1141. Save Us From Our Generation

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina.

Today's speaker will be Dr. Bob Jones III, Chancellor of Bob Jones University. Please open your Bibles to Psalm 12. We're going to read it in just a minute, but you'll see instantly when you do read it that it's a cry for God to guard us from our generation. You're aware that sociologists have divided up American generations since 1901 unto the present. Since the year 2000, everybody born, including all of you here, are part of Gen Z. The generation ahead of you, Gen Y, started in 1980 and went to 2000. Each of those generations has dominant characteristics.

It's not guaranteed, but the sociologists have concluded that people born in those decades probably have pretty much the same emphasis, understanding of life, worldview, and all that kind of thing. But I would like to mention that in each of those six generations that they've identified, there are really two generations. The one I call Gen R. The Bible calls it the generation of the righteous.

Please keep in mind Gen R. You'll be hearing me say it several times. Psalm 14 5 tells us about Gen R. God is in the generation of the righteous. And then there's Gen U, the generation of the unrighteous. Gen U. 1 Corinthians 6 9, the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

Two distinct generations in every one of the sociologists' defined generations. The unrighteous shall not see God, but God seeks them, that they might know Him and be blessed with His mercy and His eternal goodness. Listen to Isaiah 55 7. Let the wicked forsake His way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. And let him return unto our God, for He will abundantly pardon. That's God's heart toward the unrighteous. It's not His will that any should perish. God seeks to save those who are lost. You may be part of the generation of the unrighteous.

I hope not. You were, if you were part of Gen R, you were part of Gen U. I was too. I thank God for the message of the gospel that entered my heart, drew me to Christ when I was 13 years old. I hope you have an assurance in your heart that you're part of Gen R. Second — 1 Timothy 2 tells us that God would have all men to be saved. He would want everybody to be part of Gen R. And you have come, I trust all of you, to enter that generation. Let's read Psalm 12. It speaks about David's cry for God to deliver the Gen R people from the kind of world that Gen U is making and bringing to bear upon Gen R all kinds of persecution and difficulties. We are in a conflict, are we not, those of us in Gen R?

We're in a minority for one thing. The road to heaven is a narrow road, the Bible says, and few there be that find it. So let's see how David looked at the life of a Gen R-er in the midst of a Gen U generation. With our tongue we will prevail. Our lips are our own. Who is Lord over us? For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy. Now will I arise, saith the Lord.

I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him. The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O Lord, thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever, the wicked walk on every side when the vilest men are exalted. Among other things in this psalm, God the Holy Spirit is distinguishing between the words of Gen U and the words of the Lord, which are pure words, purified many times over. The cry for David here is for God to guard Gen R in a world that has been corrupted by the lips and the tongues of Gen U. I hope you could see it there as we read it. It is interesting, is it not, that in this psalm God chose the speech of Gen U rather than the deeds of Gen U to reveal the corruption that is in the world through Gen U. I would like you to turn for another example of what God thinks about the words of the unrighteous to Romans 3. Would you please turn there?

I would like you to follow it. I would like you to see God's perspective about the kind of thing David was crying out to God that he would deliver Gen R from Gen U. The words, the speech, the tongues, the lips of the unrighteous. Romans 3, 10, as it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They're all gone out of the way. They are together, become unprofitable.

There is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulcher. With their tongues they have used deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feets are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways.

The way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. How much of these words of Paul were directed by the problems created in this world by the tongues, the speech of the ungodly? That speech goes forth from educational classrooms where the unregenerate teacher teaches, teaches the insults that are hurled against God every time they teach that God the Creator did not create, but man is an evolutionary accident, and on and on and on. The philosophies of the wicked hearts come forth through the lips of the ungodly and the unrighteous who teach in those classrooms. The words of Gen U come forth to our nation through the newsrooms, through corrupted pulpits, elected officials, unelected judges, social media.

I'd like to stop there just a minute. Social media allows the unrighteous to spew forth every diatribe, every filth, every immoral idea and practice, bigotry, lying gossip about others and about institutions. It is just the perfect devil-designed channel through which the words of Gen U can spread vitriol, poison throughout the minds and hearts of a nation. If you are into social media, and that includes almost all of you probably, I hope you will understand the potential, the destructive potential that is there and avoid it.

Don't go to those places. Don't listen to those voices. It's the kind of voices that David said are corrupting the world. The speech of the unrighteous is a corruptive speech because of their corrupted hearts. The husbands and the fathers who are part of Gen U, the husbands and the fathers who are unrighteous, have spewed out into some of your hearts that are breaking because of the angry words, the wrath. Wives weep throughout the day when the husband is gone, crying out to God because of the verbal abuses that angry, unrighteous men are hurling at their wives. This is the kind of thing David is speaking about.

But I want you to look at the very first verse, his cry to the Lord. He says, the problem is, Lord, that the ungodly man has ceased and the faithful have failed from among the children of men. The godly cease to be godly. The faithful cease to be faithful. Have you noticed?

Maybe you haven't lived long enough to notice, but some of us have. There is a marked deterioration in the lives of the professed godly and the professed faithful. They are collapsing in the midst of the intimidation they face for the stance that they took for the Lord out of their godly hearts. They did godly things. They spoke godly words. They took faithful — seriously, their faithful responsibilities to the Lord. But where are these people today?

It seems they are diminishing. And as a result, the speech of the ungodly, the unrighteous, has swept into that void and has created the kind of problem David is talking about. And it's described also in verse 8, because the ungodly have — the godly have failed and the faithful have failed. The wicked walk on every side when the vilest men are exalted.

This is a problem you face. Every generation that is characterized by the speech of the ungodly makes it very difficult for Gen R. We need God's preservation. We need His protection. We need to be shielded from the proud speaking, the arrogant, in-your-face speaking against God, speaking against the words of God, forming a world where God is hated. It was the speaking of Satan in the Garden of Eden that deceived Eve, that insulted God and His goodness, and proudly appealed to the ego of the human heart to become gods themselves. We need to pray the kind of prayer David prayed, God will you keep us, will you preserve us from Gen U and all that is problematic for us, as Gen R, as the result of their kind of speech. God will you, our Heavenly Father, buffer your children from the malevolent designs that are against us from the words of the ungodly.

This is a cry. This psalm is a cry for protection. And I want you to look at Psalm 17. David also is crying to God about Gen U. It was about their speech and its effect and the corruptive influence it was even having upon God's people who had ceased to be godly and ceased to be faithful, had let down their guard, if you will, and their hearts had become cold and indifferent toward God. They weren't hot for God anymore.

And they were ripe for the insinuations of the ungodly against God. But there's something else here in Psalm 17 that makes it difficult for Gen R. David deals with that. Notice that the first verse, he cries out, hear the rite, O Lord, attend to my cry, give ear to my prayer.

Same urgency. Same pleading. God, our help is not to be found in our strength, in our wisdom, in our organizations and our institutions. God, some help has to come from you or we are doomed. And then he continues in verse 6, I have called upon thee, for thou wilt hear me, O God, incline thine ear to me and hear my speech. Show thy marvelous loving kindness, O thou that savest by thy right hand them which put their trust in thee, from those who rise up against thee. Keep me as the apple of thine eye. Hide me under the shadow of thy wings. From the wicked — and by the way, in this Psalm, the word wicked in English is the translation of the Hebrew word wicked, which means morally wicked. Morally wicked. Lord, from the morally wicked that oppress me, from the deadly enemies who compass me about, they are enclosed in their own fat with their mouth.

They speak proudly. They have now compassed us in our steps. They have set their eyes, bowing down to the earth like it is a lion that is greedy of his prey, and as it were, a young lion lurking in secret places. Arise, O Lord.

Disappoint him. Cast him down. Deliver my soul from the wicked, which is thy sword. From men, which are thy hand, O Lord. From men of the world, which have their portion in this life, and whose belly thou fillest with thy hid treasures.

They are full of children. They have rest in their substance, and they leave the rest of their substance to their babes. As for me, David said, I will behold thy face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness. He said, God, I'm confident you are going to deliver me.

You will deliver me not only from this generation, from the corruptive nature of Gen U, but you will deliver me from the grave, the ultimate deliverance. He ends this psalm in great confidence and triumph, but keep in mind what it is that these morally wicked people do. David said in verse seven, these men rise up against those who put their trust in God. They're the adversaries of Gen R. They're deadly enemies who compass or encircle or seal off Gen R. Have you recognized how this present generation wants to marginalize you as people of God? To cut off the message from the churches. To push us into a little corner where we won't bother them anymore. To treat us as though we don't even exist.

To stop their ears against the word of God that would come from our lips. They've encircled us. As a lion encircles his prey.

I think I may have shared with you before, if I did forgive me, my wife and I were in Rhodesia years ago and the missionary took us to a game park on the western edge, the eastern edge of the country, and we stayed there in the park in a secure habitation for a couple of nights. One day we went out to a water hole and on the rise above it we looked down and here were some gazelles, some impalas I guess they were, six or eight of them, and they were down at the water hole but on the hill behind them were three lions. Male lion in the center, two lionesses on each side. Over here was a giraffe who was paralyzed and motionless lest he should draw the attention of the lions. And they were encroaching slowly.

The male lion would move a little and the two lionesses would move and they had a pincer movement going and all of a sudden as on a cue they charged the hole and the impala ran across a little isthmus over here that got them away from the water and away from the threat and the lions just sat down panting from their exertion and defeated. So it is that the enemy is described here as coming against the people of God. Have you noticed the encroaching immorality in this country? The acceptance of perversity and adultery and iniquity, every sort of sexual practice. Including this whole gender identification thing.

It's just how quickly from just three or four years ago it has just accelerated. As the wicked walk on every side and the vile are exalted more and more of this can be expected. But God is marvelously kind and mightily capable of taking care of Gen R when Gen U makes life difficult for them. Look again at verse seven. Show me thy marvelous kindness, O Lord, that savest by thy right hand them which put their trust in thee from those who rise up against them.

I would like to draw this to a close. Lest you should feel a sense of hopelessness, despair. Are we going to be overcome? Will there even be any churches left? God has said He will not leave Himself without a witness. There will be faithful people who stay faithful.

There will be Godly people who stay Godly. I hope you will be among them. You're the only hope for any truth to reach this nation.

This is truth. You have it in your hearts, I hope. You have it in your hand, and I hope you have it in your lips. Without you, faithful and Godly, there's no hope humanly speaking. There's only judgment ahead for this nation and this world. If God doesn't use His people to be voices of revival, if you don't get a resurgence in your heart of the goodness of God to His enemies and want them to know that there's a God who will save them from their degradation and desires that they should come and should repent and be His people, you have a mission to fulfill. It is not a mission of your self-fulfillment. It's a mission of taking this word of truth and using it against the lies and the deception of Gen U.

It is living purely before God and uprightly, walking in His ways so that there is authenticity and integrity to your life which lends authenticity to your message and without which there is no reason anybody should believe the message if your life is as corrupt as the life of the Gen U folks. I call you, my friends, those of you who are in Gen R, I call you to prayer as you've never prayed before. You noticed in both of these psalms the emphasis on prayer. David understood what it was going to take for things to turn around, for the godly to be godly again and the faithful to be faithful again and for the people to understand and follow after God again.

He said, God, I cry to you for this. I hope you're praying for revival. I hope you're praying for God's mercy in this coming election.

I hope you're praying and I hope you're speaking and I hope you're not going to be intimidated because Gen U seems to be so pervasive everywhere you turn. The media is dominated by it. The courts are controlled by it.

The legislators are dedicated to it. And if you did not believe that God is real and that God is in charge and that God has a desire in His heart to save the ungodly, there would be no hope. You're the hope. I love you. Your faculty love you. They want you to get a grip on God.

A grip on the problem and a grip on the problem solver. Almighty God. I hope you will remain increasingly and confidently acquainted with God's Word. As we were told in verse 6 of Psalm 12, the words of the Lord are pure words as silver tried in the furnace of earth and purified seven times.

The Word of God is the only weapon you have against the falsehood, the lying words of this generation. And I hope you will remain increasingly mindful and encouraged knowing that life in this world is not the only life you're going to have. The Psalm is ended, Psalm 17, with that assurance, as for me. I will behold Thy face in righteousness.

I will be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness. This is not the only life. There's eternal life. My grandfather used to say, you and God, you and God make a majority in any situation. Yes, it seems like the ungodly are domineering.

They're in control of things. But you and God make a majority. You be on His side and you are in the majority. Because He said, you have His promise, I will never leave you nor forsake you.

So do what's right. Love God. Speak boldly His pure words. Look expectantly to the time you're going to see Him face to face and have His eternal blessings in your life and His eternal rewards.

And just keep on keeping on. You have a cause that motivates you every day in the classroom, every day of your life here. You're getting ready to be a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Here I pray your comforts for us in this confused bewildering and sometimes fearful world. But you have not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, of love, of a sound mind. So we take the sword of the Spirit, your word, and we go forth, Lord, in preparation to do battle for you. In Jesus' name, Amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Bob Jones III, Chancellor of Bob Jones University. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow at this same time as we study God's Word together on The Daily Platform.