Toward An Imprecatory Theology | Adult Sunday School

So let's get started with Adult Sunday School class. If you find your way into the sanctuary and have a seat, we'll get started here in a moment. All right, let's bow in a word of prayer. Our Father, we thank You for the joy and the pleasure, the delight that it is to gather around Your Word and to be informed by Your truth.

We pray that You would shape and mold our minds and our hearts and our affections by Your Word, and that the teaching of it may land within our hearts and that we would be conformed to the image of Christ.

We pray that You would make us to think Your thoughts after You and help us to see evil and wickedness in the light of Your Word, and also to see the future judgment that is to come that is revealed in Your Word, to see it with clarity and what it will accomplish and how it will glorify and honor You.

And we pray for innocent people now in Israel and around Israel who are in danger. This is a perfect opportunity for us to pray that You would protect those who are Yours, deliver them, and bring judgment and justice and cause the evil to cease.

And so we pray that You would protect Your people and protect the innocent, lest they be consumed like bread and lest they be destroyed. And we pray that through this Your name would be magnified. We know that everything in this world is accomplishing a great end, and it is all heading toward the conclusion that You have ordained.

And in the midst of this, as You set the stage for all that is to come, we pray that You would in Your wrath remember mercy and that You would show Your loving kindness and grace by destroying Your enemies and those who are the enemies of Your people and of the innocent and of Your truth.

We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. All right, well, we are talking about imprecatory prayers in this series. Today my object is to, my objective I should say, is to construct a theological framework of justice and just to remind us of some of the things that we already know.

Next week is the last Sunday that we'll be dealing with the subject of imprecatory prayers. For those of you who may not be here, an imprecatory prayer is a prayer where somebody invokes God to curse or destroy His enemies or their enemies.

You see this in Scripture quite frequently. As reading through the book of Jeremiah this last week, Jeremiah is repeatedly praying that God would embarrass and shame and destroy those who are His enemies.

And then Jeremiah talks about when God is going to embarrass and shame and destroy those who are His enemies. And so we are dealing with this subject of imprecation and how to interpret it. And we are today going to, I'm going to give you 12 statements of sort of truths, some of which we've collected, some of which I've mentioned without really going into it, some of which I've mentioned at great length.

I'm just going to give you 12 statements, theological statements or observations that we have observed and made over the course of our study in imprecatory prayers. And there is no logical theological order to this.

I sort of just wrote them down and have been collecting them over the course of the last several months. And then when I got ready to put all of this together, I realized there's just no order to this.

So it might seem a bit of a scattergun approach, but the point of this is to basically put into place some of the building blocks that we're going to use next week when we look at five principles for praying in imprecatory prayers.

Imprecation by Implication and the Coming Judgment

So here's the first observation. I have 12 of them, and I will get through all 12 of these. I have to get through all 12 of these because I only have one more week. The first one is this. Generic prayers for salvation or for deliverance from the wicked or for the fulfillment of God's eschatological plans are imprecatory by implication.

It's a long statement, and I'm hoping none of you are trying to write all of this down because some of them are a bit longer than that even. So just listen carefully. Generic prayers for salvation or deliverance for God's people from the wicked or prayers for the fulfillment of God's eschatological plans, they are imprecatory by implication.

And what I mean by that is for God to come and to begin to execute His eschatological end times plans is going to mean the destruction of His enemies and the enemies of His people. It will be a wholesale slaughter of those who have allied themselves against God.

So even prayers such as, Thy kingdom come, that's an imprecatory prayer. Do you understand what you're asking for? There's only one way that's going to happen. Not slow and progressive without any violence.

No, when His kingdom comes, it is the stone cut out of the mountain without hands that comes in and crushes the statue of Daniel. It is the destruction of all the kingdoms of the world. It is God putting His king on Zion and ruling them with a rod of iron and the destruction of all the wicked.

So even an innocent prayer like, Thy kingdom come or come Lord Jesus, that's an imprecation by implication. An imprecation by implication. You are implicitly asking God to do something to the wicked, namely to destroy them and to institute His end times plans.

The coming of Christ is going to be an imprecatory event. It's going to be a violent event. It has to be that by nature. I want you to look at a couple of Psalms here, Psalm 14, verses 1 through 7. The fool, have we switched yet?

Okay. The fool has said in his heart there is no God. They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds, there is no one who does good. The Lord has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.

They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt. There is no one who does good, not even one. Now, do you recognize some of those statements from somewhere? That's the book of Romans, right?

Chapter 3. Okay, look at the next few verses. Do all the workers of wickedness not know who eat up my people as they eat bread? And do not call upon the Lord? They are in great dread, for God is with the righteous generation.

Who would put to shame the counsel of the afflicted? But the Lord is His refuge. Oh, that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion when the Lord restores His captive people. Jacob will rejoice, Israel will be glad.

Okay, verse 7. When the Lord restores His captive people, the salvation of Israel will come out of Zion. What is that describing? That is describing a judgment that is to come. Not just that God would deliver His people, Israel, from their enemies, but when you talk about the ultimate salvation of Israel, you're talking about the complete destruction and annihilation of all Israel's enemies.

So a prayer for salvation would mean often the end or the destruction of the wicked. Now, it is possible for God to end evil without judging His enemies. That is possible, isn't it? For somebody to be enduring or somebody to be committing untold wickedness and evil and this to be happening to God's people or to the innocent or to the bystander, and then for God to cause that to stop, we could probably think of a dozen, two dozen ways that God could cause that to happen.

He could save the evildoer. He could cause the evildoer to have a heart attack and go into the hospital and stop his evil ways. God could make it impossible for the evildoer to do that, just like remove his physical or mental capacities for to have that happen.

There are all kinds of ways that God could stop evil without bringing judgment. But in the Psalms, that is rarely the case. Even some of the generic requests for God to save His people and deliver His people, even some of those generic requests are laden with the implication that this is going to happen through judgment, ultimate judgment upon God's enemies.

Second statement, though some Psalms don't mention judgment upon the wicked, those are the non-imprecatory Psalms, many of them lament the wicked and plea for deliverance. So even though there are Psalms that do not ask God to curse or to judge the wicked, even those Psalms are rife with mentions of the wicked and pleas for God's deliverance.

And they don't go, those 53 non-imprecatory Psalms, and I put them in that classification, those 53 non-imprecatory Psalms may not necessarily go as far as to ask God to destroy the wicked, but the implication is that these wicked things are happening, these people are evil, they're doing this to the innocent, to your people, God come and deal with this, make it stop.

And the implication even of the non-imprecatory Psalms is that they are asking for some sort of a deliverance which may or may not involve eschatological wrath. The notable exception to that is Psalm 150 that I mentioned several weeks ago, and I just remind you, if there is a chronological order to the Psalms, in other words, David saw to the composition of the first two books of the Psalms, was it two or three, I think it was the first two books of the Psalms, mostly David's Psalms, and there is a chronological order to those Psalms as a story is being told, when you get to the end of the Psalter, Psalm 150, there's no mention of the wicked, there's no mention of judgment, there's no mention of wrath, there's no mention of destruction, there's no plea for any of that.

Why is that? Because Psalm 150 is probably a picture, a portrait of the ultimate state that we will enjoy when all the wicked have been done away with, when all wickedness has been judged. Then it's just praise.

The wicked aren't there, the lament isn't there, the angst over the people of God is not there, and the innocent, it's just nothing but praise. Number three, the reign of God cannot be separated from the destruction of the wicked and the judgment to come.

The reign of God cannot be separated from the wicked, from the destruction of the wicked and the judgment to come. God's desire is to reign and to establish that reign and to demonstrate that reign and to manifest that reign to all of creation.

This will necessarily mean the destruction of the wicked. Psalm 45, for instance, celebrates the king's marriage. It's a song written for a royal celebration, probably Solomon or somebody close to Solomon, maybe David.

Psalm 45 verse 3 says, Gird your sword on your thigh. Now remember, this is a wedding song. This is what we sing at a wedding. This is the joy, this is the rejoicing, this is happy celebration. Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one, in your splendor and your majesty, and in your majesty ride on victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness.

Let your right hand teach you awesome things. Your arrows are sharp, the peoples fall under you. Your arrows are in the heart of the king's enemies. Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. A scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.

You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore, God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of joy above your fellows. You probably recognize verse 6 is a quotation from Hebrews chapter 1.

God, your God, has anointed you. Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, and a scepter of uprightness is a scepter of his kingdom. That's quoted in Hebrews chapter 1 to show that Jesus Christ is the God and the king who is spoken of in Psalm 45.

So this is obviously a psalm written in a historical context that is describing the wedding ceremony, the wedding song of a great king of Israel. But then there is, again, as we see so often in the psalms, one who is looking beyond that event to another future event, and that is describing the one who takes this scepter of his kingdom and loves righteousness and hates wickedness and is anointed by God with oil above your fellows, and he reigns and he rules.

And that will necessarily mean the destruction of his enemies. I could take you back to verse 4 where he talks about majesty riding on victoriously and your arrows are sharp and the peoples fall under you.

That's destruction and judgment. So the king described in Psalm 45 is a righteous king, he is a ruling king, he is a reigning king, and he is a warrior king. And that king, of course, is Jesus. He is the one who is God, whom the Father calls God and anoints to rule and to reign.

Okay? That's a quarter of the way through my 12. Any questions on any of that yet? Not drawing any conclusions just yet, just throwing out all of these observations, theological observations that we're going to use and sort of laying out pieces on the table that we'll use to put together the puzzle next week.

Praise for God's Reign and Righteous Judgments

Okay, number 4, praise is given to God for his reigning. Praise is given to God for his reigning. His reign, his rule, his mighty triumph over his enemies becomes the source of praise and adoration for the people of God.

It is something that they rejoice in. Psalm 47, verses 1 -4, O clap your hands, all peoples, shout to God with the voice of joy, for the Lord, most high, is to be feared, a great king over all the earth.

He subdues peoples under us and nations under our feet. He chooses our inheritance for us, the glory of Jacob, whom he loves. Psalm 48, verse 11, Let Mount Zion be glad, and let the daughters of Judah rejoice because of your judgments.

In other words, the judgments of God and his rule and reign become then the source of rejoicing, the cause of rejoicing for the people of God. God's people are to delight in God's righteous judgments.

We should delight in that. If we can't delight in that, something is wrong with us and our perspective and not with God and his perspective. But we should be able to rejoice in God's righteous judgments.

Justice and righteousness are God's attributes and he delights in them. They're part of his nature and part of his glory and he is worthy of praise and worship and adoration when he is revealed through his righteous judgments.

This is the point of Romans 9. God, in order to show his mercy, was gracious to Moses. God, in order to show his justice, hardened Pharaoh. And we can praise God for his mercy and we can praise God for his justice.

And when justice is done, we can be thankful that it is done. We can rejoice in it. We can be glad about it. We can be happy. And we don't have to hide that from people. If suddenly, Israel today just destroyed all of their enemies in the Middle East and the evil of Hamas and Hezbollah and all of the other organizations stopped immediately, you would have your David French style latte-sipping Christians going online and lamenting this execution of justice and righteousness.

And they'd be all clutching their pearls, upset about it, in an apoplectic fit. I would be rejoicing. I would be thankful. And I would praise God for his righteous judgments. And if God is to destroy other people who are wicked, we can, I think, rejoice in the execution of those judgments.

Poetic Justice in Imprecation

Number five, imprecation involves God turning the plans of the wicked back upon themselves, letting them receive the evil they planned for others. This is Psalm 64, 1 -8, which we'll read here in just a moment.

This results in righteous rejoicing. It is, imprecation involves in Scripture God turning the plans of the wicked back upon themselves, letting them receive the evil that they planned for others. This results in the righteous rejoicing.

This is what we would call poetic justice, what the wicked plan they get when God brings it back around to them. The wicked lay a snare for the righteous and then they fall into the snare. This is Proverbs, right?

The wicked lays a snare for the righteous and he falls into that. He is entrapped by the words of his own mouth. It's this idea that God knows and he sees all of these deeds and then he allows the wicked to set all of this up and then executes judgment upon the wicked by bringing upon them the very thing that they had planned for others.

Like Haman, who was hanged on his own gallows. Right? What a graphic display of God's justice. Haman, you know the story, builds the gallows and he's the one hanging from it at the end of the day. Edom got what they deserved because of what they did to Israel.

If you read the book of Obadiah that I refer to as the prophet of poetic justice, you will see in there a statement in Obadiah what you have planned for God's people. God has brought back upon you. Your deeds will come back full circle upon your own head.

That's the book of Obadiah. Edom, when Israel was being raised and plundered, the Edomites who sat, as it were, apart and watched that happen and rejoiced and even cut off, historically, they cut off escape routes for Israel so that they could be sacked and the raiders and the plunders could be even more effective.

And then Obadiah comes out and he proclaims against Edom, what you did to others, what you planned for others, I will do to you. They planned the complete destruction of Israel and God said, because you did that, I will turn this back upon your own head.

You're going to get what you planned for them and this is what is coming for you. There is an equality between the judgment and the crime that is committed. That's the book of Obadiah. By the way, you see it in the history of Israel.

Israel sins, God uses, or sorry, I should say Judah sins to give this illustration. Judah sins, God uses Babylon to punish Judah. This, of course, creates a moral conundrum. How can you use a people more wicked than Babylon to punish us?

And God says, don't worry about it. I got a plan. And the plan was that God would use the Medo-Persians to punish the Babylonians. And that happened during Daniel's stay in Babylon. When Belshazzar lost the kingdom in one night, remember that at the end of, I think it's Daniel chapter 5, Belshazzar loses the kingdom and is taken from him.

And you say, well, did he leave the Medes and the Persians unpunished? Nope, the Greeks came in and did that. Well, how about did the Greeks, did they remain unpunished? Nope, the Romans came in and destroyed them.

Well, did the nation of Rome remain unpunished? Nope. What happened to them? They were split into four kingdoms and went away and they lost the entire Roman Empire because of their folly and their sinful choices.

So there is a cycle to this, a poetic justice that is involved in imprecations. Let me give you some examples of that. Psalm 64, verses 1 to 8. Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint. Preserve my life from dread of the enemy.

Hide me from the secret counsel of evildoers, from the tumult of those who do iniquity, who have sharpened their tongue like a sword. Pay attention to this language. They aimed bitter speech as their arrow to shoot from concealment at the blameless.

Suddenly they shoot at him and do not fear. They hold fast to themselves an evil purpose. They talk of laying snares secretly. They say, who can see then? They devise injustices, saying, we are ready with a well-conceived plot.

For the inward thought and the heart of man are deep, but God will shoot at them with an arrow. Remember the previous slide? They sharpened their arrows. They have aimed them at the righteous. They have conceived this plot, and that arrow is going to go out, and like a boomerang, it's going to come right back and hit them.

God would foil their plots by destroying their wicked plans. Suddenly they will be wounded, so they will make him stumble. Their own tongue is against them. Remember the previous slide? What did it say?

They've sharpened their tongue like a sword. They aimed bitter speech as their arrow. And now God says, the arrow will come back and hit them, and their tongue, like a sword, will be against them. See, that's poetic justice.

So when we talk about imprecation, we are not praying or we are not asking God or expecting God to do something to the wicked that they do not deserve, nor are we asking God to do something to the wicked that they are not planning to do to somebody else.

And then look at how this is a cause of rejoicing. Look at verse 9 and 10. Then all men will fear, and they will declare the work of God and will consider what he has done. The righteous man will be glad in the Lord and take refuge in him.

All the upright in heart will glory. Glory over what? The wicked receiving what they have planned for the righteous. So when a terrorist plans to strap a bomb to his chest and wander into a pizzeria and kill 30, 40, 50, 80 people, innocent people, and he's walking down the street alone, the bomb goes off and destroys him, I rejoice in that.

I would rather have that end than the other end. And that can cause us to rejoice. God does this in small ways with individuals. He does this in large ways with nations. And when we see it, we can rejoice in God's righteous judgments.

And by the way, if we refuse to rejoice in God's righteous judgments, then we are refusing to delight in one of his attributes. And if we are going to worship God as God, then we need to embrace all of his attributes, even the ones that make us uncomfortable.

And we need to be willing and able to rejoice in those and to worship and glorify him because he reveals all of his attributes. Number six, the righteous should be disgusted by evil and have a righteous indignation over its temporary triumph.

The righteous should be disgusted by evil and have a righteous indignation over its temporary triumph. Psalm 15, verse four, in whose eyes a reprobate is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord, he swears to his own hurt and does not change.

It's describing a righteous man who can ascend into the hill of the Lord. Psalm 15, I think it's verse one. And here's the answer. The one in whose eyes a reprobate is despised. We should have a righteous, despising indignation towards sin.

And sometimes that means towards individual sinners who commit that sin. That indignation, that righteous indignation, can simultaneously exist with a love for our enemies. And again, if we can't get that, the problem lies with us and not with God.

Evil should elicit a righteous indignation and a visceral desire for justice from the righteous. We have that when we are offended, right? When you get offended, don't you get sort of indignant, a little righteously indignant when somebody hurts you, cuts you off in traffic, says something about you?

You kind of get all huffy-puffy. Well, how much more when the name of God is maligned, when His people are attacked, when His holiness is thwarted, when His ways are mocked and ridiculed, when His Son is despised and rejected?

How much more should the righteous be indignant about that? Psalm 139, look at verses 19 -22, "'Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God. Depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed.'". Look at that prayer, verse 19.

"'Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God.'". That's what I prayed for at the beginning of this class, by the way. That's not the prayer of an unrighteous, vindictive, bloodthirsty, blood-soaked king.

That's the prayer of a righteous man. "'Depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed, for they speak against you wickedly. Your enemies take 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? I hate them with the utmost hatred. They have become my enemies.'". See, these imprecations and these sentiments is David's righteous indignation and hatred for sin.

He's not upset that somebody called him a name. He's not upset that somebody burned his dinner. He's not asking God to judge his cook or his maid because she didn't empty the bedpan or somebody because they forgot to give him a birthday present.

That's not what he's asking for. He's righteously indignant over those who hate God, despise him, and are his enemies. And David says, "'Because zeal for your house has consumed me, God's enemies are my enemies.

And the degree to which they attack him and me is the degree to which I want God's justice to fall upon his enemies.'". Alan Ross in his commentary on the Psalms says this,. "'These imprecations are the psalmist's expressions of their hatred for sin.

The enemies who were actually attacking the righteous and taunting their faith were the embodiment of evil, vile people in whom falsehood and treachery, cunning, greed, hatred, cruelty, arrogance, and pride had found full expression.

Could David have pitied them and treated them with kindness? He did that insofar as it was possible, but as king he had to champion righteousness and punish evildoers in order to safeguard God's program.'".

Now this is one of the theological principles we have to keep in mind. There are times when David is expressing these sentiments and he is speaking of the coming eschatological judgment that the sun will pour out upon his enemies, and there are times when David is describing his own indignation over sin and sinners, and as king he was commissioned to execute judgment.

This is something, we have to keep this in mind, this is something that you and I do not share with David. God has made no covenant with us, called the Davidic covenant, and set us on his throne and given us the charge to execute God's enemies.

David as a king was commissioned to do that. So there are times when David had pity and treated them with kindness. There were times when he did that. He didn't execute Shimei when he came back into the city of Jerusalem after Absalom had run him out, did he?

He didn't execute Shimei on the day that Shimei was cursing him when he left Jerusalem. And he could have, as king, he could have said, you're cursing God's anointed, he could have executed Shimei right on the spot, and he had men at his ready who were willing to do that, but he didn't do that.

Instead, he gave grace to Shimei, he gave grace to Absalom and lamented when Absalom was killed, even though there are imprecatory psalms where David is praying for the end of the evil and the destruction of God's enemies, where Absalom is probably in the background of that.

Those two things are both going on at the same time. And then you have David as king whose job is to execute justice. He didn't execute God's justice upon Saul, a rebellious and wicked king, when he caught him in the cave, right?

Now you may say, but I remember David putting out a hit on Shimei when he handed the throne to Solomon. That's true, and probably because there is an execution of justice that was right for the king to do.

And Shimei's time of grace had come up. It wasn't unjust for Solomon to execute justice like that. Number seven, the desire for God's justice must be motivated by a concern for the victims of injustice and unrighteousness.

This is key. The desire for God's justice must be motivated by a concern for the victims of injustice and unrighteousness. Psalm 110, or sorry, Psalm 10, verse 12 through 18. Arise, O Lord, O God, lift up your hand.

Do not forget the afflicted. Why has the wicked spurned God? He has said to himself, you will not require it. You have seen it, for you have beheld mischief and vexation and take it into your hand. The unfortunate commits himself to you.

You have been the helper of the orphan, the afflicted, the unfortunate, and the orphan. So here's the prayer. Break the arm of the wicked and the evildoer. Seek out his wickedness until you find none.

The Lord is king forever and ever. Nations have perished from his hand, from his land. O Lord, you have heard the desire of the humble. You will strengthen their heart. You will incline your ear to vindicate the orphan and the oppressed so that man who is of the earth will no longer cause terror.

What kind of terror is he concerned about? The orphan, the afflicted, the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden? David is concerned there. The psalmist is concerned about what is happening to innocent people who are afflicted by this wickedness.

Psalm 12, verses 1 -5. Help, O Lord, for the godly man ceases to be, for the faithful disappear from among the sons of men. They speak falsehood to one another with flattering lips, and with a double heart they speak.

May the Lord cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that speaks great things, who have said, With our tongue we will prevail. Our lips are our own. Who is Lord over us? That's the taunting of the wicked.

Verse 5. Because of the devastation of the afflicted, and because of the groaning of the needy, now I will arise, says the Lord, I will set him in the safety for which he longs. The concern of the imprecations and the prayers for the needy, the downtrodden, and the afflicted.

Psalm 74, verses 18 -23. Remember this, O Lord, that the enemy is reviled, and the foolish people have spurned your name. Do not deliver the soul of your turtle dove to the wild beast. Do not forget the life of your afflicted forever.

Consider the covenant, for the dark places of the land are full of the habitations of violence. Let not the oppressed return dishonored. Let the afflicted and needy, praise your name, arise, O God, and plead your own cause.

Remember how the foolish man reproaches you all day long. Do not forget the voice of your adversaries, the uproar of those who rise against you, which ascends continually. Sorry about that. So that is David's lament over what the wicked are doing to the afflicted, the needy, the innocent.

And that should be the concern behind imprecations. All right, number eight. We're right on track. Not leaving any time for Angelica to ask questions. She saved them all up for next week. What's that?

Okay. Now in a modern context, before I go on to number eight, in a modern context, it would be appropriate to pray for wickedness and evil and God's destruction upon His enemies who oppose His people, who persecute Christians, who exploit people, who traffic people, who sell and buy slaves or people who exploit the needy and the desperate with false teachers, prosperity gospel, fake healings, things of that nature.

Those are appropriate expressions of imprecations in our own day. Number eight, the righteous laugh at the wicked on the day of their calamity. I don't want to make too much of this, but this is something that has to fit inside of our imprecatory theology.

Psalm 52, verses 1 to 9. Why do you boast in evil, O mighty man? The loving kindness of God endures all day long. Your tongue devises destruction like a sharp razor, O worker of deceit. You love evil more than good, falsehood more than speaking what is right.

You love all words that devour, O deceitful tongue. But God will break you down forever. He will snatch you up and tear you away from your tent and uproot you from the land of the living. The righteous will see and fear and will laugh at him, saying, Behold, the man who would not make God his refuge but trusted in the abundance of his riches and was strong in his evil desire.

The righteous will laugh at him. They will see, they will fear, and they will laugh. But as for me, the psalmist says, I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the loving kindness of God forever and ever.

I will give you thanks forever because you have done it, and I will wait on your name for it is good in the presence of your godly ones. The righteous are satisfied. They can delight and even chuckle and mock the fool who plans his little deeds, and it all comes back upon his own head.