Psalm 35. Hopefully you all noticed in Matthew 26 that it tells us that Jesus said the same words a third time. He prayed in Gethsemane the same prayer three times in a row. That's exactly what happens in this psalm. He prays the same prayer three times in a row. Three different versions of God fight my enemies and I will respond with joy and praise. A Psalm of David. Plead my cause, O Lord, with those who strive with me. Fight against those who fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler and stand up for my help. Also draw out the spear and stop those who pursue me. Say to my soul, I am your salvation. Let those be put to shame and brought to dishonor who seek after my life. Let those be turned back and brought to confusion who plot my hurt. Let them be like chaff before the wind and let the angel of the Lord chase them. Let their way be dark and slippery and let the angel of the Lord pursue them. For without cause they have hidden their net for me in a pit which they have dug without cause for my life. Let destruction come upon him unexpectedly, and let his net that he has hidden catch himself. Into that very destruction let him fall, and my soul shall be joyful in the Lord. It shall rejoice in his salvation. All my bones shall say, Lord, who is like you? Delivering the poor from him who is too strong from him. Yes, the poor and needy from him who plunders him. Fierce witnesses rise up. They ask me things that I do not know. They reward me evil for good to the sorrow of my soul. But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth. I humbled myself with fasting and my prayer would return to my own heart. I paced about as though he were my friend or brother. I bowed down heavily as one who mourns for his mother, but in my adversity they rejoiced and gathered together. Attackers gathered against me and I did not know it. They tore at me and did not cease with ungodly mockers at feasts. They gnashed at me with their teeth. Lord, how long will you look on? Rescue me from their destructions, my precious life from the lions. I will give you thanks in the great congregation. I will praise you among many people. Let them not rejoice over me who are wrongfully my enemies. nor let them wink with the eye who hate me without a cause. For they do not speak peace, but they devise deceitful matters against those who are quiet in the land. They also opened their mouth wide against me and said, Aha! Aha! Our eyes have seen it. This you have seen, O Lord. Do not keep silence. O Lord, do not be far from me. Stir up yourself and awake to my vindication, to 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, ah, so we would have it. Let them not say, we have swallowed him up. Let them be ashamed and brought to mutual confusion who rejoice at my hurt. Let them be clothed with shame and dishonor who magnify themselves against me. Let them shout for joy and be glad who favor my righteous cause. And let them say continually, let the Lord be magnified, who has pleasure in the prosperity of his servant. And my tongue shall speak of your righteousness and of your praise all the day long. Let's pray. Father, write these words on our hearts. We thank you that your son came through his encounter with the witnesses of violence. That you delivered him from the tomb. Help us to learn to pray against our enemies and to seek your help in fighting them as he did. and help us also learn to love our enemies as He did and does. Father, we tend to think it's one or the other. Your Son shows us both. Pour Your Spirit upon me that I might speak worthily of what is written in Your Word. Help us all to listen carefully and to be transformed by what we hear. We pray in the name of Jesus our Lord and Savior. Amen. The king prayed three times, saying the same words. The Lord prayed three times in Gethsemane, saying the same words. Each time saying, God, fight my enemies. And when you do, I will praise you. Rescue my soul, and I'll praise you. Vindicate me, my tongue will laud you. The king, for the joy which is set before him, prays against his enemies in the psalm before us. But he also shows us how to love our enemies. He's engaged in mortal combat. That's how the psalm opens. Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me. Fight against those who fight against me. He's in the middle of a massive battle. Enemies are attacking and surrounding him. And in this situation, as busy as he is, apparently, with his sword and his spear, he prays. He calls to God for help. He does not attempt to stand against the world, flesh, and devil unaided, and neither should we. Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me." Physical battle in this psalm and throughout the Bible is a metaphor for all kinds of conflict. It could be a physical battle, but typically it's more of a moral, spiritual battle. Regardless, the king's request here, if you notice, is not let them be physically disabled. He prays for them to be morally vanquished. Verse 4, let them be put to shame and brought to dishonor who seek my life. He wants the enemies to be shown up as holding the moral low ground. The relief he seeks is that the attackers would be shown to be wrong. that they're the immoral ones. They're the ones who want the evil thing. And that he would be shown as the one whom God honors. Show me as your favored one. Show me as the one who is doing what's right. They want his life. They want his hurt. And he prays Lord, deliver me from that. Shame and dishonor them. Because he prays, catch them exactly the way they wanted to catch me, we can ask this question. How does the world, the flesh, the devil, how do they seek to dishonor and shame us? How do they seek to do it to the king? Well, we just read it in Matthew 26, this trial kangaroo court as that the judges, the Sanhedrin, are trying to find any evidence that would suggest that Jesus is worthy of death. And they bring forward a whole parade of false witnesses, none of whom can testify to the same crime. Trying to shame and dishonor him and to seek his life by proving in this law court that he did something worthy of death. And the world, of course, continues to do that to Christians at times when a particular believer is arrested and put on trial for his life. But in a more general sense, the world tempts us to sin by persecution and by offering stuff, things we love. The flesh tempts us to sin by being interested in those things that the world offers. And the devil lies to us. All three enemies are trying to get us to reject God's saving rule over us. One of the major ways they do it is by the sort of temptation the king just mentioned, discrediting us, forcing God's people onto the moral low ground. They attack by saying, look, to obey God in this way is morally wrong, shameful, dishonorable. The upright person would do it the world's way. us in terms of an attack, a propaganda attack, like critical race theory. The world flesh and the devil cooperate to say being white is bad and shameful because black Americans are hurting. And then they make the next move. Therefore, all white people are responsible for the sufferings of all black people. And therefore, you white person should be shamed, dishonored, and humiliated for being white. You didn't relieve black suffering immediately. Or in a different sense, the world with these in vitro fertilization fertility technologies is on the very cusp of saying responsible parents are the ones who have their embryos genetically checked. Responsible parents are the ones who only allow genetically superior children to be born. And if you say otherwise, Christian, you're occupying the moral low ground. You want more human suffering. You want birth defects. You want subpar kids. Something's wrong with you. You're immoral. This is what the world is doing. Putting to shame and bringing to dishonor the king and those who serve him by changing the moral goalposts and then saying, those who follow God's way here, they're just immoral. They're shameful. It's sad to see people who are so morally confused as to think that whatever baby God sends to them is a good baby. No, no, no. Those people need to get with the program and recognize that every baby needs to be tested and only the good babies should be born. That's how the world speaks. That's how the devil speaks. That's how, and they put to shame and dishonor, the Lord's anointed, the king, and his people. We need to know scripture and biblical ethics as well as the king does. Right, it's true, a black American might have been attacked by a white American. But if that white American was not you, it's not your fault. Your baby may have been born with a genetic defect. That's a test of your faith. But it is not your fault. You are not in sin because your baby has a genetic defect. The king will not be put to shame. He refuses to be put to shame by these enemies because he has done nothing wrong. That's why he calls on the angel of the Lord to protect him, to fight on his behalf, to discredit and destroy his enemies. He describes the angel of the Lord blowing them away like the chaff which the wind drives away from Psalm 1. He even talks about the angel of the Lord going on the offensive, chasing them on a dark and icy path. We all know that trying to walk on ice is difficult in daytime. Trying to do it in the dark, when you're being chased and have to go fast, is impossible. You will fall, and as Psalm 36 verse 12 says, you will not be able to get up. That's the truth about the evildoers. They will fall and be unable to rise. That's a slander, of course, that they recycle against the king, as we read in Psalm 41. He'll never get off that sickbed. That's what they say. The Word of God says differently. The king has done nothing wrong. He's protected by the angel of the Lord. And his bones and his soul will respond in praise when God acts to protect from the enemies. Even before God destroys our enemies, we need to focus on the joy set before us. That's what the king does. My soul shall be joyful. It shall rejoice. He doesn't say he's there yet. He says, I'm getting there. When the enemies are cut down, I will rejoice in the Lord. My bones will say, Lord, who is like you? We know that our gut is very sensitive to feelings. Whether you're excited or worried, you can often feel it in your belly area. The king takes this several steps further and says, it's not just your belly, your soft, sensitive part that will be feeling this way. It's your bones. You will be so ecstatic, I will be so ecstatic, that my bones will be crying out in praise to God. Who is like him? We cannot overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil. He can. And he does. The enemies are too strong for us. but the Lord is stronger than they are. The king even mentions that the enemies are robbers. The poor and needy are being rescued from the plunderer. The enemies try to take the good name of the son of God. They want to steal his reputation. They want to steal his people's reputation. God saves us from that. That's the first movement of the psalm. Now it repeats in a slightly different way. Verses 11 to 18. Fierce witnesses rise up. The king returns a second time saying the same words, and this time he mentions the fierce witnesses. Now, before, many of the lies were directed towards confusing his conscience, shaming him for serving God. Now the lies are more specifically about his character and reputation. The first movement they were lying to him. Now in the second part they're lying about him. What we call slander. The Hebrew word translated fierce in the New King James or malicious in other versions. These fierce witnesses, it's a word you all know. This word is hamas. It's a word familiar to all of us because it's the name of a terrorist organization. It's a word that means simply violence. Hamas witnesses rise up. Lies are a form of violence. In fact, by swearing to falsehood in a court of law, you can do damage far beyond what you could do in hand-to-hand literally violent combat. The king says, I'm up against these false witnesses, these Hamas witnesses who stand up and ask me things I know nothing about. I was talking to two old guys at the rec center a few weeks ago and it turned out that they had both sued the federal government in one way or another. One was still in the middle of his suit And one of them said, what's disturbed me the most about this suit is the way that federal employees will just lie to you. And the other said, yeah, all the time. A typical American bureaucrat, I dare say, would eschew violence so unprofessionally. But has no problem, it would seem, based on this testimony of two witnesses going to a court of law and swearing to falsehoods. just like these Hamas witnesses that our Lord faced. Whether you're dealing with Hamas bureaucrats or Hamas colleagues or even Hamas church people, people who ought to know better, the king understands. He's been there. The testimony given at his trial was, he said he'll rebuild the temple in three days. That's the thing about these kinds of violent witnesses. They have no regard for the intrinsic probability of the lie. And if that were really the testimony on which Jesus was convicted, the court would have to declare him not guilty by reason of insanity. A man looks at a building project that's been happening for 55 years and says, I could do that in three days. And the court says, oh, blasphemy, blasphemy, let's kill him. instead of, this poor guy needs a little help. The intrinsic probability of the lie means nothing to the Hamas witness. Their goal is to attack and harm. The lie is useful if it causes pain. That's all they're trying to do. Fierce witnesses rise up. They ask me things I know nothing about. That terror ignorance these people will get me unless I can answer their questions and I can't answer their questions I don't know what they're talking about we saw in the Matthew 27 26 passage they were beating him where he couldn't see and then saying who was it who struck you you're supposed to know everything tell us who's beating you asking questions to which he does not know the answer. The lies cause pain. And of course, the more outrageous the lie, the more pain it causes. Slander hurts for all of us. Slander hurts the most when you are completely and totally innocent, as the Lord Jesus was. He's the best of men. He's perfect in every way. And yet these lies about him attack every aspect of his moral character. Part of why he's so good is described in verses 13 and 14. When they were sick, I dressed in sackcloth. I humbled myself with prayer and fasting. I mourned like I was mourning for my own brother, my own mother. the king says. Now I think we read that and say, you what? These are bad people. These are false witnesses. These are people that the angel of the Lord needs to get with a spear through the heart. These are the chaff which the wind drives away. Why are you sad when they're sick? Shouldn't you be happy when they're sick? Shouldn't you be rejoicing? Not Jesus, he loves his enemies. He did not die for all of his enemies, but all of those for whom he died were his enemies. That's why his death was necessary in the first place. He loved his enemies by dying for them, but he also, even before dying for them, loved his enemies, as is portrayed here, by prayer and fasting for them when they were sick. That can be hard for us to wrap our minds around. How can you both be totally opposed to their vision of the world and their desire to attack and harm the Lord's anointed, but also love them enough that you mourn and weep and fast and pray for their health? He's praying for God to cut them off. Why is he now praying for God to restore them to health? The answer can only be that he sincerely loves his enemies, just as he tells us to do. And that he also wishes them shamed and dishonored by the utter destruction of their plans to harm him. It's both. If you think about other potential interpretations, they simply don't work. You can't say that These are different enemies. The first part of the psalm is about some enemies that should be destroyed, but these enemies that he's mourning for are others, perhaps elect enemies who will be saved. Because he goes on to describe them as godless mockers at a party and asks God to stop them. You can't suggest that universalism is true, that all the enemies will eventually be saved. If universalism is true, why all the prayer against the enemies in the rest of this psalm? And in the rest of the Bible? There really are enemies, and they really do need to be stopped. And of course, you can't say that the king in this psalm doesn't understand the stakes. He knows the enemies are bad, but he also just cares for them on a personal level, and so he's sad when they're sick. He understands the stakes. The whole prayer is about how they're going to destroy him unless God acts. The king sincerely loves his enemies. The king sincerely prays for God to stop them. The former president of Planned Parenthood died a few weeks ago at 67. Now perhaps you noticed the Babylon Bee ran a headline that said, clump of cells dies at 67. Brothers and sisters, there's nothing Christian about rejoicing in this woman's downfall. It's not what the king does. Look at verse 9 again. Well, verse 8. Into that destruction let him fall, and my soul shall be joyful in the Lord. He doesn't say, when the wicked falls into destruction, my soul will be joyful in his destruction. Man, that feels good to see the enemy fall in the pit. No, he says, my soul will rejoice in the Lord. The theologians following scripture have always taught that it is lawful to commit an act that will result in the death of the attacker, but that it is not lawful to desire or intend the death of the attacker. It's not that the king wants the wicked to win. That's not why he puts on sackcloth and mourns and fasts and prays for their recovery. He doesn't want them to win. But he actually does the thing to which we pay lip service. That is loving his enemies. It's almost unbelievable. But it's true. Notice that we're at the center of the psalm in verse 14. I paced about. I bowed down as one who mourns for his mother. Here in the center of the psalm, he writes the truth that he loves his enemies. Thank God that he is like this. If Jesus Christ did not love his enemies, he would never have loved you. His love for enemies challenges us, I think, far more than his prayers against them. There are certain Christians who say, well, how can you possibly pray against the enemies? Well, I think we all know how you can pray against the enemies. Why the world, the flesh, and the devil are a problem and need to be stopped. But the bigger question is how can you love your enemies? How can you be sincerely grieved when they're sick? We need to pray for the shame and dishonor of these enemies with an attitude of love toward them. That's very hard to do. In fact, it's impossible to do unless we're moved by the same spirit that rested on our king. The spirit can give us the power to love our enemies, simultaneously praying for their plans to be frustrated. That's how Jesus did it. That's how we have to do it too. He describes again how they slander and mock Him. They rejoiced. They gathered against Him. They tore at Him with their tongues. Like ungodly mockers at feasts, they gnashed at Me with their teeth. I hope none of you have ever had the dubious privilege of sitting at the table with godless mockers at a feast. I did it once. A very hair-raising experience. One of my friends who grew up in the church with me had gone to the Marine Corps, and when he returned, all of his belief in God had fallen away, and he and his godless friends invited me to his birthday party, and I went. And I was stunned by what I heard. The godlessness, the profane language, the utter lack of respect for God or man. I couldn't wait to get away. It was very disturbing. Thank God that friend has repented and returned. But in any case, the king says, the way godless jesters talk at parties, I'm the one that they talk about. They love to mock me. And of course, if you hear all the gods and Christs and Jesuses that fly out of the mouths of these people, you know exactly what he means. They slandered him. They said he was a Samaritan. They said he had a demon. They said he was delusional and thought he could rebuild the temple in three days. It hurts a lot to be slandered. Your king has been slandered more than anyone. Pray that God would put the slanderers to shame and rescue you from their sharp tongues. That the name of Christ would be honored and magnified as it should be, not slandered and torn down by godless jesters at a party. The king promises, when you do that, I will give you thanks in the great congregation and praise you among many people. The gold standard is not private worship. The gold standard is public worship. The king says, this is the most gratitude I can show you. Not to go in my closet and pray. That's not a bad thing to do. But it's even better to come and praise in the mighty throng. He returns the third time saying the same words, starting in verse 19. Don't let them rejoice over me. The regular wicked are bad enough. The joyful wicked, who think they see their plans coming to pass, they're terrifying. Don't let them wink with the eye, who hate me without a cause. He describes their evil speaking. They devise deceitful matters against those who are quiet in the land. And a clear reference to the high priest, this, aha, aha, our eyes have seen it. It's exactly what Caiaphas says. You've heard it with your own ears. We don't need any more witnesses. A total gotcha moment. Aha, he said something that we can use to throw him to the cross. When they see someone at peace, the world, the flesh, and the devil, they want to destroy that peace with their lies. In our society, this way of taking action against the righteous manifests itself as lawfare, as propaganda, as harassment, as discrimination. In Jesus' life, it can be seen in the Pharisees plotting to put him to death because he's doing too much good, teaching too much truth, healing too many people. In our day, it can be seen in arrested abortion protesters, in magazine articles warning against Christian nationalism. The wicked plots against the righteous and finds great joy in disturbing the quiet that the quiet of the land enjoy. It's not conspiracy theory. It's fact. It's written right here. What's the solution? Keep praying, this you have seen, O Lord. Do not keep silence. Stir yourself up and awake to my vindication. The mighty throng are the king's supporters who favor him. Verse 27, let them shout for joy and be glad who favor my righteous cause. Those who gather with the king in worship, in verse 18, the great congregation who give thanks with him, that's the ones who rejoice and favor his righteous cause. That's us. People who get together and celebrate the resurrection of the Son of God from the dead. People who rejoice when Jesus is vindicated. Does your tongue declare God's righteousness and praise all day long? I hope so. That may seem unrealistic, but we certainly know that it's realistic to go the other way. There are many people whose tongue grouses and complains all day long. You can't talk to him for 30 seconds without hearing another complaint. The world, the government, this, that. The king has the opposite habit. Whenever he opens his mouth, he's praising God. Whenever he talks, he's saying, marvelous are your works. and that my soul knows right well." What does your tongue do all day? Do you pray? Have you really heard the Lord say to your soul, verse 3, I am your salvation? If you have, you are able to say all day long that God is righteous and good. You are able to rejoice in His salvation. He delights in the king's prosperity. He delights in your prosperity. Make sure that you respond by delighting in Him. Let's pray. Father, we thank You that You did vindicate Your Son. That You brought Him through this calamity and out the other side into new life. Father, strengthen our tongues to declare your righteousness and your praise all day long. Help us to say, let the Lord be magnified who has pleasure in the prosperity of his servant. Send your angel to protect us from the world, the flesh, and the devil. Help us, Father, to believe only the truth, to speak only the truth, To walk in praise rather than complaining. Not to sound like godless jesters at a party. To sound like godly men and women gathered in the mighty throng to follow our King's lead in worship. We thank you for what your Son endured for us. We pray that you would give us the strength to endure whatever you have in store for us for Him. We bless you in His name, Lord. Amen.