Dennis Tuuri

Revelation 6, beginning at verse one. And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard as it were the voice of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, “Come and see.” And I saw, and behold, a white horse, and he that sat on him had a bow. And a crown was given unto him, and he went forth conquering and to conquer.

And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, “Come and see.” And there went out another horse that was red, and power was given to him that sat upon him to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another. And there was given unto him a great sword. And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, “Come and see.” And I beheld, and lo a black horse, and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, “A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny, and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.” And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, “Come and see.” And I looked, and behold, a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was death, and hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?” And white robes were given unto every one of them. And it was said unto them that they should rest yet for a little season until their fellow servants also and their brethren that should be killed as they were should be fulfilled.

And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood, and the stars of heaven fell into the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it rolled together, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bond man, and every free man hid themselves in the dens, and in the rocks of the mountains, and said unto the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?”

And after these things, I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree. And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God. And he cried out with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, saying, “Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.”

And I heard the number of them which were sealed. And there were sealed 144,000 of all the tribes of the children of Israel. Of the tribe of Judah were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Reuben were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Gad were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Asher were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Naphtali were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Manasseh were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Simeon were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Levi were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Issachar were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Zebulun were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Joseph were sealed 12,000. And of the tribe of Benjamin were sealed 12,000.

After this I beheld and lo a great multitude which no man could number of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues stood before the throne and before the Lamb clothed with white robes and palms in their hands, and cried with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation to our God, which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.” And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders, and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshiped God, saying, “Amen.

Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might be unto our God forever and ever. Amen.” And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, “What are these which are arrayed in white robes? And whence came they?” And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said unto me, “These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple. And he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters.

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. And I saw the seven angels which stood before God. And to them were given seven trumpets. And another angel came and stood at the altar having a golden censer. And there was given unto him much incense that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.

And the smoke of the incense which came with the prayers of the saints ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand. And the angel took the censer and filled it with fire of the altar and cast it into the earth. And there were voices and thunderings and lightnings and an earthquake. And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.

Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your scriptures and we pray now that your Holy Spirit would illumine these texts for understanding. And we pray, Lord God, that the prayers of this church and of your church as it exists throughout this world might be efficacious this day and every Lord’s day to bring forth, Father, changes in history and our world round about us. We thank you, Father, for the importance that these texts tell us of our prayers. Forgive us, Lord God, for entering into worship before you lightly so often, lightly praying things.

Help us, Father, to see the correlation between what we do on earth here and what is occurring in heaven above. And we pray that the end result of this matter, Lord God, might be a more cleansed and purified people, prepared to pray the prayers that we must pray this day. For we ask it in Christ’s name and for the sake of his kingdom, not ours. Amen.

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Decline of decency in the language of public discourse. I commented on this last week for those of you who weren’t here. If you don’t remember this, I mentioned my wife’s mother, a godly, saintly woman who died nearly 13 or 14 years ago. At that time, portions of the male anatomy were not being discussed as part of public discourse. Since then, of course, they have become commonplace in our news reporting.

I mentioned last week the shame that had come to our country because the previous day there was a deposition taken of the president of the United States that discusses in detail certain sorts of terms and things. Well, who would know that this last week would see a further decline? I cannot—I will not—tell you the sorts of terms that are now being used in the public discourse of our country.

Even the New York Times, the great respected institution among some that it has been for public discourse, has used terminology for the first time these past few days, referring not just to the president, but to anyone. These are not terms that are unknown to people, but they are terms that we would normally expect to hear at that pornography shop down the street from the Beaver and Pet Clinic. It is a disgusting thing that this country is sinking, and sinking rather fast.

And yet there’s a hopefulness in this as well. We’ve read these seven letters to the seven churches and considered them in some detail now for a number of months. And if it tells us anything, it says that God comes quickly. Jesus is always warning the church: Repent. The time is at hand. These things are going to happen quickly. They happened quickly to the church in AD 70 and the years leading up to that, and they’ll happen quickly in our day and age as well. It doesn’t seem like it. We ask, as the saints under the altar ask, “How long, Lord?” And yet things happen, and happen quickly.

If you were in Jerusalem or the surrounding areas in 35, 40, 45, 50, 60, 65, or 70, you would have probably, in the midst of that kind of thought life, just sort of going on the way it always had gone on. Yeah, the Christian faith was increasing and sometimes persecuted, and yet one of the reasons I read from that extended portion of the book of Revelation is I believe that it describes for us heavenly events as things that are happening on earth. And there are heavenly events occurring in the context of God’s judgment upon the world.

I think in the days in which we live there are times of increased activity, and I believe that this last week, these last few weeks is a time of priestly activity. This is preparation for us in the providence of God. We had planned this particular service, what we call anti-abortion day of the Lord service, for last Lord’s day, and then we had the ice and everything. So we got postponed a week, and I decided to finish up the seven letters rather than proceed on to that.

You know, anti-abortion day of the Lord—some churches call it Sanctity of Human Life Sunday—is held in conjunction with the anniversary of the decision of the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, 25 years ago now, which occurred on January 22nd. So, you know, the Sunday before or the Sunday after—churches, you know, will typically use one of those two Lord’s days. And in the providence of God he postponed our service for today and gave us, if you’ve read any kind of news accounts for the last three, four, or five days, an incredible picture of the relationship of God’s coming in judgment, discovering the nakedness of people who think they are clothed with power and dignity. And God rolls it back and he reveals who we are.

And then the question is: How do we deal with all of that? This is also a Super Bowl Sunday. And I mentioned last week in terms of the buying and selling that the Laodiceans engage themselves in—that commerce is a picture, ultimately, of the commerce, the transaction that occurs in worship between Christ’s people and himself. He says, “Buy of me these garments,” “Salve,” food, clothing—and how do we do that? Well, we come to worship with Christ. The symbol of that economic transaction has replaced what it is symbolizing in this country, primarily through the big writing of real estate transactions and Sunday being the primary day for that.

So our economy has totally moved away. We were talking Friday night and Elder Mayhar mentioned how in our lifetime it was seen as not a good thing when somebody would decide to stay open on the Lord’s day for business. And yet our children—most of my children—have no remembrance of a country that was sensitive to the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day, and the importance to put aside transactions so that they’d be seen properly in the context of the transaction of worship where Christ gives us freely his righteousness. We know nothing of it.

And what our children do know is a civil government that is racked with gross sins. Well, on this date, six years ago today—well, not this date, but Super Bowl Sunday—a man running for president appeared on 60 Minutes with his wife and denied sexual relationship, adultery. And we now have tapes that demonstrate clearly that that went on. This man is now the president of the United States. And we are here six years later embroiled in another such scandal.

And I want to somehow get you to sort of link these things together in your mind: that the Lord’s day has become Super Bowl Sunday, and men dominate this day in terms of their recreations and pastimes instead of the worship of God, and the sexual proclivity of men—well, what can I say?—”products of conception” are being spoken of this last week in the press. And that’s the place God has brought us to as we consider these things in relationship to the terrible sin of abortion, the killing of pre-born infants in the womb.

You know, I’ve used this illustration a number of times, but I always think of it in The Wizard of Oz, the movie. You know, the Wicked Witch is up there writing in huge letters, “Dorothy, go home.” God is writing huge letters in the sky to this country: “Repent. You’re going the wrong way.” And what I want to say today is that we don’t want to look at that as a message for the president of the United States first and foremost. We want to look at it as a message for ourselves.

In Revelation 2 and 3, Christ doesn’t go to the culture. He goes to the church with the message to repent. So we want to do that today. I want to just go through so you understand clearly what we’ll be praying at the conclusion of the sermon as we move toward our prayer of malediction and set it in a proper context, and maybe bring up an issue or two that you haven’t thought of. But I also want you to understand the justification of what we’re doing.

We even got some visitors here today. We got people that are new to the church, have never been involved in one of these services. And it might seem a little odd what we’re going to pray here in a little bit, but I want you to see that it’s not odd.

Now, this is anti-abortion day of the Lord. That’s the terminology I’ve decided to call it for the last couple of years instead of “Sanctity of Human Life Sunday.” It’s the day of the Lord in the Greek. There is no distinction. There’s no different way of saying “the day of the Lord” or “the Lord’s day.”

Now, Sunday is not a bad term, by the way. I mean, Christ is clearly pictured for us as the sun coming in his brightness. And he’s a blazing, consuming fire in the day of judgment. But he also brings light and refreshment to his people. So Sunday is not bad, but “Lord’s day” is good because it remembers to set aside Sunday as the day of the Lord specifically, as was done in the New Testament, the Christian Sabbath.

But “Lord’s day” sort of sounds, you know, okay, we get together and worship and have okay time. But if you remember that the Lord’s day is the day of the Lord and the day of the Lord in the scriptures has various connotations to it. Now there’s an ultimate day of the Lord when Christ returns, and we do not deny that; we affirm that. But we say that all judgment is not postponed till then. Rather, our Savior says that when he comes to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3, for instance, it is a day of the Lord to them. And he comes to meet with his people to show them their sins and bring them to repentance.

You know, if you come here and are convicted of sin, don’t think you did something wrong this last week. Think that God’s doing something right today. Because you sin every week, and so do I. And God’s desire is to show us those sins and to purge our sins that we might shine the brighter for him and be a better testimony and witness to the world and be more efficacious in our prayers before the throne, and on and on it goes.

So he comes—it’s a day of the Lord. And God comes to the church first, but he doesn’t stop there. He moves out to the culture. He addresses the churches, the seven churches in context of the cities in which they dwell. And we’ve talked about this a lot, but it’s because the church is displanting people.

The last letter, Laodicea—Christ is going to spew the church out of his mouth the way the Israelites would have been spewed out of the land if they committed the abominations of those in Canaan that they went in to dispossess. He was telling them, “You’re going to dispossess the Laodiceans. You’re the true Laodicean. The earth has been granted to me.”

As we just read responsibly from Psalm 2, he has asked of the Father, and he has been given the nations of the earth, and his way is most wise. He is omniscient. His most wise way of accomplishing the conversion of the nations is to send us into the world. So he comes to the church, but he then goes out to the culture as well. And the church is to pray for that culture.

So that’s what we’re doing today. It’s a day of the Lord for us. And we’re calling it anti-abortion instead of Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. Ultimately, I want to be careful how I say this—there is no sacredness to human life apart from man as an image-bearer of God. We do not—I think it is more correct to say that the law of God prohibits negatively, says do not kill or murder pre-born infants, as opposed to saying “be pro-life.”

Now obviously Christ is the definition of life, and we are pro-life. But understand that when you use terminology like that, you are prone to have creep into your conversations with others and yourself errors, serious errors. There is no sacredness of human life apart from human life, humans being image-bearers of God. And man has no right to life.

I hope—well, I won’t use the name of the foul that told me this, but, you know, and you might have heard me tell you this individually—but a man here told me. People ask him how he’s doing. He says, “Well, I’m doing better than I deserve.” And of course, that usually prompts the question, “Well, what do you deserve?” And the answer is, “I deserve to be boiling in hell, and so do you.”

Well, that’s true. And it’s a truth that we ought to bring into our conversation more often than we do. There is no right—fallen race, fallen Adam—and all men who are born kicking and screaming in rebellion against God, they have no right to life from God. Life is what we have as a gracious gift of God.

Now, we do believe in the regulation of life and the taking of life based on the scriptures. But you understand what I’m saying? If you start using things like “pro-life” and “sanctity of human life,” I’ve seen people, Christian people, good people get confused by what that means. And all of a sudden they’re against the death penalty, and all of a sudden they’re for great social welfare programs. We’re for life. We better get a lot of welfare going. And maybe even—I don’t know—maybe it would be even, you could take it to the extreme as saying premarital sex isn’t all that bad because it produces life. And if we’re pro-life, let’s get it going.

See, we are pro-life as regulated by the word of God. Okay, I probably dwelt in that too much, but just to help you understand why we use this term “anti-abortion day of the Lord.”

What I want to do now is I want to explain imprecation, and I want to look at some examples from the Old Testament. I want to look at some examples from the New Testament, and then to turn to the text that we read, primarily Revelation 6, 10, and 11, as an example of imprecation in the New Testament.

What’s imprecation? There are imprecatory Psalms. That’s where the term usually is used. And we pray a prayer of imprecation. It means to ask God to bring particular judgments, to make bad things happen—external to the situation. That God would spank for you little ones. That God would rod certain people. And we ask, on anti-abortion day of the Lord, we ask God to rod, to spank, to bring judgments, to make it really uncomfortable for people who are killing pre-born infants, babies that haven’t been born yet.

And we ask God to send forth judgment, to burn them up, to blow them away as chaff before the wind. Now, we do it to the end that those who are elect who are involved in those activities would come to repentance. It’s a redemptive prayer. But we also do it to say that those who are not elect would be taken out of the way. That the Canaanites would be dispossessed and removed.

Now, God has them here for a reason. And we ask, “How long will abortion go on in this country?” And the answer is, long enough for God to do what he’s doing, using sin sinlessly to affect the repentance of this country.

A moral nation is not what we seek, and it is not what God seeks. God seeks a Christian nation. A moral nation that doesn’t have any obvious judgments from God going on—it would be the worst possible thing we could think of, because when people die, they’re going straight to hell, no matter how moral they were, if they’re not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is not glorifying to God to have humanistic moralism.

So I want to explain imprecation, give you help you understand that it’s not something odd we’re doing. It’s a truth that goes from one end of the Bible to the other. We pray that God would bring it. It’s called a service of malediction. You read that in the prayer that I was reading earlier—as opposed to benediction at the end of the service. Number six: benediction. “Bene” is good, “diction” is word. A good word is placed on the people of God. And he’s doing something with that word. It’s not just, you know, wishful thinking or something. “God blesses you.” And a malediction: “mal” is bad, “diction” is word. It’s a bad word placed on the rebels to the Lord Jesus Christ, that God would remove them, kick them out of the land.

So that’s what we’re going to do. So let’s look, first of all, so you see where we’re going. We’re going to look at the Old Testament, and then we’re going to look in the New Testament. We’re going to look at the Revelation text specifically. We’re going to give some cautions in terms of this prayer, and we’re going to focus on our repentance as we prepare to pray this prayer before God. And I’m going to read a lamentation at the end of the service written by someone else. We’re going to do that in about a few minutes.

Okay, let’s quickly look at some texts, and the first ones I’ll just read to you. But we’re going to go to the Old Testament. Now, right, we could use Deuteronomy 32:35 if you want to write down the reference. “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.”

God says he is a God to whom belongs vengeance and recompense. Well, that’s the Old Testament God, some people say. Well, it’s one word from God, and we’re going to see that here very specifically. In Exodus 22:22-24, we read: “You shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child. If you afflict them in any way and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry and my wrath will become hot, and I will kill you with the sword. Your wives shall be widows and your children fatherless.”

Now, if that’s what God intends to do, we ought to pray that way. And if there are fatherless people in our country, surely it is those children who have been abandoned by mother and father and are taken to the abortion clinic. And surely we should pray as the widows cry out to God. So we should cry out for the fatherless, that God’s vengeance would come upon the abortionists, to the end that they might be delivered from that murder—that is, the children.

Genesis 4, talking about vengeance. Now, we read in Revelation 6 that the saints under the altar cry out to God, “How long?” And in Genesis 4:10, we read that God says, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” Cain and Abel. Abel’s blood cries out to God from the ground. The altar at the base of the altar was the blood from the sacrifices in the Old Testament. The saints in Revelation 6 have been killed and martyred for the faith. The priests, so-called of the institutional church, have poured their blood out in a supposed act of worship to God. Their blood is soaked into the ground under the altar.

Their blood is Abel’s blood. And there is continuity from Abel’s blood crying out to God for vengeance to the blood of the saints crying out to God for vengeance to those who strike at God’s image-bearer in man, and particularly who disturb the peace of the church and martyr Christians.

Psalm 9:12—”when he avenges blood, he remembers them. He does not forget the cry of the humble.” Assurances that not only is God a God of vengeance, but he answers prayers seeking his vengeance upon the wicked.

Psalm 13:1—”How long, oh Lord, will you forget me? Forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” Same prayer that the saints are crying out from under the altar. And David said, “How long will it be?” David knew it was coming. But David said, “How long will it be?”

Psalm 35—”Lord, how long will you look on? Rescue me from their destruction, my precious life from the lions.”

Psalm 74—”We do not see our signs. There is no longer any prophet, nor is there any among us who knows how long. Oh God, how long will the adversary reproach? Will the enemy blaspheme your name forever?” No, he won’t. But it does take a while sometimes for God’s vengeance to be known.

Psalm 94—”Lord, how long will the wicked? How long will the wicked triumph? They utter speech and speak insolent things. All the workers of iniquity boast in themselves.”

The scriptures tell us that God does bring vengeance, but frequently it is postponed. Imprecatory prayers are found throughout the Psalms. Now, there’s a couple we’re going to focus on. And if you would turn now to Psalm 10.

We’ll look at that briefly. Psalm 10. We won’t read the whole thing, but we will read some portions of it. Look at verse 8 in Psalm 10, talking about the ungodly man: “He sits in the lurking places of the villages in the secret place that he murder the innocent. His eyes are always set against the poor.”

Well, that’s abortionists in our day. That’s men who kill pre-born infants secretly. They murder the innocent. They do it away in closed places because it is murder. And David in Psalm 10 prays to God about this. Why does he do it? In verse 11, David says: “One reason he does this, the evil man, he said in his heart, ‘God has forgotten. He hides his face. He won’t see it.’ I haven’t experienced the judgments of God. He’s not going to do anything about my being a good doctor and helping this woman do away with the products of conception.”

So then David prays. He says: “Arise, oh Lord our God, lift up your 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 requite it with thy hand. The poor commits himself unto thee. Thou art the helper of the fatherless.”

And then he prays: “Break thou the arm of the wicked, and the evil man, seek out his wickedness till thou find none.” In other words, he’s saying, “Come and burn up the wicked in our land until there is no wicked left to burn up.” That’s what he’s saying.

Now, that can happen a couple of ways. That can happen through the conversion of people. You know, I want to—I was going to say this for later, but let’s mention it now lest you misunderstand what I’m saying. We’ve got a president who may have done tremendously wicked things. And Israel had a king. I’m not making a correlation, but understand this. Israel had a king that wrote these things. A man who loved God more than you probably. I mean, I probably shouldn’t say that, but—he—that’s what the scriptures portray him as, that kind of man. And he was an adulterer. And he didn’t just commit adultery. He had Bathsheba’s husband killed. Okay? God forgave him that sin. We’re going to see David in heaven now.

You know, his life was marked a little differently than the lives of most of us we’d make the correlation to in the life of President Clinton. But if people repent, God forgives them. Be ready for that. That’s what we want. We don’t want people sent to hell ultimately. We want to see the manifestation of God’s grace. We pray the people are elected and that these judgments, the way that God delivers us from the evil, is to convert people.

Now, you know, in his justice, he’s not chosen everybody. And that’s okay with us. We rejoice in that. But you understand: “Lord, thou hast seen the desire of the humble. Thou hast heard it. 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.” It’s going to happen. David was sure of it. He prayed it. That’s what an imprecatory prayer is. Stop this stuff from happening.

There are other portions of the Psalms where this is—there’s a ton of them, actually. Probably at least a third of the Psalter has at least a portion of these psalms where they find these kind of prayers. Let me just read a couple.

Psalm 35. Look at Psalm 35:4. “Let them be confounded and put to shame. This is the prayer, an inspired prayer of God’s men. Let them be confounded and put to shame that seek after my soul. Let them be turned back and brought to confusion that devise my hurt. Let them be as chaff before the wind, and 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 them at unawares, and let his net that he hath hid catch himself, into that very destruction, let him fall.”

Verse 25: “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 that rejoice at mine hurt. Let them be clothed with shame and dishonor that magnify themselves against me.”

God is in the process—always is—of shaming people, clothing them with shame and dishonor who oppose him, and their opposition of him is demonstrated by the sins and violations of his law. So we have it today in our country.

Psalm 58:10-11 says this. Not only does God say it’s okay to pray these things, and in fact, it is a duty of the Christian to hate sin and to pray that it receive its just judgment from God, particularly sins of public abhorrence such as abortion and the other things we’re seeing in our country—God wants us to hate it. It’s a duty of ours to pray against it. And not only that, but verse 10 of Psalm 58 says: “The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance. When we see the answers to prayers.” Now, we must do it soberly. We do not do it in the flesh. We do—very cautious not to do that—but we rejoice in the judgments of God manifested in vengeance.

“He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked so that a man shall say, ‘Verily, there is a reward for the righteous. Verily, he is a God that judges in the earth.’ We’re called to look for, pray for, and then rejoice in the contemporary judgments of God in the context of our earth.

Psalm 69. Turn quickly there, please. Verse 21: “They gave me gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.”

“Let their table become a snare before them, and that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap. Let their eyes be darkened that they see not. Make their loins continually to shake. Pour out thine indignation upon them, and let 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 not be written with the righteous.”

Well, you say that verse 21, Dennis, it’s a kind of a special case here because it’s our Savior talking. They gave him gall to drink. Well, that’s kind of the point I’m making. It is the Savior talking. I think in the Psalms that’s what we see—is the prayer life of our Savior. And our Savior, in addition to his acts of mercy and compassion and recognizing that men do not understand, are not self-conscious what they do, nonetheless, our Savior also prays that those who are adamantly opposed to God and who are not—those will be brought to repentance for their actions, but they be judged and that quite harshly.

Turn to Psalm 109. Now, Psalm 109 and the other Psalm we just read are both quoted in Acts 1:20. The apostles recognize that these things were very much applicable to Judas Iscariot. And Psalm 109 is referred to by some as the Iscariot Psalm.

Verse 6: “Set thou a wicked man over him, and 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 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. As 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 a garment which covereth him and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually—that is, shame and suffering and cursing.”

The Iscariot Psalm. So that’s kind of the bridge to the New Testament because what we see in the scriptures are those that strike—and in these Psalms we have seen by way of allusion the widow, the father. And we would include the stranger in that. They are the special recipients of the special curses of God. People that hurt those people, that strike out against them.

And then the second category: those that strike out against the church. Because the church, the widows and the fatherless, have God’s particular provision for protection. And ultimately to strike at the widow or the fatherless is to strike at them in a weakened form, a weakened sense of its own power, but an image of God. So people are striking out at God and at Jesus Christ when they abort little children. Now, they don’t know that, but that’s what they’re doing. They’re striking at the image of God.

And we need to understand that the Iscariot Psalms quoted in the book of Acts relative to the New Testament show us that the focal point of our imprecations are those who are opposed to the work of Jesus Christ.

Let me read—well, I won’t—running out of time. We’ll move forward. Let’s go to the New Testament then.

Actually, before we leave the Psalms, you know what Psalm 1 is, right? That’s the summary of the Psalms. It’s the beginning of the Psalms. It says there’s two paths. Path of blessing, class of destruction, and the path of destruction. The wicked that go on it, they will be driven off the face of the earth. That’s what Psalm 1 says.

In Psalm 2, we just read it responsibly. It says that the enemies come up against Christ, against the anointed of God, but he has them in derision. They either kiss him or they perish.

Psalm 3 sees the periphery of enemies. “Lord, how quickly grows the number of my foes that constantly distress me.” The Genevan Psalter version of Psalm 3. And the whole Psalter, rather, is filled with these struggles with the enemies of Christ’s kingdom.

But the Psalter ends with Psalm 150. And there is no mention left of the wicked in Psalm 150. Everything has been brought to resolution. Psalm 150 correlates to Psalm 1. It says, “Yeah, the two paths are real. History of man is about those two paths and about the destruction of the wicked so that all we’re left with at the end of the day are the righteous in Psalm 150.”

And Psalm 149, I think, helps us to understand the correlation of this to the worship of the church. Because it begins with statements of worship of God.

Psalm 149. Turn there. “Praise ye the Lord. Sing unto the Lord a new song. It’s praise in the congregation of saints. That’s what we’re doing today. Let Israel rejoice in him that made him. Let the children of Zion be joyful in their king. Let them praise his name in the dance. Let them sing praises unto him with the timber and harp. For the Lord takes pleasure in the people. He will beautify them with salvation.

Let the saints be joyful in glory. Let them sing aloud upon their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth.”

Worship, praise. And what happens? How did we get to Psalm 150 through Psalm 149? And it says: “And a two-edged sword in their hand to execute vengeance upon the heathen and punishments upon the people, to bind their kings with chains, their nobles with fetters of iron, to execute upon them the judgment written. This honor have all his saints. Praise ye the Lord.”

Now, that’s a lot like Psalm 2. Fathers and chains of iron. Christ executes judgment upon the wicked in Psalm 2, and his people are brought to execute that judgment upon the wicked in the context of their praise in Psalm 149, that the man of sin be no more upon the earth in Psalm 150.

Psalm 10 being read into that. So what we’re saying is that what the church does in the prayers of the church and the worship of God is to seek God, drive the dross out of us, and drive the dross out of the culture, and remove the wicked to the end that we might have an earth that is discipled to the Lord Jesus Christ that ushers up prayers and praises to him.

Now that’s the context, that’s the understanding we bring to the New Testament. So when we read in Romans 12:19, “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves but give place unto wrath. For it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay,’ saith the Lord.” And it goes on to talk in Romans 13 about the establishment of the civil state for that purpose.

We know that it’s the same God of the Old Testament. We don’t need any verses. Okay, let me just say this first. We need no verses from the New Testament affirming what I’ve said so far. If God is going to exercise a different kind of judgment in the New Testament, we would expect him to tell us that. We do not need repeated citations of God’s being a God of vengeance as well as a God of mercy in the New Testament, but we have them nonetheless. And we’ve got it right there in Romans 12.

Yeah, we don’t want to exercise vengeance ourselves, but it doesn’t mean vengeance won’t happen. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” And I have given you a civil state that is normally the instrument by which vengeance is to be brought against those who break my law.

There are other instances. Acts 8:20, Peter says unto him—that is, this man who tried to buy the Holy Spirit with money—”Your 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. Thy heart is not right in the sight of God.” He says, you perish. May God bring your destruction upon you if you continue in that line of thinking, in that way of being, and may your money perish with you.

2 Timothy 4:14-15. Paul said, “Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil. The Lord reward him according to his works.” Was Paul sinning? No. Paul understood his Bible. He understood his God. And he knew that God does judge people according to their works. And Paul prayed here that God would reward Alexander the coppersmith according to his works. “Of whom be thou warned weary also? For he hath greatly withstood our words.”

Okay. And so that’s the context when we come around to Revelation 6, that it’s part of this whole process. We read a couple more.

Luke 18:7, our Savior says: “Shall God avenge his own elect who cry out day and night to him, though he bears long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily.” And that’s just what is repeated for us in Revelation 6.

Christ says, “Yeah, vengeance will happen and it will occur.” Our Savior came and preached his sermon in the synagogue and said that he had come to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. And what does Isaiah 61 tell us? It is to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, the day of the vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourned—judgments of God brought to earth. That’s why our Savior came was to make those things manifest. And indeed they became manifest.

2 Thessalonians 1:6-8. “It is a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you and to give you who are troubled rest. When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Vengeance. God is still a God of vengeance, anger, and wrath.

Luke 18, beginning at verse one: “He spake a parable unto them to this end that men ought always to pray and not to faint. What are we supposed to pray and not to faint at? Saying, ‘There was in a city a judge who feared not God, neither regarded man. There was a widow in that city, and she came unto him, saying, “Avenge me of mine adversary.” And he would not for a while. But afterward he said within himself, “Though I fear not God, nor regard man, yet because this widow troubleeth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.”‘

And the Lord said: “Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cried day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily.” Same thing, same truth. He was telling them God does bring vengeance and our prayers must be continually for that end. That’s the whole context for the exhortation to be constant in prayer.

As I said, Romans 12 affirms this truth. Here’s another verse from 2 Corinthians 10. Listen to what Paul says. 2 Corinthians 10:3-6. Go ahead and turn there if you would. I’m going to read a citation also from Matthew Henry about this.

2 Corinthians 10, beginning at verse two: “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.”