My, what a dour tune, but rightly so for that text. I've never sung that before. That's a wonderful setting of that song. One of the hard things in editing such things, which I sometimes do, is matching text to tune and that the words and the music preach the same message. Wow. Wow. OK, hard to sing, but effective, effective. If you've never sung that before, I recommend you try it again this afternoon. No pianos do help. So thank you, Barb. Yeah, in the RP church, no pianos. Yeah. So thank you, Barb. So on to Psalm 12 then, our reading of the day. A difficult Psalm, but let's give our attention to it. Here are the word of the Lord. for the choir master to be performed upon Shulamit, the psalm of David. Help, Lord, for the godly one is gone. For the faithful have faded from owing the children of men. Falsehood they speak, each man with his neighbor. With lying lips and double heart they speak. May the Lord cut off all lying lips, every tongue that speaks great boasts. Those who say, by our tongues we will win. Our lips are with us. Who will be master over us? Because of the devastation wrecked upon the afflicted, because of the groaning of the poor, the Lord now says, I will arise. I will set them in safety. I will shine forth for them. The words of the Lord are words that are pure, silver refined in the furnace, gleaming gold purified seven times. You, O Lord, will guard us. You will defend us from this generation always, while all around the wicked strut about, as evil is honored by the children of men. So far, the reading of God's word from the Old Testament. Thanks be to God. I turn back to 1898. Maybe you remember from your history books a motto from that year, almost as famous as the one from the 1830s. Remember the one, remember the Alamo? How many know that one, remember the Alamo? All right. A couple hundred Americans killed by the Mexican forces of the president for life, dictator of Mexico, Santa Ana, who was captured not long later by, I think, Sam Houston and put on trial. 1898, a different remember. Remember the Maine. How many know that one from history books? OK, remember the Maine. Now, that motto came from William Randolph Hearst. If you read your newspapers still or online news sources, Hearst Publications is still a thing. And William Randolph Hearst, he's the one who built that famous castle up at Carmel, California. He brought all this stuff from Europe. He built a castle. All right, that's the guy. He owned newspapers all around the country. And he had a colleague or rather rival named Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World. And if you know of Pulitzer Prizes, that's the guy. Yeah, that's the guy. And together, they more or less conspired to start a war. And they succeeded. It's the Spanish-American War, which was played out in 1898. And what had happened is that the US warship, the Maine, had sailed into Havana Harbor, I think in January of that year. And several weeks later in February, blew up in Havana Harbor with the loss of more than 250 American sailors. The next day, newspapers, touted this story, quote, blown up by Spain. Every evidence that Maine was torpedoed. Blown up by Spain. And if the musical My Fair Lady had already happened on Broadway before that time, some wag might have said the blame for the Maine falls mainly on Spain. No, a tragic deed. April 25, 1898, fomented mainly by screaming headlines and page after page, week after week of eight columns of text, most of which was factually false. The public so riled up by, dare I say it this way, fake news that Congress declared war on Spain, April 25, 1898. Now, the Navy was conducting its own investigation, of course, as were some other agencies. And within a month, the Navy investigation concluded that the explosion was very likely accidental. And from fumes from the engine room, which – okay, they burnt coal for the steamer. And coal fumes from the engine room leaked into the armory. and spontaneously combusted around all those 14-inch shells that came from those massive cannons, the largest of their type, in that year. It was an accident. But we went to war, and we gained such things as, well, for a while, yes, San Juan Hill, okay, Puerto Rico became ours. The Philippines, briefly. became ours, and the end of Spanish Empire in the New World happened. It was a war instigated entirely by falsehood. Psalm 11 asks a question. We did not read that psalm today, but if you turn back in your Bible, just one psalm, the psalmist asks the question, David's question, when the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do? Now in that psalm, it sounds like things are hopeless. And when you ask the question, when the foundations are being destroyed, it sounds like despair. But the very next line shows us that the sky is not falling. And Henny, Penny, and Chicken Little are not right. The sky is not falling because the very next line of text says the Lord is in his holy temple. You know, the Lord rules. He's on his throne. That's the answer to the sky is falling. The foundations are not really being destroyed. And the righteous are being upheld as the scriptures abundantly promise us. But Psalm 12 is the companion to Psalm 11. And Psalm 12 almost asks, quote, when lies rule the world, what can the honest do? That's almost the question in Psalm 12. So in Psalm 11, it's the Henny Penny story for at least one line. The foundation is being destroyed. Do I need to tell that children's story? Do you all know the children's story? The sky is falling? Okay, you all know it, I hope. If you don't know it, ask your friend, your mama, your papa, your grandparent. Okay, find that story. Yeah, foxy-woxy, the sky is not falling. Well, in Psalm 11, the Lord is in his holy temple. The Lord sits on his holy throne, heavenly throne. That's the very next line of text. And in Psalm 12, lies do not rule the world. Why not? And here we have some lovely rhyming in Hebrew. If you'll indulge a Hebrew professor for a little bit of foreign language. The words of the Lord are words that are pure. The words of the Lord are words that are pure. Silver refined in the furnace. We sang about that in the psalm, refined seven times. I'll say more about that in a moment. So despite appearances, the world is ruled by the Lord from heaven. And the great decisions that rule the world are not made in Washington, D.C. or Beijing, China or Moscow and Russia. or any other world capital, or by any politico, or any multi-million billionaire. They're not made by these people. They're made by the Lord of Heaven, the triune God, who is good. And so we sang the great hymn from 400 and some years ago, I suppose, whatever God ordains is right. Whatever God ordains is right. We have joys, we have sorrows. We have trouble, we have illness, we have death. but the joys are greater. And the goodness of God rules over that and overturns it all for our good and for his greater glory. Now there is a party game that maybe you've played a time or two, maybe you're really good at it. It's called Truth or Lie. It's the title for the sermon. How many have played Truth or Lie? Alright, okay. So you're supposed to say three things about yourself. Two are true and one is said to be false. And your friends at the party are to guess which one is false. Is that how you play the game? Something like that? Alright, so here are my three. I was born in Washington, D.C. Hmm. Truth or lie? I have climbed the highest sheer rock face in the northeastern U.S., Seneca Rocks, 300 feet of sheer verticality. Truth or lie? For a year, I shared office space with two nuns and a priest. Truth or lie? I won't ask you to say it out loud. Turns out I lied. All three are true. Okay. And the party game, I think, is meant to mainly help us discern lying. Now, someone could, you know, maybe get better at lying by playing the game a lot, but I think the real point of the game is to help us discern what's true. My father, in my childhood, used to say, quote, you can't fool me. I've been fooled by experts. It took me some years to figure out that that was a joke. Now, if you could take a pill that would eliminate anything of your choice from ever being chosen by you again, what would the pill forever end? There's a fine question. All right, repentance by the grace of Jesus is to bring away, to take away, to turn away, to help us to turn away from our sins. We turn from evil and toward the goodness of God. That's repentance. God works it in us by his grace. And we follow along, and yes, imperfectly, but we follow in faith. And we turn more and more to the good throughout the years of Christian life. God willing. But if you could take a pill that would forever eliminate anything of your choice from ever being chosen by you again, what would the pill forever end? I'll suppose that for a great many in this space, it would be lying. Yeah, we're not immune. By lying, great harm is done. And a little lie can bring down fortresses. Maybe you remember that poster from, what, World War II? Loose lips sink ships. They're a bit of truth can wrongly stated that is stated in the wrong way or the wrong time to the wrong person. Or maybe you're writing a letter to your sweetheart from your naval base in Hawaii and you slip through the location where you were stationed and the enemy picks up the mail from a sunken ship. All right, little lies can bring down great fortresses. And Jesus speaks about straining out gnats with swallowing camels, but sometimes a gnat gives birth to a camel and a little fib becomes a very dangerous force within your life. So the great lesson of Psalm 12 is this. Love God well. And when you love God well, you will love the truth of God well. Because the truth of God is from the God of truth. Love God and his truth so well that you will always hate lies. And so the psalm speaks to us in that way. The psalm is in two parts easily discernible to the first time reader. The first part, the anguish, the distress by a world that seems to be ruled by liars. And then part two, Which picks up with the line about the damage done, the devastations wrecked upon the lowly and the godly and the poor and the weak. And the Lord then says, I will arise. I will set them in safety. I will shine my light upon them. And then the meditation about the character of what God speaks. Now since Psalm 12 is rightly canonized for us as part of sacred scripture, we can say the psalm speaks about itself. The words of the Lord are words that are pure, silver, refined in the furnace. Difficult text in the copying there, but probably the word pure gold or refined gold, purified seven times. Now, my daughter has become a metalsmith in her adult life. She's really, really, really good at it. She makes very high quality silver and gold and stainless steel and wrought iron jewelry. Lately, she's working on an anvil with a tiny hammer and hammering out rings and bracelets in wrought iron. She is wonderful. Her supervisors say her work is perfect. And when she smelts the silver, What happens? She's got to melt it down. And chances are strong that the silver that she has gotten has already been refined at least once, maybe more. But what happens in this smeltery, this furnace? Well, the melting temperature of silver is relatively low for metals. And you heat it up to the right temperature, and it comes to liquid. And the impurities in it are lighter than the silver. And so, of course, they float to the top. This is true for any kind of metal like iron. Okay, the slag floats at the top. We know all about that in Pittsburgh area. And maybe you grew up like I did with slag piles not far from the house. Yeah, the refuse of old iron. And now there's somebody who's mining the banks of the Allegheny – I'm sorry – of the Ohio River at Alaquippa to get old, discarded iron smeltings out of the mud there and refining them by the newer technology, which makes a profit somehow out of what was discarded 50 years ago. All right, so you smelt the silver, and the impurities flow to the top. You scrape them off. It's dross. It's slag. And that's disposed of. And what remains is the metal. And the more you do the smeltery, the purer the metal becomes. The words of the Lord are words that are pure, like silver refined in the fire, like gold purified seven times. We've heard a lot of those words this morning. The words of the Lord. When you read the New York Times, it's not the same, is it? Or any newscast you hear, print media, electronic media. Yes, the discerning eye must be employed because the words are not refined seven times. And the definition of propaganda goes something like this, that propaganda typically uses a fair amount of real truth, but it employs it in such a way, and often with a mixture of deceit, so as to empower the person speaking it and to make you serve their interests. Propaganda could even be entirely true. in its factual claims. But the way it's put forth is to create political power, social power, cultural power for the one who spins it to you. The people of God are called to be wise as serpents, but innocent as doves. Oh, what a hard task it is. Often we are wise as doves and not so innocent as serpents. And so we turn to the words of the Lord to give our moral conscience wisdom, because we by nature are a foolish people. In the scriptures we read so often of the power of lies, but more often of the power of the truth of God to stop them. In Psalm 63, Royal lament the king will rejoice in God all who swear by him will exalt for the mouths of liars will be stopped 50 some Psalms later King David says I said in my alarm all men are liars and that word includes the ladies to Isaiah 44 a great text on the power of prophetic prediction and Yeah, read the critical commentaries on that, you know, the commentaries by the skeptics and they say Isaiah, no, somebody other than Isaiah is creating a fiction of divine prophecy. But here's what the true Isaiah says in Isaiah 44, verse 25, that the Lord frustrates the signs of liars and makes fools of diviners. He turns the wise men back and makes their knowledge foolish. All right, so wise people with PhDs write op-ed opinions in the New York Times and other print media, and we hear opinion on newscasts from various sides of our fraught political scenery. And what ought we to believe? When we turn to the New Testament, we see a similar set of statements in 1 Timothy 1, A list of sins, sexual immorality, those who practice homosexuality, those who enslave, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching. And later in that same letter, Paul speaks about the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared. A seared conscience. That means the habit of lying is so ingrained There is virtually no sense of guilt in having done so. Revelation 21 verse 8, there we see the list of those who shall not be permitted to enter the final glorious city, the heavenly Zion which has come down to earth by the grace of God. Yes, believers go in, but in verse 8, as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, It's for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and then get this. This one's emphatic. And all liars. That word all. It's not on the rest of the list. It's only on that word. And all liars. Their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. Oh, thank God there is such a thing as Salvation, right? All right. Yeah, there is salvation. And salvation is for sinners. And only sinners can be Christians. And only Christians should be pastors. And that means that only sinners are pastors. And that's a fact. of the fallenness of our life within the present order of God's providence for our world and for his church. That is, the church is made up of sinners. Later, we hear lots of words of the radical inclusiveness of Jesus, which is a true statement. But his radical inclusiveness, that is, his desire to embrace any and all, is by the gospel coin of faith and repentance. Two sides of the same coin. Those who truly believe, however feebly, none thus also repent, however feebly. And that's the coin that Jesus receives. It's a coin, of course, his spirit gives. Without him giving it, we will not have it. And Jesus admits all who have that coin of repentance and faith. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. So says the father of the demonized boy at the foot of the mountain of transfiguration in Luke chapter 9. When I was 20, I heard my uncle say that was his favorite prayer. I was shocked. It's become one of my favorite prayers. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. 1500 years after Jesus said such things and the Gospels were written Lancelot Andrews one of the translators of the King James Bible wrote in his prayer book Lord. I repent help my impenitence The first time I read that I was shocked and Then I began to love it All right, we are weak our faith falters, but is upheld our repentance is not thorough as it ought to be but in a true believer it is real and the lie is a danger to us all not nearly as much the lie that we hear with our ears but the lie that we speak with our mouths in the psalm Some of those violent language is spoken about such things. The Lord will cut off all lying lips. The tongue that speaks great boasts. And notice the kind of boast that's given. With our tongues we will win, we'll prevail. Our lips are with us. Who will be Lord over us? Now that strange phrase, our lips are with us. It seems to mean this, that in the battle of truth and lie and a power over culture and maybe politics or kingdom, our lips are with us means our lips are our best ally. And how shall we win? Not by armies. We don't need armies. we have our lying lips and our lying tongues and by our lies alone we will win that's the claim in the first half of the psalm by lies alone we will win now in those ancient empires and still some places in the barbaric uh... corners of the world liars who are caught lying to the king What happens to them? Well, maybe they lose their heads. But maybe they're allowed to live, but they lose their lips. Or their tongues are taken out. And they're rendered speechless. In the novels, The Hunger Games, there are the avaks, people. They are slaves, servants. They are without speech. They are without tongues. All right, that's an ancient Persian custom for the one who's caught lying to the Persian king. In the first page of Herodotus' histories, he speaks about what Persians love. And what do they love? They love horses, they love archery, and they love the truth. And the names of the kings often reflect the idea of the truthfulness of heaven. Alright, so to lie to the king, you lose the power of speech. You lose that anatomy. And what does the psalm say? The Lord will cut off all lying lips, the tongue that speaks great boasts. And that's the Lord who rules the world. So in our larger catechism, we find a wonderful expansion of what we read already in the shorter catechism. So think of this as the big cat versus the small cat. The shorter catechism is like the house cat. Okay, CAT, cat for catechism. Okay, the house cat. You know, that's good for kids and families and brevity and it's true and glorious and wonderful. And the larger catechism we're told was written especially for the training of ministers. Here's the exposition of the ninth commandment in the larger catechism text of 1646. And it gives us both sides of the commandment. One of the principles of the reading of the Ten Commandments is that the sins forbidden in the commandment have positive duties on the other side. And whatever is positively commanded in the commandments have prohibitions on the other side implied. And that is perfectly true. And so the exposition of the Ten Commandments in the larger catechism, which is magnificent, yes, truly magnificent, expounds what's required as duty and what is forbidden as sin. In the back of your hymnals, you've got the text. This is question 144 and 145, and it is searching. To consider it with attentiveness, it will deepen you. Here we go. Which is the ninth commandment? The ninth commandment is thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. What are the duties required in the ninth commandment? Are you ready? Sit back and listen. It's long. The duties required in the ninth commandment are the preserving and promoting of truth between man and man and the good name of our neighbor as well as our own appearing and standing for the truth, and from the heart, sincerely, freely, clearly and fully speaking the truth and only the truth in matters of judgment and justice and in all other things whatsoever, a charitable esteem of our neighbors, loving, desiring and rejoicing in their good name, sorrowing for and covering of their infirmities, freely acknowledging of their gifts and graces, defending their innocency, a ready receiving of a good report, an unwillingness to admit of an evil report concerning them, discouraging tailbearers, that means gossip, flatterers and slanderers, love and care of our own good name and defending it when need requires, keeping of lawful promises, Studying and practicing of whatsoever things are true, honest, lovely, and of good report. That is wonderful. That goes down to the soul, doesn't it? And maybe your life will be a little different because of hearing that this morning. Number 145, what are the sins forbidden in the ninth commandment? This is where our minds more naturally go with the form of the commandment in the negative. Thou shalt not. What are the sins forbidden in the ninth commandment? The sins forbidden in the ninth commandment are all prejudicing of the truth and the good name of our neighbors as well as our own, especially in public judicature. That's hard to say. Judicature, which means the halls of justice. giving false evidence, suborning false witnesses, wittingly appearing and pleading for an evil cause, outfacing and overbearing the truth, passing unjust sentence, calling evil good and good evil, rewarding the wicked according to the works of the righteous and the righteous according to the works of the wicked, forgery concealing the truth, undue silence in a just cause, and holding our peace when iniquity calleth for either a reproof from ourselves or a complaint to others, here's one, speaking the truth unseasonably, that is at the wrong time or to the wrong person, unseasonably or maliciously to a wrongful end. or perverting it to a wrong meaning, or in doubtful or equivocal expressions to the prejudice of truth or justice. Speaking untruth, lying, slandering, backbiting, detracting, tail-bearing, whispering, scoffing, reviling, rash, harsh, and partial censuring, misconstructing intentions, words, and actions, flattering, vainglorious boasting, thinking or speaking too highly or too meanly of ourselves or others, denying the gifts and graces of God, aggravating smaller faults, hiding, excusing, or extenuating of sins when called to a free confession, unnecessarily discovering of infirmities, that means revealing them in public, raising false rumors, receiving and countenancing evil reports, and stopping our ears against just defense, evil suspicion, envying or grieving at the deserved credit of any, endeavoring or desiring to impair it, rejoicing in their disgrace and infamy, scornful contempt, fond admiration, that means we enter a cult of personality, without critical scrutiny, breach of lawful promises, neglecting such things as are of good report, and practicing or not avoiding ourselves or not hindering what we can in others, such things as procure an ill name. That was long. That's the most thorough exposition of the Ninth Commandment I know in all of Christian literature. I'm rebuked by it and encouraged in some of the clauses by habits that have grown in my heart, but not all clauses. And I suspect that you are rebuked by some of them and encouraged, I hope, by others. And now we turn to the conclusion of the psalm, which is a divine promise. It's stated in declaratory form. We can translate the words near the end. You, our Lord, will guard us. Now the Hebrew text sometimes vary on what the pronoun is. You, O Lord, will guard them. You will defend them. Some Hebrew texts go that way. Some other copies go us. Septuagint goes us. That is the earliest translation of them all. You, O Lord, will guard us. I've chosen to read the us version of those texts. You, O Lord, will guard us. You will defend us from this generation, this crooked generation, always. And we could also translate it not in the future declarative, you will guard us, But this is also the same grammar that would be for a prayer request, such as, may, oh Lord, may you guard us. May you defend us from this crooked generation always. It can be the language of prayer. And of course, in the Psalms, we often have the language of prayer. And the language of prayer is often spoken in the simple future sense of Hebrew verbs. In this particular prayer of Psalm 12, I think it's best to put it in the declarative sense. That is, in a world where it seems that lies rule, the psalmist King David declares, you, O Lord, will guard us. You will defend us from this generation, namely this crooked generation, always. Now, we would think that that would be a fine and poetical and appropriately spiritual conclusion to such a psalm. So many of the psalms end with confidence in what God either is doing or has done or shall do in the future. Psalms of distress, we call them laments, typically end with statements of trust and confidence. And this is one of those statements, in a lament concerning the distortion of the world, a world that seems ruled by lies. And that will be a fine ending of the poem. But that's not the final sentence. And the final sentence is one that speaks of David's current concern over his own world. Maybe the psalm was written during one of the great revolts. Maybe the Absalom revolt. Maybe the time when he's fighting some terrible enemy. Maybe when he was being chased by King Saul. We don't know the circumstance. But in the writing of the psalm, it's clear that David's rule is either not established well or not yet established at all. Because David, as 2 Samuel 8 tells us, ruled with justice and equity for all the people. Alright, David was no perfect king and we know well what his crimes are from the stories in 2 Samuel and the way it cost him and his family dearly, the death of four of his sons. for his crime against Bathsheba and Uriah. Such a man deserves death, says King David to the prophet Nathan when confronted. You are the man. Let him pay back four times, says David regarding the hypothetical of the rich man who stole the poor man's sheep and served it for dinner. That's the law of Moses. You pay four times as much for a lost sheep. What's not quite counted so clearly within the texts that follow is that David loses four sons for his crime against Bathsheba and worse Uriah, her husband. Yes, David pays. Our lies have consequences within the mortal world. David confesses to Nathan the prophet, I've sinned against the Lord. The very next sentence or so is the assurance of pardon. The Lord has also taken away your sin. You will not die. And then we also find the punishment for the sin. The sword will never depart from your family. Our lives are costly. They do not serve any good. But we have within our text a promise. You, O Lord, will guard us. The Lord guards His own from their own temptations. And we pray in the Lord's Prayer, Lord, keep us from that hour of testing. Don't lead us into evil. Deliver us from temptation. Do such things, Lord. And the Lord guards us in our hearts from the worst inclinations of our fallenness. Hallelujah. And the life of the real church of Jesus is a purer life than that which is lived by the world. It is. And I suspect that in the friendships of this congregation, You may well trust each other with your lives. You certainly do with your money. That is not true in the majority of the world. There's a bond of love and friendship that comes over the true church of Jesus. Hallelujah. It's part of God's own guarding of us. But in the promise, we also find that God guards us for the power of the lives of others. Hallelujah. Jesus says it even most emphatically in Matthew 24 when speaking of the lies of the of the devil and the powers of Antichrist. And there in Matthew 24, that little apocalypse spoken in the last week of Jesus earthly ministry. He says that there'll be false signs and lying wonders so as to deceive the very elect if such a thing were possible. if such a thing were possible. That is the elect will not be deceived even by the greatest lying signs of diabolical power. The devil of course can do no true miracle. They are lying signs and false wonders. And the elect will not be deceived by them because the Lord will guard us. You will defend us from this crooked generation. And then the emphatic word at the end of that line, always. Always. Hallelujah. But David, as he writes the psalm, remains in distress. And what is the real situation socially, culturally, maybe even politically, maybe even militarily, all around the wicked strut about as evil is honored by the children of men? Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers, the principalities, those spiritual forces of wickedness that St. Paul speaks of at the end of Ephesians. And so we are called upon to put on the whole armor of God, the shield of faith, the breastplate of righteousness, The shoes of the preparation of the gospel of peace. The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. And there's a reference to truth in that list, too. The belt of truth. You, O Lord, will guard us. You will defend us. While all around the wicked strut about, as evil is honored by the children of men. Our mission is to speak the truth into that world, to bring the light of the glory of the gospel into that world. And God has pledged by His own life, hallelujah, that as the gospel is lived and spoken and preached, the spirit of truth accompanies it and empowers it. and declares the truth of it in the hearts of those who hear. What Cornelius Van Til said so long ago, the self-attesting power of the Word of God. When we speak the true gospel from the heart, people know that it is true. They know. May we speak that and may it be accompanied by the mercies of God in our own lives and the lives of those who hear us. Shall we pray? Lord Jesus Christ, you are the truth, the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except by you. And so inhabit us, Lord, by your goodness, so that your goodness and your truth shine forth from our hearts and in our words. in our innermost thoughts and deepest motives. May our words, our deeds, our speech be pure like your words, Lord, refined in the fire, purified seven times. Lord, grant these things and grant us further the assurance, not only that our sins are forgiven, but that we are being cleansed and purified of them ourselves, like the silver in the furnace, the gold purified seven times. Grant that, we pray. And may the truth of the gospel come to rule this world by your goodness. In Jesus' holy name, amen. The hymn is number 488. It celebrates the mind of Christ. It is a prayer for the mind and the heart and the truth of Christ to inhabit our lives. It's misprinted in the sermon. It says, the mid of Christ. We are amid Christ. Christ amid us. But it's meant to say, may the mind of Christ, my Savior. 488.