Dennis Tuuri

Our service is today a cry for God to arise. We pray him and come in judgment and particularly upon those who have participated in and promote the heinous sin of abortion. We will turn to Psalm 9 and 10 for our sermon text. The sermon will be on abortion and atonement. You may wonder why we’re reading two psalms. I really want to primarily deal with Psalm chapter 9 or Psalm number nine. But there is a link between these two psalms.

And the indication from literary links which we shall discuss in just a minute is that these are really essentially two halves of one Psalm and so it’s good to read them together and we’ll see that it’s important for understanding of our present situation to not just finish with chapter 9 but to go on to Psalm number 10 as well. Please stand for the reading of God’s word to the chief musician upon Mlab Ben a psalm of David.

I will praise thee oh Lord with my whole heart. I will show forth all thy marvelous works. I will be glad and rejoice in thee. I will sing praise to thy name, oh thou most high. When mine enemies are turned back, they shall fall and perish at thy presence. For thou hast maintained my right and my cause. Thou saddest in the throne judging right. Thou hast rebuked the heathen. Thou hast destroyed the wicked.

Thou hast put out their name forever and ever. Oh thou enemy. Destructions are come to a perpetual end, and thou hast destroyed cities. Their memorial is perished with them. But the Lord shall endure forever. He hath prepared his throne for judgment, and he shall judge the world in righteousness. He shall minister judgment to the people in uprightness. The Lord also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble, and they that know thy name will put their trust in thee.

For thou, Lord, hast not forsaken them that seek thee. Sing praises to the Lord which dwelleth in Zion. Declare among the people his doings. When he maketh inquisition for blood, he remembereth them. He forgiveth not the cry of the humble. Have mercy upon me, oh Lord. Consider my trouble which I suffer of them that hate me. Thou that liftest me up from the gates of death, that I may show forth all thy praises in the gates of the daughter of Zion.

I will rejoice in thy salvation. The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made, and the net which they hid is their own foot taken. The Lord is known by the judgment which he executed. The wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. Hegon sila. The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God. For the needy shall not always be forgotten. The expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever. Arise, O Lord, let not man prevail.

Let the heathen be judged in thy sight. Put them in fear, O Lord, that the nations may know themselves to be but men. Sila.

And on to Psalm number 10. Why standest thou afar off, O Lord? Why hideest thou thyself in time of trouble? The wicked and his pride doth persecute the poor. Let them be taken in the devices that they have imagined. For the wicked boasteth of his heart’s desire and blesseth the covetous and the Lord abhoreth.

The wicked through the pride of his countenance will not seek after God. God is not in all his thoughts. His ways are always grievous. Thy judgments are far above out of his sight. As for all his enemies, he puffeth at them. He has said in his heart, I shall not be moved, for I shall never be in adversity. His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud. Under his tongue is mischief and vanity. He siteth in the lurking place of the villages, in the secret places doth he murder the innocent.

His eyes are privily set against the poor. He lieth and wait secretly as a lion in his den. He lieth and wait to catch the poor. He doth catch the poor when he draweth him into his net. He croucheth and humbleth himself that the poor may fall by his strong ones. He hath said in his heart, “God hath forgotten. He hideth his face, he will never see it.” Arise, O Lord, oh God, lift up thine hand. Forget not the humble.

Wherefore do the wicked condemn God? He hath said in his heart, Thou will not require it. Thou hast seen it. For thou beholdest mischief in spite to recompense it with thy hand. The poor committeth himself unto thee. Thou art the helper of the fatherless. Break thou the arm of the wicked and the evil man. Seek out his wickedness till thou find none. The Lord is king forever and ever. The heathen are perished out of his land.

Lord, thou hast heard the desire of the humble. Thou wilt prepare their heart. Thou wilt cause thine ear to hear, to judge the fatherless and the oppressed, that the man of the earth may no more oppress.

Let us sing our request that God would give us illumination on these texts. For over a decade, we have used the Lord’s Day closest to the anniversary of the 1973 United States Supreme Court decision commonly known as Roe v. Wade to pray that God would put an end to the wickedness and the sin of abortion in our land. Since 1973 there have been roughly 35 million pre-born infants murdered as a result of that Supreme Court decision.

When we read responsibly the psalm today, I hope you noticed that the gods there referred to men who rule primarily in that psalm and that indeed the gods in America have contributed to this tremendous carnage of the murder of pre-born infants.

What’s our proper response to this? How do we think? How do we feel? And how do we act to fulfill our commitment as a church and those who particularly who are covenanted members to abhor the sin of abortion and to pledge to oppose it. What do we do to oppose it? And we have put a stress upon a liturgical response to this carnage in our land.

Now, we’re in the context of a series of sermons going through the Canons of Dort and we’re finishing up, really the next week that section of the second head of doctrine the death of Christ and the redemption of men thereby. That we’re discussing the atonement in the point of Calvinism known as limited atonement or particular redemption. And the last couple of sermons I spoke next to the last sermon that I gave on atonement of the unatoned in contradiction to the atoned.

And remember the unatoned are those who seek being made in the image of God. They still seek atonement but they go about it through a false imputation. Jesus Christ had our sins imputed to him. And when men reject Christ, they impute their sins to other people or to themselves. There’s a false imputation. There’s a false sacrifice that follows that imputation and that leads to sadism and masochism and it leads to seeking to put to death as a sacrifice those that we impute sins to the way that Jesus Christ is the sacrifice for the sins of the elect.

So there’s this false imputation and a false atonement through this false sacrifice from an attempt at least. There’s no responsibility that comes from this there is irresponsibility as opposed to the atonement which leads us the biblical atonement which leads us to the responsible life of the Christian saint.

Now we can see in the sin of abortion a relationship to this false imputation and false sacrifice. There was a bombing this past week at an abortion clinic and the news at first reported it as a bombing at the abortion clinic and CNN I’m talking about now cable news network but then within hours they changed the story to be a bombing at a family planning center or at a population growth control—population control would be another terminology that’s used for abortion mills.

What does this represent? Well, women go to these facilities. In some cases, you could look at them as being lured by men that are described in Psalm number 10 who are covetous. It has been reported from some who have been in interior to the abortion industry before they’re becoming converted to the Lord Jesus Christ that really there are goals by various leaders in the national pro-abortion movement to try to attain between three and five abortions for every teenage girl because this would generate an incredible amount of money.

So there’s money, there’s covetousness, there’s pride, there is the fact that all those that reject God and hate him love death. And so there is this drive to death in the context of abortion. Nonetheless, women are responsible who take the children that God has entrusted to their very womb and turn them over to hired assassins as it were. These women sometimes do this because of this false imputation.

They can’t afford the inconvenience of the child. The sin that they lay with a man in a non-marital relationship or an adulterous relationship at times may be covered over through this deed. There’s a false imputation of responsibility to the child who is then sacrificed for the sake of the well-being of the couple or the well-being of the mother. There is in general in this culture a false imputation to people for the sins of the world.

Population growth is seen as a threat to the existence of the world and so the difficulties and sins of the world are placed by some or at least in some measure upon the burgeoning number of people. So the sin of the culture that is really sinning in violation of God’s law instead of being seen as sin in not controlling the number of children the world has. And so there’s been this tremendous emphasis in the entire time in which I’ve grown up as an adult man in this country to try to restrain population growth because children are basically seen as really problems in that they create all these problems of overpopulation.

So there’s a false imputation and then there’s this movement to falsely sacrifice these children to provide the solution the atonement for our problem. So we could see in relationship to abortion the unatoned at work who hating God love death and work out the implications of that. We can also see in the last sermon I spoke about strange atonement. By this I referred primarily to the church in America in the last couple hundred years.

We used Charles Finney as an example of those who denied the biblical doctrine of atonement. Finney held to a moral governance theory of the universe. He was Arminian to the hilt and he believed that ultimately what the atonement was about was a demonstration of God’s wrath against men. There was no substitutionary work to it ultimately in the real sense. Rather, we see there the great example by which we are to morally reform our lives.

So it’s an example theory that God asserts his moral governance of the universe through demonstrating his justice against his son. But his son doesn’t really effectively carry the sins of anyone in the ultimate sense and of everyone in a general sense. And giving everyone an example of how to be a better person. And the church has moved in terms of this perversion. Now, this perversion is most damaging in that it completely destroys the concept of law.

The atonement is an affirmation of God’s law, his justice as well as his mercy. His mercy demonstrated to the elect. But that mercy is obtained through the death of his only begotten son and requirements of the law. It is an affirmation of God’s law. And not only that, but it also then frees us that we might escape the terrors or rigors of law and be ushered into the joy and delight of lawkeeping in the power of the spirit.

Certainly not perfectly falling short, but having that shortness of our efforts atoned for once for all through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So it is both a demonstration of God’s high opinion of his law, which is an extension of his character through imputing the sins of his elect violations of that law to the son. That it is also a redemption of us into law.

Now when we come together as we do once a year in this church have historically for over a decade now and pray that God would bring his particular curses upon abortionists and upon government officials who promote the sin of murder of pre-born infants. We really speak against the unatoned and we also speak against strange atonement of the false church. Because what we say is that ultimately it is through our fault, our own fault, our own most grievous fault that we sin. And if women sin and if abortionists sin and they reject the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, they shall indeed suffer eternal punishment. And we just simply ask God to cause that to come to effect in history.

We also however correct our attitudes about the unatoned that there are people who are unatoned as the psalm we just read said. There are people who return to hell, which we’ll talk about with that in just a moment. Return to hell because that really is their natural environment, the death-like nature of hell.

So, we assert that we also, however, correct our attitudes about an improper view of atonement that is popular within the churches that I’ve spoken of now, the theory of moral governance. Because what we do when we pray imprecatorily is we reassert to ourselves also that God’s law is in effect. And so, we make appeal to God as judge sitting in session perpetually and acting in the in the lives of men and in the affairs of the world on the basis of his law and exacting justice in relationship to that law. We appeal to him as judge then and so we drive out the false theories of imputation to others of our sin and making them sacrifice and we also drive out the wrong theories that somehow the atonement means that now the law is a dead letter to us.

It is not.

Having said that, what I wanted to do then is to review briefly some things we’ve said over the last couple of years about what this Lord’s Day means to us. Then we’ll look briefly at Psalm 9 and 10 and come to a conclusion.

Now in evangelical churches this day is frequently referred to as sanctity of human life Sunday. And we I have in the last couple of years tried more to use the terminology anti-abortion day of the Lord. We have adopted as a Christian population the rhetoric of the positive nature of the world around us and rejected the assertion of negative law. By this I mean that we are not pro-life ultimately when we speak to this issue. We are against people murdering children.

If we say that essentially what we are is pro-human life, then we commit ourselves to the well-being and the manifestation not of God’s glory ultimately because that glory is affected by means of his punishment upon people and sending some to hell. We move ourselves away from the God of the scriptures and we move ourselves away from the formulation of law that says thou shalt not. We are not pro-life ultimately as regards to this issue. We are anti-abortion and it isn’t really even anti-abortion. It would be well for us to talk about anti-infanticide because these are infants in the wombs of people.

Ultimately, the term abortion itself has moved us away from biblical terminology.

There’s a movie out called Dead Man Walking. I haven’t seen it. I have read various pastors and theologians who appreciate it for its emphasis upon people taking responsibility for their sins that is affected apparently through the movie. I don’t know. But as I was reading one Christian minister, I think or it might have been a theological seminary student comment on this, he said how when he sees these executions in the context of our culture today, for instance, by means of lethal injection and they put the cotton swab against the arm, it just makes him nauseous.

You know, you’re going to be killing this person with this injection and you put the cotton swab to make sure he doesn’t get an infection or something. But why does that happen? Because what our culture wants to do is even in the execution of criminals, we want to make it sanitary. We want to make it somehow antiseptic and as a medical technique, that is going to make the patient better ultimately. But that is not why God would have us execute people.

I’m not saying we have to use stones. But I am saying that execution is execution. It should be carried out by the civil state instead of enlisting the medical profession in coming in and giving lethal injections. The medical profession devoted to a particular vocation or calling before God. You see the correlation to abortion, right? Soon as you think about it a little bit, we’ve enlisted the medical profession people have as hired assassins or thugs to kill pre-born children.

And is it any wonder then that we now have the medical profession actively going now to the idea of assisted suicide where they’re brought in to give the lethal injection to put a person to death when they want to commit suicide and want to sin against God by taking their own life. So the terminology is important. We are against the killing of pre-born infants. We do not believe ultimately in the sanctity in its fullest sense of the term of human life.

We believe in the sanctity of the Lord God Almighty who has called us to holiness. And so it’s not really sanctity of human life. It’s the glory of God that we assert when we pray for God to bring his particular judgments against those who commit abortion. We need to correct our thinking.

And it is not Sunday ultimately. That’s not a bad day. Apparently the seven days of the week relate to the sun, the moon, and the five visible planets, which is not bad because the scriptures refer to those things as being obvious signs to us and clocks as it were in the book of Genesis. However, this is the day of the Lord. This is the Lord’s Day. In the Greek, there is no distinction between the Lord’s Day and the day of the Lord. That simple grammatical fact of Greek should radically change our perception of what we do every Sunday.

The Lord’s Day almost develops a connotation of kind of a nice thing, you know. And when we talk about the day of the Lord and we read what the day of the Lord meant according to the Old Testament prophets, we see a totally different picture. We see God arriving to a people judging in the context first of the church and then of the nations. That’s the day of the Lord. And that’s what we need to reaffirm to ourselves today and every Lord’s Day, every day of the Lord.

So this is we could say anti-infanticide day of the Lord. In this particular day, we assert the glory of God. God by looking for his particular punishments upon those who would murder children in the womb.

Now, we also want to make sure, however, that we understand what we’re doing. We’re going to ask here toward the end of the service today that you join with Elder Meyer and myself in asking God to bring forth his punishments upon the wicked to the end that they would either convert, they would either repent of their sins and be turned or that they’d be destroyed off the face of the earth.

Now, we believe this is totally consonant with, for instance, Psalms 9 and 10, but it’s important that you understand that this is a biblical pattern. And we have throughout the scriptures these calls on the part of God’s people for justice. Now, particularly prayers of imprecation. This is a liturgy of malediction. What does that mean? Well, a benediction is a good word. A malediction is a bad word. When the benediction is pronounced announce at the end of the service. There’s a good word placed upon you by God and he blesses you.

And when a malediction is is prayed for or imposed upon a people, it is a bad word, a cursing from God upon that particular individual or group of people. To imprecate simply means to ask for God’s judgments to come against someone. Prayer of imprecation. We’ve just read responsibly and we’ve seen in Psalm 9 and 10 the phrase, “Arise, O Lord, and judge. Make your judgments known in the earth to the end that people might see your glory and your manifestation.” And so these psalms clearly indicate that what we’re going to ask you to participate in is biblical.

We really have the mind of our savior whose mind is revealed and heart is revealed in this altar as well as in the rest of the scriptures. We have the mind and heart of our savior when we come and do this particular thing and ask for God to bring his particular judgments in history to people to cause them to either convert or be destroyed or removed from the positions that would allow them to violate his law so grievously.

After all, we don’t believe necessarily in the sanctity of human life in its ultimate sense. But we do believe that the ungodly strikes out at man ultimately and murder is seen as the ultimate crime because it is a violation against the primary image bearer of God. Ultimately, you know, against the against the only have I sinned, David said. Ultimately, the abortionist is attempting to kill God by killing his image bearer. Kill off at least the implication of God in his life.

Whether it’s unwanted children, unwanted people in the context of the culture. And so this sin that we ask God to judge is ultimately the sin of men hating him and loving death as a result and killing his primary image bearer, men. Men, murder is a big deal. And when we fail to prosecute murder in a culture, the culture quickly grows into great decline.

Now, the scriptures tell us that there are essentially two groups of people that are particularly the recipients of prayers of imprecation in the Psalms. Those groups are first of all those who attack the helpless and we’ve read that in Psalm 10. And they also are those who attack the church. For instance, in Psalm 58, Psalm 83, Psalm 109, those who attack the people of God. And you can see that in Psalm 9 that we just read as well.

It isn’t just the helpless, it’s the church. So when we ask when you think of praying imprecatorily against someone. That must be the criteria. Go. It’s got to be regulated by God’s word. And God’s word says, “Pray particularly for those who strike out against the visible church of Jesus Christ, against his people. And pray for those who strike out against the helpless, the broken, the humbled ones in the context of a culture.”

And so when we come together today, our particular focus is on that second group. We’re talking about pre-born infants who are the most helpless really in the context of our land today. And even they are the fatherless ultimately and motherless being turned over by their mothers and fathers to abortionists. And so they’re completely helpless. And so it is proper and fitting in the context of that kind of sin according to Psalm 10 and other psalms that we ask for God’s particular judgment on those who would afflict the fatherless and the broken ones, the ones who have no protection for themselves.

The scriptures say in 2 Kings 8, Exodus 3 and 5 in Exodus 22 particularly verses 22-24 that there must be a seeking for judgment and justice on the part of the oppressed the oppressed the widow in the context of Exodus 22 in that case law is supposed to cry out to God and God then says he’ll hear and do something and the implication is that if cries are not made out to him if people aren’t seeking deliverance from him he’s not going to deliver them so there a need there’s not just an ability to have this prayer of imprecation when it comes to those who strike against the fatherless or against the church.

There’s a need on the part of those who are struck against by the ungodly to cry out to God. And then there’s also a requirement, it seems, in Judges 7 23 or 1st Samuel 10:1 17. I’ll provide these references for you later if you want copies of these notes, but the scriptures tell us over and over that it is legitimate and important for people to cry out for those who are oppressed and can’t do anything about it themselves.

So, it’s appropriate for the church institutionally to cry out to God to judge the sins of those who would oppress the fatherless in the context of the culture. So, David in Psalm 9:10 doesn’t just cry out against those who are attacking him and the church, but also David cries out on behalf of the fatherless. And so, it’s appropriate for us to cry out on behalf of the fatherless in this service.

It’s also important for us to remember that God promises in Exodus 22 again as well as other places of scripture that he will respond to these prayers. He may respond slowly from our perspective, but he shall respond asserted over and over again. We’ll look at that in Psalm 9 and 10 in just a moment. He does this to demonstrate his compassion in rescuing those who are under attack from stronger ones. And he also does this to demonstrate his justice.

The end result of the prayer of malediction. Very important. And we’ll see this again as we get to Psalm 9. But the end result of this is not personal vindictiveness. Clearly, as we come to praying this prayer that God would give us particular judgments in history against those who commit abortions and encourage them. You know, we don’t want to do this because we know an abortionist we don’t like or someone has struck out against us or we’re mad at them personally. There is no sense of personal vindictiveness in what David says.

But there is an identification with the God of the scriptures whose glory has been attacked by people who strike out against either the church or the helpless, the fatherless. So we want to leave behind all personal vindictiveness, all personal wrath. And we also want to leave behind the primacy of man. Our ultimate purpose for asking God to bring his judgments in history is not primarily the deliverance of a particular person or group.

It is primarily the glory of God and the demonstration of his justice, his mercy that he does rule in the affairs of men. And so when we pray these things, we’re ultimately seeking as we should in everything that we do, the glory of God to be manifested in the context of our culture.

Okay, that by way of review and let’s turn now to Psalm chapter 9 and chapter 10 and talk about a little bit. Now Psalm 9 which is our particular emphasis has a context and you need to understand a couple of things here. First of all s Psalm 9 is an acrostic psalm and by that each of the couplets of verses in it begins with the next Hebrew letter of the alphabet. It’s an alphabetic psalm starts with in our language A and then it has a verse starts with B and then it has C and Psalm 9 has the first 11 letters of the Hebrew alphabet of which there are 22 letters.

Okay, so it goes through the first half of the Hebrew alphabet. It is an alphabetic psalm. Now, interestingly in the Psalms there are several other alphabetic psalms and they always follow a psalm that talks about man’s predestination to glory. So the context of Psalm 9 in all alphabetic psalms is the assertion of man’s predestination by God as his image bearer to glory. And Psalm 8 is that kind of psalm. We won’t bother to read it now, but you know what is man that thou takes mind of him?

And it talks about the predestination of man to glory as establishment as God’s image bearer in fullness in the context of the world. And then after that we have these acrostic or alphabetic psalms that talk about trouble. So that’s that beginning. The other book end for Psalm 9 is Psalm 10. Now Psalm 10 is interesting because it starts with the 12th letter of the Hebrew alphabet and then it doesn’t have the rest of the letters for the first 12 verses, but it returns to the last four letters of the Hebrew alphabet in its final concluding verses.

Okay, maybe a little bit hard for you to understand, but look at it this way. If it was in English, Psalm 9 would have the first 13 letters of the alphabet, A through whatever it is, L. Psalm 10 would start with M and not have N through S and go back to T U V W X Y Z, whatever it is. You see what I’m saying? So Psalm 10 completes the alphabetic psalm begun by Psalm 9. Okay? They’re a unit is the point. And there are other things that demonstrate that as well.

This is why if you do study in u or if you’ve read Roman Catholic Bibles, a lot of them have a different numbering from the psalms after Psalm 9 and 10 because they put Psalm 9 and 10 together as one psalm. The Septuagint, the Greek vers, the Greek version of the Old Testament produced several thousand years ago, as well as the Latin Vulgate, a later translation of the Bible into Latin. Both of those followed this idea that Psalm 9 and 10 are really one psalm.

And so they changed the numbering system. Protestant Bibles followed the Hebrew Old Testament, which puts them as two different psalms. But you see what I’m saying is they’re very much linked. They’re really, whether or not they’re the same psalm, the point is they’re linked in their grammatical structure. Psalm 10, for instance, doesn’t have an introduction, a title to it because it really picks up the rest of Psalm 9.

And so Psalm 9 has as its context the affirmation of the glory of man, his predestination to be God’s primary image bearer in the world. And then it has as its conclusions Psalm 10, which has this period of chaotic breakup when it’s describing the wicked man in his in all his ungodliness in the first 11 verses and then returns to the order of the alphabetic psalm began in Psalm 9. Okay. Okay.

Having said that, let’s look at Psalm 9 now. And let me let me just we’ll just read through it, make a few comments, then we’ll read briefly through Psalm 10. Psalm 9. And if you’re keeping notes, could say that verses 1 and 2 begin this psalm with a statement of glory to God or praise of God. Psalm 9 to the chief musician upon Muth Leban. We’ll talk about that at the end of the sermon. What that word means a psalm of David author is identified.

I will praise thee, oh Lord, with my whole heart. I will show forth all thy marvelous works. I will be glad and rejoice in thee. I will sing praise to thy name, oh thou most high. So that to begin with the affirmation of praise, which comes nicely after Psalm 8 man being in his full estate depicted now as the psalmist writes these first two verses of glory to God.

Notice a couple of things here. He praises God very importantly in verse one. I will praise thee, O Lord. I will show forth all thy marvelous works. He praises God for his person and for his works. His works. And Psalm 9 and 10 are asking for God to work. You see, part of our praise of God is not just for who he is, but how he demonstrates who he is in works. in history. And that’s why we pray a prayer of malediction that God might work that we might praise him for his works and that other men might praise him as well.

We focus our attention in any liturgy and a liturgy of malediction included and the glory of God and to praise his holy name. And notice in verse 2 that David says, “I’ll be glad and rejoice in thee.” He doesn’t rejoice simply in his covenantal relationship or in his fellowship, but he rejoices really in actually it is in the fellowship that he has with God himself. Not just a manifestation of his works, not just reading his scriptures, he indeed is glad and rejoices in God directly in the tight fellowship and communion that has been affected through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ for us ultimately.

You see, he commits himself as well to rejoicing in God and not just the benefits that God gives him is the idea here. And it’s an exhortation to us number one to seek to praise God not just for who he’s revealed himself to be in his word but in his works in history and to look for those works and secondly it’s an exhortation to us Christian men and women and boys and girls that we commit our hearts as David did to be glad in the fellowship and relationship we have with God Almighty not the benefits because David’s going to write that he’s got times of trouble in these two psalms but nonetheless in the time of trouble then David girds up his heart to be glad in his relationship with God himself.

Very important for the beginning understanding of what these psalms teach us about prayers of malediction.

Verse three, I will bless thee and rejoice in thee. Verse three, when mine enemies are turned back, they shall fall and perish at thy presence. So verses 1 and 2, he starts with this statement of praise and glory. Verse three, he talks of his confident assurance. And we come today having witnessed, many of us in our lifetime witnessed in the sense of knowing about 35 million murders of pre-born infants.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the sins of this culture. And we say there are enemies round about us. There are enemies who attack the church, who attack the image of God and pre-born infants, who attack the fatherless. But we say as we focus on the praise and glory of God, we confidently say, as David said, when my enemies are turned back, they shall fall and perish at thy presence.

We don’t pray kind of wishing that God might ultimately maybe do something about this. We pray confidently knowing that God has demonstrated himself in the past to be and has told us he shall be in the future present in judgments against such sin. So we have the divine assurance that David had that begins that a consideration of our difficulties.

So one and two, glory to God. Three confident assurance that his enemies shall be turned back and God will bring justice. And then in verses 4-6, we have a contemplation by David upon past actions of God in history.

He says, “For thou hast manifested my right and my cause, maintained rather my right and my cause. Thou saddest in the throne judging right. Thou hast rebuked the heathen. Thou hast destroyed the wicked. Thou hast put out their name forever and ever. Oh thou enemy, destructions are come to a perpetual end. Thou hast destroyed cities. Their memorial has perished with them.”

What’s David saying? He’s saying, I can be confident today about in our situation the abortion problem. Because I look back on covenant history and see that God has done things to my enemies. Now, David is in relationship and fellowship to God. He is glad in his praise of God, in his relationship to him. He’s in fellowship with God. And David can and we can identify with all the church of the his of history that has had that relationship with God.

And he can look back at all of covenant history then for 6,000 years for us and say, “God has proved himself faithful to me because it’s my history. That’s who I am. I am covenantally to the Lord Jesus Christ in relationship to God and his people.” In other words, we can look back at our own lives and we can say, “Boy, you remember wife, when times were really tough and we didn’t know what we were going to do or how we were going to get out of that difficulty and God brought us out of it.

And we can look at the difficulty we’re in today with a confident assurance that we can look back on the past actions of God in our life and say, “Yeah, he’s going to help us.” And remember that guy was really this fellow was really attacking our family and we didn’t think we’d ever see the end of him, but he’s gone now. He’s been revealed to be who he is. For instance, if you have people in your business associates or whatever you might have had difficulties with, you can look back in your history.

David looked at his deliverance from enemies and said, “On the basis of that, the future looks bright.” Well, You may not be able to say that. You may not have any great manifestations of God’s deliverance to you from enemies, but you’re with David. You see, this is your history. And you can say, I remember when David was delivered and Israel was delivered from that wicked giant guy. I remember that Goliath, God delivered us.

That’s our history. You see, so we can look back on the recorded history of God in the scriptures. And then the history of the world as well and the Christian people is recorded by applying those truths of the scriptures to our history and say, “God been faithful. He’s going to work. He’s sat in judgment. You see, God is pictured here as the session in verse four. We talk about, you know, Presbyterian churches call their elders sessions.

Well, God is in session. He’s in judicial session in verse four. He sat in the throne of judgment. He’s always on that throne. He’s always sitting there. He’s always in session. God’s throne and court is always open. He maintains the right and the cause of his people. He has rebuked the heathen. Now, notice that. How does he speak and give forth a judicial decree and rebuke. Rebuke is a verbal term. No. But when he acts to slay Goliath, that was a rebuke.

God’s word, his words are demonstrated through his actions in history. And so David looks at these past actions and says, “Assuredly on the basis of these things, I know God has acted in the past and I’m going to have confidence in the future.”

Verse six, he says, “Oh, thou enemy.” Now, that’s the key is that we’re talking about enemies to God here and as a result, enemies to his people. are enemies to the fatherless. Destructions are come to a perpetual end. In other words, you’re being destroyed completely and thou hast destroyed cities. Thou, I think, refers to God there. God has destroyed the cities of the ungodly in the past. And we know, you know, the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah, the fall of other cities that have exalted themselves against God. Their memorial has perished with them.

So, God sits, God judges, God sends rebukes, God has in the past done these things. And we can then pray confidently and feel confidently about the future.

So verse 1 and 2, the glory of God. Verse 3, a confident assurance that things will be okay. Verses 4-6, a reflection on past actions of God. And now verses 7 through 12, a belief about the future. Okay, he goes from the past to the future. And then we’ll get to the present at the end of the psalm.

The Lord shall endure forever. The future holds this truth. The heath has prepared his throne for judgment. He doesn’t just sit there. He acts. He shall judge the world in righteousness. He shall manifest judgment to the people in uprightness. This is what history is about. He says, “In the future, these things will be manifested more and more. God sits in judgment. He shall act.” And so, the idea then is we’re supposed to ask him to act.

Verse 9, “The Lord will be a refuge for the oppressed and a refuge in times of trouble.” That term time of trouble is an unusual phrase. Just noting briefly here that it is also found in the first verse of chapter of Psalm number 10. That’s one of the literary ties between these two psalms that show them to be one. God is a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble. And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee, for thou, Lord, hast not forsaken them that seek thee.

Based on the past actions, the future will be filled with people putting their trust in God, and he will deliver them. Sing praises to the Lord which dwell in Zion. Declare among the people his doings. When he makes inquisition for blood, when he avenges would be another way to say this. When he avenges murders is what it saying here. So in other words, he shall do it. He remembers them. He forgets not the cry of the humble.

You see, God doesn’t necessarily, you can’t see God acting today, David says, but I know he’s acted in the past, and I know that in the future, he will avenge murders. Maybe slow and coming, but he doesn’t forget. People think he forgets. Where is God? Where is the promise of his coming? He doesn’t forget. He has his time frame, but I could go on but let me just note.

Verses 7-12 then he looks to the future and says this is the way history will unravel because of God’s presence in judgment and then on the basis of the confident remembering of the past the confident assertions of God’s presence in the future he then moves to present action in verses 13 and 14.

Have mercy upon me, oh Lord. Consider my trouble which I suffer of them that hate me. Thou that liftest me up from the gates of death, that I may show forth all thy praise in the gates of the daughter of Zion. I will rejoice in thy salvation.

You see, he’s gone from the past to the future. And then he takes refuge today in the present, knowing that God indeed will deliver from the gates of death. Not just so we can be delivered from the gates of death, but so that we may enter the gates of praise. You see, you’re either bound in the gates of death or you’re moving toward the gates of praise.

Remember the first great miracle of the apostles. A man is sitting lame at the doorway to the temple and he’s healed so that he can go into the gates and praise God. And the culture, what we desire is not simply peace and order and a moral society. That’s the moral governance theory of atonement. Again, what we desire is that God might act in judgment against abortionists.

Not just to get rid of this thing that bothers our conscience, but that the culture might see the demonstration of God’s justice and be moved then individually by families and as a nation into the halls of praise that the gates of death might be battered down by God’s judgment that we might be ushered into the gates of praise. Tremendous. This is extremely important if you very important that this verse tells us the purpose again of the prayer of malediction.

It’s not ultimately for the children. It’s not ultimately for the church. It’s not ultimately for the parents. It’s ultimately that God’s name might be manifested and that people might praise his name for his works in the context of the world. We’re not humanists. We’re trained humanists, but we’re not. We’re theists now. We’re Christians. We assert the glory of God, not ultimately the well-being of men.

So verses 13 and 14, present action. And by the way, David is a Calvinist, isn’t he? David is assured that God is sovereign. He’s demonstrated in the past. He will do it in the future. If it was ultimately a man’s decision that couldn’t make those statements. And David in his affirmation of God’s sovereignty doesn’t become passive, does he? He’s moved to action in the present. He’s moved to prayer. He doesn’t just sit and wait for it to happen.

No Calvinist does who understands the doctrine of God’s sovereignty. It engages him in the present life. And David is engaged in crying out to God for deliverance and crying for his particular judgments upon these men.

Now, this same cycle of looking at the past, remembering what God has said he’ll do in the future so that we can in the present make these prayers to God and seek his deliverance is repeated then in the next few verses, verses 15 and 16.

He looks back to the past again. Now, the heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made. In the net which they had hid is their own foot taken. The Lord is known by his judgment which he executed. The wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. Hegon sila again he talking about the pasture. God in the past has done this and meditate upon this. Sila I think means to pause. Hegon means to reflect soberly on something.

I believe that those they’re a little bit unsure but it appears that the point here is to meditate with contemplation on these facts. When God manifests his judgment, this is how he does it. He does it by caused them to fall into their own snare.

Now, we do not advocate at this church and the scriptures do not advocate taking up the civil magistrate’s sword on the part of individual people or the church. That is sin. That’s rebellion against God. And rebellion, the scriptures say, is as the sin of witchcraft. I praise God that Paul Hill was excommunicated from a church that theology is very close to ours prior to his murder of the abortionists several years ago. I don’t want what I say now to be misunderstood. It is sin.

And if you advocate that kind of violence, taking into your hands the civil magistrate’s sword against abortionists, this church will try to deal with you by instructing you that this isn’t correct. And ultimately, I pray to God, we have the fortitude and commitment to God’s