Dennis Tuuri

# Isaiah 55

I’ll be reading all of chapter 55 as well as a couple of verses of chapter 56. Twenty-two years ago today, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its infamous Roe v. Wade decision. And since then, millions of preborn children have been murdered annually in this country. And so we meet today on this particular day of the Lord to talk about that from a biblical perspective. And so I’ve got a couple of titles for this sermon.

One is God’s ways versus man’s ways, and the other is abortion as affliction. Please stand and we’ll read Isaiah 55 and a couple of verses of 56.

Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters. And he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat. Yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do you spend money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which satisfieth not?

Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear and come unto me. Hear, and your soul shall live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people. Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations that know not thee shall run unto thee, because of the Lord thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel, for he hath glorified thee.

Seek ye the Lord, while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he’ll have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater. So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace.

The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree, and it shall be of the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. Thus saith the Lord, Keep judgment, and do justice, for my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed.

Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that layeth hold on it, that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil.

Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you, Lord God, that you promised us in this very piece of scripture we just read that word goes out into the world transforming it. We thank you, Lord God, that word has reached into our lives and you’ve transformed us. You’ve regenerated us. You brought us out of sin and death and into salvation in our Savior.

Help us now, Lord God, to train our thoughts and our ways that they may more closely correspond to your thoughts and your ways, particularly relative to this terrible pestilence of abortion, murder in our country. Help us, Lord God, to be understanding these words, and we know that this is impossible apart from the work of your spirit. So we pray your spirit would illuminate this text for understanding. We pray too for the children of the Sabbath schools, that those teachers, as they speak the word, may do so with the power of the spirit. We pray all this for the sake of your kingdom, not ours. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated, and the younger children may go to their Sabbath schools.

I’ve got to pass around some tapes to some of the other men. These six tapes by Curtis Krenshaw are on affliction and trials for the Christian. They’re based basically upon an old Puritan work, The Crook in the Lot, that he has rewritten and put into more modern terminology and added his own thoughts to and published. And it’s an excellent series of messages. Janice Jacobson, I believe, has them available if you’re interested in them. I am borrowing Dan Drinkwater’s set, actually.

But in any event, in this series, one of the things that Mr. Krenshaw talks about is affliction. How long will it last? And his point is, it’ll last just as long as it takes to accomplish God’s purpose. And he was talking in the context of that of Wilberforce, a man who became a Christian at the age of 25 in England back in the late 1700s. He was a government official, elected to parliament, I believe.

And after talking with other Christian men about what he should do, they said, “Well, man your post. Be a Christian in the context of the government.” Wilberforce hated the slave trading that was going on at that particular time and dedicated the rest of his life to the elimination of slavery in England. And the final piece of legislation that accomplished that and made that a reality in the country of England was passed, I think, two or three days before his death.

The affliction of slavery—Curtis Krenshaw was saying in terms of Wilberforce’s soul—was an affliction that lasted all of his life. A trial that didn’t finally come to a conclusion until a couple of days before his death. And I thought that was an interesting way to think about a particular social evil or ill in the context of a country as an affliction. And as I meditated upon this text from Isaiah 55 and what we’re going to do again this Lord’s day—as we have for a number of years—engage in a liturgy of malediction.

Let me just say there that malediction is the opposite of a benediction. A benediction is a “ben”—good—diction, word. A malediction is like malevolent—bad—diction, word. So it’s asking, it’s saying that God’s word speaks negatively to certain sinners and certain men who engage in certain things. Just as there’s a benediction placed upon the people of God, there’s a malediction placed upon the enemies of God. We just sang about that in Psalm 83.

But in the context of this sermon, I thought about abortion as an affliction in this country. This text from Isaiah 55 talks about instead of the thorn tree, we’ll call up the myrtle tree. And the point is that right now, he’s saying in Isaiah 55, you’ve got thorns and briars in your land in the context of the writing of this prophecy. And America today has thorns and briars in the land, afflictions. And abortion is one such thing.

Abortion is the killing of preborn children. And that’s one of the points I want to make: we ought to maybe stop calling it abortion and start calling it child murder or just murder or manslaughter. Well, it’s an affliction. It should be to your soul. It is to my soul. I don’t want to do this every Sunday that comes closest to the anniversary of Roe v. Wade the rest of my life. I want abortion to cease in this country before my life comes to an end. But I don’t think that’s probably going to happen.

Now, the Lord can do wondrous things. Many times we don’t see an end to affliction possible from our perspective. And yet God has so ordained things that he does the particular thing and everything falls into place and before you know it, it’s over. And maybe that’ll happen here in America. Maybe there’ll be a tremendous resurgence of biblical faith, a revival of Reformation before I die. I don’t know. But it’s an affliction to me. It should be an affliction to you.

Recognize that a picture of hell is played out every day in this country across these states millions of times over, a million times a year. You know, hell is what goes on in the mother’s womb for that preborn child. Whether it is dismembered and cut apart, whether it is burned with caustic solutions to get it to abort, whatever the vehicle used, it’s a terrible, awful picture that is a picture of hell and evil in our land being executed against children that judicially have no reason to be put to death.

So it’s an affliction, and it should be to us as well, and I hope it is to you. I hope you don’t get sensitized to it somehow and it doesn’t bother you anymore. I think that’s one reason why we do this every year is to keep that from occurring. It’s an affliction.

And if it’s an affliction in our country, it’s my belief that God brings afflictions to people’s lives and to the country, particularly because of the church. It should be an affliction to the church first. God says judgment begins with the house of God. Why do we have an affliction? How long will this last? It will last long enough for God to move us away from our thoughts and our ways about human life and the taking of it, and respond to his thoughts and his ways about human life and the taking of it. That’s how long it will last.

I believe the affliction is here to teach us things. Now, some members of the Christian community want to cut this trial short, and they want to move outside of biblical means by taking the law into their own hands and killing people that are involved in abortion. We should do everything within biblical means to try to achieve a sense of justice in this area. But to move outside of biblical means is to try to cut short the affliction and the trial from God before it has had its work, its sanctifying work, on the church and then in the culture.

I’m calling this anti-abortion, not sanctity of human life. I’m going to talk about that in a minute. Anti-abortion day of the Lord. Not Sunday, not even Lord’s day. Day of the Lord. In the Greek and Hebrew, apparently I take this on faith from Mr. Jordan, who teaches this—the Greek and the Hebrew—there’s no difference in the Hebrew or Greek terms the day of the Lord or the Lord’s day. We could say it differently in English, and so when we talk about Lord’s day worship services, it takes on a different connotation than if we called this service the day of the Lord service.

On the day of the Lord, God comes and evaluates and judges his people. That’s what he does. I’ve talked about that a lot in this church. But it doesn’t stop there. The day of the Lord—God starts at the church and moves out to the culture. And so it’s my belief we have abortion as affliction to get us to think about biblical means that God would evaluate, judge, and try the church, and that judgment would then go out into the surrounding world. And that’s the focus of our service today.

We’re beginning by talking about biblical truth as it relates to abortion as affliction. We’ll move from that to our liturgy of malediction, where we ask the Lord who visits us on the Lord’s day in judgment to move out into this city, into Gladstone. On this day of the Lord, into Portland, down to Salem, across this state, and into the world with the spirit of judgment and evaluation against men that do wicked things, that he brings temporal judgments upon them.

So that’s what we’re doing today on this anti-abortion day of the Lord service. Abortion is an affliction from God. And it’s an affliction that it might bring us to the correctness that Isaiah 55 talks about.

What is that? God, in the middle of Isaiah 55, putting all these blessings out in front of the people, promising them these great blessings if they’ll turn. He talks to them about how their ways are not his ways and their thoughts are not his thoughts. Verses 7 and then 8. Verse 8, of course, is the primary verse I’ve used as my reference: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.”

What does that mean? Well, people have disagreed about what that means, but I think certainly by immediate textual evidence in verse 7, it says, “Let the wicked forsake his ways and let the unrighteous man forsake his thoughts and let them return to the Lord and he’ll have mercy.” And those are the two things I think it’s talking about: it’s conviction. Our ways are sinful apart from the Lord. Our thoughts are sinful.

Elder Mayard just reminded us—we try to train our thoughts. We try to achieve the mind of Christ in our worship service. Train us to think God’s thoughts after him, analogically, because we know that our thoughts are wrong. They’re wicked. Well, I believe that, to start with in terms of abortion as affliction, one reason why God has brought the affliction of abortion upon the American church is to train it to think his thoughts about human life.

And I’ve got a series of statements here. Don’t want to spend a lot of time on this. I’ll just tell you right now, my outline is more complete than I’ll be able to preach today because there’s too much material. We’ll try to move through it quickly, but you’ve got the outline and we can flesh it out perhaps later in discussions.

But first of all, God’s thoughts versus man’s thoughts. Pro vs. anti-abortion. The scriptures say positively law saying, “Thou shalt not kill.” The law is put negatively. We live in the context of a culture that hates negative statements. They hate sanctions. They hate discrimination. Instead, everything is supposed to be positive. You don’t want to say negative things to your children. You don’t want to bring corporal punishment, the rod of the authority of Jesus Christ to bear on them. You want to engage in positive parenting. You don’t want to talk about sin. You want to talk about illness. On and on it goes.

And that’s because the church made a distinction between law and grace a long time ago, and that distinction—which is false in the scriptures, that God’s law talks about the grace. God’s word talks about the grace of his law. It doesn’t make a distinction. Well, the church has said it does, and so we end up having things like pro-life movements instead of anti-abortion movements. And right away we lose our footing because we move away from God’s word, which says we’re supposed to hate abortion. We’re supposed to hate murder.

The idea isn’t being pro-life. God doesn’t place some kind of ultimate priority on human life. That’s not what everything’s about. We talked about that the last couple of weeks from Psalm 138. You know, man’s job is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. God is not created to glorify man and enjoy him forever. Human life is not placed as the ultimate ideal thing we’re supposed to attain and protect in this world. The glory of God is the ultimate. God is not human life.

God says that certain human life should be taken. He says that when people commit vile, despicable acts, and he enumerates them in his scriptures, it’s regulated by his scriptures. The civil magistrate is supposed to bear the sword against such people. They should be put to death. Highanded sins—people who knowingly commit premeditated murder—the scriptures are very clear, should be put to death. There’s no sanctity of human life that somehow is outside of the reach of the civil authorities that God has ordained.

So let’s try to restore our speak, our thoughts as reflected in our speech, to talking once more about being anti-abortion, not pro-life. “Oh, it makes good politics, Dennis. People want to hear pro statements, not anti-statements.” Well, what are we? Are we politicians or are we Christians who are going to take the word of God, which—this again, Isaiah 55—talks about that word that won’t return void, not your political imaginations? Those are the things that are going to create change in the world around us. What’s going to create change in the world around us is if we speak God’s word. And God’s word says, “Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not kill.”

Even there, though, when we use the term anti-abortion or we think in terms of anti-abortion as opposed to anti-murder, that’s point two. We kind of slip into a bad thing there too. I’ve said this before, you probably know it all by now. But you know, prior to Roe v. Wade, the state of Texas was not executing people who were killing their preborn children. They were giving them—they were giving the doctors very short, fairly short jail terms, and a lot of the mothers got nothing.

Well, that’s because somehow abortion in our mind is not connected to murder. We use this term, and when we think in terms of that, it moves us away from a realization of what actually is going on, which is murder. So really, instead of anti-abortion, we want to talk about anti-murder. That’s what way God phrases it. God doesn’t have special classes, you know, in terms of child murderer, father murderer, whatever it is. It’s wrong to murder anybody. And the child is a human being in the context of the womb. And because of that, we should talk about murder and not abortion.

Third, right to life or privilege of image-bearers. The phrase “right to life”—I heard Linda Harrington on the radio this morning. Glad I did. I’m glad she’s on the radio talking about abortion today. I know her. I appreciate their work tremendously. Right to Life in this state and across the country. But here again, while there is a sense in which there is a political right to life—in other words, that politically and in terms of governmental structures, the civil government has to have just cause to execute somebody—there is no absolute right to life in the scriptures.

I just talked about that fact. God says there’s with the fall of Adam, nobody has a right to life. What we have a right to is death and damnation, destruction. Man in his fallen state is cursed by God. We have no right to anything. To life, certainly not. We have a right to death and death only. Instead, we have the great privilege of being image-bearers.

When God says you’re not supposed to kill human beings, he puts that in the context that they are made in the image of God. And to strike out against a human being unjustly apart from the regulation of his word is a violation against God and it’s an attempt to kill God in his image. A reminder to you. And so we should in our thoughts forget this idea that there’s somehow some kind of right to life and rather think about that we have the great privilege of being image-bearers.

Sacredness of life or pursuit of holiness. What do we have in the scriptures? Is there some kind of sacredness of life? We almost start to think, somehow, with some of this anti-abortion rhetoric or pro-life rhetoric, that human beings are—James B. Jordan in an article wrote that they’re kind of considered as a slice of life or a slice of God—that we are kind of divine in who we are, that we’re sacred as in the sanctity of human life, and that we’re sacred and somehow the nature of God is in us, and so that’s what it’s all about. If you kill us, you kill a part of God. No. We’re an image bearer, and we’re called to pursue holiness.

The Lord said, “Be ye holy, for I am holy,” which means to conform ourselves to his standard of his word in all that we do. Mr. Jordan suggested a word for holiness might be integrity. Integrity relative to a standard of God’s word. All people are given the responsibility to pursue holiness. And when someone is cut off from that pursuit of holiness, it’s certainly wrong and evil for someone to murder an image-bearer before they can really exercise the proper pursuit of holiness.

But the point is that there’s no sacredness to life itself. So we should get our thoughts straight about what God’s scriptures say. And when we speak words revealing the thoughts of our hearts, we should try to get those words to conform to scriptures. Scripture says that murder is to be opposed and that there should be laws on the books that say you cannot murder any human being, and a child is a human being.

Let me just mention before I get into the rest of this that at the bottom of here outline is a sheet of acknowledgments. And I’ll just tell you that much of what I’m talking about today is taken from these sources. And much of what I just said can be found in a very good article on the pro-life movement by James B. Jordan referenced there at the bottom of your outline, published in Contra Mundum. We need to think God’s thoughts, and God’s thoughts will correct us from some of this incorrect rhetoric.

The affliction of abortion has come to the American church because it has never really grappled with these issues, I don’t think, correctly. As I said, prior to Roe v. Wade, these truths that I’ve just enunciated here were not put in practice. And that’s reflected by the civil sanctions against those that would kill preborn children. That thinking continues to this day. You will have a difficult time finding a representative from a major pro-life group who advocate the death penalty for mothers who kill their preborn children. Why is that?

We had a historical occurrence here a couple weeks ago where a woman killed a couple of her kids by driving their car into a lake, I believe, and confessed to the crime finally. She was arraigned, I guess it is, last week, whatever it was, and they brought her to court and said, “We’re going to seek the death penalty for you.” And a lot of people supported that. A lot of people didn’t because some of this pro-life rhetoric that’s coming from our thoughts and not God’s thoughts is being used against the idea of capital punishment at all.

You’ll hear people ask pro-life people, well, okay, if you don’t think you should kill preborn kids, should you execute anybody? And some will say no because they’re starting to believe their own rhetoric here. But still, there’s a consciousness of a Christian consciousness in this country to the point that woman rightfully—many people think—should be given the death penalty for killing her two children, drowning them in that car.

People have an easy time understanding why the death penalty is important there, relatively easy. But if that same woman has a couple of abortions, almost nobody in this country, if you polled them, would want her to be subject to the death penalty. Why is that? Well, there’s a couple of reasons for that. And one of the biggest reasons is we don’t think God’s thoughts after him. And the church hasn’t for a long, long time.

Abortion is one of the most common crimes that’s existed in cultures since the creation of man because it’s a, as James B. Jordan points out in the conclusion of his article in Contra Mundum, statement of faith. It’s a statement of God’s thoughts, not our thoughts, to say that the child before birth is a human being. See, we don’t see that child. And from the moment of conception, whatever you do see for quite a long time is pretty unformed.

We take God’s word, and we’re not going to go over the references today. We’ve done it before. We take God’s word as asserting that there is life, human life in the womb from the moment of conception. But that’s a statement of faith. You will not be able to prove that to people, I don’t think, ever. God doesn’t want to prove. He wants us to submit our thoughts to his thoughts as dictated in the scriptures.

So abortion is affliction. One of the primary purposes is to get us to think his thoughts after him, to bring a sense of faith back to the Christian community, taking God’s word as it defines life in the womb. And then from that we can then build a set of criminal codes that would punish abortion and mothers that contract out for the killing of their preborn children to death, sentencing them to death.

Now, again, in Mr. Jordan’s article, he talks about young girls who are given confused counsel and stray from the path. And maybe theirs is not a high-handed sin of murder when they kill their children because they’re not thinking of them as children. They’ve been sincerely confused and deluded as Eve was by men and parents and such who will tell them this isn’t a child. So I’m not saying that every mother should be executed, but I am saying that’s the direction we should be moving.

And when a mother is fully conscious of the knowledge that this is human life and submits that life to death, she should be executed. God’s thoughts, not our thoughts. And then secondly, God’s ways, not our ways. And as I said here, I mentioned it briefly already, but the scriptures very importantly tell us in Romans chapter 12 that the civil government’s job is to bring vengeance. We are not to take our own vengeance. God has ordained a civil magistrate.

We want God-ordained magistrates in the context of our country, and we have them. We do not want to move to vigilantism. As much as we’re going to pray here in a few minutes that God bring his special curses upon those that commit abortion, please understand that what has been occurring for the last year and a half of people killing, taking the law into their own hands and going out and shooting abortionists and people that work at abortion clinics, is despicable in the sight of God.

It is sin. It is just as much sin as the mothers contracting out for the killing of their children, and those men should be executed as well. There’s no biblical justification for what they do. And as we move that way, we move away from the rule of law toward anarchy. And we do it because we’re impatient. We’ve had 22 years of this. And some people are sick to death of it. And when the political thing doesn’t seem to be going good, then people go to more radical action.

But it’s unbiblical action. And it’s moving outside of God’s ordained means, the regulation of life-taking from the scriptures to combat that very thing. And it’s sin, and it will produce anarchy, not the rule of law. God’s ways are not our ways. We want to put it in quickly because it bothers us, and it bothers us a lot. It should bother us, but we should recognize that the whole purpose is to bring us to think God’s thoughts and act in terms of his ways.

The church first, then the family and state. It is good that there are political action people. You know, we’re involved with it here. I am. Others are in lots of arenas, including this particular arena. That’s good. It’s good that families are very diligent about trying to help women bring their babies to term. Another thing Mr. Jordan points out in his article is that there’s a sense of discipline that’s needed for a woman who doesn’t want a child to bring her to term.

We need a growth in faith that the child is actually a child, and in discipline, even if it is a child, going through the painful effort of bringing a child to term that you don’t want. And families have helped do that. Crisis pregnancy centers, etc. Those are tremendous works. But let me suggest that all those works must take a second seat to the voice of God as it’s sounded out through the pulpit and through the members of the churches that constitute the bride of Jesus Christ.

The church is the institution that instructs from the word of God, and that is the word that Isaiah 55 says will not return void again. It’s his word that will accomplish change. God’s ways certainly include rule of law with his ordained magistrates, but it also involves the church instructing magistrate and family from the scriptures. Worship first, other means second.

Again, judgment begins at the house of God. And the house of God is where the evaluation must come. And so that church is responsible to speak forth and in the worship of God request his particular judgments that this particular trial might come to an end.

Again, in verse 10: “As the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven returneth not, the watereth the earth and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater. So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void. It shall accomplish that which I please and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”

Word of God tells us that the church is, in the words of Mr. Jordan, the alpha of society and culture—the beginning point. When God comes in judgment, he doesn’t start with the family. He doesn’t start with the state. Scriptures tell us judgment begins with the house of God. On the day of the Lord, the special day of visitation of God to his people, he comes first to the church and then he moves out to the culture round about—to families and governments.

Book of Ezekiel—when God comes in judgment against the temple, against Jerusalem, he comes first to Jerusalem and Israel, to God’s people. But after that first portion of the book is talked about, then the judgment goes out and the woes against enemies to the north, south, east and west, Egypt, Philistia, Eden, Ammon. All that word goes out from Ezekiel’s mouth. It’s a miniature day of the Lord that we engage ourselves in on the Lord’s day here.

And Ezekiel talks about the implications of that. The message of judgment comes to the church first. And in her worship service, she recites her failings before God to think his thoughts and to act according to his ways. He judges us. And then he expects us to take that word and the spirit goes out from his place and we pray that spirit would go out and have an effect in the culture round about us as well.

Church first. Worship service of the church. The particular place where the day of the Lord occurs every week. We call it the Lord’s day. Let’s think of it as the day of the Lord. Same terminology in Greek and Hebrew. Church courts first. Other means second.

How can the church go to the civil magistrate and say, “We want you to make this illegal if the church has not made it illegal in the context of the church?” How many people were excommunicated from churches in Oregon this last year for engaging in abortion? I don’t know any. Maybe there were some. But until the church with a united voice through its courts proclaimed God’s word that abortionists, those that support abortion, mothers that commit their children to abortionists, etc., are not allowed in the congregation of the righteous and are to be cut off, we’re not going to be effective in terms of political action.

God’s ways first. God says the church is beginning of justice and judgment in the context of the land. The day of the Lord and God-regulated judgment.

Let me speak a little bit more on God-regulated judgment in a couple of minutes. Very important as we consider a liturgy of malediction to remember God’s regulation of judgment.

All right. Now, some thoughts on implications. We talked about God’s ways, God’s thoughts, God’s words, not our words. And we talked about God’s ways beginning at the church. And what should happen in the context of the church? Well, the preaching of God’s word relative to human life should go out. But also, the scriptures talk about imprecations, particular prayers for judgment upon wickedness and evil in the context of a land and nation. And I want to talk a little bit about that to prepare us for our liturgy of malediction.

Turn to Exodus 22:22-24. This is case law of God. We look in the Pentateuch first and we see the beginning of principles that are laid out throughout the rest of the scriptures, and in verses 22-24.

“Thou shalt not afflict any widow or fatherless child. If thou afflict them in any wise and they cry out aloud 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 says there’s a positive obligation to widows and the fatherless to cry out to God in an imprecatory way, asking for God’s deliverance and along with that his punishment upon the wicked. And God promises to answer such prayers. He says, “When those prayers go out, I will respond and I’ll send forth my spirit to execute judgment in relationship to those who oppress the fatherless and widows.”

And when we’re talking about children being killed in the womb, we’re talking about the fatherless. We’re talking about those outside of the protection of their parents. Parents have become no parents to them anymore. Now I think this also has a positive obligation that we as a congregation of the Lord intercede for the fatherless as well.

Again, that throughout the scriptures is a basic principle that we’re supposed to assist those who cannot assist themselves. In particular, that includes the widows and the fatherless. And so for the church to engage every year in prayers that God would rescue those children, would come to their defense and execute judgment against the wicked is proper and appropriate.

That basic principle is then spelled out in a number of imprecatory psalms. There are three particular ones I’ll just make reference to shortly. The first is Psalm 35. Look at Psalm 35, please, in your scriptures. Psalm 35:4. I’m going to read portions of this that has to do with imprecation where David is praying that God would bring judgments.

Psalm 35:4: “Let them be confounded and put to shame that seek after my soul. Verse 5: Let them be as chaff before the wind. Let the angel of the Lord chase them. Let their way be dark and slippery. And let the angel of the Lord persecute them. Verse 8: Let destruction come upon him at unawares. And let his net that he hath hid catch himself into that very destruction, let him fall.”

David asked for God’s particular curses upon these wicked men in Psalm 35, one of the imprecatory psalms.

Verse 25 and 26: “Let them not say in their hearts, ‘Ah, so would we have it.’ Let them not say, ‘We have swallowed him up.’ Let them be ashamed and brought to confusion together, and let them rejoice, let rejoice at mine hurt. Let them be clothed with shame and dishonor that magnify themselves against me.”

So David prays in Psalm 35. Look at Psalm 69. Psalm 69 verse 21: “Oh God, thou knowest my foolishness and my sins are not hid from thee.”

So he acknowledges his own sin. But then he goes on as that psalm proceeds to say this in verse 21. And so I’ll read this to set up the judgments that come upon them. “They have given me also gall for my meat and my thirst. They have given me vinegar to drink.”

Psalm 69 is quoted five times in the New Testament and alluded to a bunch of other times, and much of those times it has reference to our Savior directly. So that’s very important to note in passing.

So what is then asked for of those that essentially are the ones—the same ones who persecute the Savior—who also had persecuted David?

Verse 22: “Let their table become a snare before them. And that which should have been for them for their welfare, let it become a trap. Let their eyes be darkened that they see not, and make their loins continually to shake. Pour out thine indignation upon them, and lay thy wrathful anger, thy wrathful anger, take hold of them. Let their habitation be desolate, and let none dwell in their tents. Verse 28: Let them be blotted out of the book of the living and let them not be written with the righteous.”

Then Psalm 109. Turn to Psalm 109, please.

Begins in verse 1: “Hold not thy peace, oh God of my praise.”

So he’s asking God to act. And what does he want? What does he want God to do?

Look at verse 6: “Set thou a wicked man over him. Let Satan stand at his right hand. When he shall be judged, let him be condemned. And let his prayer become sin. Let his days be few, and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds and beg. Let them seek their bread and also out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath, and let the strangers spoil his labor.

Let there be none to extend mercy unto him, neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off, and in the generation following, let their name be blotted out. Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the Lord, and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out. Let them be before the Lord continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

Verse 17: As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him. He delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him. As he clothed himself with cursing, like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water and like oil into his bones. Let it be unto him as the garment which coverth him and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually.”

These psalms and others as well—we sang Psalm 83. We’ve talked about others as well. These are indications that the basic truth of Exodus 22, where we ask for imprecations against the enemies of God and of his people, is carried out in the prophetic work of the psalter with David’s own work.

Notice that these psalms are Psalms of David. David is the one who is continually very careful about his own particular attitude. David was greatly persecuted by Saul, but he did not strike out at the Lord’s anointed when he had an opportunity to do it. He was not one to take personal vengeance. But Shimei curses David. He doesn’t rail against Shimei. He tells the man who had advised him to go after him and kill him. He says, “No, let him beat me. Maybe the Lord’s speaking through him.”

David is portrayed over and over as someone who does not quickly take up the sword, and in fact may have had a little problem that way relative to Joab. Probably should have taken up the sword against him earlier in his life. So this is not a vengeful, angry, self-willed man who writes this stuff. This is the man who delighted after God whose heart wanted to obey God in all things, and God puts a high commendation upon David.

So let’s not say these are the writings of some malicious man. No, these are the writings of David. And David was a tremendous example to us of the right attitude in all these things.

When I read from Psalm 35, I didn’t read verses 13 and 14. Psalm 35 contains David’s imprecations against the enemies of God, but it also contains this. He says, “But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth. I humbled my soul with fasting, and my prayer returned unto my own bosom. I behaved myself as though I had he had been my friend or brother. I bowed down heavily as one that mourneth for his mother.”

See, this is not the writing of someone who was anxious to see God’s penalties being executed against people that didn’t like David. He said that his attitude was toward his enemies to try to do good to them and treat them as his brother, etc. So this is David speaking.

Again, David writes in Psalm 7: “Oh Lord my God, if I have done this, if there be iniquity in my hands, if I have recorded evil unto him that was at peace with me, yea, I have delivered him that without cause is mine enemy, then let the enemy persecute my soul and take it. Yea, let my life be taken,” he says. So this is David writing these imprecations. They’re proper. They’re proper exhibitions of what God wants us to do with the wicked—to pray that God’s judgment would come upon them.

David’s motivation is that God might be glorified in the earth. In Psalm 58, we read of his desire that the saints of God would rejoice in God’s vengeance. He says this in Psalm 58. The psalmist does. “The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance.”

So that a man shall say, “Verily, there is a reward for the righteous.” I’m sorry I missed part of the verse there. I’ll begin again. Psalm 58:10-11: “The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance. He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. Why? Because he’s glad that his enemies are hurt. No. Goes on to say, “So that a man shall say, verily there is a reward for the righteous. Verily he is a God that reigneth or judges rather in the earth.”

Psalm 10 says over and over, “Why do people plot against the helpless? Why do the abortionists plot in secret against these children? Why?” Because he says, “There’s no God. God doesn’t see it. God will not judge.” And so Psalm 10 says God does see it. And God’s judgment will awaken. And in the proper timing, he’ll move to end this affliction of abortion in America. And he’ll begin to do it in response to the prayers of his people that he do this and come to the aid of the fatherless.

Psalm 10 says that then he’ll be demonstrated to be God in the earth and the wicked will be removed off from the earth.

And so we’re told that these are not simply Old Testament truth. They are, as I said, cited again and again in the writings of the New Testament. I won’t bother to read the citations, but let me read a few other verses from the New Testament.

Romans 12:19: “Don’t avenge yourselves. Give place to wrath, for it is written, vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord.” That’s a quotation from Deuteronomy 32:35. And he goes on to say, “That’s the civil magistrate’s job to wield that sort of vengeance as defined by Deuteronomy 32:35, which says this: To me belongeth vengeance and recompense. Their foot shall slide in due time. For the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.”

Same sort of wording as these imprecations. God’s hand of judgment will come against those that are wicked and do evil in the land. We don’t take the sword up ourselves, but we do ask for God’s sword to be wielded—nominatively by the civil magistrate.

Peter in Acts chapter 8, verse 20 says to Simon Magus: “Thy money perish with thee because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money. Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter, for thy heart is not right in the sight of God.” He tells him, “God’s judgment is upon you.” And he asks for God’s judgment unless Simon repents. He impreacates Simon.

2 Timothy 4:14: Paul writes Timothy saying, “Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil. The Lord reward him according to his works.” A prayer that God would judge Alexander the coppersmith. And then he also warns Timothy to be wary of him, for he greatly withstood our words. And by the way, that’s a very important verse to add on because Paul isn’t mad that Alexander the coppersmith attacked him personally. He withstood the words of God being uttered by the apostle, and because of that, he prays that the Lord reward him according to his works. He impreacates Alexander the coppersmith.

The book of Revelation—the heavenly host in heaven, the picture of serenity and blessings so to speak, the picture of those who are brought to completion and maturation in the Savior. Yet these members of the church in the book of Revelation cry out, “How long, oh Lord, will thou be before thou avenge our blood on the earth?” They cry this out again.

John in the Apocalypse sees the vials of God’s wrath poured out in the earth, and the sea and the river, the fountains of water. And he heard the angel of the waters saying, “Righteous art thou which art and which was the holy one, because thou did judge, for they poured out the blood of saints and prophets in blood hast thou given them to drink. They are worthy.”

In like manner, when John saw Babylon fall, he heard this exhortation from heaven—not from you know some distant past, from heaven above: “Rejoice over her, thou heaven, ye saints and the apostles and prophets, for God has judged your judgment of her.”

Quote from the work that Greg reprinted—I found this article just yesterday in my files, actually. The reference is given again in the acknowledgement on the outline page. This is a sermon preached in Boston. Let me just read one of the paragraphs from that work:

“Nor can it be said that these imprecatory prayers do not agree to the spirit of Christianity. They did agree to the unequaled meekness of Moses and the exalted devotion of David. Nay, they do agree with the goodness of that frame which we are sure the blessed spirits in heaven are always in. For so the souls of them that are slain for the word of God are represented to be crying with a loud voice in Revelation 6:10: ‘How long, oh Lord, holy and true? Dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell in the earth?’ And thus the divine heard the angel of the waters say, ‘Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art and was and shall be, because thou hast judged this, for they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink, for they are worthy.’ And if both prayers and praises are uttered on this account in heaven above, are they not decent, becoming and agreeable to pure religion in the church here below?”

Indeed, we think they are. Binney wrote this in his concluding words on imprecations. As powerful witnesses for the truth that sin is hateful to God and deserving of his wrath and everlasting curse—a truth which the world would fain forget—the imprecatory psalms must be accounted worthy of their place in the divine manual of praise. Must be accounted worthy.

And we account them worthy this day in terms of our worship services.

Now there’s a very important other consideration I just want to touch on briefly. We’ve talked about these psalm citations, these imprecations, as prayers for God’s work. That is true. But the fact that Psalms 69 and 109—which 109 is frequently referred to in ancient church history as the Iscariot Psalm—the fact that these are actually depictions of what did occur to Judas Iscariot, and so hence Psalm 109 is called the Iscariot Psalm, is a very important point to bring out.

Let me just read a quote here from Binney’s work. David said, “Let their table be made a snare and a trap and a stumbling block and a recompense under them. Let their eyes be darkened that they may not see and bow down their back always.” It is worthy of notice that the apostles account what God was doing in his time—this is to the Jews and also to Judas.