The Foundations Have Crumbled

Intro

Well we have finished our series through Ezra and Nehemiah, and we are beginning our new Summer series on the Psalms. If you were around last summer, you might remember we covered Psalms 1-10. This year we’re starting where we left off, with Psalm 11. There are a number of reasons why we are committed now to working through the Psalms in the summer; some of them pragmatic. But most importantly, we believe it is good to look at God’s Word regularly for wisdom on how to pray, on how to exercise faith both in times of joy and in times of want and sorrow. The Psalms are a gift to God’s people, showing us how to hold onto God even though the wind and the waves of life may be crashing all around us.

Some of the best pastoral wisdom I ever heard came from my previous senior pastor, Charlie Baile, back in Maryland. I once heard him say, “When you encounter trouble, when you despair, when you’re overcome by grief or depression - turn to the Psalms. Read through the Psalms, and don’t stop until you find “your Psalm”, the Psalm that gives you the language for how you’re feeling right now. Then hold onto that Psalm and don’t stop praying it until the Lord sees you through.” That’s wisdom.

Find your Psalm. I don’t know if Psalm 11 will be your Psalm, or if any of the others we cover this summer will be. I hope so. And if not, my hope and prayer is you’ll see the riches to be found in the Psalms, and you’ll come to agree with this wisdom: Find your Psalm, and hold onto it until the Lord sees you through.

Let’s pray.

When I first sat down to write this sermon two weeks ago, I had this whole outline to approach the text sort of from a hypothetical question of, “How should we respond when it feels like the foundations are crumbling? What do we do then?”

But as the week went on, this hypothetical question about foundations crumbling became more and more of a reality. First, several overwhelming reminders early in the week about the reality of abuse and injustice present in the Church, among those who claim the name of Jesus. Then, the terror of Uvalde, just days after Buffalo and Laguna Woods. Just as my own heart started to become numb, we lost Zach Warrick. And as we were all trying to come to terms with this sudden, devastating loss of one we loved, our family was struggling to do our best to celebrate my father on his first birthday after his death last year.

At some point in the week it hit me: Psalm 11 is not presenting us with a hypothetical question through which we might entertain possible outcomes. The question is very real for each and every one of us. It is not a matter of “What if,” but, “The foundations have crumbled. What now?”

In my own space of numbness and temptations to retreat this week, Psalm 11 has become my Psalm. I’m trusting that the Lord has a good word for every one of us here this morning. When all around us life may be rapidly changing, even collapsing, we exercise faith by trusting in the Lord. We keep our eyes fixed on him, and our confidence in his promises determines how we make sense of whatever is happening all around us. That’s the central thrust of this Psalm. And as we explore a little more of what that looks like for us, Psalm 11 will also expose at least two ways we try to find comfort, hope, and protection apart from God.

A Couple Notes

A couple notes to situate us to Psalm 11. There is almost universal agreement that David wrote this Psalm either during the reign of Saul, when he was often hunted by Saul and his forces, or during the time of Absalom, the Son who tried to overthrow his Father’s rule. There aren’t enough specifics to place it, which is God’s gift to us, making Psalm 11 broad enough to apply in all kinds of life circumstances.

The language in this Psalm, particularly in the first three verses, relies heavily on war imagery. This image of a bird fleeing conveys the idea of a city under siege, so retreat from your dwelling to a safer place in the mountains. The arrows from the shadows remind us that often threats are not obvious or direct, but come from unseen places, from places we might least expect. Destroyed foundations image for us a society whose moral order, whose justice, whose ability to function, is collapsing.

David will begin his prayer with a declaration of trust in the Lord in verse 1, which again is the central theme of this Psalm. The Lord is our refuge, he can be trusted, no matter what.

This declaration is immediately put into conflict with another voice, the voice of counsel given from someone else. And it is here where we encounter the first way we are all tempted to look for comfort or protection apart from the Lord; and that is when we are being “earthly minded.”

Earthly Minded

It is unclear who this voice is in the Psalm. Is it coming from a trusted friend? An advisor? I don’t think we should necessarily read this voice as a malicious actor. After all, if the voice was from someone who wanted David’s harm, why would they counsel him to retreat and run away? I think a better reading is to see this voice as someone who genuinely wants good for David, but who is limited in their earthly mindedness. That is, they are unable to rightly see David’s circumstances from the perspective of God’s character, his promises, and his rule over all the earth. They are only able to see what is right in front of them, and as far as they can tell, the only thing left to do is run.

Now what would’ve been so wrong for David to run away from his situation? Is Psalm 11 teaching that when we are facing abuse, injustice, or oppression, that we just need to stay and take it? Not at all. Please hear me on this: if anyone has ever told you that you the Lord wants you to stay in an abusive relationship, they are dead wrong. That is a damnable lie. It is good and right for you to find safety, and, if possible, hold those who have caused you harm accountable to justice.

After all, David retreated from those who threatened his life. Several times. The Apostle Paul retreated, several times. Jesus retreated, several times, until the moment came to fulfill his mission and lay down his life.

So why was David so bothered by this counsel to flee? Verse 1 is nearly dripping with indignation, almost as if David is saying, “Don’t you dare say this to me.” The problem wasn’t so much that advice was being given to flee and seek physical safety. It goes deeper than that. The problem with this counsel is that, if followed, it would lead David’s heart away from the Lord. God had promised David an everlasting Kingdom. That was his specific promise to David.

This counsel David is receiving is contrary to God’s promise. This counsel is saying, “Look how much danger you’re in. Everything is collapsing all around you. What good does it do you to cling so tightly to what you call righteousness? To cling to God’s promises? There’s nothing you or anyone else can do. Run away and save yourself.” This is what it looks like to be earthly minded; to see nothing beyond the trials and tribulations right in front of us.

Like David, sometimes we too can get poor, earthly minded advice from others. Maybe it’s when you sought relationship advice from a friend who counseled you to do whatever’s best for you, to do whatever makes you the happiest. Well, hold on, what we think might make us happiest may not be what God says will make us happy. We can be tempted away from God by bad advice.

But I think often, for most of us, this earthly minded voice doesn’t come from outside of us but from inside. It is the voice of doubt and despair which says, “Will God really come through? Will he be true to his promise? Will he really provide the joy and protection he has promised?” Several things happen to our hearts when we become earthly minded.

We can be overcome by fear. In her well known essay on the subject, Marilynne Robinson describes how fear can become a kind of intoxicating addiction which causes us to lose the ability to distinguish between real fears, which are plenty, and irrational fears which we start to see everywhere.

Intoxicating fear can lead us to idolize earthly power at any cost. We vie for position, trampling on others in order to protect ourselves. We idolize candidates and parties, while dehumanizing and believing the worst about others to grow our own base or build walls of protection around ourselves.

Maybe fear isn’t the temptation, but instead its cynicism and bitterness. Losing hope that there is anything good beyond our present circumstances, our hearts slowly harden. We believe strength can be found in our bitter, hard hearts. We justify our various sins or addictions, after all, what good does striving after righteousness do? We develop an edge, which may come across as humor to some, but as our hearts darken we push more and more people away, and we leave a trail of destroyed relationships in our wake.

And so it is to earthly mindedness that David said, “Don’t you dare say this to me! I won’t even entertain the thought. Don’t you know that my God reigns from the heavens, and he watches each one of us with his careful eye?”

And it’s in this response in verses 4-7 where we find our second temptation to seek care apart from the Lord.

Heavenly Minded

This second temptation is more subtle, but these verses hold up a mirror for us where we might see our own imperfections. Here we see the temptation of being exclusively heavenly minded. You say, “Heavenly minded? Well that doesn’t sound so bad, in fact that sounds pretty positive.” Yes, however, there is a way of being heavenly minded which is actually its own kind of faithlessness.

To be merely heavenly minded is to pass over and ignore the real sorrows, threats, and trials of this present world. A heavenly minded person baptizes suffering in spiritual platitude in order to avoid entering into the real pain and darkness of this present age. The heavenly minded person is one who impulsively says, “I’ll pray for you” but never gives it another thought. An exclusively heavenly minded person has no room in their understanding of God’s sovereignty for a Jesus who weeps in rage at the sight of death. It’s Peter, who could make no sense of Jesus when he said that he must be rejected and killed. Heavenly mindedness mishandles Scripture, preaching a gospel which says that God only cares about spiritual matters and cares not for the real, physical injustices and sufferings of this world.

I think Derek Thompson captured this mindset well this week in an article for the Atlantic, where he described the way many Americans presently feel as, “Everything is terrible, but I’m fine.” It’s glib optimism fueled by a disassociation between our individual lives and the way things actually are. Christians are no less guilty of this, when we look at suffering and sorrow in the world, cover it in some kind of shallow spiritualism, and go on living as if nothing ever happened.

The temptation for the heavenly minded person is to jump from the beginning of verse 4 to the end of verse 7. “Well, the Lord reigns from heaven, and one day we’ll see him face to face. Isn’t that good enough for you?”

And while a heavenly minded person might sound like they’re being very spiritual, this perspective is so shallow and can’t sustain us. One way we’ll know when we’re giving into this perspective is when we start turning to cheap pleasures in order to find comfort apart from the Lord. We retreat into our phones, into bingeing all kinds of entertainment, anything we can do to distract us from the pain and sorrow around us.

And it’s not just shallow, but its fragile. Because we can only run from sorrow and suffering for so long. But once it comes for us in a way that we can no longer flee, if this is our perspective, we’ll be absolutely destroyed, because we’ll have no ability to hold together both the reality of our sorrow and our faith in the Lord.

Look, I know that gazing all day, every day, at difficult things, that’s hard. If you need a break from the suffering, it’s not wrong to catch a breather. Spend some time on your phone. Watch the show. Distract yourself with your friends. But don’t stay there. Don’t stay in the place of cheap pleasures and distraction. These things, they’re good, but they’re limited. Because what our hearts are really searching for is beauty that can give us hope amidst all the ugly. And the true lasting beauty that our hearts so desperately crave will only come as we direct our eyes heavenward and gaze upon the Lord.

A Right Response

David’s response is instructive to us. Even as he directed his eyes heaven ward toward the beauty of God in a temple which did not yet even exist, he did not dismiss the realities of present suffering and injustice. In fact, I think we can say that David was able to rightly acknowledge the severity of suffering and injustice precisely because he properly directed his perspective heavenward toward God and his promises.

This is why David was able to say, “From the depths of his soul the Lord hates those who do violence.” Not that God has a soul in the way that we do, but David was emphasizing from the deepest parts of God’s being he hates what the wicked do with a passion.

David could rejoice in God’s just punishment of the wicked, an offensive thought to those who refuse to acknowledge the depths of evil but a joyous thought to those who know the pain of oppression and injustice.

David could long to see the face of his God, the God who love justice and righteousness, precisely because he knew the depths of wickedness and injustice in the world around him.

David is a picture to us of what it looks like to be both earthly minded and heavenly minded; to have a right perspective on the depth of suffering precisely because we trust the promises of the one who rules and reigns from heaven.

And it’s in this picture David gives us that we see Jesus, one who so perfectly held these two perspectives together, because he was the one who would both overcome the sin and darkness of the world, and rule and reign over the world from his throne in heaven.

In John 16, Jesus told his disciples, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.” Do you hear it? Do you hear how he holds these things together? It’s as if he was saying, “I know this world is full of sin, tragedy, and sorrow. Don’t run from these things, don’t ignore them, becauyse you cant. But bring them to me and take refuge in me, for I have overcome these things, and in me, you will one day too.”

This is the heart of our Savior. When he looked out and saw us destroying ourselves, he didn’t turn his back and say, “Ah, nothing can be done, let them destroy each other.” Nor did he simply come and say, “Hey, I’ve made a way out for you to simply escape this present world! Come with me!” No, Jesus overcame sin and the power of death not by running from it but by entering into it, taking on its full weight, being destroyed for our sake. And, being raised from the dead, he not only stands victorious over sin and death but shows us that we can trust God to be true to his promise, even when we can’t make sense of it.

He didn’t turn away nor escape, but he entered in, and he overcame through the laying down of his own life. And now, he invites us in his power and his strength, to enter into the sin and suffering of this world with faith that our God will be true to what he has promised. Just as David gazed at an image which he could not yet fully see, we gaze upon the crucified and risen Jesus, whom now we may see dimly, but soon we will see face to face. That’s the beauty we need to gaze at, to hold on in faith that God will be our refuge, no matter what.