Well, this morning, if you'll turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm 44, I'm going to read the whole psalm. This psalm has been on my heart for the whole time since our national election because I think that the things that are spoken of in this psalm pertain and are relevant to what our nation is passing through, what the church is going through in relation to our nation at this particular time. And I'm hoping that this message will then be very instructive as to God's sovereignty, but also our own response, which needs to be one of looking to the Lord and praying to the Lord in faith, that he would hear our cries for revival and for the Lord's intervention in all of these matters which are a concern to us politically and personally. Let's bow together in prayer. Our Father, we do give you great thanks that you are the Almighty and nothing is too difficult for you. You are the God of all flesh. You understand the hearts of all men. you ordain all things according to the counsel of your will and you make yourself known in and through providences to your people and to the whole world and you make yourself known to us in particular through your word and the truth of it here today and so we pray that you would take my words and use them in a way that would be profitable to your people here this day that they would be built up in their faith and strengthened in their hearts so that no matter what comes in coming days that they will look to you and pray to you and seek your face continually and that you might hear our cries for our nation and that your judgments coming against us might be averted. We pray that you will be gracious to us here this morning and work in every heart For I pray and ask it in your precious name, Lord Jesus, amen. Psalm 44, to the chief musician, a contemplation of the sons of Korah. We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us the deeds you did in their days, in the days of old. You drove out the nations with your hand, but you planted them you planted, You afflicted the peoples and cast them out, for they, that is, Israel, did not gain possession of the land by their own sword, nor did their own arm save them. But it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your countenance, because you favored them, You are my king, O God. Command victories for Jacob. Through you we will push down our enemies. Through your name we will trample those who rise up against us. For I will not trust in my bow, nor shall my sword save me, but you have saved us from our enemies and have put to shame those who hated us. In God we boast all day long and praise your name forever, but you have cast us off. and put us to shame, and you do not go out with our armies. You make us turn back from the enemy, and those who hate us have taken spoil for themselves. You have given us up like sheep intended for food, and have scattered us among the nations. You sell your people for next to nothing, and you are not enriched by selling them. You make us a reproach to our neighbors, a scorn and a derision to all around us. You make us a byword among the nations, a shaking of the head among the peoples, My dishonor is continually before me, and the shame of my face has covered me, because of the voice of him who reproaches and reviles, because of the enemy and the avenger. All this has come upon us, but we have not forgotten you. nor have we dealt falsely with your covenant. Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way, but you have severely broken us in the place of jackals, and covered us with the shadow of death. If we had forgotten the name of our God, or stretched out our hands to a foreign god, would not God search this out? For he knows the secrets of the heart. Yet for your sake we are killed all day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Awake Why do you sleep, O Lord? Arise! Do not cast us off forever. Why do you hide your face and forget our affliction and our oppression? For our soul is bowed down to the dust, our body clings to the ground. Arise for our help and redeem us for your mercy's sake. Well, the events which took place this last week in our nation have dismayed us and what should we do and how should we think about what has happened. In this message I want to show you how we should pray in light of these dire political events which have come upon us. Unfortunately I believe that these great difficulties will continue coming to our nation if we do not repent of our sins and turn to God for help and salvation in greater numbers. We all want to see God intervene, don't we, on our behalf, but are we willing to pray in the way that these godly men prayed? I believe it's essential to our spiritual well-being as a nation that we pray. And I believe that it's also essential to our spiritual well-being personally as well. And so looking more carefully at this text we see first of all that we should pray remembering what God has done for us. as a nation. Let me read for you once again, verses one to three. We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, the deeds you did in their days, in the days of old, you drove out the nations with your hand, but them you planted, you afflicted the peoples and cast them out. That is the peoples of the land of Canaan that were there before them. For they, Israel, did not gain possession of the land by their own sword, nor did their own arms save them, but it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your countenance, because you favored them. So the sons of Korah begin their prayer with remembrance. That's what we've heard with our ears, O God. That's what our fathers have told us. happened in the days of yore when our fathers went into the land of canaan and fought battles with joshua as their commander and they came in and annihilated their enemies with their swords but you know what this verse says their sword did not save them this verse these verses are saying it wasn't their own arm that brought about the victory. But it was God who brought about this great victory and the many victories, by the way, that they won in driving out the inhabitants of the land. And so this is a prayer that begins with remembrance. And by the way, you and I ought to begin with remembrance. In our prayers, to God, we need to begin by remembering what God has done for us personally, in dealing with our sins through our Lord Jesus Christ at the cross, coming into our hearts and giving us the right to become the children of God because of what Christ has done, then giving us the strength by the Holy Spirit to come and overcome the enemies of our sins, our remaining corruption, driving our sins and remaining corruption out through mortification in our life. We need to give thanks, too, for our nation, this land of freedom, this one nation under God, this home of the brave, this nation that God has shed his grace on, and we sing about it. We need to remember what God did for us at the founding of our country and even before the founding of our country. Let me remind you of some of these things that God did in years ago in the early 1600s. This country was originally founded by men and women who were fleeing persecution in England. They wanted to worship God according to their conscience and according to the Word of God, and they were called separatists and dissenters from the Church of England and from her doctrine and from her worship and from Roman Catholicism and from the Pope being the supposed head over the Church. All of these things were changing in England, but they weren't changing fast enough And so many, many people were persecuted for their faith in the mid to late 1500s, all the way into the early 1600s, all the way till the time when a certain group of people, because of their persecution, they went to Holland. They tried, they were gonna go to the New World, but they found that they couldn't do that in one step, and so they went to Holland, and they lived there for 14 years. And they were taught well by their pastor, James Robinson, there. He was a godly man. He gave them everything he could, in terms of truth. And so, one day they decided that they needed to leave their land there in Holland. And they were going to travel over to the New World. And John Robinson said, I can't go with you, I'm too old. but I'm going to pray for you that you'll make it over there." And so they did. I've got history books at home that I was reading this past week in regard to these things. And we need to hear them once again, so I want to read you a few lines here. I want you to understand what that godly man, their pastor, said to them that day. He appointed a day of humiliation for them to be able to set aside for prayer and fasting. The Lord's blessing might be on them in their endeavor. And so they all participated in this, and on this memorable occasion, it says he spoke to them from the words in Ezra. And it says, and there at the river by Ahava I proclaimed a fast. that we might humble ourselves before God and seek of him a right way for us and for our children and for all our substance and pastor Robinson said we are now ere long depart us under and the Lord only knoweth whether ever I shall live to see your faces again But whether the Lord hath appointed this or not, I charge you before God and his blessed angels to follow me no farther than I have followed Christ. And if God should reveal anything to you by any other instrument of his, any other pastor, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive a truth by my ministry. And I am confident that the Lord has more light and more truth yet to give you that will break forth out of his holy word. And at the conclusion of his discourse, those who were to leave were feasted at his house. where, after tears warm and gushing from the fullness of their hearts, the song of praise and thanksgiving was raised. And truly, says one listening, it was the sweetest melody that ever my ears heard. But the parting hour had come. And Edward Winslow, in his writings, said, So they left that godly and pleasant city, which had been their resting place near twelve years. But they knew that they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, and quieted their spirits. So I read this to you to show you that even though they were beset with these many difficulties, and many trials over many years that God enabled this little band of brethren to try and to succeed in reaching the new world. They left in their ship. Their ship had problems. It had to go back. Some of their people, I mean, I could go on and on. It was just terrible, the trials that they went through. When they got over there, that first year, half of their number died. We little know, we little know what it cost the pilgrims to land and plant the colonies in Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. They left all that they knew that was familiar to them. They went on from there to plant these colonies. Entirely new place. Amazing faith that they had. They could have religious freedom there. And they began it for what we have here today. That's where the religious freedom which we prize so much today had its beginnings. So God also knew that he had ordained that the pilgrims would come to the new world. and that he would, through them, then also preach the gospel to the Native Americans. Because that's what they desired to do, brethren. The people that they met over there, they didn't drive them out of the land, like our text says. Instead, they wanted to win them to Christ. And in that regard, I want to read to you once again as well. This is concerning Roger Williams, John Elliott, Thomas Mayhew of Nantucket, and his son Thomas Jr. They reached out to the Indians everywhere around them. They wanted to persuade them of the truth of God's being the only true and living God, and they made every attempt to bring the gospel to them, and they succeeded. Thomas Mayhew arrived in Massachusetts in 1650, and he persuaded an Indian named Hyacombs to trust in Christ, and then began to preach to his tribe the gospel of Christ. And through their joint efforts, other Indians were won to Christ, and in the short space of five years, 39 men and many women had joined his meetings and the next year the number was increased to 199 people men women children and in the following years over 283 persons renounced their idols and a school was established which was attended by 30 children And a town was projected to carry on things in a civil and religious way, the better. And a covenant of faith was drawn up and adopted. And so God had commanded victory for Jacob, victory for these poor, needy pilgrims. Now, we need to take notice of this. This was our humble beginnings. in our land. This is the beginning of religious freedom as we know it today. Which, by the way, religious freedom had not existed to any great extent before the founding of this country. And even in England itself there was much persecution that I could read to you about that you would be dismayed by. But I won't do that here this morning. But this is what I want to remind you that in the midst of the trouble that has come upon us in this land, in our government, and with the coronavirus, with so many people promoting what is false in doctrine, so many people not living out in practice their faith, who say that they are Christians, we should remember that God is sovereign over all people and all nations. And we should continue to preach this truth to everyone around us. We should not be ashamed of it. We should continue to preach it and we should attempt to bring them under God's good government. Because when you become a Christian, You not only are forgiven of all your sins, but you come under God's good government. His righteous rule over your life. You take him as Savior and Lord. Not as Savior only, but Savior and Lord to rule over you. He's a great king. But he commands victories for weak people like us. Jacob. And Jacob is the word in the scripture that's always used of Israel. in his weakened state. In his state as he contemplated himself and his heart. In his own strength that he didn't look at himself and say, I'm strong in myself, but I've wrestled with God and I've prevailed. In other words, he wrestled in prayer with him there at the fords of the Jabbok in Genesis chapter 32. And he prevailed. And so he changed his name to Israel at that point. And brethren, if we will pray, then God will command victories for Jacob. If we remember what he's done in our country in past years, this is what we need to remember. It was God who enabled this country to fight a revolutionary war. back there in 1776, against the mightiest country in the world, Great Britain. A tyrannical King George III, who was going to persecute through taxation and through no representation being given to the colonists, who were citizens under the government of Great Britain. And this oppression, and by the way you need to go back and read history, was very great upon our forefathers over here. And so, a great sacrifice was made to stand up to this tyranny. We need to remember this. Christian people standing up to tyranny, which I'll explain to you here in a few minutes. George Washington How many of our children are being taught the life of George Washington, the great Christian man George Washington, and all that he did for our country at the time of the Revolutionary War, the great sacrifices that were made by him, the many times that he was providentially shot at, directly at and missed. in battle. In the French and Indian War, two different Indian chiefs lined up their guns against George Washington and shot at him and missed him every time. They came to him later on and they said, we couldn't understand why we couldn't shoot you. We never missed. And they said, we just concluded that you must be being watched over by the Great Spirit. So we told our men, don't shoot at that guy. Same thing happened to George Washington in the Revolutionary War, where a man of the British troops who was a sniper was supposed to take aim at all of the different generals and commanding men and shoot them. He had a direct bead on George Washington. He could have easily done it, but suddenly this great disgust came over him. And he said, I can't do it, I can't shoot that man. He later learned it was General George Washington. But God preserved George Washington to become the first president of these United States. The great sacrifice that they made in the Revolutionary War, the much blood of the men who fought the Battle of Trenton, who crossed the Delaware in the middle of the night under very, very difficult conditions and freezing wet weather, carrying large amounts of cannon and supplies across to the other side, and then defeating the Hessian troops in the morning, turned the whole tide of the revolution. And people began to volunteer once again. He was down to 1,500 troops to fight the Revolutionary War against the greatest country in the world. But he did it by faith in Almighty God, knowing that God was watching over him. The same thing could be said of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, all of these founding fathers of ours. Oh, that we would go back and read history. No one's reading history anymore. We need to read history. And we need to see the truth and not let it be rewritten. That's what the liberal people in our country are doing. They're rewriting our history and taking out all reference to our founding fathers except that they were slaveholders. And then they use that as their base of operations to persecute God's dear people. That's what's coming in our country if God does not command victory for Jacob. but through thee we will push back our adversaries. So many other wars were fought in this country. The Civil War, I could spend a long time on that, but I won't. But just think about it, just how great a war that was. We lost more men in the Civil War than all the other wars that we fought in this nation. Brother shooting brother, and over the issue of slavery, So don't tell me that white men didn't suffer for the blacks in terms of their slavery to try to free them. We did. One of my own relatives died in a prison camp in Arkansas during the Civil War. And many other people lost dear loved ones during that battle. World War I, the war to end all wars, or World War II. these great wars who was it that gave the victory to our forces to our troops i could go on for hours about these things but i won't i only will say we need to remember and we need to be better students of history we need to see god's providence and the way that he orders all things is for the good of his people even through difficulties like we're going through now. Second, we should be praying, asking God to command victories for us, his people, even now. Verses four to eight, let me read them to you again. You are my king, O God, command victories for Jacob. Through you we will push down our enemies. Through your name we will trample those who rise up against us. For I will not trust in my bow, nor shall my sword save me, but you have saved us from our enemies. and have put to shame those who hated us in God. We boast all day long and praise your name forever. So this is the truth that we need to remember at this time, don't we? We must learn to pray in justice way. We don't need to believe in our hearts that we are defeated. Even if we have lost the election, we do not need to pray as those who are defeated in regard to the gospel. God often causes the gospel to go forward substantially in times of opposition, even in times of persecution. For your sake we're put to death all day long. When was that written? When is it quoted in the New Testament? But in Romans chapter 8, by the Apostle Paul about the persecution by the Romans to the Christians of that day. All day long we're put to death. That's a quote that Paul uses from this psalm. But we need to also see how great God is. In these times, God is not impotent. God does not sit back and not intervene in providential ordering of events because we lose an election. In fact, he ordains all these things. He permits them. He ordains them. He works in and through them his good and perfect will. We need to see that. It doesn't mean that we don't need to fight against the forces of evil. We do. We have battles to fight. But we fight them in the name of the Lord and not by violence, as we saw this past week at the Capitol. We need to understand these things. We need to learn how God works. God can turn things upside down. These men who have turned the world upside down have come to us. How were they turning the world upside down? They were turning the world upside down by preaching Jesus and in Him the resurrection. from the dead. You and I need to remember that. And so we need to pray. We need not lose heart. Men ought always to pray and not lose heart, Jesus says in Luke 18 1. And so we need to see that God ordained that the pilgrims would come to the new world. He ordained the wars that would come to our nation, that established our nation, and all these things that I've just spoken about. He also ordained that Israel would come out of Egypt, and that's what's being referred to here. Listen to Exodus 10, 1 and 2. Now the Lord said to Moses, go into Pharaoh, for I've hardened his heart and the hearts of his servants, that I may show these signs of mine before him, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and your son's son the mighty things. that I have done in Egypt and my signs, which I have done among them, that you may know that I am the Lord." Well, you see, sometimes when the church sees initial victory, she also sees losses. Do you understand that? We don't always see victories. right away in our spiritual battles. When you're fighting a war, you don't always see victories in regard to physical battles. Sometimes you might lose a battle. Sometimes you might lose the whole war. But we need to understand that God is still on the throne. God is still sovereign over the nations. The nations are a drop in the bucket, it says in the Scriptures. The inhabitants of the earth are like grasshoppers in God's sight, in terms of His power, in terms of His infinite wisdom, in terms of His divine sovereignty to be able to do what? To stand back and do nothing? Oh no, God is in the midst of it. God is in the midst of every single battle, every single political transition of government, And in every single person's life, working his good will according to his purpose, if we would only take notice of it. And so that leads me to say that we need to pray. We need to learn to pray during these times. Ultimately, the Old Testament Israel did not gain possession of the land of Canaan by their own arm. Their own hand. They did fight those battles. They did wield those swords. They did show much courage. Have I not commanded you be strong and courageous? Do not tremble or be afraid. See? But he was with them in the battle. And you remember Achan, when he coveted those golden Babylonian pieces and hid them in his tent. You remember how God turned the whole thing upside down because of that one man's sin. Incredible. The guy just was taking of these gold spoils. He's going to put them in his tent. You know, I'm going to do this. Nobody's going to see me at all. No, God says, you count them all off. Get them out there by tribe. Count them all off. Number them. And we're going to show who did this. And you and I need to understand that God can do that with this election that we've just gone through. If that's what his will is. If that's what his will is. He could so reveal things that all the ballots could be exposed for what they are and counted. If it was according to God's will, that's the case. But let's say that that's not going to be the case. Let's say that this fraudulent election, which I believe that it was, continues on and we have Joe Biden as our president. Does that mean that God is not on the throne? Does that mean that we have to take up arms and wreak violence on the Capitol? Well, I should hope not in the name of Christ. And I'm gonna talk about this a little bit more because I think this problem is really important that we discuss this. The Lord Jesus Christ says that my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom was of this world, my servants would be fighting. Now, does that mean that Christians don't fight in battle? Oh, most certainly not. Christians do fight in battle. They lose their lives in battle. They give their blood to secure the nation as has been done over many generations at great cost to our forefathers. Our freedoms were purchased and now it looks like they might even be taken away from us because of this past election. These are very important things that we are going through here. This country is split down the middle 50-50 and it's just too close to count. We're split right down the middle in terms of our allegiance to God, on the one hand, and then people that just don't really have any regard for God or for his word. Or if they do, they twist it to say what they want it to mean and take advantage of God's dear people and take away their rights, which is what they're going to try to do here in days to come if they do truly assume power. Well, you know, the problem here is that many Christians have not prayed. They need to pray. We don't need to be so much trembling and afraid as we need to pray. I mean, if we forget to pray, what good is it? What are we saying? We're saying, oh God, you aren't sovereign. You cannot intervene. You cannot help us. You read the Old Testament scriptures over and over again. Great multitudes of people came up against Israel, and a prophet stands out there, and he says, you know, if you are with God, God is with you. You need to pray. And so, then the leader would pray, or somebody else would pray, the prophet might pray, and then God would He would give this tremendous, decisive victory so that it says 185,000 of them were slain by the Lord's angel in one night. They came out there and they were all dead bodies. I mean, that's just one example of many that you read in the Old Testament Scriptures. Can God do that again today? He will, but most likely he won't do something that dramatic. Because God has us using means to the end and he wants to build faith in your life. He wants to build our faith to such a degree that even when things don't go the way that you want them to, that you'll still pray. Because that's what faith does. Faith does not give up. You see, that was the problem with what happened the other day at our nation's capital. when large numbers of people who came to support President Trump and protested the election results, there was nothing really wrong with that. Perhaps it should have been done sooner. Nothing wrong with that. A good many patriotic people stood up that day. It was a beautiful thing, I think, to behold, at least from my personal standpoint it was. It wouldn't have been a wrong thing to do, I'm saying, if they had only shown respect to those who were already duly elected persons and sitting in the Capitol building at that time. But when President Trump, according to the reports I heard, told them at the rally, and I hope I'm getting this right, maybe I'm not, but it was reported through Karl Rove, and maybe Karl didn't get it right, but he said to the people at the rally, hit them hard! He probably wasn't speaking of doing what they were doing that day at the Capitol. And some overly zealous followers took this literally, and right away they went and broke some windows, and who knows, that could have been Antifa, it could have been Trump supporters, but they broke the windows of the Capitol, they took over the chambers of government, four people ended up dying. It was a spectacle to behold. Some of the people who entered the Capitol acted sinfully, they acted badly. Others were actually praying to the Lord. Before it was removed off of Facebook, I saw one video of a young man who actually entered into the Capitol, was there in the Capitol chambers and he was praying there with several other people. Now he probably shouldn't have gone in, you know? It wasn't a good thing. But I'm saying not everybody who went in there was invading the Capitol to try to, you know, the way that it's portrayed in the media. Many good people do not want to see wicked men in government. I know I don't. Is it the same with you? I trust it's so. You don't want to see wicked men in government. You don't want to see wicked laws and policies enacted. But those who entered the Capitol the other day did not act in a God-glorifying way in this particular case. And we need to see that. There is a way, by the way, to go about these things. I do not know President Trump's heart. But I wonder if some of the problems that have arisen for him as president is because he has not prayed. Personally I'm talking about. I know his advisors, no doubt some of his advisors pray. But I wonder if some of the problems that have arisen for him as president is because he has not prayed seeing Christ as his king. Oh, it's very important that when you pray you see Christ as your king. Thou art my king, O God. Command victories for Jacob. Through thee we will push back our enemies. So, President Trump has done a good many things for us during the time of his administration. I really have a great love and respect for him. But I'm wondering if the victories that could have been won, perhaps, thus far in this whole debacle of the electoral process. The things might have gone better had President Trump prayed in the way of our text here. I think that they would have gone better. And I do say that out of love and respect for him. I suspect that he was assuming that since he was right in his cause of putting America first, that he would continue to be able to lead without really being saved from his own sins, or from being saved from his own pride, or how he would repeatedly call other people who were his political opponents by names which were not good. I mean, he didn't need to do any of that. And I do think that one of the main issues in the way that things have gone in the election is because of President Trump's failure to lead the country in prayer. and in righteousness in the way that I'm talking about now. Not that he hasn't done many good things, and not that his policies haven't been good, and not that he isn't supporting all of the right causes. I'm not saying that, beloved. But I'm saying that if the Lord sees in the leader of a nation something that is amiss, and it is his intention to save them, as I trust that it is with President Trump, then can you see why he would deal with him in the way that he did this past Wednesday? Can you see it? Can you see that the Lord would also deal with our whole country based on him, our leader? Because God does that. Oftentimes the elections are driven by what the people are like in their hearts. And so the people are given a leader after their own heart. You know that that's true. You know that that's true. And there's many good people in this country still, many good Christians in this country. But there's also a lot, a good many compromised Christians in this country who aren't really repenting of their sins. And a good many people who need to be woken up who think that they're Christians who are not. And so God brings these things to test. He brings these things so that people will repent and that then he can bless that country again. Well, if this is true, then you can see how and why things unfolded in the way that they did this past Wednesday. The other thing that needs to be said is a word of admonition to the conservative people in this country. Conservatism is a good political cause when it is biblical. When it is not, it is often that the conservative man or woman wants to leave God out of the public discourse, out of politics, out of government. They may leave God out, but God cannot bless them except in proportion to their adherence to his word. I wonder if you've ever thought about it that way. But that's the way that you need to think about it. A political conservative, one who does not know God, does not really recognize God's authority. In fact they're almost in a worse position because they're holding to the right values but without God. That's not good enough. And God will deal with a nation that has political conservatives but they won't recognize him. And sad to say there's a good many people in this country that want to be conservative but they really don't want to follow God or know God. They'll work to establish good things for people in this country, peace, prosperity, even sometimes goodwill among men. They will punish evildoers. But if they do not believe that God rules over men and nations, then they will not recognize the fact that it's God alone who can give peace. God alone can give peace and quietness to a nation when a good number of people in government lead righteous and godly lives. It's really true. It's God who gives peace in a nation. And biblically we can go even further and say that if the president is a godly man, even if many in the country are not righteous, yet the Lord can still use that man to turn the people back to himself. He can. He did it with Josiah. Remember that in 2 Chronicles chapter 34? That little lad, Josiah, where he began to pray at the age of eight, when he became king. You remember him? And then he began to make reformation in Israel, and he tore down all the idols. I think he, if I'm thinking of the right one, he even took down his mother's idols, or his grandmother's idols, and burned them in the brook Kidron, broke them to pieces. I'm saying that God can raise up champions like in the days of the judges. But beloved, we've lived in this country for a long time and been given much truth in the Bible. If we do not pay attention to it now, where will we be in coming days if we do not believe that God can command victories for Jacob? There is a right way in these New Testament times to go about trampling down the cause of the wicked. This is what I want to just pause and give you just a little bit of what I think about this time period that we're going through. You see, it's not good when there's the violence of small groups of people taking matters into their own hands, like we saw the other day on Wednesday, to try to threaten or override the government's legally constituted proceedings as happened the other day. This using violence and destructive actions accomplishes nothing good. Did Christ ever command such a thing? Put away your sword! Can I not command 10,000 angels to come? But no, he was willing to suffer then at that point. You and I need to see that. We need to be willing to suffer, if need be, for the cause of Jesus Christ. Perhaps that's what the Lord's leading us into. Do we see it? The Lord Jesus says, love your enemies, pray for those who despitefully use you. Can you do that? Or are you always angry about the way things are going in our country and angry at the liberals who are promoting their false agenda? I'm angry too, to be honest. I am angry. But the anger of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God. And we need to see that. The only time that God has blessed revolutions in the history of the world is when righteous men took counsel together and then jointly, in the fear of God, they took actions against a king who was a tyrant. Happened twice in the English Civil War and at the time of the American Revolution. And all these righteous actions which opposed King Charles I and King George III were taken for the good of all the citizens by the people already in positions of authority. They led the charge in battle. That's what Cromwell and the Protectorate were all about. They took over the country. They actually had the king beheaded. And not everybody approved of it. and Cromwell ruled in the Protectorate for 10 years, and then suddenly died of physical ailment, and all of a sudden they were left there wondering what they were going to do for a leader, and Cromwell's son wasn't a strong enough man to lead them, and so they invited Charles II, Charles I's son, the man whom they had beheaded, They invited Charles II back in, and he persecuted the Christians again. And by the way, beloved, if you'll recall, that was the time of the Great Ejection. Do you remember the Great Ejection in 1662, where they took away the living of a thousand ministers? That was because of that transition in political government there. Was it wrong for Cromwell to form the Protectorate? No, it was good. It was a good thing he did because they were persecuting and they weren't going to let up. And they were going to try to bring Roman Catholicism back into England again. And all those godly reformers and Puritans died to bring about what Cromwell did in the Protectorate. It was only later on in the glorious revolution of 1688 that they began to see that it was the right thing to have separation of powers and government. And then in our American Revolution they implemented the separation of powers and government and no persecution of Christians would take place because there was going to be a separation of church from state in a holy way And so we saw many, many good things take place, and that's why we have the freedoms that we have today. A lot of other people suffered to bring these things about. Roger Williams even had to face godly people in New England, had to go to Rhode Island, move away to Rhode Island, establish another colony there. Why? Because they were going to persecute him. But he began to see the issue. The issue isn't trying to force people by violence. The issue is truth. And so he formed that new colony. That was a good thing. That was what set the stage for our being able to have the First Amendment. That Congress shall make no law concerning the establishment of a religion, nor the free exercise of the same. See, that's what's at stake here in this election that's just gone down. It's the First Amendment. And some people see it. I think that's why all those people gathered at the Capitol the other day. God bless them. That's why they were there. They didn't think that the election was a true one. That's why they were there. But when the violence happened, then the devil got the upper hand and then everything came down. And it keeps coming down to this point. I'm saying rulers are appointed for this end to be ministers of good. Do you know why sometimes revolution is acceptable in God's sight? It's when rulers are persecuting and they aren't doing the people good, as Romans 13 very plainly says that they should. So it is right not to submit, not to give unlimited submission to tyrants. That's the principle that established religious liberty in our country. It was because of unrecognized, continued unrecognized tyranny on the part of the King of England and the things imposed upon the people here in America that they eventually came to believe as a body politic, having definite, defined elected leaders among them, that they would not comply with the King and his tyranny and his abuse of government over them any longer. It was unjust and they would not comply. And this, my brethren, is their obeying God. rather than men. Any refusal to submit to human government must be done in the fear of God rather than men. And we must have God's laws and government over us in greater consideration than that which any king or any other authority in government commands. Our submission to the government is in the sight of God. Always realizing our accountability. to God and the leader's accountability to him. And this is also how we need to see things in relation to the time period that we're now coming into. We may have our God-given rights taken away from us, but we won't do it without protest, and we will not do it without holy resistance. So we need to see, too, that each of us understands these good principles of truth and walks in holy love and in the fear of the Lord all the day long, as the Bible says, in regard to government on all levels. I felt for some weeks now that it would be good for me to preach from this particular psalm if we lost the election. And the reason that I was thinking about this psalm particularly is because it gives us the prayer and the contemplation of the sons of Korah in light of God's having cast them off. Did you see that in verse nine? Verse nine of our text there. But you have cast us off and put us to shame. You do not go out with our armies any longer, it says there. They said those who hated them had taken spoil for themselves from them. And see, this is what appears to me is happening in our own dear nation. at this time in light of the Democrats coming to power during and following the recent election. I do not believe, I'll say it again, I do not believe that this election was conducted fairly. And I personally believe that there was considerable election fraud in the swing states on the night of the election. I also personally believe that this fraud could have been and should have been looked into both by those in Congress and by those in the Supreme Court so that there could have been a real determination of who won the election. That is what should have taken place Instead, there was a dismissing of the charges, a deliberate overlooking of the problem, and there's been a sweeping of it under the rug, as though, oh, you know, you can't prove it, so it didn't take place. See, I believe that if these things are not come to terms with righteously in the future, that we will increasingly be given over to unrighteous men who will lead our country down to great moral corruption and weakness. And what I'm saying here is that if that's the case, then our nation will go down. And we'll go down with it. But we will go down praying. And we will go down in faith that God can command victories for Jacob. So we should pray, recognizing what God has done to humble us like these people. These people in this text that I'm reading to you today, they were humbled. I mean, look at all that was taken away from them. Everything was taken away from them. And yet, it says here, do you notice? They hadn't departed from God wickedly. They hadn't denied Him. They hadn't broken His covenant. They were faithful to Him. And see, I want you to see that's what you and I need to be during this time of uncertainty that we're in. We need to be faithful to God. to believe in him and to trust him that these providential ordering of things in the way that they've gone, even when they turn against us, are for our good and they lead to a better witness of how Christians react rightly to the opposition of evil and wicked men persecuting them. Because that's what was happening to these dear people. These people had not dealt falsely with God's covenant, it says in verse 17. God was the king. He was providentially ordering what they were going through for their good. However, you notice what they said in prayer, and I'll close with this. What they said in prayer was they were protesting their innocence. They were protesting their righteousness. These things, this is how we were. This is the way we are. So see us. Notice the amazing prayer at the end of the passage where they say, Awake, God! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Arise! Do not cast us off forever! Why do you hide your face and forget our affliction and our oppression? For our soul is bowed down to the dust and our body clings to the ground. Arise for our help and redeem us for your mercy's sake. You see, that's prayer. That's that's what we have to pray at this time so let's pray together. Father we do ask that you would arise and have mercy on this nation and see that there are many people pleading with you today to turn back all of the evil that is coming upon our nation to intervene in on behalf of your people, on behalf of this nation, which has shed so much blood in wars past to establish religious freedom. May it not be lost. May we be people who take action, but may we be people who are people of prayer. May we take action in the right way, even through our government elected authorities. May it be so that we will be faithful to you and that we will be men and women of faith who though the mountains are taken away crumbled and buried into the heart of the sea that we will see that you are our refuge and our strength a very present help in time of trouble we pray and we ask for your mercy upon our nation and your mercy upon ourselves that we would become people of prayer and of holy action in Jesus name amen well let's close by singing hymn number 500 25 together, O thou to whose all-searching sight. Hymn 525. Let's stand together for this hymn. O thou to whose all-searching The darkness shineth as the light. heart it pants for thee. O burst these bands and set it free. Wash out its stains, refine its Nail my affections to the cross. cross. Hallow each thought, let all within be clean, as Thou, my Lord, art clean. If in this dark Be Thou my light, be Thou my way. no violence I fear, no harm while Thou, my God, art near. Savior, where'er Thy steps I see, Dauntless and tired follow Thee. Let thy hand support me still, and lead me to the Holy Ghost. I weigh my strength proportioned to Till toil and grief and pain shall cease, Where all is calm and joy and peace. but I will sing of your strength I will joyfully sing of your loving kindness in the morning for you are my stronghold and my refuge in my distress oh my strength I will sing praises to you for you are the God of my mercy and all of God's people said Amen. You are dismissed. May the Lord go with you.