Psalm Lament For A Shaken Land

Psalm sixty one through four. You have rejected us, O God, and broken our defenses. You have been angry with us. Now restore us to your favor. You have shaken our land and split it open. Seal the cracks, for the land trembles. You have been very hard on us, making us drink wine that sent us reeling. But you have raised a banner for those who fear you, a rallying point in the face of attack. Rosabeth Flores Rodriguez and her eleven-year-old daughter, July 16th, 2019, Des Moines, Iowa. A 29-year-old mother and her young daughter who were shot and killed in their home, along with her five-year-old son, by Marvin Oswaldo Escobar Orelena, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala who had been deported twice. Hey folks, this is Jesse Cope, back with another episode of the American Soul Podcast. Hope y'all are going well wherever y'all are, whatever part of the day you're in. I sure do appreciate you joining me, giving me a little bit of your time. I know you have a million other things pulling on your attention, so I will try and use it wisely for those of y'all who continue to share the podcast. Thank you for those of y'all who continue to pray for me and for the podcast. Thank you very much. Very, very grateful for your prayers. Father, thank you for today. Thank you for you, Father, and your Son Jesus Christ and your Holy Spirit. Thank you for your love and your mercy, your grace and your forgiveness. Thank you for your patience. Thank you that you continually pursue us even when we go our own way, when we leave the narrow path, when we try and do things on our own merit, to enter through the wrong gate, to chase our own priorities instead of yours. Forgive us when we focus on this world too much, Father, and focus on storing up for ourselves treasures here instead of in heaven with you and your Son Jesus Christ. Thank you for the guidance of your Holy Spirit. Please be with those listening to the podcast, heal their broken hearts, give them comfort and peace, and a strong faith. Help them to feel your presence. Guide them through whatever they're going through. Father, you know. You know. Be with our military and our law enforcement, our firefighters, our EMS, be with our families, please. Protect those who are overseas, comfort those who lost loved ones in the last couple weeks. Be with them. Be with our farmers, our ranchers, our fishers, our foresters, be with those who build our roads and our infrastructure, electricity, sewer pipelines, everything, buildings, Father. Comfort them, protect them. Be with those in medicine, our doctors, our nurses. Give them all wisdom and courage, Father. Guide my words here too, please. In your son's name we pray. Amen. Marriage verse for today, Proverbs 5, 18 through 19. May your spring be blessed. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. She is a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts intoxicate you all the time. Always be drunk on her love. I had the privilege of sitting around listening to my wife and a good friend, really good friend of hers, actually. And she made a comment, the friend of my wife's, and and it's something I've said on the podcast, but I think she said it a little better. And it was along the lines of normal is not a good thing. And she was referencing marriage and the fact that, you know, so often, well, they're too clingy, they're uh they're too ooey, gooey, mushy, you know, and and and why is that okay? You you know, we're supposed to cleave to our spouse, they're supposed to be the center of our entire universe outside of God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. It's the only relationship that we're told to cleave to, to become one flesh with, to not be ashamed to be naked in front of, right? But as I got to thinking about her comment, it really spreads farther than that. You know, during COVID, we've talked about this on the podcast, there was this idea, this desperation to uh get back to normal, right? Ah, just if we can just get through this, get over this hump. But but folks, normal what is what got us in this mess to begin with. Right? Our founders, they weren't normal. Uh Lincoln, Grant, the Union during the Civil War, they weren't normal. The greatest generation, men and women fighting and at home, they weren't normal. We don't need normal. We need people who unapologetically, uh crazily, you know, the the that follow Christ, that love God in America, that openly admit and acknowledge that we were a Christian nation made specifically for Christians and who aren't ashamed of that. And and and in our marriages too, who intensely love their spouse and aren't ashamed of that. I took too long on that, but maybe that helps some of y'all. Helps me. Luke 2, 36 through 52. Anna, a prophet, was also there in the temple. She was the daughter of Faniuel from the tribe of Asher. And she was very old. Her husband died when they had been married only seven years. Then she lived as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but stayed there day and night, worshiping God with fasting and prayer. She came along just as Simeon was talking with Mary and Joseph, and she began praising God. She talked about the child to everyone who had been waiting expectantly for God to rescue Jerusalem. When Jesus' parents had fulfilled all the requirements of the law of the Lord, they returned home to Nazareth in Galilee. There the child grew up healthy and strong. He was filled with wisdom, and God's favor was on him. Every year Jesus' parents went to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. When Jesus was twelve years old, they attended the festival as usual. After the celebration was over, they started home to Nazareth, but Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents didn't miss him at first because they assumed he was among the other travelers. But when he didn't show up that evening, they started looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they couldn't find him, they went back to Jerusalem to search for him there. Three days later they finally discovered him in the temple, sitting among the religious teachers, listening to them and asking questions. All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. His parents didn't know what to think. Son, his mother said to him, Why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been frantic, searching for you everywhere. But why did you need to search? he asked. Didn't you know that I must be in my father's house? But they didn't understand what he meant. Then he returned to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them, and his mother stored all these things in her heart. Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and all the people. This is a psalm of David when he fought Aram, Zobah, and Aram Nerum, and Joab returned and killed twelve thousand Edomites of the Valley of Salt. You have rejected us, O God, and broken our defenses. You have been angry with us. Now restore us to your favor. You have shaken our land and split it open. Seal the cracks, for the land trembles. You have been very hard on us, making us drink wine that sent us reeling. But you have raised a banner for those who fear you, a rallying point in the face of attack. And what is that rallying point? That rallying point is Jesus Christ. We're going to talk about a quote from one of our presidents, I think, today that will fit that really well. That's the rallying point of our nation. Now rescue your beloved people, answer and save us by your power. God has promised us by his holiness. I will divide up Shechem with joy, I will measure out the valley of Sukath. Gilead is mine, and Manasseh too. Ephraim, my helmet, will produce my warriors, and Judah, my scepter, will produce my kings. But Moab, my washbasin, will become my servant, and I will wipe my feet over Edom and shout in triumph over Philistia. Who will bring me into the fortified city? Who will bring me victory over Edom? Have you rejected us, O God? Will you no longer march with our armies? O please help us against our enemies, for all human help is useless. With God's help we will do mighty things, for he will trample down our foes. Again, the rallying point, the hope of our nation is God and Jesus Christ. It's not our planes, our ships, our boats, our politicians, certainly not our policy folks. None of that matters without God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit at the center of our nation. That's our rallying point. That has to be the shared values and virtue. Proverbs 11:15. There's a danger in putting up security for a stranger's debt. It's safer not to guarantee another person's debt. Countryside, if you are looking for a family-friendly middle grade read, uh if you would check out the Countryside series, kind of like Narnia, The Hobbit, Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, that kind of stuff. This is the first book in the series. There's some reviews if you're interested. And the second book in the series, and again, some reviews if you're interested there. And if you enjoy it, if you'd leave a review, I would appreciate that very much. Those reviews help a great deal, especially the five-star ones. Same thing with the podcast, the reviews help a lot. And if you have five or ten dollars a month, you can donate to the podcast. There's a link in the show notes where you can set that monthly donation up, and that helps a great deal. So thank you. So, Islam. Uh instead of reading a past, you know, even from just a couple years ago, I pulled incidents from the last week inside the United States. And this is what Islam is, folks. This is mainstream Islam. Uh just like leftism, there's no such thing really as far, moderate, uh, extreme, fringe. It's all mainstream, either in openly and explicitly, right, or or quietly and kind of complicitly. But it's mainstream. The desired outcome is mainstream, right? So March 7 to 8, uh Gracie Manson Mansion, uh, the New York governor's mansion, right? Two Muslim men, um, 18 and 19, they threw improvised, right, IEDs, uh, had shrapnel explosive in it. Uh uh, and thankfully they didn't explode. Uh but it's Islam. That was their inspiration, was Islam, right? March 12th, West Bloomfield Township, Michigan. I didn't even know about this until my father was talking to me, the temple, uh, Israel synagogue. And this is the reason that we ought to be exponentially more concerned about what's going on inside America than Iran or overseas. Is this was a naturalized U.S. citizen from Lebanon, a Muslim man. And he rammed a vehicle that was filled with fireworks, gasoline, explosives into the synagogue. And there were children that were supposed to be in this place where he rammed it, and thankfully they weren't. And he got into a shootout, I think, with two of the security officers there. He was killed. I don't think either of the security officers were. I think one of them was wounded, maybe. Also March 12th, right? Norfolk, Virginia, Old Dominion University, another Muslim man, again, and former Army National Guardsman. Folks, we so much more worry about here internally. Uh, he came into a Razi ROTC classroom, right? Those are the classrooms, if you don't know, where you kind of prep for going into the military, and opened fire, yelling, Allah Akbar, killed the instructor, I believe, who saved the kids, put himself in between the kids and this Muslim man, gunman, wounded two others. He was killed by the students. They stabbed him, right? Because of course you're not allowed to carry on campus, which that obviously that's a whole different discussion. But uh again, Islam, folks. It's Islam. And there's there's these people that try and talk about Allah Akbar as some kind of peaceful slogan, the fact that there's moderate Muslims. There's not. There are not. There are Muslims who haven't acted extremely, quote unquote, yet. There's but what we really ought to say is there's Muslims who haven't acted in accordance with the Quran and Muhammad yet. Yet, or openly, but they still complicitly, quietly support the actions. Because if they didn't, you would hear these overwhelming outcries every time this happened. Just like you would from Christians if somebody claimed to be Christian and attacked a school. But you don't hear that. Medal of Honor for today, John Hardes Brown, Captain U.S. Civil War Delta Company, 12th Kentucky Infantry, U.S. Army, November 30th, 1864, Franklin, Tennessee. Capture a flag. I always wish they had more in those citations. Capture a flag, right? Accredited to Charleston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, not awarded posthumously. Presented February 13th, 1865, born 1834, died January 30th, 1905, buried Arlington National Cemetery, MH3 TAC 1486, 1 TAC 2, Arlington, Virginia. Let's see if I can get a couple of these quotes, one in particular from our presidents today. I really wanted to read the one from Calvin Coolidge when you go back and remember the psalm about the rallying point, right? The strength of our country is the strength of its religious convictions. The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country. Calvin Coolidge, 30th president. If we don't have an almost universal Christian people, folks, we're not going to have America. We're not going to have liberty and freedom. You can't do it with Muslims. You can't do it with leftists, communists, socialists, Buddhist, Hindu, fascist, Nazis. You have to have a Christian people. That's the only way you really get freedom. Anywhere in the world there's freedom. It ties back into the teachings of Christ. Whether it's based on a different ideology or faith system or not, any any amount of freedom and liberty has to be based on those teachings of Christ, even if they're not acknowledged as such, right? One more, Woodrow Wilson, 28th president. The Bible is the one supreme source of revelation of the meaning of life, the nature of God, and spiritual nature and needs of men. It is the only guide of life which really leads the spirit in the way of peace and salvation. America was born a Christian nation. Again, America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of holy scripture. The Bible. Woodrow Wilson, 28th president. We'll come back and read some more. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. God bless y'all. God bless your families, your marriages. God bless your nation, wherever you are around the world listening. God bless America. We'll talk to you all again real soon, folks. Looking forward to it.