, grace, grace, and then finally, after repeated rebellion and unbelief, they were barred from the promised land. We see this in Christ. The very same Christ who said, Love your enemies, is yet coming one day to judge his enemies. And we, as believers, there is a point in time where we continue to show grace, but then ultimately we must bend to the point of where judgment is necessary. So, in addressing when is it appropriate to call for divine vengeance, I want you to take note of one more context out of the New and Old Testament to help us guide us. In every single instance, Instance, we'll use just a handful of examples. David, being relentlessly pursued by Saul and Absalom, endures it for a long period of time.

37:46Christ, at the end of his ministry, not at the beginning of his ministry, curses the fig tree against a faithless and fruitless Israel. Paul and Peter utter curses of condemnation on those who sought not just to make mistakes, but to pervert the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we see the impassioned appeal for divine vengeance by the martyred saints in heaven. Brothers and sisters, the utterance of this divine vengeance should only come after an enemy's repeated return of evil for good, after gross, vicious, and sustained periods of injustice. This is not uttering divine vengeance on your boss who has not given you two promotions.

38:50This is not uttering divine vengeance on your neighbor whose dog routinely uses your yard for his business. This is not that selfish brother or sister who always gets their way and is ignorant of the demands or needs of the rest of the family. No, brothers and sisters, it's gross heresy, unthinkable evil. It's out of those circumstances that the plea of the righteous arises for the God of the covenant and the God of justice to make himself known. Or, as stated by John Piper, there may come a point when wickedness is so persistent and high-handed and God-despising that the time of redemption is past and there only remains irremediable wickedness and judgment.

39:52In closing, I want to make one more comment. Having answered the question of when it is appropriate to call for divine vengeance, this psalm ought to stir our hearts to be more faithful in sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. The words of divine vengeance will come to pass on all who do not rest and trust in Christ alone for salvation. Thus, it is right for us to desire the wicked to turn from their ways and to trust. In Christ, even as we desire that the wicked be punished. And if you are here this morning and you don't know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, if you do not understand that God is holy, that you are born in sin, and that you cannot earn your salvation, but Christ's work on the cross, His death, His perfect life can pay for your sins if you but place your faith not in yourself, but in His finished work, I plead with you this morning. And it is also my prayer this morning that you now have at least a framework for knowing when the command to love your enemies is to be replaced by the need to earnestly petition God to save His people by exacting vengeance for His glory. Let us pray.

41:47Father, we come to you in humility. This is a difficult passage of Scripture. But this is your word. It is not abstract. It does not apply to an earlier dispensation. It is something that we can appropriate today for our joy and your glory. May we in humility be careful to plead and ask for divine vengeance. Because if we actually saw that, it would terrify us. The holy is something to be fearful of. We also pray, Lord, that we will strive to consistently love our enemies, to pray for our enemies, to endure their false accusations and their slanders, and that we would only feel compelled in the most extreme of circumstances to pray for vindication, for justice.

43:33We thank you that you are a sovereign God, that all that takes place in this world takes place underneath your control, underneath your plan. And we also know, even as the saints in Revelation 6, that one day, everything will be set right. We thank you, we praise you, we serve you. For it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.