Turn to the book of Psalms and then find Psalm 109.
Psalm 109, now I'm gonna be honest with you
right out of the gate this morning.
Psalm 109 is a difficult part of scripture.
It's one of those sections of the Bible
that at times you see well-meaning Christians
try to apologize for or to dance around
even though they shouldn't, you sometimes find that.
As we've seen in this preaching series so far,
there are many Psalms that are very comforting.
There are Psalms that are encouraging.
There are Psalms that stir our souls
to higher heights of praise and worship
as we've seen over the last three Sundays,
and then there are Psalms like this one.
But the hard truth is life isn't always comfortable.
Life isn't always encouraging or stirring,
and so the Psalms reflect that truth.
Evil in the world is real.
Human sin is deep and pervasive in every corner of the earth.
Injustice and corruption and slander are replete
in every structure and every institution
that mankind designs.
So why shouldn't there be Psalms written
to reflect that situation,
especially when God's people are suffering
and under attack and crying out for help?
The fact is you would expect to see Psalms just like that,
what we call imprecatory Psalms.
In particular, you'd expect to see them show up
in the worship life of Israel,
who as a people and a nation have suffered greatly
for thousands of years.
And so Psalm 109 is considered the fiercest
of all the imprecatory Psalms
in the entire collection of Psalms.
What we're gonna hear this morning is David lay out
somewhere around 30 imprecatory curses against his enemies,
using very severe language.
So Psalm 109 is a difficult read if you are squeamish
about the concepts of divine judgment and wrath.
In fact, C.S. Lewis once described this Psalm as, quote,
striking us in the face like heat from the mouth
of a furnace.
Oh, that's all.
Now, as a reminder, we've covered a few
of the imprecatory Psalms already in this series.
There are seven in all,
five of which were authored by David.
Let's make sure we remember what that term imprecatory means.
It refers to the invoking of judgment
upon a people or an individual who stands opposed to Yahweh,
stands opposed to his people,
and stands opposed to his purposes.
Now, the reason you see David authoring most of them
is because in the Old Testament context,
he is serving as God's anointed king
over the nation of Israel.
So any attack against God's anointed king, David,
is by extension an attack against Yahweh himself.
So that's why we see David involved in these things so often.
By the way, I don't want you to be confused by this either.
You find imprecatory language not just in the Psalms.
You'll find it in the Torah.
You'll find it in the prophets.
And this may come as a surprise to you,
you will find imprecatory language in the New Testament
as well, more on that later.
But no matter how difficult the language is in these Psalms,
listen now, we cannot dismiss it.
We cannot apologize for it or try to dance around it
because all of scripture, we're told,
is inspired by God and profitable for us,
which means there are lessons in Psalm 109
that we need to learn.
So let's dive in.
Let's do what we've been doing each and every week.
Just a brief outline of what the structure
of this Psalm looks like.
I've sectioned it off.
If you're one of those people that likes to draw
on your Bible, bring a pen.
It's good to mark up your Bible.
Did you know that?
It's not some book that you can't highlight
and circle and do all that stuff.
So I've got three different lines here
broken up into four sections.
Verses one to five reflect the attacks that David is under.
This huge section in the middle are the imprecatory curses
that David calls down upon his enemies.
I've titled the third section, Just Help Me, okay?
And we can all sort of identify with that.
And then finally, at the end, you see David's vow of praise.
So we're gonna walk through that structure
in that particular way.
So let's look at the first section.
Look at verses one through five in your Bible.
Here's how David begins.
Oh, God of my praise, do not be silent.
How many of you guys have ever prayed that before?
Lord, please don't be quiet right now.
Please don't be silent.
Verse two, for they have opened their wicked
and deceitful mouth against me.
They have spoken against me with a lying tongue.
They have also surrounded me with words of hatred
and fought against me or attacked me without cause.
In return for my love, they act as my accusers.
But I am in prayer.
And the better translation there is,
but I give myself to prayer.
Thus they have repaid me evil for good
and hatred for my love.
Now these first five verses are crucial
to understanding not just this psalm,
but to understand the broader context
of imprecatory language in the Bible.
In these five verses, David describes this series
of accusations that have been leveled against him
and he makes two very important claims
that you have to understand.
Number one, he claims that he is innocent
before these accusers, that he has acted
in good and loving ways towards these people
who are now leveling charges against him.
And number two, he describes in this very severe way
the iniquity of these people that have apparently
conspired against him and are now leveling these charges.
And those are the two most important conditions
for imprecatory prayers.
And they should be known as very rigorous conditions.
Only somebody who is in right relationship with God
someone who has examined himself
and humbly confessed his own sins,
in the words of Jesus later,
has taken the log out of his own eye.
Only in that condition should anyone dare to pray
as David is about to pray.
And only those who are truly wicked
and utterly opposed to the purposes of God
should ever be the target of an imprecatory prayer.
So those are the conditions.
Innocence of the one praying
and utter wickedness of the target of the prayer.
So notice David feels the heat from his enemies
but his first response is not to shoot back
a verbal nasty response.
I can't highlight that enough.
His first response is not to go,
well I'm gonna shoot back a nasty response.
This is so important for you and I.
This is an area where I see people in the church
fail all the time.
Both church members and leaders.
Somebody hurts our feelings.
Somebody slanders us.
Somebody accuses us or they attack us
or they just criticize us.
Somebody gossips about us.
Sometimes it's done quietly
and you hear about it through a third party.
Sometimes it's done out in the open.
And what do we tend to do in response?
What does our flesh want to do?
We all know the answer to this, right?
We wanna quickly and efficiently
have a sassy comeback, right?
To strike back in self-defense
and also to deliver an equally painful shot
at the person that has hurt us.
To make them look and feel just as bad as we do.
Here's what the Bible calls that.
Returning evil for evil.
That's important to understand.
Now every situation is different
so how we handle each situation is gonna vary.
There are gonna be times when something happens
and we are going to choose to overlook the offense.
We're gonna show grace and just let that
sorta fall off of our shoulders.
We're gonna let that go
and let love cover a multitude of sins.
Other times it is necessary to confront that sin
and to set the record straight.
But how we do that,
how we do that is incredibly important.
And it requires humility and it requires wisdom.
And oftentimes it requires getting wise counsel
before taking action.
But two things can be said for sure.
Not reacting instantly and impulsively
is very, very important.
Just so that you don't return one sin with your own sin
and return evil for evil.
And the second important thing
is what you see David doing here.
His first response to being accused is what?
To pray.
To go to prayer.
To give himself to prayer.
He turns to the one he knows can deliver him
and will ultimately vindicate him
and will show that ultimately it's God's power
and God's glory that matters and not his own reputation.
That is a hard thing for us, right?
That requires humility to say,
ultimately the more important thing
in this brewing conflict is not my reputation
but God's reputation.
So I'm gonna go to him in prayer.
David decides in wisdom to cry out to the Lord
and then to leave the situation in his hands.
Because not only does he,
he knows that he doesn't really have the strength
to fix the problem,
but he knows ultimately this is God's work
to fix the problem, not his own.
So he says, while my enemies are flapping their gums,
while they are accusing me using false words,
trying to do me harm,
what I'm gonna do is talk to God about this.
That's a good posture to take.
Now, let's look closer at David's innocence
and the guilt of his enemies.
Obviously, David is first and foremost,
he's a worshiper of God,
he is a man after God's own heart.
Does that mean he's perfect?
Absolutely not.
But in examining his life and in his writings,
you can't help but recognize
that David maintains a consistent heart of confession
and repentance and a passion to honor and praise the Lord.
So he opens Psalm 109 in that very posture.
Look what his very first line is,
oh God of my praise.
Oh God of my praise.
That is a great way for any worshiper to begin praying.
Notice then, as David comes to his request for help,
notice where he focuses.
And you might, again, if you have a pen,
you like to circle things,
you might wanna circle three words in your Bibles here.
Verse two, mouths.
Also verse two, tongue.
And verse three, words.
Mouth, tongue, words.
So David is being slandered by false accusations.
He says, they've opened their wicked
and deceitful mouths against me.
They have spoken against me with a lying tongue.
And notice the contrast that he's trying
to draw for us here.
His enemies have their poisonous mouths open.
They're flapping their gums all over the place.
And at the same time, what David perceives is
silence on behalf of God.
So can you, do you understand the weight
of what he's feeling?
Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap.
Yap, yap, yap, silence.
He's in a desperate place.
And the volume of slander coming his way
is so overwhelming.
He says here in verse three, they've surrounded me.
And it can feel like that.
When you're under attack sometimes
and the yapping is happening,
it can feel like you're being encircled by a mob, right?
They act as my accusers, David says in verse four.
So he cries out, Lord, of all the times,
please don't be silent now.
Please don't be silent.
I need you.
These men are assassinating my character.
They are attacking my life.
Father, speak up for me.
And then there's a righteous request
because according to David's solemn word here,
these accusations are not based in righteousness.
They're not based in truth.
In fact, they're the opposite of righteousness and truth.
Look at the severity of the words he uses.
Again, if you wanna circle some key words in here,
verse two, listen to the words.
Verse two, wicked, deceitful, lying.
Verse three, hatred.
Verse five, evil.
That is really serious language
that David is drawing for us here.
Not only is he innocent of these accusations,
not only has he not done anything to deserve these attacks,
but he says here, I've been nothing but good and loving
to these very men who are now slandering me.
He's been a benevolent king.
He's ruled over them as a good shepherd,
but in verse three, he says,
they've attacked me without cause.
In return for my love, they accuse me.
In verse five, they've repaid me evil for good
and hatred for my love.
Now, if you've experienced this type of thing
in church life or outside of church life,
you know how that feels.
I've done everything I can to love this person
and what have I gotten for it?
This is hurtful.
This is painful.
Now listen, friends, this is what makes David's enemies
worthy of imprecatory prayers.
This is what makes them worthy of divine wrath,
the way they're treating a righteous man.
How wicked people treat the righteous
is symptomatic of a much bigger problem.
It means that in essence, they have a great hatred
and rebellion towards God himself,
that they would treat God's righteous king in this way.
Now, David doesn't name names here.
It would be nice, because then we'd have a specific story
we could go to in the Old Testament.
We could put a map up.
It'd be amazing, right?
He doesn't name names, doesn't identify his accusers,
and what's interesting here is some Old Testament scholars
believe that he doesn't name names
because he wants to give his audience
a little bit more thought to think about
what's the being behind the slander?
What's the being behind the accusations?
Keep in mind that the Hebrew word for accuser
in verse four is what?
Satan.
That is who Satan is.
Revelation 12 tells us he is the accuser of the brethren,
and he is expertly skilled at manipulating people
to use their mouths and their tongues and their lies
to attack God's people and to divide them.
He has honed this skill for many, many years,
and he's an expert at it.
Spurgeon once declared this important truth.
He said, in all of Satan's armory,
there are no worse weapons than deceitful tongues.
I think that's true.
It's especially satanic when someone receives good
but then returns that good with evil.
It's especially satanic when you give hatred back for love.
And keep in mind, this might be shocking,
but it shouldn't be shocking.
This attack against David is not coming from the Philistines
or the Edomites or the Aramaeans.
It's coming from within his own house,
from the kingdom of Israel.
Does that shock you?
Because this is a principle that we see
throughout church history and right up to today.
Almost all the division in the church
and most of the damage done to our credibility
in front of the world comes from within our own house,
from the church itself.
It comes from internal attacks.
We call it friendly fire, right?
Doesn't come from atheists or the LGBT community.
It comes from within our own house.
It's sad, but it's true.
Now, why does that happen?
Again, because the enemy uses one of our greatest weaknesses,
our impetuous tongues, to get in there
and to divide us one against another.
And we'll come back to that truth in our conclusion today.
There's a lot going on in these first five verses.
Let's move on to the second section in Psalm 109.
Let's look at these imprecatory curses.
Now, I am not gonna walk through each one of them in detail.
I don't have time for that,
but I'll make a few observations as we go along.
Here is the long list, verses six to 20,
of these imprecatory prayer requests
that David has for the Lord, beginning in verse six.
Appoint a wicked man over him, David says,
and let an accuser stand at his right hand.
In other words, Lord, let him experience the very thing
that he is attempting to do to me.
Now, this principle comes out of a very basic
Old Testament concept known as lex talionis in Latin,
the law of retribution,
where the severity of the punishment is exactly proportional
to the crime itself.
It punishes the criminal with the very same injury
that they inflicted upon their victim.
And so David is asking God to return the favor
on the head of his enemy.
He wants the accuser to become the accused.
Lex talionis, the law of retribution.
And verse seven says, and when he is judged, Lord,
let him come forth guilty and let his prayer become sin.
Let his days be few.
Let another take his office or his position.
Now, already you may have noticed something.
The pronouns have changed between that first section
and this second section.
It started in the plural in verses one through five,
and now in this cursing section, it changes to singular.
Look again at verses one through five.
Five times you see they, right?
David is describing a group of people who are accusing him.
But now, beginning in verse six,
you see he, him, and his being used.
Now, why is this?
To be honest, we don't know for sure.
This has stumped Old Testament scholars
for thousands of years.
But the most plausible explanation is,
although it's a group of people
that are conspired against David,
he has in mind some man, a single person
who is potentially the ringleader of this group
that he's speaking about.
Or perhaps, once again, he's highlighting the single being
who is behind the group of accusers, Satan himself.
But this much we do know,
and we know this from the New Testament.
There's a connection to Satan here from the New Testament.
If you look at verse eight again,
look what it says at the end.
Let another take his office or his position.
That is quoted, cited in Acts chapter one.
Peter stands up in front of the disciples,
and I'll put the verse on the screen.
He says, brothers, the scripture had to be fulfilled,
which the Holy Spirit foretold by the mouth of who?
Of David concerning who?
Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus.
He, Judas, was counted among us
and received his share in this ministry,
for it is written in the book of Psalms.
Let his homestead be made desolate
and let no one dwell in it.
Now that's from another imprecatory Psalm, Psalm 69.
But then it says, and let another man take his office.
That's from our Psalm for today.
So just as, get this now,
just as Jesus is a fulfillment of the prophecy
concerning the seat of David, in a similar way,
Judas is a fulfillment of the seat of these wicked betrayers
who are coming against God's anointed King.
Amazing parallels here.
Now, let's keep going in Psalm one and nine.
The rest of this section is very fierce
and you cannot help but judge it as very sad as well.
Because when someone sins in this way,
with great rebellion in his heart against God,
it's not just the individual who suffers.
The consequences of his sin spill over, right?
It's gonna spill over to his entire house.
And we know this, this is just a general principle
of sowing and reaping.
Listen now, a father's sin will naturally spill over
to his entire family.
We should know that.
Gentlemen, we have a great responsibility in this.
A father's sin will naturally overflow
and spill into his family.
And so David asked God to punish these wicked men
over generations.
Look at verse nine.
Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
Let his children wander about and beg
and let them seek sustenance or food
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 or his line of descendants
be cut off in a following generation
and 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 our Lord continually
that he may cut off their memory from the earth.
Let's pray, no.
Ouch, right?
We can't end on that.
Ouch.
Now, before you get all upset about this,
and I understand the emotion behind this,
at verse 16, there's an interesting shift in tone.
And this helps explain this.
These accusers have not just targeted the king of Israel.
What we find out in the next few verses
is this is a pattern in their life,
a pattern of wickedness that deserves judgment and wrath.
So why does David ask for all these things?
Verse 16, because he did not remember
to show loving kindness,
but persecuted the afflicted and the needy man
and the despondent in heart to put them to death.
He's a murderer.
Verse 17, he also loved cursing,
so it came to him, and he did not delight in blessing,
so it was far from him.
Listen to how the CSB puts this.
It's so beautiful and poetic.
It says, he loved cursing, let it fall on him.
He took no delight in blessing,
let the blessing be far from him.
Lex Talionis.
Verse 18, but he clothed himself with cursing
as with a garment.
As with a garment, it entered into or soaked into his body,
like water and like oil into his bones.
Wow.
So let it be to him as a garment
with which he covers himself
and for a belt with which he constantly girds himself.
Wow.
So as harsh as this sound, what we read here
are biblical principles which describe
how God will ultimately judge mankind
based on their own standards, based on their own deeds,
based on their own hearts.
Those who refuse to show mercy will not receive mercy.
Those who love to curse, a curse will come upon them.
Those who withhold blessing should not expect
to receive a blessing.
This is what sin deserves.
And if you're found in Christ this morning,
you should say, thank God that's not me.
Thank God that I've been saved by God's grace
through faith.
Otherwise, that's me too.
This is what sin deserves.
And surely a wicked man has no complaint before God
if he's judged by his own standards,
if he's judged by his own life.
Finally, David summarizes this section in verse 20.
Let this be the reward or the payment of my accusers
from the Lord and of those who speak evil against my soul.
Now that last statement is important.
David does not say, let all these things come upon you
as a payment from my hand.
He says, let it come upon you as a payment from the Lord.
And that's critical.
That's important to understand.
In precatory Psalms, take matters of injustice
to the throne of God.
They are not to be acts of personal vengeance.
We take them to the throne of God.
We should never forget what Paul writes in Romans 12, 19,
which itself comes out of the Old Testament
from Deuteronomy 32.
Paul says, friends, do not avenge yourselves.
Instead, leave room for God's wrath.
Because it is written, vengeance belongs to me,
I will repay, says the Lord.
So the one who prays in a precatory prayer
must call upon God to act and then to wait upon him to act
in his perfect timing, in his way, and as he sees fit.
This is not about personal vengeance.
Because ultimately in precatory prayers,
I said this earlier, should be more God-focused
than self-focused.
God's reputation is at stake far more than our reputation
from earthly accusations.
So we gotta make sure we get this right.
Now earlier I hinted that there is imprecatory language
in the New Testament, and you may have gone through
a catalog in your brain trying to think,
well, where do we find this?
Let me give you a few examples.
And then we'll talk about what this means for us
as new covenant believers.
Jesus himself certainly evoked a series of prophetic curses
upon the scribes and the Pharisees, didn't he?
In all of his woes, he used imprecatory language.
When Simon the magician sought to buy Peter's power
to perform wonders, Peter said this to him,
may your silver be destroyed with you.
Wow, right?
Because you thought you could obtain the gift of God
with money, may it be destroyed with you.
Peter also pronounced sentence upon Ananias and Sapphira
in Acts chapter five, right?
He said, why has Satan so filled your heart
to lie to the Holy Spirit?
You've not lied to man, but to God, and what happened?
Ananias dropped dead.
That's pretty imprecatory.
We know that in Galatians one, the apostle Paul
issued an anathema upon anybody who preaches
a false gospel, right?
He said, let them be what?
Accursed.
If you go out and preach a false gospel,
you're to be accursed, Paul said.
He also cursed a false prophet and a sorcerer
in Acts chapter 13.
It says, fill with the Holy Spirit.
Paul said, you are full of all kinds of deceit
and trickery, you son of the devil.
Woof.
You enemy of all that is right.
Won't you ever stop perverting the straight path
of the Lord?
Now look, the Lord's hand is against you.
Similar language.
In 1 Timothy 1, he delivered two men,
Hymenaeus and Alexander, handed them over to Satan
to be taught not to blaspheme.
So these are all good examples of imprecatory language.
So it's not just an Old Testament thing,
but they come with caveats, don't they?
We have to be cautious with this,
because we can get all riled up and go,
man, I got a whole list of things
for my prayer time tomorrow morning.
I got a whole list of enemies.
Let's be careful.
Let's remember the caveats.
As I mentioned earlier, the primary caveat is first,
the innocence of the one praying,
the humility and the self-examination
and the innocence of the one praying.
Second, the absolute wickedness of the target.
And what that means is, this type of prayer
is not gonna be common.
This is not a prayer to use lightly.
We don't drive to work tomorrow and go,
that guy cut me off.
He's gonna be like, I'm gonna go to work tomorrow.
I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be cut off.
Imprecatory prayer.
Right?
Or somebody at work annoyed me.
All right, I'll get him.
That is not the point here.
Be very cautious.
This is the kind of prayer reserved for those who actively
and willfully seek the destruction of God's people.
It's also crucial to note that in the current dispensation
that we live under, under the new covenant,
when there is no longer an anointed king in Jerusalem,
we are not a believing nation of Israel.
When the gospel has gone to the ends of the earth
and we now have a universal priesthood,
that any imprecatory prayers that we pray
should also include a desire to see our enemies
turn from sin and repent and be saved.
Right?
This is part of why we teach a dispensational view
of scripture.
Things have changed under the new covenant.
And so that's something we should always plead with God for.
We pray, listen, we pray first for mercy.
And if not mercy, then for God's justice.
Because God is 100% of both of those things, right?
He is completely merciful and He's completely just.
So we can pray like David.
We can say, oh, God of my praise,
do not be silent in the face of this evil on the earth.
Do not be silent, Lord.
May the gospel go out to our enemies.
And if it's your will, do a saving work among them.
May they turn from evil and bow at the feet of your son.
That would be the best possible outcome.
But if they will not repent and turn to Christ, Lord,
then crush the head of the snake.
Extinguish their cause, let their days be few.
But we leave vengeance to you, Lord.
Vindicate your great name by cutting them off
from the face of the earth.
We can do that in the right circumstance.
Mercy and then justice.
That's honestly, that's as I was writing the sermon,
that's the only way that I feel like I can honor
and be faithful to both of these principles
that we have in scripture, right?
That we wanna see our enemies turn and be saved.
But at the same time, to be able to pray
in the same way that David shows us
in this particular psalm, amen?
Okay, let's quickly look at the last two sections
and then we'll conclude with some practical stuff.
These last two sections beginning in verse 21,
here we come to something that we've seen
over and over again in the psalm series
and that is a pivot point.
A point in the psalm where the tone and the focus shift,
where the psalmist's eyes come back to the glory of God
and back to worship.
And so David has just laid out these imprecatory curses
and then he writes, but you, O God, right?
But you, the Lord, deal kindly with me for your name's sake.
Because your loving kindness is good, deliver me
or rescue me.
For I am afflicted and needy
and my heart is wounded within me.
I am passing or fading away like a shadow
when it lengthens.
I'm shaken off like the locust.
My knees are weak from fasting
and my flesh has grown lean without fatness.
I also have become a reproach or an object of ridicule
to them.
When they see me, they wag their head.
They shake their head in scorn.
Help me, O Lord, my God.
Save me according to your loving kindness
and let them know that this is your hand.
You, Lord, have done it.
So catch the key phrases here where David once again
pleads for God's help.
But you, Yahweh, Adonai, deal kindly with me.
Deliver me.
Then in verse 26, help me, Yahweh, Elohim, save me.
And you see David pleading for help
and for rescue on two different levels.
First, there's the earthly level,
then the heavenly level.
From the earthly perspective, you see in the language,
he is experiencing a crisis here
that is causing him great suffering and great anxiety.
It's an emotional crisis.
He says it himself in verse 22.
I'm afflicted and needy.
He says my heart is wounded within me.
Have you ever felt that?
You're being attacked and man,
it just destroys you within.
You're afflicted, you're suffering,
and you need the Lord.
And then he goes on to describe how that emotional crisis
then has manifested itself in this physical person.
I've experienced this when you're going through a hard time
and your body can feel it.
And he says, look, I've been fasting over this.
I've lost large amounts of weight.
I'm as skinny as a shadow, he says.
His life seems to be wasting as well.
His appearance is so awful now
that when his enemies see him,
they mock him and they shake their heads with contempt.
Look what our king has become.
This is painful stuff.
So David pleads with God over these things.
He needs physical restoration.
He needs emotional restoration.
But then there's the higher level of pleading.
He asked for Yahweh to speak and to act for his own namesake
and because of his chesed, right?
His faithful covenant love.
Lord, act because of those things.
This is the higher level, right?
Because those are covenantal reasons.
This is who Yahweh is.
He acts according to his promises
and according to his great name
and his love for his own glory and his own reputation.
So David, praise, vindicate your character, Lord,
by destroying your enemies
and in the process restoring my health.
And in the end, Lord, let the world see
that it's you who has done this, not me.
Beautiful prayer, right?
Really God-focused, not self-focused.
I mean, he's going through it, but it's God-focused.
He wants the Lord to do a great work.
And then finally, in the last two verses,
David wraps up his prayer
in the same way that any of us should wrap up.
When we lay a whole bunch of prayer requests before the Lord,
here is a great way to finish that prayer
with a vow to continue to praise his name.
Regardless of what God chooses to do, right?
Because he's sovereign.
We can't manipulate him to act in our prayers,
but we can vow, Lord, whatever you choose to do
in your perfect sovereign will, I will keep praising you.
Verse 30, with my mouth, I will give thanks abundantly
to the Lord, and in the midst of many, I will praise him.
So do you see how he bookends this Psalm with praise?
The very first line was what?
Oh, God of my praise.
And in verse 30, in the midst of the many,
I will praise him.
So David is picturing a time
when he can go back into God's house.
And in the midst of the congregation of Israel,
with full confidence, he can praise the Lord
because he knows that he's going to be praised
and he knows that his God will vindicate him over time.
What an encouragement and an example
that will be for the people of Israel
to see their king doing exactly that,
praising the Lord in his house.
Verse 31, for he stands at the right hand of the needy
to save him from those who judge his soul.
David knows there's no accusation of men
that can stand between himself and Yahweh's love for him.
And is there a better reason to worship and praise than that?
That nothing can divide us from God's love?
And so we keep praising him.
Amen?
All right, so we got through a Psalm.
It's a long Psalm.
We got through it all though.
Let this be a really good guide for the way you pray
when you're under attack.
Now, as we close, I want to circle back to the idea of words.
And Adam did such a great job this morning
praying for us in this regard, how we use our words,
because that is the basis of the attacks
against the Lord's anointed here, right?
The verbal attacks from his enemies.
And friends, in the church, this is all too common.
It's part of the curse that has come upon us
as natural men and women.
Do you know that?
It's part of the curse of original sin.
This is why Paul says in Romans three, he says,
you know this famous passage from Romans three.
He says, there's none righteous, not even one.
But look at some of the language he uses.
He says, their throat, some of the same body parts, right?
Their throat is an open grave.
They deceive with their tongues.
The venom of vipers is under their lips
and their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.
That's natural man.
That's who we are.
That's a hard truth.
We don't like hearing that, but it's true.
We heard the same thing in our call to worship this morning.
This is why Grant selected this passage
from Proverbs six.
This is what it says.
He says, a worthless person, a wicked man,
goes about with crooked speech.
Crooked speech.
He winks with his eyes, signals with his feet,
points with his finger, and with a perverted heart,
he devises evil.
Wow.
There's six things that the Lord hates, hates a strong word.
Seven, they're an abomination to him.
Abomination is a serious word,
but this is how God feels.
And among those things is a lying tongue,
a false witness who breathes out lies,
and one who sows discord among brothers.
One who sows discord among brothers.
That's who we are as human beings, like it or not.
And even for the redeemed, even for those of us
who have been saved by God's grace
and are in the process of sanctification,
still our tongue can be a real problem, right?
You know James talks about this, right?
It's the most famous verse about how we use our words
from James five.
He's talking about save people.
He says, consider how a small fire
sets ablaze a large forest, and the tongue is a fire.
The tongue, a world of unrighteousness
is placed among our members.
It stains the whole body, sets the course of life on fire,
and is itself set on fire by hell.
Every kind of animal, bird, reptile, and fish is tamed,
and has been tamed by humankind,
but no one can tame the tongue.
It is a restless evil full of deadly poison.
Let's pray.
Wow.
Why don't we take this more seriously?
Wow.
And then he wraps up.
He says, with the tongue, and this is really
for the believer, right?
This section here.
With the tongue, we bless our Lord and Father,
and with it, we curse people who are made in God's likeness.
Blessing and cursing come out of the same mouth,
and look at that last statement.
Church, listen, my brothers and sisters,
these things should not be this way.
These things should not happen in God's house
among God's people.
So obviously, this matters for us today.
It's very practical, right?
We talk about unity here at Oak Hill all the time,
so this is very practical and very important.
Adam alluded to it in his pastoral prayer.
Proverbs 18.21 says, death and life
are in the power of the tongue.
Now that seems like an extreme statement,
but think about this.
Our words are never neutral.
We don't speak neutral words.
Every time we open our mouths to speak,
we're speaking either one direction or the other,
life or death.
Think of this.
Our tongues, with minimal effort,
minimal effort, can speak life and love and care
and encouragement and the building up of others,
or, again, with almost no effort whatsoever,
our tongues can speak hatred, hurt, strife, division,
and the tearing down of others.
It's the most accessible and efficient weapon
that we can utilize.
It's terrifying.
And it needs to be carefully guarded.
I'll give you an example of this,
and, man, I hate using my own life
as an example of these things,
so I saw this great little note on a blog
from a fellow pastor who gave what I think
is a beautiful example of the contrast
between these two things.
It's a brief story, but let me read it to you.
Here's what he wrote.
He said, pastors have a special relationship with Mondays.
We often call them Blue Mondays
because it's the day we spend in recovery mode
from the rigors of Sunday
and the sermon we spent all those hours preparing
only to see it fall as flat as the Kansas prairie.
I like that.
Sometimes you just feel that way.
He says, Monday is the day that that church member
sends an email to complain about the music.
Or the refreshments, or how the youth group
is meeting his family's needs,
or any of a hundred other things
that can be complained about in church life.
I remember one particularly difficult point
on a particularly difficult Monday a couple of years ago
when I was feeling down
after a low attendance, low energy Sunday.
I'd also learned that a prominent family
had announced to others that they were leaving,
but hadn't taken the time to tell me yet.
So I opened my email that morning,
convinced I would probably encounter even more bad news.
It's Blue Monday.
But the first message was from a relatively new member,
and his words were as humble as they were sweet.
He was grateful for our church's faithfulness,
for the elders clear-headed vision,
and for the friendliness of our members.
He loved that we valued the Bible enough
to make it central to everything we do.
And this one got me, he wrote, he actually thanked me.
And with that, the Monday blues were gone.
In just two short paragraphs,
those words had breathed new life into my spirit.
And suddenly I was rejoicing about the week ahead,
ready to press on toward whatever God had for me.
Do you see the contrast?
Didn't take much.
Didn't take much to bring great harm,
and it didn't take much to breathe life into another.
Now that example is not just true of pastors
on Monday mornings.
The principle of speaking death or life
is true in all of our relationships,
and in every conversation we have.
Every conversation.
The words we choose matter.
They matter in our marriages.
And you know that if you're a husband or wife,
the words you choose in your marriage matter greatly.
They matter in the way we speak to our children
as we parent them.
They can have long-lasting effects.
They matter in how we treat all of the people around us,
whether that's at work,
or that's somebody in our community.
They make a difference.
They matter in our witness to this lost world
that needs to see Jesus in us,
but often doesn't because of the words that we use.
They matter in our covenant life together here at Oak Hill.
They matter in how you speak about our church.
Your words matter in how you speak about your elders
and your deacons and your ministry leaders.
And you probably know this.
The spark that lights every church conflict
and every church split is words.
Now, it starts deeper than that, right?
It starts with pride and arrogance
and self-centeredness and stubbornness,
but when it comes to the surface,
it comes out in our speech, in the words we choose.
And then it devolves from there, right?
Back and forth, accusation, anger, hostility.
It ends in bitterness and division, and Satan wins.
I've seen it too many times.
The enemy is really good at this.
Churches crash and burn.
Worshippers are driven away from fellowship.
Great discouragement comes upon those
striving to be faithful.
And sometimes people become so disheartened
by speech in the body of Christ
that they walk away from the church
and sometimes fall away from the faith.
Another victory for Satan.
So this is why God cares about our words.
He cares about our mouths and our tongues
and our lips and our words.
This is why you see him warn us over and over
and over again in Scripture, both Old Testament and New,
because it hasn't changed over all these years.
So may we never be those who find ourselves
on the wrong side of the Lord in the use of our words.
Let me say it again.
May we never be those who find ourselves
on the wrong side of the Lord in the use of our words.
Slandering him, slandering his bride,
slandering his leaders, slandering his people.
Instead, may we respond as David does in this Psalm today,
not with vengeance, not with an impetuous tongue,
but with prayer.
Take your beef to the Lord.
He's the one that can fix the problem.
And may we follow in the footsteps of the Lord.
Jesus himself, when he was reviled, what does Scripture say?
He didn't revile in return.
What did he do?
He kept entrusting himself to the Father
who always judges justly.
What a great truth that is.
With my mouth, as David says,
I will give abundant thanks to the Lord.
And in the midst of the congregation, I will praise him.
Will you join me in that?
Let's bow our heads.
Let's praise him now.
Father, your word is continually amazing before us.
Even Lord, when we open up our Bibles
and we turn to a Psalm and we read this severe language here
and it causes us to wince just a little bit,
we're not going to be able to do that.
We're not going to be able to do that.
And it causes us to wince just a little bit.
It is still helpful for us and profitable for us
to learn what you want to tell us about sin
and about divine judgment and wrath.
And Lord, then to be nudged,
to even consider our own words,
the way that we speak to people,
the way that we respond to people when we're hurt.
Father, encourage us as a body.
As you know, God, it was not my intention
to come here and to scold,
but to simply warn and exhort
and to help us see how seriously you take this.
So Father, encourage our hearts.
We thank you this morning for your amazing grace
that we are a forgiven people.
And even though we fall short of your glory,
even though we fall short of the standard
that we have for ourselves when it comes to our words,
God, that you have forgiven us of our sins.
And we can rejoice in that.
And we can strive to grow in this area
to be sanctified in our mouths, in our lips, in our words.
So thank you for the encouragement
of Jesus Christ this morning.
Speak to our hearts now as we sing
another couple of songs, God.
May we praise you well.
For your glory we pray, amen.