Sermon Tone Analysis

A Zeal For God's Glory

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Introduction

This piece is from the Los Angeles Times of August 16 of this year.

Headline:  Buena Park pastor asks followers to pray for the death of his critics.

It reads in part:

/Wiley S. Drake, a Buena Park pastor and former national leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, called on his followers to pray for the deaths of two leaders of Americans United For Separation of Church and State.

The request was in response to the liberal group's urging the IRS on Tuesday to investigate Drake's church's nonprofit status because Drake endorsed former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for president on church letterhead and during a church-affiliated Internet radio show.

Drake said Wednesday he was “simply doing what God told me to do” by targeting Americans United officials Joe Conn and Jeremy Leaming whom he calls the “enemies of God.”  “God says to pray imprecatory prayers against people who attack God's church,” he said.

“The Bible says that if anybody attacks God's people, David said this is what will happen to them…Children will become orphans and wives will become widows/.”

Here we have the pastor of a congregation who used to be a leader of the largest denomination in America and he is calling for death to his critics.

What are we to make of this in light of Ps 139?

He uses passages exactly like this to justify his actions.

Is this a legitimate use of the Scriptures, that we should be calling for the death of those who do things which we oppose?

Or who oppose us?

It is a fact that David's words sound remarkably similar to this pastor's.

Let's pick up at Ps 139.19ff: “Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from me!

They speak against you with malicious intent; your enemies take your name in vain!~* Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD?

And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?

I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies.”

(Psalms 139:19-22 ESV)  

How do we handle this passage of Scripture?

We began with one pastor's interpretation of it.

Is it correct?

Is this what we should be doing?

Is this what the passage means, that we should be calling curses down, heavenly curses on our enemies?

This is a very difficult passage; let's admit that from the start.

While doing research on this passage I came across a post from John Piper.

His church was memorizing through Ps 139 together and they came to vv 19-22 and they wrestled with the issue, “shall we memorize it or not?” because the kids were memorizing the same passages.

They finally decided that it was just too difficult a passage to explain to young kids, so they skipped it.

The passage raises very difficult questions about the nature of God and of inspiration and of who he is and what he desires.

So let's dig in and see what we can find here.

!! Review

You may recall that we have been going very slowly through Ps 139 which is my favorite Psalm, and that we said the general theme, that David's general theme in the Psalm was a revelation of a God Most Intimate.

Here we have revealed a God who is like no other conception of God by any other religion.

He is personal.

He is present.

He is powerful, and all of his attributes he applies personally to me.

We first saw that God knows everything about me.

Then we saw that God is present wherever I am, that no matter how far I am from God; he is never far from me.

Next we saw that God's power is demonstrated in the wonder that is me, that God created me, that he knitted me together in my mother's womb, and that I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

These are some of the most sublime words in all of Scripture.

Last time I spoke we saw that God's thoughts are towards me, that his thoughts toward me are as vast as the sand, and that they are very precious.

So David is going on and on here about the character of God as it touches the individual, in poetry which is transcendent and majestic and glorious, and then all of a sudden he drops this bombshell which explodes in our conscience like someone dragging their fingernails across a chalkboard - back when they used to have chalkboards.

What is going on here?

What are we to make of this?

!! Theme: A Zeal for God's Glory

My contention is that David is demonstrating a zeal for God's glory.

I said before that we move here from theology to application.

In light of all that God is for me, how ought I to act in the world.

How does it affect my actions.

David's first answer, his first working out of this grand theme of a God Most Intimate is that it gives him a zeal to see God glorified, to see God lifted up and esteemed in all the world by all peoples.

The problem is that in spite of all that David has just worked out about God and what he is to and for me, there are people that not only do not believe or worship this God, but they hate and blaspheme him!

What are we to do with these people?

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David's Zeal Revealed When We Understand Who the Wicked Are

The first point we see is that David's zeal for God's glory is revealed when we understand who the wicked are.

Who are the wicked?

Who are God's enemies?

Look at the words David uses to describe them.

/They speak against you with malicious intent/ (vs.

20).

That same word is used in Ps 31.13 in a negative fashion for those who plot against the righteous.

When it is used elsewhere in the Old Testament it denotes people who are making evil plans or schemes, especially against the righteous.

God condemns these people.

The wicked “/take your name in vain/.”

This is one of the ten words or Ten Commandments at the very beginning of the Mosaic Law.

“/You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain/ (Ex 20.7),

The wicked feel free to take God's name in vain.

They also hate the Lord in verse 21 and they are rebels (vs 22).

In other passages of Scripture we find the wicked pursuing the poor (Ps 10.4), attacking the righteous (Ps 11.2), seeking to kill the righteous (Ps 37.32), and denying God.

We could go on and on and on here but you get the point.

The wicked man has no room for God in his thoughts; no fear of God in his eyes; he hates God; he uses God's name in vain; he is arrogant; he oppresses the poor, widows, orphans, and strangers.

For a current day example here is Richard Dawkins in his book, The God Delusion, describing God.

He writes: /The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully/.

To that description of God I simply put my hand to my mouth and pray that Richard Dawkins will get radically saved before he has to face the God whom he has so disparaged.

! God's Glory Revealed in Perspective He Takes on Wicked

That is the wicked.

Scripture is pretty clear on who they are and what they are doing.

The second way that we see David's zeal for God's glory revealed is in the perspective he takes on the wicked.

“Why is David speaking this way about them?”

Is it not true that Jesus himself said in the Sermon on the Mount, “/You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

'But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you/”

(Matthew 5:43-44 ESV).

What is going on here?

Is Christ repudiating what David wrote?

Is  the Bible contradicting itself?

Can we speak the same way about the wicked that David speaks?

Why does he speak in such a seemingly harsh and brutal way?

Look at the words David uses.

“Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?

And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?

I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies!”

There is no getting away from the words that he uses here.

The word “hate” really means hate,  that is a good translation.

So is the word “loathe.”

We might better translate the last verse as I hate them with perfect hatred.

David doesn't leave us any wiggle room here.

We can't get away from the strength of his words.

We cannot explain them away.

This kind of reference is common in the Psalms.

“/The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance; he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked/.”(Psalms

58:10 ESV) /O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us! Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock/!” (Psalms 137:8-9 ESV).