"GOD’S PEOPLE CALL GOD’S PROMISED CURSES DOWN UPON GOD’S ENEMIES."

Singing: (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 35:1,2
Psalm 110:1,2
Psalm 7:4,5
Psalm 58:1-5
Psalm 68:1; Hymn 55:5

Beloved Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Would you dare to pray the words of our text?? Read them carefully: "Break their teeth in their mouth, O God!" Could you pray like that? More: should we pray like that??

Could we pray like that? I think, beloved, if we’re honest we’d say Yes, we could, we’d even like to pray like that – about persons who have really hurt us. But should we pray like that? That’s a harder question. For on the one hand we recall Jesus’ words in His Sermon on the Mount: "I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you…" (Mt 5:44). We understand words as these to instruct us not to pray about our enemies as the psalmist does. But, wonder, how then could David implore God to "break their teeth in their mouth, O God"? If Jesus said to bless those who curse us, did David not sin when he prayed the words of this psalm?? That seems to be the obvious conclusion. But that conclusion is awkward, simply because the Lord tells us elsewhere in the Bible that "all Scripture is inspired of God" – our psalm too….

Dare we to pray as David did? May we pray as David did? Let this be clear, my beloved: God Himself put the words of Ps 58on the lips of the man David – and he was a man no different from us. And God Himself put into the Bible the words He once placed on David’s lips – and did so for our edification and encouragement. So we cannot gloss over this psalm, this prayer; instead, we need to learn to pray as God moved David to pray….

I summarise the sermon with this theme:

GOD’S PEOPLE CALL GOD’S PROMISED CURSES DOWN UPON GOD’S ENEMIES.

We want to look at this psalm from three moments in the history of the world:

1. this prayer on David’s lips
2. this prayer on Christ’s lips
3. this prayer on our lips

1. We need to give attention first to this prayer on David’s lips because this man of God is recorded as the author of the psalm. He wrote it, did so at a particular moment in his life, did so in a particular setting.

David tells us something about the setting of the psalm. For vss 1 & 2 are spoken to people around him, people who should be ‘speaking’, should be speaking ‘righteousness’; they are ‘judges’. But in fact these leaders keep their mouths closed; they are "silent ones". And as to their hearts: while these men should be contemplating God-pleasing answers to the questions before them, they are in fact contemplating ‘wickedness’.

On the basis of this material from vss 1 & 2, I want to suggest a possible moment when David wrote this psalm. I do so not because I’m so sure of when David wrote it; I do so rather because I want to make a point.

The persons of vss 1 & 2 who should be judging uprightly but are in fact silent are, let us say, the advisers of King Saul, men mandated to counsel the king concerning how to run the affairs of his kingdom. Saul himself saw need to chase David up and down the countryside, so that David had no place to call home, no place to lay down his weary head. We can understand David’s disappointment with these advisers; they should be counselling the king to quit the chase…; after all, there’s more important things to do in running the government of the land, and besides, David had done nothing against the God of Israel, was no law-breaker. But see, the counsellors do not give righteous counsel to the king; they’re rather silent, they speak no righteous word in David’s defence; they instead plot violence in the land. In that possible setting we can hear the hurt in David’s heart come out in the words of vss 1 & 2:

Then we can quite imagine that David, in the next few verses, turns to the men around him to comment about what those counsellors are really like. "The wicked," he says in vs 3, "are estranged from the womb; They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies." And again we hear a measure of the pain, the frustration, in David’s heart. He suffers because these counsellors are failures. They should be giving Godly advice to Israel’s king, but in fact they drip poison; like a serpent they spit out their poison suddenly and with that poison they harm their victims so fatally. And as to words of admonition (like those spoken in vss 1 & 2), these wicked counsellors have consciously closed their ears; "they are like the deaf cobra that stops its ears, Which will not heed the voice of charmers, Charming ever so skillfully." By so doing, these counsellors –they know it’s foolish of King Saul (and wrong also) to chase David across the country- by so doing these counsellors demonstrate the depth of their wickedness, demonstrate the hardness of their hearts, demonstrate that they are not on God’s side but on Satan’s side. And David is the victim of their folly….

I repeat: no one can be sure about whether this is indeed the setting of the psalm. Yet I make a point of mentioning this possible setting because I want to make clear to you the danger that comes with trying to crawl into David’s skin. For consider: if we have in our minds a picture of a David totally fed up with being harassed by Saul and treated like a dog, we can quite understand that David would be most frustrated…, and then we conclude that David’s frustration would break to the surface with a prayer as vs 6. "Break their teeth in their mouth, O God!" says David – and we hear the anguish of David’s heart, we hear how Saul’s hounding has gotten under David’s skin, and we feel along with David as he longs for God to tear open those closed mouths so that those counsellors tell Saul to lay off that chase…. The result? We feel vindicated ourselves when we in our frustrations wish (and even pray!) that something evil may happen to those who hurt us…. And we say to ourselves: if David in vs 8 can wish that these counsellors become like the snail David has seen so often in desert –the snail just dries up, melts away, perishes as the sun’s heat comes upon it- if David could ‘let fly’ in the face of his frustration and wish such destruction on those who fail him so, surely, we can too…. And somehow that feels good…. Don’t the psychologists tell us to ‘spit it out’?

But observe, beloved, what we have now done. What we’ve done is this: we’ve let our feelings, we’ve let the way we imagine David felt, determine the way we read our text. So the words of our text become an expression of David’s frustration…, and an expression of our frustration too when we are in parallel situations.

It needs to be absolutely clear to us: our hearts are sinful, just like David’s and just like the possible counsellors David speaks about in vs 3; our hearts too "are estranged from the womb," our hearts too "go astray as soon as [we] are born." The reality of our depravity means that we can’t let our feelings dictate how we pray, yes, we need to be very wary of crawling into David’s skin, wary of trying to understand how he can pray the words of vs 6ff. If we pursue the avenue of trying to understand David, or if we see his prayer as an expression simply of his frustration (and therefore vindication for us to pray the same sort of thing), we shall end up having our prayers determined by sinful feelings – and that’s very much a way to disaster.

How, then, are we to understand David’s prayer in vss 6-8? How could he pray as he did?? Brothers and sisters, we need to realise that God Himself has laid this prayer on David’s lips. No, God did not do so in the sense that David was a zombie and out of the blue God moved David to pray words that were not in his heart. Rather, God laid these words on David’s lips through the material God had revealed to Israel over the years and centuries, the words that were contained in the Scriptures David had. David worked with those Scriptures, and so learned from God what it was that a man should pray to God.

What had God said in His Scriptures? Already in Paradise the Lord had spoken of a curse on the serpent, yes, had spoken of warfare, of "enmity" between God and Satan, between God’s people and Satan’s people. More, God had spoken of how He would bruise Satan’s head, would defeat the evil one and all who belong to him (Gen 3:15). In keeping with that promise in Paradise, the Lord wiped out the evil generation that prevailed on the earth in the days of Noah; evil doers, the children of the evil one, invariably perish. In keeping with that same promise in Paradise, the Lord destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah; the friends of the devil, the enemies of God, invariably perish. Again, in keeping with that promise of Paradise, the Pharaoh who mistreated God’s children in Egypt was destroyed and all his people with him; those who side with Satan in the great battle of the ages invariably perish. The people of Israel on yonder side of the Red Sea understand this hatred between God and Satan, understood God’s victory over the devil, and so sang their song of triumph in Ex 15 with words like this:

And later:

You notice it, beloved: war and destruction of God’s enemies is very much part of Israel’s song of praise to the God of their deliverance. That’s also why, when Israel left Mt Sinai, yes, and whenever they picked up stakes in the desert to travel to another place, Moses spoke these words:

You see: here’s a prayer in keeping with God’s promise in Gen 3, a prayer that God would please scatter the Canaanites, the Moabites, and the other peoples of the day, would please destroy His enemies.

But it’s not just people outside Israel that God promised to destroy. His promise in Gen 3 to bruise Satan included also those followers of Satan who dwelt within Israel, who were part of God’s covenant people. So it was that the Lord, in a passage as Dt 28, laid before His covenant people their collective and individual responsibility to live as children of God. And God told His own that

and God followed this promise when many examples of how He would bless His faithful children. But, God added,

and there follows more than 50 verses of curses that God would pour out on His covenant people – and all of those curses are part and parcel of the bruising mentioned in Gen 3. Examples of the curses? Listen:

Attractive? O no, it’s horrible. But this, my beloved, is already the promise of Gen 3!! God shall bruise the head of the serpent, God shall crush the serpent and all his followers till nothing is left. That is the promise of God.

And if God has promised, are the children of God not to ask God to do what He has promised to do?? Do God’s children not long for the total defeat of the evil one?? Is that not what love for God is all about? If God’s people are to pray that the Father in heaven please make His kingdom to come, does that not imply that God please destroy Satan’s kingdom?? And therefore cast all Satan’s followers into hell also?? That prayer of Moses in the desert is a prayer that all God’s people are ever wanting to pray:

That’s what David understood, and that, beloved, is why he prayed the words of our psalm:

Sure, the words of Ps 58 strike us as more powerful than those of Moses in Num 10, but there is no difference in essence; both are prayers for the destruction of God’s enemies, both are petitions asking God to do as He promised He would in Gen 3, both are supplications urging God to act according to the promises He made in Dt 28.

So it is, my brothers and sisters, that David prays the prayer of our text not because of frustration on his part, not because of annoyance or irritation, not because of a desire in his heart to see brothers in Israel suffer and perish; David prays the loaded words of vss 6-8 because God laid these words on his lips –how?- through the Scriptures God had given to His people to date. David’s hearty desire was to have God’s name glorified, and God’s name was not glorified by counsellors in Israel who kept their hands on their mouths, counsellors who worked wickedness amongst God’s people, who refused to judge uprightly. So David prays, prays according to the instructions God had given over the years. The words of our psalm are not a personal vendetta on David’s part, are not an attempt on David’s part to get God to do the dirty work for him and take vengeance on David’s behalf against his oppressors. No, congregation, David sees that there is no glory for God through the conduct of these persons in Israel who by their conduct show themselves to be on Satan’s side, and so he prays, prays in a fashion consistent with God’s instructions over the generations. Make no mistake: not David’s frustration prompts this prayer, but God’s instruction does – and so it’s to be with all prayer.

And that, congregation, is why David can be confident in vs 9 that these wicked counsellors simply have no future; God will "take them away as with a whirlwind." And we know: what a whirlwind picks up is gone. David knows: God is faithful, and shall do as He has said; His victory over the evil one is certain. David knows: in the battle between God and the devil, Satan and his followers definitely and always have the short end of the stick.

And that also is why in vs 10 David can speak of the rejoicing of the righteous. They shall rejoice not because they are themselves vindicated; rather, they shall rejoice because God receives the glory, and therefore they themselves the blessing. And all shall see that there is fruit for the righteous: God judges the earth, sweeps away the evil one and those who love evil. Truly: here is comfort for the children of God in the midst of the sufferings they experience from Satan’s followers.

2. We haven’t, though, reached to the heart of the full comfort contained in this psalm. To do that we need to consider how Jesus Christ could pray this prayer – second point.

Jesus, as it turns out, also suffered as a result of men who refused to rise to His defence. We read the account of Jesus’ suffering in Mt 26. The account tells us of an entire circle of scribes and elders, under the leadership of Caiaphas the high priest, all assembled to pass judgment on Jesus. What was the God-given responsibility of this circle of office bearers in Israel? We know: in the words of Ps 58, they were to "speak righteousness", they were to "judge uprightly". But they don’t. that entire circle is either silent, or they open their mouths to condemn the innocent, to decree violence in the land. Though Jesus tells them the gospel, these counsellors to the high priest have stopped their ears; they refuse to listen both to reason and to the gospel…. All they say is: "He is deserving of death" (vs 66). How we could understand if our Lord in Mt 26 had burst forth with the prayer of our text; we almost expect Him to react that way!!

But see, He doesn’t! He doesn’t, because central to Jesus’ mind is not Himself and His suffering (innocent though He is of the Sanhedrin’s charges); central to Jesus’ mind is God’s glory. And Jesus knows that the silence of the counsellors is part and parcel of the battle foretold by God in Gen 3; Jesus knows that here Satan is striving to destroy the Son of God, is striving to break Jesus, to wipe Him off the earth as "a snail which melts away as it goes," to make Jesus as fruitless as the stillborn child. So Jesus can’t be busy with His own skin; Jesus needs to be busy with the things of God.

And exactly for that reason, beloved, does Jesus in Mt 26 refrain from taking David’s prayer in Ps 58 upon His holy lips! Tell me: why does Jesus in Mt 26 not follow David’s example and, according to the pattern of the Old Testament, beseech God to rise up to fight His enemies, destroy Caiaphas and the elders and the scribes?? Why does Jesus not repeat the prayer of Moses from Num 10:

Why doesn’t he join David in praying the words of our text:

The answer, beloved, the glorious answer is this: God sovereignly, righteously joined Jesus to Satan’s side, God laid on Him the iniquity of us all and therefore rejected Jesus, gave Him over to the forces of hell. Shall God, then, fight Jesus’ battle?? Shall Jesus implore God to break the teeth of the devil when God Himself has give Jesus over to the devil?? You see, beloved, Jesus cannot join David in praying the petition of our text because God has rejected Jesus!

And there, there, my beloved, is our salvation. For what has Jesus done in the horrors of the cross?? This: He broke Satan’s teeth, He broke out the fangs of the lions of hell. In the horrors of Calvary, Jesus Christ so thoroughly destroyed the evil one that Satan and his hosts are made to flow away as water, He so thoroughly crushed the seed of the serpent that when Satan now bends his bow his arrows are as if cut in pieces. So today the righteous rejoice: God has taken vengeance on the one who prompted our fall into sin in the beginning, and so there’s a future for the righteous on the earth.

Yes, Satan is defeated; through Christ’s labour on the cross his teeth are broken. Yet the Lord tells us too that this defeated devil, with his demons, have no intent of giving up; the devil goes around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour (I Pet 5:8). The battle foretold in Gen 3 continues, and we experience that battle in the hurts and pains others inflict upon us. What we do, then? Pray, beloved, pray the words of our text. That’s our last point: how do we pray this prayer today.

3. Let it be clear to us: this is a petition we can and must pray today. No, not as an expression of our frustration at what people do to us, nor as an effort to get God to do our dirty work for us and destroy our oppressors as such. Rather, we need to keep the antithesis in mind, the hatred of Satan for God and God for Satan. The battle prompted by that antithesis rages today still, because the devil Christ defeated on the cross refuses to concede defeat. The devil and his demons attack us, and Satan gets support from evil men in the world around us, gets support also from the evil that remains in our own hearts. So we pray, we pray the words of Ps 58: ‘Lord God, please destroy Satan, frustrate his attacks upon me and upon all your people. Break their teeth out of their mouths, O God! Break out the fangs of the young lions, o Lord!’ It’s a prayer that God please destroy the devil completely, that God break the subtle and not so subtle attacks of the devil upon us. It’s a prayer that’s found also in our Catechism, where the second petition of the Lord’s prayer –"Your kingdom come"- is explained like this:

So I pray that the Lord will destroy sin in every person, will destroy the sinner’s sinful conduct, will destroy the devil behind the sinner, yes, will destroy the sinner himself if he stubbornly insists on breaking down the glorious name of God Most High. And equally I pray that the Lord will cut out of me the evil that remains, the desire to do wrong, the desire to take revenge on those who have hurt me.

Yes, my beloved, we can and must pray the prayer of David in Ps 58. And at the same time we may be sure: God will hear our petition. Christ on the cross could not pray this prayer, Christ on the cross instead had to break the teeth of the devil Himself. He succeeded. And that is why the Lord today answers the pleas of His children to destroy Satan and his attacks upon us. Today in part, and tomorrow when Christ comes back, God destroys the attacks of the devil.

Yes, we can and must pray a prayer as David’s. Let us dare, my beloved, see to it that we understand well the reality of the antithesis in our daily lives, and then pray boldly to God our Saviour to destroy Satan attacks. Amen.