Untitled Sermon (5)

# Can I Ask That? (Psalm 109)

#Sermon

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### **[INTRODUCTION]**

**What is an Imprecatory Psalm?**

* An imprecatory Pslam is where the author invokes curses, calamity, or judgment upon their enemies or the enemies of God. The Psalms include a a decent number of Imprecatory Psalms. There are nearly 10 of the Psalms would be under this category or there are segments of the Psalm that include a calling down of judgement on a particular people. In all honesty, people stuggle with these Psalms. C.S. Lewis in his reflections on the Psalms talks of his stuggle with imprecatory Psalms, especially 109, the Psalm we are looking at. C.S. Lewis would call this “the worst” imprecatory Psalm in scripture. Calling on the Lord time after time to curse in some way or fashion. And when David or the Psalmist is including such raw, unfiltered emotion, he was talking about those that were literally what we would label as evil. It was not someone who cut him off while he was on his donkey, this wasn’t that little league umpire that can’t get a call right. It’s not the bully on the playground by the monkey bars. This was a people that were bloodthirsty. They hated God and the people of God. There was a war waged on the Kingdom of God when it includes the people of God. ==🟡Kingdom language here?==

**General Principles for reading, interacting with, and engaging Imprecatory Psalms?**

* **Remember that this is poetic in it’s literary form.** This specific Psalm is inscribed at the top that this Psalm is for the choir director - so this is a song! I’m not sure it would land itself on Positive, Encouraging K-Love but it’s a poem, it’s a song. There are usually rhetorical hyperbole in the psalm along with a very literal righteous anger. Derek Kidner has a really great commentary on the Psalms, we have been using him throughout thge series and he was so helpful in my studies for this Psalm. He says that the psalmist will pile up horror after horror to convey the idea, more than to express what he literally desires would happen. The outcries are similar to that of Job and Jermeiah. The crying out to God is just that. Cries out to God. The execution of such cries, are left up to God. And that’s good news for us.

* **Imprecatory Psalms are not after personal vengeance, but rather Gods Kingdom and Gods Glory.** On the surface, you may think, I don’t know, Adam…sounds an awful lot like personal vengeance. You say what you mean, and mean what you say, right? This sounds very pesonal. And yes, I agree. It does sound harsh. It does sound cold. The psalmist is crying out for the wrongs to be made right (BY GOD). For the crime (from God) to fit the punishment (toward the offender). For those that brought wrong to him or the world, that they would be dealt with (BY GOD). The crucial piece to this is who the Psalmist is taking these raw feelings and emotions to. The Psalmist is crying out TO GOD - He is taking it to the Lord and leaving the results, the outcomes to him, but the one thing that the psalmist is bringing, is his most accurate self. Not the polished, socially acceptable self. The accurate self. When the psalmist is praying an imprecatory Psalm, what they are praying, in short, is “Your Kingdom Come.”

* Derek Kidner is also helping me out with this one. **Imprecatory Psalms are for information, not imitation.** Let me explain for a moment. These scriptures, even the imprecatory psalms are inspired, innerrant, and breathed out by God. And they are profitable for us. With that in mind, these Psalms can offer us something. So ask yourself when you encounter a prayer that on the surface seems vengeful, harsh, out of sync with the rest of the psalms….What do they teach us (me) about God? What can it teach about those that oppose the Kingdom of God? What can a psalm like this teach us about prayer? But to take the verse, pluck it out of the bible and pray a calling down of judgement on the person who got your order wrong, for a person that made a wrong leadership decision in your mind, or for the person that really grinds your gears. I would again, encourage you to take it to the Lord, your most accurate self in all the rawness that that is. Take it to the Lord.

We are going to now dive into Psalm 109 taking it at sections at a time. Look at verses 1-5 with me.

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### **[PASSAGE]** **Psalm 109**

**PRAYER AGAINST AN ENEMY**

*For the choir director. A psalm of David.*

**[^1 ]** God of my praise, do not be silent.

**[^2 ]** For wicked and deceitful mouths open against me;

they speak against me with lying tongues.

**[^3 ]** They surround me with hateful words

and attack me ==🟡without cause.==

**[^4 ]** ==🟡In return for my love they accuse me,==

but I continue to pray.[^,]

**[^5 ]** They repay me evil for good,

and hatred ==🟡for my love==.

**VERSES 1-5** — THE SITUATION, THE SKUTTLEBUTT, THE DEETS

* We can see from the text that David calling upon the Lord. He says God of my praise, do not be silent. There is a call on God to do something here. He is asking God to not be silent. Don’t just watch this happen - do something. He then lays out in song/prayer form, the situation. There are wicked and deceitful mouths open against me. They speak against me and anything they speak is a lie about me. Do you see what David is doing? Countering the situation with the Lord. They are speaking against me and they are lying! Lord, speak on behalf of me, against them! Don’t be silent! Verse 3 is continuing in the situation. We are just gaining context of the situation as much as David lets us in. They (the wicked) surround me with hateful words and attack me. This next part is important and I want to point out something to you in this. He says that they attack me, say the next part out loud….without cause. Do you see here that David is claiming innocence. In other imprecatory psalms, I’m thinking of Psalm 69, David does not claim innocence but he does call on God to rescue him. He says in Psalm 69 verse 5, “God, you know my foolishness, and my guilty acts are not hidden from you.” This is not what we see in Psalm 109. They attack me without cause. He goes on to say they returned my love with accusation. They repaid me evil for good. They gave me hatred in exchange for my love.

* This Psalm points towards very few people in the New Testament given the innocent nature of one and the evil of another. But, we can look to one person. Jesus Christ was repaid evil for good, Jesus Christ was repaid hatred, for his love. There is a blantant comparison to Jesus and Judas. We will touch more on this relationship near our time of communion, but there is a pointing forward even in this psalm towards Jesus, purely innocent, yet evil being done towards him in response to love being extended towards him.

Again, this is towards a people that literally are wicked, evil, bloodthirsty liars. The situation is serious. And David, in response to this situation, goes before God and brings him his most accurate, honest self. Buckle up, verses 6-20 are coming.

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**VERSES 6-20** — THE ASK

**[^6 ]** Set a wicked person over him;

let an accuser stand at his right hand.

**[^7 ]** When he is judged, let him be found guilty,

and let his prayer be counted as sin.

**[^8 ]** Let his days be few;

let another take over his position.

**[^9 ]** Let his children be fatherless

and his wife a widow.

**[^10 ]** Let his children wander as beggars,

searching for food far from their demolished homes.

**[^11 ]** Let a creditor seize all he has;

let strangers plunder what he has worked for.

**[^12 ]** Let no one show him kindness,

and let no one be gracious to his fatherless children.

**[^13 ]** Let the line of his descendants be cut off;

let their name be blotted out in the next generation.

**[^14 ]** Let the iniquity of his fathers

be remembered before the Lord,

and do not let his mother’s sin be blotted out.

**[^15 ]** Let their sins always remain before the Lord,

and let him remove all memory of them from the earth.

Can you feel the weight of the words being expressed to God here? To be able to formulate words like this, this is in the heart of David asking God for some pretty weighty and life-altering things on people. It begs the question. What do we do with this? Can I even ask that? Is this appropriate? Why is this even in the bible?

I’m not going to go verse by verse here and disect words to gain information. We feel the weight of the passage. David wants the enemies of God to be brought to justice. He wants the wrongs to be righted. David is aking the Lord some things that you may look around and think, can God handle my raw, unfiltered heart? Let me say this, in light of Psalm 109-6:15, the most beautiful thing you can bring to the Lord is your most accurate self. I did not say, bring God your truth and let him become ok with that. Bring God, your raw, honest, self. If you were to take the summation of all that David asked in this section of Psalm 109, you could sum up that what David is really asking is that Gods Kingdom would come. Your Kingdom Come. Why pray Your Kingdom Come? Because when Gods Kingdom Comes, it wages war against any other kingdom and any other god that stands in His way. When David was praying for all of these things to happen to his enemy - he wasn’t praying that the children of these people would literally wander around fatherless. He doesn’t really want the creditor to seize them for all they got. He isn’t really wanting their line of descendents cut off. What is David really asking. GOD, YOUR KINGDOM COME. No other kingdom will survive. No other god will make it. I want your kingdom to come, invade our spaces, ransak our hearts with your presence because when your kingdom comes, your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven, every wrong will be made right - Justice will be executed by the one who carries out justice perfectly in it’s due time.

This prayer, or song, sounds a lot different than my prayers today if I’m honest. Sure I don’t pray for lines of descendents to be cut off. I don’t pray for the memory of someone to be wiped out completely. But I can learn something here about my prayers. My prayers if you were to thumb through some journal entries, alot of my prayers start out with “help me to…” help me today in this way… emower me….help me to be more…” And if God answers that with a yes - that would be pretty neat. But i’ve also been convicted lately that my prayers are pretty safe. They are palatable. They are even “domesticated”. Tame. Nurtured to be eloquent and neat and tidy. And I read the Psalms here and I think there is such access to raw emotion and I think my prayers could be taken and God would just say to me…the fluff is nice. But what are you really asking of me? What is your heart really wanting? Theres a moment in the book of Nehemiah where the King actually asks him that question. I want to take us there for a moment. In the book of Nehemiah, we learn that Nehemiah was serving as cupbearer to King Artaxerxes of Persia in Susa around 446 B.C. He had received news from his brother Hanani about the dire situation in Jerusalem. The walls were in ruins, the gates burned, and the Jewish returnees faced many troubles. Deeply moved, Nehemiah prayed to God, confessing the nation's sins and seeking divine intervention. It’s a beautiful prayer in chapter 1 of Nehemiah. Chapter 2 - it was four months later, it says this in vese 1. …”when wine was set before him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had never been sad in his presence, **[^2 ]** so the king said to me, “Why do you look so sad, when you aren’t sick? This is nothing but sadness of heart.” I was overwhelmed with fear **[^3 ]** and replied to the king, “May the king live forever! Why should I not be sad when the city where my ancestors are buried lies in ruins and its gates have been destroyed by fire?” **[^4 ]** ==🟡Then the king asked me, “What is your request?”== So I prayed to the God of the heavens **[^5 ]** and answered the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor with you, send me to Judah and to the city where my ancestors are buried,[^,] so that I may rebuild it.”

**Can he ask that?!**

This is the Kings cupbearer. This is an important job, you make sure the King doesn’t die by the inside out essentially. His request is going to put the king in a tight spot. He needs a cup bearer. But the king asked him, what is your request? It had to take guts to ask the king if he could be off assignment to go and to address his heart which was outwardly very sad. And to go a rebuild the wall.

Let me ask you. What would you pray, if the King asked you, “What is your request?” If God were to ask you, what is it you really want? What’s troubling you? What would you pray if the answer was a 100% yes? What prayer would you pray if you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would be answered? To couple that, whose life would be forever changed because of your ask? Would your request make others look around and say, wait a second….can you ask that? Not that you would pray something so vengeful and dark and harsh but that you would be so bold, so courageous, so forthright, so upfront that you break it down to it’s most simplest form. Your. Kingdom. Come.

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**[^16 ]** For he did not think to show kindness,

but pursued the suffering, needy, and brokenhearted

in order to put them to death.

**[^17 ]** He loved cursing—let it fall on him;

he took no delight in blessing—let it be far from him.

**[^18 ]** He wore cursing like his coat—

let it enter his body like water

and go into his bones like oil.

**[^19 ]** Let it be like a robe he wraps around himself,

like a belt he always wears.

**[^20 ]** Let this be the Lord’s payment to my accusers,

to those who speak evil against me.

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**[^21 ]** But you, Lord, my Lord,

deal kindly with me for your name’s sake;

because your faithful love is good, rescue me.

**[^22 ]** For I am suffering and needy;

my heart is wounded within me.

**[^23 ]** I fade away like a lengthening shadow;

I am shaken off like a locust.

**[^24 ]** My knees are weak from fasting,

and my body is emaciated.[^,]

**[^25 ]** I have become an object of ridicule to my accusers;

when they see me, they shake their heads in scorn.

**[^26 ]** Help me, Lord my God;

save me according to your faithful love

**[^27 ]** so they may know that this is your hand

and that you, Lord, have done it.

**[^28 ]** Though they curse, you will bless.

When they rise up, they will be put to shame,

but your servant will rejoice.

**[^29 ]** My accusers will be clothed with disgrace;

they will wear their shame like a cloak.

**[^30 ]** I will fervently thank the Lord with my mouth;

I will praise him in the presence of many.

**[^31 ]** For he stands at the right hand of the needy

to save him from those who would condemn him.

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### **[COMMUNION]**

A wicked person should be set over us.

An accuser should stand over us.

We should be judged and found guilty.

Our days should be few.

We should be fatherless.

We should be rung out for all we have.

Kindness and grace should be far removed from us.

Our names should be blotted out.

Our sins should be remembered and remained before us.

But God, our God, dealt kindly with us for His names sake. He is faithful in his love and he is deeply good.

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