Kootenai Church Adult Sunday School

All right, well, if you've just joined us, we are doing a series on the imprecatory psalms, which is a series—or sorry, I should say it is the Psalms in the Old Testament, passages in the Old Testament that include curses, either prayers for or pronouncements of or prophecies of judgments and curses upon the wicked. Two-thirds of the Psalms have imprecatory elements, either a mention of God's judgment, a promise of God's judgment, prayers for God's judgment, or praises over God's righteous judgments on the wicked.
And so today we come to a study of two imprecatory psalms. We're going to be looking today at Psalm 69 and Psalm 109. These are two imprecatory psalms, and I've chosen these two not only because they are imprecatory but also because they have elements of imprecation in them that are severe. In fact, these are probably two of the most severe imprecatory psalms in all of the Psalter. So I didn't want to take a couple of psalms that were sort of easy to work our way through. I wanted to take two examples of really severe curses and mentions of judgment in the Psalter. And I also chose these two imprecatory psalms because they are messianic psalms. And I think that helps us to think in terms of the theology which I've been trying to craft for the last several weeks of thinking of the imprecatory psalms through the eyes of David as the king of Israel, but also speaking for and on behalf and describing the judgments that would be executed by his greater Son—that is, his descendant, the Lord Jesus Christ—who was the fulfillment of the covenant that God made with David.
So turn in your Bibles to Psalm 69, if you haven't yet, Psalm 69. This is thirty-six verses, and we're going to read the entire psalm, and then I'm going to put some passages up on the screen which will sort of help us to walk through the thinking and the theology of the psalm. Psalm 69. And I'm going to give you here an outline up on the screen here of how this psalm kind of breaks apart. Well, I did that. There we go. All right, verses 1–12 describe a rejected king, verses 13–21 a prayer for deliverance, verses 22–28 a prayer for the destruction of his enemies, and then verses 29–36 an expression of confidence in God's promises. I have to put on my cheaters for this, so join me now in Psalm 69.
1 For the choir director; according to Shoshannim. A Psalm of David. Save me, O God, for the waters have threatened my life.
2 I have sunk in deep mire, and there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and a flood overflows me.
3 I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched; my eyes fail while I wait for my God.
4 Those who hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head; those who would destroy me are powerful, being wrongfully my enemies; what I did not steal, I then have to restore.
5 O God, it is You who knows my folly, and my wrongs are not hidden from You.
6 May those who wait for You not be ashamed through me, O Lord God of hosts; may those who seek You not be dishonored through me, O God of Israel,
7 because for Your sake I have borne reproach; dishonor has covered my face.
8 I have become estranged from my brothers and an alien to my mother's sons.
9 For zeal for Your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me.
10 When I wept in my soul with fasting, it became my reproach.
11 When I made sackcloth my clothing, I became a byword to them.
12 Those who sit in the gate talk about me, and I am the song of the drunkards. (Ps. 69:1–12 NASB)
That is the rejection of David as king. Verses 13–21 is a prayer for deliverance.
13 But as for me, my prayer is to You, O Lord, at an acceptable time; O God, in the greatness of Your lovingkindness, answer me with Your saving truth.
14 Deliver me from the mire and do not let me sink; may I be delivered from my foes and from the deep waters.
15 May the flood of water not overflow me nor the deep swallow me up, nor the pit shut its mouth on me.
16 Answer me, O Lord, for Your lovingkindness is good; according to the greatness of Your compassion, turn to me,
17 and do not hide Your face from Your servant, for I am in distress; answer me quickly.
18 O draw near to my soul and redeem it; ransom me because of my enemies!
19 You know my reproach and my shame and my dishonor; all my adversaries are before You.
20 Reproach has broken my heart and I am so sick. And I looked for sympathy, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none.
21 They also gave me gall for my food and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. (NASB)
Verses 22–28 is a prayer for the destruction of these enemies that he's been describing in the first twenty-one verses. Verse 22:
22 May their table before them become a snare; and when they are in peace, may it become a trap.
23 May their eyes grow dim so that they cannot see, and make their loins shake continually.
24 Pour out Your indignation on them, and may Your burning anger overtake them.
25 May their camp be desolate; may none dwell in their tents.
26 For they have persecuted him whom You Yourself have smitten, and they tell of the pain of those whom You have wounded.
27 Add iniquity to their iniquity, and may they not come into Your righteousness.
28 May they be blotted out of the book of life and may they not be recorded with the righteous. (NASB)
Notice there that—verse 27 and 28—he is praying for their eternal destruction and damnation. That's what he's asking for. “May they be blotted out of the book of life and may they not be recorded with the righteous” (v. 28). Verses 29–36, his confidence in God's promises:
29 But I am afflicted and in pain; may Your salvation, O God, set me securely on high.
30 I will praise the name of God with song and magnify Him with thanksgiving.
31 And it will please the Lord better than an ox or a young bull with horns and hooves.
32 The humble have seen it and are glad; you who seek God, let your heart revive.
33 For the Lord hears the needy and does not despise His who are prisoners.
34 Let heaven and earth praise Him, the seas and everything that moves in them.
35 For God will save Zion and build the cities of Judah, that they may dwell there and possess it.
36 The descendants of His servants will inherit it, and those who love His name will dwell in it. (NASB)
There is a promise there of everlasting life and a promise that the righteous will inherit the land.
I want to go over a couple features of the psalm. You can hear the aggressive imprecations of that psalm. He is praying for God to judge his enemies who have caused this affliction that is described in verses 1–21. And he is praying for not just their judgment but actually their eternal destruction. And this is the type of language that has caused us—that has been our focus in studying how we interpret this, this type of severe imprecations, severe calls for judgment on God's enemies. And the question, of course, is should we or can we pray for such things for God's enemies? Is that appropriate? And I've been slowly but I think consistently making the case that we should be making imprecatory prayers great again. Not that that's the only thing we pray for our enemies, but that it is an appropriate function to pray for God to judge the wicked. If this is something that God is going to do, and it is something that He has promised to do, and it is something that God is going to do without sinning or without doing any kind of wrong, for us to ask God to fulfill His promises and do what He has promised to do is not a sinful prayer. But the question then becomes how or when do we pray such prayers? Not answering that today, we're just observing these, we're going to go into that in a couple of weeks.
Now let's look at a couple of the features of this psalm. This psalm is quoted in the New Testament and applied to Christ. How many of you noticed things in that psalm as we read through it that you directly thought of places or episodes in the New Testament where that psalm is quoted? Did you see them? They gave me gall and vinegar to drink, right, that was probably the most noticeable one. We have in John 15:25, “But they have done this to fulfill the word that is written in their Law, ‘They hated Me without a cause.’” Of course, that is a quotation from Psalm 69:4: “Those who hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head; those who would destroy me are powerful, being wrongfully my enemies; what I did not steal, I then have to restore.” That is quoted in John 15 as referring to Christ, and John is saying that Christ fulfills that. He is the one who truly was hated without a cause. I promise you that there is some reason that somebody could have hated David, right? Because he's a fallen man. I'm sure David did something to someone somewhere along the line that would have caused them to hate him. But David in describing himself is really saying, “What I have received from them, I do not deserve. They have hated me to this degree without a cause.” But the one who ultimately fulfills that, of course, is Christ because Christ truly did nothing to anyone that would cause their hatred, and yet we can say of Christ that those who hated Him and still continue to hate Him are more than the hairs of your head.
We see another allusion in Matthew 27:27–30:
27 Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole Roman cohort around Him.
28 They stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him.
29 And after twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on His head, and a reed in His right hand; and they knelt down before Him and mocked Him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!”
30 They spat on Him, and took the reed and began to beat Him on the head. (NASB)
And while that is not quoted directly, it is an allusion to Psalm 69:12: “Those who sit in the gate talk about me, and I am the song of the drunkards.” The reviling of David in Psalm 69 was a picture of the ultimate reviling of Christ in the book of Matthew. Matthew 27:34: “They gave Him wine to drink mixed with gall; and after tasting it, He was unwilling to drink.” Psalm 69:21 says, “They also gave me gall for my food and for my first thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” So you can see these allusions to New Testament truths. John 2:17: “His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for Your house will consume me.’” Now, of course, this is a quotation from Psalm 69:9: “For zeal for Your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me.”
How is it that in John they can say this was written of Christ when it is David who was writing it? How is that possible? Remember, I suggested to you several weeks ago that we have to view the statements in the Psalms that David makes, many or most of them, through the eyes of one who really is a picture of the King that is to come. And so therefore, when we're reading in the Psalms about one for whom zeal has consumed him, we have to look at that and say that's ultimately a reference to Christ because David, though he's describing himself, he’s describing one who would come after him, who prophetically he was a picture of that one.
We see another reference to this in Acts 1:20: “It is written in the book of Psalms, ‘Let his homestead be made desolate, and let no one dwell in it’; and, ‘Let another man take his office.’” Who's that referring to, Acts 1? It’s Judas. Judas is the one. Peter's talking about Judas there. They're gathering together to replace Judas by the casting of lots. Which, by the way, it’s my position that was a legitimate—Matthias was a legitimate apostle, and he was the one whom God ordained to take that role. And so what they're doing there is citing the Old Testament Scripture that describes the betrayal of this one. There was one who had betrayed David and many hated him without a cause, and then they see in Judas the ultimate fulfillment of that ultimate betrayal of the ultimate King. And so it's quoted in Acts 1:20. It comes from Psalm 69:25: “May their camp be desolate; may none dwell in their tents.”
Peter also, by the way, quotes Psalm 109 in the same passage, which is the next psalm that we're going to be looking at. So these two messianic, imprecatory psalms, Peter quotes in Acts 1—Psalm 69 and Psalm 109—both of which he says refer to Judas and gave him biblical Old Testament authorization to do what they did in selecting Matthias as the apostle to replace Judas.
Then there's another reference in Romans 11:7–11.
7 What then? What Israel is seeking, it has not obtained, but those who were chosen obtained it, and the rest were hardened;
8 just as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes to see not and ears to hear not, down to this very day.”
9 And David says, “Let their table become a snare and a trap, and a stumbling block and a retribution to them.
10 Let their eyes be darkened to see not, and bend their backs forever.”(Rom. 11:7–10 NASB)
And there in verse 9, he is quoting Psalm 69. “May their table before them become a snare; and when they are in peace, may it become a trap. May their eyes grow dim so that they cannot see, and make their loins shake continually” (Ps. 69:22–23). That's a reference, by the way—Paul quotes this in Romans 11 to describe Israel's rejection of their King. See it's not just David's compatriots who rejected him and afflicted him, but in the rejection of Christ, which Israel did, Paul sees Israel's doing that to Christ as the ultimate fulfillment of Psalm 69. It's not just Judas who betrayed Christ but the entire nation rejecting Him and having Him crucified. And so then Paul quotes Psalm 69 to point to the judgment that was to come to Israel, which judgment is not permanent. It is, as the rest of Romans 11 shows us, a judgment that ultimately will end and then all Israel will be saved.
So those are the New Testament references to the psalm. Only Psalm 22—out of all of the Psalms, only Psalm 22 has more attributions to Christ, more verses or things which are identified in the New Testament as pointing to Christ. Psalm 22 is the one that reads, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” at the beginning of the psalm and then describes, “All my bones are out of joint, I am thirsty, they pierced my hands and my feet, and they gambled for my garments.” Only Psalm 22 has more allusions to Christ or direct quotations in the New Testament.
A third observation is not every element of the psalm can be applied to Christ, and I hope you noticed this as we were going through. For instance, Psalm 69:5: “O God, it is You who knows my folly, and my wrongs are not hidden from You.” That doesn't refer to Christ, does it? OK, so here's an important interpretive principle when looking at the imprecatory psalms and seeing them as fulfilled, ultimately as pointing in some sense to Christ. It's to keep in mind that while David describes a lot of his experiences and his prayers and things that he is doing and that will happen to the wicked, not every single detail of every single psalm that points to Christ or is a messianic [psalm] ultimately is fulfilled in Christ because Christ had no folly. Jesus had no sins or wrongs. So David is aware of his sin and he is confessing it, but he is also aware that his sin is not the reason for his suffering, and we can say that of Christ. There was no sin that He committed that was worthy of the suffering that He endured. And David is aware of his sin, and while he confesses that, he is also aware that it's not his sin that has resulted in the affliction. Something else is going on. There is truly One who, without sin, suffered all of these things that Psalm 69 describes. So not every element of the psalm can be applied to Christ.
A fourth observation, the target of the wicked in this psalm was a righteous king, David. So David's suffering in Psalm 69 is a portrait, a picture, a foreshadowing of another King who would come from his line who would suffer even worse than David was suffering. So really the target of the wicked in Psalm 69 was the righteous king who in Psalm 69 is David, but ultimately the righteous King who would come from David's line is the Lord Jesus Christ. So there's something else going on in Psalm 69, another King who receives the same treatment, so that we can say of Psalm 69, of the psalmist, that the suffering that David is describing ultimately is suffered and experienced by Christ Himself. There is a sense in which the psalmist describing their own affliction, and we can say this of David specifically—the psalmist David, in describing his own affliction, really is describing something that would come upon his Son, the King who would come after him, who would be rejected by Judas, by the Israelites, and by the entire nation. Does that make sense?
And so therefore, the judgment that comes and that is described in Psalm 69 we should also see as a messianic judgment, a judgment that would come upon those who have rejected this righteous King, and it is a righteous judgment that will fall. It is a judgment that God has warned us about in the Psalms that is going to fall upon the wicked, and therefore, all who reject this righteous King and hate Him without cause, they will suffer the judgment that is described in Psalm 69. So that is the judgment that the wicked face. Look at Psalm 69:22:
22 May their table before them become a snare; and when they are in peace, may it become a trap.
23 May their eyes grow dim so that they cannot see, and make their loins shake continually.
24 Pour out Your indignation on them, and may Your burning anger overtake them.
25 May their camp be desolate; may none dwell in their tents.
26 For they have persecuted him whom You Yourself have smitten, and they tell of the pain of those whom You have wounded.
27 Add iniquity to their iniquity, and may they not come into Your righteousness.
28 May they be blotted out of the book of life and may they not be recorded with the righteous. (Ps. 69:22–28 NASB)
Now what has God promised will happen to all the wicked who oppose the righteous King? This is what will happen. That is what He has promised. So we can legitimately see that the declaration, the prophetic declaration of these curses are going to fall upon all who have rejected the Messiah-King who came from David's line, who was the ultimate fulfillment of Psalm 69. So is it sinful to pray for or to rejoice in judgments that fall upon those who afflict this King? I don't think it is.
Let me give you a couple more observations. God will deliver the righteous. Of course, that is the end of the psalm, right? There is the confidence in God's deliverance for the righteous. Ultimately, that will mean the destruction of the wicked. It must certainly mean the punishment of those who oppose the Christ.
Second, the fulfillment of God's promises will mean the destruction of the wicked. Look at Psalm 69:34–36: “Let heaven and earth praise Him, the seas and everything that moves in them. For God will save Zion and build the cities of Judah, that they may dwell there and possess it. The descendants of His servants will inherit it, and those who love His name will dwell in it.” The word descendants there is the word for seed, describing the seed of Abraham as well as the seed of the woman in Genesis 3:15. So the fulfillment of God's promises to deliver the righteous will mean inevitably and unalterably the destruction of the wicked. Because what is it ultimately that is the deliverance for the righteous? It's not necessarily anything in this life. Ultimately our deliverance is in the life to come when God destroys the wicked entirely and casts sin and death and all impenitent sinners in the lake that burns with fire forever along with the devil and his angels, and He recreates a new heavens and a new earth and brings the righteous to dwell in the land. We get the land forever and ever, and that's what's being described there in verse 36. It's the same promise contained in Psalm 37:9–11:
9 Evildoers will be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land.
10 Yet a little while and the wicked man will be no more; and you will look carefully for his place and he will not be there.
11 But the humble will inherit the land and will delight themselves in abundant prosperity. (NASB)
That phrase—the righteous will inherit the land or dwell in the land or receive the land—that is repeated over and over again in Psalm 37, which describes the prosperity of the righteous, ultimately. And Psalm 37 is going to be a psalm I'm going to preach through as soon as we're done with the book of Hebrews. So probably this fall, we're going to take some time to work through Psalm 37. It's an imprecatory psalm in the sense that the judgments upon the wicked are mentioned in Psalm 37, but there the author’s contrasting the doom of the wicked alongside of the prosperity of the righteous, the real gift of the righteous, and the psalmist is saying, “Just a little while, just a little while; the wicked will be cut off and destroyed, and the righteous will receive an eternal inheritance.” We will dwell in the land. That land renewed and regenerated and promised to us all the way back in the book of Genesis, to Abraham and his seed, those descendants will receive the land.
Third observation, the unjustified persecution of David, a righteous king, deserves God's justice. It deserves God's justice. When we talk about God judging the wicked, let's be clear, we're not talking about anything that is undeserved or ill-deserved in any way. It's not over the top. God's justice is always perfect. Every last thing that He executes upon the wicked will be exactly what they deserve and no more. Certainly no less, and no more. It will be absolute perfect justice. Those who oppose the Son, who is the King of the Psalms, they will perish, and they are the same ones who oppose David, and then later on they oppose his greater Son. So David's struggle with the nation and with certain enemies who rejected him and persecuted him, that struggle was a microcosm of a much bigger and greater struggle, and therefore his prayers for the damnation and his pronunciation of damnation upon his enemies, that is a microcosm of a much greater judgment that is to come. In other words, we see it in small in David, and we are going to see it in large, writ large in his greater Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Of course, the wicked have been warned. Psalm 2:12: “Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way, for His wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!” So David speaks of Christ and he speaks for Christ in his suffering and in the judgment. He describes his confidence in Yahweh's deliverance, in Yahweh's vindication, in the establishment of the righteous, and in a God who will fulfill His Word both to punish the wicked as well as to reward the righteous.
James Hamilton in his commentary says this: “The point made throughout these imprecatory prayers is that God's enemies have no right to God's blessings. God's enemies should expect God's curses, and David calls on the Lord to render to them what they deserve.” That is profound and that you should write at the top of your notes and return to it over and over again. “The point made throughout these imprecatory prayers is that God's enemies have no right to God's blessings. God's enemies should expect God's curses, and David calls on the Lord to render to them what they deserve.”
And therefore, is it appropriate for us to pray that God would render to the wicked what they deserve? I think it is. I think the imprecatory psalms are there as a model for us to know how we ought to pray. I'm just making the case now that these are legitimate prayers for us. Two weeks from today, I will try and give you five principles for praying imprecatory prayers.
Any questions on Psalm 69? We're going to Psalm 109. What I wanted you to see there is just David's struggle, how it is mirrored in Christ. I think this is the theological framework in which we understand the imprecations, that what's being described here is a greater cosmic battle and ultimately a greater judgment than even what the psalmists are describing. Any questions? Comments? Nope.
You're already flipping to Psalm 109. All right. Psalm 109 it is. I'll give you an outline for this psalm as well. It is a similar structure to Psalm 69. We have in verses 1–5 a lament over his sufferings; verses 6–15 a prayer for judgment upon the wicked; verses 16–20 their crimes, and justice is defended, and when we get to that point, I want you to recognize how what the psalmist is asking for is something that is appropriate, almost a tit-for-tat, a this-for-that recompense to the wicked for what they are doing. And then verses 21–25, a description of his sufferings. And then 26–31, confidence in deliverance and vindication. And of course you see the lament at the top of the psalm and the confidence in God's vindication at the bottom of the psalm. That was the same structure, similar structure to what we had in Psalm 69.
So now with my cheaters on and your Bible before you—Psalm 109, let's read the psalm.
1 For the choir director. A Psalm of David. O God of my praise, do not be silent!
2 For they opened the wicked and deceitful mouth against me; they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.
3 They have also surrounded me with words of hatred, and fought against me without cause.
4 In return for my love they act as my accusers; but I am in prayer.
5 Thus they have repaid me evil for good and hatred for my love.
6 Appoint a wicked man over him, and let an accuser stand at his right hand [here's the imprecations].
7 When he is judged, let him come forth guilty, and let his prayer become sin.
8 Let his days be few; let another take his office.
9 Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
10 Let his children wander about and beg; and let them seek sustenance far from their ruined homes.
11 Let the creditor seize all that he has, and let strangers plunder the product of his labor.
12 Let there be none to extend lovingkindness to him, nor any to be gracious to his fatherless children.
13 Let his posterity be cut off; in a following generation let their name be blotted out.
14 Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord, and do not let the sin of his mother be blotted out.
15 Let them be before the Lord continually, that He may cut off their memory from the earth. (Ps. 109:1–15 NASB)
Verses 16–20 is their crimes that they have committed, and so justice is defended here.
16 Because he did not remember to show lovingkindness, but persecuted the afflicted and needy man, and the despondent in heart, to put them to death.
17 He also loved cursing, so it came to him; and he did not delight in blessing, so it was far from him.
18 But he clothed himself with cursing as with his garment, and it entered into his body like water and like oil into his bones.
19 Let it be to him as a garment with which he covers himself, and for a belt with which he constantly girds himself.
20 Let this be the reward of my accusers from the Lord, and those who speak evil against my soul. (NASB)
Notice there that he is asking, “They hated blessing, so let blessing be far from them. He spoke cursing, so let curses fall upon him.” In other words, David is asking that everything that the wicked have done to this innocent individual, let that fall back upon the head of the wicked person. And this is one of the principles that we'll look at in a couple weeks, but I'll give it to you now. It is wrong, I think, to pray an imprecatory prayer for a judgment that does not match the crime. OK? Somebody steals your lunch out of the refrigerator at work, we don't ask that their name be blotted out from the book of life. That's not justice. So what the author is asking here for, what David is asking here for, is a justice that fits the crime. He's not asking for damnation to fall upon the head of somebody who cut him off in traffic or, you know, didn't feed his animals at the right time or whatever. That would be immoral and wrong. That wouldn't be justice. That wouldn't be right. So the psalmist is asking for something that is—what's the word I'm looking for? Commensurate, I guess. That's not the best word, but there's another word out there. It'll come to me this afternoon.
Look at verses 21–25; it's a description of his sufferings.
21 But you, O God, the Lord, deal kindly with me for Your name's sake; because Your lovingkindness is good, deliver me;
22 for I am afflicted and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.
23 I am passing like a shadow when it lengthens; I am shaken off like the locust.
24 My knees are weak from fasting, and my flesh has grown lean, without fatness.
25 I also have become a reproach to them; when they see me, they wag their head. (NASB)
Verses 26–31 is his confidence in God's deliverance and justification.
26 Help me, O Lord my God; save me according to Your lovingkindness.
27 And let them know that this is Your hand; You, Lord, have done it.
28 Let them curse, but You bless; when they arise, they shall be ashamed, but Your servant shall be glad.
29 Let my accusers be clothed with dishonor, and let them cover themselves with their own shame as with a robe.
30 With my mouth I will give thanks abundantly to the Lord; and in the midst of many I will praise Him.
31 For He stands at the right hand of the needy, to save him from those who judge his soul. (NASB)
And there's a prayer there, a confidence in deliverance and vindication.
Let me give you a couple features of the psalm. Again, this psalm is quoted in the New Testament and used to describe the enemies of Christ. Psalm 109:8: “Let his days be few; let another take his office.” And we saw this verse—we saw Peter quote Psalm 69 in the same verse, Acts 1:20: “For it is written in the book of Psalms, ‘Let his homestead be made desolate, and let no one dwell in it’ [that's a quotation from Psalm 69]; and, ‘Let another man take his office’ [that is a quotation from Psalm 109].” So what is significant to observe here is that the apostles and Luke, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, quote imprecatory psalms, which are messianic psalms, and they use them to describe the judgment even that fell upon Judas. So I don't think the apostles had any problem with imprecatory psalms. I read a quotation from C. S. Lewis this last week where he basically refers to the imprecatory psalms as sort of those like embarrassing redheaded stepchildren in Scripture that you sort of need to push off into the closet and hope nobody ever sees them and never refers to them. He was embarrassed by the imprecatory psalms. The apostles were not. I don't think we should be.
In Psalm 109:25, another reference in the New Testament: “I also have become a reproach to them; when they see me, they wag their head.” In Matthew 27:39–40: “And those passing by were hurling abuse at Him, wagging their heads and saying, ‘You who are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save Yourself! If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross.’” That's not a quotation but a very strong allusion to Psalm 109.
Second, David's experience is typical of Christ because he is describing in this psalm undeserved suffering and, as the righteous king, one who was rejected and persecuted and afflicted. And notice in Psalm 109 that these are David's personal enemies. “O God of my praise, do not be silent! For they have opened the wicked and deceitful mouth against me; they have spoken against me with a lying tongue. They have also surrounded me with words of hatred, and fought against me without cause” (vv. 1–3). Look at verse 4: “In return for my love they act as my accusers; but I am in prayer. Thus they have repaid me evil for good and hatred for my love” (vv. 4–5). Now stop here for a moment. Notice that David is confessing his own personal love for the people who have done this, and not only did he love them, but he showed them this love. He was kind to them and expressed his personal love for them and prayed for their judgment. Right? So I've said before, we don't have to choose between these two things. We ought to be mature enough in our faith to have a personal love for enemies and, when appropriate and biblical, to ask God to stop the evil, and sometimes even if that means bringing chastening or judgment upon them to stop the evil. So David is not filled with hatred and animosity and resentment toward his enemies. He is describing here, “They have returned for my love, hatred, accusation, and a lying tongue.” And he says, “But I am in prayer.” I would take that to understand that he is in prayer for them. He is praying for them and has shown love to them. Verse 5: “Thus they have repaid me evil for good.” He has shown them good and done good to these people and I think was continuing to do good to these people. And yet he is turning around and praying for God to stop the evil.
Third, David's enemies foreshadowed Christ's enemies. Speaking of Judas, Psalm 109:8 there says, “Let his days be few; let another take his office.” So in Psalm 69 and in Psalm 109, these enemies of David were foreshadowing and pointing to ultimately sort of a prophetic enactment or symbol of the enemy of Christ who was to come. I'm going to skip through that. We're kind of running out of time here.
Peter understood that the experience of David foreshadowed Christ. The curses that are in Psalm 109 can be applied to Judas. And though we have no record that Judas had a wife or children or a posterity, David is describing things that were true of those in his own day but also ultimately true of Judas. And of course, he is the one that is described there when he talks about “Let his days be few and another take his office.” And the psalmist is asking for this curse because, Psalm 109:16:
16 Because he did not remember to show lovingkindness, but persecuted the afflicted and needy man, and the despondent in heart, to put them to death.
17 He also loved cursing, so it came to him; and he did not delight in blessing, so it was far from him.
18 But he clothed himself with cursing as with his garment, and it entered into his body like water and like oil into his bones.
19 Let it be to him as a garment with which he covers himself, and for a belt with which he constantly girds himself.
20 Let this be the reward of my accusers from the Lord, and those who speak evil against my soul. (Ps. 109:16–20 NASB)
Again, David is speaking here prophetically of Christ. If David is the king, the righteous king who is suffering affliction at the hands of his enemies, and that unjustly, when he prays for judgment or he is expecting judgment upon those who have afflicted him, you can see that as the messianic judgment that is going to fall upon those who are the ultimate persecutors and accusers of the afflicted King. The imprecations are prayers that are appropriate for justice. There's a correspondence here between their works and the judgment, as I mentioned earlier. They have hated blessing, so let blessing be far from them. They have spoken curses, so let them be accursed. They have lied about me, so let this happen. They have done this to me, so let the judgment fall which is commensurate to the crime that they have committed.
David is not praying in some fevered fit of passion, anger, and bitterness and resentment and just spewing out vile and cursing upon these enemies. These are thought-through imprecations. It's not just, “Curse that guy. I can't stand him when I see him in the gate. I've never spoken a word to him, but, boy, he looks at me cross every time I walk by him.” It's nothing like that. These are appropriate and just desires for God to do to the wicked what God has promised that He is going to do to the wicked.
Fourth, David's prayer is a prophetic promise of divine judgment. And here's a quotation from Allen P. Ross and his commentary on the Psalms:
David prophetically prays for the end of evil. The psalmist is bold in his appeal because he looks at right and wrong very seriously and knows that eventually God will destroy the wicked. He is therefore praying for God to fulfill His plan to enable righteousness to triumph. His prayer is written with the force of one who knows by experience what it means to be hounded to death, suffer malicious slander, and be repaid with evil for all the good he has done. But it ceases to be personal vengeance as he turns all his wishes over to the Lord in a prayer, thereby leaving it to the Lord to deal in justice with his adversary.
In other words, though he is praying this because of people who have done him personal wrong, David does not take the execution of this justice into his own hands. He prays that God will do what God has promised to do, that He will do it righteously, fulfill His word, allow righteousness to triumph, put an end to wickedness just as God has promised, and then he leaves it in the hands of God, not taking the vengeance into his own hands. I think that is key.
Psalm 109:26–31:
26 Help me, O Lord my God; save me according to Your lovingkindness.
27 And let them know that this is Your hand; You, Lord, have done it.
28 Let them curse, but You bless; When they arise, they shall be ashamed, but Your servant shall be glad.
29 Let my accusers be clothed with dishonor, and let them cover themselves with their own shame as with a robe.
30 With my mouth I will give thanks abundantly to the Lord; and in the midst of many I will praise Him.
31 For He stands at the right hand of the needy, to save him from those who judge his soul. (NASB)
So David is confident that salvation will come, confident that he will be vindicated, confident that the righteous man will be blessed, and confident that the deliverance of the righteous is in fact the judgment of the wicked, that the judgment on the wicked means the deliverance of the righteous.
There was a thought that just popped into my head, and now it is gone. Oh, notice—this is what it was. Notice that his enemies had cursed him, but David does not return cursing personally to them in response. Look at verse 30: “With my mouth I will give thanks abundantly to the Lord.” Contrast that to how he describes the wicked earlier in the psalm: “With their mouths they have spoken lies against me, they have cursed me, they have defamed me, they have slandered me.” But then David says, “I'm asking, God, for You to do this. With my mouth I will praise Him.” There's a righteous man who is vexed by unrighteousness. And I think that it is true of us as God's saints that as we grow older in the Lord and we are made more aware of what is going on around us, that we should be increasingly vexed by the wickedness of the wicked, and that in doing so we should have a righteous response, an indignant response to that. How do the righteous vent their desire for God to deal with the wicked? I think imprecatory psalms give us those affections, they show us those affections, and they give us not only permission but I think an obligation to pray that wickedness would come to an end.
I don't know this for certain, but I have to wonder if American Evangelicalism were less willing to mollycoddle evil and sin and to look dignified in the eyes of the world and more willing to pray like this how long it would have taken to overturn Roe v. Wade. If we had been praying imprecatory prayers instead of worrying about writing books about your best life now and all the other nonsense that goes on in Evangelicalism, if we were serious about praying for God's judgment and chastening to fall upon evil, would we see less evil? I don't know that for certain, but I have to wonder. I do know for certain that for forty or fifty years, Evangelicals and Christians in America have had no interest at all in praying like this against evil in our land, writ large, generally speaking.
A last observation, David's judgment of the wicked is Christ's judgment upon the wicked. J. J. Stewart Perowne—love that name—said this: “The language has been justified not as the language of David but as the language of Christ exercising His office as judge, or so far as He has laid aside that office during His earthly life, calling upon His Father to accomplish the curse.” Stop there for just a moment. You can understand the imprecatory psalms as what the Son is going to do to those who will not do homage to Him. He's going to judge them. So Christ, in taking His earthly role as Savior and coming the first time, we could see Him as appealing to God, to the Father, to do what is righteous and just. And ultimately, the Father has given all judgment to the Son, so the Father is going to give the responsibility of executing that judgment back to the Son, and the Son is going to execute His wrath on His enemies.
It has been alleged that this is the prophetic foreshadowing of the solemn words, “Woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It had been good for that man if he had not been born” (Matt. 26:24 KJV). The curse, in the words of Chrysostom, “is a prophecy in the form of a curse.” So David in these psalms is giving voice to his greater Son. He is speaking as Christ, who will execute His judgment in His justice and as judge, and describing prophetically what ultimately awaits the wicked.
Now, any questions about that before I wrap up and give a few concluding ideas about the psalm in general, or both psalms, I should say? Any questions? Man, I have either taught incredibly good today or you guys are all asleep, one of those two. No questions? OK. How many of you are convinced that we should make imprecatory prayers great again? OK, I got a little bit more work to do. All right. Two more weeks.
Some concluding thoughts. First, on the context of the psalms, these psalms fit well the theme and the warnings of the psalms in general. Several weeks ago, you remember, I laid out the five books of the psalms and showed you the theme of each one. I mentioned to you at the beginning of the Psalter you have Psalm 1 and Psalm 2. Psalm 1 describes the blessed man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked or stands in the path of sinners or sits in the seat of the scornful. And that that blessed man—Psalm 1:1—blessed is the man who does this. And of course, you read Psalm 1 and you're like, “That's not me. That's not anybody I know. Nobody really ultimately fulfills that.” Well, that's why we need the King that Psalm 2 describes, this King who will come. And God has set Him on David's throne, seated Him in Zion, and given this King the right to rule. And then Psalm 2 ends with “blessed are all who take refuge in Him!” Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked; blessed are those who take refuge in this King who fulfills Psalm 1. That's the archway. That's the entryway to the Psalms, right?
So then what you have in all of these imprecatory psalms is the expression of and the picture of this coming King, who—Israel would fail and David would fail and all their kings would fail, but there would come this King who would ultimately succeed in doing all of this and who would execute justice and judgment on the wicked and who would usher His people in to dwell in the land forever. This King will fulfill all of that. So what you have then in Psalm 69 and Psalm 109 is the picture of this judgment that will fall upon all those who will not do homage to the Son.
“How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night” (Ps. 1:1–2). Not a person here who's done that, meditated day and night on the law of the Lord. There is One who has done that. He is the King of Psalm 2:10–12: “Therefore, O kings, show discernment; take warning, O judges of the earth. Worship the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling. Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way, for His wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!” You see, at the beginning of the Psalms, we are warned about what will happen to those who persecute this King. We are warned about the judgment that will fall upon those who will not do homage to the Son. The psalmist is saying at the beginning of the Psalms, “Do homage to this Son, the one described in the Psalter. Worship Him, give obedience to Him, and if you don't, judgment will fall upon you.” And then we see in the rest of the Psalms what? Those who persecute the righteous King and judgment falls upon them. Just exactly what we have described in the first two psalms. So the wicked are warned about this coming King, and when they resist Him and disobey Him and persecute Him, they owe their own destruction to no one but themselves because God will keep His word and He will destroy the wicked. It is a just action for God to do, it is a good thing for God to do, and it means the blessing and deliverance and salvation and vindication of the righteous. That ultimately is what the Psalms are telling us. Blessed is the one who delights in the law of the Lord. Blessed is the one who does homage to this King. So all the way through the Psalms, we see judgment falling upon those who will assault that King and blessing coming to those who will do homage to that King. And therefore, it is right and appropriate to ask God, to pray, to not only bless those who love this King and do obedience to Him but also for God to judge the wicked who assault this King and the people that belong to this King.
All right, that's my lesson. Are there any other . . . ? David. That's a good observation. Did everybody hear that? I’ll just repeat it quickly for the recording for those who might be watching online. Christ meditated upon the imprecatory psalms, and He would have delighted in those things. And so you could have a righteous indignation against sin and wickedness and even express that in imprecatory language without being consumed by the dark side—that's a good way of phrasing it—the dark side of those emotions. Christ Himself was not characterized by vindictiveness or unkindness or cruelty at all. In fact, even when He comes back to judge the wicked, that will not characterize Him, right? So when Jesus comes back (Rev. 19) and He slays the wicked and destroys them and executes upon them all the judgments that are contained in this book and in the law of God and in the Psalter and the prophets and everything He says He's going to do, it's going to be a bloodbath when He returns. He's not coming back meek and mild in a manger, He's coming back to execute judgment, God's judgment, the wrath of God upon all of His enemies. And when He does that, we will not look at Him and say, “What a vindictive and cruel and bloodthirsty tyrant He is.” We will not say that. The wicked may say that, but the righteous will not.
Yeah, Jeff. Yep, very good. To pray, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10 KJV), is to pray an imprecatory prayer. You're asking for God to put an end to evil, and we know how He has promised to do that.