Galatians: Introduction and 1:1-10

Galatians intro and 1:1-10

 Have you ever read a part of the Old Testament and thought, “Is this really directly relevant to me today? Do I need to apply this?” Well, it turns out that this is the big question that the letter to the Galatians deals with! 

(S) Tonight at Core we’re starting a series of sermons on the book of Galatians. This is the first of six talks we’re going to have on Paul’s letter to the Galatian churches. My job tonight is to introduce us to the letter to the Galatians, so that as we move forward into the rest of the talks we can picture the context for this letter. 

 Now I know some of you better than others, but I think I’m on firm footing to say that all of us in this room are at different stages of our walk with God, have been going to church for different lengths of time, and our Bible knowledge might be a bit different. (S) So we’re going to start with some Sunday School stuff to bring us all up to speed, then we can start on the same page.

(S) Where is Galatians in the Bible? (S) Galatians is in the New Testament. So already we know that the letter to the Galatians is going to be about (S) Jesus and his impact on our relationship with God. We know it’s going to be written during the rule of the Roman Empire about 2000 years ago.

(S) Why is it called Galatians? Because it’s written to a group of churches in an area called Galatia. (S) Here it is on a map. Why am I showing you a map? Well, there’s a couple of things that this teaches us.

 First of all, do you recognise any names on here? Rome, Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Ephesus, Colossae - all of these are cities that have letters of the Bible written to them. But Galatia isn’t a city, it’s a whole province. It has cities in it like Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe - places we read about in the book of Acts. The contents of this letter were meant to be read widely - its original audience was not just a single church or a single city. The issues that are being dealt with in this letter were a big deal for a lot of churches.

 The second big thing the map shows us is that (S) Jerusalem is here, and Galatia is here. That’s about (S) 1,200kms away to get to the closest city in Galatia, Derbe. (S) That’s like from here to Adelaide. (S) And you know those South Australians are a bit weird, yeah? You probably don’t see people from Adelaide here very often. Adelaide doesn’t come up on the local news as often as Canberra, or Sydney. 

(S) Most Galatians at this time are gentiles - which just means “not Jews”. They didn’t grow up with the Old Testament. They didn’t grow up with the food laws, or circumcision, or ritual cleansing, or the festivals, all those other Jewish things. They’ve heard about Jesus from the Apostle Paul on one of his first missionary journeys, and they’ve accepted the good news with joy! But they don’t have that Jewish background. They have the Old Testament, (S) but it’s full of foreign concepts and stories that are not familiar to them. Maybe a bit like us? We have the Old Testament, but it can seem foreign and confusing sometimes.

 The Galatians had Christians, Jewish Christians, coming from Jerusalem and telling them, (S) “Yes, this is all applicable to you. If you want to become one of God’s people, you need to follow all the 613 laws in here. You need to follow our food laws, you need to follow our rituals, you need to be circumcised. And if you don’t, then not only can we not be friends anymore; but you can’t be Christian without this. You can’t be saved without this. You can’t have a relationship with God without this.”

 When the apostle Paul hears that this is happening to one of the first places he reached with the gospel,(S) he loses it. He writes the churches this letter. And in this letter Paul is not chill about this topic, because for the early church, this was a powder keg. This issue about whether gentile Christians all needed to become Jews to be saved was a make or break issue for the early church, because it cuts to the heart of the gospel. Did Jesus’ death and resurrection save us from our sins and bring us back into relationship with God the way it’s meant to be? Did he really make a new covenant between us and God, regardless of who we are and what we’ve done? Or do we still need circumcision and sacrifices and food laws to be a part of his kingdom?

 In this letter, Paul says that gentiles - us, non-Jews - don’t need to become Jews to become God’s people. And he is passionate and forthright about that. Some of Paul’s strongest language is found in this letter, because this issue is so important. 

(S) And you might be thinking, “Okay, cool, I get to eat bacon. I don’t have to wash my hands as often.” If you’re a boy you might be thinking, “I don’t have to get the snip. What’s the big deal?” 

 You might be like the rich young ruler and say, “Okay, so I would need to follow the Ten Commandments. But all of these I have followed since I was a child. What’s the big deal?”

 You may be thinking, “Well, some of these laws actually seem pretty restrictive. I’m not sure I’d choose to follow them. But if I don’t have a choice, and that’s the price for entering God’s kingdom, then isn’t it worth it? I might have to give up some freedom, but the payoff is an eternal relationship with God. When you consider what’s at stake… What’s the big deal?”

 My brothers and sisters: it is a big deal. Because this isn’t about food. It isn’t about circumcision. It isn’t about the Ten Commandments. It isn’t about giving things up for a future eternal payoff. It’s about who God is. This is about whether God is full of grace and mercy, or he isn’t. It’s about whether we are saved by God’s grace and mercy through Jesus Christ, or we need to do other things to be saved. This is about the heart of the gospel message. And that’s a big deal.

(S) The early church dealt with this issue pretty early on. In Acts 15 we can read about how the apostles had a council in Jerusalem and talked about this issue, and came to a conclusion about how big a deal it is, and how Paul was right - we don’t need to become Jews to become Christians. But this letter to the Galatian churches is so early it’s probably even before that council happened, so Paul is having to deal with these issues himself. He’s writing this letter to set the record straight. (S) Galatians is like a six chapter zoom in on the issues that are covered more briefly in 21 verses in Acts 15, and in more length and detail in his (S) letter to the Romans.

 Paul hits two big themes in the book of Galatians, and we see them both hinted at in the first 10 verses. One theme is “Why you should listen to Paul”, and the other is “Why this attack on the gospel being about grace and mercy is wrong and how that is such a big deal”.

 He gets into it from the very beginning. Let’s go through these first 10 verses together. You may find it helpful to have your Bible open in front of you. I’ll stick it up on screen as well.

 (S)“1 Paul, an apostle—sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—”

 From the get-go Paul points out why you should listen to him. He’s an apostle - a sent one. He’s been given a mission. And he wasn’t sent on this mission by just a person or a group of people. He was sent on this mission by Jesus Christ himself, and by God who raised Jesus from the dead to affirm that everything Jesus said and did was true. 

 You might remember Paul’s pretty amazing conversion story on the road to Damascus, where Jesus appears specifically to him. You can read about it in Acts 9. This message has the authority of God stamped all over it. Paul goes into more detail about the authority of his message later in chapter 1 and chapter 2. So there’s one of Paul’s themes - why we should listen to him.

 (S)“2 and all the brothers and sisters with me,”

 He is with other Christians too though. He isn’t a lone wolf.

 (S)“To the churches in Galatia:

3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,”

 This is the standard greeting for a lot of Paul’s letters. It’s how he starts Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 2 Thessalonians, and Philemon. But here in Galatians he adds to it, because he’s got business with the Galatians.

 (S)“4 who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

And there’s Paul’s other theme: why this attack on the gospel of grace and mercy is wrong and is such a big deal. What we’re talking about here is Jesus Christ, who gave himself - he died a voluntary sacrificial death - for our sins - he has dealt with the single biggest obstacle between us and God by being able to forgive our sins - to rescue us from this present evil age - to break us free from this decaying world and its messages of selfishness, self-righteousness and self-reliance, and he give us instead the freedom to live for his Kingdom in a way we just simply couldn’t do without his forgiveness. 

 You see, this world that we live in is doomed. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some awesome things in this world: love, flowers, chocolate, kids, puppies - I don’t know what you like. There are good things. But this world is broken. We know it could be better. It’s full of hunger and pain and suffering. It’s full of drugs and family violence and mental illness. It’s full of injustice and sickness, and death. 

(S) And Jesus saves us from that. Not just so that one day we will go to be with God in a heavenly kingdom for all eternity where those things don’t exist anymore. It is that - it’s definitely that. But he also saves us so that we can live lives that express that eternal kingdom here on this earth during this present evil age. He frees us from our slavery to those evil things. Because that’s what sin is: it’s everything in our lives that separates us from God and the freedom to live out his kingdom right now. It’s the selfishness, the judging, the greed, the fear, the limitations. Jesus says, “I’m done with all of those, and you can be too. I’ll rescue you from it all. I will set you free. You just need to trust me.”

 That’s the gospel. That’s the gospel that the Galatian churches heard from Paul, that they accepted with so much joy, that changed their lives! Because that is a huge deal. It is a powerful message. And it is the truth of what Jesus said and did!

 And so when Paul hears that the Galatian churches are ditching that gospel for something else, for something weak and lame, for a rehashing of the old covenant, for Old Testament 2.0, it’s little wonder he gets worked up! 

 (S)“6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 

 Most of this letter is Paul explaining why stepping away from the gospel of grace and mercy through Jesus Christ is wrong. Anything that does that is not the true gospel, it’s not good news, it’s actually really bad for you; while the true gospel is true freedom, both now and forevermore.

 I’ll let future preachers in the series unlock all that in more detail. I don’t want to steal their thunder.

 What I want to focus on today is this passion that Paul has for the gospel, the true gospel, the good news that Jesus will mercifully save us from sin and graciously set us free to live for God right now if we just trust him to do that. 

 I hope that you all here today trust God to set you free through Jesus’ death on the cross. If you have any questions or any doubts about that at all, then talk to whoever brought you here, and if you don’t know anyone then come and talk to me. You are the person I want to talk to most in this whole building. 

 For those of us who are sure that we can be Christian through Christ’s grace and mercy alone, I want us to ask ourselves: are we passionate about making sure that the true gospel message is our focus, and that we're not getting confused by twisted versions of the gospel that are out there, or that are even in here? Is the gospel of grace and mercy so central to our belief that we view everything else through it? Or do we sometimes get distracted by sideline issues that come up and threaten to drag us off-course?

 Because let me tell you, it's easy to get sidetracked! I'm sure all of us have our hobby horses, our hot button issues, those things that we really care about and that we take seriously and that are really important to us. And sometimes those things get so important that they can start to cloud how clearly we see the true gospel of Jesus Christ. We start equating knowing the gospel with having our position on our favourite issues, and judging people who disagree with us as not really Christian. 

 I have done this on so many issues! On politics: if you're not aligned with my politics, you obviously can't be a real Christian, or if you are you're not a very good one. On theology: if you don't agree with my theological positions, you can't be a Christian, or at least not a very good one. On church governance issues! Bible translation preferences! Missionary involvement! I can be so bloody judgemental! 

 And none of us are immune from this. Maybe you’re judgemental about people who say “bloody” in a church sermon! See what I did there?

 But none of those things are the gospel. Do I still feel strongly about them? You bet. Do I still think you're wrong if you disagree with me? Probably. But if I make any of these things a threshold issue about whether or not you're a Christian, if by my words or my actions or attitudes I'm telling people that they're not really right with God until they hold my view on these things, then I am setting up obstacles between someone and their relationship with God. And setting up obstacles between us and God is literally the definition of sin. I am becoming sin to those people! I am no different from those Jews who were saying that you need to be circumcised to be a Christian! No wonder Paul gets so passionate about it - so passionate he calls down God’s curse on them! 

(S)8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! 9 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!” 

I don’t want to be under God’s curse! We need to look out for these attitudes amongst ourselves as individuals and as a church; and importantly, we also need to look out and make sure that we’re not even possibly holding out a message that might confuse people about the gospel of grace and mercy in Jesus Christ, because that is what Paul is cursing in this letter. 

 This is where it changes quite a bit from what was going on for the Galatian churches and how we apply this today. It's probably not circumcision that’s the issue these days. But in a Baptist church, is it possible that we send a message that you need to be baptised to be saved? Maybe. Is it possible in our actions or attitudes or church culture we send a message that your life needs to be this well put together before you can be saved? That you need a job, or to kick the drug habit, or look after your kids well before you can be saved? Maybe. Do we send a message that your theology has to align completely with ours, or you’ve got to read the Bible a certain way, before you can be saved? Maybe.

 And yes, there are other churches out there that might be confusing people with other messages: you’ve got to join their church specifically or you aren’t saved; you’ve got to have a specific spiritual experience or you’re not saved; you’ve got to be rich or you’re not saved. That’s on them. What I care about is the people God’s put in my path. What message are they getting from me?

(S) There is a big difference between what we need to do to become children of God - which is have faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to save us from this present evil age - and what our lives might look like afterwards. Because yes, God can help you get over a drug habit. God can help you look after your family better. God can help you to understand his Word more clearly. God can open up paths that get you more involved in ministry. God can make our lives better. And we should of course encourage one another to take those steps, to get to know God better, to join closer with God’s family here on earth, to reach out more to others with God’s love and peace. Those are great things, amazing things, that can take a long time, and may never get fully sorted out in this life.

 But joining God’s family is as easy as joining your regular family was. What did you have to do to join your family? Nothing! You were born into it, or adopted into it. You were brought into it without any work from your side. Who did all the work? Your mum! Or if you’re adopted, probably both your parents! That’s why Jesus calls it being born again! If we trust that what Jesus has done is enough to bring us into the family, without anything more, then we are in! That’s faith. That’s all it takes. And if we tell people anything else, or even confuse the message to people, we are getting in the way, and we deserve to be under God’s curse.

 This week, let’s all get out there and be passionate about the gospel - the real gospel - and let’s let it shape how we think, talk and act with other people. Let’s work on reflecting the freedom that we have from this present evil age, thanks to the death and resurrection of Jesus, and on just how easy that came to us, and just how freely it’s available to everyone around us.

 

 

 

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• An intro to doing a series

• Deep dive (allows a multi-week focus)
• Continuity (building on previous weeks; we’ll still have testimonies and one-offs)
• Overview of a whole book (rather than cherry picking)
• Expository (rather than topical)
• Six sermons in this series on Galatians
• An intro to this first series: Galatians
• Map
• Where it fits into the church’s early history
• Acts - before or after Acts 15? (I say before)
• Church make-up: mostly Gentiles
• Early church problems - people messing with the gospel and membership into God’s Church
• Galatians is often referred to as a “mini-Romans” because its focus is the centrality of the content of the gospel, but in a more summarised form than the lengthier letter to the Romans
• An intro to the gospel
• Not so much the content of the gospel - that is almost implicit in the book
• More about the result of the gospel
• Shows how important it is that we stand up for the gospel; that we should have passion for the gospel

 

So the first thing I want to say is don’t panic! We will still be having someone give a testimony once a month, so we’re not breaking with that Core tradition. On 4 August we’ll take a break from Galatians to hear a testimony of what God is doing in someone’s life right here. Then, back to Galatians.

 

Now in my long experience of attending this church for, oh, months now, I’ve noticed that we haven’t done a series of talks on a book of the Bible. But it’s a great opportunity for us together as a church community to spend a bit of time focusing on the message that God may have for us from one specific part of scripture. It allows us to take a bit of a deep dive into a whole book, to get some continuity in our talks, where we can build up our knowledge of God’s message to us together. We can see how the different things that Paul says in this letter connect together, and get a bit more of the big picture of the letter. 

 

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with preaching on specific topics and addressing things that we need to hear, and you can rest assured that in September there will be more topical sermons waiting for you. But expository preaching - that is, working through the text of a passage of scripture - can help us hear the Bible speak to us in all its richness, instead of us focusing on a single topic that we want to hear about.

 

And it gives us all more reason to come for every sermon in the next seven weeks, to make sure we don’t miss any of the series! Now if you do miss one, that’s okay: the talks will all still have their own message. You should come for every single one, but if you miss something in the middle, it’s not the end of the world. You can just read the passage and catch yourself up. In fact, in preparation for the next few weeks, something worth doing over the next week is to read the book of Galatians for yourself. It’s all of six chapters. Listening to David Suchet read the whole book of Galatians takes 20 minutes.

 

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Do we accept that our sin is a problem? Do we recognise that our selfishness, self-righteousness and self-reliance are wrong? Do we realise that these things put up barriers between us and God, and that we can’t overcome those barriers by ourselves?

 

Do we trust Jesus to do it for us? Do we have faith that his death and resurrection solves this sin problem for us? Do we trust that Jesus gives us free and unfettered access to God and his kingdom right now, and in the age to come we will have eternal life with him, and it all comes from God’s great grace and mercy and love for us, not because of the things we’ve done?

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When was this letter written? Who was it written to? What’s it’s big deal: that is, why was it written? What was it wanting to deal with? These questions help us remind ourselves that this isn’t just a religious treatise someone sat down and wrote, capturing their philosophical musings about God. No, this is a real letter, written by a real person with real experiences, to a group of real people who were dealing with real issues in their relationships with God, each other, and the world we live in. In that way, they were just like us - real people with real experiences, really dealing with questions of how we relate to God, one another, and the world around us. 

 

It also helps us to remember that those real people lived in a real place and a time that wasn’t Goulburn in 2024. They spoke another language, they had a different culture. Their weather was different, their clothes were different, their food was different, technology was different - day to day life was different. And we need to do a bit of work to bring what the Bible tells us about that ancient context into our lives here and now. 

 

To understand what the book of Galatians is saying to us today, we have to understand what it was saying to its original audience back then. Then we have to translate that message - the same message - into our modern context so we can apply it to our own lives. That might be quite a different looking application to how they might have applied it in their lives back then, because our lives today look different, and the issues we’re dealing with look different today to those they were dealing with back then. 

 

What does that mean? 

 

A testament is another word for a covenant, a binding relationship built on a series of promises. We don’t use the word covenant much, but we make covenants all the time: when you get married, you make promises to the each about how you’re going to live and treat each other; when you get a job, you make promises about how you’re going to work, and your boss makes promises about how they’re going to pay you. When you make your last will and testament, you’re making your last promises about what you want to happen to your stuff based on your relationships with people, and we’re making promises to follow it and not just distribute it however we want. Human society relies on covenants to work. The Bible’s Old and New Testaments are God’s covenants with people: the promises God makes to people that will make the relationship between God and people work.

 

The Old Testament is about God’s binding relationship he made with his people, Israel. In the New Testament, Jesus brought in a new covenant that covers all people. That means anything in the New Testament is talking about stuff that happened at or after the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, about 2000 years ago.

 

That means when the Galatians first heard the gospel about salvation through Jesus Christ, they only had the Old Testament and oral stories about Jesus. No gospels! No other part of the New Testament! Everything they knew about Jesus was told to them by word of mouth, and then backed up by what was written in the Law and the Prophets.

 

If I said to you, “Give a five minute gospel presentation about Jesus being the Son of God, and his death and resurrection but oh, one thing: you can only use the Old Testament, and you can’t use any quotes or even concepts out of the New Testament” how well would you go? Tough gig, hey? Reading the Old Testament and working out what still relates to us, what is just useful history that tells us about God’s character, and what points directly to Jesus - that’s hard work. It took skill and study even back then, and it still does now.

 

Now we know that Galatians is part of the New Testament, so it’s written after the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. But how soon after? Well, most scholars agree that it was written pretty darn soon after! They reckon some time around 49AD. Galatians may well be the earliest book of the New Testament, written before the Gospels were written.

 

 

 

Sermon: Psalm 55

 Psalm 55

 

A teacher of the law once asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbour?" Jesus answered with the parable of the Good Samaritan, one of his most famous parables. Today, I want to look at Psalm 55 and ask a similar question: who is my enemy? Who does Psalm 55 actually apply to?

 

You might think it's easy to identify our enemies. They're the people with whom we're at war. Those who are out to get us. Those on the other side, whether that be in politics or religion or some other contest.

 

But then I think the teacher of the law who asked the question "who is my neighbour" also thought the answer was pretty straightforward. Jesus showed it wasn't so simple: in his story, someone who was considered an enemy to the Jews was the neighbour.

 

I don't think many of us would consider that we have enemies. Australia is not currently at war. We are not keenly threatened in our country. Many of us may look around and find it difficult to identify someone who actually holds a strong grudge against us or would actively work to do us harm.

 

You may even think the question "who is my enemy" is an odd question when in the sermon on the Mount Jesus said "You have heard that it was said love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I tell you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." And so you might think why do I need to know who my enemies are? Don't we just treat everyone with love?

 

Now that is a really good question. And of course Jesus is always right! But this doesn't delete Psalm 55 from the Bible, and so we need to grapple with it, and with the many cursing Psalms. I think it's an easy thing for us to say "love your enemies" when many of us feel we have no real enemies.  

 

In book 2 of the Psalms alone - from Psalm 42 to 72 - over half of the Psalms mention enemies. Today it’s rare to have songs in church like this that we sing. But they remain part of scripture that we read in our personal quiet times, and that we should hear together in community, which is why I’m happy to have the opportunity to preach on Psalm 55 today.

 

I'd like to suggest four ways understanding these psalms help us, and makes them a blessing to us in the way many other Psalms already are.

 

 First, these Psalms capture the real feelings of hurt that are felt by many, showing that God understands our hurts.

 

Second, they give us, both individually and in community, godly words to express our grief and sorrow when we are hurt by others. Many of these Psalms are like prayers of healing for the hurts suffered at the hands or mouths of others.

 

Third, these Psalms lead us to put our pain at God’s feet, asking him to address the solutions to the hurt and injustice we feel.

 

And finally, these Psalms help us see who the real enemies are, and how to love them as Jesus commanded.

 

Psalm 55 is called a psalm of David, meaning either it was written by David or is written to evoke David's story. Psalm 55 is about David being betrayed. There are other Psalms like this: Psalm 52 is about David being betrayed by Doeg the Edomite, a wicked man who at King Saul's command kills a family of priests who gave David shelter; Psalm 54 is about the Ziphites, who contact Saul and tell him "David is hiding here in our land".

 

Psalm 55 doesn't say what part of David's story it’s about. Scholars disagree about it because there are actually so many stories about David being betrayed by a friend. It stands as a psalm reflecting a reality of life: we all know the sting of betrayal by someone we thought was a friend.

 

And the sad truth is that some of us do have enemies right now. Some people hearing this psalm will resonate deeply with its imagery.

 

Imagine someone who has received death threats over the Internet because of their identity hearing these words: "My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught because of what my enemy is saying, because of the threats of the wicked; for they bring down suffering on me and assail me in their anger."

 

Imagine someone who has had to flee their home because of violence hearing these words: "My heart is in anguish within me; the terrors of death have fallen on me. Fear and trembling have beset me; horror has overwhelmed me. I said, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. I would flee far away and stay in the desert; I would hurry to my place of shelter, far from the tempest and storm.”

 

Imagine a Ukrainian whose city has been overcome by Russian separatists hearing these words: "I see violence and strife in the city. Day and night they prowl about on its walls; malice and abuse are within it. Destructive forces are at work in the city; threats and lies never leave its streets."

 

Imagine a victim of domestic violence, betrayed by their spouse, hearing these words: "If an enemy were insulting me, I could endure it; if a foe were rising against me, I could hide. But it is you, a man like myself, my companion, my close friend, with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship at the house of God".

 

Some people don't have to imagine. I have friends from Ukraine; there are Ukrainian refugees at Waitara Anglican. I have friends who have had death threats made against them on the Internet. I used to work for Barnabas Aid, who provides help to Christians suffering persecution. I now work with victims of domestic violence at Horizons.

 

Violence is a reality in our world, in our society, even in our churches. How powerful then, as a victim of violence, to hear your reality echoed in the words of God! To know that in your grief, your fear, your pain, even in betrayal, God has written you songs!

 

For those of us who are not victims of violence, these words are still a comfort and an empowerment. These Psalms teach us that the world can be a hard and painful place; they show us our faith isn't built on an idea that God instantly makes everything okay or that Christians have no troubles. Our faith isn't a blindfold we wear to cover our eyes from the pain of the world. We are not called to be delusional.

 

This Psalm tells us that God listens to the cries of the victim and has compassion, which means we should too. It tells us God stands up against oppressors and violence, and so we should too. It tells us God cares about the hurt that even words can cause, and so we should too.

 

Knowing someone is out there wanting to hurt us can make us hyper vigilant and dominate our thinking. Sharing songs about this reality together can give us an outlet for what is weighing so heavily upon us. It promotes unity, boosts our courage, gives us a common language, and makes us feel like we have friends, not just enemies. Addressing these issues publicly as a church provides healing for victims, and makes God’s position clear about this evil behaviour, calling it out and making plain that it is unacceptable before God.

 

Ancient people knew well the power of words. Today we say things like "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me". But words do hurt. In some cultures, like the ancient near eastern cultures much of the Bible was written in, and even in some tribal cultures of Africa such as Namibia where Penny and I worked, words are seen as weapons. Curses spoken against someone are considered powerful, able to cause sickness and physical harm. James calls the tongue in James 3:8 "a restless evil, full of deadly poison." Here in this psalm from verse 20, "My companion attacks his friends; he violates his covenant. His talk is smooth as butter, yet war is in his heart; his words are more soothing than oil, yet they are drawn swords."

 

Think back to the last time someone yelled at you or said something truly hurtful to you. You feel it in your body: you shake, or feel sick like you might vomit, your legs feel weak. Many perpetrators of family violence say things like, "I never touched her", "I never laid a finger on him" and yet their victims still suffer physically, they still get sick. Some people are in situations where they live feeling like that for weeks, months, years.

 

And so it makes sense to pray about this, to bring this sickness to God, to ask for healing. And when we look at some of these cursing Psalms in that framework - as a prayer for the healing of the one who is hurt - I think it helps us unlock a better understanding of these Psalms in a way we find easier to make sense of.

 

Because prayers for healing are possibly some of the most common prayers we pray, especially as we get older. We pray against sickness because we know sickness is not part of God's new kingdom. Sickness and death are the enemy of God, and they are an enemy we know has been defeated in his power. So we pray against them - we pray for the cause of the sickness to go away! When one of us has cancer, we don't just pray that their symptoms might get better but that the cancer will otherwise hang around. We pray for the cancer, the source of the sickness, to be taken away!

 

That's how these cursing Psalms mirror a prayer for healing: they ask for the victim to be comforted and saved, and for the source of the pain and trouble to be removed. Unfortunately, in the case of violence and betrayal, the source of the pain is another person.

 

For many of us, praying for God to deal with a person like he might deal with a sickness may seem harsh. And these curses often are harsh! "Let death take my enemies by surprise; let them go down alive to the realm of the dead, for evil finds lodging among them." This is not the strongest language the psalms use either! It's confronting. But I think these words try to capture the feelings of fear and hurt of victims of violence, and their desire for that pain to stop, for freedom from that fear.

 

Looking for a modern example, I googled "song for Ukraine war", and was directed to a song called "Bayraktar". Bayraktar is the name of a Turkish built attack drone, a weapon being used by Ukrainians against the Russian invaders. They sing a song about it destroying Russian convoys and killing enemy soldiers. The music video includes footage of the explosions. It's brutal. But the song itself is folksy and upbeat and really catchy.

 

My first thought watching this music video was, "That's distasteful." But this is the lived reality for Ukrainians! People are dying! Homes are being destroyed! Children are being taken! Ordinary citizens are having to take up arms to defend themselves. And so they sing of the hero that helps them defend against the huge powerful enemy - Bayraktar!

 

Now I'm not saying that the intentions of every Ukrainian citizen taking up arms against Russian invaders is always pure all the time. I'm not saying that every time they sing this song about Russians being killed by a combat drone they are being righteous. I feel like I'm on pretty strong ground when I say that I'm sure not every time this psalm has been sung it was sung with pure motives, fully aligning with God's will. Victims are still people, and people are not perfect. Christian intellectual Miroslav Volf says in his book Exclusion and Embrace "Evil generates new evil as evildoers fashion victims in their own ugly image". Sometimes we see the victims filled with hate and loathing against their perpetrators, lashing out against them in vengeance. It can be tempting at that point to fall into what Volf calls the "twisted arithmetic of sin", where "blame on the one side and blame on the other do not add up but cancel each other out".

 

But that is not God's way. God understands our hurts, he understands the pain that can be inflicted by our enemies, by their words, by their betrayal, and he has given his people songs to sing about that, ways to express their hurt and their desire for the pain to stop. These songs are an outlet for those feeling hurt, betrayal and injustice, who have these things thrust on them, and who know they don't have it in their power to make it go away by themselves.

 

Those harsh words in verse 15, they are also putting the cause of the pain at God's feet, by asking him to take action. The action requested is harsh, but it's also not outside of God's character. This verse about our enemies falling alive into the realm of the dead is recalling the Korah rebellion back in Numbers 16. If like me your memory is struggling to recall that incident, a bunch of Levites and Reubenites rebelled against Moses when Israel were in the wilderness having fled Egypt, and Moses called out to the people of Israel saying in Numbers 16:30 "If the Lord brings about something totally new, and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them, with everything that belongs to them, and they go down alive into the realm of the dead, then you will know that these men have treated the Lord with contempt.”

 

And that's exactly what happens in Numbers 16 - the ground opens up and swallows these people because in betraying Moses they had shown contempt for God. And then everyone freaks out because that is not normal! And if it happened today, we would freak out, because it would not be normal! And that's part of the reality of putting things into God's hands: he can deal with problems in a miraculous, sometimes frightening way. He can do that. He has done that. God definitely is not a fan of contempt. God does get angry about people doing wrong, and he does act.

 

But how many times do you think this song has been sung or prayed by the Lord's people? Probably countless times. This psalm could be 3000 years old. Throughout history when God's people have been faced with enemies, with betrayal, they prayed this prayer, bringing their situation before the Lord.

 

Now, how many times do you think God's answer to this prayer has been to crack the ground open and swallow up his enemies? Given the countless times God's people have prayed this prayer and others like it about their enemies, it is clear that God does not regularly answer this prayer in this way.

 

And we know that, right? We know that when we pray to God to drag our enemies kicking and screaming into hell that's not what's going to happen, not right away. In singing this song to God, in making this request, in putting this issue at his feet, we are accepting that God probably won't do that. We're accepting that God's actions will be sufficient, even if they take a long time, even if they aren’t what we’d like.

 

And why do we accept that? Because God has shown us who the real enemies are, and how he deals with them. To see that, let's go to another psalm - not so far away, still a psalm of David - Psalm 51. You may be more familiar with this psalm:

For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.

1 "Have mercy on me, O God,

    according to your unfailing love;

according to your great compassion

    blot out my transgressions.

2 Wash away all my iniquity

    and cleanse me from my sin.

 

3 For I know my transgressions,

    and my sin is always before me.

4 Against you, you only, have I sinned

    and done what is evil in your sight;

so you are right in your verdict

    and justified when you judge."

 

David was a victim of violence and cruelty. He had enemies who wanted him dead. He had multiple people who betrayed him. And he was a faithful king of Israel, close to God's own heart, keen to bring Israel back on track with God. But he was also an adulterer and a murderer. He was also God's enemy. And when he found himself in that position as God's enemy, did he pray that God would send him still living into the realm of the dead? No. He prayed, "Have mercy on me, O God."

 

And that’s how God treats his enemies. I'm not talking about the Korah rebellion, where the earth opened up and swallowed God's enemies that one time. I'm talking about the way God treats his enemies every single day: according to his unfailing love; according to his great compassion. David accepted that God would be right and justified to judge him and condemn him, but he threw himself on God's love and compassion and begged for mercy. And God relented.

 

And that's why, rather than take revenge on the one who has betrayed us, we sing. Why when they curse us, instead of crafting our own curses, we sing. When our minds are overwhelmed by the pain and trouble our enemies cause us, we sing. We send those things up to God, we put them at his feet, we sing Psalm 55:1, "Listen to my prayer, O God, do not ignore my plea", and we sing Psalm 55:16, "As for me, I call to God,

    and the Lord saves me.

Evening, morning and noon

    I cry out in distress,

    and he hears my voice.

He rescues me unharmed

    from the battle waged against me,

    even though many oppose me."

 

I asked at the beginning of this talk, "Who is my enemy?" When we pray a psalm like this, we are reminded that we would all be God's enemies if it weren't for God's amazing love, mercy and compassion; if it weren't for Jesus taking away our sin and making us no longer enemies of God but drawing us into his family.

 

When we pray a psalm like this, we're connecting ourselves with God's ultimate plan for the world. We are connected with God's plan to do away with evil. In the new heaven and the new earth, there is no place for violence, or lies, or betrayal. Sin is the real enemy, and God has dealt with it in Jesus. If we choose to accept that from him and turn away from violence, our sin is dealt with, even if we are a perpetrator or a betrayer.

 

When we pray "As for me, I call to God, and the Lord saves me" we are connecting with God's plan to rescue people from that evil, both victims and perpetrators.

 

But we need to recognise that, for some victims, church does not always feel like a safe place for them. It feels too safe for their enemies. There is a support group in Sydney for victims of domestic violence perpetrated by their church leader spouses. Recently our old mission agency, with whom Penny and I went to Africa, made an apology to all the children who have been abused while on the mission field in their mission stations by missionaries. 

 

Stories like this keep coming out. Perpetrators getting away with violence in the church in the name of loving your enemies; while victims are pushed out of church for not being loving and forgiving. These behaviours are not in God's will! We need to call them out, and that's what these songs do! Using violence against your spouse is not okay! Using harsh words to belittle, dominate and control anyone is not okay! We need to mourn the realities of these things happening, and call on perpetrators to repent of them! But without threatening to withhold God’s love and grace, which he offers freely to all sinners. That’s a tightrope we walk at Horizons when we are working with perpetrators of domestic violence as our clients. I won’t pretend it’s easy for us, and it’s no easier for a church.

 

And we need to be mature in how we help those seeking to escape family violence. The scourge of violence, even of poisonous words, sometimes needs drastic action. At Horizons we help people get divorces; we help people leave marriages; when it's dangerous for kids to see their abusive parent we help to restrict the child's time with that parent to protect the child.  But we don't go along with those who would take the shield of the law's protection and turn it into a sword to strike at their ex-partners for vengeance.

 

This is the impossible job God gives all of us, and so praise God he gives us words to use. When we pray Psalms like this as a community, we are sharing God's message; a comfort to victims: "Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken”; it’s a warning to the violent: “But you, God, will bring down the wicked into the pit of decay; the bloodthirsty and deceitful will not live out half their days”; and we make our position on God’s message clear and hold out the opportunity to others: “But as for me, I trust in you.” I trust in God. So should you.