Evaluating Interpretive Approaches - Lesson 5

Imprecatory Psalms and the Question of Divine Justice

All right, I'm assuming we're ready to go, so let's bow our heads in prayer, and then we'll get started with this fifth lesson. Our Father, we are thankful to You that we have this time today to dedicate to fellowshipping around Your Word and to learning of Your truth.

We pray that You would help us to think about the Psalms appropriately, to see in them the expression of Your justice, Your love, Your grace. We pray that You would conform our hearts to the image of Christ by Your truth, and that Your Word would function as the tool used by Your Holy Spirit to accomplish that end in Your people.

And so we ask Your blessing upon our time, our study, our fellowship here today, and this class hour we ask in Christ's name, amen. All right, we are today evaluating the interpretive approaches to imprecatory Psalms.

In the past few weeks, we have kind of looked at the Psalms themselves and seen some of the abrasive and aggressive elements of the imprecations in the Psalms. And so today we're going to interpret or deal with some of the different interpretive approaches that people have taken to the imprecatory Psalms.

And these are gonna be what I would say are false approaches or inadequate hermeneutical approaches to the Psalms. I have raised over the last several weeks sort of the issue of imprecations. We've talked about what it is, and then we have wrestled with some of the theology behind that in terms of just raising the issues that we need to address.

And so today we're going to eliminate what I think are inadequate interpretive approaches to the Psalms. And then next week, well, sorry, not next week, next week is Resurrection Sunday. So the following week after that, we don't have any Sunday school next week.

The following week after that, we're gonna look at two imprecatory Psalms, more specifically Psalm 69 and Psalm 109. And then the week after that, I've just got a list of observations and points that I wanna make about imprecatory Psalms.

And then hopefully the last week in this series, we will sort of wrap it all up and present, I think what would be sort of a theological approach to these Psalms and how we interpret them. All right, to review an imprecatory Psalm or an imprecatory prayer is a prayer or a Psalm that invokes evil or asks for a curse upon someone or upon evil itself.

The imprecatory Psalms are those therefore that ask God to send harm or evil upon someone. It is a prayer that asks God to judge someone or calls down a curse or an anathema. It is a prayer or a Psalm that calls for evil to befall somebody, to bring calamity upon someone, destruction, disaster, or judgment.

And there are some examples of imprecatory Psalms just to remind you of what we're looking at. Psalm 68, one and two, let God arise, let his enemies be scattered and let those who hate him flee before him.

As smoke is driven away, so drive them away. As wax melts before the fire, so let the wicked perish before God. Pour out your wrath upon the nations, which do not know you and upon the kingdom, which do not call upon your name, for they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his habitation.

Why should the nation say, where is their God? Let there be known among the nations. Yeah, let there be known among the nations in our sight, vengeance for the blood of your servants, which has been shed.

Psalm 79, verse 12, and return to our neighbors sevenfold into their bosom, the reproach which they have reproached you, O Lord. And notice there that the author is calling for God to do something about the wicked.

And of course, these imprecations are specific and these imprecations are sometimes very graphic. Then there are examples of God being worshiped because of his judgments upon the wicked. Psalm 7, verses 12 through 17.

If a man does not repent, he will sharpen his sword. He has bent his bow and made it ready. He has also prepared for himself deadly weapons. He makes his arrows fiery shafts. Behold, he travails with wickedness and he conceives mischief and brings forth falsehood.

He has dug a pit and hollowed it out and has fallen into the hole which he has made. His mischief will return upon his own head and his violence will descend upon his own pate. I will give thanks to the Lord according to his righteousness and will sing praise to the name of the Lord most high.

So there the author is praising God for his righteous judgments upon the wicked and thanking God that God is going to destroy the wicked for their wickedness. Psalm 149, praise the Lord. Sing to the Lord a new song and his praise in the congregation of the godly ones.

Let Israel be glad in his maker. Let the sons of Zion rejoice in their king. Let them praise his name with dancing. Let them sing praises to him with timbrel and lyre for the Lord takes pleasure in his people.

He will beautify the afflicted ones with salvation. Let the godly ones exult in glory. Let them sing for joy on their beds. Let the high praise of God be in their mouth and a two-edged sword in their hand to execute vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples, to bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron, to execute on them the judgment written.

This is an honor for all his godly ones. Praise the Lord. Now, some of these imprecations are obviously severe. Some of them are personal. And as we talked, as I mentioned last week, and all of this is just by way of review, as we mentioned last week, two-thirds of the Psalms have imprecatory elements like this in them, two-thirds of them.

Not two-thirds of the Psalter. That's not to say that two-thirds of the text, but two-thirds of the number of the Psalms have imprecatory elements like this in them. 97 Psalms in total by my count, and I challenged you last week to do your own reading through the Psalter and to identify either prayers asking God for judgment or praise for God's righteous judgments or mentions of that judgment and to take count of the number for yourself.

I came up with 97, which means that 53 have no imprecatory elements in them at all. There are 48 Psalms that make mention of God's judgments, 30 of them that promise God's judgments, 36 that pray for God's judgment, and 29 that praise and worship God for His righteous judgments.

And so here's the quandary for the believer that I left you with last week. How do we deal with this? How do we reconcile these passages with passages that command us to love our enemies, to be gracious, to be tenderhearted and kind and good, to not return evil for evil, and to be loving and kind to our neighbor?

Should we ever pray this way? Is it appropriate to pray this way? And if so, when? Can we pray this way? And how do we interpret these Psalms and how do we apply their example? So I'm gonna give you three interpretive approaches to the Psalms that we could identify, I think, as you kind of look at how people wrestle through these issues, three of them, and I'm going to critique and evaluate each one theologically.

The Sub-Christian View of the Psalms

The first one is what is called the sub-Christian view. Don't get lost in this quote. We're gonna read it here together in just a moment, but listen to me as I describe this. This is the view that the passages that we are reading and have read over the course of the last few weeks reflect a lower standard of ethics than that which was espoused by Christ.

That is that the Old Testament has a more benighted approach to truth and emotion and evil than Christ gave us. Therefore, the Psalms are sub-Christian. They're less than Christian. Jesus came into the world and he gave us a new ethic.

We're now to love one another and to serve one another and to forgive one another, and that's not what the Old Testament expects us to do. So the ethics of the Old Testament were kind of lowbrow, tribalistic, patriarchal, ancient, archaic ethics that might have characterized some nomadic, wandering tribe of Jews who had spent 400 years in slavery in Egypt, but we now have a new ethic and new morality and new expectations with Christ, who has given us a far better ethic than that which is given in the Old Testament.

The Old Testament authors didn't know any better. They wrote what we might expect them to write since they were a warring and vengeful and brutal and violent group of unenlightened, benighted people. Got it?

That's the sub-Christian view. Or, as Donald Frazer said in 1873, quote, "'At the same time, these passages "'cannot be fully accounted for "'without a frank recognition of the fact "'that the Psalter was conceived and written "'under the old covenant.

"'That dispensation was more stern than ours. "'God's people had, with all other peoples, "'a conflict with sword and spear. "'They wanted to tread down their enemies, "'to crush the heathen, "'and thought it a grand religious triumph "'for a righteous man to wash his feet "'in the blood of the wicked.'".

Psalm 58, verse 10, and Psalm 68, verse 23. "'Now the struggle is without carnal weapons, "'and the tone of the dispensation has changed.'". And that's, he is expressing there the pre-Christian, sub-Christian ethic view of those Psalms.

That was the old dispensation. They thought it was great to wash their feet in the blood of their enemies. We're now under the new covenant, new dispensation. Now we're supposed to forgive our enemies.

Jesus has come along to tell us that they got it all wrong in the old covenant. He gives, here's the examples that he cited there. Psalm 58, verse 10, "'The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance.

"'He will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.'". Psalm 68, verse 22 and 23, "'The Lord said, I will bring them back from Bashan, "'and I will bring them back from the depths of the sea, "'that your foot may shatter them in blood.

"'The tongue of your dogs may have its portion "'from your enemies.'". So this view says that we know better than the Old Testament authors knew. Later revelation, that is New Testament revelation, corrects the Old Testament revelation.

Now we know, because Jesus has revealed this, now we know what we should reject from the Old Testament. Because he has given us a better ethic. So any ethic that doesn't comport with our better ethic should be rejected.

And of course, you can see what that trajectory of thought will give you. Eventually, you begin to take that same hermeneutical, try it again, that same hermeneutical approach, and say, well, under the old covenant, men were leaders and women were submissive.

Under the old covenant, they stoned homosexuals and were against different types of sexual activity. Under the new covenant, we have something better. We have a higher ethic, a better ethic. That's where this hermeneutical trajectory would take us.

So here's my critique of that. First, the Old Testament did not teach a contrary ethic. Leviticus 19 .18, you shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself, for I am the Lord.

Proverbs 20, verse 22, do not say I will repay evil, wait for the Lord and he will save you. Proverbs 24, verse 29, do not say thus I shall do to him as he has done to me, I will render to the man according to his work.

If you're familiar with the Old Testament, you know that this ethic is all the way through the Old Testament. It's nothing new. The Old Testament did not teach a different ethic. Jesus didn't have to come and say, okay, all that stuff that you saw under the old covenant and the Old Testament, anything that makes you feel comfortable or hurt you in the feels, just kind of get rid of that, and I'm here to tell you about something entirely new.

This is a whole new thing that we got going on now, and now I'm gonna elevate the ethical standards of God's people. That was not the approach of Jesus. The Old Testament deals with how we should treat the foreigner and the alien and our brother and our kinsman.

The Old Testament teaches that people are created in the image of God and that they are valuable and gives us expectations of kindness and forgiveness and gentleness, all of those are revealed in the Old Covenant.

You say, but there's also these commands to, or these desires for God's enemies to be judged, right? Yeah, both of those things are together in the Old Covenant, in the Old Testament. Second point, the New Testament ethics rest on Old Testament teaching.

This is important to remember. Not only does the Old Testament teach the same ethical standards and behavior as the New Testament does, but the New Testament ethics rest upon Old Testament teaching. You never get the sense when reading the New Testament that it was intended or written to overturn the Old Testament understanding of ethics and morals.

The New Testament ethic does not supplant the Old Testament ethic, and the New Testament teaching is not there to correct Old Testament teaching. Romans 12, verses 17 to 19, never pay back evil for evil to anyone.

Respect what is right in the sight of all men, if possible, so far as it depends on you. Be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, and now he quotes the Old Testament.

Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. So notice the New Testament commands, ethical commands are grounded in Old Testament teaching. The authors of the New Testament pointed back to the Old Testament.

That is a quotation from Deuteronomy 32, 35. Vengeance is mine, and retribution. In due time, their foot will slip, for the day of their calamity is near, and the impending things hastening upon them.

So Paul doesn't suggest that God's wrath will never be expressed, or that God has changed his ethical or moral standards when he's quoting the Old Testament. He doesn't suggest that vengeance by God is not a good thing or a holy thing or a righteous thing.

He's just saying in Romans chapter 12, it is not up to us to be the executioners of that vengeance. You see what he said, what I'm saying? He's not saying that that is a bad desire to have, but he is saying that as God's people, we leave that into the hand of God, he will bring about vengeance.

And we may cry for it and desire it and long for it and praise God when it comes, but it's not ours to execute. That belongs to God, that's in the hand of God. If it is not sinful for God to judge the wicked, then how can it be sinful for us to desire God to judge the wicked?

Is it sinful for God to judge the wicked? Is that sinful? Not sinful. So if it's not sinful for God to execute judgment on the wicked, why is it sinful for a righteous person to desire God to execute justice on the wicked?

That can't be a sinful desire. It can't be sinful desire for me as one of his children to desire and ask God to do what he has promised to do. He has promised to execute judgment upon his enemies. And therefore, if that is a good and righteous thing for him to do, a good and righteous God to do, then how can it be sinful for me to desire God to do what God has promised to do, which thing is a good and righteous thing for him to do?

It therefore cannot be a sinful thing to desire God to execute judgment upon his enemies when that's the very thing that he has said he will do and he will do it in justice and righteousness and it won't be sinful and it will be a good thing for him to do it when he does it.

Third, my third critique is that Jesus cited the Old Testament for his ethics. So far from this blasphemous nonsense that Jesus came and gave us a higher standard than the Old Covenant gave, Jesus in fact cited the Old Testament for his own ethics, Matthew 24, verses 34 to 40.

But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together. One of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him, teacher, which is the great commandment of the law, and he said to them, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

And this is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And these two commandments depend the whole law on the prophets. Jesus stepped onto the scene and said, look, you've never, ever, ever heard anything like this and this is gonna take you by surprise, but love your neighbor as yourself.

Love God primarily and then love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus didn't say that. So what's the greatest commandment? He pointed to these two. Oh, by the way, he says, this is the Old Covenant, this is the Old Testament expectation, love your neighbor as yourself.

Apparently there's no contradiction between loving your neighbor as yourself and desiring God to execute judgment upon the wicked. Jesus hinged his ethic of loving others on the whole law and the prophets.

That is not a new ethic. He cited the Old Testament, his ethic was an Old Testament ethic. Jesus doesn't suggest something new, something better, something higher, and he didn't contradict the Old Testament perspective on justice.

Fourth, the New Testament authors never suggest that their ethic is superior to the Old Testament ethic. We're running out of time already, but Romans 13, you can see there that Paul quotes the Old Testament for his commandment to owe nothing to anyone except to love one another for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.

For this, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet. And if there's any other commandment summed up in this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Paul quotes the Old Testament as basically the foundation for his ethic. He never suggests that Jesus came and gave us something new, something different, something revolutionary, something that supplanted the Old Testament.

You see it also in Galatians 5 .14, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. James 2 .8, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. New Testament ethic is founded upon Old Testament ethics. Five, this is a misunderstanding of the nature of revelation.

Newer revelation does not contradict nor does it supplant or replace older revelation. This is very important to remember. You have to get this inside of your hermeneutical gridwork, your frame of understanding, interpreting scripture.

Newer revelation does not overturn older revelation. So God promised a king and a kingdom and a Davidic king to sit on David's throne and he'll come along and say, well, that's old covenant. Jesus came along and now he was rejected.

So all the new stuff, that just means that we have to reinterpret the old stuff and overturn that. No, newer revelation does not overturn or overthrow or cast out older revelation. Newer revelation interprets and applies and explains so that we can understand what the Old Testament revelation was, but the revelation and the truth is the same all the way through.

Just a newer revelation adds understanding and light to that older revelation, but it does not supplant it. It does not throw it out. Number six, this is incompatible with a high view of scripture. And I think you're probably already seeing that.

Are the Old Testament imprecatory passages inspired? Were they written by the Holy Spirit? I believe that they were. Are they therefore inerrant? That is without error. Are they therefore infallible, those authors, therefore unable to fail or to err?

They were. So the minute you say they didn't understand the things that we understand and then they wrote those things down, but now we have a better ethic and now we need to reinterpret this. The minute you say that, you place yourself in a position of judging what Old Testament writers said and reinterpreting that and casting blame upon them and suggesting that what they had and what they understood under the Old Covenant was not true.

If we say that they tried to write down truth, but that they got it wrong, then God cannot accurately communicate to Old Testament saints. And then we have to say that human error and limitations and culture affected that Old Revelation negatively.

And if that's true, then who's to say that the New Testament authors got it right? If the Old Testament authors got it wrong, who's to say the New Testament authors got it right? And if that's the way that it goes, the truth like that changes over time.

So they got it wrong, the New Testament authors had it right, but now today we have it right-er, then we can just reinterpret what the New Testament authors wrote, right? That's the trajectory. If God disapproved of these words in the Old Covenant in the Psalms, then why didn't he ever correct that?

And why didn't he prevent it from being recorded? And the seventh critique is that this is not the view of Scripture that's modeled by Jesus and the apostles. And I'm more than to say that under option number two.

But here's option number two, the imprecations in Scripture. And by the way, is there any question about that or observation about that one? That first interpretive approach, the sub-Christian ethic approach to the Psalms?

Nope, all right.

Imprecations as Merely Indicative, Not Imperative

Option two, the imprecations that we find in the Psalms are indicative and not imperative. I need to unpack this a little bit. They're indicative and not imperative. Indicative meaning that they indicate something that is true or describe something that is true, but they're not imperative in the sense of asking or requesting or demanding that God do something.

In other words, indicative just means that they are expressing how somebody feels and not necessarily how God would view it. Thus, the imprecatory Psalms are merely stating what would happen to the wicked, indicative.

This is they're indicating what would happen to the wicked, and they're not actually requesting or commanding the destruction of the wicked. That's the imperative aspect. So they're indicative, not imperative.

They're just observing what's gonna happen, not asking that it does happen. Here's my critique. Number one, this doesn't adequately explain what we actually see when we read the imprecatory Psalms. We don't just read descriptions of God's judgments.

We do actually read requests for God to judge the wicked. Psalm 109, verses six through 15, appoint a wicked man over him and let an accuser stand at his right hand. When he is judged, let him come forth guilty and let his prayer become sin and let his days be few.

Let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. Let his children wander about and beg and let them seek sustenance far from their ruined homes. Let the creditor seize all that he has and let strangers plunder the product of his labor.

Let there be none to extend loving kindness to him nor any to be gracious to his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off. In the following generation, let their name be blotted out. Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord and do not let the sin of his mother be blotted out.

Let them be before the Lord continually that he may cut off their memory from the earth. Does that sound like the author is describing something that is going to be true or is true, or does it sound like the author is asking that these things be true?

He's asking that these things be true. Psalm 59, verse five, you, O Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, awake to punish all the nations and do not be gracious to any who are treacherous in iniquity. Verse 11 of the same psalm, do not slay them or my people will forget.

Scatter them by your power and bring them down, O Lord, our shield, on account of the sin of their mouth and the words of their lips. Let them even be caught in their pride and on account of curses and lies, which they utter, destroy them in wrath, destroy them that they may be no more, that men may know that their God rules in Jacob to the ends of the earth, salaam.

In other words, after praising God for what he's asking God to do, he just says, now just meditate upon this and just glory in it. It's kind of tough, isn't it? Does it sound like the authors are just talking about what God is gonna do?

Or does it sound like the authors are asking God to do what he has promised to do? Asking, they're asking. Second critique is that there are a large number of such requests. Like if we only had to deal with one or two psalms where there was like the two that I've just numbered and given to you here, if that's all we had, we might kind of dismiss a little bit by saying, well, I mean, he's really just sort of describing what's gonna happen and not really asking what God to do, the thing that's gonna happen.

But we don't have just a few of those. We have 36 psalms that pray for God to judge the wicked. And we have 29 psalms that praise God for his judgment on the wicked. Third, there are descriptions of God's judgments in scripture.

He will overthrow, but he overthrew Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, where his loving kindness is everlasting. Psalm 105, they performed his wondrous acts among them and miracles in the land of Ham.

He sent darkness and made it dark and he did not rebel against his words. He turned their waters into blood and caused their fish to die. Their land swarmed with frogs, even in the chambers of their kings.

He spoke and there came a swarm of flies and gnats in their territory. He gave them hail for rain and flaming fire in their land. He struck down their vines also in their fig trees and shattered the trees of their territory.

He spoke and locusts came and young locusts, even without number. And he ate up all the vegetation in their land and ate up the fruit of their ground. He also struck down all the firstborn in their land and the first fruits of all their vigor.

What's the author describing there? The Exodus and the judgments of God upon Egypt, at the Exodus. Now, what you just read there is a description of what God does and what God did, right? So we can recognize what is the description, but then when he says, oh Lord, please judge the wicked and pour out your wrath upon them and let them not be remembered where their sin be blotted out and destroy them forever and scatter them so that your people may know.

That's not a description of what God is gonna do, though God is going to do that. But it is actually a prayer and a request that God do that very thing. Fourth, these are prayers of praise and worship in the Psalms.

The prayers contain requests. They ask God for a judgment. Number five, it is an abuse of the text to ignore the plain meaning of the words. We have mentions of God's judgments in scripture, yes. And we also have requests of God's judgments in scripture.

So let's not take the request and just say, well, these are just merely descriptions. They're not, they're actually requests. They're prayers for God to do this very thing. All right, any question about that option before we move on to the third option?

Imprecatory Psalms as Merely Human Venting

Third, third bad interpretive approach. That these Psalms express honest feelings, but without any divine sanction of them. That these Psalms honestly express, this is one way of viewing it, that these Psalms honestly express the feelings of the people who are writing them, but God does not necessarily sanction those feelings.

In other words, God has withheld his judgment as to whether those feelings are good or bad. All we can say is, he's just really in angst and they just sort of express this desire for God to judge. But we don't really know how God feels about that.

The Psalmist are honestly distraught over the wicked. They are in anguish, they are in distress. They do desire judgment to fall. They want the wicked to be destroyed and to perish. Even individual people and even by specific means, which we have seen them ask for specific judgments in these Psalms.

And these imprecations express how they felt, but they don't express God's approval of how they felt. In other words, what the Psalmist say may have been sinful feelings and sinful desires and sinful requests.

And we would have to understand them as sinful desires and sinful feelings and sinful requests. I mean, honestly, have you ever had a desire, a strong desire or requested God to do something that was sinful?

We probably all have had sinful desires, even very strong desires. And so if we express those desires, when we express those desires without God necessarily sanctioning or condoning the desire as it is expressed, and that's what they would say that the imprecatory Psalms are.

This is just the Psalmist, this is just David being raw and real and authentic, just keeping it real, bro. Just honest, being honest with himself, sharing his lived experience. That's what he's doing.

Not necessarily God condoning those feelings and those requests, but this is how David would have expressed them. And so this interpretive approach says these may even be sinful desires that are expressed, and these may even be sinful prayers as they were expressed.

I hope you're seeing already some problems with that if you have a high view of Scripture. So here's my critique. Number one, this makes the Psalms out to be just a lot of sinful venting, a lot of sinful venting, which turns out to be a divinely inspired book of worship, but it's sinful venting?

That's the how we're to understand the Psalms? Is this just David going off some night? His enemies were having a heyday out there and he just got really frustrated and he just vented out on a piece of paper and that's a good hymn.

We'll sing that next week in the tabernacle. And he writes that down and he's good with that. Is that how we're to understand the Psalms? I mean, two thirds of the Psalms have imprecatory elements in them.

That's a lot of sinful venting, is it not? Second critique is asking a righteous God to do a righteous thing, sinful wish-casting. Again, we come back to something I mentioned earlier. Is it unrighteous or sinful for me to desire a righteous God to do what that righteous God has promised to do in righteousness?

I don't think that that desire is sinful. This is hard for us to get our minds around, I think partly because we are sinful creatures and our sin is inside of our motives and our hearts and our desires and sometimes it's difficult to really examine where our hearts are at and say, what am I desiring God to do in this?

And why do I want God to do that? It is possible that my desire for God to do a righteous thing upon somebody specifically, it's possible that that may in fact be a sinful desire if my motive is wrong in that and what I'm wanting God to do and why I want him to do it is wrong in that.

But again, it's something in me that makes that sinful, not necessarily God doing that thing. Is it sinful to desire God's justice to be vindicated, to ask him to do what he has promised to do? Is it sinful to want to see God's enemies vanquished and to see the innocent people protected and to see evil stopped?

Are those sinful desires? I don't think those are sinful desires. I see something sinful or evil in the news or going on in our nation and I want it to end and I want it to end today, I want it to end right now.

And honestly, my desire is so passionate against some of that evil that if it means the destruction of individual people and the pouring out of God's wrath upon them to end that evil, I'm fine with that.

I think that that is a righteous desire. Now, if it's my personal enemy who cut me off or built his fence on my property line or whatever it is, then that can be a sinful. I want, yeah, but my neighbor is also a liar and a thief and he's cheating other people and so I want God to pour out his wrath upon them, not because of what he did to me.

Meanwhile, in the back of my mind is I lost two feet of property line because he built his fence over there and so if it got him, then he'd get what he deserved from me but it's really the other guy that I'm more concerned about.

See, our desires and our ambitions and our motives can all play into that and corrupt that but I'm trying to make the case to you that these desires that are expressed in the Psalms are not in and of themselves sinful.

Psalm 145, verses five through nine, let the godly ones exult in glory, let them sing for joy on their beds, let the high praises of God be in their mouth and a two-edged sword in their hand to execute vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples, to bind their kings with chains and the nobles with fetters of iron to execute on them the judgment written, this is an hour for all his godly ones, praise the Lord.

An honor, this is an honor for all his godly ones. There is, when Christ returns with angels in flaming fire to execute vengeance upon his enemies, 2 Thessalonians chapter one, when that happens and the righteous saints come back, they are going to be the instruments through which God judges the nations and destroys the kingdoms and his enemies in this world.

And that will be our honor, that will be the honor of the righteous on that day when that happens. So does this sound like impure motives what you just read here in this Psalm? Does this sound like something that God cannot condone?

The fact is, and here's my third critique, God does condone judging his adversaries and his enemies. He is going to do it and he is all about it. He's not gonna do it reluctantly, he's not gonna do it, you know, this is a sinful thing, but I gotta do this in order to wrap this whole clambake up or just have to figure out how to sort of get past this, it's sort of an ugly epoch in human history.

God is not going to judge his enemies reluctantly. He's going to judge them because this is what they deserve. And when the day of grace runs out and there's no more grace and there's no more clemency and there's no more opportunity to repentance, he is not gonna come back with his sword reluctantly or hesitatingly to execute that judgment, he is going to come back in the full fury of his wrath, all of it deserved, and he is going to destroy his enemies.

That is what is going to happen. He's not coming back meek and mild in the manger. Fourth critique is that there is no correction for these sentiments in Scripture, and this I think is a powerful one.

We might expect in some of these Psalms after the psalmist sort of vents his anger and frustration, desires for God to judge the wicked, that you might have at the end of one of those Psalms sort of a, Lord, I know that that wasn't good.