After the Sermon: Psalm 35

7/6/26 | Will DuVal | Psalms: The Soundtrack of Faith

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Welcome to the After the Sermon podcast where Pastor Will answers follow-up questions and we share your personal applications from the sermon for the benefit of the church. I'm Brian and I'm here with Pastor Will.

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Morning everyone.

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We want to remind you with this podcast that sermons are not just a Sunday thing. So start off with a quick recap of Psalm 35.

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Psalm 35. We finished up Deuteronomy last week and so new month, July, new-ish sermon series as we return to the Psalms. We've spent the past couple summers now doing mini series, just kind of taking the Psalms in order. And so we're returning to that and resumed with Psalm 35 yesterday, sometimes categorized interestingly differently by different commentators that I kind of was reading. So some call it a Psalm of lament, like an individual Psalm of lament. It's a Psalm of David. Others call it an imprecatory Psalm, put it in that list. I kind of listed it in that. So the imprecatory Psalms being the Psalms where the Psalmist is invoking or calling down a curse on an enemy, which as I mentioned yesterday, a little bit of a misnomer anyway because David himself isn't cursing anyone. He doesn't even really ask God to curse. Interestingly, the ones that are listed as imprecatory Psalms in the Book of Psalms, depending on who you ask, there's anywhere between a dozen or so.

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And then some count as many as 40 or 50, like a lot of them. Oftentimes it'll just be kind of one line like, "Let my enemies fail," and then it's kind of back to blessing the Lord or whatever. So it's like, "Well, it doesn't seem right to categorize that whole thing." But there's about 14-ish Psalms where that seems to be the main thrust. It's like, "I'm facing this opposition. It's not fair. God, would you please judge them and judge rightly for me and prove my kind of innocence and righteousness?" And that's basically kind of what David is doing here and talked about potentially the maybe best guess of historical context for that in his own life in the context of what the first two or three lines of Psalm 35, some of the language that David uses there sounds very similar to what David says in one Samuel chapter 24 verse 15 to King Saul out in the Engetti wilderness when David is being chased all over by the vengeful, jealous, insecure, demon possessed King Saul.

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And so that seems like in a lot of what we hear elsewhere in the Psalm about David weeping and fasting and when this person was sick and you think about King Saul being with his mental kind of illness and anguish and the tormented by the evil spirit when David would come and play for him and pray for him.

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So anyway, yeah, but the main point and thrust of what David is really modeling for us here, I guess it's less so something that David is telling us or exhorting us to do. It's like what David is modeling in his song and in his prayer here is he models kind of three things, which is pleading with the Lord in our time of need. So calling out, crying out, petitioning God to come to my help. And then secondly, placing our trust in the Lord. So that believing that God, it does listen, that he does care, that he will come through even when we're still in the valley of the shadow of death. In God's own timing, he's going to rescue us, deliver us. And then thirdly, being confident enough in that, that we can even praise him. And so David does that in kind of three cycles in verses one through 10.

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And so it always follows that pattern. God help please. And then I trust you to help me. And then thirdly, because of it, I'm going to praise you. Then my soul will rejoice at God's salvation. So yeah, that was kind of the example of David and the exhortation from yesterday in a nutshell is when we feel helpless in danger and in our of need, and especially when it's in relation to feeling under attack by a person, an opponent, an enemy. But I applied it yesterday specifically to the Christians. Sometimes the three greatest enemies is how we talk about the world, the flesh, the devil. And so I tried to kind of, since there are three subsections of Psalm 35, I tried to apply each of those enemies to how we might read each of those enemies in our own kind of prayer of petition and putting our trust in God and to fight the devil for us, to fight the world for us and to vindicate us over our own sin.

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And so yeah, that's Psalm 35 in a nutshell.

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So first question comes to us from Victoria. She wrote, "Wasn't Saul a believer in the Lord too. How come God didn't restore Saul and David's relationship and Saul was killed

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  Instead?" That's a really good and hard question. Saul is probably one of the saddest characters in the whole Bible.You think about someone who had so much potential, head and shoulders taller, stronger, handsome or everything, had everything going for him. And the kind of king that Israel was crying out for and yet there's that really interesting story of even when the prophet Samuel casts lots to see who God is going to pick to lead the people and the lot falls to the tribe of Benjamin and then to the family of this and that. And then ultimately to the person of Saul you might recall there's interesting, so Saul is hiding behind everyone's baggage. All the tribes have traveled down for this huge ceremony to figure out who their king's going to be or whatever. And I guess they stacked all their luggage somewhere and Saul was hiding.

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  So already he's kind of that same what you see with Moses of like, "God, please send someone else. I'm not worthy." Which on the one hand, the humility can be an asset to a leader. But when it's

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  I think in Saul's case, it's this deep insecurity and you just see that time and time again come out. I think of Samuel's rebuke to Saul when Saul fails to wait for Samuel to come and make the sacrifice before leading Israel into batle. And Samuel says this really telling line, it's like, "Are you so small in your own eyes that you don't understand?" Because Saul tries to blame the people, "Oh, they were ready to go into battle and I was afraid and this and that. " And Samuel's like, "You're the king. Why do you keep acting like you don't have the power and the authority to be the people's leader? You've been anointed for that. " And then of course in the relationship, most of all, with David, where he just keeps suspecting David of treason and of trying to usurp the throne. And David is just time and time again just trying to love Saul, help Saul, serve Saul.

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  And Saul just can't seem to rest in his own kind of calling of what the Lord's called him to. Anyway, Saul was filled with the spirit of the Lord. And that's a whole nother discussion I try not to get off on, but there's plenty of different examples of people, especially in the Old Testament. You think of Samson, where the spirit of the Lord rushed upon him and he killed all these Philistines and did this great thing. Same thing with Saul. And the spirit of the Lord rushed upon him and he would prophesy and he would do God's will and be filled with God's spirit. And then the very next page, he would sin. Same with Samson and others.

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  And so suffice it to say being a, as Victoria puts it, a believer in the Lord in and of itself is not enough to guarantee that someone is going to finish the race of faith the way that the Lord has called us to and therefore receive the crown of glory that Paul talks about and receive God's blessing and commendation. And I think you look at the book of Hebrews for instance, and it's repeated kind of the example that it keeps pointing us back to is the generation of Israel and the wilderness and how again they... And I talked about this even just last week in finishing Deuteronomy with regard to Moses and how Moses did finish well.

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  But we have so many examples in scripture like King Saul and like Solomon and others who didn't finish well, who showed such promise. And then they either got distracted, sidetracked, trapped by some besetting sin like Solomon with his womanizing or Samson with his womanizing or Saul with his insecurity and jealousy and whatever else. So suffice it to say, fire truck. Suffice it to say that Saul, he's a believer. It's one of those interesting questions I guess. It's like, yeah, will we see Saul in heaven or Samson or fill in the blank? And I tend to think, yes. I tend to believe that Saul was God's anointed.

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  God put his spirit on him to lead his people. And yes, we hear later that because of Saul's sin, that the spirit of the Lord left Saul. And that is a terrifying thing. And can get in the whole theology of today. C Holy Spirit come into your life and cause you to be reborn again and be made spiritually alive and find kind of new life in Christ. And then can that same spirit then leave you? And some people say yes. And we don't believe so. I think that the spirit of the Lord works differently today. New covenant than the spirit of the Lord used to rush upon people. But even then, even Jesus said in John three, I mean, God's spirit is like the wind. It just blows wherever it wants and you don't always know when it's coming and going.

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  But did he truly belong to the Lord? Obviously salvation is a very different thing in the old covenant anyway. But I like to hope and believe that even if Saul wasn't necessarily restored in this life, that the Lord is gracious and merciful and that Saul found restoration in the afterlife and with the Lord. Now as far as why didn't God restore Saul and David's relationship here on earth and why did God punish Saul and let him be killed instead? I think you can put that in the category of the much broader kind of question of why does God allow anyone to harden their heart and reject him and kind of go into their grave, not find... I will say this is that in so many of those incidents when Saul would chase after David and one Samuel 24 and then again in 26 and then later too, and David would have an opportunity to come in the cave and kill Saul, but instead he just cuts off part of his robe and then two chapters later Saul's asleep in his tent.

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  David sneaks down to the camp and he's got a chance to kill him. Instead, he grabs a spear in his water jug and then the next morning he's like, "Hey, you missing these?" And you just to prove like, "Hey, I could have killed you. I didn't. I have no interest in killing you because I'm not your enemy. I don't want your crown. I love you. I serve you. You're my king. Please stop chasing me. " And in both of those times and sort of multiple times, even when Jonathan confronts David back in, I think it's like chapter 19 or 18, and he's like, "Dad, why are you chasing David?

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  He's your serpent. He's done more for you than anybody." And Saul's like, "Oh, you're right." It's like all these times Saul seems to genuinely be like, "You're right. This is dumb. I need to stop doing this. " And a couple of those times, Saul would actually, like in chapter 24, I think he packed up his camp and they left. They went home. They went back to Jerusalem. He's like, "You're right. I'm going to quit chasing you. My bad." And then the next chapter, he's back at it again. And so I do think that if you can't say anything else, you can say there is for sure, clearly, explicitly, biblically, there is an element of spiritual warfare there where Saul really is being tormented by an evil spirit.

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  And yet, again, if you want to think about, okay, why does God allow that? Why didn't God relieve him of that and allow him to just enjoy this great relationship with David and be a good king? Well, why does God allow the Apostle Paul? Two Corinthians 12, three times I've asked for the Lord to remove this thorn that I have in the flesh, this messenger of Satan, this demon that's been tormenting me. Whether that's the demon of a literal spiritual force or whether that's the demon of alcoholism or pornea or an eye problem or physical cancer. We don't know what Paul's thorn in the flesh was, but three times he prayed and three times God said, no, my grace is suficient for you. I'm leaving it there. We don't know how much Saul prayed for God to remove his demon.

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  The evil spirit that afflicted him I'm not sure that we hear much about it. We hear about him going to the medium of at Endor, the witch and calling up Samuel's dead soul to figure out whether or not God was ever going to return to him and help him in battle the next day. And anyway, so Saul, he kind of seemed to just keep stumbling and doing the wrong thing and not going to the Lord, maybe not praying, maybe asking David to pray. I don't know. It's a really interesting... But it's a sad story. But yeah, I think you could just put Victoria's question in that category, much broader questions of why does God allow anyone to harden their heart and not be reconciled to whether it's another person like a Saul David dynamic or whether it's most of all to the Lord? Why does God allow anyone to reject him and go to hell?

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  I mean, if God has the power to soften people's hearts and you just read Romans nine and Paul's answer is, who are you to even ask the question? God can do what he wants. You're the clay. He's the potter. Shut up. It's kind of what he says. And he also says that if God wants to create vessels of wrath doomed for destruction just to prove even more so to magnify just how amazing his mercy is when God ever saves anyone, then again, that's his prerogative to do that. And that's a really, really, really hard truth for all of us. Even the ones who have found Christ and found salvation and been saved. But all of us have, of course, loved ones who haven't and who still reject the Lord and are doomed for hell unless that changes. And that's a really hard truth to think that God would have put them here on this earth and given them 30 or 50 or 70, 90 years of just rejecting and hardening their heart slowly more and more over time and going to their grave, just not wanting any interest in loving serving the Lord and that they're just fueling the fires of hell.

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  I mean, that's a hard truth. And the fact that he would do it just to make us even more grateful for our salvation and even more mind blown that God would soften my heart and your heart in anyone's heart. And Saul certainly does make a king like David a good king who listens to the Lord and obeys and repents. Even when he does fall short, he repents. He makes a king like that stand out even more. A king like Jesus stand out even more. And so anyway, but yeah, thanks for the question, Victoria.

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  And she had an application and wrote casting down all jealousy in the name of Jesus so that neither I or those here on earth are safe from its evil destruction.

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  That is for sure where Saul I think started to go wrong was that jealousy. Saul's killed his thousands. David's killed his 10 thousands. Wait a minute. And Saul gets all bent out of shape about that. And man, it really is the root of all kinds of sin. That pride in myself, which leads to jealousy when I see someone else being propped up above me. And anyway, yeah.

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  Next one is from Ben. He wrote, "How do we rightly pray a prayer like this knowing our sinful nature rarely leaves us guiltless?" Do you want to start there?

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  Yeah. We'll start there. Thanks, Ben. Great question. And that is a pretty common question. If I can, I guess, make it even a little bit broader to say should Christians feel welcomed to still pray these kinds of imprecatory prayers like David does here? Not just against. I mean, obviously if like I did in the sermon yesterday, if you kind of make it about, well, our real enemies are the world of flesh the devil. It's like, well, of course we as Christians feel validated in opposing the world of flesh the devil. Scripture pretty clearly tells us to crucify the flesh, to stand firm against the devil and take up the armor of God against him. And that you can't love the world and love Jesus. That if you love Jesus, you're going to hate the world. Hate the things of the world. And so of course we're supposed to oppose that and pray God judge and defend me and judge them.

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  That's one thing. But what about against another human? Because Saul certainly seems to be not just talking about Satan here. Again, I made the case. He's probably talking about Saul and Saul's whole army, because again, most of the pronouns all through Psalm 35 are plural. They rise up against me. They afflict me. And so Saul's saying, let them come to destruction, punish them. So should we still do that today? And if I start with Ben's question specifically, Ben's thinking, especially in light of the fact that we're sinful too. So be careful what you pray for. If you're going to pray for God's justice and punishment of sin, you better be really careful. So it's a great question. And interestingly, I'll just say Psalm 35, I mean, really as far as the impregatory Psalms go, it's one of the lighter ones.

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  I was reading a couple commentators making the point this week that those 14 or plus impregatory Psalms basically get progressively stronger as they go on in scripture. I think it's like Psalm five, Psalm 10, Psalm... I can't remember what they are, but it's like it starts pretty tame. It starts pretty tame with just like, "God, I'm under attack and please come to my aid and don't let them succeed." And so it's like, "Okay, well don't let them succeed is one thing. Then praying for their destruction and let the trap that they set for me, let them fall into it instead." Like that Psalm 35, that's a step up from that. God, pick up your javelin and your spear against them. Okay, that feels a little more militant. But then you get to later impregatory Psalms and it's like, let them be like the slime of the slug that gets sent on fire.

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  It's just like break their teeth straight out of their mouths. It's pretty violent stuff like, "Oh yeah. So should we pray that? " And again, not just about Satan or the sort of vague, impersonal, the world, but against other humans. And I guess here's what I'll say.

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  I did make the point at the very end of the sermon, and I do obviously believe it's true and important that the biggest difference... I talked about the prophetic fulfillment of how Christ really we can read almost all of these words from Psalm 35, read Jesus into them and him being the unjustly attacked, righteous sufferer. He was publicly mocked. They set a trap for him. He had malicious witnesses rise up against him. He did good to people and they returned evil. All the ways that he fulfills. But the biggest way that Jesus not like David here and doesn't perfectly fit the mold of Psalm 35 is that David prays, let them come to destruction. Whereas Jesus prayed from the cross, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Even the people who are literally driving the nails into his hands, he's praying that God would forgive them in his mercy, which is just the most powerful love you can imagine.

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  Here's what I will say about it though too is we know Jesus came once before and he's coming again. We look forward to his second coming when he will wipe away every tear from every eye and when he will right every wrong. And that's going to be really good news for those who have been wronged and especially for those who are on team Jesus and really bad news for those who are wrongdoers and for those who are not on team Jesus and have rejected him. And so sometimes we talk about, he came once as the lamb, the suffering lamb. He'll come again as the lion, like the sort of victorious kind of ruling lion of Judah to again, to bring down the hammer and establish justice. And so if that's the case, then there is a sense in which Jesus really does perfectly fulfill all of Psalm 35 because even those prayers of David let them come to destruction and let them suffer for all their wrongdoing and mistreatment.

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  I mean, that's going to be the way it's going to be when Jesus comes again. That's why you think about two Peter three where Peter's helping his church who's under persecution and ready for the day of the Lord. Like Jesus, why haven't you come back yet? And they've only waited 30, 40 whatever years. We've still been waiting 2,000 years now. He still hasn't come back. And we're like, what are you waiting on? It's going to be great. Well, it's going to be great for us. It's going to be great for those who belong to him. And that's Peter's point is like God is patient, not desiring that any should be eternally damned. God doesn't want for anyone to reject him forever and burn and all of that and be punished. He desires that they would repent and find mercy and grace. And so these thousands of years now that he's waited is because of God's slowness to anger, God's long sufferingness, God's patience, his love, his mercy.

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  And all of that to say, I guess how that would impact our prayer today is I think about my boss because I opened with the example of like, make it personal. When's the time when you felt attacked and under attack from another person like David did with Saul here? And I talked about my boss from my time at the boarding school in Indiana. Which by the way, the number one question I actually got after the sermon was I had multiple people ask me, "So what happened after the meeting with HR when she tried to get you fired?" And so the rest of the story is quickly. She actually did resign. She resigned that very next day when they didn't fire me. She resigned and I finished out the rest of that year, another seven or eight months that I had in my contract because we're year-to-year contract.

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  And then at the end of that year I said, "Hey, I'd love to stay." And they said, "Yeah, I think she burned enough bridges and stirred up enough just ugly stuff that But even though most of it wasn't true, it was time for me to go. But that's why I'm here now in St. Louis.

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  He works through even those hard things in our lives and redeems it and uses it for good. But going back, how should that affect, for instance, the way that I pray for my ex - boss now? I think clearly, biblically, what it means to be Christ-like is to pray, Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. So to have a heart for mercy. And we know that David, by the way, I mean, this is like David's personal journal. We're reading his diary when we read the Psalms. That's very different than when he was interacting with Saul. When he's interacting with Saul, he's not praying, God break his teeth. When he's interacting with Saul, he's like, "Why are you coming after? Can't we just go back to being friends? I love you. I've served you. What else do you want from me? " And so I think again, if we're going to learn from him and especially learn from Jesus and what it means to be Christ-like, it's praying, Father, forgive them.

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  I forgive my ex - boss. I pray that God would forgive her for the ways that she wronged me 12 years ago now.

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  I harbor no ill will toward her. I'm not praying that God would punish her. Now, of course, I'm not in the midst of it right now either. So again, maybe that's Ben's question. It's like, okay, but yeah, what about when you were walking out of that meeting with HR and she had just thrown all these accusations at you and stuff? What are you praying walking out of that meeting? Is it appropriate for a Christian in that situation to stop and pray, God, let this pit that she is trying to set for me, let her fall in it. Let her destruction come upon her own head. I do think that maybe there is. Maybe there is a place for a Christian to pray that. But I think that probably the even better more Christ-like prayer has Father forgive her even while she's driving the nails into the hand.

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  Again, I'm not Jesus. Sorry. I'm not trying to conflate those two images, but that's what Jesus did. I mean, Jesus, it wasn't like 12 years later that Jesus is able to come to a place where he's forgiven. It's like 12 minutes later, 12 seconds later. Jesus is instantaneously forgiving his crucifiers, his murderers. And so that's the better model than David.

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  However, I do think there's... Yeah, I keep going back and forth. If it sounds like I'm talking about both sides of my mouth, I probably am. But I think about we've got a couple women at our church right now, single moms in particular who I can think of three, all of whom were severely abused by their ex - husbands, raped, sexually assaulted, hit, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, just the worst things you can imagine by the closest person who's supposed to protect and love. And it's like, what do you pray for a person like that? I mean, yeah, I pray that they would find repentance that God will soften their hearts and break their hearts for what they've done and who they are and for their need for Christ. And if they don't and he doesn't answer that prayer, then yeah, I pray that they would get what they deserve.

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  And I pray that God would let them come to destruction because that's what people who, again, who refuse the Lord over and over and harden their hearts and become more abusive and that's what they deserve. And even as I praise God that he doesn't give me what I deserve. So thanks Ben. That's a great question.

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  And then you had some additional points with that. Well,

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  I just

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  Wanted to -

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  Yes, it is. I just wanted to add one more at the very bottom because I kind of already dealt with that one. But the very bottom -

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  Verse 27.

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  Yes. I was thinking about, okay, if I had to preach this over and I could add anything or cut anything, the one thing that I didn't say, because I felt like... Anyway, I was running out of time and also I didn't want to detract from the ending of just drawing us really back to Jesus and his fulfillment of this Psalm and being righteously vindicated by his father in his resurrection. But there is this great verse 27 toward the very end where David says, let those who... So he said, "All those who, the haters, let them come to destruction." But then he says, "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." And I just thought, I hope that some people walked away making the connection with what David prays there.

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  And again, if David is once again being a Christ-like figure in this Psalm as the unjust, righteous, suffering servant of the Lord, then who's he praying for there? He's praying for us. He's praying for the church. Let those who delight in my righteousness. Who is that? That's the church. We as Christians, we delight in Christ's righteousness. And what is his prayer? Let them shout for joy and be glad evermore and say, great is the Lord who delights in the welfare of his servant. And so that would be another alternate ending, I guess, to the sermon to just emphasize and to see the beauty in Christ's prayer here for us, that we would shout for joy, that we would be glad forever and sing great as the Lord who delights in the welfare of his servant, his servant Jesus. And he's vindicated him in his resurrection and in us, the servants of the Lord.

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  I mean, his people, the church, we are his servant and he delights in our welfare and he knows that our welfare is in knowing and loving and serving Christ. And so anyway, I just thought that I wanted to highlight that at the very end. But yeah, thanks for listening everyone and pray that the sermon and the after the sermon is a blessing to you this week.

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  So go continue to apply the sermon and make disciples. And Lord willing, we'll catch you right back here next week.