About this sermon
In Psalm 54 David cries to God to save him by his name and vindicate him by his power. Behind the psalm lies the conflict between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent that began in the garden. David leaves vengeance to the Lord and trusts in his justice, and he answers deliverance with willing sacrifice and thanks. God’s people now offer sacrifices of praise through Christ, the true temple, and they delight when God’s kingdom advances.
Sermon transcript
Amen. Please remain standing for the reading of God’s word. Sermon text this evening, the same passage from the Psalms that we considered on the last Lord’s Day evening, Psalm 54. Let us hear God’s holy word. The psalm is entitled as follows for the choir director on stringed instruments, a masculine of David. When the Zephyrites came and said to Saul, is not David hiding himself among us? Save me, O God, by your name and vindicate me by your power. Hear my prayer, O God, give ear to the words of my mouth. For strangers have risen against me and violent men have sought my life. They have not set God before them. See, look, behold, God is my helper. The Lord is the sustainer of my soul. He will recompense the evil to my foes, destroy them in your faithfulness.
Willingly, I will sacrifice to you. I will give thanks to your name, O Lord, for it is good, for he has delivered me from all trouble and my eye has looked with satisfaction upon my enemies. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s seek the Lord’s blessing upon the preaching of his word this evening. Lord God, gracious Heavenly Father, indeed, you are our helper. our vindicator, our salvation. We ask, O Lord, that you would grant us your aid by your spirit this evening in understanding this portion of Holy Scripture and in understanding, O Lord, the imprecatory psalms and imprecatory prayers of Holy Scripture. Give us wisdom, give us insight, O God, and we pray that you would illuminate us, that we might take these truths to heart and that we might practice these truths in our lives.
Be with us now and bless the proclamation of your word this evening. We ask these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, Amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon this evening is God’s Kingdom and the Imprecatory Psalms. This is part two, and the title is Vindicate Me. There’s five words you can be listening for in my sermon this evening. As you see on your sermon outline, if you’re following along the words vindicate, deliverance, help, confidence and worship. Well, dear ones, on the last Lord’s Day, we began to consider the so-called imprecatory Psalms and the imprecatory prayers that are found within many of the Psalms, including Psalm 54, which we continue our consideration of on this Lord’s Day evening. Now, It’s important to define our terms, and perhaps I did not define this term as well as I should have or could have on the last Lord’s Day.
The term imprecation, what do we mean by imprecation and by imprecatory psalms? Well, basically an imprecation may be defined as a spoken curse, or in the case of imprecatory psalms and prayers of the Bible, written curses that are intended to be prayed or sung in the context of worship. Our psalm for this evening contains such an imprecatory petition in verse 5, where David prays that the Lord will deal with his enemies in the following words. David prays, destroy them in your faithfulness. And then in verse 7, David expresses satisfaction at the prospect of his enemies being destroyed by the Lord. As it says in verse seven, for he has delivered me from all trouble, and my eye has looked with satisfaction upon my enemies. Now, it is precisely these kinds of imprecatory Psalms and prayers and petitions that we find in the book of Psalms and elsewhere in the scriptures that have proven to be so challenging for many Christians to accept, especially when they compare these imprecations or curses with our Lord’s call to love even our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us.
And I suspect that these biblical imprecations or curses have also proven to be a stumbling block and a hindrance for many skeptics in coming to faith. It is because the imprecatory Psalms and the prayers of Scripture that include imprecation can seem to be so difficult to harmonize with the Bible’s teachings about God’s love and Christ’s call to love even our enemies that I thought it would be good to consider a sampling of the imprecatory Psalms in greater detail as part of this series on select Psalms from the Psalter. As we consider these challenging portions of Holy Scripture, I would remind us of the truth that the Apostle Paul lays before us in that familiar passage found in 2 Timothy 3, verses 16 and 17. You’re very familiar, I’m sure, with this passage, but we need to be reminded of these words where the Apostle Paul, writing to his son in the faith, Timothy, says, All Scripture is inspired or breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” He doesn’t just say some scripture is inspired by God or God-breathed.
He doesn’t just say comforting portions of scripture are God-breathed. He says all scripture is breathed out by God, and that obviously would include not only those portions of the Bible which speak of God’s love, but even those portions that include imprecatory psalms and prayers as well. Now, on the last Lord’s Day, as sort of a general introduction to the subject of the imprecatory prayers and Psalms of Scripture, I made a couple of general guidelines as we approach these difficult portions of God’s Word. And let me just review briefly what those guidelines were. First of all, I made the point on the last Lord’s Day afternoon that ultimately these prayers are the prayers of King Jesus. the Messiah, the anointed divine King who wages holy war against Satan and the forces of Satan’s kingdom. As we take these prayers upon our own lips as a church, we are praying the prayers of Jesus, King Jesus, and he wages holy war against Satan and the forces of Satan’s kingdom.
In other words, these imprecatory Psalms are, in the words of James Adams, not J. Adams, different Adams here, but James Adams’ book is entitled War Psalms of the Prince of Peace. That’s what the imprecatory psalms are. They are war psalms of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. As such, their focus is not on personal revenge or personal vengeance or spirit of hatred, but rather they are focused on the justice of God and the Kingdom of God. They’re not advocating personal revenge against personal enemies. So that was one major guideline I sought to set before us. Secondly, I pointed out that these imprecatory prayers are motivated not by a sinful spirit of personal revenge, but by a zeal for God to manifest His holy justice and to both maintain and advance the moral order of His Kingdom.
In other words, These imprecatory prayers and psalms are to be viewed as kingdom-focused prayers. Prayers for the advance of God’s holy kingdom. Prayers that basically God’s kingdom would be done on earth, even his kingdom would come, and his will would be done on earth even as it is in heaven. A third guideline I laid before us on the last Lord’s Day is that the church prays and sings the imprecatory portions of the Psalter legitimately and righteously only as it prays and sings these prayers of Scripture in union with Jesus Christ. I also thought to point out how there is no ultimate contradiction or any real contradiction between praying and singing the imprecatory Psalms on the one hand, and praying for the salvation and conversion of God’s and our enemies on the other hand. For, think about it, one of the ways that God may choose to, quote, destroy his enemies is by converting them and transforming them into his friends.
So, with all of this in mind, let’s dive into the details of this particular psalm. Now, this particular psalm is a lament. One commentator introduces this psalm As follows, in terms of speaking of the type of song that it is, the commentator writes, this is an individual lament asking as many limits do for God’s help against those who threaten the lives of the faithful. This commentator goes on to say the song directs its singers to God’s protection and is therefore well suited for the pious to use when they are under threat of deadly persecution. For those who do not face such persecution, this song is appropriate to sing. on behalf of their brethren in danger. Remember this historical setting as laid before us in the superscription. Again, I spoke of this on the last Lord’s Day, but David before as he was rising to the kingship, God had chosen David to replace faithless Saul.
And David often had to flee for his life to protect his life as Saul was seeking to kill David. And David is the Where he’s hiding is exposed by his fellow countrymen, the Ziphites. It says, a mascal of David when the Ziphites came and said to Saul, is not David hiding himself among us? So David’s life was in danger. His life, his very life was threatened. And it is within that historical situation that David prays and cries out to God for God’s help and deliverance. And so the first thing we notice as we dive into this psalm for this evening, We notice here, and this is the first point in your sermon outline, if you’re following along, we notice here a cry for God’s deliverance from wicked men. We see here a cry for God’s deliverance from wicked men.
David says, Save me, O God, by your name and vindicate me by your power. Hear my prayer, O God, give ear to the words of my mouth. For strangers, or as it could be translated, insolent men have risen against me and violent men have sought my life. They have not set God before them. Now, what’s going on here? Well, what’s interesting about David’s cry to God is that the language that is used here in the opening verses of this psalm reflect a judicial setting, if you will. And David in this psalm approaches God as the righteous judge. Indeed, this psalm breathes that exhibits a judicial atmosphere as David brings his case before the Lord and pleads for the Lord to vindicate him and deliver him from the evil, violent men who seek to destroy his life.
And then David brings his charges against these evil men in verse three, describing the evil that they seek to bring upon him. The imprecatory psalms often seem to have in view God as the righteous judge who vindicates his people by judging the wicked who would oppress and oppose them. So we learn something about the nature of imprecatory psalms and prayers in general from this opening cry unto God for deliverance from wicked men. And it’s interesting how David presents this cry to God. In verse 1, he says, Save me, O God, how? Or by what? Save me by your name. What does that mean? What does David mean when he says, Lord, save me by your name? What does the name of God represent? Well, friends, God’s name points to his personal presence and the fullness of his divine attributes.
As one commentator puts it, one is present in one’s name, hence God as revealed to humans. When David says, Save me, O God, by your name. Save me in accordance with your revelation of yourself to us as human beings. As another commentator explains, God’s name can be an image for his personal presence or else as the thumb of his revealed character. And in particular, in the context of such a psalm, God’s character as the righteous one, as the just one who writes all wrongs. and brings his judgment upon the unrepentant wicked. As Dr. Willem van Gameron writes, the quote, name of the Lord signifies his covenant protection and blessing, which he demonstrates to his enemy, the enemies of his people with destructive quote might. So David is appealing to God to save him, to deliver him from this situation and to do so by vindicating him. vindicating him in the face of his enemies, these violent, evil men who seek to kill him, who seek to destroy his very life.
And then in verse two, we see David once again pleading for God to hear his case. In verse two, he’s basically repeating the thought of verse one in a slightly different way. But in this repetition, he is again setting his case before God. the just and righteous judge. Hear my prayer, O God, give ear to the words of my mouth. And then verse three, for strangers have risen against me. Here, David lays his case before the Lord. Now, strangers, some Hebrew manuscripts read insolent men. And I think that is probably not an expert on on the on this particular matter. Hebrew scholars will debate this, textual scholars, but it seems to me that insolent men makes more sense in the context here because the term strangers can sometimes be used of foreigners, and if not of foreigners, of those amongst God’s visible covenant people who have become foreigners or strangers to God’s covenant purposes.
In either case, whether it should be translated as strangers or insolent men, These evil men have done what he’s no doubt has the Zephyrites in mind who have betrayed him or seeking to betray him into the hands of King Saul. Strangers have risen against me and violent men have sought my life. And why have they done so? Well, here’s the charge. They have not set God before them. They’re not concerned about the purposes of God. They’re not concerned about the integrity of God’s kingdom. Remember, King David, he’s not a king at this point, but he was anointed to replace. He was chosen and anointed by God to replace faithless Saul as the theocratic king. And remember, too, that David is a picture, a type of Christ. And therefore, by resisting David, by opposing David, by seeking the death of David, they are opposing the very kingdom of God itself.
They are showing themselves to be traitors against the kingdom of God. They have not set God, nor have they set his kingdom before them as a priority. But as we consider this opening judicial scene where David is crying out to God, laying his case before God. The ultimate backdrop of this psalm and of the imprecatory psalms in general, we must remember, is the cosmic conflict between Christ’s kingdom and Satan’s pseudo kingdom. This opening section of Psalm 54 unveils for us the conflict that exists between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, a conflict that goes all the way back to the garden. You remember when Adam and Eve fell into sin as they fell under Satan’s temptation, the serpent’s temptation, and God pronounces in Genesis chapter three, verse 15, the proto evangel, the first proclamation of the gospel.
And we read these words in Genesis three, verse 15, as the Lord addresses the serpent, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. There’s enmity there. There’s conflict. There is an antithesis there between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise you on the head. and you shall bruise him on the heel. We believe rightly so that this is a prophecy of Christ who would crush the head of Satan, the serpent, and in the process would himself be bruised. And Jesus, of course, was bruised, if you will, quote unquote bruised by his atoning death on the cross of Calvary. This is the ultimate backdrop to Psalm 53, Psalm 54, rather, and all of the imprecatory prayers of Scripture. Again, remember, friends, David was chosen by God to be his theocratic king, anointed by God to replace faithless King Saul.
And as such, David was the type of Jesus Christ, the ultimate anointed king, the messianic seed of the woman who would save those united to him by faith and who would crush the seed of the serpent, meaning the wicked. who are enemies of God’s kingdom. Let me ask you, dear listener, whose seed are you? Are you united to Christ, the seed of the woman, or are you of the seed of the serpent? Are you a spiritual child of God through faith in Jesus Christ, or are you a child of the devil? You’re either one or the other. There’s no in between. May God in his sovereign grace grant you the grace to trust in Christ as your Lord and Savior, that you may prove to be of the seed of the woman, the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so we see a cry to God for deliverance from violent enemies. But next, we consider a confession of confidence in God’s help. The tone of the opening verses of this psalm is a desperate tone. But then we shift into a tone confident trust. Look at verses four and five. Behold, God is my helper. Think about it. David’s life is in peril. He is being threatened by evil, violent men who want to see him dead, who seek to hand him over to violent King Saul just to get Saul’s approval. But David says, God is my helper. If God is on your side, God before us, who can be against us? Behold, God is my helper. The Lord is the sustainer of my soul or my life. He will recompense the evil to my foes. God’s going to work this out.
David is confident that God is going to right the wrongs that have been done against him. And then he cries out with this imprecation, this imprecatory petition. Destroy them in your faithfulness. Verse four is David’s confession of trust and confidence in God as his helper. And verse four is really the center of this psalm. This is the the central thrust of this psalm. It summons us to look to God, the true and living God, the Lord, as our helper, our sustainer, the sustainer of our soul. And then verse five, these words in verse five, remind us that vengeance belongs not to us, but to the Lord. If you read the story of David and his rise to the throne, one of the things that is very clear about David is that he refused to take revenge against Saul into his own hands.
Instead, he left it to the Lord. And these words here in verse five, where David says, for he has delivered me from all trouble and my eye has looked with sadness. I’m sorry. Verse five, rather, he will recompense the evil to my foes, destroy them in your faithfulness. These words remind us that vengeance belongs again, not to us, but to the Lord. David is confident that God will bring justice to bear upon his enemies and upon the enemies of God’s kingdom. This is another characteristic of the imprecatory Psalms, namely confidence in God’s ultimate justice and in his ultimate vindication of the righteous, along with a concern for the moral order of God’s kingdom to prevail. As Dr. Van Gammeren states, the imprecation here in this verse, the imprecation is not vindictive, but expressive of trust in divine justice.
You see, By praying the imprecatory psalms and prayers in union with Christ and with a view to seeing God’s justice vindicated and seeing his kingdom come, praying in that way reminds us, is a way of expressing to the Lord, Lord, we trust you. We trust you to deal with this in your timing and in your way to right all wrongs. Instead of taking revenge into our own hands, we cry out to God, for justice to be done. We trust in him, and we wait patiently for the Lord to fulfill his purposes, his kingdom purposes. People of God, are we confident that God is our helper, our vindicator, our deliverer? Now, here in the United States of America, we have been blessed and privileged to live in a land where we have religious liberty, religious freedom, We do not have to, at least at this point, we don’t have to worry about overt forms of violent persecution.
And so sometimes the imprecatory psalms don’t ring, don’t resonate with us as they would if we were in a situation of actual violent persecution. But again, whatever situation we find ourselves in, we need to look to God as our helper, our vindicator, our deliverer. Do we, like David, yearn for justice and the moral order of God’s kingdom to prevail? Are our priorities aligned with the priorities of the Lord Jesus Christ and His kingdom? Or is our personal comfort our ultimate priority? Let us learn from the imprecatory Psalms and petitions of Scripture to trust in the Lord as our vindicator and to embrace the priorities of God’s kingdom as our own priority. And when we read of or learn of situations of violent persecution and violent persecution still takes place today all over the world in many parts of the world, our brothers and sisters in Christ in various parts of the world face daily threats to their well-being, to their lives and to the lives of their families.
And as we learn of their situations, as we pray for them, we can cry out to God, Lord, vindicate them. Restrain the hands of the wicked who would seek to harm them, even convert the wicked and turn them into friends of Christ. But we do pray for God to take out of the way all hindrances to the furtherance of his kingdom and all who would seek to do harm to his faithful servants. But finally, beloved, we find here in this psalm in the closing verses of this short psalm, a resolve to offer sacrificial worship. This is my final point based on verses six and seven, we find here a resolve to offer sacrificial worship. David writes, willingly, I will sacrifice to you. I will give thanks to your name, O Lord, for it is good.
It’s interesting up to this point, David has been not been using the covenant name for God, Yahweh. He’s referred to God as God, Lord. But here you might notice in verse six, The word for Lord is in all capital letters. That’s a indication to English readers that the translators are translating the covenant name for God, Yahweh. And so David, looking to God for deliverance, trusting in him as his helper, anticipating God’s deliverance, he says, I will willingly sacrifice to you. I will give thanks to your name, O Lord, O Yahweh, my faithful covenant God, for it is good. Your name is good, who you are, what your name represents, your character, your attributes, your justice, your holiness, your mercy, your goodness. Your name, O Lord, is good for he has delivered me from all trouble and my eye has looked upon my enemies and looked with satisfaction upon my enemies.
Here, David, either in these last two verses, David either writes these words in the aftermath of the Lord’s gracious deliverance of him from these violent enemies, or he is so confident in the Lord’s deliverance that he speaks of the Lord’s anticipated deliverance as if it had already happened. Either way, out of gratitude for God’s gracious deliverance from his enemies, David resolves to offer thankful and sacrificial worship to his faithful covenant Lord. And we have received, brothers and sisters in Christ, a great deliverance as well. In Christ and through the finished work of Christ, God, our gracious Heavenly Father, has delivered us from the grip of Satan, who seeks to destroy our souls. We have been delivered from the world, the flesh, and the devil. We have been delivered from the guilt, the penalty, and the dominating power of our sins.
We have received a great deliverance, a great salvation. through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. And what is our appropriate response to such a great deliverance? Our appropriate response is to offer to God sacrificial, heartfelt worship and thanksgiving. What do we learn from this closing section of Psalm 54? Well, and what do we learn from imprecatory prayers and Psalms? Well, first of all, the imprecatory Psalms teach us to take our ultimate satisfaction in the Lord and in the furtherance of his kingdom purposes. When David says, my eye has looked with satisfaction upon my enemies. I don’t believe it is, you know, it’s not that David is delighting and now they’re finally getting what’s coming to them. David is delighting with satisfaction that God’s justice is being maintained, that God’s kingdom purposes are being forwarded. and upheld and maintained.
The imprecatory Psalms teach us again to take our ultimate satisfaction in the Lord and in the furtherance of his kingdom. And as we learn in our very first catechism question from the shorter catechism, what is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. Enjoying God means, among other things, taking satisfaction in him and being satisfied and delighting when his kingdom purposes are forwarded through the gospel. But again, what is our appropriate response to our Lord’s gracious deliverance and vindication of us in Jesus Christ? Sacrificial worship grounded in a spirit of gratitude. Now, obviously, when David says, willingly, I will sacrifice to you, I mean, that’s old covenant language. He’s speaking about offering, you know, sacrifices to the Lord before the tabernacle and so forth, and we don’t have a temple or a tabernacle today, we have Christ, who is the ultimate living temple, and we offer sacrifices of praise to God through him.
We don’t offer animal sacrifices anymore, but children, what kind of sacrifices has God called us to offer to him? Sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving out of gratitude for God’s gift of salvation to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, that is the appropriate response. Sacrificial worship grounded in a spirit of gratitude. May the Lord’s manifestation of his justice, mercy, and faithfulness lead us to offer him grateful worship and praise, as well as daily obedience in our lives. Amen. Let us pray. Gracious Lord and Father in heaven, sovereign and eternal God, we praise you that You are a holy God. You are a just God. You are a righteous God. We thank you and praise you for all of your glorious attributes. We pray, Heavenly Father, that we would receive these difficult portions of scripture as indeed they are the word of God, that they are forgiven for our guidance and direction to instruct us, to rebuke us, to challenge us and to build us up.
We ask Lord that you would help us to receive these truths and to live them out in our lives. Give us the spirit of love, even for our enemies. And we would ask Heavenly Father that you would cause your kingdom to come, your will to be done on earth, even as it is in heaven. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
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