September 11, 2001

My father-in-law, a decorated veteran of WWII in the European theater and member of the famed U.S. Third Army, who served in two D-Days and saw the gore of Anzio, said to me this morning. "You know, I feel worse today than after Pearl Harbor." I knew what he meant, though I was not born until almost twenty years after December 7, 1941. You see, we knew, within moments of that fateful attack in Hawaii all those years ago, who had assaulted us and where to find them. Such is not the case today. The events of Tuesday morning have left us all befuddled, fearful, angry, longing for justice, but blindly flailing at a faceless, nameless adversary.

Shortly before 8:00 a.m. Tuesday, American Airlines Flight 11 left Boston for Los Angeles. It was hijacked within thirty minutes and at 8:45 a.m. slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York. Eighteen minutes later United Airlines Flight 175, a Boeing 767 which was also to be en route from Boston to Los Angeles, was hijacked and crashed into the south tower.

About 9:43 a.m., a similarly hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 (a Boeing 757, operating from Washington Dulles to Los Angeles) dove into the Pentagon in Washington. Part of one side of the venerable old structure collapsed, thick clouds of smoke drifted over our nation’s capital. Its true target had been the White House itself. Ten or so minutes later, at about 10:00 a.m., United Airlines Flight 93, from Newark to San Francisco, crashed 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh (only 85 miles northwest of Camp David). A bare five minutes later, at 10:05 a.m., the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. At around 10:30 a.m., the North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. What terrorists had longed to do before, they had now completed. And then some.

What shall we say to such things? Needless to say, our hearts go out to those who have lost loved ones. Nothing can quench the pangs of their pain, and nothing can give them back their loss. We marvel at the bravery of rescue workers. Hundreds have died doing their duty. We seethe at the wickedness of the perpetrators of such inhuman acts of violence. We contemplate what ought to be the strategic response of our nation and its allies. We speculate as to what will happen next and whether we will see justice done. And we ask hard questions like, how did our nation’s intelligence system fail to see this coming? Yes, I know, we think all those things. But I meant something a little different. What do we, as Christians, say to all this? How do we process this biblically?

Well, the first thing is this – we run to the sovereignty of God. What a kind providence that here at First Presbyterian Church, God has had our hearts meditating, Lord’s Day after Lord’s Day, in Romans 8 and 9 over these past few months. No passage in all of the Bible could be more important for us to grasp at such a time as this. The truth of His sovereignty rings clearly in moments of crisis like these; and when it is heard, even "when the strife is fierce, the warfare long," our "hearts are brave, again, and arms are strong." Thank God that He is Lord. He sits in heaven and laughs His enemies to scorn. He is the God of Hosts and mighty in battle. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that Scripture is irrelevant. We know, now better than ever, from experience even, just how timely it is. Praise God for His sovereignty and Word.

Second, we remember the brevity of life and the final accounting. The words of Moses "Lord, teach us to number our days" beckon us to this reckoning. Thousands of people went to work in New York and Washington on Tuesday who will never go home to their families again. Perhaps they thought of it as a day like any other day. But it wasn’t. Are we ready to meet our Maker? Now. Right now. Or do we presume that life will just go on?

Thirdly, we acknowledge the depravity of human nature. You see, all over this story, there’s the matter of the human heart. We live in a society and culture where the sense of sin has been lost. The educational elite of our land work hard to assure their students that "people are basically good" and that there’s no such thing as ultimate truth, or right and wrong. But such a philosophy is as foolish as it looks in light of the unspeakable tragedy of September 11, 2001. People are (apart from grace) deep down, evil. We have seen, now, a picture of this evil that will never be erased from our seared memories. But we are, all of us, capable of cosmic treason. We need the Lord and His mercy and forgiveness. Pray that some will learn that lesson even in this crisis – that God would use the wrath of men as a maneuver of grace. This is a time for Gospel thinking and Gospel praying.

Finally, my dear Christian friends, we must remember that we are simultaneously citizens of two kingdoms. We are called in this hour to be both disciples and patriots, to love God and serve our country. But in this we must keep our priorities straight and our duties clear. As citizens and residents of this great land, first, let me solemnly say that we may have just entered into a new era. Make no mistake. We are at war and the war has been brought to us. We must resolve now never to give up. We must let these cowards know that we shall not cease to strive until we prevail and harry them from this earth.

Second, let me add that now is the time to consider our national character, to recognize our societal sin, and to realize that no one is willing to die in the pursuit of wanton pleasure. Only those with higher standards and ends and goals can lay down their lives in the cause of freedom. But our Islamic neighbors view us as decadent and as international purveyors of moral perversion. And, sad to say, we are. If we will not do what is necessary to restore America’s rule of law, to amend public and private morality, and to revive the first principles upon which this land was founded, then we shall not be the equal to this challenge.

Third, to you as Christians, in your capacities as disciples of a kingdom which is not of this world, let us remember the prime directives of our Master and Savior. Let us see that His truth has been vindicated in the plight spread before us. Only His truth can set us free, He said. And let us remember that it was the surprising stratagem of the incarnation that God employed to display His limitless power in the veiling of weakness. Robert Southwell expressed this mystery in these lines.

This little Babe so few days old,
Is come to rifle Satan’s fold;
All hell doth at his presence quake,
Though he himself for cold do shake;
For in this weak, unarmed wise,
The gates of hell he will surprise.

With tears he fights and wins the field,
His naked breast stands for a shield;
His battering shot are babish cries,
His arrows made of weeping eyes,
His martial ensigns cold and need,
And feeble flesh his warrior’s steed.

His camp is pitched in a stall,
His bulwark but a broken wall;
The crib his trench, hay stalks his stakes,
Of shepherds he his muster makes;
And thus as sure his foe to wound,
The Angels’ trumps alarum sound.

My soul with Christ join thou in fight,
Stick to the tents that he hath dight;
Within his crib is surest ward,
This little Babe will be thy guard;
If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy,
Then flit not from the heavenly boy.

The Gospel may seem foolishness to men, but it is the power of God. So let us purpose to use this crisis of providence as a Gospel opportunity to make known the matchless name of the savior of the world to the ends of the earth, until the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord and of his Christ, as the waters cover the sea. May God comfort and strengthen and favor you all. Amen.

What are we as Christians to do in a time such as this? Well, there are many answers to that. More than we could possibly give tonight. We will, no doubt, continue to contemplate those things with one another over the weeks and months ahead. But I think the first answer is that we go to God. We praise Him, we trust Him, we focus upon Him and rest in Him. Let us hear the Psalmist’s words. This is the word of God.

1. Sing for joy in the LORD, O you righteous ones; Praise is becoming to the upright.
2. Give thanks to the LORD with the lyre; Sing praises to Him with a harp of ten strings.
3. Sing to Him a new song; Play skillfully with a shout of joy.
4. For the word of the LORD is upright; And all His work is done in faithfulness.
5. He loves righteousness and justice; The earth is full of the lovingkindness of the LORD.
6. By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, And by the breath of His mouth all their host.
7. He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap; He lays up the deeps in storehouses.
8. Let all the earth fear the LORD; Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.
9 For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.
10. The LORD nullifies the counsel of the nations; He frustrates the plans of the peoples.
11. The counsel of the LORD stands forever, The plans of His heart from generation to generation.
12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, The people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance.
13 The LORD looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men;
14. From His dwelling place He looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth,
15. He who fashions the hearts of them all, He who understands all their works.
16. The king is not saved by a mighty army; A warrior is not delivered by great strength.
17 A horse is a false hope for victory; Nor does it deliver anyone by its great strength.
18. Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear Him, On those who hope for His lovingkindness,
19 To deliver their soul from death, And to keep them alive in famine.
20. Our soul waits for the LORD; He is our help and our shield.
21. For our heart rejoices in Him, Because we trust in His holy name.
22. Let Thy lovingkindness, O LORD, be upon us, According as we have hoped in Thee.

We have only a few moments together tonight. But this great Psalm, it seems to me, points us in three particular directions that we need to be going right now as we face the situation that our nation finds itself in. What should we do?

I. It is always time to praise our Lord, even in the direst crisis, because His throne is not shaken.
   Well, the first thing this psalm reminds us — and it reminds us right at the very beginning — is that we ought to praise God. It is always time to praise the Lord. This psalm begins in the first verses, in verses 1 and 2 and 3, exhorting the people of God to sing to the Lord a new song.

Derek Thomas, this next Wednesday night is going to begin a new series of study in 1 Peter. Now, 1 Peter was written to people who were being persecuted and who were about to undergo a more strident persecution than they had ever experienced before. What would you say to people who were in those circumstance? What would be the first word of counsel out of your mouth to someone in those circumstances? You know what Peter’s was? Praise God. That is the first word out of Peter’s mouth to those persecuted Christians somewhere there in Asia Minor.

The Psalmist here is reminding us that in every circumstance, in any circumstance, our instinctive response as believers ought to be to praise God. There is nothing in life, nothing, that in the least undercuts His worthiness of praise. Because His worthiness of praise is not based upon the shifting circumstances of our experience. But it is based on the bedrocks of His character and the glory of His faithfulness to us; and, therefore, He is to be praised at all times. That is the first thing we learn and that is something we need to remember right now.

There will, no doubt, be many who will be asking over the days to come, "Where was God in all this?" Perhaps some of you remember the tragedy at the Woodlands Baptist Church in Texas not to long ago, when Al Meredith, the pastor, returned from Michigan where he had just closed up his childhood home; his mother had died the week before. He arrived on a Wednesday evening, only to find that a man had gunned down many of the children of his congregation at a special youth service being held.

When he arrived at this scene of carnage, a reporter shoved a microphone to his mouth and said to him, "Pastor, where was God?" And I wish that I could have had the wisdom and the grace to say what Al Meredith said to that reporter. "He was right where He was when His Son was dying on the tree, on the throne of this universe, ruling the world for the good of His people." God always deserves to be praised, and there is no crisis that can in the least undercut that. That is the first thing we need to remember right now, my friends.

II. It is to God Himself that we must run in this crisis, and trust in Him alone.
   The second thing is this; it is to God that we must that we must go. It is God who must be our trust. Notice how the psalmist explicitly says here that the king is not saved by his army. He is not saved by the numbers of his troops. He is not saved by military intelligence. He is not saved by fast horses or great warriors. The king is saved because he trusts in God.

Now, I have heard—and I don’t want to be too critical in the midst of these trying hours—but I have heard several of our national leaders, in the last 24 hours, say something like this: "America is going to be all right, because we believe in ourselves." Well, I want to tell you something, my friends. The Psalmist begs to differ.

It is not ourselves in whom we trust, if we hope for security. It is in God. Our trust must be in Him, directed away from ourselves and our own abilities and our own weaknesses which are all too apparent to us right now, and directed towards the only one who can do anything about it — the Sovereign God of Heaven and Earth.

That is the second lesson we learn in this psalm. Our trust must be in the Lord. "In God we trust," we once said in better days. But men in this land have been laboring to remove that, not simply from our coinage, but from our hearts. It is one of the singular duties of Christians in our time to remind this culture, this society, this people, that our hope is in the name of the Lord and our security is found only in His trust and so we must run to Him in trust.

III. When the world goes crazy, we must focus on God, with tenacity.
   The final lesson we learn from this great passage is just this. When the calamities of life surround us, when the crises of life engulf us, the first place that we should go, the first thing that we should think about is God Himself. Isn’t it interesting that all the reasons, and there are seven of them in this psalm—and I am not going to have time to do justice to these seven reasons—but all the reasons that the psalmist gives you to praise God in this psalm are about God. They are not about us, they are not about events, they are all about God. When he is giving you reasons to praise God, reasons to trust in Him, all those reasons reside in God. God alone.

God can be trusted, even when others can’t.
   Look at them briefly. Look at verse 4: "The Lord is trustworthy." We can trust His promises despite our trials. He shows a consistent truthfulness towards us in word and deed. We may live in a world of deceit (isn’t it ironic that these perpetrators of violence may have been trained in our own land?), but you can trust the Lord. So praise Him.

God loves and does justice, and He will settle all injustices.
   Look again at verse 5. You praise God, you trust Him, why? Because He is just. The Lord of the heaven and earth does right. He loves righteousness and justice.

You know, before Tuesday, I could imagine that in college classrooms around the country, this corundum may well have been posed to students in religion classes: "How can you say that a loving God would condemn people?" We look at that question on the other side of Tuesday and we say this, "Does God’s justice in bringing retribution against the wicked, in the least compromise His heart of love?"

If a wise, kind, and godly federal judge, a man with a heart of love, were to have the perpetrators of the disasters that we have seen in the last 36 hours brought before his bar of justice, and were he to condemn them to death, would we say, "Ah, that man knows nothing of love." Oh, no. God’s justice does not compromise His heart of love. For His love and His justice are not opposed. And this psalm assures us that He will do what is right. He will set accounts straight.

God is the Creator and we are, thus accountable to Him.
   We praise Him because He is the creator. Look at verses 6 through 9. "When by the word of the LORD the heavens were made." He created the world; we ought to stand in awe. Because He created the world, we are accountable. All people are accountable to Him. It is the doctrine of creation, which grounds the universal accountability of God. All mankind is accountable to Him and will render an account at the final reckoning, and that truth is a great comfort to us.

This world is not a world that is out of control. It is not a world that is meaningless. It is not a world that is sort of hurtling through space with no purpose and no direction. And all of life that we find meaning in, merely being some sort of contrivance that we have come up with, mind games that we play in order to supply meaning where there is no meaning.

God is the creator, and because He is the creator, that means this world means something and it is going in some direction. And it also means that for His people, there is nothing in this world, nothing in this life that is meaningless.

We have, as far as we know, no report of members of this congregation losing loved ones in the vicinity of Manhattan over the last few hours. We have had many of them there, though. Brister Ware’s son-in-law’s building is across from the World Trade Center. It is on fire now and probably won’t be there in another 24 to 48 hours. The Yandells have family there. Jim and Barbara Wellborn’s son was spared at the Pentagon. We could name many people in this congregation with friends right in that vicinity. The youth group of my home church was boarding the bus to go downtown to the Manhattan tour. Many have been spared and we will hear many stories of providence.

So let me say for those who have lost loved ones and those are in Christ, there is nothing meaningless about that. As wicked and as despicable as this act is, there is nothing meaningless about the deaths of God’s children. In fact, He says, "Precious in my sight is the death of my godly ones."

God is all powerful and has a purpose in every tragedy.
   In verses 10 and 11, we are reminded that the Lord rules the world for the good of His people and so we ought to praise Him and to trust Him. He controls history for His people’s sake. He orders all things, even tragedy for good. That is what we are going to be meditating on, on Sunday morning as we come back again to pour our hearts out before the living God and ask, "What do we do with this?" Will we run right to what Paul has been teaching us in Romans 8 and 9 and what psalm 33:11 teaches us, that the counsel of the Lord stands forever and the plans of His heart are from generation to generation. And nothing, not Abu Nidal, not Osama bin Laden, not any terrorist in the world can change those plans, defeat them, or overthrow them.

God determines the future, so trust Him and pray to Him.
   Notice again in verses 13 through 17, it is the Lord’s power that is the ultimate determiner of our reality. In the next few days, there will be much concentration on what Washington will do, and what London will do and what Berlin will do, and what Paris will do, and what Beijing will do, and what Moscow will do, and what the great centers of world power will go. And I want to say to you that it may be that the great determinative events of the next days will happen completely out of view of the gaze of the world and away from the centers of power. It may be that the great determinative events of the next few days and months will be happening in prayer meetings and in Bible studies and in friends gathering to lift up the name of the Lord in prayer and in worship services as people’s hearts are renewed and as God hears the pleas of His people because He is the ultimate determiner of reality. Does it then not make sense that those who have His ear have most involvement with that will be unfolded in the future?

And finally this, my friends, it is so important for us to remember as we look at verses 18 to 22, "the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him. The Lord is near to His people." That doesn’t simply mean that He has come alongside of us to "feel our pain" like an empathetic counselor who can’t do a thing about our situation. When the Bible says that Lord is near you, it not only means that He is there to comfort you, it means that He is there to do something about it.

And all of us need to remember right now that the Lord is near His people. He is not just here to give us hollow words of comfort or to "feel our pain," but He is here to do something about it; and what is better, He is here to accomplish the plan that He has put in motion from the foundation of the world and which has not been, in one iota, altered by the events of the last 36 hours. The purposes of His mercy will triumph and we will praise Him. Let us remember that.

Above all, He has drawn near to us in Jesus Christ, who is the only Savior of the world. As you put your trust in His person and promises, you will experience the pardon of sin, the adoption as a child of God, and the nearness of your heavenly Father.  Amen.