In Peter Allison's sermon 'The Blessings of the Law - Pt 5,' he expounds on the importance of adhering to God's law as outlined in Proverbs 28:9-12. He emphasizes that turning away from God's law results in one's prayers becoming an abomination, highlighting the necessity of hearing the law as a means of gaining wisdom. The sermon explores the concept of hearing not just as listening, but involving learning, seeking, meditating on, and applying God's word. Allison discusses how societal systems and policies, such as debt normalization and public education, often lead individuals astray from righteousness. He warns that those who attempt to cause the righteous to falter will ultimately face consequences. Through historical examples, Allison illustrates the deliberate strategies employed to lead people away from God's law. The sermon concludes with a call to recognize Christ's reign as a source of hope and encouragement to obey God's law, despite challenges and societal pressures.

Proverbs chapter 28. We've been looking at this section. We've read it several times. So this morning I would like to read just the verses we'll be looking at, verses nine through 12. Hear God's word.

Hear God's word. One who turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination. Whoever causes the upright to go astray in an evil way, he will himself fall into his own pit, but the blameless will inherit good. The rich man is wise in his own eyes, but the poor who has understanding searches him out. When the righteous rejoice, there is great glory, but when the wicked arise, men hide themselves.

May His tender mercies come to us that we may live and delight in His word. Almighty Heavenly Father, may we indeed delight in Your word this morning. May you open our eyes that we may understand it. May you also grant to us faith that we may hear and believe and obey it. And I ask that you would sanctify my lips and preserve me from error and strain, that I may proclaim this word.

In Jesus' name we ask, Amen. Well, we've been looking now at all the different ways that Proverbs 28 identifies the law of God, which is a reflection of God's nature. We've been looking at all the different ways that this law, this word of God, is a blessing. We saw in verse 2 that widespread obedience brings cultural stability. But as we read earlier in Kings, lawlessness brings the opposite.

Brings famine and food shortages even. We saw that the observance of the law produces a resistance to evil, and that a knowledge of the law produces justice, that obedience sanctifies poverty. And then especially we saw the importance of companionship for everybody, but especially the next generation and particularly the importance of making Christ our first companion. And last week we saw that just finances, which don't put wealth first, actually in the long-term bring, long-term wealth, just finances. And this morning we have a rather weighty and sobering declaration from the mouth of Jesus Christ.

That word that was made flesh and dwelt among us. One who turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer, is an abomination. One who turns away his ear even from hearing the law, or from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination. In other words, if we don't listen to God, God is not going to listen to us. Now how do we understand or define hearing the law?

How do we hear the law? Because that's what this says, turns away his ear from hearing the law. How do we hear the law and not turn away our ear from hearing God's word? Well, hearing God's word, hearing the law, is really an overarching theme of this whole book. It is, in fact, the very first command in the book.

Immediately following the introduction of the book, which gives us the purpose of the book. The central truth and foundation of the book of Proverbs is given in verse 7. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but fools despise wisdom and instruction." Those first seven verses, and particularly verse seven, you could say is the summary of the entire book. Summarized up in verse seven. And in that introduction gives us about 16 different words related to our understanding, our what we know and how we know what we know.

But the very first command right after verse 7, the very very very next statement is a command to hear. It's the very first command in the book of Proverbs and Proverbs has a lot of commands, a lot of imperatives. But the very first one is to hear. My son it says, verse 8, hear the instruction of your father and do not forsake the law of your mother. Hear the instruction of your father, do not forsake the law of your mother.

That word here, that's used there, that's one of those 16 words that's introduced in the first 7 verses related to knowledge and how we know what we know. And the word for that, how we know what we know and that we know that we know, the word for that is epistemology. If you hear that word that's what it's talking about. How we know what we know and how we know that we know. It's epistemology.

Proverbs there in the beginning, those beginning verses, gives us 16 words related to an epistemology and one of those words is here. It's a very important word and it's easy to miss because it's such a common word and it's used in so many different ways. Proverbs defines this word extensively throughout the book of Proverbs. So I'd like to give us a few aspects or characteristics of what is involved in hearing. What does it mean to hear?

Well, hearing is a means of learning. Proverbs 1.5 says, remember that verse 5 is in that beginning section of 7 where this word here is introduced, a wise man will hear and increase learning. So hearing is connected to learning. If we're not learning then we're not hearing. If we're hearing then we're learning something.

Proverbs 8.3, hear instruction and be wise. Proverbs 19.20, listen to counsel and receive instruction that you may be wise in your latter days. So listening results in wisdom. Proverbs 15-31, that ear that hears the rebuke of the wise, the rebuke of life will be among the wise. The ear that hears the rebuke of life will be among the wise.

The ear that hears the rebuke of life will abide among the wise. Hearing results in wisdom, learning something. Proverbs 23, 19, hear my son and be wise. Hear results in wisdom. And guide your heart in the way.

So if we're hearing the law then, first of all it means that we are learning the law. If we don't learn the Word of God and we don't increase in wisdom, then we haven't heard it. Even if the sound waves have bounced off our eardrum, we haven't heard it. Okay, Secondly, a sub-aspect of this is that seeking is a precursor to hearing. Seeking the Word of God is a precursor really to hearing.

Proverbs 2 opens with these words, My son, if you receive my words and treasure my commands within you, so that you incline your ear to wisdom and Apply your heart to understanding. Yes, if you cry out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding, if you seek her as silver, and search for her as hidden treasures. There's a bunch of conditional statements there that all involve seeking out, searching out, inclining your ear, and so on. If you do these things, the conclusion in verse 5, Then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. So a precursor to hearing is this seeking.

Hearing means to learn and a precursor to that is that we are seeking, we're searching, we're crying out for it. Secondly, then, seeking or hearing means to give attention to something and to make it our focus. So it means that we're learning and it means that we're giving attention to something. Here my Proverbs 4.1, hear my children the instruction of a father and give attention to no understanding. Focus on it.

It means you think about it. Now therefore, Proverbs 7.24, now therefore listen to me, my children, Pay attention to the words of my mouth proverbs talks in parallels Right it gives one statement and another statement that are parallel and when they when they do that we can we can say we can equate those two parallels. And this has given us a parallel here, listen to me, my children, pay attention. Focus. So we're not listening to the law if our minds are elsewhere while we're reading or listening to the scriptures.

But neither are we hearing the law of God if the focus of our life is elsewhere. If we read the word for a few distracted minutes and then never think about it again the rest of the day, we haven't really heard it. We haven't really listened to it. David emphasizes this aspect of hearing the Word of God in Psalm 119, which talks a lot about the law. In fact, it mentions the law in almost every verse.

Psalm 119, 115, I will meditate on your precepts and contemplate your ways. There is an aspect of giving attention to, of focusing on it, means that it remains in our thoughts. What we've heard is going to remain in our thoughts, and we're going to be meditating on it, which means that it's in our mind and we're pondering it. We're reviewing it. We're letting it sit there.

And we're blocking out maybe other thoughts that would distract it. Psalm 119.27, make me understand the way of your precepts so I shall meditate on your wonderful works." Or Psalm 119.48, my hands also I will lift up to your commandments which I love and I will meditate on your statues. Or verse 148, my eyes are awake through the night watches that I may meditate on your word. So another critical part of hearing is this process of putting our attention on it and not just at that moment, but continuing to keep that in our mind to meditate to contemplate about it throughout the day and David even says here through the night. If we wake up in the middle of the night, David said that's an opportunity to meditate on God's Word.

Okay, thirdly, To hear involves, it means to receive or accept what is being said. In that sense, we could say hearing the law of God is the opposite of despising. To hear is the opposite of despising. To hear means to accept, to receive. Proverbs 4.10, hear my son and receive my sayings, putting hearing and receiving together.

In the years of your life will be many. Or 13.1, a wise son heeds his father's instruction, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke. Listening is to heed it, to receive it as being true and not despise it. Proverbs 8.33, hear instruction and be wise. A Very close parallel to the earlier verse.

So to hear then the law is to believe that it is true and to receive it as the truth, the standard of what is right and what isn't. But hearing also involves more than that. Hearing involves applying what has been said. Hearing means that we do what we have heard that we are doers of the Word of God Proverbs 22 17 incline your ear and hear the words of the wise and apply your heart to my knowledge Listen to my Father who begot you and do not despise your mother who is old." We have to be, as James says, doers of the word. If we're just hearing it in the sense of it bouncing off our eardrums, then we're not doing it, we're not applying it, then we haven't really heard it.

But hearing also means that we persevere in following it. It means that we don't forsake it. Proverbs 1-8, My son, hear the instruction of your father, and do not forsake the law of your mother. Hear me now, my children, and do not depart from the words of my mouth. Cease listening to instruction, my son, and you will stray from the words of knowledge." So Stopping hearing means, the proverb says, you will stray from doing it.

So hearing then has to involve persevering in what we're doing. Those who hear the law in this sense don't turn away from it when they become pressured. They don't turn away when the going gets difficult. David said in Psalm 1951, the proud have me in great derision, yet I don't turn aside from your law." Or in verse 110, the wicked have laid a snare for me. They're setting a trap, but I have not strayed from your precepts.

Those who are hearing the law and the word of God, don't down the road rethink things and decide not to follow it anymore. David said in 1 19 59, I thought about my ways, I thought about them and I turn my feet toward your testimonies. And in Psalm 119, Oh let me not wander, let me not wander from your commandments. So hearing then involves a learning. Well involves first we said a precursor is seeking.

It involves learning. It involves giving attention to it, putting a focus on it which leads into meditation on it, and it means receiving and accepting it as true, and it means applying what we've heard. If we're not applying it, we're not hearing it. And it means, lastly, persevering, not forsaking it down the road when things get difficult. So that's, when you see hearing in Proverbs or in the scriptures, that's what's involved.

That's what's involved. And when the Bible talks about hearing the instruction of our father and mother, that's involved in all of that. So children, When your father or mother says, listen to me, listen to me, they mean all of these things. They mean learn what I'm going to tell you, pay attention to what I'm saying, think about what I'm saying, then apply what I'm saying to you, and then down the road don't forget and stop applying what I'm telling you. When you do that then you're listening.

You're listening, you're hearing your father and mother. Now this verse turning our ear from hearing the law isn't speaking about our weakness, our frailty, or the temptations that interrupt our hearing of the law. But this is really referring to this habitual failure to seek, to learn, to give attention to and meditate on. And to receive the Word of God as true and not despise it and to apply it in our lives. See, it's when these things are not our daily practice every day, our regular and daily practice, that we soon begin to recognize God's law.

We fail to recognize God's law as the standard of what is true and what is false, what is good and what is evil, what is right and wrong, what is just and unjust. And we seek to replace all these things with our own ideas. And we look out at the church today and They're saying, well, it's okay to have homosexual lust. That's not a sin. That's just the way God made me.

They're saying, well, it's okay for a man and a man or a man and a woman to get married. Or they're saying all sorts of things. Why'd that happen? Because they are not hearing the Word of God anymore. And that happens when we are not daily, daily, and regularly learning God's Word, thinking about meditating on it, applying it to our life.

When that's not our daily practice, then we turn away from it. So the Bible is saying here that when we flagrantly disregard God's law regarding murder, regarding adultery, regarding fornication, regarding homosexuality, regarding slavery, regarding finances and interests, regarding raising our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, then God's not going to listen to our worship. He won't hear us. That ought to be a fearful thing, a sobering thing. Men, you can't be habitually viewing pornography and expect the Lord to hear your prayers.

If you're not dwelling with your wife in an understanding way, giving honor to her as a weaker vessel and as a fellow heir of the grace of life together, Peter says you can expect that your prayers will be hindered. God won't hear them. Why? If you are habitually failing to reverence your husbands, your prayer is an abomination to God. Children, if you're not honoring your parents, if you're not hearing your parents, then your prayers are not heard by God either.

And brothers and sisters, if we're not reconciled to one another, but we have this hate or this despising or bitterness in our heart toward each other. God won't hear our prayers. In fact, that's so critical, this sixth commandment. That's so critical that if we realize that we're despising our brother, then we're not even to finish that act of worship. We're to go immediately and be reconciled because God won't hear our prayer if we're not hearing His law.

If we fail to recognize or to follow God's law regarding the use of our money, regarding interest and debt, particularly regarding the poor, then the Bible says our prayers are an abomination to the Lord. If we despise the word of God concerning raising our children, and we spare the rod, the Bible says we hate our child. Or we give them another God by sending them to the government schools to learn how Jehovah is not the creator, then our prayers are an abomination to God. Because God has given us this command. He said, these words which I command you today shall be in your heart, and you shall teach them diligently to your children.

And you shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. And we can't expect to send our children to the government school which despises everything that's in God's Word and does just the opposite of all of that and expect that they will learn to fear the Lord or that God will hear our prayer. One who turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer, is an abomination.

Verse 10, whoever causes the upright to go astray in an evil way, he himself will fall into his own pit. There are some people who seek to get Christians to stumble. It might be co-workers or in the military your fellow peers, soldiers, who like nothing more than to see Christians do things that are contrary to their profession so they can then make fun of them. Well the Bible says they will fall into their own pit that they have laid. You can think of Haman.

This happened with Haman. He tried to get Mordecai. He tried to kill him, and God brought what he intended for Mordecai back on his own head. I think it's also true of the civil magistrates and the police who seek to get their righteous to go astray. It's a very frequent tactic.

You call it entrapment or a sting operation where they tempt people deliberately to go astray. They set up an operation where they tempt people to prostitution, or to other sins, other violations of the law of God, so that they can then arrest them for those things. That's entrapment. And The Bible says those who do that will fall into their own pit. Those who prey on our faults, on our weaknesses, on the sinful nature that still remains in us, to tempt that and to get us to fall, that's not right.

But on a, and we could multiply many more examples at the micro level, but I'd like to also look at it at the macro level, at a very large scale way, because this is also true and very much the case in a macro level, in thinking generationally. And there have been in our country three main ways that the wicked have sought to do this, to get the upright to go astray in an evil way. There are more. But I want to just look at, I want to look, for example, this morning at three ways, three macro ways that the wicked have sought to entrap and get the righteous to go astray. One is with debauched currency and debt.

And that has been a very deliberate attempt to do this. Beardsley, because this is a corrupting influence on people. Beardsley Rommel, as chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. It's the first and most important of the 12 banks. He told the American Bar Association in shortly after World War II that federal taxes were no longer needed for revenue for the federal government.

They didn't need taxes to maintain solvency. They didn't need taxes to maintain their operations, in other words. Well, you might ask, well, why then have taxes? And so he went on to say well here's why we have taxes. One of them was taxes to control inflation to keep people from if there's too much money in circulation taxes bring it back and take it out of circulation.

Secondly, so it was to redistribute the wealth, to take from the people that have and give it to the people that don't, which is theft. It's stealing from one class and giving to the other class, which when you do that creates covetousness in the class that doesn't have it and a lot of other problems. It creates laziness too when you simply just give people money that they haven't earned or worked for on a regular ongoing basis without any responsibility. Corrupts the people. But it's the third reason that he gave that's the most interesting.

He said purpose for tax was to implement or to express, but it's to implement, public policy by subsidizing the kinds of behavior they want and penalizing the kinds of behavior that they don't want. So taxes were a way of implementing policies. It's a way of getting people to do the things we want them to do. And what are the things that they wanted to get people to do? Well, if you want to steer people into debt, then you implement taxes that encourage and reward people for being in debt and penalize people who are not in debt.

And so that's what they've done. If you are in debt, you paid less taxes. If you're not in debt, you paid more taxes. Guess what financial advisors were telling people? Get them debt.

I remember having, I remember, I think it was, I've heard, to say I've heard many times financial advisors tell people you need debt you need some debt you got you have too much income here and there's no debt to offset it, no interest payments to offset it. And so what do we have today? Before the Federal Reserve was around, most people owned a house. Today very few people actually own their house. We all live in debt.

We have debt for our cars, debt for our houses, and we think that's a normal way of living because it's gone for so many generations that we consider debt as normal now. Well, it's just expected. When that was unheard of before the Federal Reserve. What's happened? The wicked have caused the righteous to go astray in an evil way by normalizing debt.

And all of the thinking that goes with it. You don't realize until you get out of debt just how influenced your thinking is when you're in debt. You think a totally different way. When you're in debt, everything is short-sighted to the extent that you're in debt. Obviously, you know, this is a spectrum, right?

I'm painting with a broad brush. But just look at how things are advertised. Everything's advertised by monthly payments now. You don't see the price of a car, you see the monthly payment for the car. Just assume you're going to be in debt and that's how people are thinking month to month.

Do I have enough income to pay all my debts this month. But when you're not in debt, you think totally differently. You begin to think, well, how much is this going to cost me overall? Because I'm only earning this much income in my life, and I want to be a good steward of it and use it in the best way possible. And how much of my life income is this purchase going to take?

And why would I put it on debt and pay more for it when I can buy it without debt and pay less for it? You see, this was a public policy implemented at a very high level to steer people into an evil way. This one example. Government schools is another example. Government schools is another example.

I want to take a minute just to show you how much this was planned. And a deliberate attempt of the wicked to cause the upright to go astray in an evil way. I'd like to read from an interview by Mr. Norman Dodd. Mr.

Norman Dodd had a rather routine upbringing being born in New Jersey. He went to private schools and completed an education at Yale university. And he had one major interest in his life which was to understand and how the country was founded. And he entered the world of business he says after graduation knowing nothing about how that world operated. And so he realized he would have to experience some of the world to understand how it operated.

So he had experience in the manufacturing world, the world of international communication, and then he said, I finally chose banking as the field I wanted to devote my life to. And he was, I was unfortunate enough to secure a position in one of the important banks in New York. And I lived through conditions which led up to what is known as the crash of 1929. I witnessed what is tantamount to a collapse of the structure of the United States as a whole. Much to my surprise my superiors in the middle of the panic in which they were immersed confronted me.

They asked me Norm what do we do now? I was 30 at the time he says I had no more right to have an answer to that question than the man on the moon However, I did manage to say to my superiors gentlemen You take this experience as proof of something that you do not know about banking You take this as this is something you don't know about banking here that's what's happened and that's why this has happened and you better go find out what that something is and act accordingly. So four days later he says I was confronted by these same superiors within a statement to the effect that norm, you go figure out the answer to your question. And I was really fool enough to accept that assignment because it meant that You were going out to search for something and nobody could tell you what you were looking for. But I felt so strongly on the subject that I consented to it.

He says, I was relieved of all normal duties inside the bank and two and a half years later I felt that it was possible to report back to those who had given me this assignment. Two and a half years is quite a long time. It's a PhD almost. So I rendered such a report and as a result of the report I rendered I was told the following, Norm what you are saying is that we should return to sound banking. And I said yes, in essence that's exactly what I am saying.

Whereupon he says I got my first shock, which was a statement to them from this effect. We will never see sound banking in the United States again." And they cited chapter and verse to support that statement. Norman says, this came to me as an extraordinary shock Because the men who made this statement were men who were deemed as the most prominent bankers in the country the bank of which I was a part was spoken of as a Morgan Bank And coming from men of that caliber a statement made of that kind made a tremendous impression among me The type of impression that it made on me was this I wondered if I as an individual What they would call a junior officer of the bank could with the same enthusiasm foster the progress and policies of that bank. He's saying, look, I'm a junior guy. They're telling me we're never going to return to sound banking.

He's saying, can I really, can I live like this? Can I live in a bank? Can I work in a bank that's never going to return to sound banking now that I know what it is? I've spent two and a half years studying it I Spent about a year trying to think this out and came to the conclusion that I would have to resign I did resign As a consequence of that he says I had this experience from my letter of resignation reached the desk of the president of the bank he sent for me, he said, we have your letter here, But I don't believe you understand what's happened in the last 10 days. And Norm said, no Mr.

Cocker and I have no idea what happened. He said, well basically the directors of the bank have not been able to get your report to them out of their minds and they've decided that you as an individual must begin at once to reorganize the bank in keeping with your own ideas." And he said, so then the president said, can I now tear up your resignation letter? He thought that was a pretty good opportunity for service to his country as he could imagine, so he said yes. And they said they wished him to begin at once and he did. But suddenly within a span of six weeks, he was not permitted to do another piece of work and every time he brought the subject up he was kind of patted on the back and told stop worrying about it, pretty soon you'll be a vice president, you'll have quite a handsome salary and ultimately be able to retire on a very worthwhile pension and in the meantime go play golf and tennis to your heart's content on the weekends." Norm says, well, I couldn't do it.

He said, I spent a year figuratively with my feet on the desk doing nothing. I just couldn't do it, so I resigned. This time my resignation stuck. Then I got my second shock, which was the discovery that the doors of every bank in the United States were closed to me, and I could never get a job in a bank. So I fined myself for the first time since I graduated from college without a job.

Well, that's the introduction to this man, just to tell you who he is. In 1953, he was the director of research for a committee called the Reiss Commission, the Reiss Committee. And they were attempting to carry out a resolution in the House of Representatives to investigate the foundations as to whether they were engaged in un-American activities. It's a very famous commission, I'm sure you've heard of it. Norman Dodd was the director of research to him for that committee.

To him they assigned a lawyer. That's right, every government thing has to have a lawyer assigned to it and a doctor and so on. And so He had a conversation with the president of one of these foundations that he was supposed to investigate. Rowan Gaither was president of the Ford Foundation. So he, you know, he's going to investigate these foundations.

The first thing you do is you call him up and you want to sit down and talk with them. And so he has this conversation and Mr. Gaither says, Mr. Dodd, we have asked you to come up here today because we thought that possibly off the record you could you would tell us why Congress is interested in the activities of foundations such as ourselves. But before he could answer, Mr.

Gaither went on and said, Mr. Dodd, all of us who have a hand in making policies here have had experience with either the OSS during the war, that's the precursor to the CIA, or with the European Economic Administration after the war. These directives emanate that we are following in these organizations emanate from the White House, and we still operate under these directives. Would you like to know the substance of these directives. Norman Dodd said, yes, Mr.

Gaither, I would like to know. And so Mr. Gaither said, Mr. Dodd, we are here to operate in response to similar directives, the substance of which is that we will use our grant-making power to so alter life in the United States that it can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union." Norman Dodd says, well, I practically fell off my chair. Mr.

Gaither, he said, oh, I can now answer your first question, why Congress wants to know. He said, you forced the Congress of the United States to spend $150, 000 to find out what you have just told me. He said, I don't think you're entitled to withhold that information from the people of the country to whom you're indebted for your tax exemption. So why don't you tell the people of the country just what you told me and his answer was where we wouldn't think of doing any such thing. Now, there was another foundation called the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace.

They went through the same process to find out some information. This is what I want to get to because it relates to education. To cut the story short on how this situation got set up. There was a new president of the foundation and he invited them to come up and look through all their minutes and archives. Remember this is 1953, these minutes and archives went back half a century or more.

So this lawyer, Catherine Casey, who had no interest in this committee whatsoever, she was assigned there because it had to have a lawyer, was chosen to go up there and look through these records and she took a dictaphone because this is before cell phone cameras and copy machines, right? And so she came back at the end of two weeks with the following recorded on dictaphone belts. So she would have gone in, reviewed these minutes, and just read into her dictaphone. And this is what she read into that. We are now at the year 1908 which was the year that the Carnegie Foundation began operations and in that year the trustees meeting for the very first time raised a specific question which they discussed throughout the balance of war in a very learned fashion.

And the question they were asking was this, is there any means known more effective than war, assuming you wish to alter life of an entire people? They conclude that no more effective means to that end is known to humanity than war. And so in 1909 they raised a second question and discussed it, namely, how do we involve the United States in a war? Well, I doubt at that time, Normandad said, if there was any subject more removed from the thinking of most of the people of this country than its involvement in a war. And so here's the answer Catherine Casey found in the minutes that she read into her dictaphone.

We must take over control, take over and control the diplomatic machinery of this country and finally they resolve to aim at that as an objective. Time passes and we are eventually in a war which would be World War I and Norman Dodd says at that time they record on their minutes a shocking report in which they dispatch to President Wilson a telegram cautioning him to see that the war doesn't end too quickly and finally of course he says the war is over. So then she goes on down and they ask at some point, they ask how do we prevent a reversion to life in the United States before the war. War was to alter it. How do we prevent when the war is over it reverting back?

And they come to the conclusion that to prevent a reversion they must control education in the United States. And they realize that's a big task. To them it's too big. And so they approach the Rockefeller Foundation with a suggestion. They want them to look at education domestically and they will handle it internationally.

And they decide then that the key to the success of these two operations lay in the alteration of the teaching of American history. And so on and it goes on. You see these are wicked people who are causing the upright to go astray in an evil way. They are planning it. They are planning it, they are thinking about it, and they are implementing it.

But the Bible says that those who do that will fall into their own pit. And that just applies to these people as well. Verse 12 says, When the righteous rejoice, there is great glory. But when the wicked men arise, men hide themselves." The word rejoice here has the sense of triumph. This word for rejoice is only used a couple of times in the Old Testament.

It's not the usual word for rejoicing that's used, for example, we looked at in the rejoicing tithe. Psalm 25 says, Oh my God, I trust in you, let me not be ashamed, let not my enemies triumph over me. So that word for triumph is the same word for rejoice. Hannah prayed, my heart rejoices in the Lord, my horn is exalted in the Lord. The horn is exalted, that's in parallel with her rejoicing.

And so the sense may come through of this verse more clearly to translate it, When the righteous triumph, there is great glory, but when the wicked arise, men hide themselves. It's really a summary statement concluding this whole section. Freedom is the ability to obey the law of God. Tyranny is the inability to obey the law of God. So that which helps us and enables us and encourages us to obey God's law brings freedom.

That which hinders our ability to obey God's law, like these wicked, seeking to entrap, bring tyranny and bondage. So you see, good government then is to direct according to the law of God bringing freedom. Bad government is to direct arbitrarily bringing tyranny and so when the godly rule there is great glory when the Rick wicked role men hide themselves and that begins with not saying things being silenced And we've been there for quite some time. How many times have we listened in silence to lies and errors? Parents no longer train their children in public.

When I was Growing up, parents spanked their children in the grocery store if they were disobeying at that moment. I didn't think twice about it. I remember being spanked in a grocery store for stealing something. I had got home, I had to take it back, and I had to give it back to the person, and I was spanked there at the store. We don't have that anymore.

Why? Because the righteous are hiding. Because the wicked are ruling. When the wicked continue in power, the righteous are no longer even able to worship openly. And even that, then this kind of assembly has to go underground.

You see, these are the exact things that the people that wrote our Constitution as bad as it is were seeking to guard against. But brothers and sisters, Christ is reigning today. Christ is reigning and we can rejoice because Christ is reigning. That's what the saints in Revelation 11 said. The seventh trumpet sound, seventh angel sounded and there were loud voices in heaven saying the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever." And then the 24 elders representing the New Testament and Old Testament churches fell before God on their thrones, fell on their faces and they worshiped God saying, We give you thanks, O Lord God Almighty.

The one who is and who was and who is to come because you have taken your great power and reigned. The nations were angry and your wrath has come in the time of the dead that they should be judged, and that you reward your servants and your prophets and the saints and those who fear your name small and great, and should destroy those who destroy the earth." Brothers and sisters, we can rejoice this morning. Christ truly is reigning. You know how you can remember that every single day? Every time you write the date, every time you write the date, think Christ is reigning.

The year of our Lord, AD, 2021. Dates are always given in the year of the reigning King. Always, they always have been. And we are living in the year 2021 because Christ has been reigning for that long. This is the year of His reign.

Let us rejoice, even as we pray for His victory over those who would subvert the righteous. Let's pray. And I'm going to include in light of the time our prayer for the Lord's Supper as well. We'll move right into that. Almighty Heavenly Father, We do thank you that you are the reigning king and we rejoice this morning as your people.

We rejoice that you have taken your authority, that you have triumphed over the principalities and powers of this world. We rejoice Lord that you have caused your gospel to go forward, that you have brought it to every nation, to every tribe and tongue and people, that you have caused your word to be translated into more languages than any other book, that you have caused your word to be so prolific that it is the most bought book of all other books. There is no other book that even comes close. And those that count these things don't even include it because it wins every time. Father, we rejoice that the knowledge of your Word, of your truth has covered this earth as the waters cover the ocean.

We rejoice this morning that you have allowed us, that you have seated us in the heavenlies with you and allowed us to reign with you. Oh father, may we walk worthy of such a calling. And we thank you Lord for this bread and this cup that you have given to us to remember your death, that by which you achieved this great victory. For it is in your death and resurrection that you triumphed over the evil one, that you crushed the head of the serpent, that you made a public spectacle of all of the powers of this earth. We come to this table this morning with great gratitude to remember your sacrifice, to remember your victory.

And we ask Lord for your grace to fill us, to encourage us, to give to us renewed hope and zeal for your kingdom, that you are not in the grave but you have risen and you are seated at the right hand of the Father and you are coming to judge the world at the last day. Oh Lord this is our hope this is our prayer, through Jesus Christ. Amen.