A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on March 24, 2024.
Be not silent, O God of my praise!
For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me,
speaking against me with lying tongues.
They encircle me with words of hate,
and attack me without cause.
In return for my love they accuse me,
but I give myself to prayer.
So they reward me evil for good,
and hatred for my love.
Appoint a wicked man against him;
let an accuser stand at his right hand.
When he is tried, let him come forth guilty;
let his prayer be counted as sin!
May his days be few;
may another take his office!
May his children be fatherless
and his wife a widow!
May his children wander about and beg,
seeking food far from the ruins they inhabit!
May the creditor seize all that he has;
may strangers plunder the fruits of his toil!
Let there be none to extend kindness to him,
nor any to pity his fatherless children!
May his posterity be cut off;
may his name be blotted out in the second generation!
May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD,
and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out!
Let them be before the LORD continually,
that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth!
For he did not remember to show kindness,
but pursued the poor and needy
and the brokenhearted, to put them to death.
He loved to curse; let curses come upon him!
He did not delight in blessing; may it be far from him!
He clothed himself with cursing as his coat;
may it soak into his body like water,
like oil into his bones!
May it be like a garment that he wraps around him,
like a belt that he puts on every day!
May this be the reward of my accusers from the LORD,
of those who speak evil against my life!
But you, O GOD my Lord,
deal on my behalf for your name’s sake;
because your steadfast love is good, deliver me!
For I am poor and needy,
and my heart is stricken within me.
I am gone like a shadow at evening;
I am shaken off like a locust.
My knees are weak through fasting;
my body has become gaunt, with no fat.
I am an object of scorn to my accusers;
when they see me, they wag their heads.
Help me, O LORD my God!
Save me according to your steadfast love!
Let them know that this is your hand;
you, O LORD, have done it!
Let them curse, but you will bless!
They arise and are put to shame, but your servant will be glad!
May my accusers be clothed with dishonor;
may they be wrapped in their own shame as in a cloak!
With my mouth I will give great thanks to the LORD;
I will praise him in the midst of the throng.
For he stands at the right hand of the needy one,
to save him from those who condemn his soul to death. (Psalm 109).[1]
Jesus’ triumphal entry provides a picture of contrasts. As the crowd lined his path with palm branches, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” (John 12:13), the Pharisees were indignant. They were appalled that Jesus would even allow such praise (Matt. 21:16), demanding that Jesus rebuke them. Jesus’ response was, of course, priceless: “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out” (Luke 19:40). If the elders in heaven cast their crowns and cry out, “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created” (Rev. 4:11), the very stones would cry out too.
The stone-cold hearts of the Pharisees would not, who chose lies and slander rather than faith in Christ. Presumably seeking the truth, they demanded of Jesus, “tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” But when Jesus affirmed their answer and then added, “from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matt. 26:63-64), they charged him with blasphemy and killed him. He was slandered and ridiculed, attacked without cause, but in the end, the only charge that could justify their decision to put Jesus to death was in fact the truth: He is indeed the Christ, the Son of God (Matt. 26:63).
Attacked without Cause
One of the many benefits of reading through the Old and New Testament Scriptures every year is the consistent exposure to the entirety of Scripture. Read Scripture consistently and over time you will be able to recount biblical examples of God’s provision for his people. Such knowledge is of some intellectual benefit, but the primary motivation for us is worship. In other words, what Scripture reveals about God and what he has done informs our praise. For example, when the Lord had delivered the children of Israel out of the bondage of Egypt, Moses encouraged them to consider what the Lord had done and praise him, saying, “He is your praise. He is your God, who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen” (Deut. 10:21).
Likewise, David cries out to God, “Be not silent, O God of my praise!” (1). God has given him plenty of reasons to praise him in the past, now David prays that he will act as he has before. But in the moment, God seems silent, while the “wicked and deceitful mouths … with lying tongues” are not (2). They have seemingly encircled David, with words of hate and without cause.
What sets David’s lament apart from other psalms, however, is the reason for his persecution.
David says,
In return for my love they accuse me,
but I give myself to prayer.
So they reward me evil for good,
and hatred for my love (4-5).
In return for his love, they falsely accuse him. In return for his love, they reciprocate with evil. In essence, they hate him for loving them. We do not know David’s specific situation, but we can imagine his anguish. To love someone and not be loved in return is heartbreaking, but to be slandered in return for love is absurd. To do good for someone for nothing in return is noble, but to receive evil for good is wicked.
The verbal violence David endures is unjust and undeserving, as he is attacked without cause. For this reason, David’s psalm points toward his greater Son and heir of his throne, our Lord Jesus, who “committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth” (1 Pet. 2:22). He came in love (John 3:16), but “the world did not know him,” even “his own people did not receive him” (John 1:10-11). And in return for love, he was crucified. The world gave evil for good and hatred for love, but “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). God’s love for us is not responsive but progenerative: “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). It was for us that he was attacked without cause, as the perfect, promised provision of God’s love.
Worthy of Vindication
Let us take note that the psalmist in this case is David, who was more than capable of handling his adversaries, as both a capable soldier and statesman. But rather than violence and vengeance, he chooses prayer, petitioning the Lord and remembering the Lord’s promise, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay” (Rom. 12:19). Rather than retaliating, David prays for vindication, not according to his own sense of justice but God’s righteousness. David prays that in return for injustice, the wicked one who will experience what it is like to be wrongly attacked and falsely accused; that the wicked one will be found guilty, without a prayer. In fact, in Hebrew the word translated “evil man” in verse six is the same as the word translated “guilty” in verse seven, an intentional redundancy reinforcing the connection between wickedness and guilt. David doesn’t just think his adversary is evil, he is.
The world would be a better place without him, without his wicked words and ways, and so David prays that the wicked one will lose his lot in life even life itself, leaving his wife without a husband, his children without a father, his posterity without a heritage; that the wicked one’s wealth will be left to the plunder of strangers; that the wicked one and his posterity will not know kindness or be remembered for anything but iniquity; that the Lord will erase any memory of them from the earth.
If David’s prayer sounds harsh, it’s because it is. But as the remainder of the psalm reveals, David’s petitions correspond to what wicked one has done. The wicked one shows no kindness but oppresses to death the vulnerable and brokenhearted. Rather than blessing others, the wicked one curses, rendering himself a curse, that characterizes him, clothes him, saturates him: He is a living, breathing curse to mankind, whose absence would be a blessing to all. And so, David prays,
May this be the reward of my accusers from the LORD,
of those who speak evil against my life! (20)
It’s a prayer for just consequences upon the head of the one who persecutes David with his words.
Now, this may give us pause, because after all aren’t they only words? If you grew up with nursery rhymes, like I did, then you remember well, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” a bullet-proof vest, as it were, against verbal bullying. Except, it isn’t. Words do hurt, especially when they are false. If you, like me, have received unfair criticism, or been accused of things you didn’t do or say, or been slandered to others, you know how it feels, and you may also know how damaging these words can be, to your reputation and even your mental wellbeing.
In studying the imprecatory psalms, I have found it interesting how much of an emphasis is put on verbal persecution. One scholar of the imprecatory psalms explains,
A common, though perhaps easily overlooked, form of violence in the imprecatory psalms is verbal violence. Slander … false accusation … mockery … and deceitful speech … expose the psalmists to emotional turmoil … legal peril … and the relational alienation that follows closely behind a tarnished reputation …. The enemy’s words have power, not in some magical sense, but in the sense that they elicit enormous social consequences. They create a new and toxic social reality, one that is not grounded in truth, and the psalmist is forced to dwell in the unstable relational world created by his foes’ falsehoods.[2]
Such is the world David inhabits as he writes this psalm, revealing his dependence upon the Lord but also the vile heart of the wicked whose intention is destruction.
I am reminded of Absalom’s rebellion and David’s flight from Jerusalem, when on his way a descendent of Saul, Shimei, continually cursed David, falsely accusing him of murder, and claiming that God was avenging the death of Saul in David’s demise, claiming, “See, your evil is on you” (2 Sam. 16:5-8). It was the rhetoric of a fool, and David and his mighty men could have easily and justly put him to death, but instead David said, “Leave him alone, and let him curse, for the LORD has told him to. It may be that the LORD will look on the wrong done to me, and that the LORD will repay me with good for his cursing today” (2 Sam. 16:11-12). David’s mercy and trust in the Lord proved right, as Absalom’s rebellion was quickly quashed, and David’s kingdom was restored. But Shimei’s verbal violence was not forgotten by the king, who left judgment to the wisdom of his son, Solomon, who knew that a wicked man who curses the Lord’s anointed king cannot keep an oath either. Within three short years Shimei disobeyed his oath to Solomon, truly revealing, “the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45b). But what Solomon said to Shimei is key to understanding just how important the spoken word is. Solomon said, “You know in your own heart all the harm that you did to David my father. So the LORD will bring back your harm on your own head” (1 Kgs. 2:44). And Shimei was executed, immediately.
Such is David’s prayer. It is a prayer that God’s justice will prevail and that the wicked will be punished. Like the incident of Shimei’s verbal violence, David does not take matters into his own hands but prays that the wicked one will receive punishment commensurate to his evil words and ways. Calvin says,
David did not rashly, or unadvisedly, utter curses against his enemies, but strictly adhered to what the Spirit dictated. … that which David beheld by the unclouded eye of faith, he also uttered with a zeal becoming a sound mind; for having devoted himself to the cultivation of piety, and being protected by the hand of God, he was aware that the day was approaching when his enemies would meet with merited punishment.[3]
Likewise, though our Lord Jesus was persecuted, “he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (1 Pet. 2:23). And so, he does, and so we pray that the Lord will punish those who persecute his children and his church and bring wickedness to an end under the righteous rule of Christ our King.
Beloved of God
The reason David does not resort to retaliation but prayerfully petitions the Lord is because he knows that the sovereign Lord orchestrates all things for his glory and our good, that his everlasting love is for his children, not the wicked. But David’s knowledge of God’s love and faithfulness does not lead him to resignation but resolve. Zealously he prays and fasts for God’s provision. He is poor, he is needy, and his heart hurts within him. Likely weakened from weight loss and weak-kneed from anguish, he is fading like an evening shadow, easily shaken off like a locust from a tree. In his vulnerable condition, the scorn of his accusers continues. They relish in his suffering, not recognizing that against their ridicule David is sustained by the Lord’s presence.
David rejoices, not in his suffering but because the Lord leads him to look beyond his circumstances and look toward the promise of his provision. And God did provide for David both circumstantially and ultimately. For, in the fullness of time God sent forth his Son, that the saints of old looked toward and we look to. He whom the Pharisees ridiculed and slandered, “God has highly exalted … and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:9-11).
And so, like those who waived the palm branches and paved Jesus’ way to accomplish our redemption, we lift our voices as Christ’s church in thankful praise:
“Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” (Matt. 21:9).
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] Trevor Laurence, Cursing with God: The Imprecatory Psalms and the Ethics of Christian Prayer (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2022), 126-127.
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