I love these Psalms where David exhorts to God for justice, for the wicked to perish, for nations that rebel to be put down.
In today's loving and tolerant climate, such imprecations are seen as unworthy of the Christian.
But they're not.
The wicked (as we all were, to be sure) who reject the kingship of Messiah and refuse to repent, do polluted things against our most Holy God. These things are evil, they are wrong, they are a grief and a cause for mourning in the Christian that our God should have mud splattered on His holy name. We concentrate so long on the wicked person, praying for salvation, urging repentance, we forget the reason we do these things is to proclaim the name of Jesus among men and urge men everywhere to repent of the evil they do against Him.
I'm with John MacArthur when he said in his book Found: God's Will:
"If the truth offends, then let it offend. People have been living their whole lives in offense to God; let them be offended for a while." John MacarthurIn today's Psalm, David said,
The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God. (Psalm 9:17)
O, terrible thought! It gives me no delight to proclaim the fact of hell and the individual's sure condemnation of those who reject Jesus. It gives no consolation to know that nations will fall into the lake of fire to remain trapped in punishing fire for all eternity. Yet Spurgeon said it so well,
Many of God’s ministers have been accused of taking pleasure in preaching upon this terrible subject of "the wrath to come." Indeed we would be strange beings if so doleful a subject could afford us any comfort. I should count myself to be infinitely less than a man, if it did not cause me more pain in speaking about the impending sentence of condemnation, than it can possibly cause my hearers in the listening to it.
God’s ministers, I can assure you, if they feel it to be often their solemn duty, feel it always to be a heavy burden to speak about the terrors of the law. To preach Christ is our delight; to uplift his Cross is the joy of our heart; our Master is our witness, we love to blow the silver trumpet, and we have blown it with all our might. But knowing the terror of the Lord, these solemn things lie upon our conscience, and while it is hard to preach about them, it would be harder still to bear the doom which must rest upon the silent minister...
Reminding the world of the wrath to come is part of the terrible duty of truth. We stand firm in it.
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