In Psalm 146 verse 3 we read, Put not your trust in princes, or in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth. In that very day his thoughts perish. Now several Sundays ago, we spoke about how too many good Americans see our country as the indispensable nation. Raised up by God for great things, and God will surely continue to use us indefinitely. if only Trump succeeds. But America is already awash in innocent blood. Both the unborn and many helpless victims around the world, very few of us seem to care. We're $35 trillion in debt with no way out. Societal collapses all around with corruption and incompetence. The post office, the police, the courts, even some public schools are all catastrophic failures, depravity and immorality saturate our own community, just falling apart before our eyes with murders, serious loss of population, worse and worse fools elected to run things. Some of them cannot even speak plain intelligible English in the public meetings that they conduct. Americans are going to have to let go of our fanciful view that particular nations will survive long term and do great good and advance the Lord's kingdom the way we would like to see it advance. God controls all things, but not for the reasons we like him to. The prophet Daniel declared, God removes kings and sets up kings. He alone gives wisdom and knowledge. Scan through history and you will find that there have been many great kingdoms and people. But in the end, God has destroyed them all, then raised up another kingdom and other people to take their places. Therefore, it is foolish for us to look to any existing or future kingdom for our hope. Babylon had a powerful and cruel king, Nebuchadnezzar, and you remember he tried to burn the saints up in a fiery furnace for refusing to worship his idol. God humbled him greatly. being reduced to a wild beast for seven years in the fields. Nebuchadnezzar was forced to submit himself to the absolute rule of the God of heaven as a result, and he admitted so. But God had already announced his kingdom's fall and the rise of the Persians. In fact, God had already announced their fall and the rise and fall of Greece and Rome as successor kingdoms. Each subsequent kingdom was glorious and powerful and made contributions to civilization, but they were still overthrown and disappeared. In the fourth century, many Christians thought to hitch the kingdom of Christ to the Roman Empire, establish a so-called Christendom, then Rome was overthrown. Subsequent kingdoms such as the Holy Roman Empire, France, Italy, Spain, and Britain arose in turn, but each in turn was overthrown. Each time certain Christians thought that these kingdoms were the vehicle God would use to establish Christendom, but they were all wrong. Indeed, most of the kingdoms actually helped overthrow Christendom. Turns out that God just doesn't use nations the way we think He ought to. He evidently raises them up for some purpose known to Himself and then casts them down due to disobedience and rebellion There is no enduring physical kingdom left for His people to latch a hold of. The same thing has happened to God's people Israel on numerous occasions. If ever God were to use a nation like we supposed He should, surely it is Israel. There were notable kings, David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Josiah, but God has overthrown Israel several times due to its rebellion and idolatry and cast the people out of the good land that God promised to them. After Manasseh's reign, God refused to accept Josiah's reformation and subjection to God because Israel was drenched in innocent blood. Then in 70 AD again, their hatred of Messiah and killing of the prophets led to their downfall and ruin. Christ himself had told the rulers that God would take away the kingdom from them and give it to some other people. Christ foretold Israel's utter destruction with the ruination of their glorious temple. and bloody obliteration and expulsion from the land. Many Christians think that Israel now will finally be that nation that God will establish and extend forever, but already Israel's hands are covered in innocent blood. It is run by psychotic terrorists murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians and children, destroying other people's homes and farms and olive trees. Israel violates every norm of civilized society and goes out of its way to insult even its closest allies and friends. The conclusion is that we must radically reorganize our false notions of God's purposes in the nations and no longer put our trust in those nations or their survival or their accomplishing good and godly things for us that will last. Only our God will do those things for us. No nation ever can or ever will. We are not to put our trusted princes or in man generally, since all their plans disappear. As soon as they die, only God's plans survive and continue to accomplish His purposes. Meanwhile, we can but adopt the attitude of Habakkuk, who was devastated by the wrath and judgment that he saw falling upon his own people. It caused him to quake in his boots, and rottenness entered into his bones at the sight of it. God's judgment fire marched across the land. Therefore Habakkuk adopted this view. Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines. The labor of the olive shall fail. The fields shall yield no food. The flocks shall be cut off from the field, and there shall be no herd in the stalls. Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength. He will make my feet like hinds feet. He will make me to walk upon mine high places. No nation we can build or fight for can accomplish anything lasting for us. Our only hope is found in our Lord Jesus and what He accomplished for us at the cross. He has saved His people and one day will raise us up to everlasting life and glory. Rather than celebrate any nation or country, we ought to celebrate Christ's sacrifice each Lord's Day around His celebratory table. Now once again the events of the news have run up upon us suddenly and in a startling way. Overnight the Assad government in Syria collapsed and Mr. Assad has disappeared. Nobody knows where yet. Now Assad was a brutal dictator. His family had been in power for 50 years and yet they ran a country that was successful and generally safe. I remember well the story of a man named Meher Arar who had fled Syria in the mid-2000s and had gone to Canada and become a citizen there and had a wife and kids. And the Canadian government, as did most Western governments in those days, collected false intelligence about a whole host of people, and he was a victim. They decided they were going to leak him to some other terrorists. So they passed this on to the Americans. And when Mr. Arar was transiting to his flight into Canada at JFK, the United States government, the CIA kidnapped him. and put him on a plane, and he begged them not to send him to Syria because they would torture him there. But they paid no heed. They sent him to Syria, and he was brutally tortured in horrific ways. But that was typical of the Assad regime. Anybody we wanted tortured, we would send to Assad, and he would help us out. We were on again, off again friends with the Assad tyranny, depending on what it was we wanted to accomplish. Finally, Mr. Aror was set free at the persistent insistence of the Canadian government, who had figured out they had made a horrific mistake. He was brought back to Canada. He sued the United States for kidnapping, but his cases were all dismissed because it was a secret. Couldn't be talked about. Couldn't be discussed in court. The Canadians, on the other hand, created a blue-ribbon investigation which exonerated him completely, named the names of the people who were responsible for the false information, the government officials, and awarded him $10 million in damages. Of course, Mr. Aurore has not been a fan of the Assad regime ever since, but now, Al Qaeda and ISIS and others have taken over Syria. They've overthrown the Assad regime. And it's unexpected and yet has been in the offing for over a decade. Mostly the last eight years, Al Qaeda and ISIS have been squabbling amongst themselves in the Idlib region. poking each other in the eye, killing each other, so they can never get organized enough to refocus their animus against the Assad regime. Strange it is that the United States and Israel have sided with Al-Qaeda and ISIS to overthrow Assad, but that was true back in 2012, 2013. We started out supporting Al Qaeda and then ISIS, and then ISIS kind of got out of control and started chopping off people's heads on camera and burning people alive, so we backed off from ISIS. But they're back now, and we sided with them and helped them overthrow Assad this time. There were three non-Muslim secular countries in the Middle East, Iraq and Syria and Lebanon, that were ruled not by Sharia law in place. They were ruled by secular dictators who were, of course, nominal Muslims. Those three are the countries that protected Jews and Christians and allowed them to have free worship and so forth. because they didn't have Sharia law and they weren't explicitly Islamic states. Strange to notice that two of these three have now been overthrown by Israel in the United States and naturally causing most of the Christians and Jews to flee as refugees from the Muslim terrorists that took over the countries where they had been given safe refuge. Lebanon, of course, still teeters on the edge as Israel continues to murder the people during the ceasefire. Now, Assad's allies were Iran and Russia, which sort of gives you an insight into what the U.S. and Israeli motives were for destroying Syria, which now we have succeeded. Both of us were bombing Syria over the past decade. Both of us were supporting the terrorists there at a low level. It took Erdogan of Turkey in the last several months to get up amongst those terrorists at Idlib and help organize them and arrange for them to stop competing with themselves long enough to overthrow the Assad regime, which Erdogan also hated. because he wanted part of their land. In addition to the constant bombing, which Israel and the United States have engaged in over the last decade, when Trump took over, he announced that on top of that, we were going to occupy Syria and steal their oil and their farm supplies, which we have been doing over the last eight years. One thing that Trump and Biden agreed on was to steal their oil. And so the consequence of all the theft and the bombing and the killing And the sanctions against Syria is that Syria was completely destroyed and is now a wreck, and therefore it fell. Syria's fall was sudden and unexpected, even to people that watched from the outside. Nobody expected this to happen this quickly and this unexpectedly. And certainly there were many Christians and many other people, non-Christians, who were in Syria and were counting on the Syrian government as their protection, as bringing a modicum of peace, as providing the services of the Romans 13 passage. And so they were expecting that. They were relying upon it. That's why they stayed. They trusted in Esau to protect them, and now all at once they must flee or be persecuted or be liquidated by the terrorists who have taken over, which reminds us of that text we started with, But not your trusted princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help, his breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth, in that very day his thoughts perish. And all the plans of Mr. Assad and all the plans that his allies had that he would protect them have now been completely obliterated and are gone, gone in the wind. And the reason for all this is the Lord wants His people to trust only in His power and His Son's might and glory in all things. We can't rely on anything outside of the Lord Jesus and God our Father. When we do, in days like this, it'll rise up and bite us. Now, some teach that prophecy foretells Israel's return to the land, and some think that this current time is the promised final restoration, and I don't know whether that is true or not. But what we do know is that a future return is not referenced or longed for in the New Testament by New Testament believers. nor should Christians rely upon it or hope in it. During the last 70 years, Israel in the land has brought destruction and killing of Christians all over the Middle East and of many other people also. Israel in the land this time around has brought great evil to everybody there. And so what are we to conclude? No, what the New Testament references is Christ's return to the land and His reign, His rule, His judgment, His peace. That is all that believers are to long for. And that's what believers long for all through the New Testament. There isn't any mention of restoration of the Lord's people in the land or anything of that matter. They long for Christ to return and to take up His rule. And this is one of the reasons that the disciples were disappointed in Jesus He wasn't setting up that kingdom that is assuming the rule over Israel in the land and kicking out the enemies. He wasn't doing that. And they expected Messiah to do that. And he wasn't complying. And you remember when he rose from the dead, just before he ascended, they asked him, now are you going to restore the kingdom? And he told them, not what you think and not now. Now Peter, on the other hand, wrote to believers, as of now, that you're a royal generation, a holy nation, a peculiar people, a kingdom of priests to God. This is now. The Lord's people are a holy nation, a royal generation, a kingdom of priests to God. This is what Peter was focusing on, was the kingdom now in the Lord's people, in His church. And then we read in 2 Peter 3, verse 7, But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word, are kept in store reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness, but is longsuffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." Peter is teaching here that God withholds the final wrath and judgment so that all of the Lord's people who have been chosen to be saved will have a time to come unto Him and be saved. And as surely we have seen day by day, week by week, month by month, century by century, this has been the case, that the Lord's people have increased, that souls have trusted in the Savior and in the salvation, and they have been saved, and they have come to repentance. And this is an ongoing process which the Lord is waiting patiently for to be concluded. Then he says, but the day of the Lord shall come as a thief in the night. in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also, and the works that are therein shall be burned up, seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness." Notice what we're to be looking for, these things that Peter is describing, not some earthly kingdom not some sort of promise by and by that finally we'll get our act together and we'll save all the nations and the gospel will be proclaimed and then we'll set up a mighty Christendom to make things right. and then the Lord will come. He's not describing that at all. He's describing the Lord coming in wrath and judgment and destroying everything that's here. Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved and the elements shall melt with fervent heat. Nevertheless, we according to his promise, his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing ye look for such things, be diligent, that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot and blameless." Peter makes it clear what we're supposed to look for, what we're supposed to hope for, and what hope is supposed to govern our behavior while we wait for these things. Peter skips right over. All the Old Testament promises of Israel and the land and so forth. And he goes straight to this final judgment and the coming of the Lord and the establishment of a kingdom with righteousness and eternal life. But then so does the Lord Jesus in Luke 21. Jesus promises the destruction of Israel in 70 AD. And then he just sort of skips right on over to the end. If you read Luke 21 beginning at verse 20, And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. This is referring, of course, to 70 A.D. Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let them which are in the midst of it depart out, and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto. For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that gifts suck in those days for there shall be great distress in the land and wrath upon this people and they shall fall by the edge of the sword and shall be led away captive into all nations and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles under the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled and then notice next thing Jesus talks about is the return of Christ and there shall be signs in the sun and in the moon in the stars and upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity, the sea and waves roaring, men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth. For the powers of heaven shall be shaken, and then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh." Notice what Jesus speaks of. Notice what Jesus skips over. And so it is, this is the pattern to be found all through the New Testament. Even in Hebrews, which is written for Jewish believers, even it makes no reference to Israel restored, but rather in fact, it describes Old Testament saints longing not for the land, but for a heavenly country. You remember in Hebrews 11, it says, by faith, Abraham, when he was called to go into a place, which he should after received for an inheritance, obeyed, and he went out not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country dwelling in tabernacles, with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Through faith also Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised, therefore sprang there even of one in him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the seashore innumerable. These all died in faith, not having received the promises. but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from which they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly. Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city. Now, you remember that the writer of Hebrews is fighting an uphill battle against Jewish believers who might want to leave the Lord Jesus and go back to the old ways. And I imagine that some people reading this said to the writer, are you crazy? We Jews have always longed to live in our land. Always longed for that as one of our main Desires and the writer of Hebrews is saying no you have it. No you have it not Abraham not Isaac not Jacob that wasn't what their big desire was They desired a better country and heavenly country And that's why God is not ashamed to be their God because he hath built them a city and Oh that we believers would be like Abraham Set our desire upon a better country a heavenly country Our Lord Jesus longed for that day, not of being in the land again, but of His rule and power at God's right hand and His coming in the clouds. We know the text well. When they tried Him before the Sanhedrin, they brought false witnesses and they pestered Him about His claims He would destroy the temple. They misconstrued what He had said. And Jesus wouldn't answer them. Then the high priest asked him at Mark 14 at verse 61, said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the son of the blessed? And Jesus said, I am. And ye shall see the son of man sitting on the right hand of power. coming in the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest rent his clothes and saith, What need we any further witnesses? Ye have heard the blasphemy. What think ye? And they all condemned him to be guilty of death." Notice that Jesus says right here the same thing that he had said in the passage we read in Luke 21, that we would see him coming in the clouds of glory. Then we would know our salvation. was right at hand, and that all of that would happen after everything had been overthrown, there had been great carnage and wreckage, Israel had been driven out of the land, the temple had been destroyed, all those things, then we would see the Lord Jesus coming in a cloud. And here you see Jesus is taking responsibility for this. That's what you're gonna see. The next thing you're gonna see, after you put me to death, After all those horrors, the next time you're going to see me is when I'm seated at the right hand of God and I come in the clouds of heaven." And that, of course, drove them out of their minds. And that promise and that desire includes all of those that trust in Christ. You remember what Paul exhorted us in First Thessalonians 4, for the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain unto the coming shall be called up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord." This is the true hope of Christ. It's the promise of Christ. It's the true hope of His people, that we will see Him one day in the clouds, and that beyond that and before that, there is no hope in the nations of this world or in the princes or in the works of men, no hope at all for us, only hope in our risen Lord who died to save us. Christ and His rule are our only hope. and He rescued us and placed us in Him in the clouds by dying for us on the cruel tree. The world sees Him on the cross and those who don't believe in Him shudder mock and ridicule and then they leave, then they abandon, then they treat it as nothing. Only the Lord's people lay hold on the sacrifice, lay hold on what Jesus did for us and dying for us. lay hold on the body and the blood that He laid down to save His people, and lay hold on the promise that one day we will be with Him in the clouds of glory. when he comes back to take his people home and to set all these things right somehow. Praise God. Let's give thanks for the bread that pictures the body of Christ broken for us. So God our Father, we rejoice in the promises of Christ's return and the promises of Christ's reign. We rejoice in the promise that we need not put any trust in men, in princes, in countries, in nations, in schemes to establish these things. and to work all manner of goodness through them. We need not trust in any of that. We trust only in the Lord Jesus, in His dying and in His coming again to save His people, help us to have the right attitude and the right frame of mind as we see all these things happening in this world, that they were bound to happen. that you ordained that they happen. We pray that you would have mercy on believers in Syria and other places in the Middle East who are in dangerous conditions, in desperate straits, that you would take pity on them and protect them, Lord, because you have the power to do that, regardless of the princes and the men who they might have been relying upon, that they would turn to rely upon you alone. upon your power and your goodness. Thank you for this bread he left us, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. And the scriptures tell us that the night he was betrayed, Lord Jesus took this bread and he blessed it and he broke it and he said, take and eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. like to ask Brother Whitney if he'd give thanks for the cup that pictures the blood poured out to make an atonement for us. And the scriptures tell us that after they had supped, he took this cup and he blessed it. And he said, drink ye all of it. This cup is the new covenant in my blood for the remission of sin. Do it as often as ye do it in remembrance of me. The Scriptures tell us that as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we do preach the Lord's death until He comes. Let's stand and sing number 180 in the Black Book. The Lamb of God to slaughter led, the King of glory see, the crown of thorns upon His head, they nail Him to the tree. The Father gives His only Son, the Lord of glory dies, for us the guilty and undone, a spotless sacrifice. Thy name is holy, O our God. Before thy throne we bow. Thy bosom is thy saint's abode. We call thee Father now. Number 180.