Good Morning Beloved,
I'm grateful to have so many of you joining us today
Heavenly Father,
I pray today for those that are lost and confused
that You Lord, would give them a mind of understanding
ears and eyes to reason with the difficulties of life
That You would speak to their hearts, call them to You
Father, I also pray for my brothers and sister in Christ,
That Your love and Spirit would abound in them
I pray for guidance and protection and most of all,
I pray for Your Spirit of unity, that we may all come together
as one body, Your Church, Your people
Lay upon our hearts, compassion to reach out help those in need
that we might not turn away our eyes
and that would not turn away our ears from their cries for help
In our pursuit of Your kingdom,
may we pause to remember that all are Your children
In the name of Jesus Christ
Amen
"Help, Lord, for the godly man ceases to be,
For the faithful disappear from among the sons of men.
They speak falsehood to one another;
With flattering lips and with a double heart they speak.
May the Lord cut off all flattering lips,
The tongue that speaks great things;
Who have said, “With our tongue we will prevail;
Our lips are our own; who is lord over us?”
“Because of the devastation of the afflicted, because of the groaning of the needy,
Now I will arise,” says the Lord; “I will set him in the safety for which he longs.”
The words of the Lord are pure words;
As silver tried in a furnace on the earth, refined seven times.
You, O Lord, will keep them;
You will preserve him from this generation forever.
The wicked strut about on every side
When vileness is exalted among the sons of men."
Today's Message: When The Faithful Vanish
Let's face it, all too often, life just doesn’t go our way. Things don’t happen as we think they should, people don’t act like we want them to, we love people who refuse to love us back, life's events seem to unfold either too slowly, or too quickly to suit us....
Is there anyone here today who can relate to this?
When we look at the events happening in our culture and in politics, we see nothing but more problems. Leaving us often feeling frustrated ... and alone.
This psalm in today's text, is one where there isn’t a clear event in the life of David that is pointed to. Many scholars seem to think that it is one where he has faced deceit and dishonesty in his court after he was the king. In fact, from historical study, we could derive the fact that he probably had to deal with more deception and dishonesty than we could even imagine.
What we do know however, is that this is a Psalm written by David. We know it eventually came to be used as a psalm of lament, used during worship in the Temple. Beyond that, everything else becomes speculative...
Our world today is filled with liars and false flatterers and there are times that the righteous hardly know who to trust. And, in some cases, the righteous can't be trusted....
The Psalm begins with David crying out to God. He says in verse 1, "Save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone; for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man."
David feels like he alone is the only person who is still following God.
Psalm 12 continues with the similar themes that Psalm 10 and 11 have;
Psalm 10—The wicked use their words to boast and sneer.
Psalm 11—The wicked use their words to tear down the moral and social formations of society.
Psalm 12—The wicked use their words of dishonesty and flattery to get what they want.
It doesn't take us very long, to pick up on the pattern on these Psalms..
I hope that you are seeing that...
But in case you are not, allow me then to point it out to you:
God is serious about what I say and whether I am using my words to edify or to destroy.
We find in Proverbs, that Solomon knew about flattery, Proverbs 26:28; 28:23; 29:5.
In Daniel 11:32, Daniel noted that flattery would be a tool of the wicked world ruler.
Jude defined flattery as being something ungodly, verse 16.
Here is where we need the holiness that comes through instruction... Guard your tongue!
One of the things that this Psalm speaks to is a betrayal that comes through deception.
Let me give you an illustration...
On June 6, 1944, the US and her allies sent 150,000 troops to attack the coast of Normandy. It is a date in history that is commonly referred to as D-Day. While there were many casualties, it could have been much worse than what it was. One of the reasons it was prevented was because of the operation that started before the attack ever began.
Operation Fortitude was what enabled the invasion to take place. It worked on a system of spies who had infiltrated the German military system. The Americans, along with the British and French, managed to gain the confidence of German spies and they became double agents. Our spies fed the Germans information that caused them to think that we would attack in Calais and Norway rather than Normandy. To this date it remains the most successful, but sophisticated effort at espionage our nation has ever undertaken.
The US and her allies used dummy tanks, ships, and armies to fool the Germans. They even used carrier pigeons that the Germans thought belonged to them to carry information in this historic battle. Tar Robertson oversaw the spies and he managed to create what some call an “army of liars” to win the battle. While we can be thankful that our nation managed to shut off the impact of a madman, it was accomplished with great deception that in end spelled great peril for the Germans.
That is the action that David is hinting at that takes place in this psalm. Flattery, deception, double-tongues and double-hearts. He looks around him, and all he sees are people forsaking God..
The word that we translate as “faithful” comes from the root word hesed in the Hebrew.
The word hesed is used in the Old Testament quite a lot, some 250 times. Often used referring to acts of love and loyalty that are specifically expressed in a covenant relationship. And therefore, similarly, hesed can be used to describe loyalty to one’s obligations to God.
Before we begin moving deeper into the psalm, we look to a word in the superscription, Sheminith.
We also find this word in the superscription in Psalm 6 and has one other reference in 1 Chronicles 15:21.
Its literal meaning is "the eighth division."
Because it is attached to 1 Chronicles 15, we find that there is an order of worship that Israel participated in that required of them to hold a special place for those "righteous worshipers." These were apparently those men who were literally in a cut above all the rest of those who were involved in the worship procession and service.
Whether we are comfortable making this analogy or not, there are still people who fill that same role of being worshipers of a higher calling and a higher devotion. The memorial of worship from Mary and her alabaster box is a New Testament example of the behavior that separates the classes of worshipers from the general to those who are highly devoted to the Lord.
David felt surrounded by people who did not care about the truth. They said whatever they needed to say to get what they wanted.
Furthermore, we see that in Psalm 6 and Psalm 12 that there are some unique connections to when we need worshipers who are a cut above the rest of the crowd. Psalm 6 dealt with the conscience that had been so troubled by sin and the need of confession to set it right. Now David is making his appeal again in another situation.
David is lamenting the downfall of his society, and the wickedness and lies he finds in it, and it’s the same lament we often have today in America and around the world...
So where do we stand today?
What do we hear that's going on in our culture?
Here are some of the things that I am hearing:
There is no such thing as absolute truth; therefore, everyone gets to define their own truth.
Gender is a social construct which is determined solely upon one's feeling and is not correlated with biological birth sex.
Marriage between any two people is valid, love is always good, any kind of love is wholesome and proper.
A woman may abort her unborn baby without consequence, because a woman can do what she wants with her own body.
A baby, in many states, can be aborted, at the discretion of the mother, even as late as full term delivery.
Everyone has to find their own path to God, and all paths are legitimate if sincerely believed.
And we all have a right, to do what we want, with whom we want, how we want and its nobody's business..
I think that about sums up the current culture of today..
And perhaps, I've even missed a few.
But even if people believe all of them to be true, and believe me, there are lots of people who do, they are still at their root lies which find their ultimate source in the hearts of wicked men and women who are seeking any possible reason to rationalize their rebellion against God.
Increasingly, the sinful culture of today's society and the sophisticated culture of the sanctuary is doing its best to squeeze the life out of holy and devoted worshipers. This need not be so among us! If you have a desire to live a life of half-hearted devotion, that is a personal choice, but please don’t attempt to scorn the devotion of the “eighth division” of true worshipers, because their presence fights against sin and the vanishing presence of the faithful!
"Help, Lord, for the godly man ceases to be,
For the faithful disappear from among the sons of men.
They speak falsehood to one another;
With flattering lips and with a double heart they speak.
May the Lord cut off all flattering lips,
The tongue that speaks great things;
Who have said, “With our tongue we will prevail;
Our lips are our own; who is lord over us?"
Psalm 12:1-4
This psalm is one that falls into the category of a prayer. That prayer is speaking specifically for deliverance from deception, 12:2; speak vanity, flattering lips, a double heart.
That same prayer should be prayed by all saints of the Lord.
Much of the deception that makes its way into our minds is through the voices from the outside that are not submitted to a Scriptural filter nor any discerning of spirits. We need both of those elements in our lives.
In Closing....
Beloved, let's not kid ourselves here, it’s not just secular culture that is to blame. The churches of today also have a "heart issue." To put it another way, every one of us has a sin nature. It’s not just that we commit sins every once in a while, but rather that without Christ, we are a people who is bent toward sin. It's our nature!
And the even bigger issue is that in our sinful nature, we place ourselves above God.
As Christians, we are called to be like David, lamenting the sinfulness of society around us, but on the other hand, when we read about boastful liars and flatterers, we must look at ourselves and realize that we are just as guilty as anyone else! It's just as the apostle Paul said, "I am the chief of sinners."
What would it be like if all of the sudden those people whom you have considered as holy and godly were to disappear from your world? You know the ones nagging you to come to church, to receive salvation through Jesus.
What would it be like to walk into this church and see groups of ungodly and unholy people?
Instead of hearing prayer coming from the mouths of good saints of God, you heard foul mouth talking and gutter language?
That is some idea of what David was trying to express with this psalm. He was looking for the holy, he was looking for the faithful... but the faithful had all vanished!
This is the whole point of Psalm 12. David is working through his emotions of frustration and loneliness. He is making his request known to God, and he finds his confidence in God once more. He remembers and rests in the fact that God will save him, even though evil appears to reign.
So now I want to focus on two questions:
How can we apply what David was going through to our lives, so the first of two questions is:
Why is God so long-suffering of evil? Why, from our vantage point, does God take so long to arise?
And the second question is:
Where will a church drift to when the anchors of godly and righteous people are no longer there?
That is a rather chilling question to consider...
Though you must never forget that God will have a remnant to serve Him!
When we look at the evil in the world and wonder where God is, believe He is at hand..
In These times when it may appear that holiness has fallen on hard times and only difficult days lie ahead but it is still the order of the day!
Deception is one of the tools of the trade for the devil in the end times
Truth is always the antidote for deception.
If ever we needed a passion and hunger for the Word of God, it is in these days that we are living in right now!
I'd like to leave you today with one final thought...
The faithful may be under fire, overwhelmed but the faithful have not yet vanished!
But if the church is going to make it to heaven, we must change...
And now may the Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen
Brian Monzon Ministries