Farewell to the Foundations

It is the granite foundation of God's purpose and God's plan and God's power. This is fitting into His design for us, for our church, for our country, for our world, ultimately for His kingdom. So whenever we do see those things which are dear to our heart and they crumble and they may be gone, remember underneath them is a foundation and it will never ever crumble. Have you ever looked around at your culture and felt like the foundations were crumbling?

Things that you felt would never change have changed. Maybe you've seen examples of times when evil men seem to prosper and godless ideas are adopted. I'm sure you have and so did King David. This is Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Today Stephen begins a series from the Psalms. It's called The Song Volume 2. In today's lesson he's taking us to the first three verses of Psalm 11 where we'll see King David's perspective on how we should respond to moral decay in our culture.

Here's Stephen with today's lesson. In 1934 the veterans of foreign wars put up a cross out in the Mojave Desert. It was a memorial to all of those who fell during World War I.

The cross was only seven feet tall, rather small. They placed it on a stony outcropping, little hill out in the middle of virtually nowhere. To see it, I read you'd have to leave Los Angeles and drive nearly four hours northeast on US Highway 15. Then turn south on Cima Road, a two-lane blacktop.

Drive for nine miles until you enter the Mojave National Preserve. More than likely you won't see any other travelers along that road. Once you've arrived at Sunset Rock you'll be able to see the cross on top of that little rocky hilltop.

You won't see any other signs. There are no inscriptions. There's no granite monument describing it or even telling you why it's there. Just a simple little white cross where it has stood for 82 years. In 2001, a Park Service employee sued the government demanding that the cross be removed. That began a 10-year battle that ended not too long ago. In fact, at one point a judge ordered that the cross be covered with a plywood box so that it kind of looked more like a billboard than a cross.

But evidently that wasn't good enough. For some reason this was troubling, this little cross to our national conscience. And so you had the American Humanist Association, the Atheist Alliance International, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, the Americans United for Separation of Church and State, People for the American Way and the American Civil Liberties joined in a campaign to take this cross down.

This particular case would be battled all the way up to the Supreme Court. And on April 28, 2010, the court narrowly ruled by one vote that this little cross could stay on top of the hill. Less than two weeks later thieves cut the mounting bolts and got rid of the cross and it's never been seen since. Even in the Mojave Desert where almost no one ever saw it, the cross was and is a foundation marker that must go.

In more recent days the interfaith group called the American Clergy Leadership Conference, whenever you hear clergy run. They are calling for churches by the way everywhere in this country to remove their crosses. Their spokesman said that the cross was a symbol of oppression and it represented an attitude of superiority. You know it strikes me that the apostle Paul had the same problem too, didn't he? With his culture, different people, different reasons and yet it is a troubling marker. So he writes to the Corinthians that the preaching of the cross is to the Jews a stumbling block. It's in the way and to the Greeks it's stupidity.

That's how you could render that word. It's foolishness. Now frankly the desire of our unbelieving world and I know I'm preaching to the choir, just rehearsing it together, is not just to remove the foundation, it is to remove any memory of the founder. That's the bigger issue and the trouble is the real danger to any culture and in any country and the apostle Paul by the way, don't ever forget, lived in it, is that when you remove the absolute proposition of the existence of a creator God, you invite into your own personal life, into your own generation, into your own culture, into your own nation, all sorts of harm. All sorts of danger and error. It was famously written by Dostoevsky that famous quote, if there is no God anything is permissible.

Anything is permissible. Dostoevsky was a Russian author and he was forbidden by the way to be read during Joseph Stalin's reign when Stalin came to power and interestingly enough, Stalin's own daughter Svetlana, whose biography I tried to read this summer, just came out, a massive biography about that thing, about 400 pages and I got through 300 and finally gave up and skipped to the last chapter and found out how she died. At any rate, Svetlana would sneak into her room and read her forbidden novels by Dostoevsky. She would by the way later defected the United States. Died just a couple of years ago. But think of the truth of that.

If there is no God then anything is permissible and what has become permissible. Today it isn't even headline news for all that long for abortionists to be caught on tape talking of crunching bones and baby parts for sale. In fact, just this month California's assembly voted not to restrict abortion or try to encourage women to realize that the baby they're carrying more than likely by then has fingernails and heartbeats. They voted to force pro-life pregnancy health care centers into posting announcements that these women could obtain a free abortion covered by Medi-Cal and they were even required, they are even now required to post those signs and it's demanded that they post them in 24 font type. Large enough so that they can all see free abortions here in a pregnancy pro-life help center. That's like posting a big announcement at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that free beer is available after the meeting.

And how ridiculous is that? But with the exclusion of God, the value of life is one of those foundation markers that just sort of goes away. In fact, more chilling will be the fact that the elderly will have less and less of a defense for living. I was given this article at a recent bioethics conference, a professor of theology no less, gave a lecture where she said that personhood is not automatically given to human beings, it is assigned by culture.

That's chilling, think Third Reich and Jews. She said and I quote, an Alzheimer's patient without any memory and without people to care for them ceases to be a person. Someone who still has friends or family who love and remember them maintain their personhood.

I couldn't help but wonder what she will think if she ends up with Alzheimer's one day. And what about personhood anyway? You remove the creator and all that's up for grabs. You remove the wonderful discovery where Jeremiah and the psalmist say, you God, you know, ordain my being, you know who I am. I am something, someone. I have personhood before I'm even delivered. But you get rid of the creator and everything's out for grabs. One author described us now kind of moving into what he called in his journal article a genderless wasteland where people are no more born male or female but where they determine their own gender.

And should they choose to change their gender, they are applauded as heroes. In fact, a few months ago, Rob Bell, an apostate former pastor who built a large church in Michigan, he was being interviewed by Oprah Winfrey on her wonderfully theologically correct television show in which this former Protestant pastor, best-selling by the way, who just wrote a book ironically on marriage, said this and I quote, marriage gay and straight is a gift to the world because the world needs more not less love. And Oprah interrupted him and asked when is the church going to get that? And he responded we're close, we're moments away from the church accepting it.

And he's right. Not this church but the church at large. It has picked up its own eraser and clergy are helping as if they're enthusiastically gleefully able to participate in removing foundations.

Let me remind you though beloved what we're facing isn't new. It isn't new to the scope of church history. It has not caught God off guard and I want us to have this new sense of vision and mission that God has chosen to call us, to summon us to this particular generation in this particular country at this particular point in time.

We all need to need to carry in our hearts a sense of the responsibility of being able to answer the questions, of being able to respond with grace and truth, to be able to answer the questions that are raised about these scriptures and our God and our views and our morals. Because as I've said to this congregation before and I'll say it again, we are not living anymore in a post-Christian culture. We are living in a pre-Christian culture.

This is the time when Jesus Christ decided to create the church and by the descent of the Holy Spirit it was created in that generation. So for us the more we look like them the more it might be in the mind of God the perfect time to be a church. Now I don't want you to misunderstand by the analogy to history that it isn't grievous to me to see values and virtues turned upside down. It is deeply troubling to me to see because I know the hurt that we're only inviting culture wide to see God erased from our landscape. It's discouraging for me to see the White House bathed in rainbow colors in honor of the Supreme Court's decision to knowingly willfully defy God. So don't misunderstand my reference to historical analogy it is tragic to see any culture, especially mine, this is my country and yours, to see it literally given over to the swamp of drugs and alcohol and pornography and abortion and greed and promiscuity. All of it justified, all of it magnified, all of it now applauded. I agree with one of our country's forefathers who was already concerned 200 years ago when he said indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that his justice will not sleep forever. So the question for us is what do we do?

How do we respond in every generation in every nation to one degree or another? The church has to answer this question. Dr. Arno Gable line now with the Lord a Bible scholar of great renown called this the burning question of the day and he wrote that in 1939. This happens to be the question of King David the songwriter in fact David thought this was so significant that he handed it to his choir master and he said I want you to put this into music because I want the nation singing this. David's question is as critical today as it was when it was composed 3,000 years ago. So I have selected this song to begin our series and I want you to turn to Psalm 11. Psalm 11. If the foundations are destroyed what can the righteous do? Now would you notice here what he says or what he doesn't say? He doesn't say what do the righteous do when the roof falls in? Notice. What do you do when the door won't open?

What do you do when the windows get stuck? Now he's saying what do you do when the very foundation upon which life around you is supported is destroyed? That is the burning question of the day. Now go back to verse 1. David actually begins with his statement of trust and dependence. It's really a statement of faith. The first phrase in the Lord I take refuge. He doesn't write in my kingdom I take refuge in my generation I take refuge in my house in my little world where I live I take refuge. No in Yahweh I'm secure. Now commentators are hard-pressed to try to identify exactly the trouble David is facing here when he writes this song.

Some of them are a little easier to to date this one isn't. They don't know if it's you know when Saul is tracking him down and there on those rocky bluffs he runs for his life. They don't know it could possibly be when Absalom has successfully just about nearly completed his coup d'etat and and and David is on the run and David's closest counselor has betrayed him turned against him. We don't know but here's what we do know we do know that that someone who follows after God is not guaranteed a smooth ride. That's what we do know because he's writing this. We do know that we have not been given from God the right of approval. King David here is he isn't marginalized he's running for his life. He's out there in the wilderness and and this example at least gives us the principle to to apply that when you follow God that doesn't mean that why everything just settles down people applaud you people appreciate you people give you a chair at the table and welcome you.

The church has been deluded I'm afraid for decades. The world will now become what the world has always been and the masks will come down. So notice here here's the advice he has this conversation though he doesn't name the person but he's talking back to someone and he says how can you say to my soul by the way that means this advice that he's about to hear or has heard has affected him deeply.

How can you say something that has impacted my very soul? What is this advice? Flee as a bird to the mountain run David run hide your only Avenue that that's your only option run you can't fight you're like a little bird you can't defend yourself fly away to safety. A woman came up to me after the church service today and she said I have friends that are talking about going and buying property and building a commune and disappearing. Run. Our mission is not to escape our world our mission is to engage our world with the gospel but let's not minimize the danger in fact notice verse two for behold David writes the wicked this person says to David the wicked bend the bow they make ready their arrow upon the string to shoot in darkness at the upright in heart in the darkness the Greek translation of the Old Testament the Septuagint says in a moonless night just to sort of increase the drama in the moonless night you are in the sights of an archer this is another way of saying David you're a sitting duck nighttime there's an archer you're in the open you're in his sights you don't have a chance now these advisors are actually using verb tenses that really ratchet up up the tension in fact if I translated it with those tenses in mind it would be along the lines of the Sun has already set they have already pulled back the string they have already set the arrow they already have you in their sights and you can't see them because it's dark this is like a firing squad this is the moment where you hear that man shout ready a it's in that brief moment that David's writing this there's nothing you can do I saw a cartoon once where two men are pictured standing against the wall they're facing a firing squad they're tied up they're blindfolded the commandant shouts ready aim and the one guy turns the other and says I have a plan you don't have a plan between aim and fire that's why the first stanza of this song ends with the question how hopeless can it be how difficult can it be how gut-wrenching can it be the enemies of that which I believe David said they've already strung their bow they've set their arrow they have me in their sights there's nowhere to go and his friends come along and say we've got a we've got a plan one thing you can do and that is hope you turn into a little bird and fly away which doesn't help at all because you can't turn into a little bird and fly away you got to get up tomorrow morning and re-enter the rat race and face the pressure what do you do when the foundations are destroyed not crumbling gone the word David uses for foundation is a rare word it comes from a Hebrew word meaning the settled order of things David is sort of likening society to a building his culture his life to a building and the foundations of of society are law and order and and truth and justice and morality and decency and integrity and on down the line right all the virtues you can think of but when the unrighteous in darkness shoot away effectively not just at David or the believer but the very foundations filling them with arrows bringing them to naught what do you do when the foundational principles of right and wrong are destroyed David will answer that question in his second stanza eight different ways and we will expound on all eight of them in our next session in the meantime let me give you this to reassure you and your soul there is a foundation underneath the foundations there there is a granite foundation under the sandstone crumbling foundations of our culture it is the granite foundation of God's purpose and God's plan and God's power he isn't saying oh my this is fitting into his design for us for our church for our country for our world ultimately for his kingdom so whenever we do see those things which are dear to our heart and they crumble and they may be gone remember underneath them is a foundation and it will never ever crumble thanks for joining us today as we begin this series from the book of Psalms entitled the song volume two you've been listening to wisdom for the heart this is the bible teaching ministry of Stephen Davey and you can learn more about us if you visit our website which is wisdom online.org you'll be able to access the complete archive of Stephen's bible teaching ministry we also post each day's broadcast so if you ever miss one of these lessons you can go to our website and keep caught up with our daily bible teaching the 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