In 'The Moral Revolution: The Corporate Onslaught,' Paul Carrington discusses the ongoing moral revolution, emphasizing its unprecedented scope and historical roots. He traces its origins back to societal changes such as divorce, cohabitation, and the influence of humanism, which devalues both God and humanity. Carrington argues that the revolution has evolved beyond calls for tolerance, now demanding celebration and normalization of new moral regimes, particularly in relation to LGBT issues. He frames the revolution as a spiritual war against God's created order, as outlined in Genesis 1 and 2. The sermon highlights the role of corporations in accelerating this revolution, noting a shift from profitability to social activism. Carrington cites examples of corporate influence in legislation and societal norms, emphasizing their power to shape public opinion. The sermon concludes by urging the church to stand firm in its teachings, drawing strength from biblical passages like Psalm 2 and Acts 4, and to preach the word of God with boldness despite societal pressures.

Well, good afternoon. This afternoon we're going to be continuing in our series of pulling down strongholds, and we're going to be taking a look at things from a slightly different angle. Before I get into that, I think it's good just to recalibrate and refresh on what we've been going through thus far. And really you know the more that we're looking into this it really is hard to overstate what's going on in our times. We are literally living in the midst of probably the greatest moral revolution in history.

It's hard to find another one when you start looking into the actual root of things that even compares and comes close. And in our series so far, we've looked at the moral revolution from a variety of aspects. We started off by looking at Romans 1 and evaluating, how did we even get here, get to this place? And in Romans 1, we read those lines that they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. And It didn't just start all of a sudden right we said it didn't just start five years ago or ten years ago It's not really the explosion of really the popular popular narrative that all of a sudden this LGBT stuff just came out of the woodwork, but it's been this long slow steady progression of decline and it began with things like divorce and attack on the very foundational institutions of our society.

Divorce and cohabitation, we looked at things like birth control and abortion, things like that. And then the effects of evolution, where you're really not a human being with a soul, but really what you are according to evolution are just random molecules and particles bumping into each other and really going nowhere because you came from nothing, the worldview of this world. And what we found out is that humanism, humanism is the great debaser of humankind. Humanism, it devalues God, but by devaluing God, it also devalues people and devalues men and women. Then we looked also at homosexuality and transgenderism and took a look at what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah and really what are the fruits of a debased mind.

You begin to see that now when you begin to explore, you know, homosexuality or sodomy, when you begin to look at things like transgenderism. And what we found is that they're no longer just asking for tolerance and acceptance, but there's a demand for celebration and a demand for normalization. The agenda says this, endorse the new moral regime or get out of the way that's really what we're being asked and told today and it's resulting in social social chaos right we locked all these different examples of the pronoun wars and all these confusion that's happening But this is simply the price We're told of progress and going forward in this new morality the transgender piece is another one altogether where it's challenging even what it means to be a human being at root and what they're saying is that your body tells you nothing about who you really are well that's not what what God says at all and so what we're finding out is that there's no bottom Like we see in Romans chapter 1 when you're given over to a debased mind, there's really no end. Where does this stop? No one can point to where this stops.

Well, we framed everything in the idea of it being a spiritual war. This is not simply a cultural war, but this is a spiritual war. Hence the whole concept of pulling down strongholds That's really really the basis of what we're talking about today And the war is geared against God and his created order the very infrastructure of creation Most of what we're talking about is an attack directly at Genesis 1 and 2. What God has said, man is saying, did he really say? Did God indeed say?

And what's fascinating is this, that you can go throughout nature and you're gonna find that all creatures pretty much live in accordance with their nature, right, where they live, their habitat, the things that they eat, and so on. But man, man is different. He wants to pursue things that God forbids. The only creature in all of creation that has this this bent within himself. It's a question that's really interesting to begin to ask and and we found out this when we looked at a woman kind of the high priestess of feminism and a lesbian by the name of Camille Paglia.

This is what she said. She says, fate, not God, has given us this flesh. We have absolute claim to our bodies and may do with them as we see fit. This is a war against God. But what do we read in Psalm 100 the great 100th?

100th it says this know that the Lord himself He is God it is he who made us and not we ourselves And So we have this conflict of one worldview that says I can decide for myself who I am and on the other side God saying I have decided I have declared my word it shall stand and so this is where we find ourselves Well today we're gonna be looking at another facet of this moral revolution and we're going to be taking a look at it from the perspective of the corporate Onslot because even though the moral revolution started you can go back You know to the 20s perhaps with evolution and maybe even you know the 60s with the decline of no fault divorce and cohabitation and then you get things like we said you know abortion and all the other things birth control coming out of the woodwork we're now dealing with the LGBT issue that's come on the scene another phase of that moral revolution But what's given fuel to this whole movement is unlike other aspects, like abortion even, or divorce. There's something else that's undergirding much of what we're seeing, and a lot of people are left kind of scratching their heads, like, how is this happening so quickly?

Well, I think today what we'll find is that there is a corporate onslaught behind this, right? And what we see in this moral revolution is that the beginnings of it when it comes to the corporations around us that are in the country today, It really started off with kind of the LGBT movement and a lot of elements of this moral revolution really finding a good and solid partner with show business or Hollywood. And then from show business, things have not only stayed there, but this contagion has spread into tech business or, you know, things like Silicon Valley. And from there it's jumped, you could say, even across the continent to Wall Street in New York with the financial firms. And now the contagion has spread all the way to Main Street and so from show business to tech business To Wall Street to Main Street where companies even like Walmart are totally untethered From any moral footings at all and are advocates of much of what we're going to be looking at today.

They're getting their fuel and resources, revenue. They're getting a lot of their support, even influences coming from the corporations. So all of this, what we're seeing around us today would be impossible to maintain without this support. It's not everyone, and not every single corporation, and not everyone within those corporations. I want to be careful that we don't just paint every single company in the world with a broad brush.

That's not what we're trying to do. Or people that work in these companies aren't necessarily going in this direction. And not even the fact that, you know, there are companies that make things that we enjoy, right? We enjoy many of these companies that are full-blown advocates of evil. We enjoy some of their products, services.

We partake of those things. We even use their platforms. Some of us are employed by some of these companies and we appreciate their innovation. So this is not an idea. We're not trying to begrudge these corporations or the people that reap the benefits of them of any financial success.

This is not a plea for a boycott. Let's boycott this company because they're doing this this is not a call for for socialism of any kind You know, let's get rid of capitalism and there'll be some better system. That's not it at all but what we're looking at today is the context of The more Revolution and the corporate onslaught what they're actually doing actively To push forward this this revolution at a pace that we've never seen before and so I think what would be helpful to do is start off with a historic shift and that happened just about three years ago and all of us might we might be familiar with this where companies were getting out of the mindset of, let's just build good products and let's just build good services. We're not about just building a community center, but how can we get involved in shaping society? And really fashioning themselves as crusaders for the new morality.

Well, this kickoff, this show of force, really this new era of corporate activism and social justice, quote-unquote, began in probably 2015. There's a lot of lead-up to it, but there was this departure from revenue, profits, new markets, to really flexing corporate muscle to really spur the evolution of public opinion. And all of us will remember this, right? There was a governor in Indiana by the name of Mike Pence who, him and the entire state legislature in Indiana, Republican legislature, majority Republican legislature, was forced to change their minds within 72 hours of putting forward a bill called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a very tame bill that would simply say businesses retain the right to not Be involved in servicing people against their conscience Well that was Intolerable, how could you say that how could you allow someone to make a decision on who to serve based on any moral? Bounds or any moral footing whatsoever who are you to say that And so he took a lot of heat and what happened was a particular CEO threatened to pull out all business from Indiana and then that was followed by other very influential companies, companies like Apple and NASCAR and before you knew it 70 CEOs, very powerful CEOs threatened to do take action if they didn't pull back this law and basically sink the economy of Indiana.

Well, that sent reverberations all the way throughout the country. Georgia had another similar type of bill on the table. Quickly just put that to rest. Arkansas as well under pressure from Walmart put that away and put together a very, very even tamer version of this RFRA. And you begin to see what's going on here.

Something has happened where these CEOs are now almost Dictating and threatening and using their influence to change the course of Law and history that's really what had happened and we began to see that I think even here in our own state with Hb2 right a couple of years ago where there were innumerable threats from all sorts of corporations, even the NCAA for sports, or the NBA were threatening, we're going to pull the All-Star game out, they did in 2017, where the NCAA threatening all sorts of other things if you don't do what we want you to do as it pertains to LGBT. This is what was happening. And I found these quotes really interesting. Listen to these CEOs and sense the shift in terms of their thinking. Our jobs, quote, as CEOs now including, now include driving what we think is right says Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan this is the second largest bank in the United States and it's based in Charlotte.

It's not exactly political activism, but it is action on issues beyond business. See, this is what's happening. It's not about just revenues now. We need to see what are the interests that we need to get behind, and then we're gonna put all of our weight behind this. This was unheard of 40 years ago.

Men who were CEOs would be more careful to step away from anything that might be seen as divisive in the political sphere and just focus on profits because that's what their shareholders wanted, profits and revenue and growth and so on. Tim Cook, the CEO of the world's highest valued company in the world right now, 1.1 trillion dollar market cap. It's a massive, massive company and he's a big LGBT activist. He said in a coming out 2014 interview that he was proud to be gay Adding I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me and This is what you'll be seeing I think over the course of time where we're at right now is you're gonna be under increasing pressure if you work for a corporation or you're a partner of a corporate you work as in partnership with one of them or just being in the general sphere of corporate America you're gonna be under this pressure to go along to get along. This is going to be the problem.

Just a few weeks ago, there was a CEO of Twitter named Jack Dorsey, and he committed the cardinal sin against the new morality. This is back in June. What did he do? Well, he's a, remember, he's the CEO of Twitter and he tweeted a picture showing that he went to Chick-fil-A. Well, what's the big deal with that?

All of a sudden, an avalanche of criticism fell on the CEO because it was Gay Pride Month. Not day, Gay Pride Day or week, but Gay Pride Month and how dare someone like him go to a place and buy food from an organization that doesn't Thoroughly endorse the new morality well He was quick to repent he did public penance And he was restored over the course of a couple of weeks But just to think if you don't go along to get along watch out even the CEO of a company You know people were even threatening we should pull his Twitter account. How can you pull the CEO of Twitter's Twitter account? But this is the insanity of what goes on. And so this is what's happening with this historic shift, but there's something else going on.

I was actually at a meeting on Thursday in DC. Really fascinating. And one of the things we were talking about in a work meeting, a dinner, was with the disintegration of the family. These are not Christians, but they were looking at things, right? Divorce.

And even if a family's still nuclear, what you're finding is, guess what? They don't even eat together. The family is so busy going here, there, and everywhere, extracurricular activities, that they might live under a same roof, but There's not a cohesive unit. So what are people doing? They're finding their affiliations outside of the family.

Long ago outside of the church. But they, human beings are the same, right? They must find purpose. They must find meaning. But where are they looking to?

Well, the topic of discussion at the dinner was as young people are growing up and they have not nowhere To look family is not really there. There's no church. They refer to it as faith You know whether you're a Muslim or Buddhist or whatever And so people are looking to draw their affinity from corporations, where you work. And the corporations themselves see this, and they're trying to pivot to become almost like a family, where you don't just go to work from Monday to Friday, but in the evenings, you go out for dinner. These millennials, young people, they want to be part of something bigger than just getting a paycheck.

They want to be part of a cause. They want to be part of something bigger than just getting a paycheck They want to be part of a cause they want to be part of what they see to be as Progressive and making strides in the culture around them And so they found this kind of surrogate family in the corporation. Really again a shift that hasn't happened in the last 40 years, but it's happening right now especially if you go to the west coast and the east coast, maybe not necessarily always in the middle. But these are another shift that's happening. And so in light of all of this, we're going to be looking at Psalm chapter 2 today and talk about what's really happening.

But before you can open up to Psalm chapter 2, but I want to start actually in Acts 4. You don't have to go to Acts 4, just go to Psalm 2. But What was happening in Acts chapter 4? Well, when you look at Acts, the church now has begun to get its footing, right? The ascension of the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords has happened.

Christ has ascended. He's now at the right hand of God. Pentecost has happened. You've got 3, 000 people that have been swept into the kingdom, the lame man has been healed, which drew a lot of attention, and then in chapter four you see Jerusalem is being filled with the doctrine of Christ where now the number of disciples is above 5, 000 in this city. Well the Sanhedrin can't take this anymore, and they go and they arrest Peter and John as they're preaching.

They bring them in and they put them into custody. And Peter and John at this time are full of the Holy Spirit and they give bold witness. And the men look and they say they took knowledge that they had been with Jesus Christ. Well they're threatened and they're commanded to speak no more in His name, and then they're dismissed and they go back to their companions and this is what Acts chapter 4 says, so when they heard that is the big group Peter and John and and all these companions the other apostles and so on so when they heard that the report they raised their voice with one accord and said, Lord, you are God, who made heaven and earth and the sea, and all that is in them, who by the mouth of your servant David has said." And what does he do? What does the group do?

They begin to quote Psalm chapter 2. Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot a vain thing and they go down and they draw their strength in the midst of adversity from Psalm chapter 2 and that's the Psalm we're going to be looking at today. And so Psalm chapter 2, we'll go through all of it, but it's broken into four kind of stanzas, and each one of them is about three verses. But what you find in Psalm 2 is really an encapsulation of the entire Bible. We're going to see that today and it's very applicable and very contemporary to what we're going through right now with the moral revolution.

So in verses 1 to 3 what we see is a view into the human heart and then in verses 4 to 6 God's reaction to the loftiness of man. Verse 7 to 9 is the divine conversation between the father and son. And then it ends in verse 10 to 12 with the appeal, the appeal of the Lord. And so, however man describes himself or describes the world, what do we find? God describes everything under the auspice of a spiritual war?

That we are involved in right now, and so I'm going to read verses 1 to 3 here It says this Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves and The rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed saying let us break Their bonds in pieces and cast their cords from us." It begins with a question, why? It's this question, to what outrageous end are men contemplating these things? It's really the greatest of all fool's errands that man is embarking on, A vain thing is how the psalmist describes it here. But something has infected man.

You notice who's directed to right here. It's to all mankind, but specifically to rulers and to kings. And they've been infected with the pride of accomplishment. They've developed this arrogance that comes from having done some things in the world and perhaps accumulated some assets and so on. It's led them to fatal arrogance.

And so these self-proclaimed masters of the universe, These are the ones that are being addressed right here. And what's interesting is this Again to just tell you about the times that we're living in right the richest people in the world are No longer monarchs You go back 200 years ago or even 150 years ago that would have been the case you take the fortune You know 20 most richest men and they'll probably all be monarchs Well today if you take the most wealthy people in America all 20 of them will be business leaders right in fact look at this for a second consider this out of the top hundred largest economies in the world in the world only 31 our countries think about that Out of the hundred biggest economies in the world, only less than a third are countries, which means what are the two-thirds corporations? The number 10 biggest economy in the world is Walmart. Number 17 is Apple. Number 25 is Amazon.

Right? You look at a company like Netflix that Puts forth filth really into our homes and into the homes of the world Netflix alone Has a bigger market capitalization Than the entire stock market of Turkey just to give some some context one one company This is to show you just the level of strength. These are the kings and the rulers that Psalm 2 is also addressing. And they wield immense power. We're not here to bemoan their success.

Again, that's great that they're able to do this and make these products and all of that, but there's something else going on here as well, this inrushing tsunami, if you will, of money and influence that's flooding the world, and a lot of it is being marshaled behind the most, what you would call progressive, quote-unquote, LGBT movements, other things like that in our world today, directly in opposition to God and the things that God stands for. And so what do we find here in verses 1 to 3 that man recognizes God, but he will not recognize him as sovereign. They say this, let us break their bonds. And this is this idea of a collaborative effort this unifying Purpose and this is the undercurrent of unregenerate man that runs through him He may not say the words let us break their bonds in pieces But the whole tenor and pace and drive of his life is to break out of what he feels himself confined in, which are the commands and other elements of God. And so what they're saying is this, let us be liberated from the only true source of liberty.

Well, the result of that is slavery. It's this idea almost like a prison break is the imagery that you get here, right? It's the wrong thinking. It's like the thinking in the garden that God is somehow holding out on you. He's restraining the true expression of your beauty and your authentic self.

This is the belief of unregenerate man and this is the theme behind the moral revolution. And man feels these constraints, these cords that must be thrown off, these shackles. What are these shackles? Well you could look at them as the commands of God, the Ten Commandments as an example, or the conscience, the law of God written on the heart. You could look at nature, male and female, very very clear, self-evident.

But also you can look at the pillar and ground of the truth, the actual church that is a witness that God has spoken in the earth. Well these are the bonds and these are the things that hem men in. It's so confining and it's so narrow. Let's break these cords. Let's destroy the commands and debase our conscience and maybe by doing it we'll be able to escape those bonds and those cords.

Well that really doesn't work, does it? But they've gone so far as to celebrate and sanction sin without any moral restraint. And this is the thing, it's an attack against the sovereignty of God. And if you think of it like this, if the sovereignty of God is the pillow on which the child of God rests his head at night, the sovereignty of God is the thorn in the side of the unregenerate man who just cannot find any rest as long as he knows God reigns and this is the problem. In 1971 there was a popular artist and you've probably heard of him he was a part of the Beatles but he produced a single called Imagine and This was the most successful single it was very very popular song and it really captures the heart of Really the population at that time but even up until now and I just want to read to you the first verse of this song These are the very first words of this song Imagine.

And it starts off like this, imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people living for today. And then it goes on to say imagine that there's no religion, imagine just a fellowship of man.

And this is what man tries to conjure up. But if he had done a little bit of research and just look back 10 or 20 years ago he would have seen that this has already been tried. It's called communist China where 60 million people were killed in an attempt to imagine. Or you could have gone to the United the USSR, communist USSR, where 40 million people were killed in an effort to bring about this so-called human utopia but man is so intent on imagining life without God and this is the great problem right This is what Charles Spurgeon says regarding these verses, To a graceless neck the yoke of Christ is intolerable, But to the saved sinner it is easy and light. We may judge ourselves by this.

Do we love that yoke or do we wish to cast it from us? Similar to the sermon that we heard this morning in terms of that question. And so economics is a big, big push, a big, big driver. You know, people say that the LGBT economy, they call it an economy, has about $800 billion per year. And people try to put debauchery and sin into economic terms.

Listen to this for a second here. Just a few weeks ago, two weeks ago, Chelsea Clinton, she was speaking at an event called Rise Up for Roe, and it was sponsored by NARAL and Planned Parenthood. And her whole argument is that abortion is wonderful because it's made the United States that much more prosperous. So how could it be wrong? She puts the benefits of abortion into economic terms and this is what men try to do.

Listen to what she says and I'm going to quote her here quote, whether you fundamentally care about reproductive rights and access, If you care about social justice, that's a popular phrase today, or economic justice agency, you have to care about this. It is not a disconnected fact that American women entering the labor force from 1973 to 2009 added three and a half trillion dollars to our economy, right? The net new entrance of women that is not disconnected from the fact that Rowe became the law of the land in January 1973 so I think whatever it is that people say they care about, I think that you can connect to this issue. Of course, I would hope that they would care about our equal rights and dignity to make our own choices, but if that is not sufficiently persuasive, hopefully come some time, come some of these other arguments that you've expressed so beautifully will be. And so what she's saying is this, if people won't be persuaded by our autonomy as women, surely they'll be persuaded by the economic benefits of adding three and a half trillion dollars to the economy.

Sure, we killed 50 billion babies, but look at all the new products and gadgets that we can buy. This is the debased thinking that goes on in our world today as we look at the moral revolution. It's utter evil to really think of it like this. And the underlying tone of this is that women who don't enter the workforce are a hindrance because they could be adding more revenue to the economy. This is the evil.

And so this is what Owen says. He says, men's underrating of sin arises merely from their contempt for God. See, the world sees God's ways as shackling, the world's ways as liberating, and they get together and they have these self-congratulating councils and they devise and scheme on how they can push forward an agenda that is contra God Rather than promoting the things that are good and so in verses 4 to 6 it says this He who sits in the heavens shall laugh here We see the divine reaction to man's loftiness the Lord shall hold them in derision Then he shall speak to them in his wrath and distress them in his deep displeasure. Yet I have set my king on my holy hill of Zion." And so what disposition do we do we find God with all the nuclear armament of money, influence, human power that are aimed directly at him. We have Hollywood and the media Silicon Valley Wall Street Main Street, you name it.

You've got organizations like the human rights campaign Which is a major influencer of this whole LGBT move do you find God pacing or or nail biting or flustered or confused or depressed Now what you do is you find him sitting on his throne untouched by man's plots and by man's schemes So all of this even as Christians us who are here today, and we look around us and we see all the things happening, it would be absolutely burying, so depressing, except for one thing. God. God is sitting on his throne. God is ruling over all things. He is the self-existent one.

He's inhabiting the heavens. Isaiah refers to him as the high and lofty one, robed in splendor and majesty. And the earth, how is the earth described in scripture as his footstool You see all of a sudden now You see what the laugh is about Should should heaven fear earth? That's really the the question Should heaven have any fear of what men on earth whose breath is in their nostrils are thinking and plotting and scheming? That's not at all the case.

Man has made a dire, dire miscalculation because he lives in a moral universe. He can't get away from that, And God rules in this moral universe. There's a permanency to God's authority over all of his creation. He knows and he sees, he moves, he brings to pass all of his will. And this is what Psalm 50 says about the Lord and about man's thoughts about him.

It gets right to the heart of it. It says, these things you have done and I kept silent. You thought that I was altogether like you but I will rebuke you. Isaiah 40 says this, all nations before him are as nothing and are counted as by him as less than nothing and worthless. And so you see God's reaction to man, he says, yet, I love that word yet, man you're doing all that you want to do, yet I will bring to pass what I have ordained that I will do." And so what you can see here is that God is sovereign indeed.

He's over all of his works and if you try to think of it in these terms that if you were to take all this earth, all this earth rallied and marshaled together, they can do nothing to heaven, can they? Not only that though, if you were to simply take every grain of sand on this planet and each one of them were given the same wealth, resources, power. Each grain of sand was another earth, and every single grain of sand as an earth with all that it has were to rebel against God and point their armaments at God. Even then, God would be untouched. This is how high God is above all of his creation, that there's nothing that man can do against God.

Now the church may be attacked and persecuted and damaged or whatever, but God, his will will prevail over everything. And so he goes on to say this in verse 7 to 9 I will declare the decree the Lord has said to me you are my son Today I have begotten you ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron. You shall dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel." And so God turns his back from all the calving of men who are raging and plotting and scheming and he turns to his son and no matter what they're saying this is what I'm going to do I will declare the decree you see that's where we can get our confidence from this no flesh Can say this this is where the church derives its power. This is this is the undergirding power of the missionary effort I will declare my decree I will bring to pass what I have purposed and This is the problem that men have no matter how high you rise if you're an employer CEO that has over 2 million employees you still can't say this I will declare My decree you can't say that none of those who traffic in billions of dollars can come close to saying what God is saying right here, because every single man at his best is just a single breath away from death.

Frail, feeble, that's all we are. Our plans are so fragile, we can declare whatever we want to, we can put into law whatever we want to, but God's will will come to pass. And perhaps a helpful illustration is to look at the Titanic in 1912 where here was the ship and it was referred to as the ship that God himself could not sink. White Star Line, this was the company that owned it and was sending this and other ships across the ocean. Even when they got word that the ship had foundered, the VP, the vice president of White Star Line said this, we place absolute confidence in the Titanic.

We believe the boat is unsinkable. Well, by then, it had already sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic. And this is the thing, is that there's such hubris and arrogance, But it hits an iceberg of God's sovereignty. And in this case, it was a great, great tragedy because after two hours and 40 minutes, 1, 500 people lost their lives. But to refer to something as the ship that even God himself could not sink.

That's a terrifying statement to make. And it's almost like an illustration of what can happen when man's arrogance gets out of control. And so God's will often equals man's distress. And man imagines himself strong and God's weak God himself is weak And you could imagine if we look to the cross just for a moment and you could see all the back slapping and everything like that That's taking place in the domain of Satan as they're watching the Son of God breathe His last breath. The jubilation when He utters His last words and then His head slings down on His chest.

All of hell, you could say, rejoicing. Satan and all his minions thinking, God tried his best and this is how it's ended. Let's rejoice. But those last three words, it is finished. Those weren't the words of defeat, but the words of the greatest victory that's ever been wrought in the sphere of heaven or earth and so through the cross Even though it's weakness.

What is God doing his anointed? This is what Psalm 2 is saying his anointed is Being exalted God is accomplishing all of His will, the means of redemption for the whole world through the sending of His Son and the dying of His Son. And three days later we see obviously that Christ rose victorious from the grave with that declaration that you are my son. That's what we see right here. You are my son.

Today I have forgotten you. I've begotten you. And this is the idea that you have the Trinity, the Father and the Son, working together to bring all of their will to pass. All power has been given to him, both in heaven and in earth. And so while men fancy themselves to be movers and shakers and People that are fast-forwarding the moral revolution just as quickly as they can The reality is that man is as fragile as pottery That's what this verse these verses are saying right here And we might be threatened as a church or people.

We might be mowed down, but the will of God is going to come to pass and he will accomplish everything that he's designed. And so we end with these verses here in verses 10 to 12. It says, now therefore be wise, O kings, you who are the rulers, you who are the high men of the earth. Be instructed, you judges of the earth, serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry with you, and you perish in the way when his wrath is kindled, but a little Blessed are those who put their trust in him and here you come to the actual theme of the entire psalm Right here kiss the Sun This is the appeal that even though these men have exalted themselves and gone so far astray that there's an appeal to repent and to turn back, to fear God.

You see, the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. And these men have no wisdom, even though they know many things, they lack the knowledge of the most important thing, that God rules and that he reigns. And God wants them to know you may be kings, but there is a king of kings that you must bow down to and that you must acknowledge. So the call is to be wise, to sober up, and to bend to his terms. Stop this mad career, thinking somehow on this highway of progressivism that you're going to achieve anything worthwhile.

He says, kiss the son. And what we're learning from this is that none who live for God ultimately live in vain. But you can acquire everything this world has to offer, and yet at the end of the day have nothing. Remember what the Lord Jesus said? What would it profit a man if he gains not a United States, not Europe, not add those two together, but what should it profit a man if he gains the entire world, but in the process of gaining He loses his own soul.

The most important thing a man has is his soul. Everything else will go over the process of time. And so this is the challenge is that he's calling, lest you perish in the way. As you're on this path that you've decided is the right path, there's a danger that you perish in the way. The epitaph over millions of gravestones could read that perished in the way.

You heard the call of God but you didn't repent And that could even be for some of us sitting here. I was going to. I'm thinking seriously about it. Yes, I know God is God. I know.

I believe in Christ. I just... And you perish in the way because you didn't bow the knee when you had an opportunity to turn to God. And so these are the things that we want to think of. Think of it like this.

Esther in the Old Testament, who can remember the name of the king that she was under at that time? Most people, if you ask them, take a few minutes to try to remember what his name is. Well his name was King Ahasuerus and this man ruled a kingdom all the way from India to Ethiopia, 127 provinces. But today I guarantee you, you go down any main city and you ask the name of that king You'll just get blank stares. No one remembers and but he reigned from Ethiopia all the way to India that's bigger than the United States 127 provinces and yet what do we find?

He's only a little footnote in the redemptive story of God accomplishing his work through a maiden named Esther. You see, God brings his will to pass and so in conclusion we've we've looked at Psalm 2 which is a summary of the whole Bible It gives you that glimpse into the heart of man. It gives you God's response to man It then takes our attention away to this conversation between the father and the Son and then finally it ends with this appeal. Well what do we see the early church do in the midst of such onslaught and such difficulty much maybe like what we're experiencing today probably even more hazardous to their health so to speak because there was actual physical threats going on. Well what do we see?

I'm just going to end by reading the finishing right after all the Apostles and disciples quote Psalm chapter 2. This is what it says, for truly against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel Were gathered together to do whatever your hand and your purpose Determined before to be done Then he said they say this now look Lord on their threats and grant your servants with that with all boldness they may speak your word by stretching out your hand to heal and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of your holy servant Jesus and when they had prayed the place where they were assembled together was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they spoke the word of God with boldness. So what is the response in the midst of this moral revolution? What should the church do? Be the church.

Worship God. Preach the word with all boldness because you stand on the true foundation of God's word. And whatever man may say or do, heaven and earth will pass away, But my word says the Lord will never pass away. May that be our great confidence our joy and our hope. Let's pray.

Oh Lord we we do come before you and we are so glad Lord that you put a solid rock under our feet. You've given us everything that pertains to life and to godliness Lord you surround us you cover us and while even the heathen rages and the people plot a vain thing while the world around us just careens and a Terrible direction Oh Lord With no end no stopping point. We thank you Lord that you've you've given us your word You've given us your commands. You've given us a conscience. Oh Lord.

We thank you for your your bonds we thank you for these wonderful wonderful commands that we can look to and see the beauty that is in you and so we pray oh god help us as a church Help your church in this nation to stand for the truth to declare the truth with boldness Even as the darkness encroaches Lord that even more so we would be inspired to live to work Lord even to lose for you and even to face death if need be, to stand for the truth that is in Jesus Christ. O Lord, we do thank you and praise you and honor you. Amen. Amen.