Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Exodus 22 and Malediction

Sermon scripture is found in the case laws in the book of Exodus. Exodus chapter 22. I’ll begin reading at verse 18.

Exodus 22, beginning with verse 18:

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death. He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed. Thou shalt neither vex a stranger nor oppress him. For ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. Ye shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child. If thou afflict them in any wise and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry, and my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.”

This is the Sunday in January that the Christian Action Council and other members of the Christian community have designated as Sanctity of Human Life Sunday for 1991. They always choose the date closest to the Supreme Court ruling on Roe versus Wade from 1973 that essentially moved the country toward legalized abortion on demand. The scriptures, I believe, teach that this is the murder of preborn infants. The ruling gave it sanction or sanctuary, as it were, to those murderous acts in this country for the last eighteen years.

Various churches have taken one Sunday a month or a year rather to speak against the Supreme Court ruling and to talk about some of the implications. While they have primarily sought in these years to stress—as the title of the Sunday indicates—sanctity of human life, RCC has taken a bit of a different twist in which we have always used this opportunity to conduct a liturgy, an order of worship that includes a malediction in it.

And this Sunday is no different. Now, a malediction is simply—can be thought of simply—as a reverse of a benediction. Benediction comes from two words: bene, meaning good, and diction, meaning word. A benediction is a good word. A malediction comes from two words combined: mal, meaning bad, and diction, meaning word.

The benediction, for instance, that is placed upon the congregation at the close of both of our halves of formal worship at this church is a good word. It’s a blessing that’s placed upon the congregation. And God promises, of course, in the ironic benediction in Numbers 6 that we always use at the close of the first half of the service. He says that when this benediction is placed upon his people—and the condition is, of course, that they are his people, that they’re walking in obedience and repentance for sins in their life, aiming for the mark, not hitting it perfectly but aiming for the mark—that God will indeed bless them.

A malediction is much the same thing. It is a prayer, but it’s a prayer that God has said when used correctly by his church and unless the persons that are being prayed against come to repentance will be effectual. God will indeed curse them.

I thought it would be good this Sunday to explain why we do this. And so that’s what we’re going to be talking about. I’m going to be using verse 23 for the first three points of the outline. Really, verse 23 has three kind of clauses in it. We’ll be looking at each of those clauses to look at the preconditions of a malediction. In other words, when is a malediction appropriate? In what circumstance do we see it being used in Scripture?

Secondly, the obligation or need for a malediction. (I have trouble with that word. I originally started with “the command of a malediction,” but it isn’t really commanded in verse 23 of Exodus 22. But there is an obligation to engage in a prayer of malediction at that point that we’ll be talking about.) I think that as Christians, we have an obligation to do what we do here formally and in a very focused sense each year and in prayers throughout the year as well—to ask that God send his special curses on a particular class of people as a people.

So secondly, the need or obligation for a malediction. And then third, the verse points out quite clearly the assurance of God’s response to such maledictions. And then we’ll conclude by making two brief points, kind of pointing all this stuff back to what we said about faith a couple of weeks ago in terms of First Thessalonians. We’ll talk about faith’s relationship to malediction and then as a result of that, works and malediction as well. So that’s kind of what we want to do.

We’ll start by looking at verse 23 for the first three points of the outline. The last two have some general comments. And as we go through this, I will make some comments about the Persian Gulf situation as well. I think that in the providence of God, this is as good a Sunday as any to address certain aspects of it.

Okay. First of all, then, the preconditions of a malediction.

Exodus 22:23 in the case law says, “If thou afflict them in any wise, then this other thing will happen, and they cry to me and I’ll answer.” So the condition is: if thou afflict them in any wise.

The phrase refers, of course, back to widows and orphans, and some would say also the strangers that are mentioned in the verses leading up to this. And so the condition is the affliction of a group of people, and specifically the affliction of those members of the covenant—or members rather of the extended community—who are widows, orphans or fatherless, and strangers. Now there’s been some discussion as to why these particular three people are lumped together. I think there are some theological reasons for it which we may touch on in a couple of minutes.

But I think that—and I think I put this on the outline—that first of all an attack on the helpless is being described as the condition for the malediction in verse 23. An attack on the helpless.

Now I feel pretty confident saying that’s one of the reasons for this particular word being used—this particular grouping rather—of widows, fatherless, and strangers, because in Job 29:12 we read a phrase saying, “Because I delivered the poor that cried and the fatherless and him that had no one to help him.”

And so there we seem to have a descriptive phrase from Job 29:12 telling us why the righteous person will seek to aid the poor that cry and the fatherless. And the reason is: there are none to help him. None to help him. No voice to speak up. No man in the household. And by the way, the term orphan really is better translated, I believe, “fatherless.” We have orphans in the scriptures who have mothers but not fathers. They have no covenantal representation, as another person has said about this particular group of people.

The stranger is known to represent him. He can be easily taken advantage of and he is helpless to a certain degree in the context of a group of people. And so God says that in a situation where a helpless group of people are attacked—and the word “afflict” means that they are suppressed, they are pushed down—the word “afflict” can actually be used. I’ve listed some scriptures there to talk about the results of war. So it can refer to murder as well and violence against people.

This affliction takes place, then a malediction—a cry for deliverance, and a particular kind of deliverance—is uttered to God and he hears and answers.

Now I think that obviously this is direct application to the sin of abortion. In Ezekiel 16, God describes the nation of Israel as essentially orphaned although their mother and father were living. He says, “I found you in the desert. You had been born essentially, but they didn’t clean you in the day of your birth.” And this, that, and the other thing.

The picture given—and of course it’s an allegory, a symbol of Israel’s origins—but the point is that the picture given is of a couple who have a child and abandoned it to die. And so the child who is taken in the mother’s womb to the abortion clinic has essentially been abandoned in terms of protection by father, by their father, and certainly by their mother.

And so they fit very well, I think, this class of the fatherless. And so when abortionists afflict the fatherless—that is, depress them, take away their rights in any way—this passage says, then God’s judgment comes to pass when they cry out. That is, now certainly that would apply to the fatherless who are actually murdered in the womb.

Now I want you to recognize where we go on with this. I began reading at verse 18 when we started because the context for this particular law is quite important. There is a marked shift in tone from the case laws leading up to verse 18 and the ones that follow. The context then for this oppression of the helpless is listed in the same sense as capital crimes of idolatry and witchcraft. And so it is a very serious matter. Oppression is a very serious matter in any law order.

And when the law order fails to provide rights for the helpless based upon God’s word and fails to extend legal protections to, for instance, the unborn in this country, then essentially that society has moved away from being a law order at all. The law is now only a mechanism by which some people can oppress other people. So there no defense is left for anybody really. It has changed radically from being a law order to being an order that simply accommodates a particular class of people against another class of people.

And so it is a very serious matter when a culture moves away from the protection of these sorts of people. It’s certainly a very serious and grieving matter when our nation moved away in 1973—but even earlier in terms of thought patterns—from protecting the unborn in the womb as children.

So it is a very serious sin to be engaged with, and God says that in these cases, when cries go up to him, he will hear them and he will then execute rapid and quick judgment against those who do such things.

Now I mentioned the helpless here, and while the text doesn’t specifically mention this, there are another group of people that also are the subjects that create the correct conditions for the use of a malediction: the people of God are under attack.

I’ve listed some other scriptures there: Psalm 94:6 talking about the slaying of the widow and the stranger and the murder of the fatherless. These things are frequently lumped together just as an indication that the helpless are certainly one of the reasons when maledictions come to play. But there are other scriptures listed there—specifically Psalm 109 and various other scriptures.

We have, for instance, frequently in this church sung Psalm 83. Psalm 83 calls for God’s rapid judgment against a whole confederation of peoples that come together for the purpose—the express purpose—not of hurting the fatherless or the widow or the stranger, but rather of hurting God’s congregation, his chosen people. And that’s the second condition that would call for a malediction: when there is a self-conscious effort on the part of any nation or groups of people or individual even to strike out at the image of God in terms of his church, his people.

Psalm 109 is probably one of the most known of what are known as the imprecatory psalms—those psalms that call for God to cast judgment and so imprecate God to judge those who are being mentioned in it. And we read, for instance, in verse 9 of Psalm 109:

“Let his children be fatherless. And let his wife be a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds and beg. Let them seek their bread also out of their own desolate places.”

So there are some strong calls here for malediction. But the context is not in this case the oppression of the widows and the fatherless, but rather the oppression of the people of God, of the man of God, as is indicated in the first five verses: “They have rewarded me evil for good.”

Ultimately, portions of this psalm were directly quoted in the New Testament to refer to the judgments of God upon Judas. So ultimately, Jesus Christ is the object of the man of wickedness in Psalm 109 that creates the condition then for the malediction to be uttered by the psalmist.

And so the two situations in scripture that give us the correct conditions for a malediction are: first of all, the affliction rather of a condition or a class of people that are helpless to defend themselves, and then secondly the affliction of God’s particular covenant people. Either of those conditions—the scriptures teach us—gives us the correct conditions for a malediction.

Now in Psalm 94, these two conditions actually come together. In verses 5 and 6 of Psalm 94—which is a psalm of imprecation—we read: “They, that is the ones who are being prayed against, break in pieces thy people, O Lord, and afflict thine heritage. So he’s praying against him because they attack his people. But then he goes on to say: They slay the widow and the stranger and murder the fatherless.”

So you have those two conditions—the people of God and the helpless in society—both brought together in Psalm 94.

Now the command for a malediction is quite important to see in the context of Exodus 22.

Exodus 22 does not say that when somebody strikes out against a widow or an orphan, God is going to strike out at them. It’s not what it says. It says that when they strike out against a widow and orphan, and then the widow and orphan cry out to God, then God moves to deliver them. So there is a condition here applied to the widow and orphan for the malediction to be effectual, for it to happen.

God says: When you’re being oppressed and afflicted and killed and murdered, you’re supposed to cry out to me and I will deliver you. Okay? But there’s a conditional note to that.

And so we see, for instance, that widows and orphans who don’t believe in God and who reject him and cling instead to idols—God is not moved to protect them, because they have rejected him and they have gone instead to idols who have no ability to rescue them. And so there’s a conditional clause here: in order for the malediction for God’s wrath to take place against the afflicters, they must cry out to God.

Now it’s interesting. He says that they cry out at all unto me. And again, stressing the seriousness of these sorts of sins. We become so used to people oppressing the fatherless in this country. The phrase there is put in the singular, and then in verse 24, when he talks about his wrath coming against you—and your wives will become widows and your children will be fatherless—he goes back to the plural. And the indication seems to be that any act in a nation, a covenant nation, against any individual widow or fatherless or stranger will bring God’s wrath upon the whole nation. It’s that serious of a sin.

But their responsibility is to cry out to God. And certainly the individual has a responsibility to do this. You remember the case law about the woman who is raped. If she cries out, then she’s innocent. Nothing happens to her. But if she fails to cry out, she is then found guilty of complicity and adultery and is then subject to capital punishment.

In Second Kings 8:3 and 5, the widow that Elisha restored her son to life—that widow comes to the king and cries out to the king for her house and for her land. And this term “cry out” is the same one that’s used here, “cry out.” It is a very emotion-laden aspect, as it were. It doesn’t just mean that they kind of talk to me a little bit. They cry out to God as this widow cried out to the king for her land, and God will indeed answer that cry.

So that is the condition of the command for a malediction on the part of the individual. But also this term “cry” can be used actually to convene an assembly. And I’ve listed a couple of scriptures there: Judges 7:23 and First Samuel 10:17. It says that Samuel called or cried the people together unto the Lord at Mizpah. And so the cry there can have reference to a specific convocation as well, who would then jointly cry out to God.

Now we have very real obligations—as is obvious probably to most of us—to this particular class of people that God designates in these case laws: the widow, the fatherless, and the stranger.

In Job 29:17, he talks about how he broke the jaws of the wicked and he plucked the spoil out of his teeth. And he’s talking there about the fatherless.

In Psalm 82:4, we are told to deliver the poor and needy, to rid them out of the hand of the wicked.

In Isaiah 58:6 and 7—remember we talked about fasting. What’s the purpose of the fast? God says, “This is the fast I choose: to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed, those who have been afflicted, go free and that you break every yoke.”

Christianity is seen here as on the offensive then—as removing the yokes that are put upon helpless classes of people. And so that’s a very real aspect, and it’s part of our obligations as Christians—to realize that these scriptures are written to us.

God tells us in the book of James, which we’ll return to in a couple of minutes, that true and undefiled religion is to visit the widow and the fatherless. Okay? And so we have obligations toward these people.

Now, if we know we have obligations to the fatherless, and in our case today, the aborted babies that are murdered every year, and if we know that there are not a lot of mechanisms that we can choose to affect their deliverance, we should certainly realize that is one of the obligations that we have: to cry out to God for those who cannot cry out, who are in the womb, who cannot cry out to God.

We have an obligation to perform the responsibilities of Exodus 22 for them. And so we cry out to God on behalf of the unborn babies in this country, and that’s what we do. And that’s one of the reasons why we have a service of malediction. We are acknowledging in this that ultimately any deliverance of the unborn or the helpless classes of people that are here—any deliverance must come forth from God.

We must turn to him first and foremost for deliverance. That’s what he calls us to do. And then he will deliver them through various means.

In Jeremiah 22:3, we’ve read this before. It talks about the need to, as we come forward to the temple to worship God, to come forward in a correct manner. We read: “Thus saith the Lord, execute ye judgment and righteousness and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor. And do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, neither shedding innocent blood in this place.”

So one of the obligations that we have, as we come forward to worship God every week in confession of sin, is to acknowledge that we’re to live a lifestyle that is concerned with delivering the spoiled out of the hand of the afflicted—the fatherless.

We have an obligation then as Christians to engage whatever means God has given to us to affect deliverance for unborn children. And he tells us in Exodus 22—one of the specific things he wants us to do, as David shows us throughout the Psalter—is to cry out to him that he would bring curses upon the wicked and would destroy them. Okay? And as we said, David does this repeatedly.

Exodus 22 goes on though. Having given us the condition for malediction and then the obligation to cry out to God, it then tells us the assurance of God’s response to the malediction:

“Because if these things happen, if they’re afflicted and they cry out, then I will surely hear their cry. He will hear it, and my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall be widows and your children fatherless.”

Very strong form of expression here. God says surely—in other words, I will definitely hear that prayer when they cry out to me—that malediction—and I will answer it, just as he says with a benediction I will bless them if the conditions have been met.

And so we have a very strong form of expression. He says my wrath shall wax hot. And the imagery here has two expressions going together. His wrath refers to the flaring of the nostrils—is one of the four Old Testament words about anger. His anger, the flaring of his nostrils, shall wax hot. So the idea is almost the picture of a fire-breathing dragon, as it were. God is enraged over the violence done to the oppressed who cry out to him, and he will surely then be motivated to action: to rescue them and to bring punishments upon those who would oppress them.

Now he does this for two reasons. I believe there are probably more reasons than this, but for the sake of this afternoon’s talk, for two reasons.

First, to demonstrate his compassion.

See, at the very heart of it, God is a God who is concerned with helpless people. And he is concerned that we understand that, and that he demonstrates that at the heart of his character is goodness and love. And that is demonstrated toward those who are unable to help themselves. God is motivated to help them.

And you see, in very real sense—it’s interesting that this terminology about his nose flaring is terminology that’s used throughout the Old Testament to refer to a man who is angry and angry with jealousy over attacks upon his bride. And so we have the widow and the fatherless and the stranger as pictures, as it were, of the bride of God, that he is now angry over when another man reaches out to strike her.

It’s the way we should feel as husbands if our wives are attacked. You see, and we’ve talked about this before. We talked about the mercy aspect of the tithe. But really, those three classes of people refer to all of us. We were all widowed, as it were, when the first Adam sinned and violated God’s command. And we needed a second Adam, a new husband, as it were—the groom Jesus Christ. And we were all fatherless, cut off as it were. We were strangers in the land of Egypt, God says.

And so we fit these conditions. These conditions really are pictures to us. They’re not just pictures. They’re real people who need real help. But they’re reminders to us of who we are—and reminders that God was compassionate and reached out to us and brought us into salvation and into relationship with him.

And so ultimately we’re the ones being talked about, and God demonstrates his compassion then to reaching out to those who are humble, who are poor in spirit, and recognize their poverty before the Almighty God.

Psalm 9:12 says: “When he maketh inquisition for blood, speaking of God, he remembereth them. He forgiveth not the cry of the humble.”

God desires to demonstrate what the Middle East has talked about for years—the royal virtue. He is the king of kings, and the king’s royal virtue is extension of grace to those in need. And so God, when he sees people who are afflicted, it is of his essence to reach out to them and to show compassion to them.

Conversely then, the society or the individual who reaches out to those who are helpless and kills them in the womb or oppresses them in any other way are diabolic in their activities. They’re the reverse of demonstrating the compassion of God toward the helpless classes of people that cry out to him. They’re diabolic and satanic. And the nation that sees millions of children murdered over the last several years has become really very twisted and depraved and no longer gives an image of the compassion of God that we used to once see in this country.

Psalm 10 shows us these things—that God reaches out to. He is the helper of the fatherless. Thus we read in Psalm 10.

But Psalm 10 points out another important picture of why God does these actions, and that is to indicate his justice.

Quite important. God is a God of compassion, but he is a God of justice. And he demonstrates that justice is not relegated to the by and by off in eternity someplace. His justice is in place in the earth today.

The scriptures are clear that when he judges temporally people that oppress the classes here mentioned, he does so to indicate that he does see. That’s what we just read, Psalm 10—God does see. The wicked say he doesn’t see. That’s why he does these things. But God’s judgments are in the earth that men might see that he is just and that he is God.

So that is the second reason for God’s doing these things: to demonstrate the character of his justice.

And because of that, God’s justice says he doesn’t reach out, as we said before, to any and every widow or fatherless or stranger, but only to those of them who have brought themselves to a position of repentance of their own sins and acknowledgement of their helpless condition before God—a picture of us as well.

And then he afflicts judgment, of course. And it is, as it always is in scriptures, an eye for an eye.

It’s interesting. Isaiah 9:17 says: “The Lord, the Lord, shall have no joy in their young men. Neither shall have mercy on their fatherless and widows. For everyone is a hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth speaketh folly. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.”

So for those classes of people, even though helpless in their outward condition, still see themselves as not needing the help of Yahweh, of the God of the scriptures, of the covenant God who performs these wondrous acts of compassion—those people, because they reject him, there is no compassion shown to them.

Then, and to the end that the man on earth may no more oppress—quoting from Psalm 10. He says: “Break out the arm of the wicked and the evil man. Seek out his wickedness until they find none.”

God brings those who would oppress people to either repentance or to removal and destruction temporally.

Now what does all this have to do with faith?

Well, one other scripture about God’s justice. By the way, I should read this. Psalm 58, from verse 1 to the end. In Psalm 58 of asking God to let them melt away, break their teeth, so that a man shall say: “Verily, there is a reward for the righteous. Verily, there is a God that judgeth in the earth now, temporally.”

Okay. What does this have to do with faith?

Well, we’ve looked at some Old Testament quotes here primarily, and I wanted to just reference a couple of New Testament references to this going on. And what I’m trying to do—the reason I do this—is to show you the scriptures are one word on everything, and certainly on this subject as well: the need for malediction, as well in the New Testament times as in the Old Testament times.

Now I can mention a lot of things about the New Testament. Remember Jesus overturning the money changers in the temple. I bring that up specifically because it was in the temple that—you remember Solomon’s prayer of dedication in the temple. He said that when the stranger comes into this temple, who believes in you, believes in you and asks anything, answer him.

That’s one of the specific things that Solomon prayed for in Second Chronicles in that prayer for the dedication of the temple at Second Chronicles 6:32. And I think that what that’s a reference back to are those case laws about the stranger and included under that would be the widow and the fatherless as well.

When they are being afflicted by someone in the covenant nation, what are they to do? They’re coming to the temple to pray that God would indeed bring his wrath upon those people. And so Jesus says the temple is to be a house of prayer. And as a result of that, he brings judgment from the throne room, as it were, upon the money changers in the temple who seek to pervert the very purpose of the temple. And he demonstrates then the correlation between malediction or curse and temple prayer.

Not the only place in the scriptures. Psalm 79:6 and 7 are repeated—I believe are referenced in—Second Thessalonians 1:8 and 9, talking about the evildoers will be punished with everlasting destruction.

Now it is interesting that in the correlation of the old to the new testament, the judgments are not really done away with but are intensified. Let me give you an example.

In Psalm 6:8 we read: “Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity, for the Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping.”

And in the context of the psalm, what he’s saying is that there are wicked people around him. God hears them, and he tells them to get out of here now. Go away. Go someplace else.

But Jesus quotes from that psalm in Matthew 7:23 to people that are doing things that they claim are for him, but he doesn’t know him. He says: “And when will I profess unto them, I never knew you. Depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

And Jesus is talking there about not going to some other physical locality. He’s talking there about sending them to hell. And so the judgments, the temporal judgments that are depicted on earth are pictures of the eternal judgment in hell, and that is made quite clear in scripture—that intensification of judgment.

But now, couple of scriptures. Luke 18. And you might want to turn to this. Go ahead and turn to Luke 18. We looked at this when we talked about faith. Faith, as we remember, we talked about a couple of weeks ago.

Faith is reliance upon the faithful God who gives us a scripture that is a covenant word to man. Faith has an object. The object is God’s revelation—Scripture. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. And so faith is exercised in the very words of God. Every word in the scripture is what our faith is about.

But I’m trying to get you to see that we engage in prayers of malediction because we believe, we have faith in this Bible. And to have faith in the Bible means we must live by that word.

Now Luke 18. We see here really almost a very obvious correlation back to Exodus 22. He spake a parable unto them to the end that men ought always to pray and not to faint, saying: “There was in a city a judge, who feared not God, neither regarded man—not a good judge, an unjust judge. There was a widow in that city, and she came unto him, saying, ‘Avenge me of mine adversary.’”

Now, you may have a translation that has a different word than “avenge,” but really, this word does have the primary connotation not simply of getting peace for yourself, but of revenge being taken upon the one who is afflicting somebody. The word has that primary connotation—that the person, the widow, isn’t just spared from this person, but there actually is judgment against this person as well. And so the King James does a good job by translating “avenge me of my adversary.”

“He wouldn’t for a while, but afterward he said within himself: ‘Though I fear not God, nor regard man, yet because this woman troubleth me, I will avenge her. Lest by her continual coming she weary me.’”

And the Lord said: “Here, what the unjust judge saith? And shall not God, who obviously is just, shall not God avenge—same word—his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith in the earth?”

What kind of faith is being described in Luke 18? You cannot strip that last sentence away from the rest of the text. And the text says: “Have faith about what?” That God will judge—not just save you or keep you away from bad people—but will judge and avenge enemies of who? Who are the two groups he picks? Widows—representative of the helpless class. And you, his elect, God’s people.

Attacks upon those same two groups that the Old Testament shows over and over call for God’s malediction are the objects of the faith that Jesus talks about in verse 18 of Luke 18. He says: “Have faith. God’s judgments will come and will come speedily.”

Let’s see. Geldenhuys and his commentary in the Gospel of Luke says that this faith clearly refers to the faith that is here being discussed—faith in Jesus the Christ, Messianic Son of Man, through whom God will vindicate the cause of the elect.

The Savior had himself already answered this question earlier in the chapter. R.G. Rushdoony commenting on this text says faith here means that we as God’s covenant people and lawkeepers are required to believe that God’s justice will prevail.

The widow was not resigned to injustice. She cried out again and again against it and triumphed despite the heartlessness and injustice of the judge. If we hold to the faith, it means that we believe that our Savior and Judge, Jesus Christ, will see to it that justice is done to his elect. He will not be tolerant to our opponents. To have faith in Christ our Savior means also to have faith in him as our righteous Judge and avenger now and forever.

So the point of all this is that we have a service of malediction as the primary method to eliminate the sin of abortion and abortionists. You can eliminate them either through them repenting and no longer being abortionists, or either through them dying and as a result no longer being abortionists. But our reason that we pray that is because we have faith in the word of God—the kind of faith that Jesus implores us to keep in this very parable and for the very same reasons: that God’s vengeance might be wreaked upon those who oppress the helpless, the aborted babies, or his church.

James 1:27. I mentioned this before: “Pure religion, undefiled before God and the Father, is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.”

Well, I don’t think that means that all we do is pay a visit to them and drop in and say, “Hi, how’s it going? Goodbye.” The term “visit” here is used in the Gospels—the same term—to refer to God’s visiting and redeeming his people in Luke 1:68: “Through the tender mercy of our God in Luke 1:78, whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us.”

“Visit” means, as the dictionary or the Strong’s definition says, to relieve. It’s at the root of that meaning—to visit. And so we have an obligation at the very core of our faith to extend grace to helpless people, because God has extended to us. And the vehicle through which that is to occur is to visit the fatherless, the aborted babies.

To visit them means to seek their relief. And God says that the way we’re to do that, according to Exodus 22, is to cry out to him. And that’s why David does it. And that’s why it’s seen throughout the scriptures—cries to God that he might demonstrate his compassion toward the fatherless, that he might demonstrate his justice in the world, and he might bring about faith to be expanded in acknowledging his word governs every bit of our creation.

Now the world doesn’t like this. We—I said I mentioned the Persian Gulf. You know, I was talking to Reverend Rushdoony yesterday, and I said it’s kind of like this—the flag situation a year ago, the flag burning case. I read an editorial by Joseph. So you keep wanting to find the right group or the right position in this thing to support, and really you can’t find a good godly position. That’s the way it is in America today.

I think it’s rather obvious that the kind of war being fought is not a righteous biblical war. I mean, the scriptures seem to speak pretty clearly against ungodly alliances with other nations, particularly nations such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which suppress Christianity, which really are totally idolatrous regimes, in which the gospel has not been allowed to be preached, etc. In Israel, it’s against the law to convert a person to Christianity.

And so we’re over there supporting a lot of people that really are not godly nations. There are other elements of just war and biblical war that are also being violated. I believe—having said that—it is of great concern to me that the demonstrations that have been going on in Portland, one of the major centers of these demonstrations apparently against the war, indicates that we now have a whole generation of people coming up that are really committed to a basically pacifistic position—a position that says that war is never the right solution.

Nobody is arguing whether or not we should be at war with Iraq. Everybody is either in favor of sanctions or military action. Well, the blockade is an act of war. And sanctions, such as a blockade, keeping goods out of a country, is an act of war. So what they’re arguing about is the way the war is to be waged—through economic sanctions or through military use.

Now, in my way of thinking, that’s a decision for the commander-in-chief to make, not for the Congress to make once having declared war on a particular people. Now, I don’t believe we should be declaring war on that particular group of people if we’re going to be very self-consciously biblical about our position. But having said that, I am more concerned at this point in time that our nation seems now to be moving increasingly toward a position of never justifying the use of war at all.

And I mean, these people, these demonstrations, time after time, they will tell the camera, “We don’t think it’s ever right to have war.” Now, you know, it’s kind of surprising to hear that so consistently from the thousands of people that I’ve seen on the TV the last few days with signs and taking these positions.

But in a way, it shouldn’t really surprise us. After all, the NEA has done a tremendous job of teaching the public schools from a humanistic perspective, and the various child services agencies across the country have done a very good job of convincing people increasingly that any kind of corporal punishment is always wrong.

I’ve said for a long time that I don’t see how people can think that spanking is illegitimate and then justify the use of physical force against any people—be it police work or warfare. And indeed, those very arguments are being touted today—that really there are better ways to resolve conflicts than the use of physical force. Well, the scriptures say that physical force is necessary and is a good thing and a proper thing. If this country is attacked, we should defend ourselves with physical means. But this country has moved toward a pacifistic position.

Now what has that got to do with the liturgy of malediction? Well, I think a couple of things.

First, I think that Saddam Hussein has definitely struck out against the helpless classes in Kuwait—throwing children out of their protective devices, etc., raping young men and girls, young boys and girls in front of their parents, all kinds of mean and nasty things we don’t need to repeat today. He has definitely been an idolatrous murderer and is certainly eligible for God’s malediction. We can pray that confidently that God will bring his curse upon Saddam Hussein.

But secondly, I think that the world—and this country specifically—has moved away from its sanity on how to defend oneself or how to raise godly children, because the church moved away from this position of malediction. The church separated the faith in terms of the scriptures and took out large portions of it in terms of God’s vengeance in time and in history here now against people.

The church became humanistic, and humanism does not want humans to suffer. But see, the Scriptures say that God, who cannot have a charge brought against him, has created hell, and it is a place of eternal damnation for those who reject his mercy and compassion. God has done that. And all the wars that we see, and the various punishments that we’re to pray that God send upon abortionists, for instance, are precursors to that hell, and they are proper and good.

But the church doesn’t believe that anymore in America. And so it’s the National Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches, various other churches that are leading these demonstrations against the war because of this humanistic philosophy that had been read into their scriptures.

The word of God says the church is supposed to witness to God’s blessing on one hand, but his curse on the other.

Turn to Deuteronomy 27, verse 19. You’re familiar with this, I’m sure, but we’ll just remind you of it. They’re about to enter the land, and God sends them to go into the land.

Verse 12, we’ll start reading. Verse 11. Moses charges the people in Deuteronomy 27:11, saying:

“These shall stand upon Mount Gerizim to bless the people when ye are come over Jordan: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin. And these shall stand upon Mount Ebal to curse: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali. And the Levite shall speak and say unto all the men of Israel with a loud voice: ‘Curse be he that maketh any graven or molten image or abomination unto the Lord, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and putteth it in a secret place.’ And all the people shall answer and say, ‘Amen.’”

Okay, now it’s interesting. What we have here and then we have a whole string of curses here that are read, and all the people—not just half the people—said Amen. What you have here are the people of God, the congregation of God, represented by the six tribes and two different sets of tribes on these two mountains to represent blessing and curse.

All the people affirm both blessings and curse. Why are they divided? They’re divided, I think, as a two-fold witness to the reality of God’s blessing and curse temporally upon the nation when they sin and upon various groups of people when they sin. And I think our responsibility today is to do the same thing—to remind people that these sayings are true and that faith declares that every word that God utters in this scripture is true and relevant to our times.

The church today is to be a witness to the blessings and cursings of God, to the fact that the order that God has created is not one in which man is the measure. It is not one in which man is the measure. If it was, then what we’re praying for today in terms of God’s destruction of abortionists and temporal judgments upon them would be out of sync with that. But they’re not the measure. God and his justice is the measure.

And so we’re to pray these prayers of malediction according to the scriptures.

Now, so I think that faith has a lot to do with malediction—being an affirmation of every word of God and indicating that the church has strayed radically in seeking alternative solutions to the abortion issue rather than the prayers that are a witness to men and nations calling for the actions of God, that are a witness to his temporal cursings and blessings in society.

But faith, as we pointed out in First Thessalonians, is in the context of works. The scriptures say that faith are connected to works.

In Exodus 14:15, God tells Moses to stop crying out to him and to start getting into action. Verse 15: “The Lord said unto Moses, ‘Wherefore criest thou unto me?’” And that same term, “cry”—when you cry out to God, Malediction or whatever—”‘Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward, but lift up thy rod and stretch out thine hand over the sea and divide it.’”

So he tells him here, he’s going to harden the hearts of the Egyptians. He’s going to deliver the people, to deliver the host. He’s going to destroy all the Egyptians. God says to Moses: There is a time for that maledictory prayer against the Egyptians. I’ve heard that. But now get to work in accordance with what I’m going to tell you to do.

And so if we have faith, we should pray these prayers and that God will indeed answer them, the conditions being met. That means that faith should work into our lives by taking actions as well—means that God has given to us legitimately to seek to end abortion in our land.

It is good that we start in this church with acknowledging God’s sovereignty in these affairs and the need to ask him to curse abortionists, and the need for any deliverance from this nation of these sins to come forth from the hand of God. It is good that we start that way, but it is important that we move on from there to act—actually take whatever means are possible under the providence of God, under the guidance of his scriptures—to seek to eliminate abortion.