July 10, 2016 A Time To Curse by Pastor Josh Sheldon

The Terror and Hope of God’s Judgment

If you're using one of the Bibles in a few, the page numbers are on the handout.

Nahum chapter 1. Stand. Stand.

Please stand with me for the reading of God's word. An oracle concerning Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum, of Elkash. The Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful.

The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries and keeps wrath of His enemies. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power. And the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet.

He rebukes the sea and makes it dry. He dries up all the rivers. The Shan and Carmel wither. The bloom of Lebanon withers. The mountains quake before Him. The hills melt. The earth heaves before Him. The world and all who dwell in it.

Who can stand before His indignation? Who can endure the heat of His anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken into pieces by Him. The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble.

He knows those who take refuge in Him. But with overflowing flood, He will make a complete end of the adversaries. He will consume His enemies into darkness. What can you plot against the Lord? He will make a complete end.

Trouble will not rise up a second time. For they are like entangled thorns, like drunkards as they drink. They are consumed like stubble, fully dried. From you came one who plotted evil against the Lord, a worthless counselor.

Thus says the Lord, Though they are at full strength in many, they will be cut down and pass away. Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no more. And now I will break His rope from off you, and will burst your bonds apart.

The Lord has given commandment about you. No more shall your name be perpetuated. From the house of your gods, I will cut off the carved image and the metal image. I will make your grave, for you are vile.

Behold, upon the mountains the feet of Him who brings good news, who publishes peace. Keep your feasts, O Judah. Fulfill your vows. For never again shall a worthless pass through you. He is utterly cut off.

Reading from Romans chapter 2, 1 -11. Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. When passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.

We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man, you who judge those who practice such things, and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God?

Or do you presume on the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God's judgment will be revealed.

He will render to each one, according to His works, to those who by patience and well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, He will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury, there will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek.

But the glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also for the Greek. For God shows no partiality. Let us pray. We thank You, Father, for Your Word. We ask that as our pastor comes and shares Your Word with us this morning, that You would, by Your Spirit, cause our hearts and our minds to understand what You have revealed in Scripture and to accept what You have revealed.

We pray that You would sanctify us by Your Word. We ask that You would bless our time this morning, worshiping You and learning from Your Word now, in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you, Tom.

Why God’s Judgment Is Good News

God's judgment is an awesome thing to consider. Just the sheer terror of what it will be like for those who know not the Lord Jesus Christ, those who decline the gospel and the offer of God's forgiveness.

And the final bringing of judgment upon them. It should make us shudder. It should make us all the more grateful and awestruck before God that such is not the lot of those whose faith, whose trust, whose hope is in Jesus Christ.

But the judgment of God is something that is so prevalent through the Scriptures, we dare not ignore it. We cannot look upon the Scripture and fail to read that God indeed will judge, not just His people, but all peoples.

And this, brethren, this is something we must look upon as good news. The passage in Nahum that Tom just read to you, did you notice how that ended in that chapter? Behold upon the mountains the feet of Him who brings good news.

What good news? Well, everything that preceded that was judgment. This awesome, inexorable judgment of God coming upon the sinful people here, Nineveh. But elsewhere in Scripture we would say it's all who would fail to bow the knee to God by faith in His Son, Jesus Christ.

If you read in Revelation chapter 18, read about the fall of Babylon, and just how, in a sense, can I use the word gruesome? How gruesome it was that Babylon was simply destroyed. Babylon being that symbol in Scripture for man-centered religion, for rebellion against God.

And when they are finally destroyed, and finally destroyed, the very next verse in the very next chapter, after this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven crying out, Hallelujah!

See, God's judgments, as awesome as they are, is something for the people of God to rejoice in. Rejoice! Not just that we worship a God who saves, a God who is merciful to sinners. Rejoice in that, yes, but not just in that.

We worship a God who judges sin. This morning, we will be in Psalm 109. Psalm 109. A psalm, if you will, of judgment. We call it an imprecatory psalm. An imprecatory psalm just means it's a psalm of cursing.

Quite literally, that's what the word means. To imprecate, to curse someone. And these kind of psalms, there's several of them in the Psalter. Psalm 109, I think being the longest and perhaps the most intense of them, they sort of embarrass us, don't they?

When we read of a saint like David in this Psalm 109, and this king who was this great type of Christ. As a matter of fact, Jesus' favorite term was son of David. We read of him calling for curses upon his enemies.

Invoking evil upon them, if you will. And he calls for curses not just on his enemies, but on his enemies' children. And not just on his children, but on his wife. And it just doesn't seem to us to be Christian.

We shudder at this. We shy away from the imprecatory psalms or anything like them. They embarrass us. It seems to go against what Jesus tells us, commands us, about loving our enemies and blessing those who curse us.

It especially seems to be in conflict with our Lord's prayer for forgiveness of his tormentors when he said, forgive them, for they know not what they're doing. If Stephen, for example, if Stephen could pray for his murderers, how can we justify praying something like Psalm 109?

The way that would direct us. How do we compare ourselves then to Stephen, who says, do not hold this to their account, as he was dying. We have to acknowledge, we have to agree, all scripture, all scripture, including these psalms, all scripture is God-breathed.

None of it is for anything but our good. And to ignore these psalms from the Bible's book of prayers is to limit ourselves, and I would say to our hurt, limit ourselves. It would be to ignore prayers that are realistic and gritty.

Many psalms, not just these, but I would argue most especially these imprecatory psalms offer us an outlet for the real rubber-is-on-the-road conflicts that we face in our Christian walk. People seem to think that the imprecatory psalms are in conflict with the gospel itself, so we avoid them.

We will not pray this way about our neighbors, about our supervisors, our boss, coworkers. We consign them to the Old Testament. We say implicitly that the God of the Old Testament that would have this kind of prayer be in that part of the Bible, well, that's almost a different God from the God that we worship, as if Jesus and God are somehow different.

That's wrong. It's even a bit dangerous to remove from our arsenal this whole stockpile of prayers that spring forth from the mind of God and are here in our Bibles for our benefit. The imprecatory psalms are bathed in the gospel.

Do not be embarrassed of them. They're bathed in gospel love. They're soaked through with the love of Christ. They're not to be avoided. And so I'd have you turn to Psalm 109. If you're following in the Black Pew Bible in front of you, that's page 508.

Page 508. Do not be silent, O God of my praise, for wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me, speaking against me with lying tongues. They encircle me with words of hate and attack me without cause.

In return for my love they accuse me, but I give myself to prayer. So they reward me evil for good and hatred for my love. And here comes the imprecation. Don't those first verses speak so well to our experience here in this world, even if it is not us personally who've been attacked like that as an individual?

Is this not the world's view of the Christian, of the true Christian, the one who will not compromise on what the Word of God says? Do we not see our faith, our church, our God, our Savior, constantly derided and made fun of in the media?

Is that not this exactly? And not just made fun of, but openly insulted. This is real life stuff. This is what we live in. And verse 6, David, remember David writing by the Holy Spirit, says this, appoint a wicked man against him.

Let an accuser stand at his right hand. When he has tried, let him come forth guilty. Let his prayer be counted as sin. May his days be few. May another take his office. So recognize that from what Peter said about Judas when Judas was being replaced in the first chapter of Acts.

May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. May his children wander about and beg, seeking food far from the ruins they inhabit. May the creditor seize all he has. May strangers plunder the fruits of his toil.

Let there be none to extend kindness to him, nor any to pity his fatherless children. May his posterity be cut off. May his name be blotted out in the second generation. In other words, his house is not going to last.

The second generation, just the children, and be done with him is what the psalmist says here. May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.

Let them be before the Lord continually that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth. And very quickly we find out why David would wish this upon anyone. Verse 16. For he did not remember to show kindness, but pursued the poor and needy and the brokenhearted to put them to death.

He loved to curse. Let curses come upon him. He did not delight in blessing. May it be far from him. He clothed himself with cursing as his coat. May it soak into his body like water, like oil into his bones.

May it be like a garment that he wraps around him, like a belt that he puts on every day. May this be the reward of my accusers from the Lord and of those who speak evil against my life. But you, O God, my Lord, deal on my behalf for your name's sake.

Because your steadfast love is good, deliver me. For I am poor and needy and my heart is stricken within me. I am gone like a shadow at evening. I am shaken off like a locust. My knees are weak through fasting.

My body has become gaunt with no fat. I am an object of scorn to my accusers. When they see me, they wag their heads. Help me, O Lord, my God. Save me according to your steadfast love. Let them know that it is your hand.

You, O Lord, have done it. Let them curse, but you will bless. They arise and are put to shame, but your servant will be glad. May my accusers be clothed with dishonor. May they be wrapped in their own shame as in a cloak.

With my mouth I will give great thanks to the Lord. I will praise him in the midst of the throng. For he stands at the right hand of the needy to save him from those who condemn his soul to death. That's an imprecatory psalm.

That is David's wish upon his enemies. This is, remember, every keystroke inspired by the Holy Spirit of God. For all scripture is breathed out by God. The context here may well be King Saul and David during the times when King Saul was so wrongfully attacking David.

That's Steve Lawson's theory of the context. We have very few clues, but it seems probable that that is what is going on here. David had been Saul's faithful servant from the time he had been drafted to go against Goliath.

But Paul's insane, his paranoid jealousy sought to kill his most loyal servant and his most successful warrior. And this tore at David's heart. This tore at his heart that he knew he was serving Saul as God would have him to serve the king.

And that he never rebelled against Saul's authority or against his person. He never slandered him, but only did his best to serve him rightly. And so this tore at his heart. He wanted the throne. We know he'd been anointed king by this time.

He wanted the throne because God said it would be his, but there was nothing that could convince him to seek it while Saul was king. He was faithful and loyal to Saul. His duty to God was to be this way.

Faithful, true to the king. So before we go through the litany of offenses and the things that are prayed against the wicked, we can immediately stop and check our spirit against David's spirit here. Because we've all been wronged in some ways.

We are often too quick to say I've been wronged. We get too self-defensive, too self-rationalizing and too self-righteous about it. But we have all been wronged at some time or another. We know how bad that feels.

How hard it is to defend ourselves. But before we go through the imprecations of this psalm, let us check our spirit against David's spirit. Look again at verse 22. For I'm poor and needy. My heart is stricken within me.

I'm gone like a shadow. I'm shaken off like a locust. My knees are weak through fasting. My body is gaunt. There's no fat. This man is mourning and fasting and praying over all these things that have come upon him.

Not of his own fault. Not his own accord. Others have imposed these sins upon him. And yet where do we find him? We find him in prayer. We find him fasting. He says I'm poor and needy. The word for poor is the same word that Jesus used in the Beatitudes.

Where he said blessed are the poor in spirit. This is exactly the same word. I'm poor. I am needy. He's without resource against his tormentor. His only refuge is what? It's God. And that's the only place he turns.

His heart at the deepest level is stricken. The word means to be wounded, to be pierced. In some forms it's even used for ritual uncleanness. See the agony that he has. And I don't read this as agony that oh look what I'm going through.

Poor me. This is so hard on me. I think his prayer, his fasting, his agony, his heart being stricken is because of the one who's doing this against him. His heart is stricken for Saul if indeed that is the context of this.

What's the first effect of the wicked deeds of wicked people? What should that first effect be upon us as Christians? As gospel bearers. As light in this world. What should be the first effect upon us when wickedness comes upon us?

Let's assume that we are not at fault here. Because really the first thing we should do is check ourselves. Look at the word of God and see what have I done? Where have I sinned? Where must I repent? The context here is a little bit different.

The first thing that should happen to us when wicked people do wicked things to us and harm us in this way is we should be wounded. We should be willing to admit how much it hurts at the deepest, innermost level.

David says it's my heart. That means the inner man. That means that this is really, really painful. And we need to admit it. We need to not try and be the tough guy or the tough gal and pretend it doesn't hurt like it does.

Saul's response to David broke David's heart. To see the ungodly act according to their nature is an awful sight. To be the recipient of it makes us feel well, to use the word the way it is in some contexts.

It makes us feel polluted, unclean. Our first response, our first gospel lesson here in this psalm of curses is this. Before we get to the imprecation, let our hearts break for the ungodly. There's nothing here that hints at pleasure in the fate of the wicked.

As I live, says the Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Let us be the same. Jesus took no pleasure in knowing that Jerusalem would be destroyed, but what did he do? He wept for Jerusalem, even knowing it was his father's will that Jerusalem would be wiped out, the temple would be taken down brick by brick, not one stone left upon another.

It was God's will. And yet Jesus wept over that, wept over the coming judgment. Let us, before we seek God's vengeance, let's be sure our hearts are broken for those who will see that come upon them. That's first.

Be wounded in the inner man by the wickedness of the wicked, just to see it. And the other thing I think we need to do here is admit how helpless it makes you feel. Admit how helpless it is to be slandered.

And sometimes this comes around, you can't even find out who started it or why. What do they have against me? Why is this all coming upon me? I don't know, but all of a sudden everybody thinks these terrible things of me.

I didn't do this. I don't think that way. I'm not that person. And yet, there it is. It makes us feel helpless, poor and needy, open-handed before God, humbled before Him because He is our only place to turn.

Says, I'm gone like a shadow at evening. I'm shaken off like a lotus. What he's saying is I'm just a shadow of myself anymore. Maybe I'm so intimidated by all this that I shrink away from the confrontation.

I don't even know where it started. Now in David's case, of course, he does know where it started. So often we don't. Things just sort of get around. Even knowing that I'm right, I might fear to enter into the fray.

When I do answer back, my arguments are shaken off like an insect waved off an arm. I'm like a locust. I have no substance. I can't deal with this. And the next verse says, my knees are weak through fasting.

He goes on to say how he's fasted so much that he's gaunt. He's lost weight so much that he looks ghastly. And all this and mourning over these sins that are being foisted upon him. Back in verse four, he says that he's given himself to prayer.

He's given himself to prayer. Let me see if I can get there and read that again to you. In return for my love they accuse me, but I give myself to prayer. And here is where we obey Jesus to pray for our persecutors.

Here is where we bless and do not curse. In the original language there, there's no verb. Prayer is a noun, it's not a verb. He's not saying, I start praying, or I give myself to praying. What it actually says is something more like this, but I, prayer.

But I, comma, space, prayer. It's a way of saying, but I am prayer. I am prayer. I pray for my detractors so much that I am prayer itself. You might think of James, the Lord's brother. It was said of him that he prayed so much that his knees became so calloused that he called him the man with camel's knees.

Have you ever heard that of him before? He was the man with camel's knees because of how much he prayed. And David here, thinking of his persecutors, or of Esau, his one persecutor, we find him as prayer itself.

Could it be a picture of what we learn of James? It's not in the scripture, but it's testified so many places we could take it as true. He's on his knees constantly because of this. I am prayer. Now all this is the right preparation for the imprecations, the prayer, really, of Psalm 109.

It's the right preparation for any time we pray. This is the heart that prays and prays and prays. This is the one who comes to God in an attitude of abject dependence. I am poor and needy. I am open-handed.

Only to thy cross I cling. This one is one who steps into imprecation circumspectly with fear and trembling. Let's think about this a moment. When that lunatic on the road cuts you off, well, how must we pray?

There's no one answer, but let's imagine for a moment that he cuts you off intentionally and you have proof that he meant to do it on purpose. Of course, we always think he did, and that's usually what elicits the kind of response that we give them.

Must I pray, though? Must I pray for God to grant him repentance? That'd be a good prayer. That'd be a good prayer for anybody. Grant them repentance, Lord, that they might believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, that they may come to faith, that they might be forgiven of their sins.

That's a good prayer, but it's not the only prayer. Now you heard me read through all of Psalm 109. I ask you, when that lunatic cuts you off dangerously close, so you have to come off the gas and step on the brakes hard or change your lanes quickly in a way that's almost dangerous just to get out of his way and avoid an accident, might it be proper to pray, Lord, may a CHP be nearby and may he receive the ticket that he deserves.

For he didn't consider that I was in the right lane minding my own business. He had no regard for the safety of others. Lord, punish him now. Is there anything wrong with that prayer? It might be good for the public's safety even, but does that one not deserve that ticket?

I would suggest that that's a good prayer. That's a prayer that Psalm 109 would commend to us. I think of Richard Dawkins. He's Oxford's professor for public understanding of science. He's an avowed atheist.

He's a hater of religion generally, Christianity particularly, and he likens giving our children the heritage of the gospel to child abuse. He calls it child abuse. He says parents should be prevented from teaching their children any religion at all.

He's a brilliant man. He's a biologist, eloquent, well-spoken, influential. Do we pray, O Lord, open his eyes to the gospel of your Son Jesus, show him the truth, and grant him repentance? Yes. We can pray that prayer.

That's a good prayer, but so is this. Lord, defend your holy name against this wicked man. He's led many people astray. He has besmirched you and attacked your people. May his books fail. When he speaks, may you stop his voice.

Father God, may his children go against his ways and become followers of Jesus Christ before his very eyes. Wouldn't that be a good prayer? To him, it'd be a curse. But I would suggest that that's a good prayer and perfectly consistent with Psalm 109.

It's the upshot of everything he calls for, David calls for against his enemy. Verse 16 again. He did not remember to show kindness, but pursued the poor and needy and the brokenhearted to put them to death.

And then this, he says, he loved to curse. Let curses come upon him. It's Talionic justice. You get what you receive. Do not be deceived, for God is not mocked. What a man sows, he reaps. He loved to curse.

Let curses come upon him. He did not delight in blessing. May blessing be far from him. Very consistent with Deuteronomy 2, excuse me, Deuteronomy 19, verses 15 to 21, where it says essentially that a false witness who brings accusation against someone, if it is found that they lied, they receive the punishment that the person they falsely accused would have received had they been found wrongly guilty.

The punishment fits the crime. This one showed no kindness. Let no kindness come to him. This one pursued the poor and put them to death. Do the same to him. He cursed. Let curses come to him. He would not bless.

Let no blessings come upon him either. And the hardest thing here sometimes, and this is certainly David's situation, is that sometimes these are people, these people who are bringing this upon us, these people who are hating us, failing to bless us, cursing us, all these things that we read about in the psalm, all these things that we've experienced in our lives, they're people who have received only love from us.

Perfect love? Well, no. That's only possible from God. But love. And not necessarily personal love. Maybe the love of Christ in letting love cover a multitude of sins. Maybe the love of thinking the best, of saying, well, she's just having a rough day.

He must have just gotten some awful news. I'm not going to hold this over their head. For love's sake, I'll forget it. And then in return, you're attacked by this person. And it shocks us. Don't you know how much in you I've overlooked?

Don't you see any of your own sin? Now, you know, the psalms generally, the imprecatory psalms especially, they cover real life. These are the things that actually happen. These pull no punches when they talk about the awful things that get imposed upon us in life, especially as children of God, most especially when we overtly and rightly represent our Savior, Jesus Christ.

These are the things that happen. In return for love, they accuse me. What is accused? Accused is the Hebrew word, satan. It's where we get the name of our adversary, Satan, the accuser. To accuse, to be a satan, an accuser.

And here's where the imprecatory psalm makes its entrance or the, excuse me, the imprecatory portion of the psalm makes its entrance, is against the accuser. David loved his king and he served him well.

And we all know what he got in return was death threats and conspiracy. Saul gave him his daughter, Michal, because he thought that she'd be a snare to him. He even hoped that the Philistines would somehow defeat him or even kill him.

He slandered David as a traitor in return for his love. This is what he got. You know, there's something about a true, a good and godly spirit, a loving spirit, if you will, that brings out hatred. Have you ever noticed this yourself?

Where the more love you exhibit, the stronger the hatred against you comes? Have you ever read Melville's Billy Budd's Sailor? Billy Budd is an impressed seaman on a British ship of war in the late 18th century.

And the master at arms is a man named John Claggart. He's a cruel, sadistic, mean-tempered man. Basically a man of hatred. And Budd, his purity, his magnanimity of spirit, only served to exacerbate Claggart's wickedness.

The more he was unable to make Budd hate him, the more he hated Billy Budd, the sailor. I'll say no more about it, but it's a wonderful novel if you care to read it. But the point is how Billy Budd's goodness and his refusal to hate Claggart, with all Claggart's efforts to make him hate him, just made Claggart hate all the more.

And there's just something about goodness, about godly, Christ-based love that brings out quite the opposite. And the more love, the more intensive it becomes, the bad reaction to it. We need to take care here.

So often we say we're helping a brother or sister by showing them their faults. We're being edifying, of course. We're speaking the truth in love. We only want to see their problem. We only want them to see their problem.

We want them to repent and to come closer to the image of Christ. That is our goal, right? And I ask, but do we pray first? Do we become prayer itself? Jesus says before you go to get that mote out of their eye, you take the log out of your own eye.

What is this but prayer? And then it's not an option. The log is commanded to come out. Jesus commands you to do that work and then go and help your brother or sister. Do we even pray first? Do we become prayer itself before we become this accuser, this pointer-outer of every fault that we can find?

Do we become prayer itself? Do our knees get calloused or even uncomfortable? Do we say no? And yet we wonder why our words fall on deaf ears, why they float away unheeded like chaff in the wind. Which are we?

Are we Billy Budd or are we John Claggart? Is that mote really there? Is it so harmful that we must say something? Are we that one that when we approach, they just know that another fault has got to be uncovered?

I ask us as we think of these imprecatory psalms, these rightful prayers that God has given this church. Remember Revelation 18. Babylon's destroyed. Remember the beginning of Revelation 19 where heaven shouts out, Hallelujah!

Because the imprecation of God has finally been fulfilled. But have we prayed? Have we become prayer? Are we speaking the truth and love for good and necessary edification as Paul says? Is it love that's being exchanged for false accusations?

You're receiving the false accusations and you know that it was love that you gave forth in the first place. We say yes. I say are you sure that Psalm 109 could well be your next stop? This psalm like the others like it is a prayer of dependence.

Now the imprecations, the curses upon the evil are clear. But it's a prayer of dependence. It starts out in our ESV. It says, Do not be silent, O God of my praise. But really it should be the other way around.

O God of my praise, do not be silent. It begins with God. O God of my praise, my God who is praise itself, do not be silent. And the psalm ends with God. With my mouth I will give great thanks to the Lord.

I will praise him in the midst of the throng. In other words, Lord, do this in a way that only you can get the glory just as verse 27 says. Lord, do this so they can see that your hand and your hand alone and only your hand has done this.

It's a psalm of dependence. The imprecatory prayers are prayers of absolute dependence. And they have to be. We have to be defended because when we try to vindicate ourselves we just end up hashing it all up.

We make things worse. To take our own vengeance is a profound statement of a lack of faith. It's also abject disobedience because God says vengeance is mine, says the Lord. I will avenge. And we need to leave place for vengeance.

Do we not? And when we don't, I would argue again, we just make things worse and worse and worse. Jesus said that offenses must come but then what does he say? Woe to him by whom the offense comes, that's Matthew 18, 7.

The surest path to being the offense is not starting with God. We don't go right to the imprecations. We start where David started. Oh God of my praise, do not be silent. And we end where he ends, where I'll give thanks to the Lord in the midst of the throng, the church, in the assembly.

Here's a wonderful check on our spirit before we invoke such a prayer, Psalm 109. Look again at verse 16. He did not remember to show kindness. We could say that he did not give one of these little ones a cup of water in Jesus' name.

We could say he refused to clothe them. Verse 17, he loved to curse, he lived to curse, he was curse itself you could almost say. Words of edification and encouragement were foreign to him. He tore down, destroying the one for whom Christ died.

That's terrible, right? Doesn't this person deserve to hear an imprecatory prayer against them? But now we need to hear the word of the Lord. Do we not need to slow down our spirits here? This prayer was given to us for our good.

It's a prayer for the church, for us severally and individually. But before we go right to the curses, are we starting with God? Have we become prayer itself? Have we thought forward a little bit to 1 Corinthians?

Where Paul ends that long list of sins and says, but such were some of you. But such were some of you. Imprecatory Psalms are not wrong. If they were, we'd have no explanation for why God included them in Scripture.

They are not wrong. If they were, why would Peter write in 2 Peter 2, 3, in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

If they're wrong, why would Paul write in Romans 3, 8, and why not do evil that good may come, as some people slanderously charge us with saying, their condemnation is just. That's an imprecation, brethren.

Their condemnation is just. Galatians 1, verses 8 and 9, where Paul says that the bearer of a different gospel should be accursed. I say again, let him be accursed. Galatians 5, 12, he says he wishes they would emasculate themselves.

Or for that matter, think of the woes that Jesus pronounced in Matthew 23. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees. Woe again and again and again. And does he not say to them that all the blood from Abel to Zechariah will come upon this generation?

And remember what Peter said, how Peter said in Acts 1, verse 8, how God was fulfilling there the curse in Psalm 109. God himself pronounced an imprecation against Judas. God himself fulfilled it against him.

You see, it's right for us to desire evil to be punished. God, because of who he is, he must punish evil. Because God is holy, he must punish evil. Because God has sent his son, Jesus Christ, he must punish evil.

Because Christ died for all the evil. Christ went to the cross because of sin. And God poured out his wrath on him, the holy imprecation of Psalm 109, and infinitely, infinitely, infinitely more upon him.

God's eternal wrath at all our sins imprecated, if you will, upon Jesus Christ. It's right to desire evil to be punished. First, we need to be glad, to rejoice, to fall down again before Jesus because our evil was punished in him.

And so we don't look at evil, meaning the people. We don't look at the wicked and gloat over them. We look with humility. Say, such was us, was, past. The sort of prayer, Psalm 109, though, I would suggest to us, if we pray it rightly, if we've prepared ourselves, if we're starting with God, if for those who are against us, we have become prayer itself before we come to this point.