Psalm 35, let's read it together.
Of David,
Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me.
! Fight against those who fight against me.
Take hold of shield and buckler and rise for my help.
Draw the spear and javelin against my pursuers.
Say to my soul, I am your salvation.
Let them be put to shame and dishonor who seek after my life.
Let them be turned back and disappointed who devise evil against me.
Let them be like chaff before the wind,
with the angel of the Lord driving them away.
Let their way be dark and slippery with the angel of the Lord pursuing them.
For without cause, they hid their net for me.
Without cause, they dug a pit for my life.
Let destruction come upon him when he does not know it.
And let the net that he hid ensnare him,
let him fall into it to his destruction.
Then my soul will rejoice in the Lord,
exulting in his salvation.
All my bones shall say, O Lord, who is like you?
Delivering the poor from him who is too strong for him.
The poor and needy from him who robs him.
Malicious witnesses rise up.
They ask me of things I do not know.
They repay me evil for good.
My soul is bereft.
But I, when they were sick, I wore sackcloth.
I afflicted myself with fasting.
I prayed with head bowed on my chest.
I went about as though I grieved for my friend or my brother.
As one who laments his mother, I bowed down in mourning.
But at my stumbling, they rejoiced and gathered.
They gathered together against me.
Wretches whom I did not know tore at me without ceasing.
Like profane mockers at a feast, they gnash at me with their teeth.
How long, O Lord, will you look on?
Rescue me from their destruction.
My precious life from the lions.
And I will thank you in the great congregation.
In the mighty throng, I will praise you.
Let not those rejoice over me who are wrongfully my foes.
Let not those wink the eye who hate me without cause.
For they do not speak peace.
But against those who are quiet in the land, they devise words of deceit.
They open wide their mouths against me.
They say, aha, aha, our eyes have seen it.
You have seen, O Lord.
Be not silent.
O Lord, be not far from me.
Awake and rouse yourself for my vindication.
For my cause, my God and my Lord.
Vindicate me, O Lord, my God.
According to your righteousness.
And let them not rejoice over me.
Let them not say in their hearts, aha, our heart's desire.
Let them not say we have swallowed him up.
Let them be put to shame and disappointed altogether who rejoice at my calamity.
Let them be clothed with shame and dishonor who magnify themselves against me.
Let those who delight in my righteousness shout for joy and be glad.
And say evermore, great is the Lord who delights in the welfare of his servant.
Then my tongue shall tell of your righteousness and of your praise all the day long.
Amen.
Well, I want to begin with a statement that may very well blow your mind.
You ready?
Here it is.
Life is hard.
You didn't know that, did you?
It's hard, isn't it?
Of course, not all of it is hard.
Despite what the Eeyores in your life may suggest, God actually does great good for us.
He gives us tremendous joy and opportunities for rejoicing even in the midst of difficult times.
But our time in this world is routinely plagued by difficulties of all sorts.
One kind of hardship is especially difficult, however.
And that's when other people are actively against you.
Sometimes we bring that upon ourselves.
It's the result of our own sin or our own misgivings or our own treatment of others.
And as the science has taught us, with every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.
And when we treat others poorly, we should expect to be treated poorly in return.
And that certainly happens.
But it's not always that way, is it?
There may also be moments when enemies seek your demise without a just cause.
Not because you've done something wrong, not because you're deserving, but perhaps simply because they don't like you.
They don't like what you've done.
They don't appreciate your righteousness.
They don't appreciate your decisions.
They are intent on seeking your destruction.
The scriptures warn us that this could actually be a regular experience, regular occurrence in the lives of believers.
And it's hard.
It's devastating in many cases.
In Psalm 35, David is writing from that kind of circumstance.
Enemies are pursuing him.
Companions have betrayed him.
Rivals are conspiring against him.
And none of it, in this case, is for just cause.
In Psalm 35, David represents God's righteous king who unjustly suffers at the hands of those who do not truly fear the Lord.
And typologically, the psalm points us to Jesus, of course, who in John chapter 15 claims explicitly to be the true fulfillment of Psalm 35.
So again, we find that David writes the psalm.
Jesus fulfills the psalm so that the church may truly sing or pray the psalm.
But the nature of this one and others like it, it's actually, believe it or not, it's a little bit controversial among some Christians.
David here doesn't simply pray for defense.
He prays for destruction.
Some may group this in what they call imprecatory psalms.
I don't know if that's the best way for us to understand it.
An imprecation is to pronounce a curse.
I don't know that David himself is intending to pronounce curses here as much as he's asking God to take on that role here in his life.
But in either case, he's at least asking that God would destroy someone else.
And others look at this psalm and other psalms like it, and they say that David is just acting vindictively.
This is vengeful on his part.
This cannot square with other scriptures that teach us that we are to love our enemies and pray for them and seek to do good to them.
Which brings a point of wrestling for us, doesn't it?
That criticism calls us to question whether or not Christians should employ such psalms as this one in their own worship and prayer.
To say it simply, is it right for us to actually sing this song?
Maybe even especially in light of the New Testament, New Covenant gospel of Jesus that has been revealed in a way that was not revealed to David.
Does that mean that it would be inappropriate actually for us to sing this one?
Can we actually pray for God to judge our enemies without simultaneously violating Jesus' commands to love our enemies?
And we need to wrestle with that.
Now I want to suggest a few things in relation to that question.
One is this.
Nothing here suggests that David would be upset or discouraged if his enemies repented and received God's mercy instead of God's judgment.
And we need to notice that.
In David's mind, what is being assumed here is that these are active enemies against God and against God's people.
And they continue in that state of being actively against the Lord and his purposes in the world.
Which means that it's very right for him to pray for God's justice.
To do what God must do.
And that is to deal with sin.
If God doesn't deal with sin, then God isn't truly righteous.
Which means that we need to pay attention to what exactly is David referring to.
Is this a penitent people and he just refuses to accept that the Lord would forgive them?
Or are these enemies of God and he's crying out for God to act in judgment against his own enemies in order that he might fulfill his covenant?
And I think that's what he's doing.
I think that's what all the Psalms like this are doing.
James Johnson is helpful on this.
He gives a few reasons why we don't need to quickly dismiss Psalms like this one.
First, he says, we know that David was not a vindictive man.
If you've read anything of David's life in the scriptures, you know that over and over and over and over again,
people who were actively seeking to take his life, he showed tremendous mercy.
On multiple occasions, he refused to take Saul's life.
He wept at the death of his own son who was pursuing him and trying to kill him.
Others who had betrayed him and turned to follow Absalom and his betrayal who lived.
First, David allowed them to continue to live and even be in Jerusalem.
He extended tremendous mercy.
It is not in general right for us to look at David's life and say that he was a vengeful man or a vindictive man.
Therefore, we shouldn't look at his Psalms and say, well, this is just evidence of a vindictive heart.
That just doesn't match up with what we know to be true of his life.
Second, David always asked for God to avenge him.
He never asked for God to strengthen him to take vengeance for himself.
And I think that's an important note for us to consider.
David prays again and again that God in his divine righteousness and holiness would look on his situation
and that he would do what is right according to his righteousness, according to what he knows is true.
He asked for God to judge his enemies, but he asked for God to do that according to his own wisdom.
He entrusts that role to the Lord.
He doesn't take it upon himself.
Which means there's a huge difference between being vindictive and asking for vindication.
Third thing James Johnston points out that I think is helpful is that David was writing here under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
This is God's word.
And we need to accept it as God's word.
Which means we cannot dismiss it.
It cannot be wrong.
It cannot be misleading in any way.
We must stay faithful to it because it is what God has given to us.
And then there's a final note.
And this one is really important.
We may not always think about this one, but this one is really important.
And that is that David wrote as God's chosen king.
He prayed as God's chosen servant.
And that means that the circumstances that David was in and how they would turn out reflect on God's covenant faithfulness.
In other words, if David's enemies overcome him, it's not just an indictment on David as being weak or a failure or sinful in some way.
It's an indictment on the God who chose him and made a covenant with him for not being faithful to that covenant.
There is far more at stake in David's life than what we often imagine.
It's not ultimately about David.
It's about the Lord and whether or not he's truly faithful.
Says Christopher Ashe in relationship to this,
He must pray against them because if they succeed, God's king will be defeated.
And all God's purposes of grace and kindness in a broken world will be frustrated.
This is not a desire for personal revenge.
It is a yearning that justice will prevail in the universe.
And of course, when Christopher Ashe writes that, he's got one hand holding on to David, looking at David's specific circumstance.
And he's got the other hand and he's looking at Jesus and he's looking at the cross, the greater David who ultimately prays this prayer.
God must come to his aid or else God is not faithful and we have no hope.
Now, with all of that in mind, I want to show you how Psalm 35 actually teaches us to pray when enemies surround us.
I want to say that not only are we to look at David and say this was right for David to pray.
I want to suggest to you today that it is right and it is good for you to pray for justice in your own life.
So long as the justice you pray for is colored by and influenced by your understanding of the gospel.
That is that God must judge sin and I want God to be just either by judging my enemies who refuse to repent or by judging Christ in their place when they do repent.
Okay.
It's right for you always to pray for God's justice.
And this Psalm helps us know how to do that well.
It actually contains three different prayers.
And through the three prayers, we see a threefold pattern for prayer that emerges.
If you like to keep notes, you'll probably want to write this down.
Here's the pattern.
We always see a protest.
That is, David pours out his heart to the Lord in complaint.
He underscores what the specifics of the situation are.
And he gives his protest to the Lord.
He issues his complaint to the Lord, which is to say that when you're in such circumstances and you are coming to the Lord in prayer,
it is okay to protest, not protest God, not to complain against him as if he's unjust, but it's okay to say, Lord, I've been wronged.
It's okay.
Do that.
David shows us how.
Second, there's always a plea, right?
A plea.
That is, David prays for God to intervene, to not be silent, to arouse himself from sleep and act on his behalf,
which means that in such circumstances, not only are we to bring our complaints to the Lord, but we are to lean on him for help.
We are to beg him for his own intervention according to his own will and wisdom.
But then there's a third piece.
You may not think about this, but it's important.
The third piece of the pattern is that there's always a praise.
Always.
It's always at the end.
Before there's a deliverance, before we know the end, there is always a praise.
That is, David promises to worship the Lord in his life and with his life.
And this is how we should pray, and we should do so in faith because God has faithfully delivered our king.
Let's just work through the prayers one by one.
Prayer number one is in the first ten verses.
Let's just read it again.
Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me.
Fight against those who fight against me.
Take hold of shield and buckler.
Rise for my help.
This is a battle scene.
Draw the spear and javelin against my pursuers.
This is interesting.
Say to my soul, Lord, I am your salvation.
Let them be put to shame and dishonor who seek after my life.
Let them be turned back and disappointed who devise evil against me.
That is, frustrate their plans.
Let them be like chaff before the wind with the angel of the Lord driving them away.
I love the picture there.
We're in the dry season, aren't we?
And whenever the one neighbor gets out and he's barely got any grass but he mows it anyways,
what is it that constantly is flying up in the air?
It's all of the debris from the dead grass, the dirt.
It's all mingled together, right?
And where does it go?
Everywhere, right?
It picks up on the wind.
It's blown everywhere.
That's what David is praying for here essentially.
That the chaff, the wheat, that dead part, that worthless shale,
that God would drive his enemies out like the wind drives away that dust and debris in the dryness.
Let their way be dark and slippery with the angel of the Lord pursuing them.
For without cause they hid their net from me.
Without cause they dug a pit for my life.
Let destruction come upon him when he does not know it.
Let the net that he hid ensnare him.
Let him fall into it to his destruction.
And then my soul will rejoice in the Lord exulting in his salvation.
All my bones shall say, O Lord, who is like you?
Delivering the poor who in this case is not poor as in they have nothing.
David considers himself to be the poor in this situation.
That is poor in spirit.
He is a victim in this case.
God delivers the victim from him who is too strong.
The poor and needy from him who robs him.
In this case, attempts to rob him of his life.
I think we can summarize this prayer this way.
Lord, defend me from pursuing enemies so that my soul will rejoice in you.
Defend me from enemies that pursue me so that my soul might rejoice in you.
This situation is clear from the start.
Enemies are pursuing David.
They're fighting against him as if in battle.
That's the picture.
It's an army that's come against him.
They're actively trying to kill him.
They're devising evil against him in order that they may take his life.
But the complaint isn't justified plainly until verse 7.
Where David finally protests that the enemy is scheming against him and they have no reason to.
He's done nothing to them.
He's done no wrong to deserve it.
He is absolutely righteous in this case.
It would be one thing if David had broken covenant with God.
It would be one thing if David had sinned in such a way as to demand his death.
But no such thing has occurred in this instance.
The enemy pursues him despite his righteousness.
The enemy pursues him maybe because of his righteousness.
And I want you to notice that in this prayer and through the whole psalm,
David never asked God for mercy.
We see that routinely in David's prayers.
He does not ask for mercy anywhere in this psalm.
He asks for justice in this psalm.
Showing that he understands himself, at least in this case, to be truly righteous.
That's really important that we notice that.
He doesn't pray as a guilty one.
He prays as God's righteous one.
He doesn't ask for God to forgive him.
He asks for God to avenge him, to vindicate him, to defend him.
And of course, we understand that at the end of the day, David wasn't truly righteous.
He had all kinds of sin in his life.
But the prayer makes us think that if God is concerned to give justice to a sinner like David when he acts righteously,
what would God do if there was one who is not actually a sinner in any way?
What does justice look like for that one?
What must it mean if there is a truly righteous one who is being threatened?
What does it look like for God to be just then?
Now, if you're living faithfully before God, you're going to have to be prepared for enemies who will seek your hurt in spite of your righteousness.
And as we understand the scriptures and what even Jesus has warned us about himself,
we understand that we should expect that there will be enemies who seek our destruction because of our righteousness.
And I just want you to see here that God invites you to make your complaint known to him in those situations.
That it's okay to pray for justice.
That it's okay to pray that God would defend you.
That's what David does.
His plea is that God would defend him from such enemies.
But strikingly, he doesn't ask God to strengthen him for the fight.
He asks that God would fight in his place.
Do you see that?
Look at the beginning.
You contend, O Lord, with them.
You fight against them, Lord.
You take hold of your armor, shield, and buckler.
You draw the spear and javelin.
You let them be put to shame.
You turn them back.
He's seeking the angel of the Lord to drive them away.
The angel of the Lord to pursue them.
He doesn't ask for God to give him superhuman strength.
He asks for God to do all the fighting for him.
Oh, what faith is that?
And then he asks for comfort.
Isn't that what we need in such situations?
We need someone who will fight for us.
And we need someone who will comfort us in that.
Someone who will say, I am your salvation.
I'll take care of it.
David seeks for the Lord to give him such assurance.
And this is the plea of the righteous who set all their hope on God's faithfulness.
And then the promise of praise.
It comes in verses 9 and 10, which isn't a bribe.
It's not that David is saying, if you will do this for me, then I will do this for you.
No, it's a commitment.
He's consecrating himself to worship.
He won't grow haughty in any success.
He will rejoice in God alone.
He will give praise to the one who defends the poor and needy from their abusers.
This is the unabashed praise of anyone who has found salvation in God's faithfulness.
This is indicative of the praise we should give day by day, Sunday by Sunday when we gather together, recognizing that God alone is our salvation.
That's prayer number one.
We get to prayer number two in verses 11 to 18.
And it takes on a little bit of a different shape now.
The circumstance changes somewhat.
Verse 11, malicious witnesses rise up.
They ask me of things I don't know about.
They repay me evil for good.
My soul is bereft.
It's grieved.
Because when they were sick, I wore sackcloth.
I grieved for them.
I afflicted myself with fasting and prayer.
I prayed with my head bowed on my chest.
I went about as though I grieved for a friend or brother or one who laments his own mother.
I bowed down in mourning for them.
But now at my stumbling, they rejoice.
They gather together against me wretches that I don't even know have been brought together.
They're tearing at me without ceasing.
As profane mockers at a feast, there's a public gnashing at me with their teeth.
How long, O Lord, will you look on?
Rescue me, David prays.
And I will thank you in the great congregation.
If we summarize the first prayer as,
Defend me against pursuing enemies that my soul may rejoice in you.
We might summarize this prayer as,
Rescue me from the betrayal of friends so that I might thank you before all your people.
Rescue me from the betrayal of friends so that I might thank you before all of your people.
I'm currently reading through Ron Chernow's prize-winning biography on George Washington.
I don't know why, but the girls don't understand it.
Maybe it's just that I'm feeling patriotic at 250 years.
But if you haven't read it, it's so good and I would recommend it to you.
It might take you about three years to get through it, but it's very good.
And of course, as you know, Washington was assigned the duty to lead the Continental Armies,
which were full of amateur soldiers, militiamen, farmers, teenagers, as young as 14 years old,
against the formidable armies, professional armies of Britain and the Hessians.
He was given an impossible task.
In fact, if you look back and you consider the circumstances
and you even read through the way that the circumstances unfolded,
it's kind of amazing to think that the United States of America even exists today,
that it was even possible for them to win.
He fought an amazing army.
Britain was fierce and they were good.
And he led through significant defeats.
He was actually quite a poor tactician and he didn't have many victories as far as the battlefield was concerned.
But even more than that, he fought a different kind of enemy.
There was the enemies that he understood to be the armies that were against him.
There was a different kind of enemy and that was starvation, cold.
Spending summers with his army in Valley Forge in Morristown, New Jersey, they had no clothes.
They had no food.
Many of them were dying from disease.
They were dying from starvation because the people that they were given to defend
refused to actually support them with the provisions necessary to have a healthy army.
So he's got Britain on one hand.
He's got just the elements on the other hand.
But I was somewhat surprised to learn that he had a completely different army or enemy that he was constantly fighting against.
And that was traitors within his own ranks.
Of course, we understand the extreme versions of this.
Men like Benedict Arnold, we all are familiar with that.
Washington had something completely different than that that was taking place around him.
In his inner circle of generals, they were constantly, throughout the war, constantly conspiring against him
in order that they might oust him from the Continental Army, not because he was a poor leader,
but because they wanted the glory for themselves.
Over and over again, he intercepted correspondences between his own closest generals
who were conspiring to find a way to disregard his commands and make him look bad so the Continental Congress would actually dismiss him
and they could take his place.
And the whole episode just reminds us that you can always know who your enemy is on the outside,
but you can't always know who is really your friend on the inside.
And that's where David is here.
We learn in this second prayer that David's enemy wasn't actually a distant army.
It was a dear friend.
Those he treated as his own family rose up against him to repay the good he had done for them with evil.
Those he thought were companions rejoiced when he failed, when he was down,
and even recruited others to turn against him.
Malicious in spirit, they tried to trap him.
They set traps.
They tried to confuse him.
They asked him about things that he doesn't even know about
in order that they might make him look bad.
And what surely began as secret whispers in dark corners
ended in public mockery and dissent by mobs of people that he didn't even know.
It's hard to have an enemy.
It's devastating to experience betrayal.
And you know that.
Because every one of us have probably experienced that in some way.
Those who are supposed to be our friends.
Closest family members.
Those in our inner circle, we discover,
are actually against us and they're working against us
and they're trying to recruit others to work against us.
Such was the experience of our Savior.
How can we not read this particular prayer
and see all that happened leading up to the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus?
Who came into his own and his own would not receive him.
The ones who should have led the people to Jesus were actually envious of him.
They attempted to trap him in his words.
You read through the Gospels, you see all those times
that the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the others,
they came and they tried to trick him with questions.
They tried to catch him in some kind of thing
so that they could turn to the people and point and say,
see, he's not who you think he is.
Constantly trying to trap him.
They should have been leading others to him, but they wouldn't.
They sought to destroy him eventually.
Why?
Because they were envious of him.
Fundamentally, it was envy.
One of his closest companions
betrayed him to the murderous mom
for some money.
Jesus knew what this was.
Jesus fulfills this
in its ultimate sense.
He hangs on a cross
while people who do not even know him
walk by and they
wag their heads and they gnash at him with their teeth,
the Gospels say.
David's plea is that God would rescue him
from such betrayal that he would
no longer look silently on
as the schemers plot their treachery.
And his promise
is to give thanks to God
not in the privacy of his heart, notice,
but actually amid the gathered congregation
of true worshipers
showing us that our salvation
is always personal.
It should never be private.
He says,
Lord, rescue me
and among all your people
I will give you thanks
and glory.
Well, then we get to prayer number three
and it changes slightly again.
Verse 19,
let not those rejoice over me
who are wrongfully my foes.
Let not those wink the eye
who hate me without cause.
For they do not speak peace,
but against those who are quiet in the land
they devise words of deceit.
They open wide their mouths against me.
They say,
aha, aha,
our eyes have seen it.
You have seen,
oh Lord.
Do not be silent.
Oh Lord,
do not be far from me.
Awake and rouse yourself
for my vindication.
For my cause,
my God and my Lord.
Vindicate me,
oh Lord,
my God,
according to your righteousness.
Let them not rejoice over me.
Let them not say in their hearts,
aha,
our heart's desire.
Let them not say,
we have swallowed him up,
as in death.
But let them be put to shame
and disappointed altogether
who rejoice at my calamity.
Let them be clothed with shame
and dishonor
who magnify themselves
against me.
This final prayer,
we might summarize it this way.
Vindicate me
from conspiring rivals
so that all of your people
may tell of your righteousness.
Vindicate me
from those who conspire against me
so that everyone
may then see
that you are righteous,
God.
We find here
that more than David's life
is at stake.
Truth itself
is at stake here.
More profound
than a prayer
for deliverance.
This is a plea
for vindication.
Rivals have
misrepresented him.
They've lied about the king
so that his life
may be taken without cause.
They're accusing him,
saying,
hey, we've seen him do this
and we've heard him say this.
He's worthy of this death.
All of it lies.
All of it misconstrued.
And God is here
called upon
to expose
the liars,
to make the truth known
by supernatural
vindication.
A kind of divine
vindication
that cannot be confused.
It cannot be ignored
and it cannot be denied.
He's asking for
an ultimate
vindication,
a revealing
of truth
that has been so marred
by his enemies.
And the truth
that is at stake here
is twofold.
On one hand,
it's the truth
of his own innocence.
That he has not
actually done anything
that was worthy
of death.
But the second thing
that is at stake
is the truth
of God's faithfulness.
That God will actually
fulfill his covenant
to his chosen king.
If God's righteous one
succumbs to his enemies,
then God cannot be faithful.
He must intervene
for his own glory
and for the good
of his chosen one.
And of course,
this vindication
that hints
at resurrection,
doesn't it?
Only through resurrection
can this true form
of vindication
take place
and God's faithfulness
truly be known.
And that's for everyone.
David cannot truly
be vindicated
in the way
that he's asking
unless he's raised.
Jesus is not vindicated
unless he's raised.
You and I
are not vindicated
in the righteousness
that has been imputed
to us
unless we are raised.
What's at stake here
is far more
than a protection
of an earthly life.
When we pray
for vindication,
yes,
we're praying
that God would expose
the liars
who have come against us,
but we're praying
more for that
as Christians.
When we pray
for vindication,
we're praying
with hearts
that are set
on a future reality,
something that we may
not actually experience
in this life
that kind of vindication,
but we know
we will experience
in time.
And through that resurrection,
the truth will no longer
be able to be denied
by anyone.
It will be clear.
Now, what's interesting
about the final praise
is that it includes
all of God's people
who trust
in the king's righteousness.
Look at verses 27 and 28.
In this vindication,
David says,
let those who delight
in my righteousness,
this is the king speaking,
they delight in my innocence,
my righteousness,
let them shout for joy,
let them be glad,
let them say,
great is the Lord.
And why is he great?
Because he delights
in the welfare
of his chosen one,
of his servant,
of his Messiah,
of his Christ.
Oh, this is so good.
David says,
vindicate your servant
so that all of those
who know I'm righteous
and who are trusting
in my righteousness
may then turn and say,
God, you are great
because you love your Messiah,
because you love your king,
because you have been faithful
to your promise.
It's amazing.
We sing great is the Lord
not only because God
is powerful
to rescue his servant,
but because he is faithful
to rescue his servant.
And we all thus praise God
for his righteousness,
the righteousness of our king
and the righteousness
of the father
to vindicate him.
because his vindication
means ours.
Again, says Christopher Ashe,
what God does for his Messiah,
he now does
through his Messiah
for all who will come
to him for salvation.
Every man or woman
in Christ
here in this psalm
echoes Christ's joy
of resurrection
and deliverance
and salvation.
It's amazing.
So should we pray
Psalm 35?
Absolutely we should pray
Psalm 35.
We sing at first
to rejoice in Christ,
but I think we can also
follow its pattern
when we're treated
with contempt
like our king.
God invites us
to protest
the injustices.
He invites us
to plead
for his intervention.
He wants us
to praise him
for the salvation
that he provides.
And ultimately
to pray the prayer here
is to express faith
in God's faithfulness
and in his justice
so that when enemies
surround,
we can obey
Christ's commands
to love them
while also praying
for God
to act against
those who are
finally impenitent
and continue
as his enemy.
And this is how
the Bible teaches us
to pray in such circumstances.
God's people
can rejoice
in his mercy
and in his justice.
But Psalm 35
obviously is more
than a model prayer.
If all we take
out of this
is a pattern
to pray ourselves
when people
are mistreating us,
then we've missed
the most important
thing here.
Psalm 35
is ultimately
about Jesus.
And we know it
because Jesus
said so.
I want to close
by asking you
to turn to John 15.
The Gospel of John
chapter 15.
In verses 22
to 25,
Jesus speaks
of himself
as the truly
righteous king
and then claims
explicitly
to be the fulfillment
of Psalm 35.
Look at verse 22.
Verse 22.
If I had not come
and spoken to them,
that is those
who hate me
and are trying
to take my life,
they would not
have been guilty
of sin.
But now they have
no excuse
for their sin.
Why?
Because he hasn't
done anything.
Whoever hates me
hates my father also.
If I had not done
among them
the works
that no one else did,
they would not
be guilty of sin.
But now they have
seen and hated
both me
and my father.
So Jesus is
building a case
there for being
the righteous king
sent by the father
and has proven
that in mighty
works and deeds
as he's lived out
before these enemies.
And then verse 25,
he quotes
Psalm 35.
But the word
that is written
in their law
must be fulfilled.
They hated me
without a cause.
And that's a direct
quote from Psalm 35.
Jesus here is saying,
I'm that righteous king,
I've come to fulfill
what David was on about
way back then.
But I want you to notice
the context of this.
This is helpful for us.
Look back at verse 18.
Why is Jesus
even saying this?
Look.
If the world
hates you,
know that it hated me
before it hated you.
If you were of the world,
the world would love you
as its own,
but because you're not
of the world,
but I choose you
out of the world,
therefore the world
hates you.
Remember the word
I said to you,
a servant is not
greater than his master.
And if they persecuted me,
they will also persecute you.
If they kept my word,
they will also keep yours.
But all these things
they will do to you
on account of my name,
because they do not
know him who sent me.
Okay,
why is that important?
Because we can look
at Psalm 35
and understand
that Jesus is ultimately
the fulfillment
of what's happening there.
But then we can also
look and see,
but that was actually
David's true experience
as well.
And then we get here
when Jesus is quoting it
and he's quoting it
in the context
of telling his disciples
that what they're going
to do to him,
they should also expect
to be done to them.
Which means that yes,
Jesus is the fulfillment,
but even he says that
my enemies
are going to hate you too.
And they're going
to conspire against you too.
And they're going
to seek your destruction too.
And some of them
may even come
from within your own family
or your church
or your friends
or those who you think
now are your companions.
You can go to Matthew 10
to see Jesus flesh that out
in greater detail.
So we look at this
and we say,
okay,
because our king
experienced this,
we should expect
the same kind of treatment
from his enemies.
which helps us
have context
for why we would even
need to pray Psalm 35 ourselves.
But that's not the end.
There's something else.
Look at verse 26
instead of 27.
But when the helper comes,
that's the Holy Spirit,
whom I will send to you
from the Father,
the Spirit of truth
who proceeds from the Father,
he will bear witness
about me
and you will also
bear witness about me
because you've been with me
from the beginning.
Now I want you to think
of this promise
in relationship
to what David
is describing
in Psalm 35.
In each case,
the judgment
of his enemies
is without cause.
They are bearing
a false witness
against the king.
Here Jesus says,
I've come to fulfill that
and there is one
who will give
a true witness
in this vindication.
Begins with resurrection.
But then he promises
that just as we will receive
the same treatment
from the world,
we will receive
the same deliverance
and he will use us
to then be his witnesses
of his own vindication.
So we can look
at what Jesus says
here in John 15
and say,
okay,
we will experience
the hardships
that Jesus experienced
but we'll also receive
the promises
that Jesus received.
And we go back
to that statement
Christopher Ash made.
What the Father did
for his Messiah,
he now does
through his Messiah.
God sends us
his Spirit.
You're reading
through Acts
right now,
aren't you?
What are you seeing
in Acts?
What is their witnesses?
What does their witness
look like?
The power of the Spirit
at work in their lives
as they hope
for the resurrection
and they preach
the resurrection
of Jesus Christ
from the dead.
So they say all that
to say that because
the Father did this
for Jesus,
we can trust
that he will do it
for us.
So don't be discouraged
when enemies surround.
Your vindication
has already been
secured in Christ.
And you are a witness
of that.
And we want to be faithful
of that witness.
Let's pray together.
.