Would you take your Bibles please and turn to Psalm 11 in the book of Psalms, Psalm 11 about the Lord in this holy temple. When we come to the Bible in any age, it's a common mistake for us to doubt that it's relevant and reliable to the things that we face in our what we call modern times. I had the privilege a couple of weeks ago, four weeks ago to go down to Wingate University and talk to about 80 or 90 college kids who were with campus outreach on the subject of can the Bible be trusted. And my answer was not surprising, it was a resounding yes. It can be trusted. And I gave seven arguments for why I think the Bible is reliable. The first one, probably the most important is because Jesus believed the Bible. He affirmed in his life and in his statements his teachings that he believed in the creation account of Genesis 1 and 2, that he believed that Job was a real person, that Jonah was really swallowed by a whale and survived. He believed in the Exodus and Moses and the law and the prophets. He sang Psalms and he relied upon the very words of God in his own life to defend him against the temptations of the devil because Jesus Christ accepts the Bible as reliable and relevant I do. But there are other reasons. Archaeology, secondly, is consistently proven that the Bible is historically, culturally and geographically accurate. The science of excavating and discovering old ruins and old cities and temples and the like is done nothing but bolster our support and our confidence in the history of the Old Testament. Secondly, science and the scriptures agree. When we interpret the Bible properly and when science has practiced good science and not pursued biased theories, there is an amazing amount of concordance between science and the scriptures. Fourthly, I believe in the moral argument. The Bible says that the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged-sorted piercing to the division of Jones and Mero able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And one of the things that makes me believe that the Bible is reliable and relevant to any age is that it consistently convicts people and makes them uncomfortable. In fact, one of the major reasons that people reject the Bible is not because they take exception or disagree with its contents but because it condemns their pet sins and therefore they seek to discredit the Bible rather than repent of those sins and turn to God and humble reliance upon his grace and the power to change their living. I also believe in the social argument that people often reject the Bible because it is uncool to believe it and they fear the ridicule and ostracization that comes with accepting the word of God. They are bullied and shamed into denial but I find amazingly that the people who will not acknowledge in public that they believe in the Bible turned to it in private time and time again in times of distress and need. Sixthly, people never really understand the Bible until they are truly regenerate, until they are converted. But once they are born again, the Holy Spirit enters their souls and the Bible makes sense to them. I guess you could call this the conversion argument that person after person including myself who once doubted the accuracy and even the worth of the Bible. Have all of a sudden come to Christ and all of a sudden it makes sense to them. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Here is what he says. Yet among the mature we do impart a wisdom although it is not a wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away but we import a secret and hidden wisdom, a wisdom from God which is decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this for if they had they would not have crucified the Lord of glory but as it is written, what I has not seen and here has not heard, what has not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love him. These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything even the depths of God, for no one knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him. And likewise no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the Spirit of this age but the Spirit who is from God that we might understand the things freely given to us by God. And we impart these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual men. The natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for their foolishness to him and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned but the spiritual person judges all things but is himself to be judged by no one. For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him yet we have the mind of Christ? It's amazing how people, when they are filled with the Holy Spirit, all of a sudden find this book to be very pertinent and very necessary in their lives. My seventh argument for the reliability Bible had to do with the reliability of Scripture's proven record to improve our lives and to make us better people. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training and righteous that the man of God may be complete equipped adequate for every good work. I asked the young people if there was one person that they could point to who believed the Bible and began to accept the Bible who became a worse person and no one raised their hand. God, you see, has not changed. He is immutable. He is eternally the same. He is the same yesterday and today and forever. And mankind since the fall has not changed. Every person is born a sinner with a predictable pattern of sinfulness in their lives. All of them in need of a Savior Jesus Christ. The world is reliably the same. It's opposed to God and antagonistic towards the Church and hostile towards the Word. It is against the Bible. And so it stands the reason that the Word of God will not change. It will reflect on changing dynamics of God and man and sin and salvation. As John says in the book of Revelation, it is an eternal gospel to be preached to the end of time. I have one more piece of evidence I think that points to the reliability of this text and that is my own life. As you know, I grew up a very religious young man and a religious Catholic home, but a home that in our school and in our church did not study the Bible that much. I studied in a minor seminarian high school, and although I studied a lot of things about history and religion and the canon law of the Church, we never studied the Bible in those four years. I went to a huge secular university that had 55,000 students on campus the day I walked into the ranks of a freshman. And I came to doubt creation and to believe in evolution. I called into questions some of the miracles of the Bible, and I actually believed at one time that there were other ways to God besides Jesus Christ. And then for reasons I can't explain. I got interested in the Bible in 1975 and 1976 I was converted under the expository preaching of Jimmy Lannimer at the Central Church in Memphis, Tennessee. And I watched how Jimmy Lannimer stood up Sunday after Sunday with complete confidence and great boldness and preached out of an old book and addressed the issues of my life and my times. I have four degrees attending five different universities and so I'm not an uneducated person. I've studied and taught and commented or written upon the Bible for over 35 years of ministry. I spent the bulk of my week in the Word of God. I preached through 56 of the 66 books of the Bible and some of them several times. And I estimate that I preached over 7,000 sermons that does not include Sunday school lessons, lectures and Bible studies. I know as much about the Bible after four decades of service as a doctor does about medicine, a lawyer does about law or a businessman about finances. In other words, in any other place but here my opinion would be an expert opinion. And I'm here to say that the age of 67 I am more committed to the Bible and its inspiration in fallibility reliability and relevance than when I entered seminary back in September of 1979. And I don't see that there's any Psalm in the Psalter that is more relevant to this day than Psalm 11. Which acts this probing little question. When the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? Isn't that an amazing Psalm to come to in the wake of what's happening to our governor and our city involving Title IX and the federal government and bathrooms for different kinds of people? Our beloved friend, Alex about to go on the radio and talk about same sex marriage and the biblical norm for families. When the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? R.No.C. Gayblind said back in 1939 at the start of World War II, this is the burning question of our day, 1939. What shall we do when the laws are not upheld when morality is undermined and evil sweeps on unchecked? What shall we do when the Bible is undermined and is teaching disregarded when even churchmen seek to support the rising tide of secularism? What shall we do when family values are crumbling and the tide of frequent divorces sweep forward the increasing damage to children, parents and society alike? What can we do when everything around us seems to be giving lay? When the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? If you look at Psalm 11 in the first verse, we find to the choir master of David, but we find no historical context for this Psalm. What was it that motivated David in his time and his space to write this little Psalm, this prayer? Well, some people think it's when he fled from Saul when Saul was chasing him. Other people think that it's when Absalom was rebelling against him, and both of those things are possible, but it could be. And I favored the opinion. The David wrote this, not for himself, but generally for the people of God, when time after time, after time, it appeared the very pillars of society, the very foundations of life seem to be crumbling underneath him. Here is a prayer for you and for me when we feel that the foundations of life are being destroyed. This Psalm has two little stances. The first one, Alexander McLaren says, comes from a low level perspective of all the troubles in the world. The second stanza takes the high perspective of a man or a moment of God who lifts his eyes to God on the throne in heaven. Let's understand this Psalm and then learn how we can pray it for there are none more relevant than today as Psalm 11 is. First, we look to the throne of God because of the threats in the world. That's the first thing we see is the threats around us. In the Lord, I take refuge. How can you say to my soul, flee like a bird to your mountain? For behold, the wicked bend the bow. They have fitted their arrows to the string to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? The first stanza focuses on the threat to our way of life. These threats arise all around us. They appear to be as if people are deliberately pulling back the bow and aiming at the upright in heart or could be translated literally in Hebrew at the heart of the upright to strike a fatal blow to what the people of God hold to as the foundations of life. So overwhelming as this, the David's friends and advisors, perhaps even enemies say flee to the mountain like a bird. They're saying in such a way that this thing is so overwhelming. It's so far beyond fixing. It's so done. That the best thing to do is to get up and give up and run away. Hide. Too much danger surrounding us. A hopeless situation. And we know. We know that people feel like that because we can feel like that today. That our country is so far gone. That it cannot be repaired. In fact, the evidence of that is that we have stopped praying, we're beaten. And the probing question doesn't give us any comfort. If the foundations are destroyed, David's assuming they are. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? Literally, he asked in Hebrew, if the pillars give way, these could be the pillars of society, principled people, or people in principled positions, or they could be the principles of life like law and order and morality and piety and safety. It's not the only time the scripture uses that phrase. And Psalm 82, the sons of Korah would write, rescue the weak and the needy, deliver them from the hand of the wicked. They have neither knowledge nor understanding they walk about in darkness for all the foundations of the earth are shaken. Ezekiel would talk about how the foundations of society and his time were torn down. It is all as one commentator said, hopeless disorder and confusion. Trump and Longman says that these foundations are the disintegration of institutions that maintain social order and decency in the public place. John Goldengate says these foundations in Psalm 11 are the metaphorical basis for all that is social in life. Ralph Jacobsen says it captures both the sense of powerlessness that the righteous man feels in the face of evil and the temptation to relinquish the public square to those who feel no scruples about using violence to control society towards an evil end. What are these pillars, though? They're in the plural foundations. What are they? Well, we kind of intuitively understand what they are, but I suggest you that David Wells, a theologian who wrote a book called No Place for Truth, does the best job of telling us what these three pillars are. He calls them the three sinews that tie together society. He says in the past, western society was held together by three sinews, tradition, authority and power. To change the metaphor, they were the garments that covered western society and without which it has become indecent. He says the first of these pillars is tradition. Tradition passed on by the family. Listen to what he says. Of these three, tradition might have been the first to go, although it went hand in hand with authority. Tradition is the process where in one generation inducts its successors into its accumulated wisdom, lore and values. The family once served as the chief conduit for this transmission of tradition. But then we know what happened to the family, divorce and fornication and adultery, common law marriages and shacking up, homosexual unions and now homosexual marriages. The families now become whatever we wanted to be defined as and we're finding out that even polygamy is about to be legalized in some states. Tradition of values must be jettison and even remade because they would not allow us to live with these new configurations of our sexual desires and intimate behavior. They would not let us remake the family which was made in the image of God in chapter 2 of Genesis and so these traditions must go and they have gone. Perhaps not deliberately with the demise of that conduit of tradition, the crumbling of the American family. The second pillar is moral authority brought to us by the church. At the same time, well says, at the same time society finds that it can no longer recognize appeals to authority. For any transcendent realm in which these appeals might be lodged has vanished from sight. This is evident in many contexts, in art and literature, in philosophy and politics but a single pattern is common to all of them. First, the Christian theism on which Western society was built was replaced by idealism of one kind or another. And this idealism still had a transcendent interest but it was no longer focused on God than that idealism collapsed during the 19th century. Initially it was replaced by a kind of humanism that was elevated in its ethical and aesthetic interest but as such it had no durable conceptual base and so it fell apart as all things without God do. The political arena it gave way to various forms of political correctness or totalitarianism. Biblical churches are slandered, suppressed, marginalized and attacked, soon they'll be persecuted, then they'll be closed down, finally they'll be killed. Why? Because the moral authority with which the church speaks, the voice of God in the world must be silenced so that in the easy American conscience can go on and function in a man-centered way. If we can shame Christians into silence at work, if we can brainwash their children to school into new immoralities, if we can ignore and discredit pastors and pass laws and ordinances and tax codes, which punish or shut down Biblical churches then the voice of God we think will be silenced but we don't count on one voice that will never be silenced.
Why are the twenty-somethings dropping out of church even though they may believe in Jesus? Well they're responding to the loss of moral authority in our culture. They fear being ridiculed, losing their jobs, being ostracized or marginalized or persecuted. Their parents taught them that the church was optional. They gave them a low view of the church. Their schools caved into political correctness and gave up any ethical instructions. Their pastors quit preaching a message of holiness and obedience and righteousness and gave them a steady diet of sentimental grace while they ignored moral law. They turned their heads to family meltdown for sick church discipline and feared losing members rather than losing the grace of God. Because America possesses no moral authority, she has no moral courage and no moral order and now each man does what is right in his own eyes. So why if you are a young person would you be interested in a church like that? Now there's only one thing left. If tradition and authority are gone only one pillar remains and that is the pillar of power and power resides in the state. The three tendons have been reduced. Tradition and authority have been severed only power remains but it is a power alone that must direct our corporate life. A power severed from a moral order that might contain and correct it and from any values of the past that might instruct and inform it. In a strange testimony to this inner vacuum the profession of law has risen to such prominence in America that 70% of all the lawyers in the world practice here have to tell you one thing right there. In the absence of moral obligation in a sense of what is right disputes are extraordinarily difficult to resolve and so the set of rules that has emerged under the law must take on the duties that once were shoulder by other institutions like parents and schools and churches. Now we are forced to marry people in spite of what the church and the Bible teach. We are forced to fire people who don't approve of the firm or the bank's practice of aggressive pro gay policies. We are forced into silence about our faith. We can't pray or read scripture or speak of Christ or talk to someone about God or salvation or sin or conversion or the gospel in the public square and the workplace on the ball field in the classroom. Lawyers now override parents and the trump pastors so that power is divorced from Judeo Christian tradition and uninformed by the moral suasion of the holy word of God. The pillars have crumbled and now the foundations have been destroyed and that is why we're having a showdown with the federal government over who can use our bathrooms.
Families don't live that way. Churches don't teach that at least they used to not and now the court will tell us this is what you will do or else only power remains. If the foundation to destroyed, what can the righteous do? Well, there's an answer. We go to God who sits on the throne in heaven. Verse 4. The Lord is in his holy temple. The Lord's throne is in heaven. His eyes see. His eyelids test the children of man. The Lord tests the righteous but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence. Let him reign coals on the wicked, fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup. For the Lord is righteous. He loves righteous deeds. The upright shall be hold his face. The simple statement, no pun intended, makes all the difference in the world. The Lord is in his holy temple. The Lord's throne is in heaven. It's amazing how many times my friends in the Old Testament that holy temple is mentioned as a reference place for God. Hear you people's all of you. Pay attention, O men of the earth and all that is in it. Let the Lord God be a witness against you. The Lord from his holy temple says the prophet Micah. Habakkuk says, but the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silent before him. I say it tells of his conversion and his call to ministry. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up and the trainer's throne filled the temple in heaven and I heard people say holy, holy, holy is the Lord God the Almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory. John said, then I heard a voice say come up here and I will show you things that are about to take place and I was taken up to the temple and I saw one on a throne. We pray to God who is on a throne on a holy throne in the holy temple who is the God of the universe, David would write in another Psalm. In my distress I called upon the Lord. I called to my God and cried for help and from his temple he heard my voice and my cry to him reached his ears. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? They pray. Unless they've lost hope. They remember what Benjamin Harrison acknowledged back in 1787 when our forefathers were forming this country. A country they would be very distressed to find out is turned out the way it has. They were at a loggerhead. They had gridlock at the federal level, not something surprising. Then one day Benjamin Franklin stood up and he said in the beginning of this great contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayers in this room for the divine protection. Our prayers were heard and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in this struggle must have observed frequent instances of super intending providence in our favor. To that kind of providence we owe this happy opportunity of counseling and peace for the means of establishing our future national felicity. Have we now forgotten our powerful friend? I have lived sir a long time and the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth that God governs in the affairs of men. God governs in the affairs of North Carolina in the affairs of Washington DC. David put it this way the Lord is in his holy temple the Lord's throne is in heaven his eyes see his eyelids test the children of man. We see once again in the song the two people we met in song one the righteous and the wicked. The Lord tests the righteous he always begins there God always begins with the testing of his people before he judges the world. The Lord tests the righteous but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence let tolls be reigned on the wicked fire and sulfur and scorching men shall be the portion of their cup. For the Lord is righteous he loves righteousness the upright shall behold his face neither David or really hear the Holy Spirit. Nor God on his throne are moved by political correctness or shamed into silence or bullied into changing their values. Thou are wicked people in the world David says. They won't respond to God and their cup is unfortunate destruction and there are righteous people who pray and God hears them and delivers them from all of their troubles. One thing separates these two people in this song and that is prayer. The wicked seek the company of fellow sinners who will seek the throw of God's will they they will oppose God's throne. That's clear from Psalm 2 look back there look at Psalm 2 verse 3 at what the wicked are doing let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. Read to find who we are what marriage is what a family a church what a law on the state would humanity will be. World to them the Bible says. You call evil good and good evil but the righteous seek not the company of other people see that's where we falter as evangelicals we think we get enough voices. And can it accumulate enough political power we can turn this thing back but you know listen to me the church has not been granted power only moral authority we could never overpower Rome never but our God is on his holy throne. So we pray we seek the company of one the one on the throne we seek his counsel to change our lives our laws and our way of life but not to change God we ask God first to search us search me oh God and know my heart try me and know my anxious thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me then lead me in the way everlasting. The righteous live by faith and faith is never more tested than when it has to pray and we are people who when we lose heart we lose our voice and we become silent and when we pray we have power when we are prayerless then the foundations are destroyed because we have been silenced in the public square and then silenced before the throne of God so how could God ever answer our prayers when they don't exist. Our silence sounds very much to God like we agree with the world the Lord is in his holy temple that is the key truth. God still governs in the affairs of mankind. So how do we pray this? I suggest to you that this song presents us with three answers to that probing question question number one when the foundations are destroyed what can the righteous do the answer is continue to be righteous. If our lives and our conduct contribute to the wickedness and unrighteousness and the undermining of the foundations then we can pray for a solution because we'd be part of the problem and we know that the one thing God will not do is hear the prayer of a hypocrite. So the first thing we need to do when the foundations are destroyed is to ask the Lord to test as David says to examine our souls and family lives and religious practices and citizenship before we confront the gay community or the lesbian lobby about their immorality we need to ask God about our own fornication about our own adultery and divorces about how we relate to our wives and husbands and children about our pornography. Our carnal dating practices are walking away from the church. This is the reason why so many millennials in my generation and so many generous and gave silliest generation and so many millennials and stewards generation simply have a hard time standing up to confront these things because why would we condemn lesbians and gays from doing the same thing we've done. Did they destroy marriage? No, we did. Did they redefine gender? No, we did. It was our feminism and our chauvinism and our immorality and our forsaking both family and church that brought these foundations to be riddled with cracks and finally blessed their sinful little souls as ours are. The LGBT break jumped onto this thing the last straw and it began to crumble. The first thing that you and I need to do is to turn to God in repentance and faith and prayer to ask God for a new start to a life of righteousness in Jesus Christ.
If you go even after this sermon tonight and pray about all those wicked people out there you will not be heard. The problem is in this pulpit. It's in my cross and it's in you and that's where we begin. When the foundations are all destroyed, what can the righteous do? You begin by saying, Lord, am I righteous? Am I living a righteous life? Second question. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? Well, they can shore up their own foundations. They can shore up their own marriages and families. They can return with excitement and vigor and endorsement and involvement in their church. They can prayerfully and principally be involved in voting and in helping our culture make a change because it's husbands and parents who pass on tradition. It's pastors who wield this moral authority and the voters who give power to the government. These three pillars have names, parents, pastors, politicians and we are involved in all of them either by default or negligence or by wrongdoing. We have contributed to the problem and so we need to look at our own family, our own church, our own pastorate, our own voting record. And see what we're doing to shore up tradition and moral authority and the power of the state. The third question. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? They can look to God in prayer. I believe with all my heart that if all true Christians in this country went to God in humble repentance with a living faith in Jesus Christ, an earnest prayer for God to restore our foundations that God would send us a spiritual awakening. He would answer our prayers and he would restore the foundations of our society. Why do I believe this because the Bible says so? Turn if you will enclosing to 1 Timothy chapter 2. What we are questioning and worrying about in Psalm 11 is answered in 1 Timothy chapter 2 in the first 5 verses. First of all then, I urge that supplications and prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good and it is pleasing in the sight of our God and Savior who desires. This is the will of God. He desires that all people be safe and to come to the knowledge of the truth for there is one God. There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. All the concerns of David in Psalm 11 are mentioned here in 1 Timothy 2 verses 1 through 5. Supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgiving, holy hands, people, kings, those in high positions, peace, quiet, godliness, dignity, salvation through Jesus Christ and the will of God for our good.
Whenever I pray this Psalm, we must always say to God, if the foundation to destroy what can the righteous do and then we have to listen for the voice from the throne to ask us some other questions. Michael? Michael? Are you righteous in Christ? Are you resting in me? Michael? Are you leaning a righteous life? What would your people say? If they saw how you treated Jane and how you acted when you were frustrated? What you were like when you didn't get what you wanted? Michael? How was your support for my pillars in your family and in your church? What is your voting record like? Michael, when was the last time you looked to this throne and said in earnestness, I have no hope but in thee. And I always come away with the same assurance that God is still on the throne. He is still righteous and he still answers prayer. The Lord is in his holy temple. The Lord's throne is in heaven. His eyes see his eyelids test the children of man, that's you and me. For the Lord is righteous and he loves righteous deeds. The upright shall behold his face. They will see his face first in prayer and then in his favor as he answered those prayers and then they will see him with eyes of faith and then face to face in heaven. And he will smile upon them. The Lord will bless you and keep you. The Lord will make his face to smile upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord will lift up his face upon you and give you well-being because the Lord is in his holy temple and the Lord rules and the affairs of men. Father, perhaps in no other season of our life has this song been so pertinent as it is today, not just in the grander scheme of things in our state and country and its political and social upheaval, but because of how we interface and transect the cross-currence of these things and how our prayers and our faith and our own conduct and our life in Christ in the church are revealed in the flow and the warping roof of these things between the righteous and the wicked. We ask you to give us hope, hope that is invincible through the power of the Holy Spirit as we sang tonight that we might be men and women of prayer, humbly examining our own lives, our own moralities, our families, our church and involvement in it, our faith, our witness, even the way we vote. You would move in a powerful way to cause us to be a praying people at worship, at work, at witness and at warfare so that we might see your face smile upon us and that you might restore the foundations of the earth for the sake of our children and grandchildren, for generations yet to come who will believe in and follow Jesus Christ and we would ask you this humbly as we see you on your throne and in Jesus' name as we bow before you. Amen.