Principles of Imprecation | Adult Sunday School

Kootenai Church

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So, let's go ahead and get started. We'll shut the doors at the back and all right, let's begin by asking the

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Lord's blessing upon our time here. Father, we are thankful to You that we have this time together to fellowship and to worship around Your Word, to bring

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Your Word before our hearts and our minds, that we may be conformed by it and transformed by it.

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We thank You that You use Your Word to sanctify Your people and to make us a holy people. We pray that our time in Your Word, both now and in the worship service that is to follow, may accomplish that end in us, that You would examine every wicked way within us, help us to see ourselves, this world, and eternity in light of what

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You have revealed. We pray that You would give to us Your affections and Your heart regarding holiness and evil and how we are to feel about those things.

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So, we pray Your blessing here upon this time, You help us to think clearly about imprecations and curses and praying against the wicked and that in doing so that we would be conformed to the image of Your Son, grow in Christ's likeness and honor and glorify

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You. We ask this in Christ's name, amen. Well, this is the last lesson in our series on the imprecatory prayers or imprecations in Scripture, and I just want to answer a slander that was leveled against me several weeks ago where somebody accused me that I would never be able to get through all of these in my goal, my time.

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I want you to know that I am right on time, I'm right on track, and so we are finishing exactly where I promised that we would finish.

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Today we're going to suggest, or I should say I'm going to suggest some principles for praying imprecatory prayers and to consider the principles, the theology, the truth that must be weighed in the heart and mind of the believer as we pray against evil and evildoers.

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And in order to review, we talked about a theology of the Psalms at the beginning, we talked about bad interpretations of some of the imprecatory

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Psalms, and for those of you who may be new, imprecatory Psalms are the Psalms or prayers in Scripture that call for curses against God's enemies, sometimes against personal enemies, where the psalmist or the prayer asks

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God to curse, to judge, to send affliction or destruction upon His enemies. And these are very prolific in Scripture, they're two -thirds of the

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Psalms have imprecatory elements, so we considered some of the bad interpretive approaches to those

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Psalms and then we looked at two Psalms, Psalm 69 and Psalm 109, both of which are Messianic Psalms but also

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Psalms with imprecatory elements in them, two of the most notorious of the imprecatory

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Psalms. And then last week, I sort of gave you a collection in no specific order other than the order that I gave them in of 12 considerations or observations or things that we have sort of seen as we've worked through this entire series.

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The intention there was to sort of put all of the theological pieces out on the table so that we could put them together today in what

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I'm going to give you are five principles for praying imprecatory Psalms. Before I do that, I'm just in a matter of very quickly,

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I want to go through and sort of rebuild that superstructure as it were, giving you some of the theologies, some of the hermeneutics, some of the principles that we've covered.

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And I'm not going to list all 12 of what we had last week, but these are the ones that I want to bring before you today. Number one, justice is a good thing.

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Justice is a good thing. It's part of God's character, it's part of His nature, He is righteous, He is just. Desiring a good thing is a good thing, that's number two.

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Praying for a good thing is a good thing because God is going to do that good thing,

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He's going to accomplish that good thing. He is going to do so without sinning and without any measure of unrighteousness.

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Those were four. Number five, the Psalms and other imprecations should be understood in light of God's promises.

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God has promised to destroy evil, to destroy evildoers. The Psalms begin with those promises in Psalm 1 or 2, and therefore when you get into the rest of the

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Psalter and you see prayers for God to do what He has promised to do, it shouldn't strike us as odd, it shouldn't surprise us that there would be prayers for God to do the very thing that He has promised that He's going to do.

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Number six, imprecations or Psalms should be interpreted in light of Christ as the fulfillment of them.

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Since Christ is the one who is going to return, He's going to judge His enemies and destroy the wicked, He's going to punish the impenitent.

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This is what He has promised to do, this is what we should expect Him to do. Therefore, when we read of this in the

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Psalms, we ought to be reading those prayers of imprecation and cursing as sort of echoes of the judgment that is to come, warnings therefore to the impenitent and the unrighteous in this world.

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I'm going to read to you Psalm 18, 37 through 50, and I want you, as we read this together,

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I want you to notice the things in here that sound as if they could come off of the lips of the

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Savior as He returns in the kind of judgment that is mentioned in Revelation chapter 19.

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Now this is David who is writing this prayer, this Psalm, but as we read this,

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I want you to hear David's voice then echoing out against God's redemptive plan, as it were, and recognizing that David is here speaking not only on his own behalf in some ways, but also on behalf of his greater

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Son who would come to establish His kingdom and to destroy the wicked. Psalm 18,

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I pursued my enemies and overtook them, and I did not turn back until they were consumed. I shattered them so that they were not able to rise.

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They fell under my feet, for you have girded me with strength for battle. You have subdued under me those who rose up against me.

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He has made His enemies a footstool for His feet, for instance. You have also made my enemies turn their backs to me, and I destroyed those who hated me.

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They cried for help, but there was none to save, even to the Lord, but He did not answer them. Then I beat them as fine as the dust before the wind.

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I emptied them out as the mire of the streets. You have delivered me from the contentions of the people.

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You have placed me as the head of the nations, a people whom I have not known serve me.

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As soon as they hear, they obey me. Foreigners submit to me." Now that is something that could be said by Christ.

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That is what is going to happen. People who hate Him will end up serving Him. He will subdue the nations.

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He will place His enemies under His feet. Foreigners fade away and come trembling out of their fortresses.

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The Lord lives, and blessed be my rock, and exalted be the God of my salvation, the God who executes vengeance for me and subdues peoples under me.

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He delivers me from my enemies. Surely, You lift me above those who rise up against me.

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You rescue me from the violent man. Therefore, I will give thanks to You among the nations,

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O Lord, and I will sing praises to Your name. He gives great deliverance to His King and shows loving kindness to His anointed, to David and his descendants forever."

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Now I hope that you can see as you read that, that David's voice is echoed in God's greater redemptive plan, the

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Lord Jesus Christ, who could say some of these very same things. And therefore, when we read in the Psalms of the judgment that will fall upon the wicked and the

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King who executes that judgment, we interpret that in light of God's eschatological plan that David is often speaking for his greater

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Son who is the fulfillment and will finish this job of executing the judgment on the unrighteous.

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And number seven, a high view of Scripture requires that we receive the imprecatory prayers as instructive.

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We don't dismiss them. We don't put them in the corner and remain ashamed of them like a redheaded stepchild. We don't try and make excuses for them.

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We have to accept them and embrace them as inspired Scripture. These are inspired authors, righteous men who prayed and wrote these things, and we have to understand them in light of God's truth.

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They inform us really of God's view of sin and of evil. And then lastly, one last consideration, these things serve as examples for our own prayer regarding the wicked.

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I believe that they are illustrative. I believe that we are to learn how it is that we should view the wicked and how it is that we should pray against wickedness in our own day through the imprecatory prayers.

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So it is my conviction, as if I have not already put all of my cards out on the table at this point in the study, it is my conviction that not only can we pray imprecatory prayers, there are situations where we should indeed pray imprecatory prayers.

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So now the question remains, how? Now let me offer a quick word of clarification.

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I am not saying that you must pray imprecatory prayers. If you don't feel comfortable praying imprecatory prayers,

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I'm not saying you are obligated to pray for anything in particular. But I am suggesting that if you see evil in our day and you cry out for God to execute justice and judgment upon His enemies and those who perpetrate that evil,

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I think you are entirely justified in praying the type of prayers that we see in the Psalms. I think at times that is appropriate.

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So how do we do this? Five guidelines for principles, I think, or five guidelines or principles for praying imprecatory prayers.

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And I'm going to go through each of these, a little bit of explanation with each one of these. I have some Scripture references, too.

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And then I think that we'll be done with this in time to ask any questions at the end if you have any questions. Of course, if you have a question, any time in the middle of this, feel free to raise your hand.

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Number one, imprecatory prayers must be God -centered. They must be God -centered. They must be theocentric, show a desire for the honor of God, and ultimately it is

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His Word, His honor, His justice, His righteousness, and His name that is on the line.

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And so, we wish for Him and desire and should pray for God to vindicate His own name and His own righteousness.

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And therefore, our prayers should be God -centered, not just normally in our prayers, but also in the imprecatory prayers should be theocentric.

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Psalm 83, for instance, verses 16 to 18, notice the psalmist's desire for the vindication of God's name.

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"'Fill their faces with dishonor, that they may seek Your name, O Lord. Let them be ashamed and dismayed forever, and let them be humiliated and perish, that they may know that You alone, whose name is the

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Lord, are the most high over all the earth.'" What does the psalmist ultimately want? He wants the wicked to be judged, to be filled with shame, not just because he delights in the punishment or the pain of people, but he wants or delights in the vindication of God's name and God's righteousness.

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This is a theocentric prayer, so yes, there are imprecatory elements there, but it's not man -centered.

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It's not about me that the psalmist is praying. He wants God's name, His nature,

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His righteousness, His justice to be vindicated. And one of the ways that God vindicates those things is by judging the impenitent.

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We see it in Psalm 139, we've returned to this one time and again, "'O, that You would slay the wicked,

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O God. Depart from Me, therefore, men of bloodshed. For they speak against You wickedly, and Your enemies take

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Your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate You, O Lord, and do I not loathe those who rise up against You?

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I hate them with the utmost hatred, they have become My enemies.'" What is the psalmist's real issue here?

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They take Your name in vain. They're men of bloodshed. They speak against God wickedly.

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And he is so filled with righteous indignation over how the wicked speak of and defame

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God's name that he wants God vindicated. I would dare say,

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I don't know if I know one Christian out of ten who has that kind of indignation. Because about the minute we start to feel that way, then we feel like we have to step back and temper it and say, no, no,

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I need to love my enemies, I need to have all the warm feels inside of my heart for them. And as I said last week, there is a balance there where we want to love our enemies, but there's also the other side of that coin where we are indignant when

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God is blasphemed. And we get righteously indignant about that. I think we err on the side of being righteously indignant.

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That's where I think Christianity today errs on not going that far. I should say we err on the side of being loving and gentle and compassionate and gracious and mollycoddling people who blaspheme

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God. We don't err, evangelicalism does not err on the side of a righteous indignation. It's not like you walk into a church and you go, man, that's a church full of righteously indignant people over the wicked in the world.

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And nobody's ever walked in here and said that. It's not like we are just over on that end of the pendulum at all.

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So for the psalmist, these are sometimes his own personal enemies, but the psalmist, even when he prays for God to judge his own personal enemies, he is praying for God to vindicate his righteousness.

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So this is not, we pray this way for our neighbor who doesn't appreciate the fact that we play our

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Sovereign Grace music too loud while we're doing yard work, and we're not praying this against them. We're not praying against the person who cuts us off in traffic that way.

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These are people who have made us their enemy because they have made God their enemy, but really what makes us righteously indignant is not how they treat us, but how they treat

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God. God's glory is tied to the fulfillment of His Word, and so the vindication of His name is what is at stake.

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And when He fulfills His promises to destroy His enemies, He will indeed vindicate His name. So there must be a righteous anger and a righteous desire for wickedness to cease and for God's justice and His name to be vindicated.

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Now, it is possible to desire imprecations or curses with the wrong attitude or the wrong heart.

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And I think we see this in Luke chapter 9 verse 51, when the days were approaching for His ascension,

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He was determined to go to Jerusalem, this is Jesus, and He sent messengers ahead of Him and they went and entered a village of the

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Samaritans to make arrangements for Him. Just remember the Samaritans hate the Jews, the Jews hate the Samaritans. When His disciples, verse 53, but they did not receive

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Him because He was traveling toward Jerusalem. When His disciples James and John saw this, they said,

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Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them? But He turned and rebuked them and said, you do not know what kind of spirit you are of, for the

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Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives but to save them. And they went on to another village. And what were they indignant about?

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The Samaritans had rejected them. They were Jews and the Samaritans were Samaritans. This was just par for the course,

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Samaritans rejected Jews, Jews rejected Samaritans. There was a mutual hatred, a common understanding of their animosity toward one another and so when the

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Samaritan village would not receive Christ and His apostles, should we command fire to come down from heaven upon them?

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By the way, that's a little overwrought judgment, don't you think? You can just go to another village, sure it's another two, three mile walk, but you could make that before sunset surely.

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And Jesus said, you don't know of what spirit you are. The Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives but to save them.

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Now when He comes back, He is not coming to save men's lives but to destroy them. So that's

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His eschatological judgment that is coming with His next return. But the timing for the judgment was not right,

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Jesus is saying that, and the attitude, the offense did not justify what they were asking for.

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So the disciples are not righteously indignant when they are asking this, instead, the disciples are personally offended that these

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Samaritans wouldn't welcome them into the village. There's another example of the Lord rebuking an unrighteous vengeance in Ezekiel 25, thus says the

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Lord God, because the Philistines have acted in revenge and have taken vengeance with scorn of soul to destroy with everlasting enmity.

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Therefore thus says the Lord God, behold, I will stretch out My hand against the Philistines, even cut off the

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Cherethites and destroy the remnant of the seacoast, I will execute great vengeance on them with wrathful rebukes, and they will know that I am the

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Lord when I lay My vengeance on them. So the Lord there reproves the Philistines for enacting curses and vengeance themselves, but then it is not vengeance that is necessarily the wrong thing, for the

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Lord says, I'm going to pour out My vengeance upon the Philistines for what they have done, a right and appropriate curse.

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So, we must therefore have a righteous anger, be slow to anger, concerned with righteousness and justice and holiness and not our personal agendas.

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In other words, we don't pray imprecatory prayers with an itchy trigger finger. Imprecation is not our first response.

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It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be the first thing that jumps to our mind. We see evil and the first thing we want to do is start citing

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Psalm 118 and Psalm 69 and Psalm 109 with all of the curses. That should not be the initial response of somebody who has a righteousness inside of themselves.

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It's not to say that there should never be a response at any point in seeing wickedness, but it shouldn't be the first response.

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And such righteous anger leaves the execution of that justice to God. Now you can see how this would require some self -examination when we pray prayers against evil and wickedness, right?

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Am I praying this because I am righteously indignant that my God has been blasphemed, or am I praying this because this person has personally offended me?

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Am I praying this because I'm really passionate about justice and righteousness, or am I praying this because somehow

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I have been slighted or wronged? And that requires some self -examination and examining the heart and thinking through your prayers.

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But isn't that what we're supposed to do with all of our prayers? When I pray for this provision, am I praying this for this provision because I'm discontent with what

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God has given to me or because I actually need it? Really, all of our prayers should be a matter of self -examination in the praying of it so that we would conform our hearts and our minds and our souls to God's will in this situation, allowing truth about Him and about righteousness and justice to inform our prayers.

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Imprecatory prayers, I think, are the same way. We have to examine ourselves and our own hearts when we are praying against wickedness.

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Number two, we pray for God's justice out of concern for the innocent because we are concerned for others.

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Now, it might be that we are the innocent party aggrieved in something.

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So it is appropriate to desire or pray for God's justice when an innocent party is aggrieved or hurt, and it is also appropriate to do that when we might be the innocent party aggrieved and hurt because that sometimes happens.

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So let me give you an illustration. Let's say somebody were to break into my house and kill my wife sometime when

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I am away at work and I come home and I find her there. I don't know who did it. The criminal is out there wandering around.

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I would pray for law enforcement to find him, to identify the killer, to seize that killer, to get him.

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I want justice to be done. I want that returned upon his own head and I would be praying for the death penalty to come down for that person who had done that to my wife.

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Anybody here that wouldn't pray for that? If somebody was murdered that you were close to and the murderer was going free?

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I think we would all pray that justice would be done, that the perpetrator would be caught and that they would be swiftly and summarily dealt with according to the fullest extent of the law and of justice.

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Well, if it is appropriate to pray that when my wife has been harmed, how much more is it appropriate to pray and desire the same thing when our

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God has been harmed? And I don't know if you've noticed this or not, but my wife doesn't compare to the majesty and the glory of God.

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She's great, but she's not that great. And so if it's okay for me to pray that for my wife's killer to receive justice, it is appropriate even though I'm the aggrieved party in a sense, it's certainly appropriate for us to pray for the ultimate sheriff of the universe to make sure that justice is done and to execute that justice upon somebody else so that their crimes against others would cease.

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So sometimes we are the aggrieved party, this is number two, we pray for God's justice out of concern for the innocent.

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Look at Psalm 35 verse 7, for without cause they hid their net for me, without cause they dug a pit for my soul.

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You're going to see in a moment Psalm 35 is an imprecatory psalm. Psalm 59 verses 3 to 4, behold they have set an ambush for my life, fierce men launch an attack against me, not for my transgression nor for my sin,

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O Lord, for no guilt of mine, they run and set themselves against me, arouse yourself to help me and see.

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Psalm 109 verse 2, for they have opened the wicked and deceitful mouth against me, they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.

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These are psalms that have imprecatory elements or prayers, curses in them, but notice that the aggrieved party is one who, the innocent one in the aggrieved party is the person who is praying this.

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So our concern should be for the innocent, the weak, the vulnerable, but at the same time understand that sometimes we are the ones who are the aggrieved and the weak and the vulnerable that desire justice, in which case it's still okay to pray for that.

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Notice here the concern for others, Psalm 109 verses 16 to 20, because He did not remember to show loving kindness but persecuted the afflicted and needy man and the despondent in heart to put them to death.

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He loved cursing, so it came to Him. He did not delight in blessing, so it was far from Him, but He clothed

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Himself with cursing as with His garment and entered into His body like water and like oil into His bones.

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Let them be to Him as a garment with which He covers Himself and for a belt with which He constantly girds

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Himself. Let this be the reward of my accusers from the Lord and of those who speak evil against my soul.

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Notice He's mentioning there in that first part, the persecuted, the afflicted, and the needy man, the despondent in heart.

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It is a concern for others and the psalmist is one of those people who is being oppressed in that way, which is why he describes himself there in those next two verses.

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So when we see children, widows, poor, vulnerable people, and we watch unrighteousness that is done to them, even by people in positions of power and authority, even elected officials, and we see the innocent suffering at the hands of sex traffickers and drug runners and terrorists, world leaders, politicians, abortionists, wicked women who promote that holocaust, pedophiles, groomers, child mutilators, murderers, rapists, looters, tyrants, unjust prosecutors.

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These are people who are at war with God. They promote wickedness and evil on a grand scale.

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They do great and tremendous harm against the innocent. How do you deal with that?

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I think it's appropriate to pray against them and I think that the Psalms give us indications of how, why, and when it is appropriate to pray against them.

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To be concerned for the innocent means that we should pray for the downfall of those who exploit the innocent, that God would thwart their plans, bring their schemes to nothing, destroy their enterprises, let justice fall, or save them and deliver them from that deception.

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Those are appropriate prayers. It is appropriate to pray against people who treat the innocent and I understand, you understand that I understand that we're not talking about people who are all morally innocent, but people who do not deserve to be treated like that.

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Okay? Pedophiles, groomers, terrorists, evil, wicked people who take joy and delight in destroying other people, ruining lives, and violating

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God's Word, blaspheming His name. People that we would call moral animals. How do you pray against them?

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I think it's appropriate to pray in precaritory prayers against them. What if some of them sit in the

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White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court and they don't necessarily do those actions themselves, but they certainly facilitate and make it easier for people to do those actions.

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Somebody murders somebody else, a baby, a child, and then they get a slap on the wrist and they are released into the public with, you know, 20 hours of community service or some laughable judgment.

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The truth is that we live in a world where government is not even doing its most basic and fundamental service, which is to punish evildoers and reward those who are right.

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Our society is so broken, the government cannot even do the two things that God tells it to do.

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It does everything else except for those two things. And so how do you pray for a government, a nation, a people, prosecutors who are intent on doing evil and facilitating evil?

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I think it's in precaritory prayers. Third, in precaritory prayers must be prayers for what is just and righteous.

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It must be God -centered, it must be a concern for the innocent, and it must be prayers for what is just and righteous.

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Our prayers must be informed by biblical truth about justice and they should align with God's character, His righteousness and His justice.

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It's unjust to ask for the death of the man who speeds through your neighborhood every day. But I don't think it is unjust to ask for God to let destruction fall upon child mutilating doctors, people who think that pediatric care should look something like the island of Dr.

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Moreau, some horrific thing that is going on in our culture, pedophiles, groomers, and the sexualization of children, even false teachers who blaspheme

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God's name and exploit the poor, the needy, and the desperate while reviling God in the midst of all of that.

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I think in precaritory prayers are appropriate. We can pray against wicked and unjust rulers who are destroying people's lives, but we have to pray for proportional justice that they would get what they are intending for others.

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And this, I think, is the example we see in Psalm 35 verse 8, "'Let destruction come upon him unawares and let the net with which he hid catch himself.

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Into that very destruction let him fall.'" So the psalmist, when they pray for curses, they're not praying for a justice that is not commensurate to the crime, which is why in the imprecatory prayers you see the crimes listed and detailed and then you see what it is that they are calling for.

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It's not overbearing. They're calling for justice. So when we ask for God to give justice, we should be asking for that justice which is commensurate to the crime that has been committed that we're asking

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God to intervene in. So we're not asking for anything that is over the top or wrong in that sense.

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Psalm 109 verses 17 to 18, "'He also loved cursing, so it came to him. He did not delight in blessing, so it was far from him.

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He clothed himself with cursing as with his garment and it entered into his body like water and like oil into his bones.'"

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So he liked cursing, cursing came upon him. He didn't like blessing, instead he got the curse. And Psalm 109 is describing, it's an imprecatory psalm, it describes that judgment that comes and it is a this for that judgment.

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They've done this and this is the justice, so I'm asking God to do what is right and appropriate in the case of this person.

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And so we are asking God to bring justice, a poetic justice that is proportional and just where it fits the crime and we should do this with an eye to the justice that is to come, remembering that in the end

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God will have His say and justice will be done for these very same people. And that brings us to number four, the fourth principle, we leave the execution of judgment in God's hands.

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We do not take it upon ourselves, Romans 12 verse 19, never take your own revenge beloved but leave room for the wrath of God for it is written, vengeance is mine,

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I will repay says the Lord. So we pray for justice, we pray for judgment, we pray against the wicked but then we commit that into the

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Lord's hands understanding that His timing is best and we're asking Him to do something that is appropriate to what is going on.

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And we don't take the judgment of the justice of that, the execution of that into our own hands. David did this, there was a time when he waited and he could have avenged himself on his enemies but he was restrained and he didn't.

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As I mentioned last week, he let Shimei go. David sometimes executes the justice instantly that was deserved and other times he was very restrained in doing that and there is this indication, you read the

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Psalms that the Psalmist is asking God to do something and then leaving it into the hands of God to find the best way and the best time to do that very thing.

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We are not the instruments of God's justice, we don't speak prophetically on behalf of the Messiah King, we're not in David's unique position and so we are to pray in accordance with God's will and His will is to vindicate

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His people, to judge sinners in sin and we're asking Him to do what He has promised to do and then we pray with the proper motivation of love and compassion and righteous indignation and then we trust

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God to answer His way and His time and leave the execution of it into His hands. By the way, did

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Jesus love His enemies? He did. Did Jesus pronounce judgment upon His enemies?

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He did. Is Jesus going to come back and execute judgment upon those enemies? He will.

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You see David's example in Psalm 109 verses 4 through 6, "'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.

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Appoint a wicked man over him and let an accuser stand at his right hand.'" So clearly David had a love for this person and he had shown it and he is not motivated even in asking for judgment, he is not motivated by his personal animosity or personal malice.

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Psalm 35 I think is instructive and I want to look at a series of verses here and I want to notice three things and I would commend

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Psalm 35 for you for your own meditation and study.

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First, David's accusers accused him without cause. Look at Psalm 35 verse 7.

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I'm going to give you some selected passages here from Psalm 35. "'Without cause they hid their net for me. Without cause they dug a pit for my soul.

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Do not let those who are wrongfully my enemies rejoice over me, nor let those who hate me without cause wink maliciously.'"

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So he was an innocent man and he's suffering affliction at the hands of these people who are wrongfully his enemies and three times there he says, four times he asserts it, three times he directly says, this is without cause.

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It's not that he was a perfectly righteous man and not that he was not a sinner, David certainly was, but in terms of the affliction he was enduring, this is an unjust affliction.

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There's nothing that he had done that deserved to be treated like this. And David even in that psalm describes his own kindness to these people.

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Look at verse 13 and 14, "'But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth. I humbled my soul with fasting, and my prayer kept returning to my bosom.'"

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Right? "'When they were afflicted, I was praying for them. I humbled myself and put on sackcloth for them, and I fasted for them, and I was concerned for these people.

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I went about as though it were my friend or brother. I bowed down mourning as one sorrows for a mother.'"

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When these people were afflicted with physical illness, I prayed for them, I wore sackcloth for them,

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I was in mourning over them like it was my own mother who was sick and ill. This is the kindness with which

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David had treated these enemies. And then he prays for their judgment. Verse 24, "'Judge me,

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O Lord my God, according to your righteousness, and do not let them rejoice over me. Do not let them say in their heart,

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Aha, our desire. Do not let them say, We have swallowed him up. Let those be ashamed and humiliated altogether who rejoice at my distress.

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Let those be clothed with shame and dishonor who magnify themselves over me. Let them shout for joy and rejoice who favor my vindication, and let them continually say,

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The Lord be magnified who delights in the prosperity of his servant.'" David there is praying for God to vindicate his justice upon those enemies.

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I want you to notice something. David had treated them with kindness. He had prayed for them. He continued to pray for them.

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And they persecuted him without cause, without any just reason to do that.

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And he expresses his love for them, his concern for them, and prays for God's judgment on them.

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Those two things together. He expresses his love and his concern for them, and he prays for God's judgment upon them.

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Now, it is up to all of us to mature in Christ to the point where we can put those together and have those in our heart at the same time.

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It is...now, is it possible to pray imprecatory prayers with malice and evil in your hearts?

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It is. Is it possible to pray with the wrong motives for our petty grievances in spiteful and vengeful sinful anger and sadistic bloodthirsty wrath?

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Is it possible to pray that way? It is possible to pray that way. And might

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I suggest then that you don't pray imprecatory prayers that way. That should go without saying, right?

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If the only way that you can pray for God to judge your enemies is in the way

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I've just described, evil, malice in your heart, wrong motives, sinful anger with a vindictive bloodlust, then don't pray imprecatory prayers.

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But if you can pray with a heart of love and concern for the innocent and a desire for that enemy to be saved, and you're asking

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God to do something to stop this evil from happening anymore, and therefore to bring justice and judgment and wrath in some way that God sees fit.

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If you can do those at the same time, then I think we can pray imprecatory prayers. Desiring God's justice is not a sinful desire necessarily.

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Desiring a curse upon those who do exceeding evil is not a sinful desire. Praying for that curse upon that person is not inherently sinful because these can be holy and righteous desires that the righteous have.

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Now let me offer you some examples of New Testament imprecations.

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This will probably take about five minutes and then I think we'll be done and have time for some questions. You see examples of New Testament imprecations from the heart of people who talk about loving your enemies and doing good to those who persecute you.

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Galatians 1, I'm amazed that you're so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another, only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

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But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be damned.

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The strongest word possible for damnation. He's to be cursed. As we've said before,

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I say now again, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you have received, he is to be accursed.

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Now what is behind that? Just Paul doesn't like competitors? Is that what it is? These guys go out there, they've got a different message, and then

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I come to town, it's hard for them to gain an offering going when they're trusting in somebody else. Was that what was behind that?

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No, it was the purity of the gospel because the eternal life and salvation of people is at stake.

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The glory of God and the continuation of the truth and the glory of his name revealed in the gospel of Christ is what is at stake.

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This created in Paul such a righteous Indian nation that anybody who would come in and alter the gospel by keeping everything in tact but just adding one little thing, just one little thing, circumcision to it, that person is worthy of judgment.

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And he asked that they be judged. Let them be accursed, eternally damned. First Corinthians 16 .22, if anyone does not love the

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Lord, he is to be accursed, Maranatha. Revelation 6, 9 through 10, when the lamb broke the fifth seal,

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I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and because of the testimony which they had maintained.

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And they cried out with a loud voice saying, how long, O Lord, holy and true, will you refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?

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These are glorified and righteous saints who are praying for this. I would dare say that they have a better handle on holiness and righteousness than anybody in this room, right?

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These are glorified saints at the throne of God saying, how long until you destroy them to judge them and avenge our blood upon these people?

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What do they want? They want justice to fall. They have been martyred. In other words, this is a holy desire.

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You can pray this and you can pray something like this in the presence of God as a glorified saint with no sin present whatsoever.

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Revelation 18, verse 8, this is the destruction and judgment of Babylon, for this reason in one day her plagues will come, pestilence and mourning and famine, and she will be burned up with fire for the

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Lord God who judges her is strong. Here's the reaction of the wicked to those judgments, verse 17, for in one hour such great wealth has been laid waste and every ship master and every passenger and sailor and as many as make their living by the sea stood at a distance and were crying out as they saw the smoke of her burning saying, what city is like the great city?

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They threw dust on their heads and were crying out weeping and mourning saying, whoa, whoa, the great city in which all who had ships at sea became rich by her wealth for in one hour she has been laid waste.

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In other words, all the wicked lament over the fall of Babylon, but here's the response of the righteous in heaven, rejoice over her,

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O heaven and you saints and apostles and prophets because God has pronounced judgment for you against her.

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Therefore, the judgment of God upon this city which wrought so much destruction on the face of the planet, the righteous saints in heaven rejoice and they are commanded, heaven is commanded to rejoice at the righteous judgments of God.

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Revelation 19, 1 -6, after these things I heard something like a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven saying, hallelujah, salvation and glory and power belong to our

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God because his judgments are true and righteous. For he has judged the great harlot who is corrupting the earth with her immorality and he has avenged the blood of his bondservants on her.

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And a second time they said, hallelujah, her smoke rises up forever and ever. And the 24 elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped

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God who sits on the throne saying, hallelujah. And a voice came from the throne saying, give praise to our

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God, all you as bondservants who fear him, the small and the great. Then I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder saying, hallelujah, for the

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Lord, our God, the Almighty reigns. So what happens in heaven when God's judgments are executed on the wicked?

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There is rejoicing. Now I want you to take that sentiment and that understanding and realize that people in our lives whom we know and whom we love who are not believers, when that judgment falls upon them and we have heaven's perspective, this will be our response.

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That is hard for us to swallow here. But if God does something righteous in heaven and we say, no, not on my cousin,

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I didn't like that at all, then you're just questioning God's wisdom and his justice. But when we have

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God's perspective on sin and unrighteousness, then we will rejoice over his judgments.

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And if in heaven the glorified saints can rejoice over the righteous judgments of God, then I would submit to you that it is possible for the righteous to rejoice over God's righteous judgments in this world as well.

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And it is appropriate to pray for those judgments. When the crime is worthy of that kind of judgment.

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So, that is it. Now we have a few minutes for questions. Steve. Well, we're not talking about somebody has a different view of Christ that is a different view, then of course you're talking about somebody who has a heretical or aberrant view of the person of Christ.

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If you're talking about somebody who's using that view to exploit and destroy people, then I think it is appropriate to pray that that would end.

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I would be very hesitant to begin to pray imprecatory prayers against other people within the church over doctrinal issues like that, people who are within one fellowship like that.

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There's certainly evil going on in churches. To take your example and to put it nationally and begin to even put it in a more perverse setting, when you have churches who are

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LGBTQ affirming and they are promoting that and they have rainbows all over the outside of the building and then they stand up and promote the very things that are abominations to God, you have people doing that under the guise of Christianity and mainline denominations.

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That's the type of wickedness and evil that I think is appropriate to pray against. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think he is to be the object of our imprecatory prayers.

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A different take on what is appropriate in a situation like that. Though I may disagree with that and I'm on record for disagreeing with that,

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I would never pray that way against him. He's a genuine brother. I think we're talking about distinctions where you're definitely talking about, there's no doubt that this person is not a brother and what they're doing is destroying people.

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Any other questions? Simon. Yeah. That's a good question.

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Yeah. I did stop short of making it an imperative, a command that you must pray this way.

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And I think the reason that I stopped short of saying that is because there may be something in somebody's heart or situation that makes them uncomfortable praying in this way at this time.

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So, I would not want to put upon you if you're uncomfortable praying or thinking through this, there might be somebody who's been part of this series online or here that they've never even thought of imprecatory issues before.

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And they're measuring this out and working this out and I'm maybe moving the needle with them a little bit, but they're like, man,

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I don't know if I could pray against even sex traffickers, for instance, or terrorists.

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I'm not sure if I could pray that way. I'm trying to move the needle a little bit to say that I think you have the freedom and the liberty to do that, but for me to put that law upon you and say this is what you must pray,

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I would have a hard time because there's no…the illustration is there, the example is there,

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I think the teaching is there, but in terms of this is how you have to pray, I'm hesitant to say that.

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I wouldn't go that far. I think I could say this, generally speaking, we should be praying more like this with our prayers.

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We should be. Now whether you were in sin for not praying imprecatory prayers, I won't say that. But I think that Christians should be praying more like these kinds of prayers against the evil and wickedness of our age.

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Peter. In the study that you've done going through the psalms, the sinners doing imprecatory prayers, they seem, from the outside point of view, to be very personal, and the people who they have a personal connection with.

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Is that your perspective when you say you're praying against sex theft? I don't know.

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Yeah. But that's not something I have personal connection with. Well, we did see examples even today earlier in Psalm, was it 109?

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35 was the one that was really personal. I think it was Psalm 109, where sometimes these evildoers are not necessarily named and they're not necessarily people specifically.

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They are those who do evil, they who afflict the needy and the downtrodden and the widow, etc.

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So some of the descriptions of the evildoers seem to be more general than the specific ones that are like in Psalm 109, where it says,

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I mean, that person, David in that situation had one particular guy in mind who he was praying against.

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And other times, it doesn't seem as if he has one particular person in mind. And other times, it seems as if he is speaking against those who flaunt themselves against God's name and take

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His name in vain and dishonor Him and afflict the needy and the righteous.

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So sometimes it is specific, sometimes I think it is general. I don't know, I mean, if I knew a sex trafficker, they'd be in prison.

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So I don't know the name of a specific sex trafficker, but I do know the name of specific politicians who

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I think are facilitating it. And so I can pray against them, even though they're not my personal enemies, they don't live next door to me.

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Personal, you know, people in positions of power who are doing wickedness, we may not know them, but we know of them and we know their name.

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So I don't think I have to personally know them in order to pray against their wickedness. Mike, did you have one?

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Psalm 69, verse 6? Yeah, it says, "...May those who wait for You not be ashamed through me,

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O Lord God of hosts. May those who seek You not be dishonored through me, O God of Israel." Well, I mean, that's a good verse, a lot of good verses in Psalm 69.

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That is something I think it is possible to pray even in the midst of an imprecation because Psalm 69 is an imprecatory psalm.

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And so, David, this could go back to examining our own heart and our own actions in the midst of praying imprecatory prayers.

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It should be my sentiment that though I pray against the wicked, that I myself will not fall into that same wickedness and that I will not become callous to that and that I myself will not do anything to deserve the kind of judgment that I'm asking

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God to execute on somebody else for their wickedness. So that's a good self -examination that we talked about earlier.

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We examine ourselves and we do not want to dishonor God even in how we pray imprecatory prayers.

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So therefore, I would say that if you struggle with praying this way or desiring these things, that you think it through, you work it through yourself, and make sure that even in your praying against evil in this way, that you're not praying in a way that is dishonoring to God.

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He didn't shrink back to preaching the whole gospel of God. As we study the concept of prayer, what

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Simon talked about, if you look at the prayer that the Lord Jesus said, when you pray, pray in this way, two things

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He said in that that we really should be thinking through. He said, nor shall them come, nor will be done.

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And when we think about what that really means, I won't say that it's a command to pray imprecatory prayers, but we should consider it.

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Yeah. When His will comes, His kingdom comes, much destruction will be happening.

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And His kingdom and His will today is to preach the gospel and all that that implies to those who have participated in that effort.

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That's something to keep in mind as we're studying what it means to pray. Yep. Any other questions?

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Yes. When the imprecatory prayers would be proportional to the crime, when the crime is against the most holy being, how do you pray proportionally?

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Yeah, that's…when the crime is against the most holy being, how do you pray proportionally? Well, then it's not going to be possible for you to pray in proportionally, would it?

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Because eternal judgment would just begin to execute justice for that crime.

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Yeah. That's why I think that when we're praying imprecatory prayers, we're talking about serious issues.

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And it is, not to put words in my mouth, but it is a PhD level thing. We're not talking about petty grievances that we're addressing with this.

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This is…these are serious things. And I think that we can be praying serious things against serious things.

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Jason? Yeah, in the imprecatory prayers, the deliverance…sometimes it's not stated this way.

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The implication of it is this way. Deliver me from the evildoer. Deliver me from this person. And sometimes when you hear…when you read in the

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Psalms, the psalmists say, here's what the evildoer is doing, all of these things, so deliver me from them. There is an imprecatory feeling there, like make this stop.

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And if you need to execute justice, make this stop. Yeah, that can. But God can deliver me from the effects of an evil person without executing judgment as well.

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Okay, that's going to have to be it for me and imprecatory prayers. One final thing before…two final things before we close in prayer.

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If you want this chart that I did with the four kinds of implications in the Psalms and where in each of the

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Psalms you see the verse numbers for those kinds of implications, if you want that, email Kathy, secretary at Kootenai .church.

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Secretary at Kootenai .church. She has access to that. It's a PDF. She will send that to you if you want to kind of check your work as you go through the

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Psalms and notice some of the implications. Yes? What's that? Yeah, and Josh will put it up on the site as well if you want it.

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That might even be better, go to the site and do that. Has this been helpful for you, at least in thinking through this and kind of weighing it out?

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Is it good? Okay, how many of you learned nothing new? Okay, good.

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All right, nobody wants to be the person who raises their hand to that, right? Okay, how many of you learned something new?

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Okay, that makes me feel good. All right, let's pray. Father, we are just grateful that we can enjoy time of fellowship around Your Word and some things in Your Word are easy to apply, to understand, to see in our own hearts and lives.

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Some things are difficult for us to think through and it is because of our fallenness and the limitations of our humanity that we are unable to understand and appreciate fully all that is revealed in Your Word.

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And so we just pray that this time would be profitable and fruitful in our hearts and our lives for us to think justly and righteously.

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And again, we pray that Your Word would inform our affections, our desires, our loves, and our hates and that we would be guided by that in truth for the glory of Christ our