Montana Mission Trip Report

Pastor K and Brother Greg, thank you Paul Nance at the back for helping with that PowerPoint.

That was a nail biter there. All right. Well, my name is Hunter Strength. I've had the privilege of leading this year's mission's trip to Larry and Carol Bunyan's place, White Tailed Baptist Church on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. We'll go ahead and have the group come up here. We'll do our song so you guys can go ahead and sit back. We were going to do This Is My Father's World, but Greg went ahead and took care of that for us tonight. So we have one more that we can do. Hey, Providence, Providence. And so you guys can go ahead and come up here. We do not have the song online, so Logan's going to put it right underneath the mic for us and that'll play the music and we'll be able to sing that for you all.

And then we'll get into the presentation this evening. God made the earth and filled it full with seeds and trees and animals and then he made a man. But Adam, he was incomplete, so God gave him a helper.

He who carried out his plan. This happy husband and his wife, they showed the world what God is like and still they disobeyed. And even though they lost it all, we still see fingerprints of God in everyone he makes. We are the image of the God of all the world. He made us boys. He made us girls.

Different pieces of the puzzle joined together perfectly. We are just the way God wanted us to be. We're shades of brown, we're short and tall, but God himself designed us all unique so we could see.

He wants each one to play a part to show the world that fathers are to have a family. We are the image of the God of all the world. He made us boys. He made us girls.

Different pieces of the puzzle joined together perfectly. We are just the way God wanted us to be. We are the image of the God of all the world. He made us boys. He made us girls. Different pieces of the puzzle joined together perfectly. We are just the way God wanted us to be.

We are just the way God wanted us to be. Yeah, it's all right. Okay.

Are we good up there? There we go. Okay.

All right. Well, again, I've had the privilege of taking these guys there. There were 13 of us. It was a really young group, but most of them have been before. We had two first-timers this year, which was Levi Beck and Jed Lowe came with us. And so I appreciate being able to bring some people who have been before with me because this is my first year without Pastor Latour. So they were able to kind of walk along with me as we got to experience some new things, particularly getting there about five hours later than we were expecting to Saturday morning due to that global IT crisis that we had.

But we're going to go ahead and go through. Behind me you see our cover photo. That's Rock City, a place that we had never been before, but it's in a town called Valier just outside of there.

And I thought he was driving us to the middle of a wheat field to ditch us. And then it just broadens up into this big drop-off right there, which is Rock City. So we'll go ahead and get started there. Let's see. There we go. Nope. I am not. There we go.

Yeah. So this is Colorado. We flew in from RDU into Denver.

Again, due to that IT crisis, we kind of were on a tight strain. We had about originally an hour layover in Denver that gave us more than enough time. And as the day went longer, that layover got shorter. And we had about five minutes of a layover by the time we landed in Denver. But thankfully, we got an update just before we landed and it extended it for 30 minutes and then 45 minutes and then an hour and then two hours. And so that's about how that went.

But that's a nice photo of Denver. We finally arrived and hard viewed at 5 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. We were originally supposed to arrive at 1 Eastern Standard Time, so it took a few days, at least on my hand, to recalibrate. I'm still recalibrating from getting there and having a little less sleep than we were anticipating. After sleeping in for a few hours, we woke up that morning and began to get ready for VBS by decorating. This year's theme was Safari themed, particularly focused on creation.

Logan did a great job designing this year's curriculum and teaching the kids there. As you'll see later on, she goes through creation and the fall and confusion and then Christ and his work for us as the second Adam in teaching those kids that. Here is a picture of I think that's Olivia in there and Zach riding our elephant. That little part where it was really awkward during the song where it was just music playing for a minute there.

That usually went later on. It was Jed that was in there. And during that music part, Jed would run out and he was usually being chased by Zion in the elephant suit, chasing him through the auditorium during that quiet part. The giraffe is no longer with us. He is unfortunately dead because Jed's shoulders are bigger than we anticipated and it did blow the seams out every time we put him on.

So it was a duct tape giraffe. That's what we had for us there. Right behind the church is the Heart Butte mountain range there. And we usually climb this one little trail there. It's a fairly steep but a short hike to the top. And so we spent that first day after we got done decorating, exploring Heart Butte.

That's the view from the top there at the Heart Butte. They had a drought this year just like here. The weather was quite warmer than last year.

It was in the 90s. They have about 65 wildfires in the state of Montana now. This day it was a lot clearer. As the week progressed on it got a lot more cloudy due to the smoke being blown in. We drove into Browning. Browning is a closer city to us or town there where we were able to go get groceries and whatnot.

And so while you drive there you pass little rivers and streams such as this. After we got done decorating and exploring for a little while, it's typically our case for us to have worship on Sunday and then go canvassing in the evening. But this year we decided to go canvassing on that Saturday night. We were able to hand out a little over 100 flyers there to announce the VBS that we were doing.

And two subdivisions there. So here's a few photos of the guys and the girls getting some of those things handed out for you all. You'll notice that I'm not in most of these and the reason is because I'm driving as well as Chris in the background and because I don't like the dogs and the girls seem to enjoy them a lot more than I do. One thing about people on the reservation is they really, really like dogs and I really, really, really don't like dogs that I don't know.

And so that was always a fun comparison there. Sunday worship. This is actually just a photo of our practice there. Jed did not play piano for us, though he could have. He did a good job for us in practice.

As you just heard, the songs that we sang this year were This is My Father's World and Just the Way He Wanted Us to Be. And so that's a photo of us practicing there. For the Sunday morning worship service, we had Chris Wilburn and Logan Latour and Zach Beck gave their testimonies there and did a wonderful job. There were about 40 people in attendance there at Larry and Carol Bunyan's church. He says that if everybody's there at the same time, but as a pastor, you know that that never happens. But if everyone's there at the same time, they have about 75 people, which is quite impressive for a Native American church plant there.

Larry and Carol have been there for about 39 years going on their 40th year. And I'll get a little bit more into what all is going there. After the testimonies were done, we went downstairs and were able to fellowship with the congregants for a little while in their basement.

And then I had the privilege of preaching from Psalm 73 on Asaph's Psalm that morning. Here's just a photo. I have been informed by Trinity Latour that that is not a satisfactory photo because it's a little little cockeyed there.

But that is that's what I've got for you today. So that's that's a photo of the church there. We were able to go out just outside of Valier to see what will be the future home of the Bunyan's. The Bunyan's, unfortunately, were contacted last year after we left and informed by their the inheritor of their lease that they would not be able to they would not honor their lease agreement.

And so that they would have two weeks to relocate or they were going to be expected to pay twelve hundred dollars a month in rent for the house that they've been living at for 25 years or so now. And so the Lord and His Providence saw fit for them to find this piece of land just outside of Valier. Valier is not in the reservation, but it's about 30 minutes away from where the church is now. It's a wonderful piece of land. There's there's a lot of congregants right near them. This is just a big field.

You can see Lake Francis from just there. And it's a it's a really beautiful lot. They're estimating that it's going to cost them about a hundred around one hundred thousand dollars to relocate their house. That's getting the land prepped. That's getting the wells dug. That's getting the septic put in because this is brand new raw land. So they're going to have to do all of that. But as he said, it's a lot better than having to buy a brand new house. So this is moving your house and getting everything prepped for them there. He decided to take us to Rock City, as I mentioned earlier, and I'll show you a few photos of that.

This is a beautiful, beautiful place there. And then day three is our first day of EBS. That's that Monday. And so we got things ready there.

Here are our sign up crew that's in the basement. In the background, you can see just a little snip of where Barbara lived for the whole week as she was our cook. A special shout out to Barbara. I think it was two days before she saw the sign because we just kind of stuffed her away in there and forgot about her. And she she by far has the hardest job as she cooks for us three times a day and does a wonderful job there and makes desserts as well.

So I have I'm a lot heavier than I was before I went to Montana and it's all thanks to Barbara. But right there, you'll see Trinity and Olivia. That's our sign up crew. Basically, the kids will open up the front door of the church. There's two stairs that are split. One goes up to the auditorium. One goes down to where they are at. The kids can come up, give them their names and they will get their lanyards. They also have a chance to repeat the Bible verse that we have for the week, which was Genesis 131.

And that will give them important points. If you come every day, you get 100 points. If you bring a friend, you get 200 points.

If you say your verse, you get 300 points. If you come every day, you get 1000 extra points. And that's really how you kind of find your way to to win the big prizes at the end of the VBS. And so they're the people you want to see to kind of get get ahead on that. So Logan led in teaching the kids about God as the creator and Genesis one is pretty quickly decided last year that we really wanted to head that direction.

I think it's a good way to combat a lot of the native religion there and establishing that God is the sovereign creator who is worthy of adoration, who is the creator of all things that we see. And Logan did a fantastic job launching into that and teaching the kids there. Then Olivia would come up. Olivia had two personalities that week and the kids were really interested in pointing out that she was Olivia, who would go through the verse of the day, and then she was Dr. Olivia, who would turn around and put on a white coat. And they always told her that she was the same person.

So it was a weekly argument back and forth whether or not she was really Olivia or Dr. Olivia or whether she was a certified doctor at all. So nothing gets by the kids there at the VBS. So she went over their memory verse with them, which was Genesis 131. And then game time.

I think up there you see a photo of them playing tug of war. And then we get to work. So basically the VBS there starts at 11 o'clock and goes to 1 o'clock every day. After that, we immediately dive into, we go change our clothes and then we dive into the projects that the Bunions have designated for us that year. This year was staining.

They wanted us to stain the outside of the church as well as the doors on the inside of the church that would hold stain. And then some of the guys went and took down the fence to prepare to move from the Bunions. I don't have photos of the guys doing the fence work because they were just that fast. We finished a lot earlier than expected. But when you have three guys from Blue Line Fencing, I guess you should expect that to be the case. Bobby, I told them to wear shirts and take pictures and that, you know, this would be a great write off or something like that.

Anyway, all right. Day three. Here is a photo of Zach and Micah. They're about to launch into a video I'll show you later, which is how animals eat their food, which was a fan favorite there in Montana. Songs with Larry. I was going to put silly songs with Larry and hope some of you got it, but they were not silly. But they were Songs with Larry.

That's how we started every week or every VBS. They would come in and we would pretend to scan their little tags so they could get on the safari and then Larry would launch into singing with them for just a little while. Logan would teach the kids on day two of the VBS on the fall of man. Olivia covered her memory verse again. And then how animals eat with Micah and Zach. This is particularly my favorite part. Every day they would come out and they would set up a cardboard table.

Micah would be the compliant guest at the table and Zach would be the man demonstrating how animals eat their food. Next, I have a video. So if the guy's at the back, if you could click it or it may play automatically.

I don't know if it will let you click it or not. Let's see. There we go.

We could just get Zach to come do it for us now. Presenting the right answers. That was my favorite one. I really liked that one a lot.

He had a few others such as a flamingo or a cow. As the week went on, the cardboard got weaker, but my favorite was the very first one when Zach face plants into it thinking the cardboard would give and it didn't. And so those were great skits there that they did for us. That was kind of their little niche that they did for us there. Game time moved inside due to the heat. So for two days of the week, the air quality there is usually 30. It was 110 due to the smoke and the temperatures were in the 90s. One of the girls says to one of us, it's hot outside.

Don't you see that the trees aren't moving? And we were used to the heat because we're from here and it doesn't feel like we just walked through a shower because the humidity is so low. But they weren't so we had to be sensitive to them and so we moved game time inside. There's a picture of Olivia. I think that day they did drawings of the earth on those paper plates there. Then there's some basketball and Foursquare photos.

Foursquare was a very passionate game that we took in quite frequently while we were in Montana. Lunch. Every day we had lunch. We had a few people from the church that would come and team up with Barbara to serve all the kids. You'll see a photo of Vera in the bottom left hand corner there. Vera is a very precious lady. She was praying that the Lord would see fit to send a Christian missionary to Montana around 40 years ago. And the time that she was praying was the same time that the Lord impressed on Larry and Carol Bunyan's heart to head to Montana. And so she's just she's a particularly special lady, just a godly woman. She has, if I remember correctly, 15 or 18 great grandchildren.

And she was there every day helping us prepare and really appreciated all the hard work that folks like Vera put in. Staining. Micah really got to show out this week.

Staining again there on the back. Day four. Here's our sign up again. You see Sage and Layla and Rue and Ducky and Alexis there.

Logan taught on confusion through the stories of Noah and the Tower of Babel. And then here's lunch. It's everybody's favorite time of the day.

Game time again. We had to be inside. This is probably one of my favorite photos just because of how excited everybody is. And I think that's Jed. Jed, is that you in there?

Yeah, there's Jed in the giraffe costume pulling against the kids there. And the tug of war was fun. And then we got to go to Glacier National Park.

So this would have been Wednesday. We finished all of our projects on Tuesday. All the fellows knocked out the staining and the fence removal. And so we had a few things that we needed to do.

The loose ends. We went and took down the cabinets in the Bunyan's house and moved some furniture out to their trailer. But we were we were done with everything. So we got to go to Glacier earlier than I recall us doing last year. But it was a great, great time. Here's some photos of Glacier.

Again, you'll be able to see it's a little smoky there due to the wildfires. And then day five there again outside. And there's a rhythm there.

Songs with Larry. Logan finishes up the VBS with a lesson on Christ. His crucifixion and consummation did a wonderful job. As Pastor Carnes alluded to this morning concerning the federal headship of Christ, tying in that Christ is the second Adam who has come to do what Adam could not. But being our federal head and through his active obedience has as a tone for our sins and and we receive his active obedience through imputation.

She did not necessarily use those words, but she taught those concepts and did a remarkable job there. Candy grab. Larry had a big box wrapped in. I think it was Tiger. Tiger. Yes, I think.

Yes. They wrapped there and so they had a bag of a box of candy that they could reach in and get. Zion was riding the elephant around that day in particular. This is Alexis, Layla and Sage.

Sage was this year's winner for our boys as far as the points in the verse memorization went. This is a Shadow Wolf running crane. Shadow Wolf's a little bit of a legend. He's been there at least both years that I've been there and I think probably beforehand, but he's always, always come. We've really enjoyed getting to know Shadow Wolf.

And so there he is. There is Ducky on the left and Rue on the right. These are the great grandchildren, two of them, of Vera, who I showed you earlier. They are just really precious kids. Ducky really latched on to Olivia and Trinity and Rue's just always been such a sweet little girl. And that is the slideshow that we have for you for this year.

It's a privilege and an honor and a blessing. This year's team couldn't have been particularly any better with Logan and Olivia being so working so well with kids and Caleb and Micah doing so well in staining and in fence removal. So they led up a lot of those.

And so this team was really well put together, I thought. And so if you feel like you have something to contribute to next year's when we start requesting applications and you're interested, let us know. I think Barbara has tried to get out of going the last two years. So maybe if you want to relieve Barbara, she might fight you over. I don't know how happy she is to get out of it, but maybe she would be happy to relinquish at least the cooking aspect of it.

Who knows? So next year, if you would like to go with us, feel free to apply and we would be happy to consider taking more of you with us next year. That is what we have there. If you will, since we do have time, turn with me to the book of Psalms.

Psalm chapter three is where we will look at this evening. I do want to give a special thank you to Walt for dropping us off and picking us up. The drop off, I think, was a little bit easier as he only dropped us off at two. And the pickup was probably a little bit harder because he picked us up after midnight in Raleigh, Durham. So special thanks to Walt and Pam for driving out there and picking us up.

And as you can tell, we got back safely from from those trips. Psalm three, a psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son. Lord, how they have increased who trouble me. Many are they who rise up against me.

Many are they who say of me, there is no help in God. Psalm three is a psalm written by David as his world seems to be falling apart. David has committed adultery with Bathsheba. He has sent her husband, one of his own mighty men, to his death. And as a result, David has and will experience the death of his infant son, born of Bathsheba. He will experience the death of his son Amnon. And Amnon rapes his sister, his own sister, and is killed by his own brother Absalom for the crimes that he had committed. Then as a response to Absalom killing Amnon, Absalom is sent off into exile. However, what we find later on is that David eventually brings Absalom back.

We do not find any repentance having taken place. Maybe just a soft spot in the heart of his father David, allowing him entrance back into the kingdom. But regardless, we find that Absalom is back, and as he returns, he leads a revolt against his own father, the king David. And this revolt forces David to run for his life into the wilderness.

The man's life seems to be falling apart, and this is quite a turn of events. You see, at one point, we see David rising to power. This is the lion, the bear, the goliath-slaying shepherd boy who has turned king. He is the one whom God has used to expand Israel's borders and to conquer land and to establish itself as a legitimate nation throughout the world. But now, this is David, the one known as a man after God's own heart. And now what do we see?

We see an adulterous murderer whose family has fallen apart and is now, he is on the run from his own son. David feels here like the world has turned against him, and he's not sure if he will live to see another day. And this is what causes David's heart to cry out in verse 1, Lord, how they have increased who trouble me, many are they who rise up against me.

As king, it is doubtless that David was unfamiliar with having enemies. However, here, there are just too many rising up against the king. And these are not just grumbling and disappointed citizens beneath David, but these are enemies who have risen up against him and are actively doing something about it. And at the forefront of it all isn't just a sworn enemy of David, but it is his own son. And as though this wasn't enough, David, the one who is anointed by God to serve as king, is being told by his enemies that God has forsaken him, that David has no help in God, that literally the entire world and the God over the world has turned against him, and David is alone. And from what David sees at this moment, his sons are all either dead or they hate him. It seems that they're right. David is hated or grieving the deaths of his sons.

He is running for his life. David feels like the whole world has turned against him. And maybe you felt that way before, like the whole world is against you, like you can't do anything right, like God seems to have forgotten all about you.

And that's how David felt. And if you feel that way this evening, then I think the song may be a particular encouragement to you. Because tonight in Psalm 3, I want us to find two encouragements for us. When we find ourselves feeling like David did, I want you to be reminded, first of all, that God hears you, and second of all, that God helps you. God hears you and God helps you.

Point one, God hears you. David might have been told that God has forsaken him, but David is not buying that. As a matter of fact, his response to them is that God is his shield, his glory, and the lifter up of his head.

Now this is a particularly interesting response there in verse three. I think that David is saying this because that's not how things seem to have been in the beginning. In 2 Samuel 15, 30, we read of David fleeing from his son. His son is leading the revolt, and David is in such a predicament that he doesn't even have time to slip on his shoes.

Here's what the text says. So David went up by the ascent of the Mount of Olives and wept as he went up, and he had his head covered and went barefoot, and all the people who were with him covered their heads and went up weeping as they went up. And so David, who went from running away so terrified that he didn't even have a chance to put on his shoes, he is hiding his face, he is weeping, and what does David say here in response to those who say that David is forsaken? David seems to be saying, yes, I may have been broken, I may have hidden my face, I may have seemed inglorious, but my God is my shield.

Now the shield that David seems to be referring to would have been a small circular shield, an infantryman's shield that they would use in battle. And to put it simply, David isn't giving up, but is confident that God will protect him in this fight for the throne, that God will restore David, and that God's faithfulness lifts up the once drooping head of this struggling king. It's remarkable that we see David in 2 Samuel 15 with his head drooping down and covered and with tears running down it. And in response to his enemies here in the psalm, David says that my God is my glory and he is the one who lifts up my head. It is as though between the events in 2 Samuel 15 and the pinning of Psalm 3 that the divine hand of grace has girded David about, has put his gentle hand of affection beneath the chin of this doubting king and has lifted him up to gaze upon the king of heaven and earth. David isn't giving up. He's confident that God will protect him in this fight for the throne, that God will restore him and that God's faithful to him.

Why? Why is David so confident? And the reason that David is so confident here is because David's God has heard him. But you, verse 3, O Lord, are a shield for me, my glory and the one who lifts up my head. I cried to the Lord with my voice and he heard me from his holy hill. In verse 4, David says that he cried to the Lord and the Lord heard him from his holy hill.

In my opinion, that's the most precious part. That's the climax pinnacle of the Psalm here. And the reason is, is because as David is pinning this or is recalling this event, David is hiding in what is known as the Jordanian Rift.

The Jordanian Rift is the lowest place on the face of the earth, at least that's dry. David is as far down physically and spiritually as he could possibly be. But where does God hear him from? David is in the deepest of despairs, but the Lord is not cut off from him.

And the Lord hears him from where? His holy hill. The holy hill was back in Jerusalem. That was where the Ark of the Covenant would be.

The Ark of the Covenant is representative of the glory and the presence of God among his people. And David is essentially communicating to us that although he is at the deepest, the darkest, the most terrified point of his life, distance makes no difference. God hears David. David may have been shamed with his head hanging and is dwelling in the depths of the earth, but God is still seated in his glory. God still knows where David is, and God has not forgotten about David. God has not forgotten about David. And if you find yourself feeling alone, don't let the doubts that Satan throws at you choke out your prayers to God.

They might be broken, tear-stained, hurt-filled prayers, but God is not interested in hearing the prayers of people who have it all together. He is the one who has promised to never leave us nor forsake us. He is the one who has promised to hear us when we call upon him. What does that reality do for you? Well, I can tell you what that reality does for David. It gives him peace, so much peace that David just lays down and goes to sleep.

Verse 5, I lay down and slept, and I awoke for the Lord to sustain me. Now, David is not back in the palace here. He is not sleeping in his bed surrounded by the guard. David is not living it up in the palace.

He is still on the run. David is in the Jordanian rift in the wilderness surrounded by beasts. He has men who have betrayed him all over the kingdom. They're looking for him.

They're conspiring against him. David is in danger. But the peace of God sues his troubled soul, and he lays himself down, and he sleeps. This is a significant picture in the ancient Near Eastern world. Here is a letter from a pharaoh to his son. He writes, Even when you sleep, guard your heart, because no man has adherence on the day of distress. In short, the king is communicating to his son, never sleep, or at least never rest in true rest, because no one will stand with you when the hardships of life encompass you. And if anyone's going to be set up and emotional in a circumstantial place to hold on to that pharaoh's wisdom, it's David.

His own son has betrayed him. But even though it seems that the whole world has surrounded the king, all God is there. And even though it seems that no one is there for David on the day of distress, God is. And David can lay down and can sleep because of that. In David's mind, he has peace because God stands with him, and when he wakes up, he is refreshed and he is ready to face the enemy. And that leads us to our second point tonight, which is that God helps you. Not only does he hear you, but God helps you. Now, although David has peace, the problem isn't going away. And so he runs to God in prayer. I lay down and slept, I awoke for the Lord to stay me, and all my problems were gone. That's not what David said.

I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around. I do want to take a pause here and make sure that we mention that David does not just sit on his hands. One of the privileges that we have in our Bibles is the preservation of those little transcripts at the top of the psalm. This is a psalm of David when he fled from Absalom his son.

And if you read Psalm 3, you're going to think to yourself, well, when life falls apart I can sleep and pray and everything is going to be taken care of for me. That's not the theology of David. As a matter of fact, what you'll find as you study the life of David is that he prays that God would bless the conspirings of this godly king. You'll find that he has men who are loyal to him and he forms aspiring. And he sends them back in and that they penetrate into the life of Absalom. And they give him advice and feedback, intel to David to safeguard him and to lead Absalom astray. As a matter of fact, one of Absalom's chiefest advisors is Bathsheba's father who understandably would be very disgusted with the king.

And he gives great counsel. But one of David's men penetrates that spy ring and he gives counsel to the king that Bathsheba's father knows is foolish counsel. And knowing that if he gives him foolish counsel he will be killed, Bathsheba's father goes home and he hangs himself. So David is not just teaching us here through his life to sit and to pray and to do nothing. What David does is he sends a ring of spies into Israel and one of them becomes an advisor to Absalom and is able to give Absalom counsel that will prevent him from getting to David. But in this psalm, in this psalm David wants us to see that he ran to God in prayer. The first thing that David does is he cries out, Arise, O Lord! Arise, O Lord! This is a way of calling God to intervene where David is helpless. Now that phrase there has a history of being used in military scenarios such as Numbers 10.35, Moses' war cry, Arise, O Lord! So here we see that the helpless David is calling on God, his shield, his glory to fight for him where he cannot succeed on his own. The next part is particularly interesting as David says, Save me, O my God! This is a prayer that appeals to justice.

You see, God makes it clear in the civil law that he gives to the nation of Israel that if you hear someone being violated and they cry out for help it is your responsibility to intervene on their behalf. And where you might hear a lonely woman on the streets in the night calling for help from some stranger nearby, David is not calling on just some mere stranger. He's calling on his own God. This is an appeal of justice that David is making here. So in this prayer David is crying out like a helpless victim.

To who? To God himself. He is so confident that God will hear him. He is so confident in God's faithfulness to deliver this suffering man that he finishes the prayer here as though it's already finished. He doesn't say, Please strike!

But he continues the prayer speaking in the past tense. You have struck all my enemies on the cheekbone. You have broken the teeth of the ungodly. David is confident that the faithful God of Israel who anointed him for this task is the God that will hear his cry on the day of distress and will be faithful to deliver him based on his own character.

He is the just God who hears the pleas of his people. When David talks about their teeth being broken in verse 7 he is comparing them to animals. He is describing them as though they are wild beasts trying to bite and to devour prey. God breaks their teeth. This is a figure of speech. David is crying out for God to make them harmless.

Disarm them. What I also find interesting in this psalm is that David does not pray for their death. David prays for them to be neutralized, to be made harmless. I personally think this is because David knows that his own son is going to face the judgment of God.

David prays for God to deal with him gently. I arrived at this because when you find Absalom's death recorded what is the response of David? Oh, Absalom.

Oh, Absalom. So he is praying that God would neutralize or would render harmless the enemies, namely his own son. That God would intervene. That he would leave them harmless.

There has been a lot of controversy on social media over the last few days concerning the events that have taken place at the French sponsored Olympics there. As it would seem the French have tried to put on a blasphemous display of the Lord's Supper or the Last Supper there with the utilization of drag queens. It should not be our prayer as Christians who were once just like they were to see God to devour them in his just wrath. But that God would render them harmless and make them just as we are, sons and daughters of God. Tonight I wanted to teach out of 2 Corinthians. And in 2 Corinthians Paul talks about how he is always made triumphant in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now when I read that I thought to myself, yes, we are marching through with the Lord and made triumphant.

But that's not what that means. Paul is pulling on something the Corinthians would have known about. It is the Roman triumph parades. When they would go and take control of an enemy territory they would come back and they would have white oxen march before them and they would be slain.

And in the middle of the parade was the triumphant one. And he would be wearing purple and he would be surrounded and over him would be declared oe triumphe or hell the triumphant one. And behind him were not his generals.

Behind him were his prisoners. Paul is the one who used to be an enemy of the Most High God but is made a captive of Christ's holy war. He is a trophy of grace, not subdued by a militant enemy but is one who has been subdued and is held in shackles by one of divine love.

And Paul is paraded throughout the world as a trophy of grace, a prisoner of divine affection. And wherever he is led by the Spirit, he declares to the world, I was once an enemy of Christ, but now I have been subdued in his holy war and he is taken throughout the world to make his gospel known. I think that when David is praying for the neutralizing or the rendering of harmlessness of these enemies, as you read the finality of this psalm, he says, Salvation belongs to the Lord, your blessings upon your people. David is longing for unity among the people of God.

And I think that as we pray this psalm as well, that we pray for the enemies of God to be subdued and added to our number. Not the end of this prayer, David acknowledges that if anything happens, it will all be the Lord's doing. And David prays that God would work in such a way that God's people would live beneath his blessing. And that's what we see there in verse 8.

Salvation belongs to the Lord. David is conspiring. David is taking counsel. David is working to secure the throne that he has been called to hold as God's anointed king. But David understands that all the plans that I put together, all the dreams that I have, all the work that I am attempting to do, if God does not bless it, nothing is going to be accomplished.

Growing up, we used to sing out of an old Church of God redback hymnal that sometimes we would quote as though it was inspired itself. And in one place, we used to sing, All is vain unless the Spirit of the Holy One comes down. And it doesn't matter how much we do, it doesn't matter how much we plan, it doesn't matter how much counsel we take, if the Lord does not bless all of our efforts, there will be no fruit.

There will be no fruit. It irks me to no end when I see conferences or articles written on how to grow your church. It doesn't matter how many banners you have outside or how cool your flat screens are, if Christ does not bless the work that we have, nothing of eternal value will happen. And David understands this here. Your salvation belongs to the Lord. And then he says, All in your blessings be upon your people. Now, if you're a student of mine, I hope that you're asking yourself right now, where's Jesus? Where's Jesus?

And if you are, you're asking the right questions. You see, although David is the anointed one facing the enemy, David's descendant, the Lord Jesus Christ, who sits on David's throne forever, is the truly anointed one himself, who was betrayed not by his own son, but by the whole world. And it was this Christ who was considered helpless. Remember how they struck him and how they said to him, He delivered others, but his own self he cannot save. The Lord in the middle of this time of great agony had his eyes set on the glory of the Father.

And like David in Psalm five or Psalm three verse five, Jesus died and laid down and slept in the tomb. And he has arisen again. He has risen from the dead and now there is no other name given among heaven or given among men whereby we must be saved. It is through Jesus' sufferings and his victorious conquering that we are blessed today. The salvation that David was longing for was reconciliation and restoration to the throne. But at a cosmic scope, there is reconciliation through the Christ who has slept in the tomb and has risen again and who is seated to bring reconciliation, blessings and unity to the whole world through all who believe in him. In Luke 24, I preached a few months ago, just before Jesus' sins in the heaven, he lifts his hands and he pronounces us as blessed people on account of what? On account of his own blood.

On account of his own blood. So tonight if you were discouraged, you feel alone, you feel like the world has turned against you. Remember that God knows where you are. Even if it feels like you are deeper than a Jordanian rift and all that is around you is darkness and you have dug yourself into a hole so deep you don't see how you could possibly get out of it. If you feel that way, know that God knows where you are. God hears you and God will help you.

Why? It's not on account of anything that you've done. It's because you're blessed.

And why are you blessed? It's because in Jesus you are one of his own and he isn't going to just forget about someone who his own son bled and died for. Now your prayer name may not be answered in the way that you thought it would be, but I can promise you a few things. God won't let your suffering be for no reason. God won't let wrongdoers get a free pass. God will walk through you through the dark valleys that you face as his own. As a Christian, Pastor K alluded to this this morning, you are not exempt from hardships, but you are exempt from facing those hardships alone. His grace is sufficient for us in our time of need. So as you face hardships, keep reminding yourself salvation belongs to the Lord and his blessings are upon me for I am his own. This is the word of God for the people of God.

Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the scriptures. We thank you how you have worked through them to bring salvation to our hearts. You have made us who were once enemies of grace, vessels of mercy.

You have taken image bearers who have shattered your image through sin and you have reclaimed us and are slowly and meticulously putting back the pieces together that we might more perfectly show your glory into all the world. Father, I want to thank you for the opportunity to go and to share this gospel to the Blackfeet natives in Montana. I pray, Lord, that you would be with Larry and Carol Bunyan in this 39th year of ministry there, that you would grant them fruit for their labors they have labored faithfully, how lonely they must feel without camaraderie surrounding them and the ease that we enjoy here in North Carolina surrounding them, how easy it would be to be burnt out and to feel alone themselves.

But you hear them and you are with them and you use us as your body to encourage them and I pray that we have done that to your glory. Lord, I pray that you would bring salvation to the Blackfeet people. I pray that you would bring salvation to our children and our grandchildren here at Beacon. I pray that you would bring salvation to our community.

But, Lord, that you would do this through the regular means of our efforts of witnessing to those around us. Give us boldness, Lord. Give us boldness to speak your gospel with love and to all the world. For those here tonight who are in Christ but feel as though they are alone and forsaken, who feel like they are in darkness, I pray that you might remind them as you reminded the Apostle Paul who so struggled with that thorn in the flesh that your grace is sufficient. Lord, walk with them, be with them, use us as your body to encourage them and uplift them. Lord, let the fact that they belong to you and you to them be a crown and glory to them that lifts their drooping, broken hearts and minds. Lord, I love you and I thank you for your church. I thank you for the privilege to be in your Word tonight and ask that you would bless it in Christ's name. Amen.