Pastor Butler, how to sing, pray, or yes, just praying the imprecatory Psalms and bless our enemies, can that be done at the same time? They seem contradictory. So how do we reconcile that with Christ's command to bless and not curse our enemies? Yeah, that's a great question.

It may be difficult, but we can do it. I think the tendency of some in the church to take the Psalms of David that contain imprecations, that means basically calling down a curse upon your enemies, is to conclude that that's antiquated, that's barbaric, that's something confined to David, that really shouldn't be duplicated in this New Testament setting. The first thing I would say is that the New Testament itself contains imprecations. Paul in 1 Corinthians 16 says, �If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema.

� Which I would say outdoes David in the Psalms. David says, �Shatter my enemy's teeth.� Paul is saying, �Let him be damned to hell.� Okay, that's 1 Corinthians 16, 22.

Paul in 2 Timothy chapter 4 says, Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm, may the Lord repay him. And I don't think he means by grace, mercy, forgiveness, and, you know, a spot next to the Lord Jesus in the kingdom to come. You know, Paul in Galatians chapter 1 pronounces an anathema, a curse, upon anybody that would twist or distort the gospel. So, to dismiss imprecations as being, you know, unbiblical is to deal unjustly with New Testament texts.

The second thing I would say is that when it comes to these imprecations that you find in the Psalms of David, that they're prayers of Christ ultimately. I think that Jesus is the subject, the object, the author, the composer, the singer, and the prayer of the Psalms. And I think that's important to keep in mind. Jesus was a man of sorrows and he was acquainted with grief.

The Psalms led us into his mindset during his earthly ministry. And as we would expect from somebody that's true humanity, true human being, there's a hatred and a detestation for that which is contrary to his Father. He hates and abhors the wickedness. And so, he cries out for vindication.

He cries out for God's justice. To reject the imprecatory Psalms is to reject God's justice. It is to reject, in principle, God's righteousness and the reality that I think the Bible always and everywhere presents that God is a just judge. He is going to bring vengeance upon His enemies.

He is going to shatter the teeth of His enemies. He is going to smash them and cast them down. Now, I suggest that for us, if we want to invoke these psalms, if we want to pray or sing these psalms, we need to remember their scripture. I know there's times when we've sang Psalm 11 in our church, and I've often wondered, I've often sympathized with the newbie that's just found their way into our church, and it talks about God raining coals of fire upon his enemies.

You know, that's not your typical Christian fare on a Sunday morning. You're not singing about God smashing His enemy's teeth. Well, we do sing imprecatory songs. And so, yeah, I do wonder.

This is probably the first and the last time this person will ever visit with us. But we need to remember that they're given to us by God. They're Scripture. They're God-breathed Scripture, and they're about Jesus.

Jesus tells us they're about Him in Luke's Gospel. So for us to sing them, we can sing them in the spirit of Scripture, and we sing Scripture. To pray them and make them our own, we need to remember they're Christ's and they're David's, and by extension they are the church's. But they're not to be utilized for little issues, you know, your boss was mean to you at work.

You don't pray God to smash his teeth. You don't. You don't pray for God to cause the car that cut you off in traffic to crash, to spin over and burn up. That would be a vindictive, self-centered appropriation of those Psalms.

We ought to bless those who curse us. we are in a general tenor of God's benevolent love to others, not bump into people, not, you know, invoke God's wrath upon them. But when it comes to, you know, certain grave attacks against the majesty of the Most High and against His Christ, is it legit to pray that God would stop His enemies? I think it's perfectly legit.

Can we use the language of the Psalter to voice those concerns? Yes! I don't see anything that would keep us from praying that God take those enemies and smash them under His hand of justice. Again, not my enemy that cut me off or took the last whatever at Walmart, but those enemies of the gospel, those enemies of Christ, those enemies that are abusing and hurting and violating Christ's little ones.

Yeah! To say no, we need to love those who are cutting off our brothers and sisters' tongues. We are to love those who are, you know, raping Christian sisters. We are to love those who, you know, abort babies and celebrate ghoulishness.

No, we can love them with that love of benevolence. You know, I'm not going to set you on fire, but with the love for God and the purity of His gospel and the glory of His name, take these wretches out. You know, I've presented at our church what I think are That's not what I think. It's not like Jim thinks.

But, you know, I've thought through this and I've read some stuff on this. And, you know, with civil authority, how do we pray for civil government in a Psalms of David sort of fashion? Well, I pray first and foremost that God redeem. We saw that in our study in 1 Timothy 2 the other night.

Why do we pray for kings and all who are in authority? Because God wants to save all men. Not all men without exception, but all men without distinction. All kinds of men.

So, pray for their salvation. But if they're not going to be saved, we can pray that God restrains them, right? Get restrained, wholly restrained. Solomon says that the king's heart is in the hand of Yahweh.

He turns it wherever he wishes, like water. So, God, restrain them. And if not, then remove them. I don't get nitty-gritty, here's how I think you should remove them.

They can choke on their morning eggs. They could crash their car. However God wants to remove them is up to Him. And if that means some violent, bloody way, then that's up to Him.

You know, the voice of a God and not a man. Herod in Acts chapter 12, he was eaten by worms and died. God's free to do that. And nobody's free to say, well, that doesn't seem right.

That doesn't seem fair. This was an enemy of the Most High, arrogating to himself that he was the Most High, and God took him out. So, you know, redeem them, restrain them, or remove them. Why would we continue to be okay with guys that promote, you know, wide-scale mass murder?

Because I love my enemies? Yeah, I love my enemies in that I'm not setting them on fire, but I don't love godless men who are destroying countries through, you know, murder and mayhem. Take them out. I think if ever there was a time to pray the imprecatory Psalms of David, now's probably as good a time as it could be.

You know, the hymns and the singing and the songs in churches today, you know, it can be so effeminate. We're the church militant. Let's sing Psalm 68. Let's sing Psalm 94.

Let's sing Psalm 58. Let's sing Psalm 11. Let's sing these songs that our brothers in Christ have sung throughout millennia as they marched to the gallows, as they fought in battles, as they promoted Christ and His cross. I think what the church sings oftentimes is indicative of how the church functions.

And if it's all these, you know, shallow, vapid, weird songs, of course we're going to be effeminate. Yeah, you've always got this quote you read from, is it Ralph Davis or something, about the weak fellow? He comes raking of hand cream, yeah. But he's a conquering warrior on a horse, right?

He's a conquering warrior, that's right. So crushing the enemies, yeah, could be kill them, right, or something, right? Or he could crush them by his grace. Yeah, and humble them.

Yeah, bring them to salvation. That's where, you know, David gets pretty vocal. Yeah, break their teeth. You know, we can repeat those in song or in prayer, but ultimately David would have been content.

However, God chose to remove those enemies. Some of the language is more symbolic. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah.

And there's things that, yeah, definitely invoke or assume other images that are used in the Scripture. Yeah. And there's a great essay, there's a couple of good things on imprecatory Psalms. I mean, I think it's an area that should be studied.

There's a good, there's a book called Sing a New Song. It's edited by Joel Beakey and I want to say I can't remember the guy, Savaggio, some long name. But it's just multi authors contributing essays. And I think it was David, I'm gonna mess up his name.

One of the guys, David Murray, wrote the article or the essay on the imprecatory Psalms. It was very good, brief, really good. There's a book by a Reformed Baptist pastor called War Songs of the Prince of Peace. which gets high marks just for that title alone.

The book could have been garbage, and that title, Warsongs of the Prince of Peace, either Warsongs or Songs. But it's really good. It's very helpful. There's some good things in there to think through and some good things to ponder.

You can't just dismiss it and say, well, that's the Old Testament. It doesn't matter for us today. Well, you've got Paul invoking God's wrath upon distorters of the gospel. You've got problems if, in principle, you take out God's justice, judgment, and righteousness and inflict it against His enemies.