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Monday, March 25, 2019
Monday, March 18, 2019
Thursday, March 14, 2019
Self-imprecation [Imprecatory Psalms; Ps. 55]
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE.
Ps. 55:12-14
What we are going to take to heart
this Lent is what are called the Imprecatory Psalms. Imprecation means to curse
or condemn. As we will see in hearing some of the 28 or so Psalms that contain
these curses, they sound very out of place in such a beautiful and excellent
book of poetry that the book of Psalms is.
For next to “this is the day that
the Lord has made” is the verse “confuse, O Lord, and divide their tongues”
which we heard in Ps. 55 this evening (v.9). Such hard and intense truths,
found in all of the imprecatory psalms, seem to spring up as thorns among the
sweet flowerets of God. they appear to mar any enjoyment to be had from the rest
of the book for Jews and Christians alike.
So offensive do some find them,
that in modern times many have called for their removal, including some popes,
because they have no place in the “christian” spirit of love, so-called. Though
they are mistaken, its quite hard to disagree. These coming Wednesdays we will
be hearing things like, “Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into
hell: for wickedness is in their dwellings, and among them.” (55:15) and “But thou, O God, shalt bring
them down into the pit of destruction: bloody and deceitful men shall not live
out half their days;” (55:23).
So, those false
teachers reject these Psalms for 2 reasons: 1) the ancients were degenerates,
unable to comprehend our modern, superior sense of morality and 2) that God had
not yet told them the real truth, waiting until we showed up to tell us. Or
maybe God didn’t want to tell them.
Either way,
Holy Scripture refuses to let either of those reasons be true, because 1) we
already find in the OT the commands to love our enemies and other high values,
and 2) the progression of God’s revelation is not from error to truth, but from
partial and obscure to complete and clear.
Therefore, the
first of five ways we interpret these imprecations is: Self imprecation.
These curses
found in the psalms are not to be understood as simply the personal
vindictiveness of some self-righteous, angry men. They are to be understood as
the groanings of the Holy Spirit against the evil and persistent evil-doers.
Namely, sinners. As terrible as these imprecations sound to us, they are
nothing when stood beside the real nature of our own sin and heinousness.
Our own sin is
odious. It is the worst curse that could be laid on us. It is worse than
anything God could do to us or to the earth around us. Those curses God spoke
in Genesis 3? Child’s play compared to our sinful nature. It is not God that
curses us or causes evil or causes unrighteous suffering. It is our sin.
This is because
sin kills life. It is the solid ground that will accept no amount of seeding.
It is the scorching sun that shrivels faith as quickly as it matures. It is the
ring of thorns that bleed out faith. It is the existence that shouldn’t exist,
because its purpose is to make a space where there is no God, thus causing
death, since God is the Lord of Life.
Even the
smallest amount is enough to drive a wedge between us and life. As far as
heaven is from hell, so far is the great divide that none can cross. Just the
smallest infraction, the tiniest assent to a sinful desire is enough to cause
the eternal condemnation of both body and soul.
Thus, when we
return to Psalm 55 and hear the imprecations of verses 9-11 and 19-21 saying, “Destroy,
O Lord, and divide their tongues: for I have seen violence and strife in the
city. Day and night they go about it upon the walls thereof: mischief also and
sorrow are in the midst of it. Wickedness is in the midst thereof: deceit and
guile depart not from her streets.” “God shall hear, and afflict them, even he
that abideth of old. Because they have no changes, therefore they fear
not God. He hath put forth his hands against such as be at peace with him: he
hath broken his covenant. The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but
war was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn
swords.”
We must hear
them as final judgments pronounced upon our own sinful nature and in that
despairing light cry out with the Church catholic for mercy. We pray and shout
that the Lord would show mercy upon us rather than letting His righteous wrath
fall upon us. Don’t let this be true about us. Don’t let us be enemies. Please,
we beg you, make us loved. Make us better. Make us like you.
Psalm 55 goes
on. “For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it:
neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me; then I
would have hid myself from him: But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide,
and mine acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the
house of God in company.” (v.12-14)
Here it tells us Who exactly is accusing us. It is not an
enemy!! It is a man, an equal, a friend. This may make our sin even worse, but
there is hope here. For we have a friend in Jesus, as we sing. He dwells among
us as an equal, sharing our flesh. And He was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the virgin Mary, and was made man!
Now it is clear. This man is the God-man. The God-man Who
demands such perfect divorce from this sin that He imprecates Himself, though
He remains innocent. Jesus, the Just Judge, becomes Jesus the
guilty-of-all-the-world’s-sin on the cross. He shows us His glorious body,
hanging on the cross. We see there our sin, in all its cursed condemnation,
waiting for death.
But we also see
our Savior, Who fetters and imprisons all imprecation in death and hell
forever. This we know is true because that black pit of a tomb is empty. Not
empty of sin and death, but empty of guilt and condemnation, for the Lord of
Life has taken away our imprecations and instead has baptized us into life and
light, without sin.
This is the
force of these imprecations within the Psalms. They bring out our own sin and
rebellion against God. But, now that our Savior has mounted the cross, they are
not ours anymore, but His. In order that all the blessings that were His now
becomes ours. We feel our curse, we feel our condemnation, we feel our sin, we
feel death. But the word of the cross is now the power of salvation.
The cross we
bear and the cross Christ bears are the same. Baptized into His death and
resurrection, we now hear life in the midst of death. When we feel our sins
press upon us and guilt and condemnation rushing in, we know it is the work of
the Holy Spirit convicting us of our sin so that we look outside of ourselves
and see our Crucified Savior. Within the curse is the blessing, for Christ
became the curse for us. He became sin for us.
We finish up
Psalm 55 with these words of hope in verses 16-18 and 22: “As for me, I will
call upon God; and the LORD shall save me. Evening, and morning, and at noon,
will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice. He hath delivered my
soul in peace from the battle that was against me...Cast thy burden upon the
LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous [in Christ]
to be moved.”
“There is
therefore now no condemnation [, no imprecation] to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not
after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law
could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in
the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the
righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the
flesh, but after the Spirit.” (Rom.
Thursday, March 7, 2019
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