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00:00 I was reading one commentary on this psalm and the writer said,"Most of the
00:06 psalms are well-loved by Christians. This one is not
00:12 because of that horrible ending." Chuch Chong was asking me about suggestions
00:17 for songs and I didn't have any. I don't have any songs about bringing vengeance
00:23 on your enemies. I thought about telling him just have the guitarists come in here and hang their guitars up and go
00:30 sit down. Have the drummers move the drums off to the side. Move the piano off and go sit down and cry. And that
00:37 would then set the mood for the psalm. I thought that might be too much of a
00:43 shock. Just that last verse is shocking enough to hear as he was crying out for
00:48 vengeance even on the babies of his enemies.
00:54 The title of the sermon today is praying our anger. And that's a good illustration of anger.
01:01 In that text, the psalm begins with heartbreaking grief, but ends with
01:07 brutal hostility as the psalmist is pouring out his anger to God.
01:13 Now, if you've never read through the entire book of Psalms or if you've never prayed through the Psalms,
01:19 finding such a passage as that might come as quite a surprise because usually we think of the Psalms as joyful,
01:27 exuberant, triumphant hymns of praise to God, to a God that loves us and cares
01:33 for us. Well, in our series on the Psalms, we're going to see that there's a wide variety of types of Psalms
01:40 because the Psalms are addressing just about every conceivable experience in
01:46 our human existence. And all of the emotions that we experience in human life are expressed
01:52 in the Psalms. From lofty praise to the depths of despair and to the violent
01:59 anger that we heard. About half of the psalms would be psalms of praise, but
02:04 over a third of them are psalms of lament.
02:11 An Old Testament scholar who is from the same hometown that my wife is from, taught at a seminary there, he divided
02:19 the psalms a little bit differently than just psalms of praise or psalms of lament. He talked about and my clicker
02:26 is not working.
02:34 Can we There we go. Or did you do that? He talks about psalms of orientation for
02:40 the hymns of praise. He said when life is oriented, things are going well,
02:45 things are happening like they should happen. get up in the morning, go to work, healthy, have a job, everything's
02:52 going well, then it's easy to sing the Psalms of praise because everything is oriented and life seems like it's going
02:58 like it should. But then he talks about psalms that he calls psalms of disorientation or the laments where life
03:06 has now become disoriented. Something happens that brings tragedy into our
03:12 life. Possibly we have sinned and our relationship with God is estranged.
03:19 Possibly we're involved in some natural disaster like the flooding in Kanton. Possibly a victim of a violent crime.
03:27 Maybe your spouse walks out on you. A child disappoints you. You're diagnosed with an incurable disease. Or maybe a
03:34 family member or close friend was on Air Asia flight QZ 8501
03:41 or MH17 or MH370 and your life falls apart and you become
03:47 disoriented. Well then these times of tragedy and difficulty the psalms of disorientation
03:54 the laments can speak to us because they help us as we pray our emotion.
04:00 And then Walter Bugamman also speaks of psalms of reorientation. After the tragedy comes and our focus is
04:08 taken off God, then we're reoriented because we've had a fresh encounter with God and we've
04:15 seen God work again in our life. In some of the Psalms of lament, you have both
04:20 the disorientation as well as then the new orientation. A little bit later in this series,
04:27 you'll hear a psalm that's like that. The first half of the psalm, he's complaining and I don't understand life.
04:33 And then he has a fresh encounter with God and he sees things from a new perspective.
04:38 Unfortunately, the psalm this morning, there is no reorientation. It stays bitter to the end. The negative
04:46 emotions run all the way through the psalm. There is no happy end to this
04:52 psalm. Psalm 137 belongs to a class of psalms that is sometimes called
04:57 impregatory psalms. Impregatory comes from the word impreate
05:04 dictionary definition to invoke evil upon or curse upon one's enemies.
05:11 Now I don't like the word impregatory for one reason. Nobody knows what it means. I was looking online and it's on
05:19 on one side it said probably less than 5% of English speakers have a clue what this word means. So if you knew what
05:26 that meant before you came this morning, congratulations. You're in the top 5%. And now all of you are in the top 5%. So
05:34 you've learned something today. Not only does nobody know what it means, it's hard to pronounce. I had to practice to
05:40 be able to say it. Impreatory is how Americans say it. Imprecatory is how
05:46 Brits say it. And for some Asians, I'm sure that's difficult. The difference in
05:52 imprecation and implication. Implicate. Implicate.
05:58 Like one time I was served a dish of fly lice when I was in Thailand.
06:04 Tellable. Terrible. But the main reason I don't like the
06:10 term impregatory is because I don't really think that's exactly what the Psalms are
06:17 communicating. They're not just calling down curses on people who have maybe
06:22 insulted them or done something that they don't like. They're really calls for divine
06:28 judgment. They're pleased to God knowing that God is a God of justice. God,
06:35 please bring justice. They're in reaction to terrible wrongdoing, to
06:40 violence, to evildoers, people that are opposed to God and his will and his people. And so these prayers were not
06:48 written so much to just bring down judgment arbitrarily on enemies, but
06:53 they're written reflecting God's abhorance of evil and the fact that God
07:00 is going to judge. So, I would prefer to think of these psalms not as psalms of curses or
07:08 calling down evil, but more a psalm asking for God to judge justly. But
07:14 nevertheless, I will today in the sermon use the word impregatory now that you know what it means. But when I use that
07:20 word, I'll be thinking more of this is a psalm calling down God's judgment.
07:26 Well, in our text today, Psalm 137, the psalmist is pouring out his emotions to
07:31 God as he prays his grief and as he prays his anger. And what he says at the
07:38 end of the psalm is indeed quite harsh, but it's an expression of raw, unbridled
07:45 anger that he's bringing to God now in prayer. To our modern, sophisticated, civilized,
07:53 and Christianized ears to hear such words as, "Blessed is he
07:59 who dashes their babies against stones." That just sounds horrible, doesn't it?
08:05 How could any god-fearing person cry out like that?
08:11 But most of us have not experienced anything like the psalmist had experienced. As Charles Hatton Spurgeon,
08:18 the well-known 19th century British pastor said, "Let those find fault with
08:24 this psalm who have never had their temples burned, who have never had their
08:29 cities ruined, who have never had their wives ravished, who have never had their
08:36 children slain. They might not perhaps be quite so velvet mouthed if they had suffered
08:44 after this fashion. I think of a young man who used to attend this church. He's from Pashawar,
08:52 Pakistan. He was involved in the student ministry here while he was a student.
08:57 After his student days, he and another Pakistani friend started a restaurant business and a time or two they even
09:04 catered pizza for our church. So some of you, even if you don't remember him, you might remember eating his pizza from
09:10 Pashawara, Pakistan. About a year and a half ago in Pashawar, Pakistan on a Sunday morning, there were
09:16 about 600 people who got up to go to church like they normally do. And I'm
09:22 sure they were dressed in their finest. When Pakistanis go to church, they usually put on their finest. And some of
09:28 you maybe have seen how the Pakistanis really can dress to the hilt. And the ladies in their colorful, beautiful
09:34 sawar kamisas with sequins down the front. The girls also very beautiful.
09:40 the children so cute and the boys and girls both just dressed to the hilt. men probably not quite so good-looking, but
09:47 nevertheless, they're going to church, having a great day, family time, go to worship God, and then after the service,
09:55 as they're gathering on the grounds for fellowship, for food, like we will at the Globe Cafe in a few minutes,
10:03 two suicide bombers with six kilograms of explosives strapped to their body,
10:10 come and blow themselves up. And there were official statistics over 250
10:17 casualties from that church of 600 people and the people that live there that I've
10:24 talked to said those are the official statistics the real statistics were higher than
10:30 that and the man who used to attend our church he was in Malaysia when that
10:35 happened but he lost 40 family members that's 40
10:43 family members How does he feel? How does he pray to
10:48 God? You can see that a psalm like this would be a good way just to express your
10:55 heartfelt emotion to God and ask that justice be done for such horrific
11:01 atrocities. So in the preparatory Psalms, we're calling on God to bring judgment on
11:09 evildoers. The situation that the psalmist was in
11:17 was even worse than what this man from Pashawar Pakistan experienced. The man
11:22 who used to attend our church. The psalmist had gone through something even much horrible as the Babylonians came to
11:30 Jerusalem and totally wiped out their city. Babylonia was the new powerful
11:36 country in the world at that time, the new superpower. under King Nebuchadnezzar, they came to Judah. They
11:44 besieged the capital city of Jerusalem. The siege lasted many months, over a
11:49 year. And when a city is sieged, that means they're going to run out of food,
11:55 might run out of water. Starvation was rampant in the city. People were getting
12:01 sick and dying of disease, no new medical supplies available. And the
12:06 starvation got so bad that according to the book of Lamentations in the Bible,
12:11 some of the women were even cooking their own children to eat.
12:18 Then the Babylonians finally break through the walls and when they do, they kill everybody in sight. The men, the
12:24 women, the elderly, the children, the babies. They take the babies and bash
12:30 them against the rocks. And then they go to the temple. They
12:36 steal everything of value. They set it on fire. And when the flames recede,
12:41 then they tear down the walls of the temple. They burn down the city. They tear down all the buildings. They level
12:47 the city wall so it's no longer safe to live there. The whole city has been leveled. And the people that remain
12:55 alive are taken off as captives in exile to Babylon.
13:02 And that's what the psalmist has just experienced. So with this horse historical background
13:08 in mind, it's a little bit easier to understand the psalmist rage as he is
13:14 expressing his emotions to God in this psalm.
13:19 Hopefully none of us will ever have to experience anything like that today.
13:25 Some of the Christians in Iraq and Mosul are experiencing it.
13:30 But even though we aren't experiencing anything quite that bad, even in our relatively peaceful world,
13:38 we're still going to experience tragedy and loss,
13:44 other difficulties that just bring out all sorts of emotions in us. And the
13:49 same emotions that the psalmist experienced, the grief and the anger are going to well up within us from time to
13:56 time. So what do we do when we experience such emotions?
14:03 Do like the psalmist did. Pray your emotions.
14:08 And when we look at the scripture passage today, we can get some helps about how to go about praying our anger
14:15 to God. First of all, in praying our anger to God,
14:22 encourage you just to bring honestly everything to God. That's what the psalmist did.
14:29 He brought his emotions to God. Now, different people handle emotions different ways. Some people, they just
14:36 try to be tough, cool, calm, collected, and they stuff all the emotions down.
14:42 And sometime later, that ends up usually causing health difficulties, bitterness, lack of joy in life. Other
14:52 people say, "No, no, I don't want that problem. I'm going to blow up and vent my rage.
14:57 And you do feel better for a while. Everybody else around you feels worse.
15:03 You may not have the health problems that you're causing everybody else health problems.
15:09 And it doesn't take care of the anger because usually you're going to blow up again and again and the anger stays.
15:14 Well, there's a unique biblical approach to handling emotions. The Bible doesn't say stuff them. It doesn't say vent
15:21 them, but the Bible teaches us pray your emotions. And we see that's what the
15:27 psalmist is doing as he prays his grief. In the first part of the psalm, we see
15:33 the grief as he says, "We sat and we wept."
15:39 And then in the last part of the psalm, that's where we see then the anger
15:44 vented as he's calling for God to judge the people in the same way that they had
15:51 been dealt with. Deal violently with them as they have dealt violently with us. So the psalmist is bringing
15:59 everything to God honestly. He's owning his feelings. He admits, "I
16:05 am sad. I'm not going to try to hide that. I am angry
16:10 and I'm not going to try to hide that. By the way, God already knew he was sad.
16:16 God already knew he was angry. So, be honest. Tell God that's the way you feel. Not only did the psalmist bring
16:24 his emotions to God, he brought the entire situation to God. And we can do
16:29 the same. If something bad has happened, more than likely, you're constantly thinking about
16:35 it again and again. It's like replaying old tape, old old tapes, excuse me, and
16:42 you constantly are remembering the details and you relive each of those
16:47 details. Take those details to God.
16:53 We don't see a lot of details in the first part of the psalm, but when he said the end of verse one, we remembered
17:01 Zion, I'm sure he remembered everything I just talked about as we remembered Zion. And
17:09 then through his mind goes these scenes of horror and terror as people are
17:15 massacred, as the temple goes up in flames, as the women are violated.
17:21 and his beloved city is leveled. And he probably also has other memories.
17:28 He remembers the way it used to be when it was so good. Beautiful city,
17:34 wonderful place to live. The palace where the king reigned. The temple where God in a very special
17:42 way revealed his presence to the people. the strong walls fortify in the city.
17:51 And undoubtedly as he remembered Zion, he remembered this is the place where
17:56 God dwells in a special way, where God has provided forgiveness of sin there at
18:02 the temple. And this is the place where a descendant of David is going to reign
18:08 forever. The Davidic line had its throne there in Jerusalem. So he's remembering
18:14 all of this and then he remembers again, no, there is no king on the throne.
18:20 There is no temple and his hopes are crushed.
18:26 Anger wells up within him and he sits down. He weeps
18:34 and as he thinks of his capttors mocking him, he definitely can't sing. The captives
18:41 are saying, "Hey, we hear you Jews are good musicians. Hey, you have a harp there. Take it down out of the tree.
18:46 Play us a song." Somebody else says, "Hey, sing us one of those songs about how beautiful your temple is."
18:54 Somebody else, "Hey, sing us one of those songs about the strong walls of Zion.
19:00 Sing us one of those songs about how your God will protect you." And they laugh and they mock. And of course they
19:08 can't sing. How can we sing the songs of Zion, the songs of the Lord in such a
19:16 setting? Even without the tormentors, it would have been very difficult to sing a song
19:22 of Zion, knowing that Zion had been destroyed. But with these mockers,
19:29 it would be like throwing pearls before swine to even try to sing in front of them.
19:35 This brings us then to the second part of the psalm beginning with verse 14. And in this next section, even though
19:42 it's not obvious at the very beginning, we're going to see that in praying your anger,
19:48 it's important to reaffirm your faith in God.
19:56 You see, when the psalmist asks, "How can we sing a song in a strange land?"
20:02 He's talking more than He's talking about more than just the fact that I'm
20:07 in a country that I don't want to be in. I can't sing the songs of Zion around
20:13 all of these pagan idol worshippers. I think he's also thinking
20:21 God has possibly forsaken us. He's disappointed in God. He's probably
20:28 angry at God. and he might be beginning to lose his faith. How can I sing the
20:34 songs of Zion? A friend of mine in the US, well, I
20:41 really I'm a better friend of his older brother and his older sister. He was younger than me, but friends of the
20:46 family in my hometown in America. I went there.
20:52 It's been several years ago now. I saw him the second to last time that I've seen him. I don't get to that part of
20:57 the world much. But the next second to last time that I saw him, I was visiting with him. He was telling me about his
21:05 family, about his son, about his wife. I had not yet met either one. He was telling me about a new job that he had
21:11 and how he really liked the job. And the main thing that he liked about his job was he had enough money from the job
21:19 that he only had to work three days a week. And what he liked about that was not that he had four days to go on
21:26 vacation. No, what he liked about that was now I've got four days I can invest
21:31 in ministry. And he was involved in a new church plant.
21:36 That part of the country where he lives is rapidly growing. And he was actively helping to start a new church. And he
21:42 was just so excited that he had these extra days to invest in serving God.
21:49 Well, the last time I saw him was a few years after that. And in the meantime, his son had joined
21:57 the army. The US had invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.
22:04 And his son was assigned to one of the theaters of war and he did not come home. Was killed in action.
22:13 The last time I saw my friend, then I was expressing my condolences to him for
22:19 the loss of his only son. He was also expressing his condolences to me because the occasion for our
22:26 meeting was at the funeral of my father. So we were both suffering grief, but yet I knew his grief was much worse than
22:32 mine. You expect your father to die someday. And my dad was 92. But you
22:38 don't expect your son in his late teens to die.
22:44 So, we talked about the tragedies for a while, but then we turned to other things, just catching up because we
22:49 hadn't seen each other in a while. And he was telling me again some about his job, about the town where I used to
22:55 live, how it was growing and developing. And then I asked him, "Hey, how's that church plant going that you were so
23:01 actively involved in?" And he said, "We don't go to church anymore.
23:09 We can't worship God. We can't praise God in such a situation as this.
23:20 You see, when we get to this place in the psalm, I think the psalmist realizes he is in spiritual danger.
23:28 If you can't sing God's praises, there's a danger you're going to forget the song. If you don't sing God's praises,
23:35 you might forget God. And I think the psalmist is coming to the point that he realizes I could easily turn my back on
23:43 God. I could easily become so influenced by all the people around me that I will
23:50 no longer worship the true God. After all, how can I worship a God that allowed my family to be killed and
23:57 allowed my home to be burned? But the psalmist does not want to go
24:03 that direction. He reaffirms his faith in God. And he does it with
24:08 selfimpreation. If you remember that word, he's calling down a curse on him
24:14 if he turns his back away from God. If I forget Zion, if I forget Jerusalem, and
24:21 I think he's saying, if I forget the God of Jerusalem, the God whose temple was
24:26 in Jerusalem that we worshiped there in Jerusalem, may horrible things happen to
24:32 me. And in verse five, he said, "If I forget
24:38 you, oh Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill." No longer would he be
24:43 able to play the harp. Some translations say may my right hand
24:49 wither, lose all its strength. Then he would not be able to work and that would
24:55 cause severe financial ruin. And then verse six, he goes even further. If
25:01 Jerusalem is not my highest joy, then may my tongue cleave to the top of my
25:06 mouth. Then he for sure could not sing. Also wouldn't be able to eat. It's as if
25:14 he's dying of thirst and his tongue is parched sticking to the top of his mouth.
25:20 So even in these difficult times where he's filled with grief and anger, we see
25:26 him praying this prayer of recommmitment, reaffirmation of his
25:32 faith. God, I don't want to forget your city. I don't want to forget your temple. I don't want to forget the
25:38 worship of you. And God, if I forget, may I go through
25:43 life handicapped? God, if I forget, may I die?
25:51 Now, how many of us pray like that? God, may be may I be accursed if I don't
25:60 God, if I don't give my time willingly and joyfully to you in service, may my
26:05 time be cut short on earth. God, if I don't honor you with my possessions, may I suffer financial
26:13 ruin? God, if I don't use my mouth to proclaim your message and gospel to lost people,
26:20 may I lose my ability to speak. God, if you are not my highest joy, may
26:25 my life be filled with sadness. I don't pray like that.
26:32 I've never heard anybody pray like that. But that's what the psalmist is doing.
26:39 And while we may not want to use those exact words, I think we can learn something from the
26:45 psalmist that in times of difficulty, we want to reaffirm our faith in God. We
26:52 don't want to turn our back on him. So when we pray our anger to God, we
26:60 tell him what it's like. We express our emotions. We tell him about the whole situation
27:05 but we also reaffirm faith in him. The third thing we can learn from this psalm
27:12 is that when we pray our anger we can ask God to intervene and bring
27:18 justice. And that's what the psalmist does in the last third of the psalm.
27:25 We're so horrified by that last verse and understandably so that we can easily
27:31 miss that what the psalmist is really doing is he is asking God that justice be done.
27:37 And there's three things that I want to point out related to justice being done.
27:44 First of all, in asking God to intervene and bring justice,
27:49 we want to ask God to judge.
27:54 The psalmist is not going to personally take revenge. He is not going to personally act in a violent way against
28:02 his enemies. He is not going to be the judge, jury, and executioner allin one.
28:08 He wants God to judge. Look at verse seven. He says, "Remember, O Lord."
28:16 And then he just says, "Yeah, remember the what they did to us."
28:22 The psalmist is taking his anger to the Lord. He's asking God to judge because
28:30 he remembers that God is the judge. God, there's injustice. Do something about
28:36 it. It's interesting to see the psalmist is not taking a vow to revenge. The vows we
28:42 just saw were his vow to reaffirm his faith in the God of Zion. He didn't say,
28:50 "May my right hand wither if I do not take up a sword and slay thousands of my
28:55 enemies." He did not say, "May I lose my strength?
29:02 May I lose my life if I don't do everything in my power to cause pain,
29:07 inflict pain on my enemies. The psalmist does not go and strap explosives to his
29:13 body and go blow up women and children of his enemies. No, he knows God is the judge. God is
29:21 the one person in the universe who has the power to judge.
29:26 the one person in the universe who has the knowledge to judge and to judge justly, giving people what
29:34 they deserve. And God is the only one in the universe with the right to judge
29:40 because he's the only one who's not guilty. Be careful if you pray that God judge
29:46 everybody, giving them exactly what they deserve or it might come back and haunt
29:52 you. So we ask God, God bring justice. You're the one with the power, the
29:58 knowledge, and the right to judge. So here we see that the psalmist is just
30:04 remembering that God is the judge. He's not. Secondly, in this psalm, we see that the
30:10 psalmist is also asking that the justice be fair,
30:15 at least in his understanding of fairness. You see, his understanding of justice was based on a principle known
30:22 as lex talionus. That's a Latin phrase, a judicial phrase, but basically it's
30:29 just means it should be done to the offenders exactly what they did to the
30:34 victims. The degree of suffering that the criminal caused should be imposed upon
30:41 him. The same degree, no more, no less. And many judicial systems in the world
30:47 today are based on this principle. You try to have an appropriate punishment
30:52 for the crime. No more, no less. For example, if
30:57 somebody gets caught stealing a hundred ringots, they don't deserve to be executed. Too stiff of a penalty.
31:05 On the same token, or the reverse, vice versa, if a person commits a murder, he
31:11 should not get off with a 50 ringot fine. appropriate penalty for the crime is the
31:19 principle of lexalion. And that's what the psalmist is crying
31:25 out for. Because you see in the Old Testament, in the law, the civil law that God gave
31:32 his people, it said an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And so he's basing
31:37 his understanding on the scripture. So he is asking God to let happen to his
31:43 tormentors to his to the people that violated his family and his country.
31:49 Let them have the same thing. We see that in verse eight.
31:54 Blessed is he who repays you with what you have done for us. No more, no less,
31:60 but based on the principle of lexalonus, God bring judgment on them. Exactly what they deserve, exactly what they caused
32:06 on us. Do to them. They killed our babies, kill their babies.
32:14 And so even though it sounds harsh in the psalmist mind, he is asking that God
32:19 deal fairly. Let justice be done according to the principle of Lexellionus.
32:25 Then there's a third aspect in asking God to intervene and bring justice.
32:31 We want to ask for God's will to be done. Now, that's not obvious just reading
32:37 this psalm. But it becomes obvious if you read some of the other prophetic literature in the Old Testament because
32:43 we'll see in other prophetic literature that God has already pronounced doom and judgment on Babylon. Both Isaiah and
32:51 Jeremiah speak out saying God is going to judge Babylon because of her pride
32:57 and because of her extreme violence. And the prophet Obadiah, his entire
33:04 message, as short as it is, just one chapter, it's a proclamation that doom
33:09 and judgment is coming to Eden, Edom.
33:14 Oadiah, you see, he's saying because of your pride, God is going to bring you down.
33:25 Because of your violence, you are going to be cut off forever.
33:32 And then he speaks out the accusations as the city of Jerusalem was being
33:37 plundered. Not only did the cheer the Babylonians on and say, "Yeah,
33:42 bring it down to the ground. Level it." It also says that they rejoiced and gloated over the people of Judah.
33:51 They looted the city of Jerusalem. And not only that, when people were able
33:57 to escape Jerusalem, they escaped the Babylonian armies. the would grab them and turn them over to their
34:03 captives. So again, this principle of justice, let
34:09 it be done to them what they did. And this is what God has now said through
34:15 the prophet Oadiah. So when the psalmist says, "Let it be done to Edom,"
34:23 he's asking God's will to be done. In Isaiah, we see judgment against
34:29 Babylon. And this taunt song is against the king of Babylon. And we see that judgment is coming to
34:36 Babylon first because of their pride. The king of Babylon, it said, "Hey, I am
34:42 just equal to God. Therefore, he is going to be brought
34:47 low." And because of the fact that he made a desert out of the places that he
34:54 conquered, he just devastated and destroyed the cities and the people of the cities. God is going to bring
34:60 judgment. So this has already been proclaimed and the psalmist is basically just saying, God,
35:08 let happen to them what happened to us. So in praying your anger, we can learn
35:13 from this psalm to ask God to intervene and bring justice.
35:19 Let him be the judge. Let the justice be fair and ask for
35:24 God's will to be done. So in this psalm so far we have seen
35:30 that in bringing our anger to God, we want to bring everything honestly to God. Want to reaffirm our faith in God.
35:38 And we want to ask God to intervene and bring justice. Well, some of you might ask, should we
35:45 pray impregatory psalms today?
35:50 Well, there's differences of opinion among Christians, and I'll give you a few of those opinions before I go
35:55 further in the sermon. There's a pastor in the United States
36:01 quite embarrassed that he's a Baptist. But back in 2009,
36:06 less than six months after President Obama had been inaugurated as president of the US, he made national headlines by
36:13 praying an impregatory prayer against President Obama that God would strike him dead.
36:19 I don't think that's appropriate because in the New Testament when we see
36:26 Paul telling us in Ephesians, "Be angry, but don't sin. Don't use your anger as
36:31 an excuse for sin." I think this was possibly
36:37 trying to cover up hatred, possibly trying to cover up racism,
36:42 covering up that intense anger that my candidate didn't make it. But nevertheless, some people are quite free
36:48 in their use of impregatory psalms. The opposite extreme. One commentator
36:53 said a Christian should never pray an impregatory prayer. Should never pray an
36:58 impregatory psalm because if you do so, you're taking it out of context and you're trying to take what might have
37:05 applied back then to your situation and it doesn't really apply.
37:12 More of a middle ground. One prominent pastor in the US said that I
37:18 occasionally do pray impregatory prayers, but usually I don't. Usually I'm praying
37:24 just that God's will be done. Well, is it appropriate to pray
37:29 impregatory prayers? Are there some situations that really justify them?
37:36 I remember a story from World War II back in, not that I remember it
37:41 personally, but I remember hearing about it. Back in World War II, the German army had moved into Italy, and they had
37:49 one unit in the army had set up camp on a large piece of ground belonging to the
37:55 Catholic Church. Not only was there a church there, but there was a monastery, there was a convent, there was an
38:00 orphanage, large piece of land. And when the Allies approached, the
38:06 Germans retreated. But before they retreated, they killed everybody on that property,
38:15 all of the people connected with that church, men, women, children,
38:20 and then they retreated. And I'm wondering, were impregatory prayers prayed at that time?
38:29 And I have no idea, but my guess is they probably were. Because one of the practices of piety
38:37 among Catholics is that they frequently do pray through the psalms. And so more
38:43 than likely as some of the Catholic people that survived or relatives of those that were killed as they were praying through the psalms when they got
38:50 to these impregatory prayers like the one today, they were probably praying that against the cruel aggressors who
38:57 had massacred so many people.
39:03 Speaking specifically about this psalm, one commentator said, "Before Christ, it
39:10 was appropriate to pray the exact words of this psalm."
39:15 In our day, while we might be able to pray some of the general ideas, we don't want to use the exact words and pray it
39:22 exactly the way the psalmist did because we need to let our understanding of
39:28 these psalms be influenced by Jesus, his life, his teachings, his example.
39:35 And we do need to realize that Psalm 137 is not a comprehensive theology on judgment, nor on how to deal with
39:42 enemies. And it's not a detailed psychological textbook on anger management. It's just one small portion
39:49 of scripture. Yes, it is scripture. But if we're going to really understand and apply that scripture to us today, we
39:56 also need to look at other scriptures that would deal with judgment and would
40:01 deal with how do we handle enemies. And the best thing to understand would then
40:07 be to look at what did Jesus say? What did Jesus do? So the last point that I
40:15 want to mention and pray in our anger. When we pray our anger, let's pray in light of what Jesus has said and done.
40:25 In Luke chapter nine, there's an interesting event. The disciples have gone ahead to try to prepare a place for
40:31 Jesus to stay. Back in those days, they didn't have hotels and all the little small towns. And so when they go into
40:37 this village, they're refused. And the disciples get furious. and they come back to Jesus and say, "Master, they
40:42 wouldn't let us do it. Should we call down fire from heaven?" And it's almost like you can just see them. Yeah, we
40:48 want to see those guys burn. They wouldn't let us spend the night with them. We want them to burn.
40:54 But Jesus rebukes them. Doesn't say exactly what he said, but rebuke is a
40:60 strong word. No, of course not. Don't be ridiculous. Don't call down fire from heaven.
41:08 In Matthew 5, we have Jesus quoting from the Old Testament. And he reminds people
41:14 in the Ten Commandments, it says, "You shall not murder." But he amplifies that and says,
41:21 "Everyone who is angry with his brother is liable to judgment because murder
41:28 begins with the anger and the hatred." Be careful, Jesus is saying. Jesus also
41:34 then quotes this passage that I mentioned earlier, this Lex Talionus concept of of justice where in the Old
41:42 Testament it says an eye for an eye and a tooth for the tooth as an example for the criminal justice system. But Jesus
41:49 is saying do not use that for you to take personal revenge. No, a better way
41:55 is you repay evil with good.
42:00 And then Jesus says and you have heard it said love your neighbors and hate your enemies. Now there is no such verse
42:07 in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament you do find in Leviticus love your neighbor as yourself. And so
42:15 possibly some of the Pharisees that Jesus was talking to they thought okay I'll love my neighbors but who are my
42:21 neighbors? Well that's people like me. People with the same ethnic background. People with the same religious
42:28 background. people from the same socioeconomic status. Those are my neighbors. I'll love them and I don't
42:34 have to love anybody else. I'll just hate everybody else. That might be what Jesus was addressing. But it might be
42:41 that in the last part of the statement, this hate your enemies, it might be that Jesus was addressing some of the
42:46 language in the impregatory psalms. You have heard psalms like Psalm 137 where
42:52 we're crying out that the descendants of our enemies be crushed.
42:57 hate your enemies. But Jesus says, "No, I have a better way. Love your enemies.
43:05 Pray for anyone who mistreats you." And we see similar language in Luke. Love
43:11 your enemies. Do good to them which hate you. Bless them that curse you and pray for those who despitefully use you.
43:20 How do we pray for our enemies? Well, one way we can pray for our enemies is to pray that they come to
43:26 repentance and they come to faith because we know it's God's will that our enemies do come to faith. In second
43:34 Peter, it says, "The Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that all
43:39 should come to repentance." about 12 or 13 years ago when we lived
43:44 in Germany. I met an older man and I first encountered him just a few days
43:51 before the Iraq war broke out. And we were talking about the possibility is
43:57 there going to be wars? They're not. And he told me, "I hate war.
44:03 Do you know why I hate war?" Well, I knew he was going to tell me, so I said, "No, I don't know why. Tell me."
44:10 And so he began and he said, "When I was young, I was a soldier in the German army and
44:18 our unit was stationed in Italy and we had set up camp on a large piece of land
44:24 belonging to a church." And when we were ordered to retreat, the
44:30 order also came, "Kill everybody."
44:35 And his voice broke. Tears came to his eyes and he said, "And that meant the women and the children."
44:47 As a young soldier, just a boy, just a teenager, he was ordered to massacre innocent
44:55 women and children. And he really didn't have a choice the
45:00 way he saw it. He knew if he refused to obey that order, he would be killed himself. But he had suffered for now 60
45:07 years under that guilt of having massacred women and children.
45:15 I visited with him many times over a period of several months and I can remember one day visiting with
45:21 him and I was trying to share the gospel with him. I told him how Jesus came to
45:27 bring salvation. Jesus came to bring forgiveness. And again his voice broke and he said,"I
45:34 need that. That's what I need. Forgiveness and he prayed and he received Christ."
45:45 After that massacre at that church land in Italy, I feel sure there were probably impregatory prayers prayed and
45:53 God did bring judgment. The German army was defeated. That unit had severe losses.
45:60 But I wonder also if possibly some of the people there were praying for the salvation of their oppressors.
46:08 Possibly so. Because again in Catholic piety and every church you go into, they
46:13 have the 12 stations of the cross. And one of those stations is where Jesus is being crucified.
46:21 And when he is being crucified, what does he call out? Father, forgive them. They know not what
46:28 they do. This man
46:36 deserved judgment. But yet God's will was not only that
46:41 justice be done and this horrible army be stopped. But God's will was also that this man come to faith in Christ. He did
46:49 not want him to perish. He wanted him to come to faith.
46:55 Not everybody will come to repentance. Justice is necessary.
47:01 But how do we look at those upon whom justice is coming? Are we going to gloat and cheer when it happens?
47:09 Let's learn also from an example in the life of Jesus. This is Palm Sunday. Five days before
47:16 the crucifixion. Jesus is triumphantly heading toward Jerusalem. The crowds are
47:22 cheering. But as he approaches the city of Jerusalem, he stops and he weeps over
47:28 the city. And then he prophesies what he as a son
47:34 of God knows is going to happen in about 40 years. And he says, "The time is
47:39 coming in, Jerusalem, when you will be surrounded by enemy armies, and they
47:45 will dash you to the ground and your children with you, and they will not
47:51 leave one stone upon another because you did not know the day of your
47:56 visitation." Now, notice the words that Jesus is using. It's words from Psalm 137,
48:05 dashing your little ones against the stone. And he say in Jerusalem, this is what's going to happen to you. There's
48:11 not going to be one stone left upon another. But is Jesus gloating? Is he rejoicing?
48:19 No. He wept over it. That is to be our attitude.
48:28 Yes, we pray for justice and justice is going to come, but we pray that people will come to repentance before it's too
48:35 late. And when justice does come, we're not going to gloat. We're not
48:41 going to rejoice. And remember, just five days after Jesus
48:47 was weeping over Jerusalem, he was killed.
48:53 But he did not say, "Haha, you're going to get yours." He did not say, "You just
48:60 wait. God's going to pay you back and then we'll know who's boss." No, he's
49:05 weeping over Jerusalem
49:12 and he prays as he's nailed to that cross. Father, forgive them.
49:19 Well, in praying your anger this morning, we've seen that we can bring everything honestly to God.
49:27 We can reaffirm our faith in God rather than turn our back on him. We want to
49:33 ask God to intervene and bring justice, but we also want to pray in light of what Jesus has said and done.
49:41 Now, when you read that list, some of you might say, "Well, I can definitely do number one. I can tell my anger."
49:48 It's a little bit tougher with number two, but no, I don't want to turn my back on
49:53 God. Number three, yeah, I can pray that for justice. But number four, uh-uh, if
49:60 somebody does wrong, they've got to pay for it. When there's injustice, somebody
50:05 must pay. If injustice is done, it's got to be paid for. Somebody must pay.
50:12 And the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is somebody has paid.
50:20 Jesus Christ has paid the penalty for our sins.
50:26 Yes, sin must be paid for. God is concerned about justice, but through the
50:32 crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, sin has been paid for. Not only our
50:39 sins, if we believe, but the sins of all people who come in faith to Christ. All
50:46 who come in repentance and faith will have their sins paid for by Jesus. His
50:52 cruel debt at the hand of evil men. And his resurrection brings victory over
50:58 sin. And it brings victory over evil.
51:04 All people who repent, who let God change their mind, change their heart, change them on the inside through the
51:10 power of his spirit and the power of his word, and then who come in faith and give their life to Christ, entrusting
51:16 their life into his hand, bowing the knee before Christ. Lord, I'm not going
51:23 to rule my life anymore. I'm going to let you do that. All who come in such
51:28 repentance and faith can experience the forgiveness, the mercy of God.
51:36 Today I would encourage you, bring your anger to God. Pour it out like we have
51:43 talked about. But also, if you have never come to faith, come to Christ in repentance and
51:50 faith, I would encourage you to do that
