Category: Sermons

Introduction

Concept of Recapitulation.

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God is giving another Exodus of His people who have suffered under another King who has again murdered their children in hopes of keeping Israel oppressed. Like the first Exodus under Moses the leadership of the 2nd Exodus is led by one who escaped the wicked King’s murderous designs.

There is thus re-capitulation going on here in Matthew’s Gospel. Just as Israel of old was persecuted but delivered by the child (Moses) who had escaped the Tyrant’s persecution so the God has granted another Deliverer to Israel by another deliverer who likewise has escaped the Tyrant’s persecution.

So, what Matthew is doing here is a retelling of Israel’s story. Jesus is the greater Israel who is repeating Israel’s drama. In Matthew’s Christology Christ is faithful-obedient Israel where Israel was unfaithful and disobedient. In Christ there is a final Exodus with a faithful deliverer.

Matthew is thus giving us Literary clues that all that God intended with Israel was now coming to pass in Christ.

There is continuity then with the OT except at this point the recapitulated covenant story is marked by the success of God’s suffering servant Messiah as opposed to the failure that OT Israel had been. This success of the suffering servant Messiah is what makes the covenant now a “new and better covenant.”

That this is the purpose of Matthew is seen in the genealogy with which he opens his book. Jesus, descendant of Abraham, descendant of David, is the culmination of true Israel. Indeed Jesus is the TRUE Israel and as the true Israel He recapitulates the story of Israel so that Matthew wants us to see Jesus as Israel.

This recapitulation motif is underscored by the fact that Jesus is taken down into Egypt. When finally Jesus returns from Egypt there is then a connection to Israel’s ancient History of coming out of Egypt.

Matthew is giving us a literary and redemptive history akin to the work of the Pointilist Artist at the end of the 19th century. Pointilism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. This is what Matthew is doing with his Gospel. He is painting His Gospel with small distinct dots of narrative in such a way that when one looks at his Gospel they see points of contact with Israel’s history so that the two together form one History. Matthew thus is not only a literary Pointilist but he is also one of those artists who gives you two works in one work.

You know the kind I’m speaking of. We’ve all seen those pictures that if you stare long enough at them you being to see another picture. Matthew is giving us two pointilist pictures. One is of OT history but the other is of Jesus participating in that History now fulfilled and culminating in Him.

In our text today we have that not only here with the parallel’s between Moses as divinely ordained deliverer who escapes the slaughter of the infants and the Lord Christ as divinely ordained deliverer who escapes the slaughter of the infants (2:16) but we have it also in the fact just as OT Israel was God’s son and came out of Egypt (2:15) so the Lord Jesus is God’s embodiment of Israel who is called out of Egypt.

This recapitulation continues in vs. 18 where Mt. quotes from Jer. 31:15. Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, sees Jerusalem being sacked by the Babylonian invasion and with that sacking he sees the judicially innocent children being slaughtered by the Heathens. The prophet Jeremiah imagines, with his poetic vision, that Rachel, the wife of Jacob and mother of Joseph (who would be associated with Israel through Ephraim and Manasseh) and Benjamin (Judah), is weeping for her descendants, her children. Rachel is thus, for Matthew, the OT epitome of Israel’s mothers who are now weeping for their children brutally massacred by another occupying force. For Matthew then, the Lord Christ is thus caught up with not only Israel’s Exodus but also in the great historical event of their Exile.

However, there is a note of promise here also for Jeremiah’s lamentation is in the middle of four chapters, Jeremiah 30-33, that are filled with comfort and consolation and joy. Jeremiah 30-33 gives us a prophetic vision of hope though as well as misery. Jeremiah will speak of a Messianic age to come when the new and better covenant will bring in everlasting peace and righteousness. Despite all the despair that Jeremiah records there is a promise of a time when sins will be forgiven, the Holy Spirit poured out, and eternal life present. That time that Jeremiah had spoken of has now come but what Matthew wants to do is that he wants his readers to see that the Lord Christ, as the new and better Israel, bringing a new and better covenant, shares in the brokenness of Israel’s redemptive History. He is the Deliverer saved from the Pagan King. He is part of the history of Israel’s Exile. Matthew is identifying Christ’s History with Israel’s redemptive history.

This recapitulation is also seen in vs. 23. When the Lord Christ is eventually led out of Egypt back to Israel his family settles in Nazareth. The scorn for Nazareth is seen later in John’s Gospel when one of the future disciples asks, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” upon hearing that Jesus came from that hamlet. Nazareth was to Israel what Burr Oak might be to Michigan or Longtown might be to South Carolina. Every state has there Nazareths. Remote nowhere hamlets occupied by those considered untermensh by the elite. Nazareth was a no account village in a no account region (Galilee).

But Matthew, under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration is going to use that origin of residence of Jesus to exercise another example of Historical recapitualation. Matthew tells us that the Lord Christ “being called a Nazarene,” is a fulfillment of the prophetic word. The problem comes though that you can exhaustively search the Prophets and will find nothing that explicitly says that the Messiah will come from Nazareth.

So … how do we handle that.

Well, we suspect that what Matthew is doing is that he is appealing to Isaiah 11.

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit

Here is the connection.

In the Hebrew the word for Branch in Isaiah 11:1 is neser (nay-tser) and to the hearing it sounds like “Nazareth.” The connection is that just as a branch (nay-tser) from a stump is a humble and lowly origin so the Lord Christ as Messiah coming from (nay-tser) Nazareth is one from a humble and lowly origin. The Lord Christ as the Messiah is Isaiah’s nay-ster (Branch) hailing from nay-ster (Nazareth).

Of course this is all typical of the way God often works. Throughout the OT he takes people from the backwaters of life … the people who are of lowly estate … the people the elite consider the poor white trash and he uses them to change the course of History. Jesus was a mere (nay-ster) Branch, from (nay-ster) Nazareth.

Here there is prophetic fulfillment and recapitulation. In terms of prophetic fulfillment Jesus not only shares Israel’s History but He is the one whom Israel’s History is pointed. In terms of prophetic fulfillment The Lord Christ is the lowly branch (the remnant / Isaiah 6) — the only thing left of the great Kingdom of Israel that God cut down with the captivity. The fact that Jesus hails from despised Nazareth is consistent with a lowly branch being all that was left of a great Kingdom.

However, like the context where the Jeremiah passage is taken that records Rachel’s weeping there is in the Isaiah 11 context where the branch language is taken a great amount of hopefulness. There in Isaiah 11 you also find the record of the Messiah becoming King that rules over a re-creation of peace,

10 In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious. 11 In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the surviving remnant of his people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush,[b] from Elam, from Babylonia,[c] from Hamath and from the islands of the Mediterranean.

12 He will raise a banner for the nations
and gather the exiles of Israel;
he will assemble the scattered people of Judah
from the four quarters of the earth.

In these verses (Mt. 2:13-23) then we find pointilist recapitulation. The Lord Christ shares in Israel’s history as the greater deliverer who escapes the blood-lust of a wicked King. The Lord Christ shares in Israel’s history as one who goes down into Egypt because of travail and comes out of Egypt to peace. The Lord Christ shares in Israel’s history as the weeping of Mothers in his time in Israel, during the time of Herod, parallels the weeping of Mother’s in the Babylonian slaughter. The Lord Christ recapitulates Israel’s history has being the foretold lowly nay-ster (branch) who comes from lowly nay-ster (Nazareth).

What Matthew is communicating is that the one has come who is the embodiment of all that Israel was intended to be. Messiah IS Israel.

Application

1.) Herod was a paranoid madman. He executed one of his favorite wives as well as at least three of his sons.

In view of such executions, the emperor Augustus reportedly quipped, “It is better to be Herod’s pig than son”

Those who begin by hating THE Child end by hurting children. Hating God and God’s Revelation leads to hurting people. If people will be ungodly they will act inhumane. Herod is the proof-text for this but not the only proof text. Adam and Eve hate God and His Revelation and so turn on each other. Cain hates God and His Revelation and so turns on Abel.

2.) Iraneus “Against Heresies” posits that the babies of Jerusalem killed were the first Christian martyrs.

3.) With the played out drama of Herod’s maniacal slaughter it is not beyond reason to suggest that as the Word is Incarnated in Christ so the anti-word is Incarnated in Herod. At the very least, I think we are to see here the long warfare that God spoke of in Genesis between the seed of the woman (the Lord Christ) and the seed of the Serpent. The Serpent, via Herod, lashes out to strike the seed of the woman but He misses due to God’s providence.

4.) The slaughter and Christmas

There is, in the combination of the Triumph of the Christ child’s escape with the slaughter of the innocent the reminder that hope should not be buried in the context of calamity. For those who live with tragedy and sorrow in lands that know something of persecution and slaughter there is, in Matthew’s Christmas account the understanding that midst untold sorrow and suffering God’s plans are not being snuffed out. Hope remains. It is a bitter-sweet consolation coated in God’s severe mercy but a consolation all the same.

5.) Already a fulfillment of

Luke 2:34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, 35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

Psalm 58 has historically been placed among the Psalms of lament. Such laments often contain within them portions of imprecation that are directed at God’s enemies.

As we approach this Psalm we remember the necessity to see Christ in the Psalms when Christ is there to be seen.

Certainly it is the mortal Psalmist who prays this proximately but ultimately we would insist that it is the Lord Christ who petitions the Father against His enemies here. This Psalm is the prayer of an innocent man and only the Lord Christ is the perfectly innocent man. It is true that David prayed this Psalm but we remember that David was the lesser son of God who pictured the coming Christ. It is Christ here who is bringing accusation against His enemies.

This bringing of accusation and the following of imprecation against enemies should be seen in light of our Lord Christ’s own words, when severely angry with Jewish scholars (especially Pharisees and scribes) by calling them “hypocrites”, “snakes”, “offspring of vipers”, “fools” etc in Matthew 23:13-36, Mark 7:6, etc.

We even see Jesus saying to Jews that their father is the devil (John 8:44).

And the Lord Christ speaks of a day when He will say to His enemies,

… depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!

Principle #1 — We perhaps should be slow and cautious to pray imprecatory prayers because like those of whom we might pray imprecatorily we also are sinners. We are likely not innocent of the very things that we are angry about, even if we have been practitioners only in a lesser degree. However, our Lord Christ was very man of very man and without sin and He is perfectly justified in praying against those who would oppose Him. And so we read David’s imprecatory prayers as ultimately coming in the voice of the greater David … the Lord Christ.

But we must not be over much righteous by not praying these Imprecatory prayers ourselves against those who are guilty of those very things the Psalmist speaks of. It is true that we are sinners but it is also true that we are sinners who have joyfully been made captive to God’s righteousness and so we desire to see the Kingdom of Christ advanced. When we pray for God’s Kingdom to come we are praying in general for what the Psalmist prays for with particularity in Psalm 58. We pray, “Thine Kingdom come.” We recognize that for God’s Kingdom to come then all other opposing Kingdoms must be brought low and utterly destroyed. The Psalmist here merely adds particularity to what is called “The Lord’s Prayer.”

Well, as we turn to the Psalm proper

I.) The Psalmist States The Problem (1-5)

vs. 1 refers to “the silent ones.” The word there translated “silent ones” resembles the Hebrew word for ‘gods.’ The word ‘gods’ was often used to refer to human judges (see Psalm 82:1). The reference here then could be a rhetorical question aimed at these wicked judges.

Alternately, the thrust with “silent ones,” when seen in the context of the later reference to judging, may be a statement that Magistrates charged with judging are remaining silent when they should be letting their voices be heard against oppression.

It is interesting that early Christian tradition associated this section of the Psalms with the high Priests and the Sanhedrin as they brought false judgment against the Lord Christ.

A.) What are the accusations brought against these wicked judges?

1.) The 1st accusation we mentioned already – Magistrates are silent against the pleas of the judicially innocent

“Do you indeed speak righteousness you silent ones.”

We might style this 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 asserting that they only tacitly consented to the persecution of the judicially innocent by their silence.

Martin Niemoller captures this in his famous poem about silence in Germany during the Nazi era,

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because 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 for me.

The problem that the Psalmist sees is silence in the face of the persecution of the judicially innocent. While it is 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.

2.) The second accusation — Active pursuit of wickedness (Responsible for violence and oppression)

Note that the actions of the wicked Tyrants was conceived in their inner most being before it was implemented in practice (vs. 2). This is but a reflection on the truth that what a man thinketh in his heart, so he is. The Tyrant ponders and plans these things and follows through.

In short the Psalmist understands that the wickedness of Tyrants is premeditated. They plan them carefully and thoughtfully. These are not what are styled “Crimes of passion” but cold calculating evil.

Spurgeon put it this way,

“They were deliberate sinners, cold, calculating villains. As righteous judges ponder the law, balance the evidence, and weigh the case, so the malicious dispense injustice with malice aforethought in cold blood.”

There are many many examples that we could adduce of cold, calculating villains planning and then executing their wickedness.

We will take the destruction of the Creation account in favor of Evolution. This has not happened by coincidence and chance but has been long planned and then executed. We have seen in our Sunday School class who the Scopes Monkey trial was pre-planned and arranged and the outcome known before the trial started. We have seen what the Chrsitless evolutionists have done in order to invent evidence that evolution is true. From the glued on Moths in industrial England to Haeckel’s gill charts to the manipulated pig and ape fossils the wicked have done just what Psalm 58:3 teaches. They worked out wickedness in their hearts and then weighed out the violence of their hands in the earth.

B.) That Which Explains the Wicked’s work

There is a change here from the wicked being addressed to the wicked being described.

1.) The problem is Original Sin

Sin Nature

Of course this reminds us that man is not basically good.

On President Reagan’s tombstone is inscribed just the opposite of what the Psalmist notes,

“ I know in my heart that man is good … ”

To the contrary the Scripture teaches us that man, left to himself is wicked. That I am wicked. David confirms this in Psalm 51:5 when he teaches that,

“Surely I have been a sinner from Birth; sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”

What follows bridges a connection between the wicked and the great serpent dragon… the Satan.

They speak lies … the language of Hell

Jesus, speaking of the Devil said,

“When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it.”

In vs. 5 they are even compared to referred to as a serpent who stops their ears against the Charmer.

Here we might remind ourselves that the only reason we are different from those wicked Tyrants described already is God’s grace. We are not smarter, better, then those who have gone astray from the womb. The only thing that differentiates us is God’s Grace in Christ. The fact that we also don’t conspire to do wicked has nothing to do with us and all to do with being brought from the dead and the love of conspiring against God by God providing Christ for us and pouring out the Holy Spirit to be our rescue.

II.) The Psalmist Offers Imprecatory Prayers (6-9)

vs. 6-8 seem startling at first blush. But what is required to rejoice in them is some understanding of wickedness.

If you read Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago or Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of Nazi Germany,” or Bacque’s “Other Losses,” or 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. When one reads how the destruction of the family has been long long planned and then understands how that plan has been executed one begins to relish these imprecatory prayer requests.

When one reads of or sees the 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 then on longs for God to trample upon those who have visited such cruelty upon the judicially innocent.

The Psalmist longs for the venom of the wicked to be milked.

1.) Break their teeth in their mouth — (So they can do no harm)
2.) Waters that flow away — (No force in their pent up power)
3.) Arrows cut in pieces — (can do no harm)
4.) Snail melts as it goes — (dying in the son)
5.) Stillborn child — (If stillborn then can do no damage)

For simple and common people like myself praying in this way seems like the only recourse we have. The levers of human power are shut off from us by the wicked tyrants. We are mocked for our alleged “fundamentalist” Christianity by those who are practicing fundamentalist wickedness. We are shut up to the God of all the Universe asking for Him to Glorify Himself by defeating His enemies.

And yet as we pray the imprecatory prayers we are reminded that the only difference between ourselves and the wicked is God’s grace. We too are sinners. We too are wicked. And so in praying the imprecatory prayers we are once again filled with gratitude that God differentiated us by uniting us to Christ from eternity.

III.) The Psalmist Rejoices In God’s Vindication (10-11)

Dt. 32:43 “Rejoice, O 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.”

Jer. 11:20 — But, O Lord of hosts, who judgest righteously, who triest the reins and the heart, let me see Thy vengeance on them, for unto Thee have I revealed my cause.

21 But God shall wound the head of His enemies, and the hairy scalp of such a one as goeth on still in his trespasses. 22 The Lord said, “I will bring again from Bashan; I will bring My people again from the depths of the sea, 23 that thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and the tongues of thy dogs in the same.”

Rev. 19:13, speaks of Christ,

“And He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, and His name is called, The Word of God.”

One commentary offers,

“This is the blood of His enemies from His trampling them in the “winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.”

Contemporary Theologian Jon Wenham has offered here,

“The enemies of God are implacable. It is necessary for the vindication of God’s authority and God’s goodness that just retribution should not long be delayed. He prays for it, not shutting his eyes to the horror which it involves. There is not sadistic pleasure in seeing his enemy suffer, no sense of getting his own back, but simply a deep desire that world might see that God is just.”

Edwards

There is an older Christianity that does not blush at this notion. For centuries the idea of rejoicing in the defeat of God’s enemies was common fare.

“The view of the misery of the damned will double the ardour of the love and gratitude of the saints of heaven.”

The sight of hell torments 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, yea! Such will be his sense of justice that it will increase rather than diminish his bliss.

Jonathan Edwards
[“The Eternity of Hell Torments” (Sermon), April 1739 & Discourses on Various Important Subjects, 1738]

Boston,

“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 riseth up for ever.”

Thomas Boston, Scottish preacher, 1732

Our forebears in the faith were different people then we tend to be. They understood that God is angular and will never be made smooth.

Introduction

Christ familiarity with the Psalms

Psalm 31:5 —
Psalm 22:1
Psalm 69:21 , 22:15 — Echo “I am thirsty”
Psalm 22:31 — echoes “It if finished”

Also throughout his life we see familiarity with the Psalms

Psalm 6:8 — cited Mt. 7:23 — “Then I will tell you plainly, ‘I never knew you’ Away from me you evildoers”
Psalm 35:19, 69:4 — cited John 15:25 — “They hated me without reason.”
Psalm 118:26 — cited Mt. 21:13
Psalm 41:9 — cited John 13:18
Psalm 62:12 — cited Matthew 16:27

Christ was saturated with the Psalms. Today we want to look at the Psalms familiarity with Christ.

I.) Christ in the Psalms of Righteous Declaration

Psalm 24

Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord?
Or who may stand in His holy place?
4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
Who has not lifted up his soul to an idol,
Nor sworn deceitfully.
5 He shall receive blessing from the Lord,
And righteousness from the God of his salvation.

Psalm 18

20 The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness;
According to the cleanness of my hands
He has recompensed me.
21 For I have kept the ways of the Lord,
And have not wickedly departed from my God.
22 For all His judgments were before me,
And I did not put away His statutes from me.
23 I was also blameless before Him,
And I kept myself from my iniquity.
24 Therefore the Lord has recompensed me according to my righteousness,
According to the cleanness of my hands in His sight.

Here we note that while David might have been able to pray these Psalms in a comparative sense, given our understanding of our sin nature, and of our sin by habit which is taught in Scripture there is no way that David could have prayed these in a absolute sense. No man can. And so we hear these Psalms and we are immediately reminded of the Lord Christ. The Lord Christ alone is the one who can stand in God’s Holy place as the one who has clean hands and a pure heart and who had not not lifted up his soul to an idol, Nor sworn deceitfully. He alone can declare that “I was blameless before God.”

The good news in all this is that we are united to Christ and what is predicated of Christ is predicated of His people because we are in Christ. We have had all this described perfection put to our account. And so, because of the Lord Christ we also are blameless. No … not in and of ourselves but as we are reckoned in Christ.

II.) Christ in the Penitential Psalms

7 Psalms known as “Penitential Psalms”

Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143

But there are other Psalms that have snatches of penitence within them,

Psalm 69:5 O God, You know my foolishness;
And my sins are not hidden from You.

Psalm 6

O Lord, do not rebuke me in Your anger,
Nor chasten me in Your hot displeasure.
2 Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak;
O Lord, heal me, for my bones are troubled.
3 My soul also is greatly troubled;
But You, O Lord—how long?
4 Return, O Lord, deliver me!
Oh, save me for Your mercies’ sake!
5 For in death there is no remembrance of You;
In the grave who will give You thanks?

How shall we handle these penitential Psalms in light of the reality that we see and hear Christ in them? Is it really the case that the Lord Christ would need to pray these prayers? Aren’t we doing the Lord Christ a disservice by suggesting He, through David, prayed in such a penitential manner?

The only answer that can suffice is that in these Penitential Psalms the Lord Christ, in His humanity, is identifying with His people. In point of fact He is so identifying with them that He confesses sin, through David, as if it is His own.

So, closely does Christ identify with us as sinners that He confesses sin in these penitential Psalms. Now, we know that Christ is the spotless lamb of God and we know that He was at all points tempted as us yet without sin but here in the Psalms we find the sinless God-man confessing sin. Thus does he identify so closely with His people. Such is His tenderness towards us. In such a way Christ demonstrates He was and is our substitute.

It was not without reason that the Holy Spirit could write in the NT,

“God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” (II Cor. 5:21). As Peter says, Christ suffered as the “just for the unjust.”

Here then in the penitential Psalms we see the love of God and His Christ for sinners. So closely does the Lord Christ identify with us that He confesses sins.

Jonathan Edwards offers here,

“His elect were, from all eternity, dear to Him, as the apple of His eye. He looked upon them so much as Himself, that He regarded their concerns as His own; and he has even made their guilt as his, by a gracious assumption of it to Himself, that it might be looked upon as His own, through that divine imputation in virtue of which they are treated as innocent, while He suffers for them.”

Horne in his commentary on the Psalms offers,

“… Christ in the day of his passion, standing charged with the sin and guilt of his people, speaks of such their sin and guilt, as if they were His own, appropriating to himself those debts, for which, in the capacity of a surety, had made himself responsible.”

Elsewhere, in yet another commentary E. C. Olsen affirms again this line of thought,

“I am particularly impressed with the 5th verse of the 69th Psalm where the Lord said, ‘O God, You know my foolishness; And my sins are not hidden from thee.’ For 2000 years no man who has had any respect for his intellect dared charge our Lord Jesus with sin. But some might as, What do you mean when you say our Lord is the speaker in this verse? Just this: the fact of Calvary is not a sham or mirage. It is an actual fact. Christ making atonement for sin was a reality. The NT declares that He who knew no sin was made sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. As Christ restored that which He took not away, that is, restored to us a righteousness which we never had, so Christ had to take your sins and mine, your foolishness and mine. These sins became such an integral part of Him that He called them “my sins and my foolishness.” Our Lord was the substitute for the sinner. He had to take the sinners place, and in so doing, He took upon Himself all of the sinner’s sin. In the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, ‘Surely He has borne our griefs, And carried our sorrows; … yet the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.’ The iniquity of us all was laid upon Christ. He bore our sins ‘in His own body on the tree.’ Can you fathom that? When you do, you will understand the mystery of the Gospel.”

In light of this great Love for His people, how can we, who are convinced of this love, ever violate such a compassion as was demonstrated by the Lord Christ towards us?

III.) Christ in the Imprecatory Psalms

We spoke some concerning the ability of God’s people to pray the Imprecatory prayers but we also must realize that it is first and foremost the Lord Christ Himself who prays the Imprecatory prayers.

The modern Church has this vision of effeminate Jesus. There he is in the Poster or a art sketch set against a backdrop of azure sky blue with fluffy white clouds around him in a long flowing white tunic with his shoulder length hair poofed perfectly and he is beckoning His people with outstretched hands. Or there he is at the door knocking … ever the gentle guest. A halo surrounds his head and you get the sense that the door knocking Jesus is so calm the door adores being rapped upon by Him.

The Jesus of the modern contemporary church poses no threat to sin or sinners. He constantly forgives in the face of epistemologically self conscious defiance and rebellion against Him and his cause. He forgives even in the face of being told that we have no reason to be forgiven. He is Jesus the effeminate wonder male.

We agree that the Lord Christ is gentle, meek, and forgiving, but He holds not those qualities without also being God who pursues God’s righteousness. He inveighs against the wicked. He holds the rebellious to account. In the Psalms, through the voice of David, the Lord Christ cries out for the blood of those who would oppose His Kingdom and His people. He is not God with whom we are to trifle.

Psalm 69:23-28

23 Let their eyes be darkened, so that they do not see;
And make their loins shake continually.
24 Pour out Your indignation upon them,
And let Your wrathful anger take hold of them.
25 Let their dwelling place be desolate;
Let no one live in their tents.
26 For they persecute the ones You have struck,
And talk of the grief of those You have wounded.
27 Add iniquity to their iniquity,
And let them not come into Your righteousness.
28 Let them be blotted out of the book of the living,
And not be written with the righteous.

J. H. Webster in his book, “The Psalms in Worship” has this to say

David, for example, was a type and spokesman of Christ, and the imprecatory Psalms are expressions of the infinite justice of the God-man, of His indignation against wrong-doing, of His compassion for the wronged. They reveal the feelings of His heart and the sentiments of His mind regarding sin.”

In Psalm 109

Let his days be few,
And let another take his office.
9 Let his children be fatherless,
And his wife a widow.
10 Let his children continually be vagabonds, and beg;
Let them seek their bread[b] also from their desolate places.
11 Let the creditor seize all that he has,
And let strangers plunder his labor.
12 Let there be none to extend mercy to him,
Nor let there be any to favor his fatherless children.
13 Let his posterity be cut off,
And in the generation following let their name be blotted out.

This Psalm, throughout Church History became known as the Judas Psalm because it is quoted concerning Judas in the NT.

Professor Fred Leahy of Belfast Ireland wrote concerning Psalm 109

“… the view which limits Psalm 109 to David and one of his adversaries is altogether to short-sighted because it ignores the typical nature of David and His Kingdom and overlooks the interpretation of the imprecatory psalms in the NT, where their ultimate fulfilment is seen either in the judgment of Judas or in the apostasy of Israel (cf., Rom. 11:9-10),. In the Christian church Psalm 109 soon became known as the Psalmus Ischarioticus — the Iscariot Psalm.”

The modern contemporary Church in the West today needs to hear again Christ praying with these imprecations against those who have set themselves against the Lord and His anointed. The modern contemporary Church in the West today needs to be reminded that those with designs to cast off their chains and arise to the place of the most high will be thoroughly cast down.

And why would we insist that the Christ praying the imprecatory prayers must come forward again? First because we love the Lord Christ and desire to protect His reputation but also because we love people. We do those in rebellion to Christ no favors … we show them no love, if we do not warn them concerning the wrath of the Lamb of God. In point of fact if we refuse to speak of these realities we show our scorn and hatred of those outside of Christ. The love of Christ and love for those outside of Christ compels God’s servants to take up this hallowed theme, fully aware that we ourselves are only saved from the wrath of God because of the work of the Lord Christ to pay for our sins.

What we find here in the Psalms is what we find in the Revelation. The Christ speaking through David these imprecations is the Christ spoken of in the NT

Rev. 19:11 Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. 12 His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had[a] a name written that no one knew except Himself. 13 He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. 14 And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean,[b] followed Him on white horses. 15 Now out of His mouth goes a sharp[c] sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

Conclusion

George Horne, who wrote a commentary on the Psalms in the 19th century wrote,

“The Primitive Fathers … are unexceptional witnesses to us of this matter of fact, that such a method of expounding the Psalms (the Method of reading them Christocentrically) built upon the practice of the Apostles in their writings and preachings, did universally prevail in the church from the beginning. They, who have ever looked to St. Augustine, know, that he pursues this plan invariably, treating of the Psalms as proceeding from the mouth of Christ, or of the Church, or of both, considered as one mystical person. The same is true of Jerome, Ambrose, Cassidore, Hilary, and Prosper … But what is very observable, Tertullian, who flourished at the beginning of the 3rd century, mentions it, as if it were then an allowed point in the church, that almost all the Psalms are spoken in the person of Christ, being addressed by the Son to the Father, that is, by Christ to God.”