Sermon: A Psalm for Our Day

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at verse 2. They speak falsehood to one another with flattering lips and with a double heart they speak.

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Now even in an English translation that's a little bit rough.

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It's more so when we look at the original language, but we want to dig into it.

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So literally it's empty words. Empty words.

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They speak empty words, a man to his neighbor. A man to his neighbor.

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Have you ever noticed in God's Word in the Old Testament there is an emphasis upon the responsibility that we bear toward our neighbor.

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Now of course Jesus talks about who is our neighbor and things like that. But the reality is we live in a society and we cannot help but have interaction with and therefore be a part of the life of our neighbor, the person near to us.

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And so when there is untruthfulness, when there is the speaking of empty words, falsehoods, a man to his neighbor, a man to the one next to him.

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This is the description, not of the godly men that are deceasing, this is the description of now the majority, the large majority in the psalmist experience.

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They speak falsehood to one another with flattering lips and literally it's with a heart in a heart.

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With a heart in a heart they speak. And you can see what that, we all know what this is all about.

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This is a description of Twitter. Here we have prophecy from, from long before anyone could have dreamed of it.

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Of what almost any comment section on anything you write on Facebook is all about. Because it says a heart within a heart.

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So in other words, the real intention is hidden within what you say your heart is really all about.

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And then you use flattering words to hide this double heartedness.

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And is that not the very essence of what we face in our society today?

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It is very rare, it should not be rare amongst Christians, but it is very rare any longer in our society to hear anything about how evil it is to be a liar.

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There was a time when in our, I remember within society as a young person it was still understood in my youth that a person who was a liar was a person who was untrustworthy.

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There was a character flaw. There was something wrong with this person. And that it was something that definitely you wanted to have understood about you that you were a person of character.

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And how did you demonstrate that? Yes, it was by how you acted, yes. But it was also by how you spoke.

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The words of your mouth. I am very thankful that I was raised in a context where I was not allowed to utilize off -color language.

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That obviously is not the case with much of our society today. But, and you could argue that well, you know, that was probably just a little bit too strict and all that kind of stuff.

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But the reality is we are the only creatures that God has made on this earth.

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We're not talking about angels. They can do it too. But we're the only creatures on this earth that can actually speak.

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Oh, I know there's an orangutan someplace that can sign language something. Okay, that's great. And sometimes

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I am pretty certain my cat is talking to me. I do realize that.

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But when it comes to actually using language to express divine truths, we're the whole game.

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You're sitting there in front of you and many of you have paper Bibles. Many of you have your phones.

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But what's on it? Written language. Written words. Words that can be passed down from generation to generation.

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Words that can be translated into other languages. I remember the last time back in 2017 when

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I had the opportunity of visiting many Reformation sites prior to the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the

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Reformation in Germany. I was blown away when someone showed me how

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I could take my phone and I could use the camera to look at a menu in a foreign language and my phone could translate the words.

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Now some of the translations weren't even close. But it was literally changing what

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I was seeing on the screen into another language. Amazing, the ability to do that.

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It truly is. But when you think about what the Bible says about our tongues, about our mouth, about our speech, may

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I say to all of us, to every single one of us, did not our

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Lord say that every idle word will be judged on that great day? And how easy is it for all of us to slip into a mindset to where we use the tremendous gift of speech,

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God's gift to us, but we don't use it to His honor and glory.

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We speak like the world speaks. They speak falsehood, empty words.

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We as Christians, because we have the light of God's Word, are able to speak words full of divine truth.

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And how our world needs people speaking words of divine truth.

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Words that bring light. Words that bring life. You have that capacity.

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You who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God. But how often do we, all of us,

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I'm talking to myself, I'm talking to you, how often do we begin our day,

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Lord, protect my mouth this day. Watch over my tongue.

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Not just in saying biting things and impatient things, but just in joining with the world in degrading

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God's creation by the way we speak of it. I don't want my words to be empty words, falsehoods that I speak to one another.

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I don't want to have flattering lips or today flattering fingers.

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Because that's how many of us communicate now, right? Or, I hate this part. No. When people send me a book -length text message,

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I'm like, I hope you're sitting at a computer. You're going to have carpal thumb tunnel something, whatever you call it.

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But do we even think about purity and glorifying God? The movement of our fingers?

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That's the description of the context in which the psalmist says, the faithful man, he's disappearing.

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The truthers, the ones that speak truth and love truth, they're vanishing.

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And instead, you have this description. Now, please note what the psalmist says.

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May Yahweh cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that speaks great and swelling things.

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You see, when man no longer acknowledges his creator and no longer acknowledges that there's going to be a day of judgment, that God is watching us.

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And when you have the religion of secularism that is in our society now, that is specifically designed to cause you to forget that there is one who is listening, there is one who is observing, who is seeing all things and will judge all things by a perfect standard.

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What are we memorizing, Acts 17, 31? Yes, the resurrection evidence that the day is coming that He will judge by a man whom

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He is appointed and raised from the dead. That day of judgment is coming.

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But secularism is designed to numb that, to destroy that in our thinking and in our behavior toward one another.

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There is no day of judgment. You're a cosmic accident. You just happen to be the way you are.

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And since you've been made the way you are, not by a God but by random accident, then just flow with it.

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It astonishes me. At times, maybe because I, I don't work in a secular context, that when

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I go out in it now, people would blush when they would drop

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F -bombs when I was a kid. And now there are people that can't get through two sentences without it.

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And it's so much more prevalent. And oh my goodness, especially amongst young women now.

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It's astonishing to me. I know I'm one of the older guys in here, but I, so I can tell you younger guys.

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When I was, when I was in high school, we just had our 40th high school reunion a couple weeks ago.

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Wow. I will, I will tell you one thing in passing. Guys do not age nearly as well as gals do.

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Man alive. And if you look back when I was a kid, even the guys had hair like anything.

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And now none of us do. But the gals still look real nice and it's, you know,

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Lord, I'm just not sure why that is, but that's, that's okay. But I just had my 40th high school reunion a couple weeks ago.

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And I was thinking about it. The, the young women back then, they were not all pure in, in, in speech.

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But it was rare to hear the kind of thing that you hear from young ladies today. And young ladies, there is nothing that beautifies you by using your tongue in such a fashion.

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God made you to be pure and beautiful. And there is nothing more beautiful than a young lady who has the ability to control her tongue.

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And there's nothing that demonstrates you young men are true men than when you control your tongue as well.

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As a Christian, these should not even be questions. These should not even be questions.

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This is how you glorify God. By reflecting Him in your speech.

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But notice, may the Lord cut off all flattering lips, cut off the tongue that speaks great things.

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There will be judgment coming. And it is appropriate for the psalmist to desire the cutting off of these things because they degrade

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God's creation. They degrade God's people. But notice this, this next verse, if, if you catch anything, catch this please.

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Listen in to the godless speaking amongst themselves.

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With our, who have said with our tongue, we will prevail.

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Our lips are our own. Who is

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Lord over us? When you hear those words, can you not hear almost everything being said in our speech?

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Our society today? On CNN and MSNBC and yes, even

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Fox News. With our tongue we will prevail.

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We can say what we want. We can express whatever we desire. If we want to rebel against God's law and tear off His chains from us, we can say and do anything.

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We don't have to speak truthfully. Over the past 24 hours,

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I have watched public leader after public leader make statements about a certain trial that demonstrated that the video evidence, the reality of law, the reality of what actually took place in history is irrelevant to them.

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They do not care. They will say whatever they want to say.

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Our lips are our own. We'll promote any narrative we want. The truth matters nothing to us.

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They are not embarrassed to contradict documented fact as long as it promotes their narrative.

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Our lips are our own. They're not gods. We're not creatures. We owe no responsibility to anyone else.

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Our lips are our own. This is the pot.

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Standing up before the potter and saying, I will be what I want to be. What foolishness?

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You're a pot. You can't change the fact that you're a pot. And you can't change the fact that there's a potter.

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You turn the pot over, it says made by right there. That's the, that's the insanity of sin.

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It's the insanity of sin. Our lips are our own.

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If that's a lie, then what should we be saying? Our lips are gods. They belong to Him.

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And that means what comes out of our mouth. There should always be in our thinking.

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First and foremost, who is hearing me speak? The person you're speaking to, that should be secondary.

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If you believe you're indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, you can't escape His holy presence within you.

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Our lips are our own. And here, the last phrase of verse 10.

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4. The last phrase of verse 4. Who is

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Adon over us? Adon, Ladani, my

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Lord. How you address God. Yahweh said to Ladani, my

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Lord. Remember Psalm 110. Adon, Lord.

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Who is Lord over us? These people are saying, we have no Lord over us.

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We are the ultimate authority in our lives. This is the essence of the expression of rebellion.

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I will not be what I've been made to be. I will not bow before my Creator. And I will create an entire worldview that says there is no

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Lord over us. And that is the essence of secular humanism.

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That is the essence of that has become the religion of the West. Is it not religion in the

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East as well? Is this not, is this not the essence of Xi Jinping?

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It's almost like we're hesitant today to point out that we have genocidal maniacs that are just as evil as Mao and Stalin and Hitler ever were.

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But they're alive today. And they own the NBA. Oh. Yeah.

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Xi Jinping. Did you hear just this week they came out? They released a new history of the

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Communist Party in China. And it's pure fiction. But it's what you have to believe. They can change history.

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It's the ministry of truth cranking it out. And who's the great hero? Who's the one who must be acknowledged and literally worshipped within Communist China today?

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Xi Jinping. A murderous tyrant who should be just as condemned as anyone from history.

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Stalin, Mao, and yes, the guy from, who was born in Austria.

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They're all saying, who is lord over us? Oh, Xi Jinping. That's idolatry.

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That is idolatry. And it's evil. Who is lord over us?

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It's a bad situation. But the psalm continues. Because of the devastation of the afflicted, because of the groaning of the needy, so there's your

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Hebrew parallelism again. So you have the devastation of the afflicted, the groaning of the needy.

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When you have a society where people are saying we have no lord over us, the result is always going to be the same.

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You will not have human flourishing. You will have the affliction. You will have the elites and the powerful crushing those beneath them, using them, enslaving them.

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This is the history of mankind. This is the demonstration of Romans 1. It doesn't matter where you go.

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It doesn't matter what nation you enter into. Dig far enough into history and you'll find the devastation of the afflicted, the groaning of the needy.

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The one who began speaking in this psalm is one of these who are afflicted, who are needy.

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That initial cry for save me, Yahweh, is the groaning of the needy.

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The psalmist is the one being described here. Because of the devastation of the afflicted, because of the groaning of the needy, now

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I will arise, says Yahweh. I will set him in the safety for which he longs.

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So here Yahweh enters into the picture.

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He has heard the prayer. He has heard the expression. Because of this, he says,

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I will arise. I will arise and I will set him in the safety for which he longs.

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I will deliver him from this affliction. I will deliver him from the ungodly.

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We're not told. We're not told exactly how this will happen in history.

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Frequently it has been through judgment, judgment upon a nation, destruction of evil kings.

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Sometimes it's repentance. Sometimes it's a situation where people come to know the truth and they turn from their evil ways.

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But Yahweh is saying, I know. I know what is happening.

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I hear the groaning of the needy, the devastation of the afflicted, and I will arise and I will set him in the safety for which he longs.

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Now, let me just point out in passing, we need to long for what only

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God can give to us. Simply complaining about how bad things are is not enough.

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We need to long for godliness, long for God's kingdom here on earth, long for a day when

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God will be so gracious to a people that as a people they value truth speaking, they value obedience to his ways.

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Do we long for that or are we just focused upon ourselves, focused upon our comforts?

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How much would we be willing to give up for that kind of situation to arise in our land is the question we must ask ourselves.

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But God makes a promise, I will arise, I will set him in the safety for which he longs.

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Now, please note something. This may seem somewhat too technical, but I think you'll see why it's important.

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Notice, says the Lord, says the

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Lord, I will arise, Yahweh says. The term there in Hebrew is one of the very first Hebrew words you learn when you start taking a class in Hebrew, amar, amar.

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There's different ways of talking about speaking and words and things like that, but amar is by far the most often used.

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And Yahweh speaks and he says, I will arise, says the

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Lord. And so when we get to verse 7 and it says the words of Yahweh are pure words, the term there is amaroth, the plural of the, of the noun form.

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So amar is the verbal form, but it's the same root. In those really hard things for me, there were, there were two things that made

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Hebrew really hard for me in seminary. The first is that Hebrew is based upon triliteral roots, three letter roots.

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And so you have three letters, and you'll get nouns from that, and you'll get, get your verbs from that.

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And after about the 300th three -letter word, they all just start looking like the exact same mess of letters.

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It's really hard. The second thing that made Hebrew very difficult was her. Yep, right there, she's going, me?

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Because I was taking all my Hebrew classes right after she was born, and she refused to sleep through the night for me.

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So there you go. Oh, she's going, aren't I cute? That's what she's like, but they all do.

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So the point is that the psalmist, when he says the words of the

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Lord are pure words, he's using the same root of says Yahweh.

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And so what is being referred to in verse six? The promise that Yahweh has just made that he will deliver the needy and the afflicted.

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The words of Yahweh are pure words as silver tried in a furnace on the earth refined seven times.

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In other words, he is going to do what he has promised to do. That's what is being said.

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Now, you might be saying, yeah, and? If you go to almost any, well

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I could, we're only a few miles away from a couple of King James only churches here in the valley.

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Now, we don't have as many here as you would have if you went down to panhandle of Florida or South Carolina or West Virginia and places like that.

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You'd get a lot of King James only independent fundamentalist Baptist churches. And if we were in one of them, we wouldn't be able to hear the kids for all the amen that would be going on between every other sentence that I would utter, because that's all you hear.

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Amen! And in those, I can guarantee you,

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I can guarantee you that in the vast majority of those churches today, this verse was quoted by memory.

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Not in context, but quoted from memory. Because this verse is taken out of its context and applied to the 1611 or 1769

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Blaney revision, King James version of the Bible. He didn't know that's what the psalmist was talking about.

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Up until now, he was talking about Yahweh delivering, you know, the groaning and the need to speak truth.

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But then all of a sudden, there is a prophecy of the King James version of the Bible that boom, appears in verse 6.

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And so the words of Yahweh, the King James version of the Bible, are pure words as silver tried in a furnace on the earth, refined seven times.

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Thou, O Lord, wilt keep them, the King James version of the Bible, thou wilt preserve him from this generation forever.

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And so it is taken as an absolute given, absolute necessity, that what you have here, if you're going to believe the

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Bible, then you've got to believe that the King James version is what's being spoken of here and that God will preserve the

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King James version of the Bible. There's the promise right there. The problem is this.

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You, O Yahweh, will keep them.

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You will preserve him from this generation forever.

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Now, I noticed something when Psalm 12 was read earlier in the service.

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I'm assuming that was the ESV. Am I right on that? Yes? Does it say him in both places?

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Or is it singular? Us. Oh, so it's plural. Plural in both places. Yes, plural in both places.

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Okay. All right. Here's the problem. Now, there are textual variants, but the

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Hebrew text, the first thou wilt, you will keep them, is plural.

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But then the best reading of the Hebrew is you will preserve him from this generation forever.

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So there's a plural and a singular. And in both the

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Greek Septuagint as well as in the Hebrew text, that threw some scribes off, and there was, there's always an attempt to harmonize things in that context.

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But I think allowing the Hebrew to stand in the best manuscripts, it's not all that difficult to understand.

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You, O Lord, will keep them. Them could be the words of the promise.

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Could be. I don't think so, but it could be. But if we look at Hebrew parallelism, which we've already had twice earlier, you,

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O Yahweh, will keep them are the ones who are being delivered by Yahweh.

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You will preserve him, the one expressing this desire singularly, from this generation forever.

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So in other words, verse 6 says God has promised. His words are pure.

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He's going to do what He says He's going to do. Therefore, you, Yahweh, will keep them.

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You will keep your people. You will preserve him, the one desiring safety from this generation forever.

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That seems to me to be the best way to read it. You could say you will keep them, the words, but then you have to deal with you will preserve him from this generation forever can only be in reference to the one longing for safety.

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So if you maintain the parallelism, the meaning is fairly straightforward and clear.

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But the problem is none of that has anything to do with a 17th century Anglican translation of the Bible. And yet there are thousands who today heard someone say, that's what it is.

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And if you ever question it, you can never go to one of those churches where they use anything else.

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I just did a webcast last night, I think. Yeah, yesterday afternoon.

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And the guy who was doing the interviewing said, yeah, I was on Facebook. I had shared a text, a scripture from the

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ESV. And here this guy comes after me and he's telling me all about corrupted manuscripts and you can't, you know, it's not really the

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Word of God. And that's where there are a lot of people. That's exactly where they are.

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And it might be helpful to you to know how they use this text and to go, have you ever looked real carefully at it?

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That's not what it's saying. In fact, it's consistent when you go all the way down through the entire psalm.

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And so let's finish the psalm up with verse 8 so we can see this. The wicked strut about on every side when what is vile is exalted among the sons of men.

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Now you might say, that doesn't, that doesn't seem to be the next thing

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I expected. That's not a nice way to end the psalm. But remember, the promise is to preserve those who long for safety.

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It's not a promise that that means God is going to necessarily bring revival in that society in His day.

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There have been many godly people who have lived and died looking forward to greater promises in the future, who have had to live their lives around people who did not speak the truth.

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And they left this world and those people were still there. And that's something we need to recognize, is that there have been many who have sown the seed for us, who did not lose hope for the future and built and planned for us, but they did not see the fruition in their lives.

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And so we have to be patient. We have to persevere.

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And we have to recognize that when what is vile is exalted among the sons of men, the wicked strut about.

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The wicked strut about. That doesn't mean that God is not going to preserve

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His faithful people. But the wicked strut about, and we know that their life is but a vapor, and they will be facing judgment in a very short period of time.

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But I do want us to think about verse 8 for a moment. I used to have, I used to pay each year for the web domain, psalm128 .org,

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I think it was, and that was this verse. It wasn't Psalm 128. It was

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Psalm 12 .8. When what is vile is exalted among the sons of men.

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Now remember, earlier in the Psalm, who is vanishing from amongst the sons of men?

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Those who speak truth. Those who are godly. They're vanishing from amongst the sons of men.

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That, that creates a vacuum. And what flows into that vacuum? That which is vile.

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That which is vile. Do we see that which is vile being exalted amongst the sons of men today?

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All around us. All around us. I, I don't know about the rest of you, but I, I've struggled a little bit over the past day and a half, as I've literally seen people, actors, some of whom, you know,

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I sort of looked up to, thought might have some moral foundation to them.

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They are now exalting and lifting up and turning into martyrs, the two men who died in the riots in Kenosha.

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Have you done any reading about who died in the riots in Kenosha? The first guy, from everything

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I've read, was acting like a demon -possessed man that evening. And he was a convicted pedophile, a child rapist.

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The other guy was trying to kill a young man with a skateboard. Now, I don't know about you, but back in my day, skateboards were not a whole lot of fun.

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They were these flimsy little things that had tiny little wheels, and, and pretty much everybody just fell off of them all the time.

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I never did understand what the attraction of that was. But now, the skateboards people have today, that metal and those wheels, you swing that at somebody's head, you can kill him with one shot.

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One shot. It's like a baseball bat. And the other guy that gets, not only did he not, he had a record as well, but he's trying to kill this kid with a skateboard.

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And now, these people are being lifted up. Oh, that their lives were cut short.

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Such a shame. If God's justice had been done properly with the one man, he never would have been in Kenosha that night.

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But the point is, these were vile men. And they are being lifted up and they are being exalted amongst the sons of men.

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And the result is, the wicked strut about on every side. You see, there was a time when the wicked didn't strut about because people knew what wickedness was.

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And it wasn't considered to be a good thing. A proper thing. But now, when that which is vile is exalted among the sons of men,

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I know, I know, and this is exactly what they want.

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I'm sitting here running through my mind right now, do I say this because of what it might do to our presence in social media?

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And that's what they want. It is vile for a 60 -some -year -old man to pretend to be a woman and dress like one and be exalted to the position of high authority in the government of any nation.

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And any nation that exalts that kind of behavior will be judged. My dear wife can't be with us this evening.

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She's taking care of her mother. But I will never, ever acknowledge a man dressed as a woman, as a woman, because I know what a woman actually is.

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I've been married to one for almost 40 years. And I will not degrade her and all the rest of you women in this room by collapsing and giving in to the pressure to deny the reality of what

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God has created. I will not do it. So when that which is vile is exalted amongst the sons of men, it encourages further rebellion and sinfulness.

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And that's exactly what we see in our land today. So we must not shrink back.

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Young people, young people in your 20s, in your late teens,

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I know you're sitting there saying, I can't say this to my friends. Yes you can and you must.

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If you love God, you must love His truth. And if you love them, you must tell them the truth.

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They are being lied to everywhere. Every film, every book is lying to them and telling them that you can be whatever you choose to be, male, female, or 148 other genders.

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No you can't. God did not make you that way and it will kill you to believe that.

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So you must be the one to speak truth to them. Yes, you need to live consistently in light of it, but you must be the one to speak the truth to them.

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Oh, you don't know what it will cost me. Yes I do, but I know what it will cost you not to speak the truth because that day of judgment is coming.

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We do not want to be amongst the wicked that strut about on every side. We have to be used of God to identify to the world that which is vile in His sight.

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That's the prophetic task we've been called to. And when Jesus bore witness to the light, the world hated

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Him as a result. And He told us, if the world hated me, it's going to hate you as well.

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If you walk as Jesus walked, the wicked will try to hit you over the head with a baseball bat or a skateboard.

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They'll try to cancel you. But what's our ultimate authority?

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What's our ultimate goal? We want to be a people who when we open our mouths, we are speaking truth because we live amongst a people that are starved for it.

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You say, oh, but most of them will reject it. That's not up to you. That's not up to you.

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I remember so many times Jeff was talking about years ago when we'd be out at the temple during the

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Easter pageant, and we'd be talking to an entire group of people.

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I always told our folks before they went out, I said, remember something. It's not just the person you're talking to that's listening.

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Our Lord is listening, but there's so often that person off to the side, out in the shadows that's listening.

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And I can't tell you how many times over those years those are the ones that the

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Lord touched. It wasn't the hard -hearted person in front of you. And you might say, well, then

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I failed then. No, you didn't, because the words you spoke in truth and love to them were used to benefit someone else.

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And so you don't know how your testimony is going to be used or even when.

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I think one of the most awesome things about the ministry we did up in Salt Lake City was we learned probably 12 or 15 years after an event up there that a book

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I had given out, which wasn't even on Mormonism. It was my little old book of God's Sovereign Grace on Calvinism before we did

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Potter's Freedom. I was, I had, I had given out all my, all my letters to a

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Mormon elder. For some reason, I had in my pack that I had with me a copy of, of that book, and I gave it to a

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Mormon. It was over a decade later that we found out that that Mormon not only kept it, he took it home, and his wife found the book years later, started reading it, said, that is what

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Scripture teaches, but that's not what we teach, and was gloriously converted to Christ, and there is a church in that city now because of what happened, and it was over a decade after it happened.

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You don't know. You may die not knowing how your faithfulness will be used by God, but let me ask you, can you trust

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God to use whatever you give him in any way he sees fit? Do you have to see the result?

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So often he lets us, and it's so encouraging, but folks, he has called his people to walk through very dark times in the past where they just simply had to be faithful, and they never saw what came of their faithfulness in their lives, but they continued to believe.

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Will we do that? Will you do that? Will I do that? Will we do that when we can't gather together as a large group anymore, when it's just you and your faith, you and your family?

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These are questions we all must face, issues we must consider.

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Psalm 12, a psalm for our day. It describes the profaning of speech.

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It describes the degradation of society we're seeing all around us, and it calls us, first of all, to believe

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God's made a promise. He is not ignoring us.

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He sees and hears our longing for safety, and he will preserve us from this generation.

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There's various, various ways that he uses to do that. God will preserve his people, but that also means that we should long for his kingdom, and that also means we should, as his people, be so concerned to not be like the world, to use our mouths to his honor and glory, to speak truth.

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We have been given that which the world cannot begin to touch, but needs so badly.

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Are we just going to keep there?

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Proclaim? Knowing what the cost may be, what are we going to do?

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In this coming week, this coming month, 2022, we never saw, we didn't see it's coming, but here we are.

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What will Apologia Church do? We need each other.

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We need to encourage each other. That's why in a few moments we're going to come down here, and we're going to be encouraged by the

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Holy Spirit of God in obedience to Christ, and we're going to encourage one another by together partaking of the supper.

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But it's not just on Sunday afternoon. We need each other during the week. I am so thankful to see,

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I'm going to tell you something, and we'll be done. Don't worry, when I say it, I mean it.

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One of the things that I absolutely love is before service, when

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I see my grandchildren, hi grandchildren, who immediately stopped doing whatever they were doing, and oh, yes, we're listening very closely, yes.

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And I see my grandchildren with their friends, their friends from Browntown, who have the most to share when it comes to having friends amongst the children.

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But I see them running up to each other, hugging each other, loving on each other, and then

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I see the ladies talking to one another, and they pick up in the middle of a conversation they obviously have been having on Thursday or whenever it was.

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And I am so encouraged to see the love. It's not perfect.

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We will never claim that it is. But we at least as a congregation have made the choice that we'd rather risk loving and being involved in each other's lives than being the chosen frozen.

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That's less dangerous because you're never around anybody else to get in much trouble, but it's not worth it.

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And when I think of these young people and I see them with one another,

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I just have to keep asking myself the question, how much more can we adults do to invest in them, pray for them, protect them?

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They're the next generation. They're the ones that are going to be facing the toughest fight.

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Are we laying for them the foundation that will allow them to do that? Questions for all of us.

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Questions for all of us. Let's pray together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, You have called us to this time, to this place.

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And once again, I am just so thankful for Your Word and how You do preserve

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Your Word. That may not be what verses 6 and 7 specifically talk about, but You do preserve

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Your Word. You've preserved it for us to this day. And here in our modern world, the psalmist has spoken to us words that are so accurate and so true and so challenging.

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We thank You for the Psalter. We thank You for the Scriptures. We thank You for the Spirit of God that penned them and now lives within us and draws our hearts out in obedience to the

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Scriptures. Lord, those Scriptures have called us to examine our ways, to examine our mouths, our speech, the words we use.

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Lord, we don't want to be like the world. We don't want to speak empty things. You have given us that gift of speech.

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May we use it to honor and glorify You always. And may

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You give us the strength and the courage to speak Your truth in a world that is dead set on hating it.

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But we know You use Your people. You change hearts. You continue to build

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Your kingdom. Help us to count the cost. Help us to seek to glorify