Kootenai Church Adult Sunday School

All right, this is lesson four. I'm going to begin by asking a couple of people to give me a number between 1 and 150. Jason, you're first. Give me a number between 1–what's that? Seventy-five. Ryan. I prepped you. I gave you opportunity to be preparing in case I call on you. A hundred? OK, these are both divisible by 25 so far. Give me something that's not. Lanny. Not divisible by 25. So now I want a number between 1 and 150 that's not divisible by 25. Seven. That's perfect. Yeah, I shouldn't have just thrown complex math into that right there. Like I prepped you, “Give me a number between 1 and 150,” and then I start adding it. Jeff. Where's Jeff? Jeff Miller. Number between 1 and 150 that's not a prime number. One hundred forty-seven. Is that a prime number? OK, I don't know. I can't do that math. And David Forsyth. One hundred eleven. All right, we'll get to that later on. You'll see what the purpose of that is later on.
Today's objective in this class, this lesson, is to define what an imprecation is, what an imprecatory aspect of prayer is. We want to define that, talk about where that word comes from. Then we're going to look at a couple of examples of imprecations in Scripture, curses in Scripture, and then kind of raise some of the issues—look at the different kinds of imprecations in Scripture and then deal with some of the interpretive issues that we will be looking at next week. So today's going to kind of introduce next week.
So first, what is an imprecatory psalm? I've kind of briefly described it. I want to give you a bit more of a robust definition and talk about where this word imprecatory or imprecation comes from. An imprecatory psalm or an imprecatory prayer or an imprecatory statement is a psalm or a prayer or a statement that calls for a curse on or the destruction of a person or people. It could be an enemy of God. It is sometimes in Scripture a personal enemy. Or an example of this would be when God is called upon to destroy the wicked, either with specific judgments or even just generic judgments. So just the idea of asking God to judge a sinner or to judge sin is to ask God to pour out upon them the curse that their sin warrants. So therefore it is a call for a curse. That's what an imprecation is.
The word imprecate means to invoke evil on or to curse. To invoke evil on or to curse. It is to wish evil on someone. So an imprecation then is a curse. Synonyms would be to anathematize, to curse, maledict, beshrew, to damn, or to condemn. There's two glorious, great words in there, by the way, maledict and beshrew. Those are excellent. Surprisingly the English word for an imprecation or to imprecate comes from the Latin precari, which means to pray or to ask or to entreat. So the word that describes cursing someone in our English language actually comes from the Latin word which means prayer. Precari is the ancestor of other English words like deprecate, which once meant to pray against something evil. To deprecate meant—in the old English, to deprecate something meant to pray against something that was evil. So an abortionist, an abortion mill, your average garden-variety politician, just to pray against that evil meant to deprecate them. Now deprecate means something different in our English today, in our modern English, but the archaic use of that meant to express—sorry, the modern use of that means to express earnest disapproval or protest against, but in the old English, it meant to actually pray against something evil.
The adjective precatory means simply expressing a wish. So you can hear in all of these definitions the idea of asking or beseeching or entreating someone for something. So when we're talking about an imprecatory prayer, we're talking about entreating God to curse evil or to do something about evil or to judge evil in some sense. The word precatory just means to express a wish, and the adjective means “that which expresses a wish,” and it can express something nonbinding. So for instance in legal documents a request that is not legally binding could be called a precatory provision, like in a will. So in your will you can include things that are legally binding and things then that are precatory provisions. A precatory provision just expresses a wish or a desire but doesn't necessarily legally bind the estate to do that. So for instance I could have a precatory provision in my will that would say I want all of my autographed football memorabilia to be auctioned off to the highest bidder and the proceeds given to the church. If my will has that precatory provision, my children would say, “No, that’s not going to happen. That's never going to happen,” and so they are not under any legal obligation to actually do that on behalf of the state, but my will can simply express a precatory—a wish or a desire—but it's not something that's legally binding.
An imprecatory psalm is that which asks God to send harm or evil upon someone, and so therefore it is a prayer that one prays that asks God to judge someone. So here are some examples of imprecatory prayers, because the question here is how often are these imprecatory elements found in the Psalms, and if we're going to try and think biblically about them, then we have to have a theology of imprecation that encompasses everything that we read in Scripture that is imprecatory. And you're going to see I think at the end of today and next week that wrestling through this theologically is not as simple and clear-cut as we might wish it were. There are some nuances to this that require us to think a little bit more deeply than “Oh, that was Old Testament; we're New Testament.” That sounds great. It sounds like we've achieved some moral high ground, that we're better than those of old, but it's not that simple. Let me give you some examples of imprecations.
Psalm 10:
12 Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up Your hand. Do not forget the afflicted.
13 Why has the wicked spurned God? He has said to himself, “You will not require it.”
14 You have seen it, for You have beheld mischief and vexation to take it into Your hand. The unfortunate commits himself to You; You have been the helper of the orphan.
15 Break the arm of the wicked and the evildoer, seek out his wickedness until You find none. (Ps. 10:12–15 NASB)
Notice what the author is asking there is something specific in verse 15. He is asking God to search out—that means to drill down into the heart and the life of the wicked—and to so punish and to so deal with that wickedness that there is no wickedness left to deal with. “Search it out until You find none.” And he's talking about specific wicked people here.
Psalm 58: “Do you indeed speak righteousness, O gods? Do you judge uprightly, O sons of men? No, in heart, you work unrighteousness; on earth you weigh out the violence of your hands” (vv. 1–2). This is a graphic picture. Remember a few weeks ago we talked about the imagery that the Psalms use. You weigh out the violence of your hands. You have a store of it. You put it on a scale and say, “This is enough violence, and this is not enough violence. And now I'm going to pour out a little bit more violence, and this situation needs a little bit more violence.” You weigh it out. You portion out the violence from your hands.
3 The wicked are estranged from the womb; these who speak lies go astray from birth.
4 They have venom like the venom of a serpent; like a deaf cobra that stops up its ear,
5 so that it does not hear the voice of charmers, or a skillful caster of spells.
6 O God, shatter their teeth in their mouth; break out the fangs of the young lions, O Lord.
7 Let them flow away like water that runs off; when he aims his arrows, let them be as headless shafts. (Ps. 58:3–7 NASB)
Specifically, he's saying, as the wicked aim their weapons at the righteous, let those arrows be like headless shafts. Let them shoot out but just blunt and fall to the ground and not pierce and not have the effect that the wicked want. “Let them be [that is, the arrows] as a snail which melts away as it goes along” (v. 8). You shoot an arrow and it just falls immediately and never reaches its target. “Like the miscarriages of a woman which never see the sun. Before your pots can feel the fire of thorns He will sweep them away with a whirlwind, the green and the burning alike” (vv. 8–9). So the wicked boil or cook their meat, and rather than letting the fire of their plans burn, the Lord just sweeps them away so that they are nothing, they are brought to nothing, the good tinder and the bad alike. “The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance; he will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. And men will say, ‘Surely there is a reward for the righteous; surely there is a God who judges on earth!’” (vv. 10–11)
I will just remind you once again, you have to have room in your theology for those statements. I am not going to tell you how to fit it into your theology just yet, but you have to have room for an inspired writer who says that the righteous will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. “Men will say, ‘Surely there is a reward for the righteous; surely there is a God who judges’” (v. 11). And this was hope for Old Testament saints. Now I am not suggesting, lest anybody clip this and use this later, I am not suggesting that as righteous people, this is ours to execute this kind of vengeance. I am not suggesting that. But I am suggesting that these imprecations, some of them you are going to see, are very harsh.
Psalm 59:1–17: “For the choir director; set to Al-tashheth. A Mikhtam of David, when Saul sent men and they watched the house in order to kill him. Deliver me from my enemies, O my God; set me securely on high away from those who rise up against me” (v. 1). Notice that the author here, David, is describing his enemies, not God's enemies. His enemies. Verse 2: “Deliver me from those who do iniquity and save me from men of bloodshed.” He's not talking about people who cut him off in traffic, some guy who stole his horse, OK, somebody who knocked on his door and then ran away and woke him up in the middle of the night. He's talking about men of bloodshed. What type of prayer is appropriate when men of bloodshed are afflicting the innocent? How do we pray about that? “For behold, they have set an ambush for my life; fierce men launch an attack against me, not for my transgression nor for my sin, O Lord” (v. 3). In other words, I have done nothing to deserve this. He was innocent.
4 For no guilt of mine, they run and set themselves against me. Arouse Yourself to help me, and see!
5 You, O Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel, awake to punish all the nations; do not be gracious to any who are treacherous in iniquity. Selah.
6 They return at evening, they howl like a dog, and go around the city.
7 Behold, they belch forth with their mouth; swords are in their lips, for, they say, “Who hears?”
8 But You, O Lord, laugh at them. (Ps. 59:4–8 NASB)
In other words, verse 7, the wicked do all of this and then they say, “Who's going to hold us to account? We say what we want. We do what we want. Who hears us? Who sees us?” They flaunt about like there is no accountability for their wicked ways.
Verse 8:
8 But You, O Lord, laugh at them; You scoff at all the nations.
9 Because of his strength I will watch for You, for God is my stronghold.
10 My God in His lovingkindness, will meet me; God will let me look triumphantly upon my foes.
11 Do not slay them, or my people will forget; scatter them by Your power, and bring them down, O Lord, our shield. (Ps. 59:8–11 NASB)
Now, this prayer is a little bit interesting in that he is not asking—he asked God specifically, “Don't slay them, because then people will forget Your works. Instead scatter them and let them be an example of what You do in judgment.”
12 On account of the sin of their mouth and the words of their lips, let them even be caught in their pride, and on account of curses and lies which they utter.
13 Destroy them in wrath, destroy them that they may be no more; that men may know that God rules in Jacob to the ends of the earth. Selah.
14 They return at evening, they howl like a dog, and go around the city.
15 They wander about for food and growl if they are not satisfied.
16 But as for me, I shall sing of Your strength; yes, I shall joyfully sing of Your lovingkindness in the morning, for You have been my stronghold and a refuge in the day of my distress.
17 O my strength, I will sing praises to You; for God is my stronghold, the God who shows me lovingkindness. (Ps. 59:12–17 NASB)
Now, this type of language is not isolated to the Psalms. If it were, we might be tempted to say, “Well, that's David. I mean, after all, David was the guy who God wouldn't let build the temple because there was too much blood on his hands.” So, you might expect that from someone like David, but how about Jeremiah, the weeping prophet?
In Jeremiah 18, after the vision of the potter and the clay, when God revealed through Jeremiah that He was going to judge the nation for their iniquity, Jeremiah spoke that to the people, and the people responded with hostility toward him, and Jeremiah was only seeking to turn the people away from their sins so that God would spare them and bless them and be good to them. And Jeremiah, as a prophet for Israel, did nothing but good and only good for the people. And then in Jeremiah 18, we read this: “Then they said, ‘Come and let us devise plans against Jeremiah’” (v. 18). So notice these are Jeremiah's personal enemies again. “Surely the law is not going to be lost to the priest, nor counsel to the sage, nor the divine word to the prophet! Come on and let us strike at him with our tongue, and let us give no heed to any of his words.” That's how the people responded to Jeremiah's gracious preaching calling to the people to repent. And instead, they said, “Jeremiah says that our prophets aren't going to prophesy and that our priests won't rule according to the law and that God will judge them. We don't have to listen to any of that. Let us strike at Jeremiah with our words.” In other words, they were suggesting that Jeremiah was striking at them with his words, and they wanted to return this on to Jeremiah.
Verse 19:
19 Do give heed to me, O Lord, and listen to what my opponents are saying!
20 Should good be repaid with evil? For they have dug a pit for me. Remember how I stood before You to speak good on their behalf, so as to turn away Your wrath from them.
21 Therefore, give their children over to famine and deliver them up to the power of the sword; and let their wives become childless and widowed. Let their men also be smitten to death, their young men struck down by the sword in battle.
22 May an outcry be heard from their houses, when You suddenly bring raiders upon them; for they have dug a pit to capture me and hidden snares from my feet.
23 Yet You, O Lord, know all their deadly designs against me; do not forgive their iniquity or blot out their sin from Your sight. But may they be overthrown before You; deal with them in the time of Your anger! (Jer. 18:19–23 NASB)
These are what we call imprecations.
Now let me offer a couple of observations from those examples. I know I read a lot. Let me sort of sum up some observations here real quick. Imprecations in Scripture are not given just toward God's enemies but sometimes toward personal enemies. Now, when I say that, I want you to understand you should not be thinking to yourself, “OK, which of my personal enemies do I get to curse?” Right? Because that's not the right response. For Jeremiah and for David, and I'm going to give you a little bit of the answer that we're going to be looking at in a couple of weeks, but for Jeremiah and for David, their personal enemies were also God's enemies. And those enemies in coming after them were coming after God and in David's case against God's anointed. This was the whole reason I did the structure of the book of Psalms last time. Psalm 2, right? “Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing?” (v. 1 NKJV) They say against the Lord and against His anointed—that is, the Davidic king. They're raging against him. That's the gateway to the book of Psalms. And then you get into the book of Psalms and you realize that all the raging against David and his kingdom, they're raging against him because he is the prototype. He is the example. He's the forerunner of that great Davidic King. So that all the raging of the nations against David is the raging of the nations against the Christ. Therefore, when David asked for God to judge his enemies, it's not just, “This guy tripped me on the street.” It’s, “This guy is raging against me because he is raging against the Lord's anointed. And here is what is going to happen to the Lord's anointed. And here's what the righteous wish to happen against those who rage against the Lord's anointed.” So personal enemies, yes, but keep in mind, it's personal enemies who are also God's enemies. In fact, they were their personal enemies because these people hated the God of truth. So that's what's behind that.
Second—and I think I'll return to that later on in a couple of lessons. Second, notice that these are not distant and nondescript curses. It's not, “God, please do something about that person I heard about who's doing something in another country somewhere,” right? It's crush their teeth, break their arms, destroy them, wipe them out, scatter them, make their efforts be turned to nothing. These are asking for specific judgments upon specific individuals for specific sins, not general and nondescript, “Lord, please stop whatever evil's going on somewhere.” So these are specific things that they are praying for and specific people that they are praying against.
Now, how often do these things come up in Scripture? How many Psalms have imprecations? Jason, you said seventy-five. Will you all turn please to Psalm 75:2. Psalm 75:2. Here is a mention of judgment, verses 2–5: “When I select an appointed time, it is I who judge with equity. The earth and all who dwell in it melt; it is I who have firmly set its pillars. I said to the boastful, ‘Do not boast,’ and to the wicked, ‘Do not lift up the horn; do not lift up your horn on high, do not speak with insolent pride.’” There is a mention of the judgment that is to come. Look down at versed 9–10: “But as for me, I will declare it forever; I will sing praises to the God of Jacob. And all the horns of the wicked He will cut off, but the horns of the righteous will be lifted up.” There's a mention of imprecation, of a cursing, of a judgment. God is going to destroy the wicked.
Brian, you said one hundred. Turn to Psalm 100. Psalm 100 is a short one. You can read that there for yourself. You will notice that there are no imprecations or imprecatory elements in Psalm 100. So we have one with and one without.
The next one, Lanny, Psalm 7. Psalm 7. I have my cheat sheet here. That's why you hear me flipping pages up here. Psalm 7, look at verse 8. “The Lord judges the peoples; vindicate me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and my integrity that is in me.” Look at verse 11. “God is a righteous judge, and God who has indignation every day.” Toward what? Toward the wicked. Look at verse 12.
12 If a man does not repent, He will sharpen His sword; He has bent His bow and made it ready.
13 He has also prepared for Himself deadly weapons; He makes His arrows fiery shafts.
14 Behold, he travails with wickedness, and he conceives mischief and brings forth falsehood.
15 He has dug a pit and hollowed it out, and has fallen into the hole which he made. (Ps. 7:12–15 NASB)
These are the judgments that fall upon the wicked that are mentioned there. There is a prayer for God's judgment in verses 6–7 of Psalm 7. “Arise, O Lord, in Your anger; lift up Yourself against the rage of my adversaries, and arouse Yourself for me; You have appointed judgment. Let the assembly of the peoples encompass You, and over them return on high.” There's a prayer for God's judgment. Verse 17: “I will give thanks [here's praise for God's judgment] to the Lord according to His righteousness and will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High.” So that one has imprecatory elements.
Jeff gave us Psalm 147. Look at Psalm 147. There's not a lot in this one, but look at verse 6. “The Lord supports the afflicted; He brings down the wicked to the ground.” That's a mention of God's judgment, a curse.
And then David gave us Psalm 111. Now, maybe by the time we got to David, he saw what we were doing. Maybe, maybe not. Psalm 111 has no imprecations either. It's a psalm of praise. So we have three Psalms with imprecatory elements and two without.
So now I ask you, give me your guess, anybody at random, what percentage or even what number out of 150 psalms that you would say have imprecatory elements. What would be your guesstimate? I saw that hand raised right back there. I know it was just stretching, but go ahead. You're not ready? OK. Joe. He says 80%. How much? 75%. Ayden? How much? Two-thirds of the Psalms? OK. Anybody else? If I say 50%, how many of you would say higher than 50% of the Psalms have imprecatory elements? That's a good number. How many of you would say higher than 60% of the Psalms having precatory elements? OK. How many of you would say higher than 90% of the Psalms have imprecatory elements? OK, a couple of you are really hoping that there's more than that.
Walt Kaiser in his book Hard Sayings of the Bible says this: “In all, there are only 18 Psalms that have any element of imprecation or cursing about them. These 18 Psalms contain 368 verses, of which only 65 of those verses have an element of cursing. Psalm 137 is just one of 6 psalms that are generally classified as imprecatory psalms.” One of six! His claim is that 6 of 150 psalms are imprecatory psalms and that 18 out of 150 have elements of imprecation.
Allen Ross in his commentary on the Psalms says this: “There are about eighteen psalms with such curses in them, and of the approximately 370 verses of those psalms, about 65 include anything that might be called imprecation. Some of the Psalms that include imprecations are Psalms 5, 10, 27, 31, 40, and 140, but the three psalms that have the curses in the strongest form are Psalms 35, 69, and 109.” So he would say eighteen psalms. Walt Kaiser says six, but eighteen have elements of imprecation. Allen Ross says eighteen what we would call imprecatory psalms.
Peter Hammond—not the one who's back here—Peter Hammond who runs Frontline ministries, an international missionary who works with the persecuted church around the world, he says that ninety out of the hundred and fifty psalms have imprecatory elements. Six, eighteen, and ninety. That's quite a discrepancy, isn't it? Ninety. Somehow I skipped forward here. Hold on a second. Oh yes.
Now I'm going to give you my tally because that's what I was consulting here. So what I did is last year, knowing that I was going to teach this class, I read through all of the Psalms, and I noted four different categories of kinds of imprecations in the Psalms. There are mentions of God's judgment, there are promises of God's judgment, there are prayers for God's judgment, and then there is praise and rejoicing over God's curses on His enemies. Four different kinds of imprecations. So, I found that in forty-eight psalms, there were mentions of God's judgments. In thirty psalms, there were promises of God's judgments. In thirty-six psalms, there were prayers for God's judgment on the wicked. And in twenty-nine psalms, there was praise or worship for God's judgments on the wicked. Now, if you're quickly doing the math, you're like, OK, that's a lot. But there are some psalms that have both mentions and praise, mentions and prayers for, etc. So, some psalms have more than one of these kinds of elements in them. But I found in reading through the psalms that there are fifty-three non-imprecatory psalms.
So, those are my categories, and I have them here on a spreadsheet, psalm by psalm, that's why I could ask for five random psalms. And out of the five, we found that three of them have imprecations and two of them, taken at random, don't. So, that's three-fifths. And what we find is that that's pretty standard, when taken at random. That's pretty indicative of the overall tenor of the Psalms that two-thirds of them have imprecations or elements of imprecations in them. That means that ninety—oh, I shouldn't have tried to do that math. What did I say? There were fifty-three non-imprecatory psalms, so there are ninety-seven psalms with some element, some kind of imprecation in them, which is about two-thirds. So Ayden—she's laughing already. She wins. Did you hear this already? Oh, I told her two weeks ago. All right. Insider trading, yeah. OK, she's my Martha Stewart.
All right, here's something to remember: even the non-imprecatory psalms still mention the wicked, some of them. In fact, I would say probably a lot of them still mention the wicked. But there's no prayer for or praise for or asking for God to judge them or promises of judgment or mentions of judgment. It just laments the wicked. So for instance, Psalm 8:2: “From the mouth of infants and nursing babes You have established strength because of Your adversaries, to make the enemy and the revengeful cease.” Now Psalm 8 is a non-imprecatory psalm. There's mention of enemies here, but Psalm 8 doesn't call for God to judge those enemies.
Another example of this is Psalm 15.
1 A Psalm of David. O Lord, who may abide in Your tent? Who may dwell on Your holy hill?
2 He who walks with integrity, and works righteousness, and speaks truth in his heart.
3 He does not slander with his tongue, nor does evil to his neighbor. . . .
4 In whose eyes a reprobate [there's the enemy or the wicked] is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord; he swears to his own hurt and does not change;
5 he does not put out his money at interest, nor does he take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things will never be shaken.”
There's a non-imprecatory psalm, Psalm 115.
By the way, I think that there are two other significant psalms that are non-imprecatory psalms. One of them is—fast-forwarding now to the end of the Psalter—Psalm 150. There’s not an imprecatory element in it. It's all praise. Praise the Lord on this, praise the Lord on that. It's all praise. Now remember, last time we were together, I showed you how the five books of the Psalms are in chronological and logical order, right? So if the Psalms are laid out to cover the Davidic kingdom and then the exile of Israel into Babylonian exile and then the return to the land, if there's a chronological order there to those books and to those ideas and how the Psalms are arranged, and I think clearly there is, then when you get to Psalm 150—Psalm 149, by the way, the psalm right before it, is the psalm that says the righteous will bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked and they will bind the kings and they will bind the rulers with fetters and chains of iron, indicating that there is this judgment wherein the rulers who rejected the Messiah in Psalm 2 are finally judged by the people of the Messiah in Psalm 149 when they get their recompense for all of the hostility they have expressed toward the Messiah and His anointed. That judgment comes in Psalm 149, which would be like the final judgment that takes place. Psalm 150, if it's laid out chronologically, Psalm 150, there's no mention of the wicked, no mention of the adversaries, no mention of sin, no mention of sinners. It's all praise, which would indicate to me that Psalm 150 sort of points to and is indicative of the eternal state. After all of the judgments are carried out that are described in the rest of the Psalms, you get to Psalm 150 and it's all praise. The wicked are remembered no more.
Another interesting non-imprecatory psalm is Psalm 22. This was interesting for a different reason because in Psalm 22 you have the prophecy of the crucifixion of Christ. They pierced my hands, they pierced my feet, my bones were out of joint, I thirst and my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth, and for my garments they cast lots and gambled for my clothing. You have all of that. “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” (Ps. 22:1) It is a prophetic—one thousand years before the crucifixion—picture of the crucifixion of the Messiah. And you have David there expressing his own anguish over the wicked, but there is not a single cry for imprecation or cursing upon these enemies who are pouring out this horrible wickedness on an innocent man. Why is that? Because it's at the crucifixion, and it's at the crucifixion that Christ says, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34 KJV). Psalm 22, the Author bears the curse of His people. He doesn't pour out that curse upon His adversaries. Instead He bears the curse of His adversaries. So Psalm 22, which describes this horrible suffering of an innocent person, the worst suffering that could be imagined, has no request for cursing or judgment for those enemies. Those are two very significant and interesting non-imprecatory psalms. It's almost like somebody else wrote that book.
All right, now let me ask you this. What if two-thirds of the songs that we sung in our worship mentioned God's judgment and called for God to judge the wicked? Would you be comfortable with such a hymnal if two-thirds of the songs that we sang and used for worship asked God to judge the wicked, and yet this is the inspired hymnal for worship of the people of God in the Old Testament. Now maybe you've never thought through these issues. Maybe you've never dealt with them. Maybe you've never confronted them. But I want you to give some thought to the theology behind this and kind of what I've covered here this week as for your homework this next week, as I would encourage you to read through the Psalms again, picking them out and just random numbers if you want to see what percentage of them you find that have imprecatory elements. If you want, and I would hate to spoil it for you, but if in your Bible reading this year, you want a fun thing to do in the Psalms, do this. Just in a notepad, start at the beginning of the Psalms, read through, and just take notes of those four different categories of imprecation. Mentions, promises, praise for, and prayer for God's judgments. And just take note of those verses. If you're not going to do that for homework and you want this handy little cheat sheet, I'm happy to email it to you.
All right, let me draw this to a conclusion a little bit. I know it seems early, but my conclusion is long. So we're not really that close to being done. Now, there are a number of issues that come to mind as we talk through and think through the issue of imprecations. And I understand that there is a desire in the heart of some Christians, and I think well-meaning Christians, to minimize the idea of imprecations in Scripture, curses in Scripture. I can't judge the heart, but this may be what is behind somebody saying there are only six imprecatory psalms. There's more than six imprecatory psalms. There just are. And if our standard is imprecations that are so severe I can't possibly explain it, and I just want to dismiss it, then probably six. But if our standard is elements of imprecation where God is asked to curse His enemies, it's far more than six. I agree with Peter Hammond. It's ninety. It's ninety-seven by my count. And again, not the same Peter Hammond that we know.
So here are the questions that we would have to wrestle with. And I'm giving you these questions. I want you to—I'm going to give these out sort of thoughtfully as we work our way through this, because this is setting up next week. Next week we're going to look at—next Sunday we're going to look at the bad interpretive approaches to imprecatory psalms, the ones that I don't think are theologically sound or do justice to Scripture. So here's the question. Is this just for the Old Testament dispensation? Is this just for Old Testament saints? Are these things appropriate only for a theocratic people living under God as their King or God's representative as their king?
And what about the church? It's not like the church has never faced enemies like those described in Scripture. I would suggest that some of the enemies and people who do wickedness today are every bit as evil and do every bit as much damage to innocent people as anybody imprecated in Scripture. Are we not the people of God and do we not deserve justice every bit as much as Israel did? Do the wicked still exist and do they still wreak havoc? Why has God provided these examples? Because these Psalms are not rare. The examples in Scripture are not rare. Are we given these examples so that the church might pray like this? Why is there such a preponderance of them in the Old Testament?
And by the way, before you think, “Oh, this is just an Old Testament feature,” there are imprecations in the New Testament as well. Anathema be to anybody who preaches a false gospel. Let him be cursed who does not love the Lord Jesus Christ. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites” (Matt. 23:13). There you have an imprecation coming from the lips of the Lord Himself. So you can't just say, “Well, that's Old Testament stuff. You know, I never go back to that part of the book. I'm a right-hand-of-the-book type of a Christian.” Then you are the wrong type of Christian.
And if we are to pray this way, then how should we pray and against whom should we pray and when should we pray and under what circumstances should we pray? And if we are not to pray this way, then what do we make of the righteous people in Scripture who did pray this way? You have heard me pray prayers of imprecation from this pulpit from time to time against judges, politicians, abortion doctors, people who are harming the innocent. We prayed for the end to the abortion industry, for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and for God’s judgment upon those who would inflict evil and harm and destruction upon innocent people.
Third question, is this compatible with the Christian mandate to love our neighbors? How do you wrestle that out? We're commanded to love our neighbors, right? In fact, aren't we commanded to love our enemies? So how is it loving to love my enemies and pray like this? What is the second greatest commandment? It's to love your neighbor as yourself. This is the fulfillment of the whole Old Testament law. So if that is what God expected under the Old Testament, then why do we find these things so prolifically under the Old Testament? The expectation was that they would love their neighbor as themselves. And yet we turn to the book of Psalms and we find all of these examples of curses upon God's enemies.
Fourth question, are you more pious and righteous than David, Jeremiah, and Asaph? Now, some people—we’ll look at this next week—some people say that. “That was an unenlightened ethic. They were less morally developed than we are. They didn't understand truth like we do today.” Are you going to say that you're more morally progressive, that you are more enlightened, that you're more righteous and loving and better than David and Jeremiah and Asaph? So before we pat ourselves on the back for our Christian virtue, we need to think through theologically what these things mean and if they are to be used.
Fifth, would you pray for judgment upon the wicked? Would you ever pray that? If you've ever prayed, “Even so, come Lord Jesus,” that's an imprecatory prayer. Do you understand what that's going to mean when He comes? It's not going to be pretty. He is coming back to slaughter His enemies. It's going to be a bloodbath. He's not meek and mild, coming back, love and grace, to woo His enemies. He's going to come back and He's going to destroy the nations. He is going to slay the wicked. He is going to wipe them out and establish a kingdom. He is going to rule with a rod of iron for a thousand years. To pray, “Even so, come Lord Jesus,” is to pray that He will violently put down every form of evil in the world. It is to pray for His judgment upon every impenitent wicked person on the planet. Because that's what it means. So would you pray an imprecatory prayer? If you've ever prayed for the return of Christ, you have already prayed an imprecatory prayer. So you're already guilty. Come back next week and the week after and I'll try and assuage your guilt just a little bit so that you don't feel so bad about praying for the return of Christ.
Number six, has my culture and the ease of the Western church affected my theology? Has our culture and the ease of the Western church affected our theology? I think it has. I think you would find, if you struggle with the idea of praying an imprecatory prayer, I think that you would find that you would be proficient at praying imprecations if somebody was knocking on your door, taking your wife and your children away to a prison camp. Suddenly your imprecation prayer would light up and you would be fluent and effective at it and you would be praying it fervently. But in Western culture, when we have for decades, generations actually—well, since there has been a Western culture on this continent, we have had it easy. And maybe the ease of Western Christianity and our cultural Christianity that has birthed out of that ease has affected us theologically so that we have a hard time with some of the things that we've read on the screen here this morning. It kind of, all of us—I would imagine all of us have some level of revulsion to what we've read, in some measure. It's uncomfortable, and I get that.
But the persecuted church prays imprecatory prayers. You know why? Because they're persecuted, and they see the wicked, and they see the wicked triumphing, and they see the nations raging against the Lord and against His Anointed, and then they see the nations raging against the Lord, against His Anointed, and against the people of His Anointed, and they feel that, and they want evil to stop. And so I ask you, what type of prayer is appropriate when you see an unmitigated violence against innocent people? When you see wickedness prevail in a land and prevail over top of people, how is it appropriate to pray? I would submit to you that sometimes it is appropriate to pray that God would judge the wickedness and the wicked and stop the wickedness. It's appropriate to pray that God would save that wicked person. Praying for their salvation is legitimate. It's also, I think, legitimate and appropriate for us to pray that God would end the wickedness, and if that means ending the wicked, then I'm fine with that as long as the wickedness stops.
And I have come to the point in my own walk with the Lord when I do not see a conflict between loving that person and wanting their salvation and at the same time wanting that evil to stop, and if that means God would judge them and destroy them, then that is not my call to make and I will not be the instrument through which that person's wickedness stops or their life ends, but I will pray that God in His sovereignty will do whatever is necessary to end the evil. And it's appropriate for the church to pray that way. Now, I think I kind of, maybe I alleviated you of the tension a little bit by giving you that, but I want you to think through some of those questions. When is it appropriate, how is it appropriate, and against whom should we pray these things?
All right, are there any questions before we—I didn't stop at any point through this. Angelika is not here, so we had no questions from her, right? Did she mail one in to you? Did she send one along with you to ask? No? OK, any other questions? [someone asks a question] This is Psalm 15. Did I say Psalm 115? I know I didn't say Psalms 115, but I might have said Psalm 115. [someone asks a question] Not over that, no, no. Just in case you're curious, Psalm 115—or Psalms 115 for you, Rick—Psalm 115 has no imprecatory elements either. [someone comments] OK, there you go. He reads the header of his Bible, he said. That's not inspired text; you realize that, right?
All right, yeah, Joe. [someone asks a question] How would I distinguish who was my neighbor rather than a random passerby? I think that Jesus's parable of the Good Samaritan sort of answers that, that we have an obligation to do good to everybody and to have that charitable demeanor toward them. But obviously, we don't have the ability to do good to everybody we know and every person out there. So while we might—our demonstration of charity toward another individual should be extended because really they qualify as a neighbor. The way in which I give charity to individuals is going to be different depending on their relationship to me obviously. I mean, the lady who lives across the street from me, I mow her lawn and plow her driveway. She's mostly blind and I do kindness to her. I don't do the same thing for anybody who lives in Sandpoint. There’s distance, there's factors that mitigate and change how I deal with different people and what I give to different people and how I serve them. And I think that some of that's dictated by wisdom. [someone asks a question] Well, if the neighbor next door to me is an abortion doctor, no. I might still—let's say the lady across the street was an abortion doctor, and I might still go over and show her kindness and help her while sharing the truth with her and while praying that God would end her evil. I want to reach that person with the gospel. So we talk about imprecations, we're not taking the gospel and throwing it out and saying, “This doesn't apply. These people don't get it. We don't give it to them.” We're not doing that. We're trying to have room in our theology for both of these things and find out how these things fit together. I don't think that they conflict. I don't think I have to choose between sharing the gospel with somebody and praying that their evil will end.
This is the actual Peter Hammond, yes. [someone asks a question] Yeah, are false teachers someone we should be thoughtful about praying imprecatory psalms against? They do a certain kind of evil, don't they? And I think an egregious evil in leading people astray and being part of their judgment. I think it is appropriate to pray that kind of prayer for false teachers as well. I want their teaching to end. I want their ministries to come to an end. I’ve prayed for false teachers. When I do, I pray that God would expose their immorality and their iniquity and their charlatan tactics, that that would become obvious, that God would put an end to their ministry, shut them down or even take them off the planet if it would keep them from teaching their error. I think it's an appropriate prayer. I also think it's entirely appropriate to pray for the salvation of a false teacher, though for somebody who has received that kind of light and still rejects it on that level, that is less a factor in my praying for false teachers than that their teaching and evil will stop. They have the truth, they know the truth, they can speak the truth, and yet they twist it and distort it to destroy millions and exploit millions.
Is there another person? Jeff? Just a second, Kevin. Go ahead, Jeff. [someone comments] Yeah, that's right. Being a false prophet under the Old Testament law was a capital crime.
[someone asks a question] Is it problematic to stop praying for someone's salvation and only pray imprecatory prayers? Let me answer that this way. I think the danger of saying, “I'm no longer going to pray good things for this person but only pray for their judgment”—I think that that is something that should be reserved for the absolute worst people and the worst of circumstances, and I think the danger of doing that is that we lose sight of our obligation to love them and try and share the gospel and truth with them as well. I think then we can become unbalanced. And so whenever I have prayed an imprecation toward somebody, in my mind I'm always trying to pray, “God save this person, bring them to a knowledge of the truth, or judge them, but make the evil stop.” And if I can keep those two things in my mind, that's at least for me a way of keeping them in balance and making sure that I don't just become the Westboro Baptist out there holding the sign, calling for God to judge everybody because that's not healthy. That's not healthy. And I hope you—I'm sure all of you understand that's not what I'm suggesting at all.
OK, that's our time, and next week, Lord willing, we'll get into the false interpretive methodologies regarding imprecatory psalms.