I
love the Lord, because he hath heard
my
voice and my supplications.
Because
he hath inclined his ear unto me,
therefore
will I call upon him as long as I live.
The
sorrows of death compassed me,
and
the pains of hell gat hold upon me:
I
found trouble and sorrow.
Then
called I upon the name of the Lord;
O Lord,
I beseech thee, deliver my soul.
Gracious
is the Lord, and righteous;
yea,
our God is merciful.
The Lord preserveth
the simple:
I
was brought low, and he helped me.
Return
unto thy rest, O my soul;
for
the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee.
For
thou hast delivered my soul from death,
mine
eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.
I
will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.
I
believed, therefore have I spoken: I was greatly afflicted:
I
said in my haste, All men are liars.
What
shall I render unto the Lord
for
all his benefits toward me?
I
will take the cup of salvation,
and
call upon the name of the Lord.
I
will pay my vows unto the Lord now
in
the presence of all his people.
Precious
in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.
O Lord,
truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant,
and
the son of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds.
I
will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and
will call upon the name of the Lord.
I
will pay my vows unto the Lord now
in
the presence of all his people.
In
the courts of the Lord's house,
in
the midst of thee, O Jerusalem.
Praise
ye the Lord.
To be encircled by the
powers of death, hell, temptation, and sorrow is part of the curse of life in
this fallen world. It was as well known
in the ancient Mediterranean basin as it is today in modern North America, and
people across the ages in every inhabited geography have come up with a myriad
of responses to it. Fallen man continues
to poison his own wells, corrupt his own communities, and reap the whirlwinds
of malicious folly, bringing upon himself and his neighbors the blighted fruits
of evil intentions. Whether it is the
obviousness of unjust wars where one nation seeks to plunder, dominate, and
subjugate another for its own pleasure, or the theft, murder, fraud, and deception
individuals or gangs of people unjustly perform upon their neighbors, where
there are fallen people there will be the ominous shadows of evil death.
20 years ago, the evil of
fallen men rose up to murder nearly 3000 people, where Islamic terrorists
hijacked several commercial aircraft and flew them like guided missiles into
the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.
A final hijacked aircraft was overwhelmed by its hostage passengers, and
rather than finding its original target, was crashed into the Pennsylvania
landscape. It was certainly neither the
first nor the last evil atrocity of Islamic fanatics perpetrated upon
unsuspecting or naïve populations, as Islam has been the religious ideology of
a political machine to execute bloody conquest and domination from its
inception in the 7th century AD.
As a religion, Islam shares no similarities with Judaism nor
Christianity beyond a baseless claim to distant Abrahamic paternity (a claim
made 2600 years after Abraham lived… like someone today claiming without
evidence that they are the decedents of Plato or Buddha) and commands directly
from its unholy texts the murder, theft, slavery, and subjugation of everyone
who won’t affirm their false prophet.
The attacks of September 11th, 2001, were the physical emanations
of real evil, of horrible ideas which gave rise to horrible consequences in a
real and tangible world, where real people suffered and died. It is an evil which still exists and has
existed for centuries, bringing true tyranny, slavery, darkness, and death
everywhere it has gone. Failure to name
and identify it is only ignorance, cowardice, or complicity, none of which being
a worthy defense against it.
As awful as Islam both is
today and has been for the last 1500 years, it is not alone in having wreaked
evil and destruction in the world. Atheistic
Marxists caused the death and subjugation of more people in the 20th
century than all wars combined and recorded up to that point, and Marxist China
is openly working to bend the whole world under its tyrannical boot even
now. And of course, even within the
communities who on paper might subscribe to more peaceful philosophies,
horrible atrocities have been committed across history as they are in our own day. Time would fail to speak of the past and
present genocidal rampages across Africa, India, Asia, the Pacific Islands,
Europe, and the Americas. We might like
to think ourselves more enlightened in our time than our ancestors, but no
matter what group of people an individual has descended from today, they will
likely find great evil committed by someone or some group in their patrimony…
just as they see it playing out in their contemporary communities every time they
read or watch the news. The problem with
evil in our fallen world isn’t so much the world around us, but the evil within
us—we are the ones who first drug this good creation into the fiery depths of this
infernal fall, and we are the ones who continue to fan the flames of our own
destruction. No matter what label we use
to define and segregate ourselves on this globe, be it philosophically,
religiously, or socially, the root cause of our having been surrounded by
death, hell, and sorrow isn’t just the evil around us, but the evil within each
and every one of us.
As David and the ancient Hebrews
came to see rightly, the salvation of the individual soul as well as the preservation
of the whole community was not something to be won by the hands of man, but by
the grace and power of God. If man is to
be saved from the evil which encompasses him, he must first be saved from the
evil which permeates him, where only the Word and Spirit of God can reach. There, deep in the dark recesses of the human
mind, where lurk the motivations to gratify disordered passions at the expense
of abusing our neighbors, the Word of God speaks of a love, compassion,
forgiveness, and eternal life which no person can win on their own. It is a Word of freedom which daily breaks
the chains of dark impulses in our fallen nature, and imbues a person with a
new heart and a new mind to see their neighbors as God sees them: as people made in His image, created to love
and be loved in liberty, truth, and virtue.
Such a Word gives new eyes to those blinded by evil, new ears to those
deafened by a cacophony of injustice, that they might rise up in their
generation and bear witness to the One who seeks and saves those who are lost on
this sea of troubles. This Word which
first spoke the universe into existence, which thundered out the Law on Mount
Sinai and cried out the Gospel from a Cross on Mount Calvary, which shall come
again on the Last Day to judge the living and the dead and whose Kingdom has no
end, is the Word which comes to each of us surrounded and permeated by the
terrors of death and hell. This Word is
Jesus.
Jesus Christ, the Word of
God made flesh who dwelt among us 2000 years ago, still dwells among His people
today. Today He calls out to those
surrounded by darkness to give them a Light which cannot be overcome, a life
which cannot be taken away, and a strength to shoulder every sorrow until that
Day when darkness, death, and sorrow shall be no more. Today the Word of God comes to you, rescuing
you from the evil down deep in your own soul, as well as the evil which
surrounds you in the hearts and hands of others. Today, Jesus offers you the inestimable gifts
of forgiveness, life, and salvation, of victory over every dark and evil force
at work in the world around us, all by His incomparable work of grace that we
may receive it by faith and trust in Him.
Hear Him as He speaks His Word of life, liberty, and victory to you,
that you may stand before God and men without fear, knowing that what has
transformed you by grace through faith into a child of the Living God, is the only
power which can and will transform and save our fallen world. To God alone be the glory, now and forever,
and unto ages of ages. Amen.
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