this morning Christ in this psalm. Do you indeed speak righteousness, you silent ones? Do you judge uprightly, you sons of men? No. In heart you work wickedness. You weigh out the violence of your hands in the earth. The wicked are estranged from the womb. They go astray as soon as they're born, speaking lies. Their poison is like the poison of a serpent. They're like the deaf cobra that stops its ears. They'll not heed the voice of charmers and chanters ever so skillfully. Break their teeth and their mouth, O God. Break out the fangs of the young lions, O Lord. Let them flow away as waters which run continually. When he bends his bow, let his arrows be as if cut in pieces. Let them be like a snail which melts away as it goes. like a stillborn child of a woman, that they may not see the sun. Before your pots can feel the burning thorns, He shall take them away as with a whirlwind, as in His living and burning wrath. The righteous shall rejoice when He sees the vengeance. He shall wash His feet in the blood of the wicked, so that men will say, surely there is a reward for the righteous. Surely He is God who judges the earth. To move through this morning, we're going to look at three points. We're going to look at how the psalmist states the problem. Then we're going to look at this idea of the psalmist offering imprecatory prayers. And then we're going to look at the psalmist rejoices in God's vindication. Psalm 58 has historically been placed among what's called Psalms of Lament. Such laments often contain within them portions of imprecation that are directed towards and at God's enemies. And as we approach this psalm, we remember the necessity to see Christ in the Psalms when Christ is there to be seen. Now, I put this here, when Christ is there to be seen, purposely, because while we want to emphasize the necessity of seeing Christ throughout the Scriptures, we want to be careful on the other end that we don't go so allegorical that we're forcing Christ in just because we think it's a technique that we should use, and so we put Him there in ways that shouldn't be seen. And so we do say that we should read the Scriptures Christocentrically, but we have to be careful that we don't do so in an artificial fashion. mortal psalmist who's praying here. He's praying proximately, but we would say ultimately that it's the Lord Christ who petitions His Father against His enemies here. This psalm is the prayer of a judicially innocent man, and it's only the Lord Christ who's perfectly innocent. It's only the Lord Christ that can then put this prayer in its ultimate sense on His lips. It's true that David here is praying this psalm, but we remember that David was the lesser Son of God who pictured the Messiah, the coming Christ. And it's Christ here we would say who is bringing accusation against His enemies. This bringing of accusation against enemies and the following of imprecation against enemies should be seen in light of our Lord Christ's own words in the New Testament where He likewise speaks in similar ways. He calls His enemies, He calls them hypocrites. snakes, offsprings, vipers, fools. They're in Matthew and also in Mark. We even see Jesus saying to the Jews in John, He says to them, you are of your father the devil. He was a murderer from the beginning. And the Lord Christ speaks of a day when He will say to His enemies, depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness. We might say then as a principle as we move into Psalm 58, that truly it might be the case that we should be slow and cautious to pray in precatory prayers. Because like those of whom we pray imprecatorily, we also are sinners. We are likely not innocent of the very things that we're angry about, even if we've been practitioners of what those who we are praying in precatory prayers against are guilty of in a lesser degree. However, our Lord Christ was very man of very man and without sin. And He's perfectly justified in praying against those who would oppose Him. And so as we read David's imprecatory prayers, we read them as ultimately coming in the voice of the greater David, the Lord Christ. And we'll look at that more anon. Having said that, though, we must not be over much righteous by not praying these imprecatory prayers True, we should be slow about it, we should be cautious, we should be humble about it. We should beat our chest like the man in the New Testament who said, God have mercy upon me. But, even if we are to be slow and cautious, we should not neglect praying these prayers when warranted. It's true that we're sinners, but it's also true that we are sinners who have been joyfully made captives of God's righteousness, and so we desire to see the Kingdom of God advance. And in our desire to see the kingdom of God advance, we take up these imprecatory prayers. When we pray for God's kingdom to come, as we were taught by the Lord Christ, we are praying in general for what the psalmist prays for with particularity in this psalm and other psalms like it. When we pray, Thy kingdom come, we recognize that for God's kingdom to come, that all other opposing kingdoms must be brought low and ultimately crushed. The psalmist here merely adds particularity to what we call the Lord's Prayer, where we pray, Thy kingdom come. He prays, break their teeth, break out their fangs. Let them flow away like waters. Let them be like a stillborn child of a woman. You see, the difference here, though, is only we're praying in general. The psalmist is praying in particular. We pray Thy Kingdom come. But we have to realize that if we're going to pray Thy Kingdom come, it means fangs being taken out. It means teeth being crushed. It means stillborn wicked children. As we come to the psalm proper, we consider how the psalmist states the problem here in verses 1-5. And that's our first point this morning. Verse 1 refers to the silent ones. Do you indeed speak righteousness to you silent ones? There's a bit of a confusion debate about just exactly what this means. The word there translated silent ones resembles the Hebrew word for gods. The word gods is often used to refer to human judges. And if you see the context of verses one through five, it may be the case, it seems to be the case, that it's rulers that are being spoken of in those first five verses. The reference here then could be a rhetorical question aimed at wicked judges. Alternately, the thrust, silent ones, when seen in the context of a later reference to judging, may be a statement that magistrates who are charged with judging are remaining silent when they should be letting their voices be heard against oppression. In other words, they're being passive and allowing wickedness to go on by their silence. Either way, this rhetorical question is aimed at the fact that those who are responsible, those who are magistrates, are not fulfilling their calling, are not speaking when they should speak. The reason that we think it might be judges, then again, is there in the second part of 1, Do you judge uprightly, you sons of men? So it's interesting that early in the Christian tradition, that Psalm 58-1 talks about this idea of being silent, was often associated with the high priest in the Sanhedrin as they brought false judgment against the Lord Christ. That is, in church history, Psalm 1 was often read in reference to the unjust trying and judging of Christ. So we might ask ourselves as we examine the text and break it apart, what are the accusations that are brought against these Wicked judges. Well, we just mentioned the first one already. Magistrates are silent against the pleas of the judicially innocent. Do you indeed speak righteously, you silent ones? We might style this then as a passive complicity in wickedness. The principle here is that the magistrate who refrains from defending the cause of the judicially innocent by being passive and silent is himself an accomplice in the wrong. It will do no good for the wicked to plead innocence before God by assuming that they were only tacitly consenting to the persecution of the judicially innocent by their silence. There are many examples that we could appeal to this. Martin Niemöller from World War II gives us one example in a poem that he wrote. I don't agree with Niemöller's theology, but this poem makes the idea of silent consent. Niemöller wrote, first they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out. For I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak." So the warning here in this first couplet may be against this idea of silent consent. The problem that the psalmist sees here and the magistrates and the tyrants is silence. Silence in the face of the persecution of the judicially innocent, particularly God's people who are judicially innocent. Well, it's true that we must remain circumspect about what we speak and the way we speak and when we speak. Christians dare not fall silent when it comes to wickedness being pursued. Especially true of Christians serving as judges or magistrate. The second accusation that's put forth here, the first one being silent, silent consent. The second one here is the active pursuit of the wicked. We see that here when they talk about being responsible for weighing out violence and oppression. We know here that the actions of the wicked tyrants were conceived in their innermost being before it was implemented in practice. That is to say, he says, know in your heart you work wickedness. And so what's being communicated here is that before it is pursued, before it is implemented, put into place, that all of what's being talked about here, the oppression, the persecution of Christians who are judicially innocent, Before that all happens, it is planned in the heart. And so what's being communicated is that they are doing this not in a crime of passion, so to speak, but they're oppressing and persecuting by way of premeditation. They know what they're doing and they're pursuing it to its very end. The psalmist says it starts in the heart. In the heart you work wickedness. And then it goes on from the heart. You weigh out violence in the earth by the work of your hands. This reminds us of what we've talked about before. As a man, thinketh in his heart what? So he is, or so is he. This is what the wicked are in their heart. The wicked are in their heart. They want to consume the righteous. They want to oppress them. They want to persecute them. This is the accusation that's brought against the wicked by the psalmist and ultimately by the Lord Christ. And then having planned it in their heart, they begin to implement it. The tyrant ponders and plans these things and follows through. Spurgeon put it this way, quote, they were deliberate sinners, cold and calculating villains. As righteous judges ponder the law, balance the evidence and weigh the case, so the malicious dispense injustice with malice aforethought and cold blood. There are many examples that we could adduce of this cold calculating violence, this villain planning and the execution of their violence and their wickedness. We'll take the destruction of the creation account in favor of evolution as just an example. Others could easily be adduced. This has not happened by coincidence, this idea of pulling us off a creation understanding. But as we've learned in Sunday school, right? This should resonate. As we learned in Sunday school, this was long planned and executed. We've seen in our Sunday school classes that the Scopes Monkey Trial was pre-planned and arranged and the outcome known even before the trial started. We are seeing what the Christless evolutionists have done in order to invent evolution as true. From the glued-on moth in industrial England to Haeckel's guild charts to the manipulated pig and ape fossils, the wicked have done just what Psalm 58.3 teach. They worked out wickedness in their hearts and they weighed out the violence and they pursued it with their hands. And the psalmist cries out with accusation against them for this. We could talk about other examples. We could talk about how the wicked have planned the destruction of the family going back as far as World War I with the foundations. Rockefeller foundations, Ford foundations, other huge foundations. How they planned for the destruction of the family, getting the wife out of the house. How they planned all these things and then implemented them. We could talk about a lot of things. But this is the notion of how the wicked operate. And this idea that they plan these things out should remind us that very few things happen by chance or coincidence. It's true, God is all-empty sovereign. He's providentially orchestrating the affairs of men, but it doesn't negate the fact that the wicked still have these dispositions to plan evil against God and His people. The psalmist goes on here to explain the wicked's work. There's a charge here from the wicked being addressed to the wicked being described. And the problem is original sin. We see that in verse 3. They're estranged from the womb. They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies. The problem is original sin. The problem is a sin nature. Of course, this reminds us again of this centerpiece in our worldview that we have to hold on to. And contrary to what all the world embraces, either explicitly or implicitly, and that is in our worldview, man is not basically good. This is what the psalmist is saying here. The wicked are estranged from the womb. They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies. This is contrary to what is shouted at us at every venue. If you go to visit, just one example, President Reagan's grave on President Reagan's tombstone is inscribed just the opposite of what the psalmist says. On the tombstone, you'll go there and you'll read this, I know in my heart that man is good. Now there's more to that sentence, but that first one ought to remind us that this is a fundamental understanding of those who oppose God. They want to insist that man is basically good. To the contrary, Scripture teaches us here and elsewhere that man left to himself is wicked. That I am wicked. David confirms this in another psalm elsewhere. He teaches, Surely I have been a sinner from birth, sinful from the time my mother has conceived me. What follows then in the psalm is a bridge connecting between the wicked and the great serpent, dragon, Satan. Listen to how he speaks here. They're born speaking lies. Well, who is the one who speaks lies? Right. Scripture teaches us when you lie, you speak the language of your father, the devil. So as he describes these people here, he's describing Satan because ultimately they're just reflections of the wicked one. They speak lies, the language of hell. When he speaketh a lie, as you just said, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it. In verse 5, they're even compared and referred to as a serpent who stops their ears against the charmer. And of course, they should well be compared to the serpent because they are little serpentlings. Is that a word? It is now, right? They're little serpentlings. They are taking on the character and characteristics of their father the devil. And so the psalmist speaks of that and he brings these accusations against them. But we're reminded and we should be positively reminded that the only thing that differentiates us from them is the grace of God. It's not that we're made of better dirt. It's not if we're smarter. It's not if we're more intelligent. We're able to weigh the evidence better. We understand the only thing that causes us not to be spoken of in this way is the grace of God and Jesus Christ who has won us and rescued us. And so while at the same time we recognize these things about the wicked, we at the same time have pity on them. So the fact that we don't conspire to do wicked has nothing to do with us and all to do with being brought from the dead. It's all to do with the love of God by providing Christ for us and pouring out the Holy Spirit to be our rescue. In verses 6-9, though, as they continue, the psalmist offers some preparatory prayers. This is the second point. We read 6-8, break their teeth, break their fangs. Let them flow away as waters that run continually. Let their arrows be cut as in pieces. Let them be like a snail which melts away, like a stillborn child of a woman that they may not see the sun. It seems startling at first blush. at least to our modern ears, that have made God smooth. But what's required here to rejoice in them is some understanding of wickedness. They say they desire for God to do this, and then they say they're going to rejoice over God doing it. And the reason that these requests are brought up is because they understand the character and nature of the wicked, and largely we don't. We've been shielded from that, thank God, for much of our lives. But if you read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, or Shires, The Rise and Fall of Nazi Germany, or Bosch's Other Losses, or Robert Conquest's Harvest of Sorrow, or any other book that deals honestly with the 20th century, then one begins to relish these imprecatory prayer requests. Read Hellstorm. The 20th century has been a century soaked and saturated with the blood of tyrants that are being described here. And if you understand or have read If you've read any of that literature, how can you not cry out, break their teeth, O God? And so we find it alarming and arresting. These are precatory prayers. There are churchmen that we have seen as we've talked about these precatory psalms. There are churchmen that say, we cannot pray these. They're not for us. And as we've said before when taking up that point, all we can say is balderdash. God still hates sin. And we still champion the cause of the judicially innocent. We should still pray these when it's appropriate for them to be prayed. When one reads or sees then the long trauma of the judicially innocent visited upon them by wicked tyrants, then one longs for the justice of God. When one sees how the judicially innocent have been trampled upon them, one longs for God to trample upon those who have visited such cruelty upon the judicially innocent." In short, the psalmist, all he does here is he longs for the venom of the wicked to be milked. We already read this list, we won't read it again. But just briefly, the idea of breaking their teeth is so that they can do no harm. The teeth and fangs being a vision of chewing, mandicating. Waters that flow away, in other words, as the waters flow away, they dissipate their strength. They're not built up, and so it can do real havoc, but they just flow away, and so they're dissipated. Arrows that are cut in pieces, an arrow's fired, but if it's cut in pieces, obviously, it's not going to do any harm. Snail that melts as it goes, dying in the sun, I think is the idea here. Stillborn child of stillborn, then it can do no damage. And so we would say, in a macro sense, as we consider these preparatory prayers for simple and common people like myself, praying in this way seems to be the likely only recourse we sometimes have. The levers of human power are shut off from us by the wicked tyrants. mocked for our alleged fundamentalist Christianity by those who are practicing fundamentalist wickedness. We're shut up to the God of all the universe, asking for Him to glorify Himself by defeating His enemies. And yet, as we pray these imprecatory prayers, again I say, we're reminded of the only difference between ourselves and the wicked are God's grace. But it reminds us that God is the judge and God will judge and God's judgment is necessary. And these imprecatory prayers remind us of the seriousness of it all. There are deep implications and consequences for stopping our ears against the Gospel call of Jesus Christ. And those deep and serious implications is that God's wrath as described here is going to visit itself upon those who stop their ears. For their own sake, we beg them, hear the imprecatory prayers that you might flee to Christ and be rescued from this wrath as we have. We, too, are sinners. We, too, are wicked. And so in praying the imprecatory prayers, we're once again filled with gratitude that God differentiated us by uniting us with Christ from eternity. And in verses 10 and 11, the third point, the psalmist rejoices in God's vindication. By the way, verse 9, just quickly, the idea of the pot stealing the burning thorns. It's the idea, I think, that the pot is being put upon the burning thorns to cook something, but a whirlwind comes along and blows it out. And so it's being asked that the wicked be snuffed out in such a way. When we come then to the psalmist rejoicing in God's vindication, the righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance. Again, that's startling. Two generations ago, it wasn't startling. They could identify at least somewhat with this. And if we have memories or have done reading, likewise, this desire for vindication, for rejoicing in seeing God's vengeance. If you read a little bit about our history and you see how Americans responded on the Victory in Europe Day and Victory in Japan Day, they went to their churches, the bells were pealing and ringing. They were happy. They were rejoicing. Why? Because wickedness had been what? destroyed, or at least as they understood it at that time. This, though, cry here rejoicing when we see the vengeance washing our feet in the blood of the wicked. It's not unique to the Psalms. It's everywhere through Scripture. And we see Christ here as well. In Deuteronomy, for example, rejoice, all ye nations, with His people. For He will avenge the blood of His servants and will render vengeance to His adversaries and will be merciful unto His land and to His people. One of the prophets, but O Lord of hosts, who judges righteously, who trieth the reins of the heart, let me see thy vengeance on them, for unto thee have I revealed my cause. But God shall wound the head of his enemies, and the hairy scalp of such a one as goeth on still in his trespasses. The Lord said, I will bring again from Bashan, I will bring my people again from the depths of the sea, that thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and the tongues of thy dogs in the same. But even when we get to Revelation 19, it speaks of Christ. And He was called a vesture dipped in blood, and His name is called the Word of God. His vesture was dipped in blood. Whose blood was it dipped in? Somebody whispered it. His vesture is dipped in the blood of His enemies. One commentary offers here, this is the blood of His enemies from His trampling them in the winepress of His fierceness and the wrath of Almighty God. So here is this desire to see feet washed in the blood of the wicked. And Christ Himself exemplifies that in Revelation where it's spoken of the fact of His vesture being dipped in blood. Well, what part of the vesture? It seems most likely it's going to be the lower part as He does what? Walk among His defeated enemies. We have tamed our God, but the Scriptures do not allow us to do that. God is always angular and will never be made smooth. Wenham offers this, a contemporary commentator. He says, the enemies of God are implacable. It's necessary for the vindication of God's authority and God's goodness that just retribution should not be long delayed. He prays for it. Not shutting his eyes to the horror which it involves. There is not sadistic pleasure in seeing his enemies suffer. This is key. No sense of getting his own back, but simply a deep desire that the world might see that God is just. This idea of rejoicing when we see the vengeance and washing our feet in the blood of the wicked. Again, an older Christianity understood this. I first came across it hunting in a deer stand 25 odd years ago. I was reading Edwards as I was hunting deer. I never saw a deer, so I had to take something to make it worth my while. And I read Edwards, and this is one piece I read. The view of the misery of the damned will double The view of the misery of the damned will double the ardor of the love and gratitude of the saints of heaven. The sights of hell torment will exalt the happiness of the saints forever. Can the believing father in heaven be happy with his unbelieving children in hell? I tell you, Edward said, yea. Such will be his sense of justice that will increase rather than diminish his bliss. Can you imagine this idea being communicated in pulpits across America? People would go, huh? So strange are we to this idea of God's justice being exalted and thus finding pleasure in God's vengeance landing. Not as, Wenham notes, not as a, hey, I finally got some payback. But in the fact that God's character is upheld in His justice scene. Thomas Boston, predated Edwards, another well-known Puritan. He could say, God shall not pity them, but laugh at their calamity. The righteous company in heaven shall rejoice in the execution of God's judgment and shall sing while the smoke rises up forever. Our forebears in the faith were different people than we tend to be. They understood that God will have His way. And so we see that in verse 11, surely there is a reward for the righteous. Surely He is God who judges the earth. That's where the psalmist ends here. The whole purpose of it is that God will be seen as one who judges the earth. That He is over those who were earlier spoken of as those who plot and plan, conspire to do wickedness. That God judges over them and He is the one who is the ruler and He is going to have the last word. Now all this should remind us of the glories of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, because what it's talking about here is how God is going to judge the wicked. And we're reminded again by looking at that, that we ourselves have already been judged in Jesus Christ. He took on all of that that should have been for us, received it upon Himself on the cross that we might no longer be under this threat. And so we're reminded, even in the imprecatory Psalms, we're reminded of God's goodness to us, and we find ourselves praying, O God, as You have mercy upon me, as You have mercy upon me, so have mercy upon those who are outside of Christ. Will You not call them in? Will You not cause them to escape from their dangers and cause them to close with Christ? Yes, we pray imprecatorily, but our passion also is that they would come and bow to Christ as opposed to being utterly destroyed. May God grant us grace to understand this older, historical, more true biblical Christianity. God of all mercy and grace, we do not come unto You recommending ourselves, but only because of Christ's recommendation of us before You. We're reminded again of how Christ speaks in the Psalms and how Christ speaks even here. And we cry out with Him, Father, that Your ways would be known. Grant us grace, Father, At one and the same time, have increased compassion and pity upon those outside of Christ. And yet, at one and the same time, desire for you to triumph over them. Grant us grace, Father, in this time to have wisdom, to know how to lean into the times in which you've given us. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.