Dennis Tuuri

Mark chapter 9. And he said to them, “Assuredly I say to you that there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the kingdom of God present with power.” Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them. His clothes became shiny, exceedingly white like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them.

And Elijah appeared to them with Moses and they were talking with Jesus. Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here and let us make three tabernacles, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah,” because he did not know what to say, for they were greatly afraid. And a cloud came and overshadowed them. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my beloved son. Hear him.”

Suddenly, when they had looked around, they saw no one anymore, but only Jesus with themselves. Now, as they came down from the mountain, he commanded them that they should tell no one the things they had seen till the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept this word to themselves, questioning what the rising from the dead meant. And they asked him, saying, “Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?”

Then he answered and told them, “Indeed, Elijah is coming first and restores all things, and how it is written concerning the Son of Man that he must suffer many things and be treated with contempt. But I say to you that Elijah has also come and they did to him whatever they wished as it is written of him.”

And when he came to his disciples, he saw a great multitude around them and scribes disputing with them. Immediately when they saw him, all the people were greatly amazed and running to him greeted him. And he asked the scribes, “What are you discussing with them?”

Then one of the crowd answered and said, “Teacher, I brought you my son, who has a mute spirit. And wherever it seizes him, it throws him down. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid. So I spoke to your disciples that they should cast it out, but they could not.”

He answered him and said, “Oh faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to me.” Then they brought him to him. And when he saw him, immediately the spirit convulsed him, and he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming at the mouth.

So he asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. And often he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”

Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.” When Jesus saw that people came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “Deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him, and enter him no more.”

Then the spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out of him. And he became as one dead, so that many said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up, and he arose. And when he had come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?”

So he said to them, “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.” Then they departed from there and passed through Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know of it. For he taught his disciples and said to them, “The Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And after he is killed, he will rise the third day.”

But they did not understand this saying, and were afraid to ask him. Then he came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house, he asked them, “What was it you disputed about amongst yourselves on the road?” But they kept silent, for on the road they had disputed amongst themselves, who would be the greatest.

And he sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and set him in the midst of them. And when he had taken him in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever receives one of these little children in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives not me, but him who sent me.”

Now John answered him, saying, “Teacher, we saw someone who does not follow us casting out demons in your name. And we forbade him because he does not follow us.” But Jesus said, “Do not forbid him. For no one who works a miracle in my name can soon afterward speak evil of me. For he who is not against us is on our side.”

“For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in my name, because you belong to Christ, assuredly I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believes in me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.”

“If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed rather than having two hands to go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched, where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame rather than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched, where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.”

“And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire where the worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. For everyone will be seasoned with fire, and every sacrifice will be seasoned with salt. Salt is good, but if the salt loses its flavor, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace with one another.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this your word and we thank you for your spirit and we pray that your spirit would illumine this text for understanding. We thank you father and confess that this book is unlike any other book. We must understand it with the grace of your holy spirit teaching it to us, running it upon our hearts. We pray then that you would do that work, Lord God, of using your two-edged sword to both slay us and to heal us.

In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

This last week saw the celebration of a couple of anniversaries. The work week that began last Monday started with a national holiday, Martin Luther King Day, remembering the man who is undoubtedly responsible for one of the most famous speeches in American political culture in the last 100 years at least. The “I Have a Dream” speech in which he posited an essentially biblical vision for the future: a dream of equality, a dream of not judging people on the basis of their skin color, and a dream of acceptance and unity and peace. A dream really in which we could say that blessing we see in the ironic blessing portrayed in the song of ascent that we read responsively pours out from God upon his elect, no matter what color they are, no matter what tongue or tribe they come from.

And the beauty of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is that it indeed goes out to save all the nations of the world. And so we can resonate with some of the truths of that particular speech by Dr. King.

And as you might have meditated upon that, you might have thought through the idea that the reconciliation of the races that he posited in that speech is really a biblical theme, and of course he was prone to put it in biblical language.

On the contrasting side of that, at the end of the week we remember the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision on Roe versus Wade, and we go from a dream to a nightmare.

I want us to consider today that in a sense what we do here is we dream. We have a vision. We are expected to dream of the world in a way different than the way it is given to us now in the context of the horrific nature of abortion on demand and what has happened in the context of this country.

Christians have a heritage of dreams. You know, Jacob dreamed of God’s blessing upon him. Joseph dreamed a vision of the way things were going to be. When Joseph articulates that vision, opposition occurs. And while his vision is one of him being exalted in the context of God’s providence to save the world and to save his own family and then ultimately to speak of the coming of the greater Joseph, while that vision is articulated in that way, it seems like it’s not going to come to pass because the next thing we know about Joseph directly because of his articulation of the dream, he’s in the pit.

He’s in a picture of death. And then he’s carried off to Egypt and he’s placed in prison there. But Joseph’s dream is realized because Joseph’s dream was not a pipe dream. Joseph’s dream was a biblical dream. Joseph’s dream was a revelation of the person of God to him. And he knew that history moved in relationship to the dream, to the vision that God gives to his people.

Solomon has a dream. This last week, I watched a movie, October Sky. A young man has a dream. He works—he’s not working yet—but he’s destined to work in the coal mines of the little village he’s raised in, Homer Hickam. And he sees Sputnik up in the October sky in the early 1950s. And he dreams of not spending a life underneath the earth, but spending a life focused on the heavens. And that movie is based on a true story. There really was a Homer Hickam who had that kind of dream, not going under the earth to work, but searching to the heavens for his vocation.

And he eventually, in spite of all odds and opposition, in spite of the opposition of his father and principal of the school and various other people, the opposition of his economic status and the limited future that all young men had in his village, nonetheless, in the providence of God, Homer Hickam becomes a NASA engineer, wins the science fair award, goes to college, and his dream is realized.

We have before us today a dream. We have a vision of a country that will be different than the way we see it now. We have a dream where the joy of the wedding that we celebrated this past Friday becomes the joy of the weddings of the nation where women and men don’t any longer sleep together and as a result move outside of the covenant of Christ, but instead move in the context of covenant keeping and commitment to one another, having their marriages founded firmly on the word of God the way that Zach and Holly’s marriage is firmly founded on the word of God.

We have a dream where the world will one day celebrate the arrival of children in birth and their conception the way we do in this church. The way we joyously applaud when people announce pregnancies in the context of our fellowship here. That kind of joy. We have a dream or a vision that as Christ disciples the nations, this nation shall surely see that kind of joy in the reception of children.

We have a dream that the horrific butchery of abortion shall peace in the context of our land. We have a vision for that. We’re moving today in the context of that vision and of that dream.

The scriptures tell us in Psalm 126 that the Lord when he turned the captivity of Zion, we were like those that dreamed with the joy of dreamers. And that’s the joy we’ll have as God turns this horrific thing around in the future and moves in the context to once again cause children to rejoice in the conception of people.

Proverbs 29:18 says that when there is no vision, the people perish. When there is no vision, the people perish or languish. When there’s no sense of what God is doing, when it isn’t placed in front of the congregation, when it isn’t placed in front of the world, when it isn’t placed in front of the civil rulers, the idea here seems to be that the people languish and perish. Dreaming, envisioning the future the way God tells us it should be envisioned is an important part of who we are in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Isaiah 11, verses 1-9, tells us a vision of what this dream is.

There shall come forth a rod from the stump of Jesse. A branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. His delight is in the fear of the Lord. And he shall not judge by the sight of his eyes, nor decide by the hearing of his ears, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips, he shall slay the wicked.

That is part of our dream, envisioning Isaiah 11, the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, and what it means for men and nations. Righteousness shall be the belt of his loins, and faithfulness the belt of his waist. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down at the young goat, the calf and the young lion, the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young ones shall lie down together. And the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play by the cobra’s hole, and the wean child shall put his hand on the viper’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.

We have a dream. We have a vision of the future that says that the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth. That says that they will not hurt or destroy in all of God’s holy mountain in the nations that receive the discipling of the gospel of the Lord Jesus. The sort of hurting and destruction of children will be rolled back. And instead, those children will play in the most dangerous of places, and certainly in the safest of places, supposedly the mother’s womb, they’ll be safe. That’s what we envision for the future.

We remember what the scriptures tell us about the future. And we dream, we pray, and we act on the basis of that. And so once a year at this church, one Sunday out of 52, we have anti-abortion Lord’s day. We speak against the murder of the unborn. That is euphemistically referred to as abortion. We’re against murder. And we talk about the day of the Lord.

You know, in the Greek when it talks about John being in the spirit on the Lord’s day, in the Greek construction of things, it’s exactly the same. The day of the Lord or the Lord’s day. No difference grammatically. You see, when we talk about the Lord’s day, it sounds kind of nice and pleasant. We get together and have fun. But when we talk about the day of the Lord, all that Old Testament imagery of the Lord Jesus Christ to deal with his people and then to move out into the world to deal with the world. Now things change a little bit.

Well, that’s what we have every Lord’s day is the day of the Lord. God comes and he brings us to conviction and then he heals us and then he sends his spirit out into the world to change things in relationship to the prayers of his church offered up around the globe that is his, that the Lord Jesus Christ exercises crown rights over. This is the Lord’s day. This is the day of the Lord and this is the day that he once proclaimed that abortion is murder and that it is not consistent. It is not in keeping with the vision or the dream of the future that the Lord Jesus Christ came to effect.

We come together today to dream to envision and then to beseech our heavenly father to make it so to pray that his kingdom come that his will might be done in Portland in Oregon City in Gladstone in the abortion clinics that his will might be done on earth as it is in heaven. We don’t have a pipe dream. We have a Bible-based dream that drives us into the future and drives our actions.

We’re to remember certain truths about God’s victory over death. We’re supposed to remember certain truths about God’s vision and the judgments that accompany it based on Isaiah 11 that the Lord Jesus Christ comes as judge as well as comes as sustainer of his people. We have to remember what God calls abortion. We have to remember what we’re searching what we’re seeking to do and what we’re driving to do in the context of this culture.

But there’s a proper sense of remembering and articulating a vision or dream. But there’s also a proper forgetting I want to mention briefly here before we get into our text of scripture today.

There are some of you who have in times past, I’m sure, participated either directly or indirectly in acts of abortion. There may be people here who have turned their unborn children over to the abortionist. There may be men here who are responsible for unwanted pregnancies, so to speak, who sin sexually, and who left women in a condition where they were tempted to engage in this particular sin.

Now, I don’t want you to remember all of that. I want you to forget that. You’re going to be prone, as we talk about the horrors of abortion, to come under guilt. But I want you to remember that the Lord Jesus Christ has said he forgets your sin. He removes it as far from him as the east is from the west. You’re forgiven through the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. God says he’ll remember it no more. There’s a proper forgetting on the part of some of you of the sin that the Lord Jesus Christ has forgiven.

Psalm 103:12, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”

Isaiah 43:25, “I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”

God doesn’t judge you today. The devil may whisper in your ear that you’re not forgiven of that sin. You don’t believe it. You tell him he’s a liar when he does that. You tell him that you know the truths of 1 Corinthians 6:9 through 11.

“Don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Don’t be deceived, neither fornicators nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you are washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the spirit of our God.”

So there’s a proper forgiving here of sins forgiven by the Lord Jesus Christ. Sins that God says he blots out to remember no more.

Now we do need to turn now to remember though and to meditate upon the horrors of what’s going on in this culture. We do need to talk about the war on the unborn that’s going on in the context of our world.

And I need to talk here a little bit about some statistics to bring home the reality of this horror.

Now there’s a little bit of bright news. The Center for Disease Control reports that abortions were down in 1997, the last year for which they have accurate figures at this point in time. Slightly, not much. Abortion is on the decrease slightly. And one of the encouraging things here is that the CDC actually says that one of the factors leading to this is different attitudes about the morality of abortion. So here we have a government agency, a pro-abortion agency acknowledging that apparently the morality of abortion is now being questioned by more and more Americans.

So what we do in bringing the biblical dream, the biblical vision of children in front of the congregations of Christ in the front of the world does have an effect in the short term in this reduction of abortions. But even with this reduction, there are still over one million abortions per year in the United States. There are 55 million murders of unborn children worldwide every year. And while you hear a lot about rape, incest, life with the mother, et cetera, over 95% of these abortions are classified by the government even as abortions of convenience. Not enough money, child interferes with their lives, whatever it is.

It’s not rape. It’s not incest. It’s not fetal abnormalities. It’s not the life of the mother being threatened. Over 95% are convenience abortions. And they measure if we’re living or dead at the end of our lives when we’re old. They’re going to measure our heart. Is it still beating? And are our brain waves still active? Children’s hearts beat at 18 days and they have brain waves, discernable brain waves at 40 days.

And 100% of these over one million abortions occur after the seventh week. Well after the heart is beating and the brain is operating. Over one million and 100% of them are after the heart is beating and the brain is operating.

Now this one million a year bring it down to a little more understandable statistics. That’s over 3,000 per day in the United States. That’s 136 murders of pre-born infants per hour, 24 hours, round the clock, day in day out, week in week out. That’s two per minute. And that means by the time this sermon is over, over 100 children who were alive in the womb, who had a beating heart and had thoughts at the end of this sermon, over a hundred of them will be dead in this country.

Now, Oregon’s about 1% of the population. So that means that every time you hear a sermon up here, on the average, a child is dying in the womb. If we want to talk about the world, by the end of this sermon, 5,000 children who were alive at the beginning of the sermon will be dead at the hands of abortionists, in conjunction with their parents by the end of the sermon. Three out of five babies—that’s not true. Three out of ten babies, three out of ten babies will not make it out of the womb. They’ll be aborted. They’ll be murdered in the context of the womb.

This is a war on the unborn. You can’t see it any other way. Most by far the most dangerous place for a child to be is in the womb of their mother.

Now, we looked at the case law from Exodus 21:22-25.

We’ll read it again. If men fight and hurt a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet no harm follows, he shall surely be punished accordingly as the woman’s husband imposes on him, he shall pay as the judge is determined. But if any harm follows, in other words, to the mother or to the child, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe whatever happens to the child or to the mother.

So the person that accidentally even causes the death of that child, that person’s life is forfeit if they’re out there publicly fighting with each other and then cause an abortion, so to speak, the death of the unborn child. That man’s life is now forfeit. The scriptures refer to abortion as murder and exact the death penalty upon those who do it. Certainly those who engage in it deliberately.

We have a war on the unborn completely out of sync with the vision for the future that the Lord God wants us to dream of and work in the context of today.

What do we do about this? What do we do about this horrific situation, this war on the unborn that’ll claim 5,000 more victims across this world by the time this sermon is done?

Well, I think first and foremost, what we want to do is cry out to God because there’s not a whole lot we can do other than cry out to God. But that’s all right because the Bible helps us to understand dream and to envision our responsibility in such a case very easily.

Turn to Psalm 10 in your scriptures and we’ll see the same sort of situation that we find ourselves in where the wicked are doing whatever they want to do and the civil government doesn’t do anything about it and we’re sitting by really pretty much unable to stop the horror.

Psalm 10 is a psalm that sort of talks about what we should be doing. And I think when we get done with it, we’ll see here in this brief overview of Psalm 10 that what we have here is the necessity of imprecatory prayers for societal change. The necessity, not the okayness of, not the acceptability, the necessity of imprecatory prayers. Prayers that call for God’s imprecation, a service of malediction, bad words to certain people as opposed to a benediction, good words. Scriptures want us to pray that God bring his particular judgments, to pray imprecatorily, and Psalm 10 will show us that.

We have first in verse one a cry out to God. Why do you stand afar off, O Lord? Why do you hide in times of trouble?

Well, that’s the way we feel, isn’t it? When we realize that in another hour or so, 5,000 babies will be killed by abortionists. Why do you stand afar off? You know, I’ve been teaching world history this year. And if there’s one thing world history will teach you, it is that God is slow and long-suffering, far more patient than you or I. God has his ways, his wheels of justice do indeed grind slowly but exceedingly fine. Every wrong is written as it were. So we can feel like this. Why do you stand afar off, O Lord? Why do you hide in times of trouble?

And then verse two really gives us a summary of the whole psalm. The wicked in his pride persecutes the poor. Let them be caught in the plots which they have devised.

There it is. That’s the psalm. That’s what we do. We say the wicked are in their pride persecuting attacking the poor, the defenseless, the child in the womb in the case of abortion. And our responsibility to that is to ask God that he might catch them in the plots which they have devised. We’re to pray imprecatorily to God in relationship to that reality. So that’s a summary of the whole psalm.

Now, it goes on to talk in verses 3-6 of the wicked’s security. But before we go to that, you know, I’m going to talk to you about the Psalms, but don’t think this is some kind of Old Testament concept, you know. We have here the words of the sweet psalmist in the inspired hymnbook of God. Praying that the wicked would be caught in his own devices. Let the abortionist be caught in his own devices. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. And we have the sweet psalmist writing this, the inspired hymnbook of the church. Don’t think it ends there.

When we get around to Paul, he tells us in 2 Timothy 4:14, he says, “Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm. May the Lord repay him according to his works.” Same thing that the psalmist prays. Paul says as well in terms of those who do the ministry of God much harm, not his personal enemy, that the minister of the gospel is opposed by Alexander the coppersmith. And Paul prays, “May the Lord repay him according to his works.”

Lex Talionis. Revelation 6:9-11. When he opens the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. This is that first fruits church. I talked about a communion last week, martyred off prior to A.D. 70. They’re under the throne of God and they cry with a loud voice saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until you judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”

The ransomed saints, this side of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ are crying out in heaven that God would avenge the blood upon those who killed the martyrs of the church. Christ harvesters them, but don’t think it alleviates the responsibility of those who martyr, produce, who persecute and kill the saints. And we’re going to join with—what we do in the Lord’s worship day is we join with that heavenly choir worshiping God. And part of that heavenly choir here is singing, “Judge them, Lord God, holy and true.”

Now, these people are perfected souls in heaven. This can’t be sin. Their sin is gone. They’re in the throne room of God, and they’re crying out like we should in the throne room of God, “How long were you going to let this go on. Judge them, Father. Bring justice to the earth.”

So, this concept of the judgments of God is not just something we find in the Old Testament. It’s found in the epistles. It’s found in the concluding book of the scriptures in the book of Revelation itself.

Look at verses 3 to 6 and we see a little bit of the motivation of the wicked. The wicked boasts of his heart’s desire. He blesses the greedy and renounces the Lord. The wicked in his proud countenance does not seek God. God is not in his thoughts. As the abortionist goes about doing his work, he does so saying, “God’s not in my thoughts.” He’s not even thinking about God. His ways are always prospering. Your judgments are far above, out of sight. He doesn’t see your judgments, God. And as a result, he’s strengthened in his sin to continue to sin more.

For all his enemies, he sneers at them. He has said in his heart, “I shall not be moved. I shall never be in adversity.” The wicked are described as those who do not comprehend, do not know, and need to be reminded that the judgments of God are real. The wicked are described here in terms of their motivation. Their security is given for us as a picture as a preliminary statement to the wicked’s resultant actions in verses 7-10.

Verses 7-10 describes what the wicked do. His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and oppression. Under his tongue is trouble and iniquity. He sits in the lurking places of the villages and in the secret places. He murders the innocent in the secret places of Portland, the women’s health clinic. They murder the innocent. That’s what the wicked is doing. Hiding off there, walled off by police. So in private, they can go off there and murder the innocent.

In other words, the innocent in the sense of those who have no reason to be executed. His eyes are secretly fixed on the helpless. The abortionist’s eyes are secretly fixed on the child that can do nothing to defend itself in that womb. Zero, nada. He is helpless. He lies and waits secretly as a lion in his den. He lies and wait to catch the poor. They plant these abortion clinics in poor neighborhoods. David Curio was telling me about such a thing down in Los Angeles when they were there or some part of California he lived in. They put it in the worst neighborhood. They’re looking to the poor and catching those the poorest children to execute them and to kill them in their war on the unborn.

Now I know that you know the people the parents have their responsibility but everything is being driven around them by telling them this is not a child nothing’s going on it’s all right we just need to take care of this little problem you’ve got you can’t afford this child we don’t want to pay more welfare to you we don’t want you to raise up children who are somehow not as good as the rest of us eugenics has been part of this movement from the beginning Margaret Sanger the mother of planned parenthood she advocated eugenics getting rid of the poorer class by means of abortion.

I know nobody’s self-consciously doing that today, but in effect, that’s the way it works out. Under the control, as it were, of Satan and his dominion, these people attack the poor. He secretly waits to catch the poor. He catches the poor when he draws him into his net. So, he crouches. He lies low that the helpless may fall by his strength.

Those are the actions of the wicked. And once more, at the end of this description of action, he goes back to the motivation, the security of the wicked. He has said in his heart, God has forgotten. He hides his face. He’ll never see what’s going on here. He doesn’t want brought to his attention the judgments of God. And then this is what we do.

We see this very situation played out in our world today, down at the abortion clinics in Portland, various places across the state, nation, around the world, 5,000 deaths by the time the sermon’s over. This is what we see going on, what’s described for us here. And this is supposed to be what we’re supposed to do about it.

Verse 12, we’re supposed to cry out to God, “Arise, O Lord. O God, lift up your hand. Do not forget the humble.” We’re to cry out to God on behalf of the unborn, on behalf of the poor, on behalf of the helpless. And we know that will have an effect.

Verse 13 refers to the state of the wicked man’s mind. Why do the wicked renounce God? He said in his heart, “You will not require an account.” When we plead to God, we say, “Hey, when you bring judgments, he’ll stop. When you withhold judgments, he’s puffed up. So, please God, send forth your judgments upon these people.”

And verse 14 says, we’re not asking God to do anything other than what he has declared himself to be.

Verse 14, you have seen, you observe trouble and grief, to repay it by your hand. We’re not asking God to do something that is outside of his character when we pray a prayer of malediction. It is what he does. It’s the way he goes about things. It’s what he does. And he wants us to pray to him that he then would bring forth his actions on the earth to put an end to the butchery.

The helpless commits himself to you. You are the helper of the fatherless, the abandoned child in the womb. And then the prayer again in verse 15, in a strengthened form, “Break the arm of the wicked and the evil man. Seek out his wickedness until you find none.”

Now, there’s two ways for that to happen. The abortionist can repent and stop his wicked ways that way or he can be destroyed by God in judgments, his arms broken so he can’t do that work anymore. And either way, the end result, the psalmist prays in terms of the dream. He prays in terms of the vision. He prays that the wickedness of the abortionist will be found no more in the context of our world. And then he talks about the sureness of his answer.

The Lord is king forever and ever. The nations have perished out of his land. Lord, you have heard the desires of the humble. You will prepare their heart. You will cause their ear to hear, to do justice to the fatherless and to the oppressed.

God says, “What we’re supposed to do in a time of trouble in Psalm 10 is we’re supposed to pray. What else can we do? The elected officials will not make manifest the judgments that God has said they’re to make manifest. Romans tells us that the purpose of the civil magistrate is to bring his judgments to protect the weak and to work out the judgments of God. And so by doing that cause people to say I’m not going to sin in that grievous of a way and we have to in our prayers then talk a little bit also about the civil state.

Turn to Psalm 82 and we’ll see the relationship of what we’re talking about today to what we talked about a couple of weeks ago in terms of not reviling a ruler of the people.

So Psalm 82 is a picture again of the situation in our day. It’s very contemporary to us. It’s very much what we see in the context of our lives.

We have first judges described as gods. In verse one, God stands in the congregation of the mighty. He judges among the gods. The case law we just read from Exodus 21. You know the woman, the man has to pay whatever the judges or gods Elohim with a definite article attached to it. The gods whatever the gods described. So here the gods, the rulers in the context of the world are described as being in the context of God. God stands in the congregation of the mighty. He judges amongst the gods. The rulers of the world have to know that they’re not sitting there isolated. God is in their context and he judges the gods.

Verse two, “How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?”

See the law. How long will you award $150 million or $110 million of damages to Planned Parenthood last year because Andrew Bernett and others made some statements that some people felt threatened by. Andrew never intended to threaten people’s lives by printing up a poster talking about, you know, the need to get evidence to remove licenses from abortionists. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s okay. There was a huge lawsuit here in Portland last year and the judge awarded $110 million. The jury made the decision. The judge awards the money to Planned Parenthood and now we’re back in court again this year.

Now, Andrew’s wife, Diane Bernett, who owns Good Impressions, always has owned Good Impressions because she received money from Advocates for Life this last year in payment for some printing, not even covering her expenses. Planned Parenthood is now suing Andrew’s wife for $150,000, saying that she shouldn’t have taken any money from Advocates for Life. Advocates for Life shouldn’t do any business. They should give all their money to the abortionists. And we’re back in court.

How long will these judges judge unjustly. How long will the judges of our state and of our nation say that abortion on demand is what this country’s laws are going to be like? God stands in the midst of the Supreme Court. He stands in the midst of the courts here in Oregon. He stands in the midst of the judges on the bench who award these ridiculous judgments against Andrew and his wife, good Christian people here in Portland. God sits there and he judges, but we see that while God judges in the midst of the rulers, yet these people show partiality to the wicked.

Verse three, “Defend the poor and fatherless. Do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy. Free them from the hand of the wicked.”

That’s their job. Their job is to protect those babies in the womb.

Verse 5 though says just in the contemporary situation of this psalm just like us. They don’t know the judges, nor do they understand. They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are unstable. Things are bad. We have a nightmare. As I said at the end of this week, instead of the dream envisioned at the beginning of last week, we have this nightmare of the foundations of the culture being rocked and rolled because judges will not defend the helpless and will not defend babies in the context of the womb. It’s a horrific thing to the context of societal order. This great sin on the part of judges.

Verse six, God says, “I said you are gods, you rulers. All of you are children of the most high, but you shall die like men and fall like one of the princes.”

God promises to bring his judgments on civil rulers who ignore their responsibilities to defend the unborn.

And then finally, verse 8 is where we come into the picture. Like the psalmist, like Paul, like those ransomed souls in the book of Revelation, we’re to cry out to God, “Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you shall inherit all nations.”

Our job first and foremost in response to this war on the unborn and this nightmare, to move it to the dream again, man. Our job is to cry out to God in Lord’s day worship services that he might arise and judge the earth. He is going to disciple the nations and part of that is bringing his judgments to bear on the abortionist who sees no judgments upon him and upon the judges who are lofty and held up in their own imaginations that they rule for themselves and not for God. We ask God to come and make manifest his judgments on those rulers.

There is nothing inconsistent between admonitions to be exceedingly careful with our tongues relative to the authorities of the land, to not revile, to not speak sarcastically and reviling the rulers of the people on the one hand, and yet to use our tongues to graciously and submissively cry out to God that he would bring judgment upon the Supreme Court of the country until they turn from their wicked ways and represent his justice in the gate.

Again, those things have to be okay together because they’re both reflected clearly in the word of God when we pray that God would bring his judgments on the justices, it’s so that they might repent. And in fact, it’s part of our obligation to speak to the civil arena. If these men have forgotten that they’re bound to the justice of God for what they do in their deliberations, who shall remind them if not you and I? Who shall remind them if not the church of the Lord Jesus Christ?

We have an obligation in proper submission to the civil state to warn them of the danger that they pose to themselves and our country when they remain stiff-necked against the teachings of God in terms of the defense of the unborn. We have an obligation to enter into at least an educational ministry in terms of the civil state and certainly to join with the psalmist in asking God to arise and judge the earth to bring his judgments if necessary against the civil rulers to the end that the dream might progress and that we might see the manifestation of Christ’s kingdom in our time.

I was really pleased yesterday. I went to the post office and I got a nice letter from a representative here in Oregon, member of the House of Representatives here in Oregon. Representative Close is her name. I’ve never met the woman. Got a nice letter from her though, Papac did, saying, “I really liked the voters’ guide you sent out. Liked it a lot. Only one thing I’d suggest to you, come and talk to us before we vote on these things.”

See, the last election was all referrals from the legislature. And in the primary election, there’s six more referrals from the Oregon legislature. And the legislature is dominated by Republicans. So these are Republican measures, some of which we recommended “no” on. By the way, in the providence of God, I don’t think I ever reported back, but the recommendations we gave in the voters’ guide were exactly how the election turned out. 100% correct or whatever you want to call it. Which was very encouraging to me for this reason. All of the measures were kind of presented as a plank by either side. Either vote “yes” on all or vote “no” on all. But the people of Oregon actually thought about each of them individually and made individual judgments. Several passed, several didn’t pass.

Well, in any event, this representative said, you know, please come and talk to us. You know, she was saying, I would have liked to have heard this stuff that you put in your newsletter before I voted to refer this to the people. She said, “We get very little input from Christian people in the legislature.” She’s asking us as a group, as a congregation, an organization to lobby her, to send information to her about things that could be referred by the legislature to the people to help her vote better.

Now, that’s wonderful, isn’t it? But see, we have an obligation to do that, to talk to them, and to help them think biblically. We don’t have the final answer, but we want to bring things to the table. And we’re being encouraged to do that.

And like I said, we have to address the situation. I think it’s appropriate. Today, I’m going to be praying for several people at the end of the sermon who are specifically involved in this lawsuit against Andrew Bernett’s wife, Diane. The next court thing that will go on will probably be in April. And as I said, she’s now being sued, not because she ever did anything threatening to an abortionist, but because she happened to, in the course of her business affairs, receive money from a group that now has a judgment, a federal judgment against it.

Well, you know, how would you know? Advocates for Life comes to you or Andrew Bernett or any of these people come to you and maybe they want to buy your car and you take the money for your car and all of a sudden Planned Parenthood comes to you and says, “Hey, we want that money. You can’t have it. Give it all back.” And you say, “My car is gone. I expended the services. Too bad. You don’t get it. We want your money to fund abortions. That’s what we’re doing with that $110 million. And that’s what we’ll do with your $150,000.”

That’s what these people are doing.

There are women involved in the local abortion clinic. There are a couple of abortionists, James and Liz Newman Hall. We pray that they would come to repentance for their part in these lawsuits and wanting to continue abortions in the context of Portland. Lois Bakos is the local Planned Parenthood chapter director. We pray she’d come to repentance for her deeds. The Feminist Women’s Health Center, or otherwise known as the All Women’s Health Clinic, is one of the biggest places of abortion in the state, probably the biggest place. We pray that those people that work there would come to repentance.

Carol Bernick is the local attorney for Planned Parenthood and Maria Bulo is the New York attorney for Planned Parenthood that’s in charge of this lawsuit against Diane Bernett. You know, the Bernettes do printing for John and Pam Forester for Door Post. They do the printing for the Parents Education Association. They do printing for a lot of people. Do a great job. Good Christian people. And Planned Parenthood is trying to put them out of business and more than that, they’re trying to take their business and their money and use it to fund abortion. Awful.

We want to point the finger to these people, so to speak, and say, “You must repent.” But if all we do is do that, we haven’t done everything I want us to do today. So, let’s move to the next part of the outline.

Yes, we’re going to talk about Mark chapter 9 a little bit here in a summary way. And I want us to see some correlations in what goes on in Mark chapter 9 that we just read. And we won’t have time to go verse by verse through the text, but we will do an overview of it.

Let me just say at the beginning that this part after the sermon, I owe in large credit to Doug Wilson on the way back from the Moscow trip in which we were received into membership in the CRA. Howard L. played a tape that he had gotten from Doug Wilson who preached on this on July 4th last year, Mark 9 and so much some of the ideas in this section I got from that tape. Another advantage of institutional catholicity and linking up with people indirect but still an advantage nonetheless.

Now the context here is the transfiguration. Let me say first that I think it’s interesting that in the context of the transfiguration, you’ve got Elijah and Moses and Jesus there. And then after they come down from the Mount of Transfiguration, the disciples are talking about Elijah, not Moses. So there’s a stress on Elijah in the text and they’re saying, “Well, what does it mean that Elijah has to come first?”

And what they’re referring to, among other things, is the end of Malachi where one will come in the spirit and power of Elijah. So there’s an emphasis drawn to Elijah at the beginning of this complete section of text in Mark chapter 9. And I can’t help but think here in terms of what we know about the rest of that statement from Malachi that Elijah comes in or man comes in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers. Note the order. Turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and then the children to the fathers. So attention is drawn in the context of this segment of scripture to Elijah and I think to the hearts of children and fathers.

And I want us to