I'll just be reading the first ten verses of Psalm 59. I'll read from the title to the chief musician, set to do not destroy, a miktom of David when Saul sent men and they watched the house in order to kill him. Deliver me from my enemies, O my God. Defend me from those who rise up against me. Deliver me from the workers of iniquity and save me from bloodthirsty men. For look, they lie in wait for my life. The mighty gather against me, not for my transgression or for my sin, O Lord. They run and prepare themselves through no fault of mine, awake to help me. And behold, you therefore, O Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel, Awake to punish all the nations. Do not be merciful to any wicked transgressors. At evening they return. They growl like a dog and go all around the city. Indeed, they belch with their mouth. Swords are in their lips, for they say, who hears? But you, O Lord, shall laugh at them. You shall have all the nations in derision. I will wait for you, O you His strength. For God is my defense. My God of mercy shall come to meet me. God shall let me see my desire on my enemies. Father, I thank you for the encouragement that you identify with us in our pain by giving us these psalms. And I pray that as I give exposition to it, you would guard my lips from error, that you would enable all of us to appreciate that you are not only our defense, but a warrior who fights on our behalf. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, as Gary mentioned earlier, all across the world there are people who are setting this Sunday aside to remember the persecuted church. And I want to begin by reading some statistics of the persecution that has happened over the past few months. And any time you're dealing with statistics in closed countries, it's hard to know, you know, exactly how accurate they are. But quite a few mission organizations believe these are…they're fairly reliable. Both IDOP and the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission claimed that in 2004, quote, over 365 million Christians live under governments that restrict religious freedom and subject believers to various forms of persecution. 365 million, that's a lot. A World Watch list documented 10,000 churches were closed down in China just this year. Story after story of massive persecution has been documented by actually quite a number of organizations as occurring in Somalia, Libya, Eritrea, Yemen, Nigeria, Pakistan, and several other Muslim countries. For example, last year 5,000 Christians were martyred for their faith, 4,000 were detained, and 300,000 had to flee from their homes and go into hiding. We don't have a lot of information on North Korea. People can't really get in and out of that country much, but many organizations have said that is probably the most dangerous country to live in as a Christian. And so how should the church respond to persecution? Should we love our persecutors? Yes, the Bible commands us to. Should we preach the gospel to them? Of course. Should we refuse to get bitter when we are persecuted? Yes. But is there not more that can be done? And there are some sincere Christians who say, absolutely not. In fact, even some Reformed people advocate total passivity. and non-resistance to persecution. For example, John MacArthur, who by the way is a pastor I admire, he's a wonderful pastor on many levels, but he's absolutely wrong on this. He has mistakenly said this, in a sense, pointing out the apostles' submission in that passage is an argument from silence. Nowhere does scripture indicate that they struggled against their captors or fought against their detention, but in that silence is a notable lack of resistance, especially from Peter, who just weeks earlier lopped off a Roman soldier's ear in a misguided attempt to protect Christ from arrest. Okay, yeah, that was not so good, not the right kind of resistance. But he goes on, it's clear that in the intervening days, his attitudes about submission and self-defense changed significantly. The pattern of submission repeats throughout the New Testament. The apostles frequently faced legal and physical repercussions for their ministries. Many of them suffered long imprisonments, vicious beatings, and ultimately martyrdom. Yet in every instance, he's wrong on that, but it says, in every instance, they faithfully submitted to wicked authorities and their unjust punishments. The pattern in the early church was not to avoid or fight persecution, but to submit to it, trusting in God to sovereignly work through it to accomplish His purposes. Now, what he failed to mention is that in the very passage that he cited there, Peter questioned the authorities' right to do what they were doing. He said they had no authority to do that. And he sang psalms, psalms that resulted in Satan's kingdom taking a hit and a guard and his family coming to Christ. And it wouldn't surprise me if he sang some of the imprecatory psalms. Let me give you some other examples. David loved Saul. That's who this psalm is written about. He loved Saul. Lack of love was not the issue, and yet David did not submit to Saul's persecutions. He even wrote other imprecatory psalms. This is one of the more common, well-known ones. He loved to psalm Absalom, and yet he wrote an imprecatory psalm by inspiration against Absalom. That's Psalm 3. You see, you can love people and yet pray that God would bring His judgments against His and our enemies. And we do that because we do not want Satan to triumph through the lives of these people as dearly as we may love them. And by the way, God can answer this prayer and the other imprecatory prayers in one of two ways. He can say, okay, Christ is gonna bear the curse of this psalm in their place, and I'm going to convert them, but the psalm is still answered. Or He can take them out of the way, right? Either way, there is no longer any persecution, but it is simply not true that Christians should not cry out to God for His protection and judgments when the church is being ravished. And so before I even dig into this psalm, I want to read a scripture from Deuteronomy that may not initially seem to have any bearing, but I believe it is very relevant. It is Deuteronomy 22 and verses 22 through 24. Verse 22 says, If a man is found lying with a woman married to a husband, then both of them shall die. The man that lay with the woman and the woman, so you shall put away the evil from Israel." Now using that as an analogy, I would say there are some disasters that happen to the church because she has committed spiritual adultery and the husband, Jesus Christ, is a jealous husband. He is forgiving when true repentance has happened, but when the Bride of Christ persists in her spiritual adultery and is unrepentant of her spiritual adultery, then God's anger actually is unleashed, and many times He uses persecution as one of His disciplines. There are passages in the prophets that apply this passage in Deuteronomy to God's relationship to adulterous Israel. And so some persecution is God's judgment for spiritual adultery, and I believe that the American church has committed spiritual adultery with a high hand, and there is bound to be severe persecution. But the next two verses are the ones I want to focus on this morning. It's verses 23 through 24. It says, if a woman who is a virgin is betrothed to a husband, and a man finds her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones. The young woman, because she did not cry out in the city, and the man, because he humbled his neighbor's wife, so you shall put away the evil from among you. And I want to emphasize that phrase, because she did not cry out. Women were expected to resist their rapists, and they were expected to cry out for help, and neither men nor women were supposed to be passive when it came to evil. They were to resist evil with all of the means at their disposal, and crying out is one of those means of resistance. Well, God has given to us at least 18 imprecatory psalms. And if you count portions of Psalms, some scholars say it's as high as 39 Psalms that cry out to God for vengeance and judgment. Indeed, one of the ways for the persecuted church to be freed up from bitterness and to be freed up to love their enemies is to hand them over to God and say, Lord, you deal with them. I'm powerless to deal with them. I want the gospel to shine through me, but you deal with them. But many churchgoing people do not think it is right for the church to cry these out. They don't understand how it can be compatible with love, and that's why I wanted to preach on it this morning. They're particularly disturbed by phrases like this, let destruction come upon him unexpectedly, and let his net that he has hidden catch himself. Into that very destruction let him fall. Psalm 35, 8. Let death take my enemies by surprise. Let them go down alive into hell. That's one of the most severe ones. Psalm 55, 15. Break their teeth and their mouths, O God. Psalm 58, 6. May his children be fatherless and his wife be a widow. Psalm 109, verse 9. Now, these are all cries of a church that is being demonically ravished by the enemies of God. And each one of these cries, I believe, is a God-authorized cry to God to help the church. And yet many say we cannot put these words on our lips. And let me give you some quotes of Christians who hate Psalms 35, 58, 59, and many other Psalms. And I don't think hate is too strong of a word. I think they hate these Psalms. The Church of England removed all of the imprecatory psalms from their psalter many, many years ago, and here are direct quotes from the revisers as to why they did so. They said, these Psalms include wild screams of barbaric rage in which reason, morality, respect for humanity, and reverence for God seem alike forgotten. These Psalms are unchristian, unfit for the age of the gospel, an affront to the peace and love of the bleeding Savior, belonging to a time of primitive, warlike, and unrefined Jewish religion. They are little short of an insult to divine majesty. Now, of course, they don't explain why divine majesty gave them to us in the first place. Of course, they don't believe in inspiration. That's a different question. C.S. Lewis called the imprecatory Psalms diabolical. Diabolical. He also wrote this, it is monstrously simple-minded to read the cursings in the Psalms with no feeling except one of horror at the uncharity. Uncharity is just an older word for lack of love. the uncharity of the poets. They are indeed devilish." That is C.S. Lewis. Well, he'd have to accuse Jesus of being devilish because Jesus quoted the imprecatory Psalms against his enemies. And we'd have to also accuse him of being devilish because he gave even worse imprecations in the book of Revelation. And you'd also have to accuse Moses, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, and many other saints in the Bible because they use very, very similar language against their persecutors. A. Weiser's commentary on the Psalms calls the imprecatory Psalms, quote, the undisguised gloating and the cruel vindictiveness of an intolerant religious fanaticism. I think he's completely misinterpreted these Psalms and David as well. Francis Watson said, Christian victims of oppression could never, ever legitimately appropriate this psalm in its entirety, however extreme their sufferings, and its use in Christian liturgical contexts can in no circumstances be justified. Alfred Martin says, ultimately, of course, Christians at prayer will keep in mind that in praying the Psalms they find themselves with a pre-Christian and sub-Christian ethos on a level far surpassed by the Sermon on the Mount. And I've heard quite a number of pro-lifers say the same thing to me when I've had discussions with them. I'm here to tell you the church must cry out to her husband and to his armies for help when she is being ravished. There is too much passivity when it comes to persecution. We're going to be having a prayer meeting this afternoon. I'm very thankful for Pastor Michael and Daniel Knorr for having put some of these together. And I'm hoping, I would encourage you to take these home and use them in a systematic way for your own prayers on behalf of the persecuted church. Christians who are being tortured in barbaric ways or who have been sitting in prison, basically mud holes filled with bugs and rats for years, or gangs of militants who have murdered, raped, and pillaged Christians simply because they were Christians. Gary quoted earlier Hebrews 13, 3, remember the prisoners as if chained with them, those who are mistreated since you yourselves are in the body also. So, he's saying, if you're part of the body of Christ, you're part of the bride of Christ, and the bride of Christ needs to cry out. We need to identify with those who are being persecuted. Now, the first thing that we see in this psalm is that David is not just crying out on his own behalf, he is crying out on behalf of the bride as a whole. Yes, there is a historical context given in the title, but let me show you some hints of how he, by inspiration, made this way broader than himself. The only enemy that David had was Saul, a Jew, and yet notice in verse 5 that he calls on God to punish all the nations and to not be merciful to any wicked transgressors. Verse 8 says, you shall have all the nations in derision. So this is the whole bride crying out wherever she may live. And let's dig into the first five verses. In verses 1 through 5, the bride is driven to Jesus, her husband, and protector. He says, deliver me from my enemies, O my God. Now, he's using first person singular, me and my, and you might wonder, I've never experienced any bloody persecution. How can I put this on my lips? But if you're part of the bride, think of yourself corporately as part of the bride. You really can put this on their behalf, on your lips, and asking Jesus, to protect the bride. When a bride was molested in the Old Testament, God expected her to cry out, and God expects the whole bride to cry out to God and not take on persecution passively. There is much that can be done, and God is a jealous God who defends his bride, and he avenges her when she is ravished. The psalm says, deliver me from my enemies. Now, the church has a lot of friends, but it also has many enemies. And you might wonder, why in the world would the world hate the church and be at enmity with the church? I mean, down through history, the church has done so much good for the world. Mankind has benefited enormously through orphanages, old age homes, hospitals, schools, financial aid, many other acts of love. Why would they bite the hand that feeds them? And I would say the reason is that we don't ultimately wrestle with flesh and blood, we're wrestling with demons who are behind that flesh and blood. Jesus said that unbelievers have Satan as their father, and it says, the desires of their father they will do, that's John 8 verse 44. And the demons who influence those men and women hate anything associated with Christ's grace. So when you respond with love and grace to persecution, it infuriates the demons even more. And Saul was a very vivid example of this. The demon that afflicted Saul moved Saul to persecute David, even though David defended Saul and did good to Saul. In fact, David did nothing but good to Saul. David goes on, defend me from those who rise up against me. What this Psalm is teaching us to do is that the church must not be ravished quietly. She must cry out, and when her husband hears her, he will respond with vengeance. A second thing we learn is that enemies rise up rather suddenly. A person who was not an enemy yesterday can suddenly become an enemy tomorrow. And even in our voting we need to consider this. What might be not an enemy yesterday could be an enemy today if the person does not have God to protect that person from demons, right? Sometimes Christians don't know where the next attack will come from. Psalmist goes on, deliver me from the workers of iniquity and save me from bloodthirsty men. The level of iniquity and the level of bloodthirstiness that can be aroused by unbelievers driven by demons is really astonishing. If you look in the last century, amazing how many millions and hundreds of millions of people were killed by communism. But my research shows that this year, 1,037,000 abortions were officially reported in the formal health care system in America. Well, that was 2023, actually. America is dripping with bloodthirstiness. It's a demonic bloodthirstiness. Now, back when I used to make missions trips to India, I knew a Baptist pastor there who He was regularly preaching out on the marketplace, and he had led many, many people to Christ. And he was so effective that it infuriated the radical Hindu group known as RSS. And so one time some of the RSS stormed into the church and dragged Pastor Paul out of the church and beat him up. And he was hospitalized over it, but as soon as he was released, he was back to preaching again. The second time they beat him so severely, it took quite a while to get out of the hospital, and the congregants were kind of worried about him. Are you going to keep on preaching? But he said, this is what God has called me to do, even if I have to lay down my life, I will do it. He continued to preach. The third time that the RSS arrested him, they did not beat him. Instead, they took his daughter, doused her with gasoline, sorry, doused her with gasoline and set her on fire. And she was an amazing girl. Through the flames, she held her head high and yelled at her dad, don't stop preaching, dad. Preach, preach, preach the gospel. And the RSS held him so he couldn't run to his daughter. But it's just so clearly demonic, the kinds of stuff that you read almost every week is coming out of some of these. And yet here was a pastor, even though he was torn apart by anguish, also knew, as he worded it, the anguish that his enemies would experience in hell if they did not believe. And so he continued to preach to him. The next time that they beat Pastor Paul, they used a sharp rock and it cut his abdomen open, all of his guts spilled out, and they drove that sharp stone up his rectum so hard that he had to wear a permanent colostomy after that, just because he was preaching the love of God to sinners. Now, I've lost track of him for many years. Maybe he's not alive anymore, I don't know. But the last I heard, he continued preaching, bearing in his body the wounds of Christ. And here's the point. The bride of Jesus Christ needs us to care about them and to sing the psalms of the Prince of Peace. The bride is being ravished. And Deuteronomy 22 implies that if we, that is the bride, do not cry out, we are guilty of complicity with the ravisher. We need to pray these prayers until the enemies are either converted, in which case Christ bears that curse for them, or they are destroyed. And when you see the total depravity of men, you will not have problems praying these kinds of prayers, God's curses, that are in these Psalms. If unbelievers have demons pushing them, they can eventually become bloodthirsty. And if God gives America up, talks about giving up to depravity, that means withdrawing His restraining grace, America could very, very quickly plummet into more and more bloodthirstiness, including ungodly wars. And bloody persecution, even that kind of persecution could happen. Now verse 3 goes on to say, for look, they lie and wait for my life, the mighty gather against me. At this point, all David had done was to show Saul love and faithful service and loyalty, and yet that demon that was afflicting Saul continually moved Saul to destroy David. Now sometimes afterwards, Saul didn't even know why he hated David so much. He was embarrassed by it. It appears he was embarrassed by it later. But because he had given Satan legal ground to work in him, he was powerless to resist Satan's temptations. By the way, this is one reason why we always have to come clean with sin. When we leave sin unconfessed in our lives, it can give demons, if they know about it, it can give demons legal ground to be at work in our life. Anyway, demons hate the church today just as much as they did back then, and they are waiting to destroy it. The day before this psalm was written, Saul had thrown a spear at David, trying to pin him to the wall. David escaped, and David thought it was just a temporary fit of anger, but that night the soldiers of Saul were outside the house, waiting to kill him in the morning. Now, the title says, To the Chief Musician Set to Do Not Destroy. Now, that's an interesting title for a psalm that's calling for destruction. But it's an all-out war. It's one side or the other side that's going to be destroyed. Either the church will be destroyed or Satan's kingdom will be destroyed. And as Moses prayed, O Lord God, do not destroy your people and your inheritance. If it has to be one or the other, David is saying, don't destroy your own people, have mercy upon them, destroy your enemies. Anyway, the title goes on to say, a mictom, which just means an inscription, a mictom of David, when Saul sent men and they watched the house in order to kill him. So his wife helped him to escape out of the window, but David was on the run from her father from then on. And while on the run, David was driven to the Lord for defense. And the question might come again, why? What had David done? Now back to our psalm, verse 3 says, for look, they lie and wait for my life, the mighty gather against me, not for my transgression or for my sin, O Lord. He's not claiming to be sinless. He's just claiming, look, I have not engaged in spiritual adultery, so to speak. I've not done anything worthy of this persecution. So he's saying this is an unjustified persecution that Saul is bringing. Sometimes we are persecuted just because we're jerks. That's not the kind of persecution that counts, right? David was being persecuted because of his righteous life, and his righteous life offended Saul so much. And I believe part of the reason was his integrity highlighted Saul's lack of integrity, and it made him very, very insecure. His loyalty to Saul highlighted the lack of loyalty that Saul had. His love for Saul highlighted the fact that Saul lorded it over other people. And it showed Saul really to be unworthy to be king. It made him insecure. And scripture assures us this can be expected if there are demons behind other men. Second Timothy 3.12 says, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. And you might have a hard time believing that. Hey, if I'm nice to people, if I'm living a godly life, surely they're going to like me. But it says, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. Why? Because they are of their father, the devil, and the desires of their father they will do. Make sure that your persecutions are not because of your sin. Those don't count. Jesus said, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, Matthew 5.10. Make sure that the persecution is because of the reality of God's presence within you. And if that is true, then your cry, I wake to help me and behold, will be taken seriously by God. Now verse 5 starts, you therefore, O Lord, God of hosts. Now notice the phrase, God of hosts. David realizes that the massive army that Saul had is not the army that makes the definitive difference. It is the hosts of God, which are angelic hosts, that makes the difference and that counts. It was not the number of sophisticated weapons that were used by northern Sudan against southern Sudan that made the crucial difference in the South's successful war for secession. Now obviously it would have been nice if the southern armies had had some patriot missiles to shoot down helicopters that were strafing women and children indiscriminately, but ultimately it was the favor of the Lord of hosts. And it really is amazing when you read the history, and Peter Hammond has given a lot of that history, but when you read that history, to see how God came through on their behalf miraculously over and over again. The only weapons that the southern Sudanese had been able to procure were those that were captured from the north. Now one time the south was way outnumbered, and yet the northern army mysteriously ran away from them, leaving all of their equipment behind. And when they interviewed one of the captured soldiers, they asked him, why did you run? And he said, well, it was all of those fiery beings that were marching toward us. It scared them. Well, I believe it was God's fiery angels, his heavenly hosts that were fighting on behalf of southern Sudan. And you might ask, OK, well, that was a government fighting against a government. Why would God be fighting on their behalf? I believe it was because Southern Sudan had started using the imprecatory Psalms in their armies on a daily basis. Peter Hammond had taught them how to do that. They were finally crying out in a God-authorized way, and God answered. They'd become a bride who was crying out that she was ravished, and her husband came to her defense. And so David says, you therefore, O Lord, God of hosts, the God of Israel, awake to punish all the nations. So this is not just written for David's situation. It was included in the camp the moment it was written with the knowledge it would be used by all the nations of the world. Awake to punish all the nations. Do not be merciful to any wicked transgressors. Now, ladies, if you were about to be raped, would you not feel exactly the same way? You would want your husband to come out and shoot the guy before you got raped, right? And that's exactly the way it is with the bride of Christ. She is being coached to say, by David's inspiration, awake to punish all the nations. Do not be merciful to any wicked transgressors. Can we say amen to that? And if we can't, then we are not acting like Deuteronomy 22 says that we should be acting. God wants us to cry out for vengeance. In the parable of the unfortunate widow, Jesus praised her and then said, Now shall not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night? And will He delay long over them? I tell you that He will bring about justice for them speedily. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth? So the question is not whether God responds to our prayers. He does. The question is, will we cry out in faith like the unfortunate widow? And the church did cry out when Christ came in judgment on Rome and Israel in AD And there are miraculous, so many miraculous stories of God's intervention that enabled the church to grow like crazy in those first few centuries. And I think their use of the Imprecatory Psalms was one of the keys. The Psalter was their main hymn book. Anyway, back to our psalm. You'll notice that the next word is selah, a selah notation. That means pause. He wants people in all ages and in all nations to pause so that they can take time to meditate on the reality of persecution and the need for God's people to be driven to our protector in prayer. Pause to be gripped by the enormity of the conflict. Pause to reflect on the stakes involved. If the church is wiped out in some of these countries, what will become of that nation? Are we driven to the Lord to offer up the war psalms when we see the persecution around the world? And I hope that this psalm will motivate you to do so because Christ wants to inherit all nations, right? All nations. But now we come to the heart of the psalm, an expression of confidence in God as protector and warrior. Now, we do not pray this psalm out of despair. No, we know that Jesus will defend her bride when the whole bride is willing to cry out. We cry this in faith because we know our heavenly husband's love. He loves us, just like we were singing earlier. And so this psalm in verses 6 through 10 focuses on God as protector, refuge, and defense. Then the parallel section in verses 11 through 15 sees God as avenger, warrior, and conqueror. So the psalm is written in a chiastic structure, A-B-C-D, D-C-B-A, okay? So in your outlines, verses 6 through 7 are parallel to verses 14 through 15. Both are speaking of the howling frustration of the wicked. Let me quickly read both sections so you can see how the structure works. Verses 6 through 7, at evening they return. They growl like a dog and go all around the city. Indeed, they belch with their mouth. Swords are in their lips, for they say, who hears? Now look at verses 14 through 15. At evening, they return. They growl like a dog and go all around the city. They wander up and down for food and howl if they are not satisfied. Now, there are slight differences because the emphasis in the first section is defensive. Emphasis of the second is offensive, but they're clearly parallel. And knowing the parallels of each section helps us to not only appreciate how this material is being developed, but what the central idea, the central theme of the message is, the heart of the message. In the Hebrew chiastic structure, the center, the two D points there, is the heart of the message. That's the main theme. Now we usually put the main theme at the beginning of a paragraph, and most Hebrew paragraphs do too, but a lot of times they will use chiasms like this. So the upshot of it is this is not just a complaint about persecution. The persecution that's highlighted at the beginning and at the end is illustrating, it's a framework through which we see God as our mighty fortress. and a mighty warrior. He needs to be a fortress because of the war that's being brought against the church, but he needs to be a warrior on the offensive because God has ordained that the church of Jesus Christ is going to triumph in history. Amen? He's not just a fortress, he's also a warrior, praise God. And we can take comfort from that. But he wars when the church cries out in faith. And much of his conquest is gospel conquest in which the enemies are converted. Now in the second howling section, the failure of the enemies of the cross is highlighted by the fact that though these dogs seek food, they're howling from frustration of not being satisfied. Saul couldn't catch David, and it frustrated him. He couldn't win. More and more people were going over to David. More and more people were becoming dissatisfied with his kingship, which makes Saul even more fearful and more intense in his efforts to suppress and to try to control the people. And that's what's going on right now in so many countries. There are so many people being converted to Jesus that the Muslims and the Hindus and the Buddhists and the atheists are fearing that they will lose control, and the only power that they know is force, and so they persecute, many times out of frustration. And I think Iran is a great example of this. Several studies have shown that more than one million Iranians have become Christian and joined Christian churches in the last few years. despite the incredible persecution that the government, even private citizens, have brought. Now, I mentioned this to you before, but I think it deserves repeating. Muhammad Abu Ghazan Dulaiby, a senior Iranian cleric, reported that 50,000 mosques have closed recently due to a steep drop in attendance. Now, many of the Muslims who became Christians, they're risking death. They risk dying by becoming Christians, but they want what they see Christians have. They love what they see in the church. They don't like what they see in the mosques. And there's such a stark contrast between Muslims and Christians that they are attracted to it. But just like in David's day, the citizens saw such a stark contrast between Saul and David. And by the way, many of these Muslims have had dreams, God-given dreams, to go read the Bible or go meet some pastor or something. And they do it, and they get soundly converted. Well, enough by way of introduction to the concept of chiasm. Verse 6 says, at evening they return. And of course, Saul's soldiers had come at evening to watch for David when he came out. Demons love the darkness. They love to hide what they're doing from scrutiny. Now granted, many persecutions happen in the open, especially if the enemy is in control, but many are whisked away with no one knowing where they have gone to. Verse six says, they growl like a dog and go all around the city. what a picture of the wicked persecutors, scavengers who can't take dominion themselves, but they're jealous of the dominion that God has given to believers. And so these dogs pick fights with each other, they threaten each other. And we live in a city where dogs are licensed, you know, and controlled. I don't believe in that, but we can't appreciate how dangerous dogs can be. But in Middle Eastern cities, You didn't go anywhere. It's just like us growing up in Africa. You didn't go anywhere without a club in your hand to ward off stray dogs. I remember being sick to my stomach at one time as I was being driven in a bus. I was just a little kid. And I saw a drunk being eaten, being attacked by dogs. And it was quite a grisly scene that I could not get out of my head. until people came and chased the dogs away. But Middle Easterners didn't care for dogs much, at least not the wild dogs. You can see God does not have a high opinion of these persecutors. It goes on, indeed, they belch with their mouth. Now, they may see their boasting and their bragging as being pretty smart. God sees it as no better than a dog belch. Swords are in their lips, for they say, who hears? They think they can get away with it. Northern Sudan thought they could get away with attacks on the women and the children in the South. China thinks that its economic clout insulates it from any kind of criticism. North Korea has a cocky, who cares what God in the world thinks attitude. Saudi Arabia belches forth acidic hatred upon its Christian citizens, thinking no one will hear, no one will care. But you know what? They are mistaken. We do care. We are going to pray. Amen? We'll take upon our lips these nuclear weapons of the psalm. We'll wield, to use a different metaphor, the iron rod that Jesus authorized us to wield in Revelation 2. And in case you've forgotten from my Revelation series, let me quickly read that verse. Jesus speaking to his bride the church says, and he who overcomes and keeps my works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations. That's pretty phenomenal. You give us power over the nations. And how is he going to do that? Well, he quotes from Psalm 2, an imprecatory psalm saying he shall rule them with a rod of iron. They shall be dashed to pieces like the potter's vessels, as I also have received from my father. So he's saying, yes, the promise that was given there was that the father is going to give to Jesus authority to smash the nations with his rod of iron. But he says he's going to give us who are willing to take this, these imprecatory psalms upon our lips. He's going to give us that same power. This is an incredible, incredible promise. When we take Christ's prayers on our lips, and the imprecatory Psalms are indeed the prayers of Christ, we are raising that powerful rod of iron to smash the nations. So, I liken the imprecatory Psalms to nuclear weapon. But we need to use them carefully, but we do need to use them. Jesus said, those Psalms are his God-ordained rod of iron. In verse 8, David is confident that God is motivated to defend us because he's looking at life from God's vantage point, from the throne room of heaven. But you, O Lord, shall laugh at them. You shall have all the nations in derision. They may think that they can successfully cast off the bonds of Christ, but he who sits in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall hold them in derision. Their attempts to exterminate the church are as futile as a fly trying to kill a human, right? And confident that God is motivated by his emotions to laugh, to be in derision, he goes on to say in verses 9 through 10, I will wait for you, O you his strength, for God is my defense. My God of mercy shall come to meet me. God shall let me see my desire on my enemies. On the whole, the bride cries out, she can be confident that her husband will come running with his guns blazing, so to speak. Having asked in faith, there's no question in David's mind, God will be his defense. As Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego said, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning, fiery furnace, and he will deliver us from your hand, okay. Now, the Christian has the best of both worlds. If we die, we're delivered from all of the suffering down here below by going to heaven, right? It's going to be glory. I would love to go to heaven earlier. Of course, God's got a calling for me. He's not going to let me go there probably earlier, but heaven is a marvelous deliverance But yet God is also physically able to deliver us out of the hands of our persecutors in miraculous ways, and He's done so over and over. Either way, God is the victor, and the Christian is more than a conqueror through Christ. But God is more than merely a defense. He's on the offense as well. And notice the interesting wording in verses 11 through 12. Do not slave them, lest my people forget. Scatter them by your power and bring them down, O Lord our shield." David over and over again tried to spare Saul's life when he had a chance to kill him. You may remember the story where they're in the cave and he cuts off a piece of Saul's robe, and then when Saul's far enough away, he's yelling at him, why are you after me? I've never harmed you. I could have killed you right now, but I spared your life." And Saul relents at that point. He did it again another time in a similar way. His ultimate desire was that Saul repent. be delivered from the demon, and be changed from an enemy into a friend. And so David says, do not slay them. To me, this shows unbelievable love and forbearance. Do not slay them. It's perfectly compatible to love your enemy and yet pray this psalm. In a later war psalm, David speaks of the love and kindness he had shown to his enemies. It was probably his hope that they would get saved, in which case, again, Christ would have borne the judgment for them. But David still prays that their ungodly power and their satanic kingdom would be utterly and totally destroyed, not just in word, but in power. Scatter them by your power, bring them down, O Lord, our shield, for the sin of their mouth and the words of their lips. Let them even be taken in their pride for the cursing and lying which they speak." So there are plenty of reasons that we can offer up before the Lord as to why God should destroy some of these Muslim governments who have been covering up their crucifixions of Christians and murders and slavery and forced sex and other things. And God can uncover those lies. I found a story from years ago. It took place in Zimbabwe when they had a change in government. and a leading official had been caught on videotape telling all of his government thugs to beat up the opposition party people and make sure that they die so that no one can tell, and said, don't worry about it, you'll be safe because we got the police in our pocket. Little did he know, somebody had been secretly videoing him and he leaked that video, much to the embarrassment of the government, because now it had international attention, a lot of international criticism. The point is, God has uncovered the lies of communists. God has uncovered the lies of our present administration. God is currently uncovering the lies of the Iranian government. Very fascinating story I just ran across. A state-controlled newspaper survey revealed that 92% of Iranians are dissatisfied with the country's current status, state. 92% of Iranians do not like their current government. It's no wonder that the Iranian government is cracking down, just like they have insecurity, almost like Saul's insecurity. The survey was called the 4th National Survey of Values and Attitudes of Iranians. It was just hugely embarrassing to the government. But Iran has just doubled down as a result of that, as all these God-hating governments seem to know how to do. Control, statism, power, cover-ups, and lies. But the lies can be uncovered when we pray to God in this way. Isaiah 28, 17 says, the hail will sweep away the refuge of lies and the waters will overflow the hiding place. But, and this is a big but, that is assuming that the bride of Jesus Christ is acting as she should be acting when she is ravished. When we're willing to cry out to our God when being attacked by a metaphorical rapist, he hears better than any earthly husband can. He can see through the deceptions. He can see into the hiding places where the enemies are hiding and take them out. And the purpose of this sermon is simply to motivate us to cry out to the church's husband. He repeats his confidence that God is motivated to war for us in verse 13. Consume them in your wrath, consume them that they may not be, and let them Let them know that God rules in Jacob to the ends of the earth. Now, once again, he doesn't want them consumed in a way where they're not going to realize that God rules. He doesn't necessarily want them dead. I mean, he's okay with that if that's God's will, but he wants them scattered so that they can't do their dirty work and so that it will be obvious to everybody, God's in charge. And that should be our desire. Revolution is not the answer to any society. Conversion and social transformation is. And yet God sometimes uses death, our death, the death of others, and that's up to him. And we should rejoice either way. Then working backwards in this chiasm, he repeats that these enemies of the kingdom are like frustrated, stray, howling dogs. And at evening, they return. They growl like a dog and go all around the city. They wander up and down for food and howl if they are not satisfied. is my prayer that that would be the state of the persecutors of the church. Frustrated at every turn in their efforts to advance humanism and abortion and perversion and statism and ungodly taxes and other evil things. Howling, but utterly unable to intimidate the righteous. I'm halfway through, so I can't necessarily endorse the whole book yet, but I'm halfway through Seth Gruber's book, the 1916 project, and wow, we need more bold people like this that will stand firm in the face of opposition. I was really inspired reading some of his testimonies. May God bring the enemy to this state of howling, but running off into the darkness as the light penetrates their haunts. Now, throughout this middle section, David is expressing his confidence in God's power, God's ability, God's motivation, and God's reasons for judgment. And we, too, need to have a confidence. Our God is a God of judgment, not just in eternity, but in history right now. He is a God of judgment. He really is. The question is not whether God judges, the question is are we willing to ask Him to judge. The modern church is largely a church of wimps, utterly unable to ask God to do that. They're like the bride in Deuteronomy 22 who refuses to cry out. They think they're being loving and meek, but that is neither loving to the church nor is it meekness. Meekness is power under control, right? Are we willing to arraign people before the court of heaven and ask God to speak His guilty verdict right now? When the church has a husband who has vowed to defend her, and he has, how can the church not cry out with such psalms? We must. Deuteronomy 22 mandates that we must. And it's no wonder to me that David ends on a joyful note. He says in verse 16, but I will sing of your power. He doesn't lament that God is wringing his hands, frustrated at what's going on in history. No, no. He doesn't relegate God's power to the future. He says, I will sing of your power. Yes, I will sing aloud of your mercy in the morning. And I want to focus on that word, mercy, because the church doesn't deserve his protection when we consider all of the church's sins against him. It is mercy to the church, and we should never forget that. We can never ascribe wrong to God when God allows us to go through persecution. God has the right to allow the church to be persecuted. The church's sins testify against us. They cling to us when they are not confessed. But because of our union with Christ and because of His blood, we can plead for mercy on behalf of the bride. This implies that even the persecutions are sometimes used by God as disciplines on the church. But it also implies that God can withdraw the discipline when we have learned from that, and we can be joyful. Starting at the second clause in verse 16, for you have been my defense and refuge in the day of trouble. To you, O my strength, I will sing praises, for God is my defense, my God of mercy. The ability to sing when you are down is evidence of faith. Faith in the sovereignty of God, faith in God's goodness, faith in His mercy, faith in His power and strength. And what a great place for us to end the sermon. When we sing the war psalms, we must sing them in faith that they portray a just, loving, perfect God. Many people, again, speak against the Warsawms as if they showed a harsh God, but I revel in them. I delight in them because they evidence a divine husband that is raised to fury when he sees his wife abused, beaten, and threatened with rape. What kind of a husband would he be to passively sit by and watch and do nothing? That would not conform to God's own blueprint for a husband. God says we need to lay down our lives for our wives, and God is a far better husband than we are. Christ will declare war on all who violate his wife and we can rejoice that he is jealous on behalf of his bride. In Exodus 34, 14 he says, for you shall worship no other God for the Lord whose name is jealous is a jealous God. If his very name is jealous, it means it's of his very character, very character of his nature to rouse himself up on behalf of his bride. So we can rejoice in that. I'm going to have us sing a different Imbricatory Psalm to end the service, and as we do, I would encourage us to sing it with confidence, joy, faith, and with zeal. Let's lift the rod of iron to smite the nations who persecute the church. And may all God's people say, Amen. Father God, we thank you for your Word, and I pray that as we seek to implement it through our prayers, through our singing, through our adjustments of our faith perspective, that you would empower the church more and more to be a bride who delights in the fact that you are a God of vengeance. In Jesus' name, amen.