Heavenly Security

Text: Psalm 4

Focus: Peace (security) for believers

Function: To help believers rest in the power of God.

Form: Story telling

Intro: A few weeks ago, I was watching a TV drama that's a political show, I think it is designed to give a positive view of the Front-Running Democratic Presidential Candidate for 2016.

In the drama, there is a professor of religion at a Washington DC university who is the perennial good guy.

And, as a teacher of religion, he has been talking the last few weeks about the concept of warfare espoused by Augustine called “just war.”

In my opinion, governments may be able to exercise what is called a a “justifiable defense,” but to me, the concept of just war is a contradiction in terms.

Now, I have a son who is a police officer. He has been charged, as the Bible says, with the use of deadly force as an agent of God.

It is an awesome responsibility. We trust peace officers to protect the entire population.

I pray hard for him that he will use his authority with God-fearing equity.

He is a good man. He is different from me. He has always been different.

To him, most issues are black and white. To me, everything is a situation. He is able to make quick, life changing judgments.

If he catches a drunk driver that has no previous record, he is more likely to drive him or her home than arrest them. That is, provided they are respectful.

And right now, he is questioning everything about his career choice.

He has enforced the law and has made some enemies.

And the few officers and police departments that are indeed racist are giving him a bad name.

He tells me, Dad, there is just such a lack of respect for the Police these days that I don't know if I can continue.

But, I have seen the terribly destructive effects that Crystal Meth and Crack Cocaine can have on a life, a family and a community.

A Heroin addict I was working with introduced me to a young mother. She had been a beautiful girl, but her addiction to Crystal Meth had rotted all her teeth and left her face pock-marked.

The saddest part of it for her was that her baby's father was her drug dealer.

She was arrested and he wasn't.

He gained custody of her child since he himself had not been arrested and was smart enough to not use the product he was making.

And he was an evil man. In order for her to see her daughter, she had to come to his house and party with him by giving both herself to him and to his drug.

Because she consequently could not pass her drug test, she could not gain custody back.

She became a victim of human trafficking and he made even more money by selling her body.

If I were to call anyone evil, it might be him.

She was trapped in a haze of drugs, sex and addiction just to see her daughter.

Praise God that I was able to find a Catholic Social Service agency that provided the legal help to get her free. Sadly, the consequence was a six month stay in foster care for her child.

My son is working to protect this woman and feels terrible about the way his profession is appreciated by the local community.

War, drugs, prostitution, human trafficking, all of these things are signs of human evil. All of these are signs that we need a savior. All of these are signs that the world needs the Church to pick up the mission of Jesus and work toward health, healing and freedom for everyone.

What shocks me is that my son works in Lancaster, Co, Pennsylvania.

While I pastored there, one of my parishioners called it the “most righteous county in all of America.”

But my son actually busted an Amish Cocaine smuggling ring. Amish.

They called is the most righteous county because all over the county, one will see warehouses owned by different religious organizations where food and other sundries are collected to be distributed all over the world.

The school superintendent was concerned because there are over 100 different language groups represented in the Ephrata school district because of the refugee resettling going on by all the churches.

Great good, and in the middle of it, great evil. Destructive forces. That is his context.

He is despondent about his calling.

I think he needs a good dose of today's scripture.

Good versus evil. Right there. Right here. I watch that show that justifies a military that has arbitrary power to enforce the good of one nation and call it justifiable.

I see the destruction that drugs and racism has caused in our cities and at times, one can give up hope.

But when I look at verse 3, “the Lord knows how to keep the Godly for Himself” I find hope.

Just who are the godly?

Well, that is debatable, maybe even in this room.

Maybe the best definition is “everyone who hates and resists evil.”

Maybe it can be described in the Lord's prayer: “Deliver me from Evil.”

There is a lot of interpreting done by translators.

And a good case can be made in the Lord's prayer for “Deliver me from Satan.”

Not a great case, but a good case.

The way the Greek article is not used in the passage indicates that Jesus is telling us to pray that we might not be trapped by the force of evil that exists in this world.

Whether we personify it is the Devil, or we personify it as the choice to do wrong, the possibility to choose the wrong value in every situation leads me to pray the Lord's prayer with a silent “one” for “Evil One” whenever I am publicly praying it. When I pray it privately, I always pray “evil one.”

Evil does exist. And we live in contrast to it. We live in contrast to it with God.

David is appealing to Good.

David is appealing to the God who does Good.

David is appealing to the God who does not have evil in God's existence.

David is appealing to the God who personifies the opposite of evil.

In this Psalm, David is asking some big questions of God.

And David is reminding God of God's love and fairness.

I admit I don't understand why God answers some of my prayers with a yes and others with a no.

I don't know why.

But when I read this Psalm, I am reminded that God still loves the good. And that God has still called me to love the good as well.

God has called us to love the good without giving up on doing good.

Last night I had the privilege of hearing a panel with Cliff Kindy, a professor of Islam at a US university, another professor, I am not sure, but both men were passionate with heavy accents. They spoke about Boko Haram and the power they have to make converts.

We heard them say many things, maybe the most important is that although they are Muslims, they are not practicing Islam.

They appeal to the young who want to adventure Jihad and the appeal happens because their pre-frontal lobes are not yet developed.

They appeal to the victims of raging poverty in Nigeria who are kept in poverty because of an extremely corrupt government. They did express some hope for the new regime.

But they called us to peace. They called us to walk in peace with them.

They begged forgiveness for the violence done in the name of Islam.

They asked us to help them forgive the bad name these Jihadists give them.

It made me think of some of the crazy things I hear proclaimed against undocumented aliens, people with different gender identities, the poor, Muslims, people of other races and others who are not part of the ruling race, gender and religion in the US by those who claim Christ.

And they said this: All of this is political power that uses religion to exercise its violence.

And that makes sense to us, except government corruption seems to be the primary business of the wealthier Nigerians.

Not all of our politicians are corrupt. As a matter of fact, most of them are sincere, I pray.

It was almost like they were saying “we are having a problem with some rebellious kids, be patient with us, help us forgive and bring them back to the fold.

He asked for our forgiveness. And then he gave statistics of violence in Afghan committed against the population by UN forces.

It sounded as bad as Vietnam got at the end.

He didn't accuse. He just reminded us that their forgiveness of us is a lot as well.

The terror of the girls in Chibok. Most of them are still alive and are being used as an human shield to protect Boko Haram's camps, some have been given away to men of power in the movement, but many, if not most, are still alive.

The discussion, hearing the evil could have been depressing. But I was so much filled with hope.

You see, what I get from this Psalm is this: “Don't give up hope!”

God loves the good.

God still loves the good.

And I wish you could have heard the one Muslim get going. He could have been a Baptist preacher.

He refused to let this dismay him.

This started because Christians and Muslims started working together and Boko Haram excluded themselves from the table.

They retaliated, but the, 300 girls are held hostage, 10-15,000 have died, 180,000 people have been displaced. Only 1 in 5 churches survive and the people are desperate.

But they didn't give up hope.

As this Muslim leader started going, his voice raised, his tenor quickened and with joy he proclaimed that this will be a day that redefines Islam as a the religion of peace that it is.

I loved the way he defended the peaceable nature of his faith. Let me read this direct quote, I was typing fast! He said: “1,5 billion people practice Islam. And the vast majority practice the peaceable kind... ...Therefore we have an “Open Letter to Isis” (and he said Boko Haram and Isis are interchangeable in his mind) “that points out the way they use just a few verses out of context to justify violence in direct contradiction with the Spirit and the whole of the teaching of the Koran.”

And then he said something else, and it goes back to my introductory statement about the propagation of the idea of a “just war.” The TV show felt like propaganda for a war on Isis that is actually led by the Democrats. Heaven forbid!! But he said this: “Christians as well as proponents of every major religion have used the same device, verses out of context that contradict the Spirit and intent of the faith.”

His defense of Islam is certainly different that what I have heard on TV. I thanked God for it.

Even though nations posture in war and violence, God still loves the good and God still loves every single person, every single one, every race, every religion, every culture, every gender, every class, everyone the same.

I find that to be Heavenly Security.