July 27, 2020 – Daily Devotional

Well, good Monday to you. Here we are in another week. I hope you had a good weekend and a good Lord's Day yesterday. We're able to get some spiritual rest and refreshment, and I trust the Lord used his word in your heart and life as you interacted with his word.

I hope you were able to get together with God's people and have some fellowship together, and I trust that your worship of the Lord was pleasant to him and pleasant to you as well. Well, I got a flash for you, a news flash.

The Culture Is Out of Sync With Christian Belief

Did you know that what you believe as a Christian is radically out of sync with the world? Is that a surprise? Yeah, I know better. You know it isn't a surprise. It's getting pretty stark in realizing that today, isn't it?

You don't have to look around too much to see how the prevailing culture has attitudes and ideas that are quite contrary to what you believe as a Christian, and those things are out of sync with your beliefs.

So, for example, what's the prevailing contemporary attitude towards, say, the idea that same-sex marriage is morally wrong, or that transgenderism is a shaking the fist in the face of God and defying the created order, or that abortion is the murder of innocent unborn life, or that salvation is by grace alone.

If a person is going to go to heaven, if they're going to have eternal life, that it is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, for God's glory alone. That's the whole idea of the exclusivity of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Not an arrogant thing, but just the idea that, look, salvation is offered. It's freely offered. Trust Christ, and God offers eternal life, but it's only through Christ. How well does that sit in the contemporary culture?

What would you happen, do you suppose, if you tried to stand up for these ideas in an open forum at, say, Northern Illinois University? You know, you have an assembly of students, maybe a few college of professors moderating the thing, and you stood up in that forum and you tried to espouse the idea that same-sex marriage is morally wrong.

How far do you think you'd get in that forum? Or worse, what if you were a Christian professor, a Bible-believing Christian professor, who tried to express such concepts in the classroom at NIU? How far do you think you would get?

How long do you think you'd have your job? Well, these ideas and many, many, many more are so out of sync with the prevailing ideas of our culture that they're not even tolerated. I mean, you can't even get them out without raising the voices of angry opposition.

Those ideas would be shouted down very quickly, and honestly, many in the culture would just love to have them eradicated from society altogether and actually believe that they should be, that, you know, those things qualify, those ideas qualify as hate speech and should be shut down and should be outlawed.

Psalm 12 and the Preservation of God's Word

Now, we could easily despair over this set of circumstances, and understandably so, but listen to what God's Word has to say. It says, "...the words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.".

And then it goes on to say, "...you, O Lord, will keep them. You will guard us from this generation forever. On every side the wicked prowl, as vileness is exalted among the children of men.". Now, I got to be honest, when I first read verses 7 and 8, this is in Psalm 12, and it says, "...you, O Lord, will keep them.

You will guard us from this generation forever. On every side of the wicked prowl," and so forth. When I first read those couple of verses, I, my mind focused on the, Lord, you will keep them. You will guard us from this generation forever.

And I must have been reading that the other day in the context of, you know, the angry mobs and all the rest of that, that, you know, we're seeing in Portland and in Chicago and the cities and so forth.

And I'm thinking, I was thinking about how, you know, the Lord will guard us. The Lord will keep us from this hostility and so forth. But then I backed up. And in fact, if you look at the first part of this Psalm, Psalm 12, it almost seems to indicate that that's what the psalmist is talking about.

So the Psalm begins and says, "...save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone, for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man. Everyone utters lies to his neighbor. With flattering lips and a double heart they speak.

May the Lord cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that makes great boasts. Those who say, with our tongue we will prevail. Our lips are with us. Who is master over us? Because the poor are plundered, because the needy grown, I will now arise, says the Lord.

I will place him in the safety for which he longs.". And then it says, "...the words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.". So on the one hand, it would seem like when he later says in the next verse, "...O Lord, you will keep them.

You will guard us from this generation forever.". It almost seems like it's talking about the Lord protecting people. And he does include that. But the verse begins, verse 7 begins and says, "...O Lord, you will keep them.".

What is the them? What's the them? What's the content of verse 6? Verse 6 again says, "...the words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.". Then it says, "...you, O Lord, will keep them.

The Lord will keep his pure words that are refined and perfect. The Lord will keep them.". So here's the point. Here's the point. Our culture hates God's Word. It hates the truth of God's Word. Hates the idea that God created us.

Hates the idea that he created male and female. Hates the idea that marriage is for a man and a woman. Hates the idea that the concept of transgenderism is against nature and it's against God. Hates the idea that abortion is murder.

And on and on we could go with the social issues that the Bible addresses very clearly. It hates the biblical perspective on these things. And the culture would love to eradicate those words completely from having a voice.

But what does God say? His words are pure words and he will keep them. He will protect them. Let man do what he will to God's Word. His Word shall prevail. His Word shall prevail. Now earlier what his Word said in this particular context was, because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan, I will now arise says the Lord.

Those are his words. I will place him in the safety for which he longs. So those words the Lord will keep. He will keep those words and then it goes on to say you will guard us from this generation forever.

And why do we need guarding? Because of how the psalm ends. On every side the wicked prowl as vileness is exalted among the children of man. I know you're getting very frustrated and very weary with the exaltation of vileness in our culture.

And it doesn't seem to have any end to it anytime soon. And yet the Lord promises to protect his people. Trust in him. Trust in him through this time. He has made that promise and just as he will guard the pure words that he spoke concerning those in Psalm 12, he will guard the words of his promise.

And just as he will guard the words of his promise, he will guard all of the words of his truth. And man may do his best to try to destroy them and to keep them from coming true and keep them from being accurate and so forth and try to dispel them.

But God keeps his word. He keeps his word. And you can trust him. Trust him to keep his word and to guard you if you are his. I hope you'll find encouragement in that today. I hope you'll find encouragement in that when it seems that the vile just surround us and the wickedness just keeps abounding.

The Lord will guard his own. So our Father and our God, we thank you for the promise of your guarding and your protection. May we trust in you for that very thing. May we rejoice in your word that is protected and guarded as well.

And this we pray in Jesus name. Amen. All right, well, I hope your week gets off to a good start and the rest of your Monday will know the Lord's blessing and you'll put a spring in your step just knowing that your God, he knows, he knows where you are.

He knows who you are and he knows what's going on in the culture around us. He's not blind to it and he's not powerless from it. So trust in him in it. Have a good day. May God bless.