Our Old Testament reading is the 75th Psalm. We give thanks to you, O God. We give thanks, for your name is near. We recount your wondrous deeds. At the set time that I appoint, I will judge with equity. when the earth totters and all its inhabitants, it is I who keep steady its pillars. I say to the boastful, do not boast. And to the wicked, do not lift up your horn. Do not lift up your horn on high or speak with haughty neck. For not from the east or from the west and not from the wilderness comes lifting up, but it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another. For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup with foaming wine well mixed, and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs. But I will declare it forever. I will sing praises to the God of Jacob. All the horns of the wicked I will cut off, but the horns of the righteous shall be lifted up. The word of the Lord. Let's pray. Father, I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart will be acceptable to you, for you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen. You may be seated. There's that line in this psalm about tottering. Did you notice that? The earth totters. Sometimes it feels as though the world is tottering. Have you felt that lately? I mean, just watching the news, maybe surfing the web, you know, just what is going on? This is crazy stuff. Clown world, I've heard it called. People just doing things that just don't make sense. It just seems as though all of the norms have kind of been left behind, kind of ways of thinking that we took for granted for the longest time are now called into question about some of the most common sense things you can possibly imagine. This is the situation we find ourselves in. Have you ever heard the term, and it's a difficult one to pronounce, but it's an acronym, teotihuacan. Teotihuacan. Say that five times fast. Teotihuacan. It stands for the end of the world as we know it. It's something that kind of comes and goes depending on how bad the news is, but sometimes it just feels like the end of the world as we know it is like every day. It's like, turn on the news and there you know. It's just craziness out there. Some things that I remember as a kid that we just thought would never change just overnight changed. Take, for example, the Soviet Union. So I grew up in the 60s and the 70s, and at that time, we just thought of that as the most implacable, unchangeable thing you could possibly imagine. I mean, it was just dense and opaque and ruthless. We talked about the Iron Curtain. Do you remember those days? All the people who have been born since the year 1990 have no clue what we're thinking about. But it just seemed like these were the guys who could do us in. They had the wherewithal. And I remember as a kid in St. Louis in elementary school, bomb drills. as though hiding under your desk would save you from a nuclear explosion. I don't know if you remember those days, but duck and cover. And then there were all these shelters all around with the yellow and black signs that told you, this is where you're going to all run in case there's a nuclear attack and you're going to kill each other, kind of trampling each other, getting through the door. That was the world that I remember as a kid. And then one day, it was over. Do you remember that? You know, late 80s, early 90s, just overnight, we realized it was all facade. What we thought was implacable and unchanging turned out to be just kind of like a Hollywood movie set, with a lot of props holding up the walls from the other side. And we thought that everybody behind the Iron Curtain was fully on board with the program to destroy us. Turned out that wasn't the case. Turned out the world changed overnight. I remember the New World Order. You remember the New World Order that we were promised was just going to be just marvelous? George Bush talked about it. Now when you say New World Order, you're like, oh, World Economic Forum, that's what you had in mind. We don't want that. So now we have something else to be afraid of. And I do remember during those days when we thought about godless communism. Remember that? You'd have politicians on both sides of the aisle refer to the godless communists. And they would actually legislate things like, we need to put, in God we trust, in our money. And they did that in 1957. It wasn't always there, in case you didn't know. But it was put on the coinage of our country and on our currency, specifically with the Russians in mind. They're godless. We believe in God. That's when we built Air Force Chapel at the Air Force Academy. Probably one of the most beautiful churches in America. If you ever get a chance to visit Air Force Chapel there in Colorado Springs, you ought to do it. It's a beautiful facility. Definitely in the top ten when it comes to church buildings. And it was paid for by, guess what? The U.S. government with your tax dollars. one of the most beautiful churches in America was built with your tax dollars. That was what the world was like in those days when the godless communists were out there threatening us. Now who's godless? Right? Maybe we should be thinking about us. We're the godless ones. So, anyway, the thing to keep in mind is God does judge, and this is a good thing. I know that we think of judgment as something we'd rather avoid, and there are reasons for that. I mean, there's this marvelous quote from Chesterton, G.K. Chesterton. We were just talking about orthodoxy, his marvelous work with the elders just a few minutes ago. But he was known for writing just lots of very witty essays. And one of those essays was entitled On Household Gods and Goblins. It was published in 1922. And he had this to say about judgment. It's fun to think about. He said, some time ago, I went with some children to see Matter Link's fine and delicate fairy play about the blue bird that brought everybody happiness. For some reason or other, it didn't bring me happiness, and even the children were not quite happy. I will not go so far as to say that the blue bird was a blue devil, but it left us in something seriously like the blues. The children were partly dissatisfied with it because it did not end with a day of judgment. Because it was never revealed to the hero and the heroine that the dog had been faithful and the cat faithless. For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy." Says a lot, doesn't it? It's true. Kids want to see truth prevail. They want to see the wicked punished. And those of us who are older and wickeder, we'd rather kind of keep that, you know, sort of out of the conversation, maybe not think about it at all. We just kind of like to just avoid the matter. But the Lord has to judge because he needs to keep the world steady. There's that other image here. We see the earth tottering, but contrasted with that in verse three is the Lord declaring, it is I who keeps steady its pillars. Even though everything seems to be just in motion, as though you're in an earthquake, and I've been in one. I was in the Northridge earthquake. I'll tell you about that another time. But anyway, everything is like, shaken, you're thinking, man, what's stable? What's steady? Well, God says, I'm steady, and I know how to make things stable, and I do it, and I do it by executing judgment. I judge. Now, I know that in the course of our lives, we're not entirely sure that God's timetable is the timetable that we should follow when it comes to judgment. I think we, in some cases, like to speed it up. Now, in our own case, we'd like to slow it down. We'd like to keep the day of judgment forever in the future, kind of like a carrot on a stick. We never actually get there. But when it comes to other people, we would like it to have been done yesterday. You know, when people treat us poorly or do something wrong to us. And this brought to mind something I talked about during the Bible study hour a few months ago. And I thought, well, this is a perfect opportunity to talk about it again. It's the story of the tomato man. So if you were here that day, you're going to be subjected to the story once again. But here's how it goes. I was a minister in Boston working in the inner city in a very sort of vibrant and busy church. And it was made up of people from all over the world and from every socioeconomic background. And it was also frequented by a lot of people who came looking for help. The kind of help they were wanting is help to pay for drugs. But they would never tell you that. They would have some great story about why you needed to help them out because of the desperate circumstances they found themselves in. So anyway, you get a little cynical over time, after like the 30th time that you've been asked for something and discovered that actually the person who's doing the asking is a drug addict or an alcoholic and actually does use what you give them for things like that. But anyway, there came a day when there was a knock at the door at the church and I got to the door and I opened it up and I looked and there was this guy who was like the very picture of sort of propriety. He had a crew cut, flat top, in fact. Not a terribly tall guy, maybe 5 foot 5. And he had really highly polished shoes. I mean, like the kind you see on Marines on dress uniform day. And he had well-pressed pants. And I remember he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and he had some cross pins in it. And he was carrying a bag of tomatoes. I was like, this is different. And he told me at that point that he needed some financial assistance because he was an electrician. He was working down the street on a job. And for some reason, his car wasn't working. And he needed to get home right away. And he needed about $20 in order to take a bus down to Rhode Island. And I'm sitting, or I'm standing there listening to this guy, and over my shoulder is my friend Marvin, Marvin Daniels, a big black guy from Queens in New York. He's kind of looking down at this, he was on staff at the church, he was looking down kind of quizzically to see what I would do. And at that moment, I just wanted to believe somebody. You ever find yourself in a situation like that? You're just around a lot of people on the make, and you're just sick and tired of that kind of stuff. And you're just, I don't want to be cynical anymore. I just want to believe somebody. And I thought, this is the guy to believe. And so I reached into my pocket and pulled out a 20. And Marvin's looking at me. He said, what are you doing? I'm like, I just want to believe somebody. Anyway, I said to the guy, OK, tomato man. Here's the 20, when can you pay me back? He says, tomorrow morning I'll pay you back. Okay. What time? 5 a.m. What? Yeah, 5 a.m. I've got to be on the job at 5 a.m. right down the street. I'll be back here to pay you that $20 back. And I said, okay. I live right next door and I literally did like 20 steps away. And the next morning I was awake at 5 a.m. waiting for the tomato man. At about 5.30, I wondered if he was going to show. At 6 o'clock, I knew I had been had once again. So I got out of the chair and went down the street to the work site. And I said, hey, do you know what I'm talking about when I say the tomato man? And they just started laughing. I said, oh, the tomato man. Tomato man, if I ever find you, you're going to pay. I swore in my heart that I would get vengeance on the tomato man. And then I went home and then I read about Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. Felt guilty about wanting revenge. Anyway, I just kind of said, well, you win some, you lose some. And it seems like I just lose every time with this. And then about a week or two later, I'm walking through Central Square in Cambridge, tough neighborhood, still kind of gritty in those days, days before gentrification. And there's this commotion. at the tavern. And a lot of people shouting and a lot of turmoil. And I'm walking by and I see, guess who? The tomato man. And somebody had his finger in his face and said, you better pay me back, tomato man. He didn't say that. I don't remember the guy's name. And I thought to myself in that moment, vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. I didn't need to worry about it. And then, about a week after that, I was conducting an evangelistic Bible study in the home. And I had a bunch of guys there. And there was a knock at the door. Open the door. Guess who it is? The tomato man, crying. Because he felt so bad. And he said, I'll pay you back some day. He was drunk. And I thought to myself, you have paid for that sin already dozens of times. Let it go. It's OK. I thought, you know what? No one gets away with anything in this world. When you sin and harm somebody else, you harm yourself at the same time in ways that you can't fully appreciate at that moment. Everyone pays. No one gets away with anything. And in the end, the Lord will say, do you want me to pay for that or do you intend to pay for it yourself? Because I've paid for it. You don't need to. If you insist on holding on to it because of your pride, well, you'll pay. But let me pay. That's the gospel. Anyway, another thing about this psalm that's fascinating is the horns. What's with the horns? Have you thought about that? There are these references to horns. So, you know, you see this in verses 4, 5, and 10. I say to the boastful, do not boast, and to the wicked, do not lift up your horn. Do not lift up your horn on high or speak with haughty neck. And then down in verse 10, all the horns of the wicked I will cut off. What's with the horns? I think that the reason why, at least I wonder, what's with the horns is because, generally speaking, we're not in touch with nature like we used to be. If you're familiar with animals with horns, you know that they can hurt. And that often, they're used to get what the animal wants. The animal wants to get its way, and it uses its horns. So there's a sense in which the horns, just kind of intuitively, are understood to mean something that is strong and is forceful and is used to get its way. And the parallelism, particularly that we see there in verse five, is helpful when we're told, do not speak or speak with haughty neck. In other words, there's something about the horn. There's something about the haughty neck. And what's really sort of addressed in both those images is the idea of arrogance or the reality of arrogance. The word arrogance is a word that's worth thinking about because When we hear the word, we just think about somebody who maybe is rude, presumptuous, and that sort of thing. But there's actually a technical matter that we more or less miss. And the word arrogant is a variant on the word arrogate. And to arrogate is to take something that doesn't belong to you, particularly authority. So a person who is arrogant is a person who takes upon himself certain prerogatives, rights, and so forth that he doesn't actually have a right to possess or to have. So that's what arrogance is. So it's sort of lifting yourself up, putting yourself on top, when in fact that's not where you're supposed to be. Now, what's fascinating here though, when we consider this, when we think about horns, I know what I think of when I think of horns. When I think of evil, I think of the devil and horns and stuff like that. Most of the time we associate horns with the bad guy. I remember when I saw Michelangelo's Moses. I don't know if you've seen Michelangelo's Moses, but he's got goat horns. Freaked me out as a kid. I still don't know what Michelangelo was up to, but he's got goat horns. But we tend to associate horns with the bad guys. But that's not necessarily the case. The righteous have horns too. Did you notice that in verse 10? But the horns of the righteous shall be lifted up. So we have horns that can be lifted up. God can lift those horns up. In fact, we're told a couple of places in the New Testament that the Lord has horns. If you look at Luke chapter one, and verses 68 and 69 where Zechariah is prophesying. He said, blessed be the Lord God of Israel for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David. So the horn is referred to there, but the Lord has actually more than one horn. If you go to Revelation chapter 5 and verse 6, you read this. And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a lamb standing as though it had been slain with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth." Now I'm not going to try to explain the meaning of those horns and sort of number them and try to walk you through all of that. That's about my pay grade. But it's noteworthy that the lamb has horns. There's a sense in which the strength of God is exemplified with the horn. Now, I think that sometimes we, in our concern about people taking advantage of other people, we are suspicious when it comes to strength and talent and ability. And we wonder whether or not we should kind of flatten things out, kind of treat everybody the same, and not acknowledge that there are strengths that people have that we should acknowledge and honor and respect. and even promote. There's this notion that the idea, if we would just kind of level things out, And we were just all kind of equal, all the way across the board, in every particular way imaginable, that the world would be a better place. Because then people wouldn't have any sort of reason to think that they were better than somebody else, and everybody would be treated the same. And really what we're talking about when we talk in those terms is kind of the Marxist dream. Karl, Karl Marx, is known for saying a particular thing that most people find appealing. But it's very subtly actually wicked. And this is the line. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. What we're talking about is basically ignoring objective standards and equal weights and measures being applied to everybody. What we're talking about when we talk in those terms is we want to ignore real talent and competence and merit and just treat everybody the same, no matter whether they are making a contribution or not to the common good, or even unequal contributions. This tendency to sort of ignore competence and merit, sometimes is legislated. And then sometimes the Supreme Court overturns it, like we just saw this week with affirmative action in higher education. Now, what's fascinating about this particular episode that was adjudicated by the Supreme Court is were you aware that it was actually Asian students at Harvard or Asian students who wanted to get into Harvard that actually brought the lawsuit. We're not talking about just anybody. We're actually talking about a minority group that was making a case that this was unfair, that certain other people were being treated better, and different standards were applied to them. And what you have is this sort of, I think, well, I'll put it this way. You ever wonder why Marxism is appealing? It's because it's poison dipped in honey. I heard it put that way one time by an Ethiopian fellow who actually had lived under communism. One of the things about communism is you just meet some people who actually lived under it for a while and it's a great reality check. It helps you to see that what actually is said to be the case is not the case. What is said to be just is not just. What we actually are told in Scripture, well, in fact, let me take you to it. This is one of my favorite passages. This is Leviticus chapter 19. Now, I know what you're thinking. Whoa, Leviticus. Now we're into some really difficult stuff to understand. Well, this particular passage is not difficult to understand at all. So Leviticus chapter 19, verse 15. And there we're told this, you shall not do, let me start again. You shall do know in justice and court, you shall not be partial, shall not be partial, okay, so far so good, to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness, you shall judge your neighbor. In other words, you have the capacity to apply objective standards when you judge, do that. Don't favor the poor. Don't favor the great. Same for everybody. That's the biblical standard. And furthermore, you know, you might say, well, that's good for court, but what about just kind of daily life? Well, if you jump down to verse 35, you shall do no wrong in judgment in measures of length or weight or quantity. you'll have a just balance, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hymn. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. Same standards for everybody. There is a beautiful truth that I think we miss, and that is hierarchy understood in the right way glorifies God, and equality emphasized in the wrong way actually is intended to dethrone God. You ever wonder why Marxists are godless atheists? Because they don't want to even acknowledge God as worthy of having and possessing the authority that he has. There's kind of a leveling sort of effect in Marxism that is ultimately destructive. Hierarchy actually means sacred order. It's the order that God's established, but it's intended for the good of everyone who belongs to the order. It's for the mutual building up. So those passages that we read earlier responsibly and so forth concerning you know, the body of Christ and the distribution of gifts. It's not so that you could lift your horn when you exercise those gifts, but so that you can, when you exercise those gifts, be a blessing to the people that belong to the body of Christ. There is a distribution of goods within God's church. Now, I want to finish this particular that God serves mixed drinks. Did you notice this marvelous line in verse 8? For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, foaming with wine well mixed, and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs. Foaming wine, What is this intended to convey to us? Well, it's intended to convey this is a strong drink, and it's a drink that God has prepared and he's poured it out for a particular group of people to enjoy. And who are those people? The wicked. The wicked are going to drink this mixed drink all the way down to the dregs. Now the dregs, if you don't know what the dregs are, that's that sediment that's at the bottom of the wine bottle, the bitter bits that are there at the bottom that really you don't want to drink, but when God says drink, you drink, all the way down to that, to the bitter end. That's what is in store for the wicked. There's a marvelous line. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow uses the line in his great poem, The Mask of Pandora, but he's actually quoting a line that comes to us from antiquity. It's so common that I could name a number of people, Sotheclyse, for example, who used the line, and this is the line. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. Remember Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel chapter four? He kind of went nuts in that chapter. You remember what precipitated the insanity? Self-congratulations. He looked over the vast empire that he ruled and said, ah, Nebuchadnezzar, you are the man. No one deserves praise like me. Instantly, God made him mad. He began to eat grass like an ox, lived outside, hair grew long, nails unclipped, kind of like a hippie in Vermont. And there he was, all wet with the morning dew for days and days until finally he repented, came back to his senses, and God restored him to his place. Does it feel like we live in a world that's kind of drunk right now? Does it feel like God has kind of handed us over to our own wickedness and that we're drinking this strong drink and the world is tottering? and we're wondering what's it all kind of leading to? Things to keep in mind. Yes, God judges. Yes, He gives us what we deserve. Yes, God is judge and He is keeping the pillars stable or in place so we don't need to worry about actually things all falling apart because God is still God and He rules the world. Nevertheless, that's the tottering. that we see all around us. If you feel like it's insane, it's because it is. It's insane. What will follow, hopefully, will be what occurred with Nebuchadnezzar. What followed in his story is he came to his senses, recognized that God is truly in charge and he just owed his position and his authority to God and should have been grateful for it. And because he was able to do that, he was restored to sanity and to his office. But how our story will end, I don't know. God knows. The Lord is the one who lifts up and brings low. That's how this psalm ends. And we're told not to look to the east or the west. I think that's intended to imply that we shouldn't look to worldly powers and institutions to set things right. We're not supposed to even look into the wilderness and sort of hope for help from some unknown source. Instead, what we should do is look to the God of Jacob. Praise Him, because He's the one who holds things steady, and He's the one who judges, and we want Him to lift us up. And the way that happens is how? Humble yourself before the Lord, and He does what? Lifts you up. So let's turn to Him and look for mercy. So, just so you know, I do think mercy's a great thing. In fact, we're told that on the Ark of the Covenant, the throne of God is known as the mercy seat. That's where we should turn for help, because we're guilty as well, and we need God's grace, because God is the one who can pay for our sins and has in Christ, and satisfy his own justice in our behalf. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. It can be strong medicine at times, but we need that, Lord. We pray, Lord, that you'll help us to look to you for the help that we need at this time. Help us, Lord, not to look to the institutions of our society, even the Supreme Court or our president. Help us, Lord, to look to you and trust in you for what's right and what we need. In Christ's name, amen.