Wednesday, November 5, 2025 PM

Psalm 109, Imprecatory Psalms, and Singing with Christ

Everybody, hopefully you can hear me through those speakers again. We're going to try it again.

So, hey, what?

I'm getting a ding. I hope that's not from Daryl. Okay. Now, I think we're safe. Okay. So, Sunday night, last time we focused on the Psalms as a whole, as first and foremost, the King's songs, written either by the King himself or by his authorized representatives, with the people's voices added to his at his invitation.

This was true of David and Israel under the old covenant, and it is still true today, or we could say it's even truer today of Jesus and the church under the new covenant. Jesus was always the telos, the end, the goal, able to sing all their words to their fullest.

So, I want to touch back real quick on Psalm 109. I just can't leave it alone. When we sing certain Psalms, like Psalm 109, our first instinct is to flinch at its severity and wonder if we should even be singing such things.

But let me ask you a question. Do you know that Jesus sang these same Psalms throughout his earthly sojourn, oftentimes in the synagogues or at the prescribed feasts, surely in homes with his family or later on with his disciples, perhaps in the workshop as he learned Joseph's craft, and maybe he hummed them as he traveled the dusty roads of Judea.

Do you suppose that as he sang Psalm 109, for example, that he recoiled in the slightest? I think it is impossible to imagine that the incarnate word of God, the Christ whose spirit inspired David to write the Psalm, would be in any way conflicted concerning any of those God-breathed words.

So, Jesus is the only man whose enemies are precisely the enemies of God. And when he said, when Jesus said, "'The Son of Man indeed goes, just as it is written of him. "'But woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.

"'It would have been good for that man "'if he had never been born.'. That woe carried with it all the grim reality of all the so-called imprecatory Psalms. Perfect justice is not for the faint of heart, but it is amended by the righteous of heart.

So when we join in singing Psalms like 109, we do so with trembling and awe, following our King's lead, not with our own machinations of personal vengeance, but knowing that the dreadful blow of divine wrath ought to have fallen on us, except for, if it were not for our Savior.

And resting in the fact that all of Jesus' true enemies will be brought to a righteous and fitting end. He can sing this with integrity. So sing it with him.

Okay, moving on. I'm gonna let it go.

We're gonna let Psalm 109 go. So last time we looked at the first three verses of Psalm 34 and we saw how we are to join the King in praise. And tonight let's look at verses four through seven, which I titled, Join the King in Prayer.

And verses eight through 10, join the King in partaking, partaking of the goodness of God. So join the King in prayer. Let's read verses four through seven. I sought the Lord and he heard me and delivered me from all my fears.

They looked to him and were radiant and their faces were not ashamed. This poor man cried out and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear him and delivers them.

So this section is a couplet of couplets. So verses four and five form the first couplet. First, recounting David's personal experience and then telling of the people's parallel experience. And then verses six and seven form the next couplet.

Similarly, relaying David's experience followed by the people's analogous experience. And the theme here is clearly one of deliverance. Deliverance from fears and troubles. But these are not just generic troubles and fears.

David tells us exactly what they are. So we're gonna circle back around to something that I skipped over last time. And that's the Psalms heading. The headings were actually included in the original texts.

But the titles were not, just for your information. The titles were, they are specific to your Bible translation. So for example, the title in my new King James is the happiness of those who trust in God.

So does anybody else have a different title than that?

ESV is taste and see that the Lord is good.

Okay.

Anybody have the NASB?

Uh-huh, yep.

Okay, I'm gonna get to that. So does it have anything else or just that? Anything above that? Okay, so that one doesn't have what I'm calling a title. Okay, so are you saying like they're completely different, the different, what I'm calling a title.

So the title is not original to the text. But so if your Bible does include the heading, like what Mr. Bill was just pointing out, what I'm calling the heading, we should have something like a Psalm of David when he pretended madness before Abimelech who drove him away and he departed.

Okay, not all the translations include the title or the heading, but when they do, it is helpful. And not every Psalm has what I'm calling a heading. But when they do, they typically at least tell the author and they might give some musical instructions like what types of instruments or the tune.

Or as in this case, they might give some type of historical context to the Psalm. And this bit of information about pretending madness before Abimelech sends us back to 1 Samuel chapter 21. So let's turn there and read the short account in 1 Samuel 21.

And as you're turning, I'll give you a little bit of background. So David has just fled from Saul, who is intent on killing this rival anointed king. And David has not gone very far, but he's seeking refuge just across the border in the land of the Philistines, which is a very interesting choice because surely someone there is going to recognize this famous giant slayer.

And in fact, David was in possession of Goliath's famous sword at this time. So let's look at 1 Samuel 21, starting in verse 10. Then David arose and fled that day from before Saul and went to Achish, the king of Gath.

And the servants of Achish said to him, is this not David, the king of the land? Did they not sing of him to one another in dances, saying, Saul has slain his thousands and David, his 10 ,000s. Now David took these words to heart and was very much afraid of Achish, the king of Gath.

So he changed his behavior before them, pretended madness in their hands, scratched on the doors of the gate and let his saliva fall down on his beard. Then Achish said to his servants, look, you see, the man is insane.

Why have you brought him to me? Have I need of madmen that you have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house? Okay, so a few things to notice. So first, here in Psalm, or sorry, here in 1 Samuel 21, he is called Achish.

But in Psalm 34, he's called Abimelech. So what's going on here? Achish is the actual name of the king of Gath, which was a city in Philistia. And Abimelech is a title akin to Pharaoh in Egypt. Now second, notice how David took the words to heart, meaning that he was keenly aware of the danger that he was in as the courtiers of Achish debated the threat level that David posed to the Philistines.

And this sowed seeds of the fear of man in David's heart, it says. And therefore, in verse 13, because he was afraid, he changed his behavior before them. And we get the sense that that was perhaps a fleshly attempt born out of panic to get out of a bad situation.

But whatever the case, it doesn't really paint David in a very flattering light. And then third, notice that David is under extreme pressure. He's surrounded by enemies. He's on the run from Saul. He has very few earthly resources at this time.

And he's taken up refuge in a hostile foreign land. Okay, so now as we come back to Psalm 34, we have a clearer picture of the circumstances behind David's jubilation in the first three verses where he's praising God for deliverance.

He was in a very precarious situation. But he does not attribute his successful escape to his quick and clever madman shtick. Although disquieted in spirit, he remembered where his help comes from. I sought the Lord and he heard me and delivered me from all my fears.

So he may have started in a state of great vexation, but the Lord calmed his fears and settled his nerves after David sought him. So what is this seeking? How do you search for a spiritual being? The apostle John said that no one has seen God at any time.

How do you search for the invisible God as Paul calls him? High and low, far and wide, over the mountain and through the veil? I don't think it works that way. But what does David say? He says, I sought the Lord and he heard me.

So this is a seeking with words. Words of the mouth, words of the heart. David, in his overwhelming need, was lifting up ardent prayers to the throne of grace. So verse six, reframing verse four, restating it in a new way, puts it like this.

This poor man cried out and the Lord heard him. This humble, afflicted man. It's the singular version of the word humble back in verse two. Now we see that this seeking is not without urgency as his great distress is driving him to cry out to the Lord.

But at the same time, there is an instructive calmness about this psalm. And even hidden away from the casual English reader is the fact that this psalm is one of those few Hebrew alphabetic acrostics.

Indicating deliberate order and structure and highly contrasting with David's charade before Achish. So behind what seemed the feverish panic of a madman was a calm, peaceful reliance upon God's favor, his readiness to make his name and make his glory known in deliverance.

God had set his love upon David. God had called him out of the fields and set his anointing upon him. He had put his spirit within him. The faith-filled heart knows that its life is in the Lord's hands.

And upon seeking the Lord's face and his help, it's able to rest in his goodness, whatever may come. Okay, this is true of the king and it's true of the people identified with the king. The pronouns shift to the third person plural in verses five and seven.

They looked to him and were radiant and their faces were not ashamed. The angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear him and delivers them. Who are they but the humble of verse two and the ones who gladly heeded the call to join in magnifying the Lord in verse three and those whose daily delight is the fear of the Lord in verse seven.

They enjoy the same deliverance as the king as they follow him in seeking the Lord. After looking to him, they were radiant, shining, brilliant, sparkling, cheerful. That's what the word means. This is reminiscent of Moses' Sinai encounter that left him with a shining face.

Communion with God changes your countenance. Interestingly, this word for radiant not only means to sparkle, but it also means to flow or assemble as in Isaiah 2 .2 where the nations are prophesied to flow to Zion.

And I just get this picture in my head of this living water flowing down from Zion into all of the surrounding lands while at the same time, the multitudes of those looking to Zion and looking to the Lord are flowing to and up the mountain like streams of water sparkling under the noonday sun of Christ's glory.

And they may look backward and out of step to the world, flowing upward against gravity. And they may look like easy targets for scorn and even for violence, but the Lord surrounds his people. He arrays his heavenly ministers around them like the horses and the chariots of fire that Elisha's servants saw.

It may have appeared like the tribes of Israel were surrounding and protecting God when they encamped around the tabernacle in the wilderness. But in reality, it was exactly the other way around. So do we not see in all of this a picture of our Lord Jesus, the current anointed, the religious rulers of Israel, enraged by their own rejection by God, out for blood against the true anointed, their own kinsmen, the Messiah, as he patiently awaits his inevitable ascension to his royal throne?

The pressures that David felt in the court of Achish are but a faint echo of the perverse lion's den of Caiaphas's kangaroo court and Herod's and Pilate's mock hearings. But see how our king excelled.

He did not reduce himself to theatrical antics. He did not put on a show. Rather, he stunned his accusers and his interrogators with his silence, a weighty and condemning quietness. And I imagine a stare of innocence that rebukingly said, "'Whatever you do, do it quickly.'".

And did our Savior not meet this occasion with vehement prayer? His habit, from the stillness of mountain solitude to the tumult of the crucifixion, was to be in prayer. His cries to his father evoked great drops of blood in the garden.

As others in sadness succumbed to sleep, Jesus labored in prayer, filling heaven's throne room with his righteous pleas. And as was always the case, he was heard. He was heard and he was delivered from all his enemies, including death.

And now, like in Psalm 34, we join our king of kings as he rejoices in having been delivered from all of his troubles by the loving hand of his father. And likewise, we join him in prayer. God has designed prayer as a vehicle for deliverance.

Our master has commanded it. Pray without ceasing. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Join King Jesus in communing with the father, praying with the assurance that your deliverance is bound up in him. And no matter what form that deliverance takes, whether in this life or the next, know that it is handcrafted by God for your good and for his glory.

Tasting and Seeing That the Lord Is Good

Okay, let's turn our attention now to verses eight through 10. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who trusts in him. Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints. There is no want to those who fear him.

The young lions lack and suffer hunger, but those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing. So last Sunday night, Dwight was asking if we were gonna get to learn what it means to taste and see that the Lord is good.

Well, here we are. So just as the question naturally arose a moment ago, how do you seek the Lord? What does that mean? Immaterial, invisible, immortal spirit. And the answer was to pray. Cry out to him.

Jesus tells us to seek and you shall find. But now we ask, what do I do when I find him? I'm promised that I'm going to find him.

What do I do?

And David's answer is a surprising metaphor. Eat, partake. Now, food is a major topic in scripture and it's easy to see why. It's a daily concern for every human being. In ancient Palestine, it was not uncommon to lack and suffer hunger like the young lions.

When people labored, it was primarily to provide sustenance for them and their families for that day. They obviously didn't have refrigerators and freezers stocked up with food ready to be consumed. And that's why when Jesus would feed the multitudes, they would follow him around and they would try to goad him into producing more miracle food.

Redemptive history begins with food when Adam and Eve partook of forbidden fruit. And it will end with food when we sit down at a wedding feast together. God's word is often compared to honey as being sweeter and more delightful than the luxurious golden syrup.

And I'm sure there are many, many more examples of food-related passages that you can think of in the Bible. But David says, eat, eat and be satisfied. Partake of God's goodness and be filled. Oh, taste and see.

See, David has already tasted. And if the humble would enter into his joy, they must follow suit and taste and see for themselves. Notice there is no price tag associated with this taste test. Simply come, taste and see.

It reminds me of Isaiah 55, one. You who have no money, come buy and eat. Yes, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. How did David taste? What does this metaphor mean? Well, he tells us in the next phrase, happy is the man who trusts in him.

So we taste God's goodness using not our taste buds, but our trust buds. That's a dad joke. It's the only one, I thought it was funny. His initial fear of man succumbed to a proper fear of God. After seeking the Lord by lifting up loud cries for help, he trusted in his covenant God to take care of him.

And that tasting, that trusting led him to see and experience God's provision, his good care in deliverance from his troubles. David put his faith in God's word, his promises, his name and found that he lacked nothing.

And now he calls on all the saints to join him in prayerfully seeking the Lord and then savoring the resulting provision of every good thing. As far as infinite wisdom sees good, as Matthew Henry puts it.

So how does King Jesus exemplify this and lead us in this? Well, Jesus was always praying and receiving the good provision of his father with thankfulness, always tasting and finding his father to be good.

In all of his miracles, in all of the pressures of his ministry, in all of his troubles, he was trusting his father for help, deliverance and power. And we might be tempted to think that his miracles were simply him exercising his own power from the reservoirs of his divine nature.

But the scene at Lazarus's tomb, for example, paints the picture of a praying, trusting, dependent Jesus. We're told that he lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. And I know that you always hear me.

So that when he cried, Lazarus come forth and the dead man obeyed, that was an answer to prayer. Jesus prayed for that. And Jesus tasted and saw once again that his father was good in delivering that into his hand.

So throughout the Psalms, we hear echoes of Jesus's voice. Like in Psalm 440 verse eight, I delight to do your will, oh my God. Or Psalm 119 and verse 16, I will delight myself in your statutes. I will not forget your word.

And in verse 47 of 119, I will delight myself in your commandments, which I love. Jesus tastes, savors, and delights in God's word because in it, his father's will is proclaimed. And this is food for him.

This is sustenance and strength for his bones. In John 434, Jesus said, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Even on the cross, in his deepest, darkest moment of his life, indeed, in all of history, he commits his spirit, he entrusts himself to his father.

And what does he find on the other side of that dark moment? But complete and utter deliverance from all of his enemies. And he waits as they are being fashioned into a footstool. We not only join the king in rejoicing in his victory over sin and death, but we join him in entrusting ourselves to the same God who raised Jesus from the dead.

According to Matthew 16, verses 26 and 27, after the resurrection, we are to follow Jesus's lead by praying to the father ourselves. We are to pray to the father in Jesus's name, with Jesus's concerns in our hearts, that God's kingdom would come and that righteousness and obedience would be made manifest, that we would be kept unstained from the world and that our daily needs would be met out of the abundance of his riches to the praise of the glory of his grace and so on and so forth.

And whatever things you ask, ask in prayer, believing you will receive, Matthew 21, 22. Yes, ask and you will receive that your joy may be full, John 16, 24. Seek the Lord in prayer and taste and see that you shall lack no good thing in Christ.

All right, any thoughts or questions before we wrap up? All right, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Lord God, we are thankful for this good day that you have given. It's a joy to open up your word. It's a joy to look for Christ in all of your word, your son in whom you are satisfied.

Lord, make him satisfying to our souls. Help us to rest in him, to trust. Help us to pray with him. Help us to taste and see your goodness, to recognize your deliverance and your provision. Lord, we are so grateful of your mindfulness of poor, humble wretches like us.

We pray these things in Jesus' holy name, amen.