Book of Psalms - Psa. 2, Vs. 4-5 (07/17/2022) | Note: Audio malfunction until minute 8:57

Psalm 2 and the Heathen Plot Against the Lord

All right, good morning. Morning. So did everybody hear this morning? We're going to be taking some pics. I hope you like it. Everyone's somehow happy to get food and take pics. Whether it was a vacation, or just at the house, or their parents are taking pics.

So I wasn't here last week. We're on a trip. And Ben took over some of his goal force. Thank you for that. We listened to you all. Just to kind of recap where we've been, so that we'll know where we're going.

We've been in Psalm chapter 2. We kind of just picked up where Brother Bill left off. And we were looking at the heathen. And the beginning of the chapter starts off, why did the people rage? The people were mad about everything.

And we determined that this chapter is describing how against the Lord and against his people, they are taking a very purposeful position against us. They're hoping to break our bands asunder and cast away our courts from them.

That's what they want to do. That's ultimately the goal of their plot. And Ben did a great lesson where he was describing the Edomites and how, essentially, he gave us a very practical way in which to work with plots against God's people.

He showed us an example of that in scripture. Today, what we're going to do is we're going to look at God's response to that plot. So we're in Psalm chapter 2. And we're just going to start from the beginning of the chapter and read right down to where we are today.

So why did the heathen rage? And the people were mad about everything. The kings of the earth set themselves and rulers to take counsel together against the Lord and against his own people, saying, let us break their bands asunder and cast away their courts from us.

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them endured. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath and vex them in his sword of his pleasure. That's what we're going to get down to today.

We're going to get down to verse 5, hopefully. Lord, Lord, we have enough time. I know, a little too slowly. But if you'll remember, as the heathen is raging, they are banding together themselves. They are taking counsel together against the Lord.

And the idea is that they can remain unified in their attacks against us. And perhaps they can disband us. They want to disband the unity between us and between us and our Lord. The whole reason why they want to do that is because they are tired of the spiritual, that's a good word, spiritual holding we have.

We have a spiritual hold on this earth. We're supposed to. We're supposed to have an influence. And they're tired of it. They want to get rid of it. So they want to cast away our courts from them. Now, we see this manifesting in the world today in a big way called cancel culture.

The idea is if you are one of the lords or if you are conservative, then we're going to cancel you because your ideas are racist. They're bigoted. They are unloving. They're hateful. That's the way the world describes us.

Does that sound like the way a Christian should be described? What do you guys think? It should not be described that way. And ultimately, we're going to take kind of a left turn in this Sunday school lesson and look at perhaps the reason why you got to this point.

Or at least one of the reasons. So let's look first at what God's response to the human race is. So we see his response begin in verse 4. He that sitted in the heavens shall not. Here's my question. OK?

His enemies have no chance against him. I think that's certainly true. Any other reasons why we would think God is laughing? And what kind of laugh would you say it is? Sure. It's a masculine character.

Oh, say that again. It's a facet of his character. He used the word character. It's truly part of the lesson, too. So that's a good one to pull out. So we have the enemies don't stand a chance. And this is a facet of God's character.

He laughs. So let's talk about that for a second. God's laughing. What kind of laugh would that be? Imagine what would it be like for God to laugh? Any time God does something that is very common to humans, one of my favorite questions to ask is, why?

And what is it like? Because we know that we're created in his image. So if we're created in his image, obviously we got that from him. So it originated with him. So why is it surprising to us when he does things that we would do?

So it is, though. It makes me stop and wonder. So let's just ponder that for a second. What would God somehow be like? And believe it or not, if you dig into the Hebrew of this, you actually get a good glimpse into what kind of laugh this is.

So we're going to do that real quick. First, I want to point out something that a lot of scholars said. A lot of scholars are quick to point out that this isn't an actual laugh. They want to say that, no, God doesn't actually laugh because laughter is dependent on surprise, and God cannot be surprised.

I disagree with that. I think there are a lot of reasons why we laugh, and it's not always depending on surprise. I don't think that surprise is required for a laugh. I want to bring up a plot from Brother Otis.

He used to describe a joke, which is something we often laugh at, as leading the line in one direction and then suddenly turning it to another direction. And the surprise change in direction produces a sudden and often overwhelming motion, which can manifest as a laugh, and this is certainly an element of surprise.

That's not going to happen to God. So we know that it's not the kind of laugh that would result as a surprise joke, but there are different kinds of laughs. We have nervous laughter, which is what people use to cope with a stressful situation.

So there's certainly no element of hilarity there. It's not something funny to them, but sometimes maybe an element of surprise. If I were to ask you a question that you weren't ready for, you might nervously laugh, right?

That's not going to happen to God either, so we know it's not a courtesy laugh. We know it's not a nervous laugh. There's contagious laughter, which is where some of you can start laughing. You've got to start laughing as well, right?

If you've had that happen, you might not even know what you're laughing at. But here's the thing. Contagious laughter is a conditioned response. It's something that is influenced by someone else, and the world is certainly not conditioned by anything else, so it can't be a contagious laughter.

Let's look at some of the darker ones. There's something called a sinister laugh. My little boy's favorite. He thinks it's so funny when the bad guy laughs. He practices a sinister laugh. It's quite cute and disturbing at the same time.

A lot of people, if you will do a Google search on why does God laugh, a lot of people will attribute God's laughter to something sinister. And if you look up the word sinister, it actually has a few different meanings.

The meaning that a lot of people attribute to God's quote-unquote sinister laugh is that he enjoys evil and that he likes it when bad things happen. They try to prove this with Scripture, especially here in Psalms, because there are three times when we see that God laughs in Psalms.

And for reference, I actually have those three times. Let's see if I've got them in here somewhere. Well, I'll give those to you in a minute, maybe further down. But there's three different places in which we see God laughing.

Oh, here they are. Psalms 59 .8 is a second place. So we have it here in Psalms 2, verse 4. It's also in Psalm 59 .8. And it's in Psalm 37 .13. Let's go ahead and turn and look at those other places as well.

And let's see if the laughter in those places is similar to the laughter here. And keep in mind, when the world looks at these three examples, they think the word sinister, and they attribute that to something evil.

All right. So I'm going to pull up.

Let's see. It's Psalm 59, and that's verse 8.

And it starts off with, but thou, which means it's continuation of a thought. So let's go up a little bit. We'll just go up to verse 2 so we can see what's being described here. Psalm 59, verse 2. We're going to get into that word salah in a later study when we get into Psalm chapter 3.

Who's God laughing at here? The heathen.

Who is he laughing at in Psalm chapter 2? The heathen. The word that's used to describe God's laugh here is sakah. Same in Psalm chapter 2. And it means to laugh, play, or mock. There's one more place.

And a more descriptive definition for this word sakah, or laugh, is to laugh usually in contempt or derision. One more place where we see God laugh in the Psalms, and that is Psalms 37 .13. So you can turn there real quick.

The Lord shall laugh at him. Well, let's figure out who he's laughing at. All right. One verse up. The wicked plotteth against the just and gnasheth upon him with his teeth. The Lord shall laugh at him.

Who's he laughing at? The wicked. The wicked plotting against the just. Seems like it's the same situation each time. You have God's people or God's man, and the wicked or the unjust or the heathen are plotting against them, and they cry out to the Lord, saying that the heathen rage, and imagine a vain thing.

Kings of the earth set themselves. Rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us. He that is in the heavens shall laugh.

That's where we're at in Psalm chapter 2. Again, this word in Psalm 37 is to laugh. But it means to laugh, usually in contempt or derision. Now contempt, if you look it up in Webster's dictionary, is the feeling that a person or a thing is beneath consideration.

It's worthless or deserving scorn. So if you think about God laughing at the heathen, it is a laugh that indicates one's position in relation to the laugher. So the person who's laughing is essentially saying you're worthless.

You are beneath even consideration. Pretty strong words without words coming from the Lord, isn't it? And it says to laugh, play, mock, usually in contempt or derision. Now derision is something a little different.

Derision is the contemptuous mockery of a person. So in other words, if someone is beneath consideration, derision would be mocking them for being beneath consideration. It takes it a step further. It's not just you're unworthy of consideration, but it's also saying if I were to consider you at all, it would be only to mock you.

So here we see God laughing three different passages in Psalms. All three passages, it's a darker form of laughing. This is not a laugh of joy. It's not a laugh of happiness. This is a laugh of contemptuous mockery, a laugh of derision.

It's a little wonder why when the world reads this, they want to attribute this word sinister to the Lord because they look at it and it seems evil to them. But there is another definition of sinister.

And the other definition of sinister, see, when we think sinister, we often think bad, evil. Right? Another definition of sinister, which I have in here somewhere. Let me bring it up. I may just have to go back to my dictionary.

I thought I'd put it in my notes. Sinister. Okay. Two other definitions come with the word sinister. One is just that it is accompanied by or leading to disaster. So sinister could just mean that disaster is coming.

It could also mean that it is a presaging or a foreshadowing of ill fortune or trouble. Now, we know that the Lord is not evil and he does not take pleasure in evil. He does not take pleasure in those who produce evil.

How do we know this? Well, there's many, many different places in the Bible that tell us, but one in particular is Psalm 11 .5. So if you'll turn there real quick, we'll deal with this idea of is God sinister, meaning evil?

The reason why I want to do this is, well, I think I'm kind of preaching to the choir. We do record these and we put them online. So if anybody were to stumble across this online, I want to deal with this.

Because if you just go and Google God laughing, you're going to find a very in-depth discussion. And you can tell right from the start, it's between people who love the Lord and people who don't. And the people who don't love the Lord almost unanimously say that God has a sinister, evil laugh.

And they question why anyone would follow this man, Jesus, who claims to be the Lord. Because he laughs at evil. And he laughs with evil is what they think. But Psalm 11 .5 is speaking directly to the character of God.

And it says the Lord trieth the righteous, but the wicked and him that loveth violence, his soul hateth. So God hates evil. And he hates those who do evil. That's what God's character is like. So we can't say that God laughs sinisterly.

Is that the way to say that? Maybe. We can't say he's got a sinister, evil laugh. Because that would be against God's character. And like Kyle pointed out, this is a laugh that will be cohesive with God's character.

So if God's character is against evil, then he can't have an evil laugh. Look throughout all of scripture. Anytime God describes himself, he never once describes himself as evil. He never once describes himself as loving evil.

He never once describes himself as approving of those who do evil. So this is not a sinister laugh in the way in which the world looks at it. But let's deal with these other two definitions of sinister.

These other two definitions of sinister are accompanied by or leading to disaster, or presaging or foreshadowing ill fortune or trouble. Now let me ask you, is it possible that God's laugh at the heathen is foreshadowing trouble for the heathen?

What do you guys think? Probably so. So would we be accurate in saying God has a sinister laugh? I think it's a little bit strong for this reason, because sinister can also mean singularly evil or productive of evil.

So I wouldn't use that word. I think it's a bad word to use. But I understand why the world wants to use it. Because God's laugh definitely comes with a disaster for them. It definitely is foreshadowing ill fortune for them.

We see that here in Psalm 2. I think a better word to use would be that God's laugh mocks and also threatens. I do think that it threatens, because it without a doubt has a foreshadowing of disaster for those who would plot against the Lord and against His anointed.

So what we see here is we see in Psalm 2, we see the heathen plotting or threatening the Lord and threatening His people. Now we dealt with the fact that Psalm 2 is really just talking about the Father and the Son.

But when David wrote it, he wrote it from his own perspective. He himself was also an anointed king who viewed the Father as his father. So when David wrote this, he may have been thinking about himself, but we also saw later in Acts 5, we saw God's people recognize that Psalm 2 is about Jesus Christ.

We also found that we ourselves as the church are anointed kings in Christ. So there is an application to David as king, and there is an application to us as anointed kings in Christ. Acts 2 is really only talking about Jesus.

That's who this is about. But there is an application for David, and there's an application for us. So when the heathen or the world plots against the Lord and plots against us, His anointed children, we see God's response is a threatening laugh.

That's a little scary. But it is. It's a very threatening laugh. And this laugh, without ever using words, God is mocking. He is disrespecting the heathen. It's like a snicker or a snort. We often group snickers and snorts in with sinister or evil, but it's not always the case.

Mocking and disrespect is a little bit different from foreshadowing of disaster. It's a little bit different from the singular evilness. So that's another dark form of laughing is mocking or disrespect.

And I think we do see an element of that in God's laugh. He is mocking, He is disrespecting, and He is threatening those who threaten Him and those who threaten His people. So I think when we see that God's laughing, that is why.

Because it's a threat and it's a mocking. But there's another reason why I think we see God laugh. And so while we can read into this and we can say, oh, God is threatening and God is mocking, I want to ask ourselves, why is He mocking?

Because He knows the outcome. Okay, yeah, He knows the outcome. And it goes back to what Kyle said, they really don't stand a chance. But when you mock somebody, don't you typically have something you mock them for?

I know we're all thinking, I don't mock people, right? But if one were to mock another, they usually focus on something worthy of mockery. What would you guys say is worthy of mockery coming from the heathen here?

Yes, all right. So Mr. King says that the heathen are placing themselves in God's position as if they have any power whatsoever. And not only in God's position, but perhaps above the Lord, because they think that they can break His bands asunder with His people.

It's a full frontal direct assault on God Almighty. It sounds very similar to Satan when he said, I will be like the most high. Right? Yes. Right. Okay, that's an interesting thought that Pop brings in that he goes into, for those of you online, he goes into the idea of mocking in sports.

We called it trash talking in basketball, right? You talk trash, and it's really a mind game, trying to get into the mind of the quote-unquote enemy and reduce their level of confidence, and at the same time boost your team's level of confidence.

There's certainly, I mean, we know that the Lord could play mind games, but He doesn't need to, does He? It's such a mockery that He doesn't really even... He doesn't need to. Okay, well, that's an interesting thought.

Let me ask you this. When you hear that the Lord doesn't even consider the world worthy of consideration, when the world is trying to cancel us and making our lives harder on us, when you hear that God just kind of laughs at it, does that give you confidence that maybe your God is bigger than they are?

It does for me. So maybe, like what Pop says, maybe it's more for a laugh for the team than it is for His own sake. Yes, sir. Right. Right. So in other words, what Mr. King was saying is that the Scripture is written in a way where we get a glimpse into something God is that we aren't, and then it goes on to describe in terms that we can understand what that thing is so that we can comprehend it.

Does that kind of sum it up? So God doesn't necessarily laugh, again, out of surprise for Himself. It's not a laugh out of joy necessarily. He doesn't really have a need to mock the enemy, but He does describe His position in relation to the enemy.

Even without using words, He just uses a laugh, and He uses a type of laugh that we can understand because we have experienced a laugh like this. I'll repeat that too for those online. So God is perfect.

There is nothing sinister about Him. We are imperfect, and we can be in the flesh, so we can have that singularly evil laugh, the thing where we get into the flesh, and we have what the world truly would consider a sinister laugh.

And I think it's important for us to recognize what Mr. King just said because this is giving us a glimpse into God's character, and it's giving us a glimpse into the manifestation of that character. He is 100 above and beyond anything.

He is over everything, and sin doesn't stand a chance against Him. The world and the rulers of the world don't stand a chance. So when God laughs in mockery, it doesn't come from a place of evil at all.

It comes from a place of authority and of superiority. And so when we understand that God has authority overall and He has superiority overall, we get a glimpse into His character, and we recognize that this laugh has absolutely zero evil in it.

In fact, it's 100 good. You got a couple of other discussion points? Yes. Mm-hmm. Right. He's certainly not talking about saved sheep in this verse. Yeah. I really like the direction Ben took this.

So for those of you online, Ben is reminding us that the battle's done. The battle is finished. God sees the beginning from the end. He sees it all. He knows it all. And when He laughs, He laughs from not just a position of authority and superiority, but of having already won victory.

He laughs from a place of victory. So what Ben described is if you were to play a basketball game, for instance, and your team won the game, perhaps even heartily, not a last minute shot clock buzzer, but like an absolute trouncing, and you destroy the other team and went by a mile.

And at the end of the game, the other team starts celebrating as if they had won. That is worth mocking because there is no victory. They have no victory. It is complete loss. It is complete embarrassment.

And yet they feel as though they have won. So I like where you took that because that has to be the way that the Lord sees it. He doesn't see it as who are they going to win? No, I'm going to, I'm going to get in their head and make them lose confidence and, and then we'll win.

If from our perspective, it certainly feels that way. Right. From Anne's perspective, it's like, we're still in the battle, but from the Lord's perspective, it's done. And I still like the game is still ongoing.

Yeah. Yeah. And so he is, he's doing that mockery. Right. Yep. One thing, one thing that our coach used to say is that you guys have this one in the bag, you know, and he, and he would let us know, no, this is your game to win.

And he would phrase it that way. He wouldn't say it's your game to lose because that was not an option. You you're just going to win this game. And that gave us confidence to go out and manifest what he told us we were going to do.

And I think there's certainly an element here. The reason why the Lord lets us know that he's laughing from a place of victory and authority and superiority. Is because the game's over. And it's ours to win.

Yes. Yeah, it is definitely a victorious thing. And Melissa, you had a thought that you wanted to share. Okay. So I really liked that answer too. And it does bring another layer into it. Melissa said that as a father, God has knowledge that his children don't have.

And we, as parents, we understand that because when our kids ask something. We almost laugh because it's just so cute that they don't know it, but it's just so cute that they don't know it. And we've had a lot of situations like that with our kiddos, where we just laugh.

It just makes us laugh. And if you'll remember this whole chapter started off with God's children asking a question. Why did the heathen rage? And this laugh is almost a parent like response. It's done.

You don't even understand. We have defeated them. So while you are in a position where it's, it's kind of scary. You have victory and you might not even know it yet. The Lord knows it. So he laughs a threatening laugh at them.

A mocking laugh at them. And we see that laugh. And as a child, we don't really understand why daddy's laughing, but it's because we don't have the, the place of victory that he has manifested to us yet.

We do have the same place of victory. It is ours. It's our game to win, but it just, we hadn't seen it with our eyes yet. And that's why we ask these questions. There's another reason I believe, because now we're getting into the realm of irony, aren't we?

And I really want to show us one more aspect of irony here, and hopefully we'll have time to get to our next two verses. There's another aspect of irony, and this is where we're going to diverge from Psalm chapter two, and we're going to go into Acts chapter two.

So turn with me there real quick. And we're going to go all the way to the bottom of the chapter. And what we're seeing here is the birth of the church. All right. So the day of Pentecost has come. The Holy spirit has been provided.

Peter has stood up and told everyone around what this, this event is. He describes this event and explains that it is the Holy spirit coming into God's people. They've got the tongues of flames above their head.

They've been speaking in languages where everyone around could hear in their own language. And it begins to describe what the church does from that day forward. And part of that description is, and they continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of hearts.

We see a unity. We see that the church has banded together. The very thing that the heathen are wanting to disperse this, this idea of unity between the Lord and his anointed, which was provided through the Holy spirit and a unity between God's anointed with each other.

It's there. It's the beginning of that. It's the church. And so we see this at its birth. And I want you to see what's so ironic about the heathen plotting against this very thing, because in the next and last verse of chapter two, we see praising God.

That's something that the church did and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily, such as should be saved. Now here where it says, and having favor with all the people who are all the people.

Say it again. All, all the people who are present certainly now are all the people present God's people in this verse. Okay. But if you go up even further, you find that there are some people who listened to the tongue speaking and have assumed, Oh, these men are drunk with wine.

So we, we have early indication in this chapter that there may be two groups of people present. And if this were to mean only God's people on sec, I'll get to you. If this were to mean only God's people, we might would expect the word all here to mean some of all types that word past that David often preaches about from the, from the pulpit boss, meaning some of all types of all kinds of people that would have favored.

But we find that the word all here is not posits. And hollows is a different word for all meaning the whole collectively. So everyone who's present, like Mr. King said, everyone there, whether they are God's people or not, that is who this word all includes everybody there.

But what is it talking about is talking about the church having favor hollows, the people. So the church has favor with everyone. And we have to break that down to really understand that. The first, my mom has a, has a thought.

There were people looking at the church saying, okay. Okay. So mom saying that the last verse where it says, and the Lord added to the church daily, such as should be saved, indicates there are some that should be saved and some that are not.

So very obviously we have mixed company here, but she also says the people are looking at the church and saying, we want that some. Yes. Those who wouldn't be saved. They're the ones who would say we want that.

But then that would also indicate that there are some who say we don't want that. So for, for us to read this and say the church had favor with all collectively, the people, it almost doesn't support our, our idea of favor, does it?

Because when we read this and we see, oh, they had favor with all the people, what do we automatically think? All the people liked the church, but that's not what this verse means. This verse is showing us that the people of the church had favor is favor something that you have or favor something that you do.

It's something that you have and it is something that you receive, right? But let me ask you, where does favor come from? See, when we read this and we say that the church had favor with all the people, our minds go to the people gave the church favor that the church received favor from all the people.

That's not where favor comes from. If we'll look up the word favor and you can do that. If you've got a blue letter Bible, you'll look up the word favor. You'll find these definitions. The first being grace.

Can grace come from those who are not gods? It, it, here's some other definitions, goodwill, loving kindness, of the merciful kindness by which God exerting his Holy influence upon souls turns them to Christ, keeps, strengthens, increases them in Christian faith, knowledge, affection and kindles them to the exercise of the Christian virtues.

Can a goat have that kind of favor? Can it give that kind of favor? No. Another definition is what is due to grace, the spiritual condition of one governed by the power of divine grace. Can a goat have that?

Can it give that? No. So when we read that the church had favor with all the people, we think that it means all the people bestowed favor upon the church, meaning they liked the church, but it doesn't mean that at all.

It actually means that the church did have favor, but where did it come from? It came from God. Favor comes from the Lord. So then what's this with all the people? How does that fit? Well, we have to look at the word with to understand it.

So let's look at the word with. If you look up the word with, the word for with is pros and it means to the advantage of. Yes, ma 'am. That's exactly right. Mom says they're enjoying the fact we're here.

They don't even know it. And that kind of gets to the punchline here because pros means to the advantage of. So you could read this, that the church had favor to the advantage of all the people. So because the church had favor, everyone within the vicinity of the church experienced an advantage.

Why does God mock the heathen? Because the heathen wants to disband God's people and the unity that God's people have with the Lord, which is the very thing that activates our favor. So God is sitting there in the heavens, laughing from a place of victory, laughing from a place of authority and superiority, and he's laughing in mockery.

And the thing that he's mocking is that the heathen think that they can disband us and they'll somehow be better off. But their very advantage comes from the fact that we have favor from the Lord and are unified with each other and with our God.

That's where their advantage comes from. Now, what is this advantage? Well, favor has produced a lot of things. It's produced exponential advancement in science, in technology, in medicine, in agriculture, in commerce, in art, in storytelling and exploration and transportation.

The world benefits from God's favor on his people, and it's only on his people, but they can learn from us. They can learn science. They can learn communication. They can learn math. And if you go back in history and see some of the most incredible technological and medical advancements, you'll find that a lot of times it's Christians who played a huge role in those advancements.

It's God's people who played a huge role in it. It's often surprising to us because we tend to think that we're the only ones left. We think that God's people are so far and few between, but really, yes, we are a remnant, but God has installed his remnant at various levels of government, at various levels of medicine, at various levels of entertainment.

I was with a gentleman at one of our tradeway events one time, and I found out he was in the entertainment industry, the Christian man who was into making movies. And I asked him just how bad is it in the entertainment industry?

And here was his response. He said, you don't need to worry about the entertainment industry. We're winning there. He says, it's the social media industry that we are losing right now. He said, but we're actually gaining massive ground.

He said, Hollywood has actually discovered that the Christian message, though they don't understand it, sells. The Christian message is something that people desire. And he says, so we are actually gaining funding in the entertainment industry.

And that's why we're starting to see higher quality Christian shows and movies. He was particularly excited about this new cartoon, David, coming out. He says, it's just as good as any Pixar film you've ever seen.

He said, you're going to like it when it's done. But I thought that was interesting and surprising to me. I was like, I've always heard that we've lost in the entertainment industry. But what that shows me is that God has put some of his people in that realm to help and to win and to fight.

The battle's not done. And we've already won the battle. We've already won the battle. And that includes in all areas of life. It includes the social media area. Everything is one. We have defeated the enemy.

Rather, our Lord has defeated the enemy for us. And so when he laughs and holds them in derision, which means he's going to have them mocked. He does so because he sees the beginning to the end and he already knows it's done.

It's like what Ben said, the losing team who has already lost is trying to act as if they've won and they haven't. But he also mocks them because the very advantage that they received by our unity with God, the favor we have with the Lord is the thing they hope to destroy.