Faithfully Alert When Society is Falling Apart

One day his holy justice will be poured out forever on those who were his enemies. Here's the problem when you run around to people who are unbelieving, who are defying God, and you quickly say, you know, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, or God hates what you do and he really loves you. For you, it's as if the church is trying so hard to keep God from becoming offensive to the world.

Listen, God is not troubled about being offensive to the world. The Bible talks about things that some people seem to want to avoid. The fact that our sin can be forgiven and that we can stand before God without fear is a glorious truth.

We like to talk about that. But there's another experience altogether for those who die having never trusted Christ. They will face God's judgment and wrath. That reality is just as true, but not as frequently communicated. Today on Wisdom for the Heart, we continue through Stephen Davies' series from the book of Psalms entitled The Song. No matter what you see happening in your society, don't be fooled into thinking God doesn't care.

He does and he's paying attention. Here's Stephen with today's lesson. Associated Press ran an article in the editorial section out of their Boston office and during the registration process this fall, it's created quite a conundrum. Harvard University students are allowed to indicate which pronoun they will use for themselves.

They can choose he, she, z, e, and they. Harvard isn't the first college to do this. By the way, they're all jumping on with this wave of major institutions. They're widening their policies.

Obviously, the created order of God is set aside and with it now confusion reigns. Cornell University, MIT, Ohio University started letting their students choose from options related to gender. In fact, last week I read that the State University of New York, one of the nation's largest public university college systems, announced that it is working on a data collection tool so that students can choose among seven gender identities. Everything from trans man to questioning. Advocates for all of these transgenders are applauding the changes, of course. In fact, one student was interviewed, I read her interview, a little bit of it.

Junior class student, Lila Smith, who filled in they and their on the form, which, you know, grammarians are having a hard time with, of course, in the English department. She said, we have figured out that sexuality is fluid, gender is fluid, and I think we are at the beginning of it all. Not really. This is old stuff. It's just wrapped in new deceptive packages. Satan has always wanted mankind to question God's created order and God's authority and God's word and God's moral absolutes. In the chilling digression of the confusion and the deception, which argues against the law of God, we are told that is written on our heart, is that there are no moral facts, then there can be no moral truths, then there can be no standard of morality.

Which then opens the door to inconceivable immoral behavior, which is why there weren't arrests made, by the way, and a public outcry when abortionists were discovered and taped discussing the harvesting of the brain of a newborn baby lying on a table that had survived the abortion. Why alcohol abuse and sexual abuse and drug abuse and physical abuse are epidemic. Which is why we're no longer a society that allows pornography or even markets pornography, we are now a society that is pornographic.

From the sale of an automobile to toothpaste, it is pornographic. So what do you do? What do you do when you're living in a culture where it's just coming apart at the seams, when it's now considering it an opinion that we are all equally created, even that fundamental truth is being wiped away? What do you do when the foundations crumble? The foundations, you remember, if you were with us in our last study, is the settled order of things, the way God has ordered them.

What do you do when they crumble? What do you do in a culture that wants to denigrate the very thing that made it great? What do you do with an article that I read this past week where a teacher skipped the chapter in world history on Christianity and instead required all of her students to memorize the five pillars of Islam? The historical impact of Christianity which made the Western world, the Western world is skipped over and even mocked.

Isn't that the time that you want to get your passport ready and the picture updated and fly somewhere to some accommodating culture? I mean, what do you do when evil is applauded and truth is exiled? Psalm 11 addresses it. David's first stanza kind of leaves you hanging in the air with that unsettled, seemingly unanswerable question. Let's go to it again in verse 3.

This is where we ended the last study. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? What do you do?

What do you do? What David reveals next, which is nothing less than the secret to our steadfastness, is simple. It's so simple and yet it is simply profound once you see it. And I've whittled down this poetic response into five stanzas. By the way, this is such a profound response that David is going to write this poem and he's going to hand it to his choral director and he's going to say, arrange this musically because I want to make sure that the nation sings it for centuries to come. What do these five stanzas say?

Let me give you the first one. The first stanza basically says this, God is totally undisturbed in his sovereignty. Verse 4, the Lord is in his holy temple, the Lord's throne is in heaven. Now at first that doesn't sound encouraging at all. Great. God is in heaven. Isn't that like light years away?

What's that going to do? Well, David isn't telling us to sing about the fact that God is removed. He's way up there somewhere, way out there on his throne out there. His point isn't that God is removed. David is stressing the fact that God forever rules.

That's his point. The Lord's throne, by the way, here is not a reference to inactivity. It is a reference to supremacy.

In fact, in another psalm, it says that the nations are raging and that God is laughing at their attempts to unseat him. By living in a society or even in some circumstance where it seems like everything is falling apart, steadfastness has everything to do with our concentration. What are we concentrating on? The crumbling foundations?

We're going to find more and more illustrations. Is that all we see? Or do we see the granite foundation underneath all that is, which is the undisturbed sovereign rule of God who is never unsettled, he is and will never be unseated. His rule is not up to the majority vote.

It'll never go before a court. He rules. So you can look around and you can say, oh, that does it.

I give up. Or you can look up and then say, you know, I'm going to stay with it as I represent him. God is totally underserved in his sovereignty. Secondly, God is totally aware of his creation. Look at the latter part of verse four. His eyes behold, his eyelids test the sons of men. The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked. In other words, when the foundations are crumbling, God sees.

God knows. God saw David's situation. God saw David's attackers gathering in the moonless night to shoot their arrows. God sees. And let me remind you, and I'm sure you already know this, but let me just rehearse it for you that he is, because of his omnipresent, he is an eyewitness to everything.

He examines everyone. David writes here, both the righteous and the unrighteous. That is, those rightly related to him by faith and those who defy him. By the way, this is both terrifying in its implication for the unbeliever, who will one day stand before God with the great white throne judgment and come to the horrifying discovery that every sin was not only worthy of judgment, but that God was an eyewitness of that sin. Every thought, every motive, every deed, God will say, I saw that. I was there to the believer, whose every sinful deed and motive and thought has already met the wrath of God in the death of Christ. Everything you go through in life that then is worthy of rewarding every thought, every deed, God saw that too. He dealt with the sinful part, and now he rewards us when we stand before him. And he was an eyewitness to everything you suffered, every statement you made for Christ, everything you did, every effort for his glory.

God is totally aware of his creation. Third stanza, God is totally just in his hatred. Look at the latter part of verse five.

Start at the beginning. The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked and the one who loves violence, his soul hates. That's a powerful statement. And then here's the here's the wonderful, incredible, stunning truth about the grace of God. He sent his son to answer for us and to die for us. And thus we become the eternal object of God's love and grace. And though our sins are stained like scarlet by this one who came to die as the lamb for us, we have been washed as white as snow.

Now David isn't finished talking about this. Verse six, upon the wicked he will reign snares. You could render that coals of fire. Fire and brimstone and burning wind.

In other words, it's as if the very air is on fire. One biblical archaeologist who studied the cities and the plains of Sodom and Gomorrah, may very well be in the mind of David as he thinks of this kind of judgment which will be unveiled in the future. This archaeologist wrote that evidences of literally an eruption of petroleum is there. The record of scripture then is informing us that God actually sent burning showers of ignited gas and oil down on these unrepentant cities.

And you say, well, why would he do that to them for the same reason he's going to do that to all of mankind forever? The apostle Peter writes, know this, that in the last days, mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts and saying, note this, where is the promise of his coming? In other words, you Christians always talk about the coming judgment of God. Well, it hasn't come.

It hasn't come. So, since it hasn't happened yet, it never will. Peter goes on to say, it escapes their notice that by the word of God, the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water by water, through which the world was at that time destroyed, being flooded with water. There was a universal flood, destroyed mankind. But by his word, the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment. There's another day of judgment coming and the destruction of ungodly men, 2 Peter 3. In other words, the first global outpouring of the wrath of God against unrepentant sinners was the flood. In Genesis 9, following the flood, God gave Noah and his family a sign. And that would be a sign that he would not destroy in judgment mankind again by water. And that sign is a what?

A rainbow. Peter informs us that the next judgment won't be with water, but with fire, and that's consistent with the rest of scripture. Unbelieving mankind will be sent to the lake of fire. Earth and the universe will literally explode in a vast fireball that God will then, and then God will recreate a new heaven and a new earth, Revelation 20 and 21.

All that's to come. But the world says, oh, come on, it'll never happen. I mean, that's not the God I know. He's not like that. Well, read the book that introduced him to us.

He is. In fact, what I find especially ironic, beloved, is that the symbol for the movement promoting the gay and lesbian and transgender and whatever else in between community, the symbol of their movement is none other than a rainbow. How ironic is that? The very symbol that was to become a reminder that God completely wiped mankind off the face of the earth in judgment, because his hatred for sinners and for sin was so horrific that it would be unleashed in a universal flood. A rainbow that promises God's judgment will not happen on earth again in that way, but reminds us of the terrible judgment of God and his authority over earth and all of mankind is now the symbol of immorality. Now, about this time, maybe you're wondering, why does David spend so much time on the subject of judgment on the wicked in his answer to how we are to respond when the foundations crumble?

Follow this. A big part of the answer to what you do when the foundations fall apart is to look to God for your security and your refuge and remember the defiant unbeliever has none. Has none. Their arrogance and defiance against God will be short lived. So the answer is not so much in doing. What do the righteous do?

The answer is not so much in doing as much as it is in looking to his throne and to the future. When the foundations crumble and mankind rejects God and perhaps persecutes the believer and beloved, we aren't being persecuted. Just so you understand, we're not. When we're troubled, irritated, denounced, ignored, the lions haven't rolled in yet in cages.

We're not throwing stones yet. There are brothers and sisters of ours around the world that are suffering. There are more people being martyred for the faith they have in Jesus Christ than ever before. What would David say? David would say, don't forget when the foundations crumble and you're persecuted for daring to represent him, this song becomes a reminder that all you will ever suffer is in this brief lifetime. And for the unbeliever, all the glory they will ever experience is in this brief lifetime. The only heaven the unbeliever will ever experience is the best of Earth.

The only hell the believer will ever experience is the worst of Earth. The song ends, for the Lord is righteous. He loves righteousness. The upright will behold his face. Not the perfect, the upright.

Those who are rightly related to God through the redemption of his son. Present circumstances seem dark, but the future is magnificently bright. In the meantime, we trust and we work and we live in light of this coming day. We clarify our vision. We make sure that our concentration isn't around us. It is up first and foremost.

It's upward. In fact, the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian church. Corinthian church in the first century, we can't imagine the culture.

And I remind you often of what it was like to remind you how good we have it still. But he wrote to the Corinthian church and he said this. He said, thanks be to God who always leads us in a triumphal procession in Christ. I'm sure that had to be strange.

It sure sounds strange to us. No, we're being led in a triumphal procession in Christ. We are. We don't look triumphant. We may not feel triumphant.

What does he mean? See, when Paul was writing this to these Roman citizens living in Corinth, they immediately picked up on the analogy. When a Roman general was victorious in a major conflict over a foreign army, he returned to Rome in the splendid processional of victory. The crowds would line the streets to celebrate. The defeated generals would be marched first with those soldiers of the defeated armies that were still alive. Then behind them would come the victorious general riding in a chariot pulled by traditionally four stallions. And then behind him would be his victorious army. And all along the road, they would be chanting, victory, victory, victory, victory. Nike is the Greek word. We use it as Nike.

Nike, Nike, victory. And people would be walking along the streets, many of them waving censors filled with special incense. And the streets of Rome would literally be filled with the aroma of victory. So Paul was writing, and they would have caught it immediately.

Here's what he's saying. Let me read it, and I'll read the full verse. Thanks be to God who always leads us in a triumphal procession in Christ. And through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. What do we do when the foundations are destroyed?

It's really, where do you look? God is totally in control of the chaos of culture and state and kingdom and nation and world events. His throne is in heaven.

It is over. All he inhabits, eternity, yet sees everything and reigns. And one day, this song effectively closes. We will see him face to face. And when we do, that is, without even asking, that's going to settle every doubt. When we do, that is going to answer, without us ever questioning every delay that will heal every wound.

So when the foundations crumble, where do you look? You look to the one whom you've trusted by faith, who promises us refuge. And then you forever sing your gratitude that one day you will see his face, that you will forever be the object, not of his justice and his wrath, but his love and his grace.

We've seen two contrasting realities today. We've seen that those who die as unbelievers will face God's terrifying judgment. We've also seen that believers are the object of God's delight. For the believer, death is not something to fear. Aren't you thankful for the gospel today?

God in his mercy has made it possible for us to be saved, and God treats us as his beloved children instead of as his enemies. As long as a person lives, it's never too late to respond to God's offer of salvation. You're listening to Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. If we can help you in any way, please call us. You can reach us at 866-48-BIBLE. When you call, be sure and ask about our monthly magazine and devotional guide. Our staff and volunteers would love the opportunity to tell you about it.

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