To the chief musician on an eight-stringed harp, a psalm of David. Help, Lord, for the godly man ceases, for the faithful disappear from among the sons of men. They speak idly, every one with his neighbor, with flattering lips and a double heart they speak. May the Lord cut off all flattering lips and the tongue that speaks proud things, who have said, with our tongue we will prevail. Our lips are our own. Who is Lord over us? For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now I will arise, says the Lord. I will set him in the safety for which he yearns. The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. You shall keep them, O Lord. You shall preserve them from this generation forever. The wicked prowl on every side when vileness is exalted among the sons of men. Father God, we thank you for your word, and we pray that as we dig into it, that you would help us to not only grow in our understanding of you and of your purposes for planet Earth, but Father, for us to be changed ourselves, that you would sanctify us with your truth, your word is truth. And we pray for your anointing in Jesus' name, amen. Well today is one of those rare occasions when you're going to get a two-point sermon with a bundle of subpoints, right? Actually I'm not going to deal with all of the subpoints. I've put them there for completeness but There's two main things that I want to accomplish this morning, and the first is to try to demonstrate realistically how bad things are, to stir up our hearts for prayer and action. And then secondly, to give hope that it is possible to make changes despite how bad things are. The very title of this psalm indicates that David, when he writes to the chief musician, has an intention of getting back to the temple. He's not giving up hope, even though it looks hopeless. He fully intends to go back to this temple and he believes that God is able to turn things around. But first of all, let's take a look at the five things that contributed to Israel's decline. The first had to do with God's people no longer being salt and light within Israel. It says, help Lord, for the godly man ceases, for the faithful disappear from among the sons of men. Now the fact that the faithful have disappeared implies they were there before, and now they're not, and we're not told where they disappeared to, but the assumption is that they have defected to David, and of course by the time we get to 2 Samuel chapter 18, We're going to discover that tens of thousands have defected to David. These were faithful people who were willing to take risks for the cause of God. And anytime that happens, when the faithful disappear in society, you're going to have a negative impact upon that society. Just think of what happened in England when the Puritans and the Pilgrims left England and they came to America. Their exodus, and it was a mass exodus, had a profound positive impact upon America. It had a profound negative impact upon England. And the reason is obvious. You've got this mass exodus of salt and light no longer taming society. And in America, we had the opposite. We had almost nothing but salt and light as one of the godliest generations in history flooded into this country. Well, we are in a similar situation today to what England was in when there was that mass exodus. Now, obviously, the church hasn't left America, but the church has failed to be salt and light. And exactly the same impact is resulted. OK, if we fail to be salt and light, then the faithful are, in a sense, disappearing from culture. And let me just illustrate that very, very briefly. Now there is hot debate on how high the incidence of adultery are in America. Some saying that it's as high as 60% of men and 50% of women who have been unfaithful. And others saying, no, no, no, the evidence seems to indicate it could be as low as 22% of men and 17% of women. But even at the latter one, one in four men being unfaithful, you can see that faithfulness in America has been definitely deteriorating within our generation. But one statistic that's pretty hard to get around is the incidence of STDs that are reported on the Center for Disease Control, on their website. That's a conservative figure because, as I understand it, and I may be wrong in this, but as I understand it, it's just what the doctors report for patients that have come to them, and those conservative figures are astonishing. They're astounding. Last year, a minimum of 110 million Americans had an STD with, let's see, make sure I get it right, 20 million new infections in one year. That's just astonishing. They said that it was $16 billion of medical costs to treat these people. And the reason that that is a significant statistic is that the Bible says that sexual degeneracy is a barometer, so to speak, of where a nation is at. It's a very significant barometer of a nation's health. And when one in five Americans are claimed to have incurable herpes, just one of the STDs, I would say God's judgments are being felt. God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. Now, one of the handouts that we gave in the prayer workshop yesterday was a list of sins and strongholds in America that we really need to be praying against, and sins and strongholds within the church. I'm not going to repeat what was on that list, but I do encourage you to pray it. Regularly pray concerning that. But just very briefly, 1.2 million abortions last year. And according to the American official website, last year there were 1.2 million additional violent crimes. Now they really should have included the abortions in with those violent crimes, they do not. Last year there were 8.975 million property crimes, and the list goes on. Last year, I don't know if it was toward the end of the year, but things had gotten so bad in Chicago that the police department issued a statement that they would no longer be responding to 911 calls if the criminal was not on the premises at that particular time. Police Superintendent Gary McCarthy said, I don't mean to be flippant here because I've been the victim of a burglary at least three or four times. But I'd rather have the officer on the street where he can prevent the shooting. I found it remarkable that the police superintendent's own house had been burglarized three or four times. But here's a situation where the tyranny of crime prevention, which the Bible nowhere authorizes, is being engaged in, including attempts to disarm the citizens unlawfully again in Chicago. That failed. The court struck that down again. But on issues of responding to a crime, that's precisely where the Bible says the government has a lawful thing. They say, no, we're not going to do that. It may happen, may not happen, but we're probably not going to do anything. Now to give a little bit of perspective, you can expect the ungodly to be ungodly. What troubles me is when the church has ungodliness. When I look at the church, I cry out, help, Lord, for the godly man ceases, for the faithful disappear from among the sons of men. Now, let's just think about that for a moment. Where do you find very many Christians who take the Sabbath seriously and really seek to honor the Sabbath? It's really hard to find Sabbath keepers. Where are those who do not covet their neighbor's wife through pornography? or covet their neighbor's car or house or other ways that they're trying to keep up with the Joneses. I would say that violation of the 10th Commandment is rampant in the Church of Jesus Christ. Where are those who never break their promises or whose word can always be trusted to be kept? And you know, a lot of times Christians don't even keep their signed contracts, let alone the promises that they have made to their family or the promises that they have made to the church. I don't think that the Ten Commandments are being kept in the church of Jesus Christ, any of them, any of the Ten Commandments. Now we tend to think that we have not violated the first commandment of God, but when you look at Deuteronomy chapters six through 11, that's the section that's giving an exposition of the first commandment, you look there and you see we are violating the first commandment left and right in the church of Jesus Christ. Now, first of all, those chapters indicate that you are breaking this commandment when you look to alternative sources of law than to God's word. So we would say that The church is definitely in trouble on this one. Last week, I was talking to a man who has a reputation of being a very, very godly man. But he says that he absolutely rejects the Old Testament laws, which Matthew 5 says Jesus upheld, every jot and tittle. But he says that he doesn't believe in them. He doesn't like them. And so I would say, based on Deuteronomy, what is God's interpretation of what the first commandment means, Even though he says he keeps all Ten Commandments, I would have to say no, he does not keep God's commandments. And that means that his godliness is an illusion. Then when you keep reading through Deuteronomy 6 through 26, which is the chapters that gives in the same order as the Ten Commandments appear, gives an exposition of all Ten Commandments, you realize that we are in real, real trouble. But just on that first commandment, Deuteronomy says that the source of your law is your de facto God. It doesn't matter if you call God Yahweh and you pretend to worship Him. If your source of law is something else, you have violated that commandment. And yet many Christians have chosen to honor the laws of society, not the laws of God. So any Christian who hates God's case laws has chosen another God to be his lawmaker. Okay, it's idolatry. Deuteronomy's exposition of the first commandment says that we are serving other gods when we send our Canaanites, our children to the Canaanites to be educated. Well that means almost the entire church has violated this commandment when they send their children to government schools. Now you can argue with God on that one, it's not me, it's Deuteronomy says we must not be sending our children and it's under the exposition of the first commandment. Those same chapters say that we are having other gods when we treat the state as Messiah or when we ask the state to be doing what the church or the family needs to be doing. And there are many other applications of the first commandment that the church has been violating. And like I said earlier, when you go through the whole exposition of all 10 commandments, you realize we are a nation that is in deep trouble. We are a church that is in deep trouble. And this knowledge can either make you despair or it can drive you to prayer. And I hope it does the latter with us. There's no point in despairing. When the church is in desperate need of reformation and revival, we must turn to the Lord. We must say there is nothing too difficult for God. We must cry out with David, help Lord, and believe he's interested in helping in such societal issues and such church-wide issues as well. But we do need to recognize that there are problems in the church and there are problems in the nation if we're going to ever realize we need to start seeking solutions to those problems. The second thing that led Israel downhill and that also drove David to prayer was a lack of integrity in men's words. Verse 2 says, they speak idly, everyone with his neighbor, with flattering lips and a double heart they speak. Now David was extremely frustrated with government leaders who had previously pretended to be his friend, but it became very obvious over time that they were speaking, you know, they were double-hearted, double-minded, and they were using flattery with him, but they really did not intend it. There was no integrity in their words whatsoever. And when integrity is missing, a society is messed up. Integrity is absolutely essential for the success of a society. Keeping of contract laws, absolutely necessary for society to prosper. And when contract law is broken at the highest levels of our nation, which it is being done, we again are a nation in trouble. In devotions this past week we were reading a short devotional by R.J. Rushdoony on how societies historically have degenerated when truth is no longer important to them. Back when we used to be a Christian civilization, you didn't need written contracts that you could take to court. A handshake was all that you needed. It actually meant something because the people who shook hands, they were seeking to imitate the God of all truth who has given us truthful, inerrant scriptures. And so they valued truth because they knew that God valued truth enormously. The truth was so important that they kept it. And yet today, presidents do not keep their word. Congressmen do not keep their word. Pastors do not keep their word. Now, for the most part, businesses, in order to survive, do tend to keep contract law. But even that is being eroded through some of the recent court decisions that have been happening. Now, related to this is point C. The third thing that led Israel into a downward spiral was the absolutizing of freedom of speech. Now the reason I say absolutizing is because there is a sense in which every one of us should be defenders of freedom of speech. But it's within the limits that the scripture has laid out. It's like a train. We believe a train is most free, most speedy, most powerful when it is totally restricted to the tracks that it was built for. And it's the same with us. We are most speedy, most free, have most liberty when we restrict ourselves to the laws that God has given to us. And in early America, when they understood the law of God, which is those railroad tracks, they didn't take the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech in an absolute sense. For example, the states continued to punish blasphemy. They all had blasphemy laws. Long, long after the Constitution, was written because they did not see that as within the purview of freedom of speech. Instead they saw that as attacking the very God who gave us those liberties. It had to be punished or they could no longer maintain the liberties of God. Just by way of the analogy of the railroad tracks, if you don't punish the people who are blowing up the railroad tracks, you're not gonna have those railroad tracks to have free travel on for very long. Um, once God's limitations are removed, freedom of speech will drive a country into self-defeating and dangerous actions, and even into tyranny. So take a look at verse four again. who have said, with our tongue we will prevail, our lips are our own, who is Lord over us? The last part of that is basically saying, nobody can tell me what I can say or what I can't say. I am the master of my own lips. And if you just ask how far have we taken this principle today, it's pretty obvious. It's taken in an absolute sense by many people, some even justifying child pornography. The total free speech advocates are demanding that they be able to say anything that they want and to print anything that they want. George Grant has written a very probing analysis of the suicidal positions that the ACLU has taken on this issue as well as other issues. And that book, I think, illustrates the first part of this verse. With our tongue, we will prevail. You see, the liberals want to use that free speech clause to blow up the railroad of our liberties. That's what they want to do. They don't just want freedom from God's lordship in the area of speech. They want freedom from His restrictions in every area of life. And so it goes way, way beyond just a speech issue. But it's not the ACLU who invented that. All the way back in the time of David, these free speech advocates in this verse, their goal was to give free speech to everybody except for believers. And the same is true today. Let me just illustrate it this way. Homosexuals can Photoshop pictures to make Pastors, key leaders across the nation, look like perverts, and the courts have upheld that as free speech, and yet if those same people, those pastors, say these people are engaged in sin and abomination before the Lord, their free speech is taken away. So it's not an issue of free speech. It's an issue of overthrowing the laws of God. And if you're agreeing with David here, what you are saying is free speech is, well, he had free speech. Just look at it this way. David's government was unbelievably a limited government, but Absalom and Ahithophel were using their freedoms for free speech to destroy the liberties of everybody else. That's what ended up happening. Now again, we could bail out and despair, but we need to do like David did and go to the one for whom all things are possible. Fourth thing that drove Israel into God's curse and judgment was the oppression of the helpless. Verse five, for the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy. Now I will arise as the Lord. I will set him in the safety for which he yearns. Now we aren't told who those poor were that were oppressed. who the needy were that were being downtrodden. But I think it's pretty easy to apply this verse in modern day if you just take into account the millions of unborn babies that are in danger of being aborted. They are the downcast at this point. They are the oppressed segment of society. The fifth and last thing that drove David to prayer was the legalization of an anti-Christian law order. And for that one, look at verse eight. the wicked prowl on every side when vileness is exalted among the sons of men. Now, it may not have been an intentional thing initially, but with the unlawful transition of Absalom into government, Absalom had to in some way ignore the law and those who supported him had to ignore the law. They may not have intended it to be this way, but this is the inevitable result when government ignores one aspect of the law lawlessness begins to increase. So you get into power unlawfully, you're going to tend to ignore the law and the unintended consequence is that restraint on sin is going to automatically wither. Just by way of analogy, conservatives today who violate the Constitution on some points They lose their moral ground to be outraged over the even more egregious violations that the liberals engaged in on the Constitution on other points. They just don't have a moral leg to stand on. They think that their violations of the Constitution are minor in the others, but if you're lawless in one area, you don't have a moral basis on which to oppose other lawlessness. So this principle is that the wicked prowl on every side when vileness is exalted among the sons of men. It should be no surprise to us when when sexual abuse is on the rise when abusive pornography is legal in our country. Our politicians don't seem to see the connection but it's to me obvious on the face of it. It should be no surprise to us that all life is devalued when abortion is legal and when we are taught that we are simply higher forms of animals. There can be really no morality. It should be no surprise that there are over two million porn sites that prey upon our children in the most vile ways when the courts have exalted the right of porn. Christians who do not think that we should impose biblical law upon society just do not understand the logical implications of their stance. It really, there is no alternative. Some morality is going to be imposed upon society, and if it's not the perfect law of liberty, which is God's law, then it's gonna be the laws of man, which Ezekiel and other passages say are going to make men grown. It should be no surprise to find school shootings on the rise when courts have forced the Ten Commandments out of the classrooms, and when schools have taught we're no different than animals. When the government itself exalts any form of vileness, those vile people will instantly lose all fear of prowling, and they're gonna start looking for prey. We are, from one perspective, in an impossible situation, impossible for man. But see, this is where prayer is so important. God calls us, when we start despairing, to step aside and say, this is a job for the Almighty, and that's why we're called to prayer. And as you pray, three things should characterize your prayers. First of all, faith. These verses exhibit a faith that God's plan extends to culture. And there's a lot of Christians who question that. They doubt that, and so it's hard for them to pray in faith that God will change the culture. Now in your outlines, I've given eight sub-points. I'm only gonna focus on one, but let me just quickly summarize them. We can have faith that God cares about our culture because He is Yahweh, the name that defines Him as the Lord of life in covenant creation, even with planet Earth. Okay? So even though they are opposed to the covenant does not mean God does not want His covenant to be successful. Second, verse one shows that God is concerned when cultures go bad. Third, verse three shows that God is the judge of the whole earth. Fourth, verse four implies at least that God cares about what pagans say. He is the Lord over what pagans say. They don't like it, they resist it, but he's the Lord. Fifth, he's our protector. Sixth, his word is inerrant. Seventh, God is not simply concerned about the present, but he's got this multi-generational perspective, and thus he's interested in providing for our future. And then 8, verse 7 shows that God knows how to keep us from stumbling. But the whole psalm is designed to raise our faith in those eight areas that God does care about America and any other country. When verse 1 says, Help, Lord, what kind of help is he seeking? He's the only seeking for help to do better devotions and have better worship at the assembly and maybe take better care of their family. The way some people interpret God's word is that the only things God is interested in is our personal relationship with Him and private devotions and things of that nature. He has no interest in cultural issues. And it's really ridiculous. They're cutting out most of the Bible. This psalm is clear, David wanted help for his nation. He was asking God to be in the job of transforming of culture. Now if you don't believe it is God's job and He's called Himself to transform culture, well you're not going to have the faith to even take this psalm upon your lips. We need a church stirred up to believe that god's civil laws continue to apply that romans 13 continues to apply that culture and politics Continues to be very very important to him that god is not careless about civic matters And one of the things I would encourage you, uh, it's been on my heart for the last month and I I'm finally taking action on this There's another pastor and I that are going to be trying to go around to every church in nebraska and in iowa we're going to start with nebraska, but trying to convince pastors to be black robe regiment preachers willing to preach the whole counsel of God to apply it to every area of life. So pray that that would be successful because I think it's just so critical that the church get involved. Our Lord is interested in national issues. Now let's just focus on those sub points on one reason for faith and that's the inerrancy of scripture. Verse six says, the words of the Lord are pure words, like silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. In other words, there's no dross, there's no bad stuff in the silver of God's Word. God's Word is the purest of pure silver. There's no mistakes in it. There's nothing you should be embarrassed by. You should love this Word. It is totally, totally pure. There are Christians who are shocked that you would even suggest the idea of applying God's laws to public life. They act as if they don't like these laws of God, and of course they'll pick out the most offensive laws that they can think of. I remember a radio program, and I love Dobbs and a lot of what he's done, but I was totally offended with what he said on this. He said, of course we don't want the law of God in America. Then you'd have to stone children and nobody wants that, do they? And I would beg to differ. I would say you go to New York City and you see how juvenile delinquents kill police officers and they kill parents and they are engaged in all kinds of crime. They need to have the same laws applied to them as adults have applied to them. That's all that passage is saying. that if they engage in criminal conduct, they should be punished accordingly. And let me tell you something, that kind of a law, if it was implemented in America, would settle the crime issue in New York much more quickly than our coddling of those youth has currently been doing. Now, if the church is to be able to make a difference in society, we cannot be embarrassed by biblical law. And Jesus says, He will be ashamed of you if you are ashamed of Him and His words. It's very, very clear. We need to treasure it. It is pure, the purest of the pure silver. And if we are convinced that His word is pure silver with no dross, then we're going to have the faith to ask God to establish that pure word over culture. Amen? Isaiah 42 prophesies that Christ will establish justice in the governments of the world. This is still future to us. And it says in verse four, he will not fail nor be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands shall wait for his law. Now that verse is saying that biblical law is the definition of biblical justice. You cannot have one without the other. And since it is God's will, according to that passage for the pagan nations, the Gentile nations to wait for God's law, then we can have total faith that we should be applying God's law even in the cultures of Iowa and Nebraska. To me it's fairly straightforward. Yesterday we saw that prayer is a big part of that. There was a good quote in Operation World that says, when man works, man works. When man prays, God works. Okay, by faith, we need to step aside and say, this is a job for the Almighty, because it's impossible, right? And God is up to the job, nothing is impossible for Him, and His perfect word is the perfect foundation for our society. And the question is, do we have faith in that word? Now, secondly, we must have hope. We must not only have faith that God can do this, but we must have biblical hope that He will do this. So that gets us into the whole area of eschatology. Is there really a biblical basis for praying for the Christianization of civilization, of cultures? And I say, well, of course there is a basis for that, the Great Commission. You know, there's many other passages that call us to be having exactly this hope for planet Earth. Why would God authorize us to pray the content of verse 3 if it was not His will for the world to become converted and liars to cease from the land? David says, Now if all flattering lips and all liars are cut off, Either through conversion or through some other method. If that's all is taken seriously, you've got a Christian civilization. So it's not a ridiculous prayer to pray. It's praying God's will. And I believe that since the New Testament authorizes us to sing all 150 Psalms, that this is God's will for us to be praying this for our culture. And by the way, as I mentioned, they can be cut off one of two ways. One way of being cut off is by being converted, because Jesus is cut off on their behalf, right? He bears the judgment for them. But God's judgments are biblical. Gary talked about that earlier in the service, and we need to be praying God's judgments. If it is God's will for us to pray the imprecatory Psalms, Then it gives me tremendous hope that God wants to do something about our situation. Secondly, why would God authorize us to pray verse five if it was not his will for the righteous to ask for victory and to be preserved. Now I will arise says the Lord I will set him in the safety for which he yearns. So the fact that God has authorized us to pray that in the new covenant that gives me hope. Thirdly, we have hope for the future of America because God authorizes us to pray and to declare by faith the truth of verse 7. You shall keep them, O Lord. You shall preserve them from this generation forever. Now, what's He keeping? He's keeping the Old Testament for that generation to the next generation forever. He's not calling us to be New Testament Christians. He's calling and saying He's going to preserve His Word forever to multiple generations because this is His gift to multiple generations, but the implication too is that God is going to have multiple generations who will value that Word. Too many times we lack hope for the future because we have so many setbacks in the present. But hope is not based on what is possible. It is based upon the promises of a God who cannot lie. God for whom nothing is impossible. And so that's what David did. He, he grounded his prayer in, in the scripture. So it calls for faith. It calls for hope. Thirdly, it calls for commitment. Otherwise we're involved in hypocrisy. Verse one implies that David is committed to being godly and to being faithful. Well, that makes sense. It would be rather foolish for a farmer to pray that God would bless his crops if he never planted anything, never watered anything, never plowed anything, he never did any of his own responsibilities. That'd be a pretty foolish thing to say. Consider Lot in the city of Sodom. Even though the New Testament says that he was saved and that his righteous soul vexed him from day to day, he never was salt and light. He never sought to influence his society and therefore he never impacted his society. Now contrast him with Jonah. Jonah was another reluctant person, but he did eventually go out and preach, right? And Rodney has shown us in the past, there was a great reluctance there. But when he faithfully preached his word in culture, God took that word and sovereignly turned that nation upside down. Now, yes, Jonah did it with bad attitudes, but I'll tell you something, I'd much rather have a church with bad attitudes that's salty and willing to do something in culture than a church that's got good attitudes like salt that's having zero impact upon culture. I'd much rather have the bad attitudes. Now, I'd rather have neither, right? I'd rather have good attitudes and be salty just like Daniel was. And think of the impact that Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had on the nation of the empire of Babylon. It was incredible the impact that they had. Why? It was an issue of faithfulness to God for whom nothing is impossible, and they were willing to lay down their lives and trust God, but they knew that God could do it, that changing an impossible culture was something that God could do, and God did do it through them. So we first of all, we need to commit to being godly, verse one. Second, we need to commit to glorifying God with our speech, verses two through four. Now, it's phrased negatively here, but that's really the implication. If we're against all of that flattery and that unfaithful speech, that means we're going to be committing ourselves to having integrity of lips. So, if we pray for a pro-life cause, and we're praying that the pro-life situation would advance, and we are never involved in the pro-life movement, then our prayers really lack integrity. Why would God answer our prayers for anything When we have such little interest in that anything, that we're not willing to be involved. Anytime even people give opportunity, no, I'm not really interested in being involved. I'll pray for you, but that's about it. Why would God answer if we have no commitment to the very things that we're asking Him for? Okay. Thirdly, the church needs to commit to minister to the oppressed. That's what was needed to reverse verse 5. Fourth, we must be committed to God's law order. We cannot sincerely pray against vileness that is exalted among the sons of men if we are opposed to God's law order ourselves. So you can't pick and choose among God's commands. So praying this psalm logically commits us to exalting God's law in our nation. Vileness can only be defined in terms of God's law, and so we're committed to putting on the opposite of verse 8. Now let me just quickly end with three concluding thoughts. Though the wicked may triumph for a time in America, Psalm 2 reminds us that they will not triumph forever. 2 Timothy 3 tells us that the wicked, quote, will progress no further. Well, that implies they can progress, But they can only progress to a certain point. They will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all. So it's saying that wickedness can only progress to a certain point before it really blows itself up. And I think we can expect the same thing to be true in America. Even as the humanists right now are triumphing against Christianity on issue after issue, it's beginning to alienate the populace against their radical ways. And this has been historically, if you study the spiritual war that's gone on from the time of Adam to the present, which my dad did a huge study on that. When you study that, you realize Satan's victories often contribute to his own defeat. You know, he gets ahead and he gets ahead, looks like he's triumphing and he's alienating the very people that he has initially gathered to himself. Secondly, don't take a who cares attitude about our nation. Grown as David groaned over moral failures. Yearn for liberty from tyranny, as verse 5 talks about. Groaning over sin, yearning for liberty, glorifies God. And then lastly, be aware of the vastly different worldviews that humanists and Christians have. What David was grieved over, humanists rejoiced over. What David rejoiced over, humanists grieved over. There's never going to be a peace treaty, and Christians are fooling themselves when they try to have a peace treaty with humanism. No, this is an irreconcilable war of two systems, and it's Jesus Christ who will triumph in history. Now this psalm, in summary, is a call for the church to be neither pessimistic nor carefree, but to have a realistic perspective of what needs to be accomplished and an attitude of faith, hope, and total commitment to be achieving those changes. Pray this prayer. Pray that God would destroy humanism and once again cause His truth to triumph in our nation. Amen. Father, we thank You for Your Word and the reminders that it gives to us that the mountains we see are really molehills for You. They're nothing. You can scatter the darkness at Your will. You can turn a Nineveh upside down at Your will. You can humble a Nebuchadnezzar at Your will. You can cause Your truth to triumph under an Esther where it looked like the Christians were going to be totally annihilated, and yet at the end we see many of the Gentiles becoming Jews. And so, Father, we pray that You would work in our midst this faith, this hope, this commitment, and that You would leverage even the weakest