Psalm 2, I looked through my files, I'm astounded I've never preached on Psalm 2, one of my favorite psalms. Psalm 2, hear the word of the Lord. Why do the nations rage and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed saying, let us break their bonds and pieces and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall hold them in derision. Then he shall speak to them in his wrath and distress them in his deep displeasure. Yet I have set my king on my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree. The Lord has said to me, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron. You shall dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel. Now therefore be wise, O kings, be instructed, you judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son lest he be angry and you perish in the way when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who put their trust in him. Amen. Father, I thank You for this, Your Word, filled with warnings, filled with promises. And by faith, we look to You and to Your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom You have established as King over the nations. And we pray that You would use us in whatever way that You will. We are Your servants, Father. Your will be done in our lives, in our families, in this church. Our passion is to see Your glory lifted up and to see the kingdom of Your Son advanced. And we pray that You would enable us to be and to play a small part in this process. Bless the preaching of Your Word and the reception of it by this Your people. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Well, I don't need to tell you that this is July 4, or even that I don't usually preach on national holidays or Hallmark holidays. I sometimes do. But I've made an exception today because the state of the union is in such dire straits that I think it warrants a sermon. I think we need to know. ourselves, how we traverse the present and the future. And we have fallen so far from the original July 4 atmosphere that July 4 is generally a day of mourning for me just as much as it is a day of of Thanksgiving for the courage of our Founding Fathers. And I think you can have both mourning and celebration and encouragement as well. Our Founding Fathers, at great risk to their lives and to their fortunes, interposed themselves between the King of England and the people, and they declared independence. And it was an enormous sacrifice. I think we need more people who are willing to make the kind of sacrifices that they made. And I'll give you some ideas on how that can be done later. But their resistance to tyranny was not anarchistic. It was not secularistic. It was not revolutionary. It was duly elected representatives doing their duty before God, and they explicitly said it was before God, to protect their citizens from a conspiracy of the King of England and the Parliament, who had irrigated powers to themselves that they did not have, did not belong to them. In every age, men are tempted to wait and hope for the best, and to wait, and to wait, and to wait, and to put up with conspiracy well beyond the time that we should. And that was almost true there. It was Patrick Henry's speech that really changed the tide and moved them forward. And if you've not read much of Patrick Henry's writings, we got them in the library, I think. And he's really an amazing man, a very remarkable, far-sighted man for his day. But anyway, in his speech at the convention, he said that they had tried every other avenue. And he said, quote, an appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left to us. And he ended his impassioned speech with these words, why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death. Now in August, a fancier version of the Declaration was re-signed, and in a speech before signing, Samuel Adams said, we have this day restored the Sovereign, and it was Sovereign with a capital S referring to God, we have this day restored the Sovereign to whom alone men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven, and from the rising to the setting sun may his kingdom come. Amen. These founding fathers recognized the conspiracy, they exposed it, and they resisted it. Now, of course, conspiracies didn't begin with the British, and they didn't end with the British. This psalm actually gives us a theology of conspiracies, what God thinks about these conspiracies, and it tells us how we can navigate ourselves during times of conspiracies, but God believes in conspiracies. Well, that is that they exist, right? He believes they exist. He's had to deal with from the beginning of time. Right at the beginning, Satan conspired against God and worked together to lure a third of the angels to rebel against God. And then Satan encouraged Adam and Eve to also conspire against God. The Bible is a long history of one conspiracy after another to wipe out the line of Messiah and to cast off the bonds of God's law. Prior to the flood, the satanic conspiracies seemed to triumph until God judged the world. After the flood, there are repeated conspiracies against God's kingdom, the Tower of Babel being one of the notable ones. At the time of Moses, Pharaoh conspired against God's purposes by attempting to kill all of the male babies, et cetera, et cetera. And to those of you who tend to be skeptical and scoff at conspiracy theories, there are a bunch of nutso ones out there, but if you tend to scoff at conspiracies in general, I think you might find it interesting that the Hebrew word for conspiracy, kashar, occurs 60 times. 60 times in the Bible, God himself declares that there are conspiracies, lots of them. In fact, there are other synonyms for kashar that deal with conspiracy. And so God says they are a thing. We need to be aware of them. And the reason there are so many conspiracies against Christianity, against Christ's law, against liberty and family and everything else that God has ordained is because of the demonic forces that stand behind those leaders. Jesus told the Pharisees, who were one faction of the political leaders that were opposed to Jesus, he told them, you are of your father, the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources for he is a liar and the father of it. He is a liar and the father of it. Satan and his hosts try to beget lies in people wherever they can. They are the father of lies. This is their M.O. When unbelievers control the media, we should not be surprised that it is filled with lies and half-truths and misdirection. You really should not be getting your main source of news from the mainstream media. We should not be surprised that the media, for the most part, has become a tool of the statists, the LGBTQ, critical race theory, United Nations programs, etc. It's not simply an issue of leftist ideology. There is a demonic that is moving at least some of these media people. But it's not just the media that is involved in conspiracies small and great. Lies, blackmail, bribery seems to be pervasive in Washington, D.C. And if you want to just get a tiny, tiny taste of it, look at some of the, they're somewhat entertaining, but very short movies put out by some conservative congressmen called The Swamp. There aren't a lot of them, but they show what goes on day in and day out there. I have talked to doctors who have trusted the Center for Disease Control to be accurate for most of their lives, but over the past decade, their skepticism has grown as they've begun to recognize that the CDC has so much conflict of interest, has had so many cover-ups, so many lies, so much misuse of money, and they have been caught in so many other ethical slanders that they've come to the point where they don't believe anything that comes out of the CDC. May be true, may not be true, but they can't just automatically believe it anymore. These are doctors telling me this. It's time to put off naivete about the objectivity of government agencies. They don't have your best interests in mind, of that I am pretty sure. It's hard anymore to distinguish truth from error on what comes out of these centralized agencies. Conspiracies are rife in almost every department and agency in the United States. Dr. Gary Coles, MD, wrote an essay that is titled Why you can't trust the FDA, the WHO, the CDC, the AAP, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi or Pfizer. In that essay, he documents very well the conflicts of interest that are driving these organizations and these agencies to various outcomes like Julie Gerberding, the head of CDC from 2002 to 2009, who basically helped Merck while in the CDC and then took a lucrative job with Merck afterwards. And they gave her this title. Get a load of this long title. executive vice president and chief patent officer, strategic communications, global public policy and population health position, which really amounts to a position of propaganda and interface with the civil government agencies. Now what that article did not get into, they're puzzled by a lot of the stuff that goes on, it does not get into the demonic that controls many of these And all you have to do is write what some of the key players in these agencies have said about Christianity. And you begin to see the demonic written all over it. We've got Pastor Allison with us. He can tell you a lot of stories about the demonic that is behind some of these agencies in America and in the United Nations. The conspiracies of other agencies are well documented. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. states, the FDA receives 45% of its annual budget from the pharmaceutical industry. The World Health Organization, WHO, gets roughly 50% of its budget from private sources, including Big Pharma and its allied foundations. And the CDC, frankly, is a vaccine company. It owns 56 vaccine patents and buys and very profitably distributes $4.6 billion in vaccines annually through the Vaccines for Children program, which represents over 40% of its total budget. Conflict of interest? I would say so. When 97% of the contributions made by the IRS union go to Democratic candidates, Is it any wonder that a recent scandal has emerged where the IRS is being weaponized against Republicans and against evangelical churches? Now, of course, there's been a long history of using the IRS, going all the way back to FDR. This is not anything new. They're being exposed more now, but they're not new. And most of you are aware of a longstanding conspiracy in education, Epoch Times. has documented the brainwashing going on and the cover-ups and the secrecy to try to keep people from finding out what the children are being taught in these schools. And of course, schools have been pushing the critical race theory for quite some time. Our governor has been trying to get citizens to oppose the horrific, and I've looked at them, they are absolutely horrific, sex education programs that are going into the schools in America. And very few people are rising up in response to what the governor is trying to do. And it's really sad because when you read this stuff, it is officially sanctioned child abuse. It is sexual abuse and no one is rising up to support our governor in his opposition to what is happening. A few years ago, Dr. Paul Witts, professor of psychology at New York University, worked with a large committee that examined 60 social studies and history textbooks from schools around the nation. And they were shocked to discover that what used to be in the textbooks has completely evaporated. Every vestige of Christian influence our nation has been evaporated from those textbooks. And critical race theory seems to be permeating everything. I was two weeks ago reading the policies for math curriculum in Oregon State schools. And I was shocked to see critical race on virtually every page of what they were discussing there, and statements like, if you insist that two plus two equals four, you're part of the racist conspiracy. It's just, it's absolutely ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. The education conspiracy to throw off the bonds of Christ started long before I was born, but it has become very, very successful. By the way, If you declare, as they did, that 2 plus 2 equals 4 is just a convention, there are no absolutes, if you don't think that that's throwing off the bonds of Christ, you don't know the Bible very well because the Bible has all of the axioms of mathematics as well as the axioms of all of the other hard sciences as well. They are true because God uses them. We know that they are true. I've got a list of the headquarters started, a list of the headquarters. So far over a hundred organizations in America, and I ran out of time because I only got through Washington, D.C. and a couple of states. whose main goal seems to be to cast off the bonds of Christ. And this list does not even contain the mainstream media, the educational establishment, pro-LGBT corporations, foundations, businesses, local human rights commissions. I mean, those are bad enough. These, though, are organizations whose whole purpose seems to be devoted to casting off some facet of Christ's law in our nation. That's their main agenda. When you look at all of the agencies in the United Nations, it represents hundreds of conspiracies to remove every vestige of Christianity from every nation. It was horrifying enough way back to see the United Nations taking their hypocritical and ungodly stands against South Africa and against Rhodesia And then Rwanda, you know, siding with those who are engaging in explicit genocide, covering it up. This has been exposed. Peter Hammond and others have written quite extensively on that. But who the United Nations sides with has gotten much worse over time. Their religious department is occult through and through. The agendas WHO pushes for children are breathtaking in their scope. Child sex education guidelines, just read them again this past week. Starting from age zero, starting from age zero, being almost unbelievable. United States should not be a part of the United Nations. United Nations is a tower of Babel conspiracy machine. And I haven't even gotten into the typical conspiracies that most people talk about, but which do indeed seem to influence governments, budgets, banks, international corporations. Oh my, you just look at how much money flows from the Federal Reserve, where they've caught it anyway, to European banks. It really is astounding. But our passage will inform you that though there are a plethora of conspiracies today, conspiracies are nothing new, and they are not almighty. They are not almighty. David begins this psalm. It's really looking through a prophetic telescope to the time of the Lord Jesus Christ in the New Testament. He's just astonished by what he sees. Why do the nations rage and the people plot a vain thing? Why? Not just the nations, but the people. Why? Why do they do it? Jesus, whom this psalm is about, did nothing but good. So why would they plot against him? Why would they conspire to crucify him? Acts 4 quotes this psalm and applies it to the irrational hatred that the Jewish leaders had when they manipulated Pilate into crucifying Jesus. And we've already hinted at the answer for the wise because Satan, with his millions of demons, are working every angle that they can to get into civics, into the church, into individuals to try to influence and get away from the influence of Jesus. The conspiracy to get him crucified was the greatest conspiracy in world history, and yet it was no match for a tiny church filled with the Holy Spirit. Let me read Acts 4. 23 through 31, because I think this early church's take on Acts 4, very, very encouraging. So the context is that Peter and John have been arrested. They have been prohibited from preaching, threatened with punishment if they did. They're not discouraged in the least. They know for whom they work, the Almighty. Picking up at verse 23. And being let go, they went to their own companions and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them. So when they heard that, they raised their voice to God with one accord and said, Lord, you are God who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them, who by the mouth of your servant David have said, Why do the nations rage and the people plot vain things? The kings of the earth took their stand and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ for truly against your holy servant, Jesus, whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together to do whatever your hand and your purpose determined beforehand to be done. Now, Lord, look on their threats and grant to your servants that with all boldness they may speak your word by stretching out your hand to heal, and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of your holy servant Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness. What is the solution to conspiracies? Acts 4 tells us it's not rational arguments, believe it or not. As much as rational arguments are important for God's people, but when you bring rational arguments against a person who is driven by demons, it just makes them mad. They're not going to be convinced by the evidence that makes them mad. The solution is not rational arguments. It's not revolution. It's not hotheads marching on D.C. with guns. Okay, it isn't having our own counter conspiracy. The true solution is for citizens of the kingdom of heaven to be firmly convinced Jesus is seated on his throne. He really does have universal authority to begin to say, Lord, would you now for this day give me the resources of heaven that I need to be able to advance your kingdom. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Hebrews 11 says, without faith it is impossible to please God, which logically means without faith it's impossible to advance the kingdom of his mediatorial son. These early Christians turned the world upside down because they were filled with the Holy Spirit. They were driven by faith and a vision for Christ's kingdom. They engaged in spiritual warfare. They preached the whole Bible faithfully. You know, when you hold a candle in the darkness, the darkness automatically has a setback. That's all. Automatically has a setback. Our only light is the light of His kingdom, especially the Word of God. Okay? And so, may we speak the Word of God with boldness as the early church did. But verses 1 through 3 of Psalm 2 shows that God himself is not surprised by conspiracies at all. This is exactly what we should expect will happen. I mean, if we're being faithful to Christ, we're dangerous to Satan, and Satan and his hordes are going to come after us. That's what we should exactly expect. It totally makes sense. Verses 1-3, Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed, saying, Let us break their bonds in pieces, and cast away their cords from us. Why does the world hate Christ's cords and consider them unduly binding? What are those cords in the first place? I believe that those cords are the laws of Almighty God. You throw off King Jesus by throwing off His laws. There is no kingdom without law. And so that means to me that when you've got Christians who hold to theories like the radical two kingdom theory that throw out the law of God, they're throwing out King Jesus. They're throwing out His kingdom. There is no kingdom without law. Okay? Demons are joyful over the radical two kingdom and other secularizing theories. But I want to point out that the conspiracies to remove God's law from America started right away. Shortly after the first settlements came to America from England, the Rosicrucians were sent to start a movement to counteract the radical Christianity of the Puritans, right off the bat. A lot of people don't realize this, but Sir Francis Bacon was appointed by the British crown to protect its interests throughout the empire. And Bacon was a Rosicrucian who was directing the order both in England and on the continent, but he was also very involved in promoting Rosicrucianism in the Americas as well. A group of Rosicrucians under the leadership of Johannes Kelpius landed in Philadelphia in 1694 and immediately set to work in areas of printing and sciences and arts and architecture and other areas. They actually produced a lot of good stuff, but it was bypassing Christianity and introducing in very subtle ways the occult. Very fascinating history. I believe it was Freemasonry that arose out of Rosicrucianism, even though that is hotly contested by Mackie in his history of masonry. But even Mackie, pages 351 and following, you look at that and you'll see he admits that right from the earliest times the highest orders of masonry were completely dominated by Rosicrucians. I really think that there is a connection there. Anyway, here's the point. I shouldn't go down rabbit trails. The point is a number of our founding fathers were Freemasons and introduced all kinds of occult symbols, ideas, and boy, you walk through Washington, D.C., even in the centuries afterwards, it is occult to the core. Walk through every, I've been through quite a few Capitol buildings, but you walk through Nebraska's Capitol building, I challenge you to find a single room that does not have some kind of an occult symbol in it. Satan is always pushing, pushing, pushing, looking. And I forget where I was at on this, but oh, Freemasons, some of our founding fathers, when they developed the Constitution, there was a lot of debate. We don't know what the debates were. They were secret. But when it emerged, there was a lot of people that were upset with two things that were missing. No declaration that the Bible is the highest authority. Number two, there was no declaration that Jesus was the sovereign of the nation. Now, there were a number of delegates who said, well, we believe Jesus is a sovereign. We believe that his laws are the highest law. And because the state constitutions, the states created the federal government, we don't need to include it. It is a Christian nation by default. But I think that many of these people were duped by a handful of people at the convention who did all that they could to keep God and the Bible out of it. They couldn't do it entirely. Common law is in the Constitution. It was so pervasive they couldn't get rid of it. Common law is right in the Bill of Limitations, what some people call the Bill of Rights. But there is an element of truth to what Gary North says. He wrote a book on conspiracy in Philadelphia. I think he maybe overstates his case to some degree. I'm somewhere between Rush Dooney and North on this issue. But there do appear to be at least some at that convention that had a secularizing conspiracy, and the results have been absolutely disastrous. Now let me comment on a few phrases in the first three verses that show why we need counties and states to stand up against tyranny once again. We need a new July 4, so to speak. July 4 really is a call for interposition by counties and by states. If you just think of it that way, it is a call for interposition, and that's good. One phrase in verse 2 says, rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed. Now in the first century, Acts 4 says that these rulers constituted Herod, Pilate, and the political leaders of Israel. Now here is the weird thing about those leaders. They hated each other. They were enemies. But because they now have a common enemy in Christ, they consulted together to seek to oppose what Christ was accomplishing. And this consulting together continued on, so that by the 80s, 62, they were consulting with Nero. And the Jews were in almost every level of Nero's government, and Nero made a treaty with the Jews to exterminate Christians. We've looked at that in the series on Revelation. Now, later, They broke that treaty and they came after and destroyed Israel. This is the cool thing about God's providences. There's lots of conspiracies and these conspiracies get frustrated and they get broken apart by God's providence, praise God. But demons are constantly trying to get power brokers into churches and into states to conspire together. I won't get into all of the back room deals that have happened over the past decades in the Southern Baptist Convention or in the Presbyterian Church in America or other big, large evangelical groups. Actually, some of the things that happened this past week, I praise the Lord for. There were some good decisions that were made. Maybe people are waking up. But the politics of these church assemblies often mimic the politics of the Gentiles, and I believe for the same reason. It's the influence of demons. You cannot read through Revelation 2 through 3 without realizing that Satan and his demonic hosts are constantly trying to get into churches, influence churches, neutralize their effectiveness. The aphorism attributed to Wendell Phillips, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, is still true. It is true in the state, it is true in the church, it's true even in businesses. It is sad to me to see Christian businesses that once stood strong caving in to the hounds of hell, you know, to the woke movement and to the LGBTQ crowd. The point is, you don't have to dig very deep to see leaders in every area of life taking secret counsel together and either using or receiving bribery, threats, and even blackmail to get their agendas passed. Apparently it's much, much worse. Reading some of the people who have been sent as delegates to the United Nations, much worse there. The conspiracies against Orthodox Christianity, conservative states, even families is astounding. Just read what the United Nations plans for your children are. You will be very, very dismayed. Their plans, educational plans, medical plans, sexual plans, religious plans, it will turn your stomach. And by the way, They don't consider your children to be your children, not at all. One of their mottos that I have seen sprinkled through numerous United Nations documents is this phrase, quote, every child is our child, unquote. You see that in UNESCO documents, UNICEF documents, UN discussions of education, sexual rights of children. I mean, it's hard to keep up with all of the conspiracies that keep floating around. But destroying the integrity of the family is not unique to the United Nations. In the past, we have seen the same invasion of the family in communist countries. We've seen it in the French Revolution. We're seeing it right now in Washington, D.C. Leaders there are taking counsel together to impose a new world order into the minds of our children. Here's the thing. God guarantees where grace is absent, the Gentiles are going to conspire together against Christ's word. It's going to happen. Eventually it will happen. It's impossible for it to be otherwise with demons behind the scenes. So yeah, there are some nutso, really whacked out, weird conspiracy theories out there. And I think sometimes people put those out, the fake news, in order to discredit any concept of conspiracy whatsoever. But Psalm 2 calls you to believe that conspiracies are all around us. This is why it is utterly foolish to send your children to government schools where you have no control over the influences in their lives. A second word that I want to comment on is the word rage. Why do they rage against Christ, especially since Christ was so righteous? Since Acts 4 says that the focus of this was when Christ was on earth, we're gonna look at Christ's life and notice the rage of his enemies. One of the reasons they raged against him is because Jesus used presuppositional apologetics and it absolutely destroyed the arguments of the people that he was talking with. He was constantly demolishing their reasons, tearing them to shreds. And a reprobate man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. Even when Jesus performed obvious miracles, obvious miracles, it just made them mad. John 12 verse 10 says that when Lazarus was raised from the dead, and that was a remarkable miracle because he was already what, four days he stinketh, you know, that story. When he was raised from the dead, John 12 10 says, his testimony was so powerful to Christ that the religious and the political leaders conspired together to kill Lazarus to get rid of the evidence. It's not about truth for them, it's about preserving their power, their money, their lifestyle, and their agendas. And the same is true today. Scientists that expose the lies of global warming have often lost their jobs, they cannot get their research published, and they are hounded, they are persecuted, I mean really persecuted. They experience the rage of the establishment. There is no open exchange of ideas. Leadership of these science organizations have made it clear that if researchers do not submit to their agendas, they will be ruined. And the same has been true of scientists who disagree with the CDC on the origin and the spread of AIDS decades ago. Wow. Same is true of scientists who disagree with the CDC and the FDA narratives on vaccines and masks recently. I have read testimonies from some of these scientists who are brilliant. They had won awards in the past, but the moment they disagreed with the COVID-19 narrative or with the wisdom of the COVID-19 vaccines, whatever you think of those, These people have been ground into the dust with persecution. It is a blind rage that defies reason. Anytime you see irrational rage, you might consider there might be some demonic involved. And when the demonic is involved, your reasons don't matter. They don't care. Okay. That's illustrated in Acts 7, where Stephen gives a brilliant biblical defense of himself. And that should have been the end of it. You know, his accusers should have said, huh, good point. Okay. I guess I was wrong. No, they didn't do that. Verse 54 gives the result. When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart and they gnashed at him with their teeth. Irrational rage. He won the argument. They were convinced. That's why they were cut to the heart. They were convinced. But they hated him for it. They raged against him. The last phrase I want to comment on in this first section is, let us break their bonds in pieces and cast away their cords from us. Heinsohn and Kroll's commentary says, the heathen rage and constantly devise ways to thwart the purpose of God because they do not like the constraints of God's law. Bible morality or Christian conduct. They prefer to be a law unto themselves to establish their own conduct by what feels right to them. That's America. It hates God's law. It's not just indifferent, it hates God's law. And the idea of breaking to pieces Christ's restrictive rules shows a definitive attempt to keep God's law out of the public sphere. And this is exactly what America has done. Now, that was not always the case. I've read quite a few Supreme Court decisions from the 1800s, and you could see in many, many states that they still upheld Sabbath laws and blasphemy laws and several times declared the Bible to be the highest law of our nation. And even up into the early 1900s, I've read Supreme Court cases along those lines. Well, that's a thing of the past. Let me read you about a Nebraska court case that shows how thoroughly God's laws have been broken to pieces in our court system and why we have justices in Nebraska that need to be impeached. They really need to be impeached. Some of you may remember the case of Aaron Patnoe in Sarpy County. He was a child molester who had repeatedly sodomized a child and was caught. He pleaded guilty to the evidence. He was convicted. It was a watertight case. There were no complications. There were no technicalities that could possibly ruin this case, or so they thought. When the sentencing was read by the judge, the judge read a Bible verse to underscore the heinousness of the crime. A complaint was made that he had read a Bible verse. Now remember, Patnoe pled guilty, right? But the complaint was made that a Bible verse was quoted. The Nebraska Supreme Court, and may God curse those guilty justices. May He curse them. The Supreme Court stuck its nose in, reviewed the situation, overturned the conviction, not based on any technicalities, not based on the evidence, not based on a not guilty plea. Aaron pleaded guilty. The sentence was overturned solely on the basis that the Bible had been alluded to for a few seconds. Attorney General Don Stenberg appealed to the Supreme Court. And let me read you an old clipping of the Supreme Court's refusal to overturn the Nebraska Supreme Court. It said, the Supreme Court refused yesterday to review a Nebraska High Court decision that overturned a child molester's prison sentence because the trial judge quoted Bible verses when imposing the man's punishment. The justices let stand the Nebraska Supreme Court's ruling because reasonable people might question the judge's impartiality. Wow, if you believe the Bible, You can't be trusted to be impartial, is what they were saying. You might be prejudiced against criminals. And this is not the only time that the Nebraska Supreme Court has overturned a decision based on some injection of some biblical principle. It has happened a number of times. Let me give you another clipping, this one from Pennsylvania. Quote, convicted and sentenced by a jury for brutally clubbing to death a 71-year-old woman with an axe handle so that he could steal her social security check, the perpetrator got his sentence overturned. Why? Because the prosecuting attorney, in a statement lasting less than five seconds, mentioned a Bible verse in the courtroom. Do not tell me that we are one nation under God. That is a lie. We are conspirators who have completely cast off the bonds of Christ. The fury that was poured out upon Chief Justice Roy Moore because he had ten commandments posted, you know, at the courthouse was a fury of people who knew the danger of that kind of a court case to those kinds of humanistic decisions. With states' rights issues involved, that case was pivotal. It had the potential of overturning 50 years of judicial activism, and it could not stand. And so they allowed an injustice to happen to Chief Justice Roy Moore. By the way, the state governor had promised to stand behind him and caved under the pressure. It's really sad. It was a perfect opportunity of nullification. In any case, the powers that be gave an injustice to Judge Moore to make sure that God's laws remain permanently broken to pieces and cast away. That, brothers and sisters, is the state of America, and this is why the yo-yo escalator graph that was given at the financial class is no longer valid. I love that man. I love most of what he teaches, but it is not taking into consideration the judgments that Psalm 2 is talking about, okay? We're close to receiving the fury of Almighty God and of His Son, how far we have fallen from that first July 4th. However, while it is easy to get discouraged by this kind of thing, verses four through five assure us that God thinks such conspiracies are foolish, and more than foolish, they are futile in holding back Christ's kingdom. He who sits in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall hold them into vision. And he shall speak to them in his wrath and distress them in his deep displeasure. God does not honor those conspirators with fear, and neither should we. They are not worthy of fear. God, you know, laughs at their attempts to play God, and He holds them in derision. In His perfect timing, He will make them fail. But, and this is a very, very, very, very, very important but. But I do not believe God will make them fail until the church starts acting like the church in Acts chapter 4. A church filled with the Holy Spirit, bold to speak the Word of God into every sphere of life, and a faith in King Jesus that He is greater than any conspirator out there. You know, the church of the first century turned the world upside down. They overcame the world, not because they had the numbers, not because they had anything going for them other than that they were standing in God's power. And when the modern church is willing to have a consistent faith of the church of Acts 4, we can do the same. These conspirators were no match for Jesus. Who won? Herod Antipas or Jesus? Well, Herod Antipas was flung out, cast into exile by Caligula. Who won? Herod Agrippa or the church he persecuted? Acts chapter 12 says that God slew him and he was eaten alive by worms because he did not give the glory to God. Who won? Jesus or the Jewish leaders that sought to have him crucified? If you look at their history you will see that most of those leaders died a gruesome death, a grisly death. God afflicted them in His deep displeasure and He can do the same with the deceiving tyrants in these United States of America. And we can have confidence that any tyrants who are allowed to remain in power or allowed to remain in agencies and committees are there because God is using them to discipline and purify and advance the church. I mean, they serve at God's will, not their own will. God laughs at their futile attempts to cast off the bonds of Christ, and so should we. They're pawns. They're pawns in God's hand, and we can laugh the laugh of faith. But verses 6 through 9 are a prophecy that God would set Jesus on His throne to be the greatest conspiracy exposure and conspiracy buster of all history. Yet I have set my king on my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree. The Lord has said to me, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron. You shall dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel. There are at least six fairly straightforward deductions we can make from this section and the New Testament passages that quote it. First, based on Hebrews 1.5, we can say that this psalm is talking about Jesus. The whole psalm is a prophecy about Jesus, according to that passage, Hebrews 1.5. Second, based on Hebrews 5, verse 5, which says that the installation of Jesus on God's holy hill has already taken place, we can say Jesus is already king. We're not waiting for him to become king. The church of Jesus Christ has got to get that figured out if we're to have the faith to expect great things from his throne and to attempt great things for his throne. Hebrews 5 verse 5 is quite clear on that point. Third, based on Acts 13 verse 33, we can say that this begetting of the son is not his eternal generation. It's not his conception. It's not his birth. Rather, Acts refers this verse to Christ's resurrection when he was acknowledged to be king. Collins and other commentaries point out that this is almost identical to the clause that would be used when kings would set one of their sons, or in the case of Samuel and Saul, Saul became the son, but they would set one of their sons on the throne as a co-regent. They would make the declaration See if I can read it here somewhere. They would say, today I have begotten you to this throne. Of course, we don't need that extra biblical evidence to know that's exactly what happened, because Acts 13, 32 through 33 says, and we declare to you glad tidings, that promise which was made to the fathers. God has fulfilled this for us, their children, in that he has raised up Jesus. As it is also written in the second Psalm, you are my son, today I have begotten you. Now fourth, since the previous three points are true, this makes total sense of Christ's declaration in Matthew 28, that he'd already been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Not at his ascension, but at his resurrection. At his resurrection, he is given the authority. At his ascension, he sits on the throne. After his resurrection, but before his ascension in Matthew 28, 18, Jesus said, all authority, past tense, all authority has been given to me. in heaven and on earth, all authority. I hadn't realized this before, but it was at His resurrection. We're not waiting for Him to inherit the nations. God gave all of the nations to Him at His resurrection, just like the nations of Canaan were given to Joshua after the crossing of the Jordan River. But fifth, Jesus is called upon to make those nations his possession. Just as Joshua had to conquer the nations of Canaan that had been given to him, Jesus, the greater Joshua, through his disciples, needs to conquer the nations that are conspiring against Jesus. And that's why there is a therefore in the Great Commission. Let me read that for you, Matthew 28, 18 to 20. And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore, based on the fact that he's been given all authority now, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I've commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen. Sixth, until all nations become disciples, in other words, until all nations are Christianized, they're Christian nations, that's the goal, and until those Christian nations begin observing all of his laws, Christ will engage in a series of judgments over nations that continue to rebel. And he's been doing that over the past 1,900 plus years. The father says to Jesus, you shall break them with a rod of iron, you shall dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel. What does that tell you about the future of America? not just as politics, but its institutions and its stock market. It tells me that if America persists in casting off the bonds of Christ, there's gonna be a day of reckoning from the Lord Jesus. And to say that the stock market will always do what it has always done, I think is ignoring this fact here. We ignore this to our own peril. Okay, don't think things will continue on a path of prosperity in America without some spiritual reversals happening. But the last verses tell us why conspiracies will ultimately fail. Jesus is not just fooling around in his kingship. This is not just a nice theory that has no application whatsoever to our lives. He is king, he is ruling. And thus the father warns nations and kings, now therefore be wise, O kings, be instructed you judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son lest he be angry and you perish in the way when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who put their trust in him. So God leaves only two options before these conspirator nations. While he's very, very patient, God tells these conspirators, submit to Jesus or perish. The goal of all of history is the Great Commission. Christian nations obeying all God's law in all of life. That's the goal of Christ's kingdom. It's the goal of this psalm as well. So even though he says he declares war on all kings and nations that refuses kingship in his laws, he blesses nations that put their trust in him. Blessed are all those who put their trust in him. There was a time in America when America as a whole did trust in God. They weren't perfect in their trust, but they did. We still have vestiges of that. If you pull out your wallet and look at your money, it says, in God we trust. By the way, that was put on there in 1956. That wasn't that long ago, right? And if there is repentance, there's always hope that our 50 nations that constitute the federation known as these United States and America will once again be blessed. But notice that this section doesn't just address kings or presidents. It also addresses lesser magistrates or judges. And this is very key to me. The Hebrew word Shabbat can refer to a judge or it can refer to a lesser magistrate who rules. And you can especially see that in the book of Judges. But Ruth 1 verse 1, Proverbs 8, 15 to 16, Hosea 3.10, Micah 3.9 through 11, there are a number of scriptures that indicate that this could even refer to the equivalent of a mayor. or a governor. So let's say that a lesser magistrate has become an evil enemy of Christ and the higher magistrate is the servant of Christ, what should happen? What should happen is downward interposition where he seeks to bring this person back to the Lord or encourages the citizens to impeach him. What about the reverse? There's actually much more that could be done by a lower magistrate, especially the way that the United States has been set up. The lower magistrate should not just roll over and say, well, there's nothing I can do and go along with the tyranny, because then he will fail to be kissing the sun. He will fail in his loyalty to Christ. So the lower magistrate instead should, in obedience to his sovereign Jesus, nullify the dictatorial decrees of the higher magistrate as being null, void, invalid and do all in his power to protect his citizens from the higher magistrate. We call this interposition. This is one of the practical outworkings of loyalty to Christ or kissing the sun. And this is in effect what the godly magistrates of the colonies had been doing for years And that's what they did when they declared independence. Only after every other effort failed did they declare independence in 1776. And secession is always an option for lower magistrates. Now I am grateful that so many counties in Nebraska have declared themselves to be sanctuary counties for the Second Amendment. I think it's over 80, 81, 82, something like that, out of the 90 some counties. They should take the next step and be consistent, say we're going to be sanctuary counties for the life of the unborn. But I will really, really, really get excited when the ruling officials in county after county confess the sins that have defiled the land. Not just abortion and other murders, but fornication and witchcraft, anything that defiles the land. And ask Christ to cleanse the land that they have jurisdiction over. and declare God's laws to be the laws of the land, Jesus to be the king, criminalize what scripture criminalizes, and formally kiss the sun by coming into covenant as Christian counties. When more and more counties do that, maybe states will have the courage to do the same. I think we need a new July 4 in our nation, a July 4 of standing up for the crown rights of King Jesus. May it be so, Lord Jesus. Amen. Oh, Father, I thank you for this word. There's so much more in this passage that we could dig into, but I pray that what we have looked at would be something that would stir up our faith, but also that would help us to not be naive in the way in which we view the world. There's so much demonic that is out there and help us, Father, to not be taken in by it. Help us to think clearly in an unclear world. And I pray that you would bless this, your people, that you would protect them, that you would help them to take whatever strategies that they need to face the future in confidence. And I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.