Psalm 109 - The Lord protects those who have been falsely accused.

These are hard psalms, aren't they? These psalms of curses and condemnation. These are not normally the psalms that make us feel good, at least not like "The Lord is my Shepherd" or "Bless the Lord oh my soul". The comfort is not as obvious in Psalm 109, or Psalm 55 or Psalm 35, as in some of the other psalms we love so much.

And yet, there’s supposed to be a comfort here. These are supposed to be uplifting psalms, especially for people who have fallen down. Especially for people who’ve been knocked down. The imprecatory psalms are supposed to give hope for hopeless people, strength for people who feel so weak, courage for when they are under attack. When you’ve been beaten up for so long, I hope these psalms help to raise your head again, knowing that evil is punished, and sinners can be changed.

But these psalms also function in a different way. Psalm 109, and the other imprecatory, curse psalms, also function as a warning. For those who have been beaten and are hurt, hearing Psalm 109 gives comfort. For those have been doing the beating and causing the hurt, hearing Psalm 109 should cause some fear, like God is reaching down with a healing hand to help the hurt, while turning His eye on the perpetrator who caused the pain. Like when a bully is picking on you at school, calling you names. And then they look up and there’s your very large, very angry father watching. And you can just watch the bully shrink, and get scared himself, and probably run away.

That’s the reaction when we pray verse 1:

Hear the hope? Wicked and deceitful men may have opened their mouths against you, they may be telling lies, spreading rumors, being nasty. But you just called on God. They may attack you without cause. Verse 4:

But you are praying. This is no little thing. You’re telling on them. You’re telling on them to God. And if God hears about this, when God hears about this, they’re going to be in trouble. They’ll be caught, they’ll be tried, they’ll be found guilty, they’ll be sentenced, and the sentence will be carried out. Verse 6 starts the trial:

God is about justice, and justice means getting what you deserve. The Old Testament law stated that if you hurt somebody’s eye, then your eye should be hurt. If you hurt someone’s tooth, then your tooth should be hurt. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

So verse 6 makes sense. If someone has been acting evil, then let someone act evil towards him. If someone has been accusing, then let her be accused herself. And, verse 7:

When he talks to You, Lord, don’t listen. When she’s praying, make the words stick in her mouth. When she says her prayers at meal time and before going to sleep, send her prayers back, No Delivery, Return To Sender. In fact, as she’s praying, convict her. Let her know that something is wrong. Make her know that praying to God doesn’t fit with how she’s treating another person. That she can’t love God with all of her heart and soul and mind and strength, when she’s not loving her neighbor.

So far, our anger has been simmering. Now, our anger boils over. The sentence is more harsh. Verse 9:

We’re not only wishing bad things to happen to the attacker. Now, we’re wishing for the bad things to happen to the children. God said, in Exodus 20:5

The anger spills over to the rest of the family. They go together. They’re a unit, so I’m mad at them all.

And the rage continues. The writer of Psalm 109 has a lot of anger, and it’s taking a lot of time to let it out. Verse 11:

If this was anywhere other than the Bible, this would sound so wrong, so ungodly. To wish bankruptcy on our enemy. To wish loneliness on him. To wish death for him and no one to feel sorry for his orphans. To wish for this to be the end of his family line. Verse 13:

Psalm 109 is a raw gush of rage. This is not nice loving language. This is putting the most hurtful heartache into words. It’s expressing the anger that just makes you shake, you’re so mad. Look at what they did. Verse 16:

We’ve looked at three of these kinds of psalms, and I know that they are heavy psalms. They are dark images. They hurt. This is harsh language. But they have to be like this in order to be effective. If you’ve been hurt, betrayed, if your reputation has been destroyed by rumors, if your family is being torn apart, even your physical health is suffering, you’re getting chest pains or migraines from all this, nice language is not going to cut it. A psalm speaking words like:

In order for our minds and hearts to be made whole again, this psalm has to be real. It has to express where we really are.

And here’s the effects. First, like we said last week, the harsh words bring us to the limit of our anger. Last week we wanted them buried alive, this week we want their children to be orphaned, and we realize we really don’t. As angry as we’ve been, we’re not that angry. We’ve reached a turning point in our angry, and hopefully, instead of getting angrier and angrier and that anger consuming us, hopefully, we’re heading in the other direction. We’re coming out of the blind rage and we’re starting to see things more objectively, more hopefully, and with the ability to forgive. When we bring this anger to God, we find that He takes it and replaces it with peace and holiness and strength. When we bring it to God.

And we have to bring it all. It doesn’t work to hold back when we’re praying. Psalm 109 is a pure, uninhibited complaint to God. It’s not filtered, not restrained, we are being open and genuine, just the way God wants it. He doesn’t want us only telling Him want we think He can handle. He doesn’t want us to be fake. We don’t have to clean up our prayers for God. Our prayers need to reflect our hearts, and sometimes there is a lot of anger in our hearts. God wants it, He wants it all. He wants it pure. He wants it raw.

Because when we give it to Him raw, when we give it all to Him, that’s when we find relief. It’s in His hands and it’s out of ours. It’s His to fix, and not our responsibility. We still have our job, but it’s not to bring justice and it’s not to restore the friendship and it’s certainly not to exact revenge. Our job is to forgive, and that’s hard enough. Our job is to remain open to restoration. Our job is to not make matters worse by slandering the attacker. Tell the truth, sure, just do it in truthful, Godly way. That’s our responsibility.

And it’s God’s work to right wrongs and to convict people and to change their hearts and minds. You cannot change a person’s heart, no matter how many times you try, no matter how many phone calls you make, no matter how many notes you write, no matter how many tears you cry. But God can. God is very persistent in how He works. He can wake people up in the middle of the night. He can use dreams. The Holy Spirit can whisper, and nudge, and sometimes even hit over the head to get His point across. It’s out of our hands and it’s in the Lord’s

Which should scare the wits out of the attacker. Because Psalm 109 is not just for the victim, it’s also a warning for the one inflicting the pain. All of these curses that we’ve been praying for the past few weeks, the evil to be turned back on the evil doer, the burying alive from last week, the bankruptcy, the fall-out on the children, the death, the end of their family line, this might be wishful thinking on the part of the victim, but it’s also a possibility for those who do evil, and keep doing evil, even after they’ve been warned.

This is not the image of God that we like to have. We’re comfortable with the idea of God as loving and kind and patient and friendly. Like a big grandpa, who hugs us when we get hurt. But a God who is angry, who hands out justice, who allows evil to be paid for evil, that doesn’t set well. And yet, while our God is loving and kind and patient, He is also angry. He is also just. He says in Matthew 26:52:

And Galatians 6:7:

So, Psalm 109 should strike fear into anyone coming down on another person. Verse 20:

It feels good to have power. It feels good to talk about other people. There’s a sense of superiority when we stand over someone and look down on them. We might have even convinced ourselves that we’re are right, that we are condemning them for holy reasons, that we are standing on God’s side when we make that other person’s life miserable. After all, we’re making their life miserable to teach them a lesson, right?

But it’s not ours to teach them the lesson. It’s not ours to deal with the sin. Jesus dealt with that sin when He died on the cross. It’s the Holy Spirit’s work to convince and convict. He uses us, but we had better be careful, very careful, that we are doing the right thing. When someone has sinned, God has given us instructions for what to do, how to handle it. We are to go to the person and point out the sin. If they haven’t listened, then we take someone else with us. If they won’t listen to us, then we bring the church in, the elders. But even in these situations, we’re not trying to make their lives miserable. We’re trying to love them, to point out the problem but doing it kindly.

So, for those who are NOT acting kindly, who are not following God’s instructions for correction, let this be a warning. Verse 27:

And they will know if they've been listening to Psalm 109. Is this something YOU would want to mess with? Is the gossip and the rumors and the looks worth all of this? Not for me!?! No way! Not when there’s a chance I may be picking on an innocent person. Not when there’s a chance I may be attacking someone that God is protecting. Verse 28:

Jesus had a saying He would use a lot:

He who has heard Psalm 109, and Psalm 55, and Psalm 35, let him hear, be so warned.

But let the innocent praise the Lord. Verse 30:

Not, with my mouth I will gloat. Not, with my mouth will I sneer at their pain. But with my mouth I will praise the Lord. As we’ve looked at these psalms, we’ve also been warned not to be happy when people are hurt, even people who do evil. Proverbs 24:17,18 say:

Instead, we keep our eyes on the Lord. When the attacker is stronger then we are, we bring our hurt to the Lord, and we watch Him. When the attacker was a friend who has turned on us and brought us unimaginable pain, we bring our anger, our rage to the Lord, and we watch Him. When the rumors, the lies, the none-of-their-business business are passed around, we call to the Lord with everything we have, and we wait for Him to protect and defend. He will, verse 31: